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Lucid9 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - It comes as a shock when Yama personally witnesses Shoji being killed by a train right in front of him. - In the bad endings, Yama goes crazy and murders the hostages and the culprit, and in some variations he even murders Rui because he's just that far gone due to what the culprit put him through. - There's a moment of nightmare fuel even in the good ending: everything seems to be fine, the culprit has been brought to justice, Yama and his friends have been having fun, and Yama has just had a heart-to-heart talk with the girl of your choice, and then you visit Rui's house and find Rui's corpse laying in a pool of her own blood, with her parents also dead and the house having been ransacked. Worst of all, you don't even know who killed Rui, because the culprit of the previous murders has already been arrested by this point.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Lucid9
Lucky Luke / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Comics: - Bob Dalton's on-screen death via headshot◊. The one panel in which he calls out for his mother as he dies hanging from the lantern showing only his feet suspended and something (it's probably the oil from the lamp but with the way it's portrayed like forming a pool underneath him the next panel) dripping below makes a chilling image. It's no wonder Dupuis asked Morris to change it. - The dream sequences from The Bride of Lucky Luke, Luke is having Counting Sheep dreams after being roped into helping a wagon train of single woman across half the frontier to a town of single men. The sheeps' heads suddenly turn into the women's heads, leading to a Catapult Nightmare for poor Luke. It's repeated later in the story when he's forced to stay in the town to chaperone one of the women, an Irish girl named Jenny, whose fiancee got himself jailed for several months after trashing the saloon in celebration of his marriage. This time it's just Jenny's face, but equally unsettling. - One bizarre short story revolves around Luke looking for a man who has apparently stolen Jolly Jumper, with the theft having taken place over a year ago. His only clue is a pants button the thief left behind, but after finding a man wearing said pants it turns out they were part of a Chain of Deals, and when Luke finally tracks down the man who sold them, it turns out he got them from the body of a man who was hanged for selling horsemeat, making him faint dead out of shock. \|\|Thankfully, it was All Just a Dream\|\| - The Daltons coming within seconds of getting hanged when their sentences are changed to execution. It's especially disturbing how the whole town treats it like a public event, complete with little kids asking to be held up so they can watch (which is completely historically accurate by the way). Daisy Town: - The showdown between Luke and the Daltons starts of as rather sinister with ominous music playing, the Daltons ready to kill and the whole town pausing at whatever they were doing to listen to the sound of the approaching combatants.\|\| And then the whole thing ventures to purely comedic Nightmare Retardant thanks to Lucky Luke's plan.\|\| Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure: - Edgar Crook gleefully admits to having manipulated other groups of settlers to their dooms with his fraudulent scheme. He then tosses a stick of dynamite while he runs off with the Daltons' loot, which would blow up Luke, Miss Littletown, the schoolchildren, all the other settlers and the Daltons. Even throughout their journey, some of his attempts at sabotage are mundane at best, such as blowing up a bridge or trying to force Luke to split from the group by kidnapping the Daltons, whereas at another point he tries to unleash alligators on them. Luke: You knew there was no way they'd get here in eighty days. Crook, how many settlers have you put in peril? Crook: A dozen, give or take. It's a small business, but it does very well.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuckyLuke
Luca / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes WARNING: Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages. All spoilers will be unmarked! The film's entire premise may count: two sea monster boys risking life and limb pretending to be humans in a town known for killing their species. One wrong move, one stray splash of water, and it's all over for them. And they come very close numerous times in revealing themselves, and who knows the worst that could happen... Alberto's earlier thievery on the fishing boat at night can come off as quite creepy, even knowing he's up to no harm. From the fishermen's perspective they only catch brief glimpses of something in the dark water, circling them, its intentions unknown, and they quickly flee the scene fearing the worst without getting a good look at just exactly what was after them. For the brief time Uncle Ugo appears, his overall appearance is unsettling due to the fact that his transparent body shows his organs. Then there's a moment where he freezes up while talking to Luca and Luca's father has him punch his uncle's heart hard enough to get it working again. And with his complaints that there is too much oxygen on the surface, one can only imagine what kind of life awaits Luca down in the dark abyss. Alberto revealing his sea monster form to Giulia for the first time comes off as very ominous. It's played off as a moment of betrayal where Alberto tries to prove that humans can't accept them, but him then rising out of the water backlit by the sun makes him look downright menacing. Alberto and Luca's relationship. In the real world, a dominant personality that separates you from others and tries to control what you think based on lies is not a good person to be around. It also rarely has a happy ending. Ercole's attack on Luca and Alberto in front of the Vespa shop is disturbing to watch. In the dead of night, he first throws a harpoon at them to get their attention, then he has Guido and Ciccio pin Alberto to the wall while he gut-punches him. It's an unpleasant display of Ercole's Bully Brutality and shows who is the true monster. Ercole: I want to make myself very clear; this is my town, number ONE!(he socks Alberto in the gut as he says the last word) And number two, I don't want you in it. The climax has Ercole suffering a Villainous Breakdown and chasing after the now-transformed Luca and Alberto, hellbent on killing them after the latter makes off with the former. This turns him from a mere obnoxious bully to a downright sociopathic monster who will do anything for his own gain. Worse, Luca and Alberto cannot rely on anyone's help (with the fortunate exception of Giulia, who is chasing after Ercole to stop him) as they are perceived as The Dreaded by the townsfolk. This line by Ercole also qualifies: Ercole: You should've left when I told you. Now, I GOTTA KILL SOME SEA MONSTERS!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Luca
Lucifer (2016) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Lucifer gives a rather chilling speech to Cain, with a Slasher Smile that makes you very glad he's on our side... Deep down, you know you're a monster, and that you belong in Hell where you will torture yourself with that truth for eternity . 'Cause no matter what you tell yourself... you can't outrun what you've done. What you truly are. - Worse, Cain tries to deny feeling guilty over causing Charlotte's death, until Lucifer happily reminds him with the line above. Since guilt is required to go to Hell, this could be interpreted as Lucifer intentionally making an appeal to whatever is left of Cain's conscience just before he dies, so Lucifer can make damn sure Cain goes to Hell. Brr... - And in response to the above, Cain just snarls, "And neither can you," and laughs.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Lucifer2016
Lost Tapes / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes This simian is not silly. - The Reptilians. They can take on any form, are smarter than us, and have infiltrated pretty much everywhere. If you get marked, they can find you no matter where you go. Victims are wrapped in a translucent substance that keeps them very much alive, possibly even conscious. They clearly need live humans for something, but this purpose is never explained. - The Monster of Monterey episode. If being stuck out at sea isn't enough for you, how about seeing it happen to your friend on a live recording? Throw in you being knocked off your boat, with no way back on, and a plesiosaur dragging you under, and you can't see it, and you've got some prime horror. It's especially galling because she did nothing wrong. - A blink-and-you-miss-it example; as they show a POV shot of Sharon slowly drifting away from the boat, she suddenly gasps and shouts "what was that!?" before being pulled under... - The long, slow, drawn-out shot of a blurry shape swimming by under the boat and utterly dwarfing her in size is also absolutely chilling. - Earlier in the episode, she received a distress call, saying they were under attack by something, but then the transmisison is cut off. Later, she comes upon the boat, but doesn't see anyone on it, however when she drives passed it, there's blood on the side of the boat, suggesting the crew was attacked and killed by the monster. - Some episodes manage to be truly scary: Zombie has some real jump-inducing moments. Poltergiest, Strigoi, Alien, and especially Devil Dragon tend to stand out. - Poltergeist especially, particularly the feelings of hopelessness that come up as the documentary crew is killed one by one, especially the circumstances under which they all die: the woman in the wheelchair is thrown against the wall and convulses as the poltergeist possesses her to tell the others to leave; the cameraman is killed, blood comes from his eyes, and he just stays standing there like he's in a trance rather than dead; and their asthmatic leader is lured upstairs by what sound like cries for help, only to be confront by the poltergeist—which only he can see—and is stabbed to death. - The clincher? By the time the cameraman dies, the leader gives up. He immediately starts screaming "Okay! You win!" to the poltergeist in a terrified voice before desperately trying to escape. But the poltergeist isn't satisfied with them leaving the normal way. No, he wants them to leave in body bags. And that's exactly what he gets. - Just to add to the terror of the scene, as Jeremy (the leader of the documentarians) tries to leave through the front door, but it's locked. No problem, right? He's inside, so he has control over whether the door is locked or not, right? Nope. The poltergeist keeps locking the door, and Jeremy is clearly becoming more panicked as he undoes the lock only for it to close again seemingly all by itself the second he takes his hand away. Much like in other paranormal horror stories, it's a very mundane thing which becomes much, much scarier by the fact that you can't see what's doing it. - The episode begins with Troy and Meghan filming a video for their grandparents, only for the siblings to get into an argument. When one of Meghan's stuffed animals is thrown off the shelf by the poltergeist, the argument culminates in Meghan calling her brother a freak. Cue the poltergeist causing the entire shelf coming very close to landing on Meghan. It's later mentioned that she went to stay with her grandparents because the parents were afraid that Troy might try to kill/hurt her again. - Owlman is packed with nightmarish moments, including the way Sue Ann appears to draw and see him everywhere. He wants girls for eating, and who knows what else. Sue Ann: It knows you're here to stop it. And it's coming back to stop you. - Adding fuel to the fire is the implied connection between the Owlman and demons. Special attention is drawn to the biblical Lillith, who is shown flanked by two owls, and the child sacrifices made to Moloch by the Carthaginians. The strong implication is that the Owlman is the physical manifestation of one of these old gods, which explains the way it ruthlessly hunts down Sue Ann - it thinks of her as a sacrifice. - Let's not forget Wendigo: American Cannibal. Not only does the episode feature surprisingly good special effects and acting, the clips of Matthew approaching the Despair Event Horizon after a week of no food hit really uncomfortable places, as a Primal Fear to end all fears. Paraphrased conversation: Lane: We can't just leave her [their injured friend] here! Matthew: I'm not saying that, but we can barely look out for ourselves! Lane: Well, what other plan do you have?! Matthew: (guilty silence) How long has it been since you had something to eat? Lane: ...You're sick. - When the investigators find Lane hiding in a cave from the Wendigo, screaming "Please don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!" Once she calms down, she explains what went down over the last couple of days to the investigators: Lane: Because I was afraid. It can make noises that sound like people! Matthew! It! Shelby Nash: Lane, why don't you tell us what happened on the camping trip? Lane: We didn't know where we were going. Then we got lost. And then we got really scared and we ran out of food. That's when things got really, really bad... - Footage of Day 11 shows Lane finding Matthew eating something... Lane: Matthew? What are you eating? It's not another squirrel, is it? (a bloodied Matthew turns to face Lane, Lane gasps from what she sees, then he returns to eating) - By Day 12, things get worse as April is injured with a compound fracture and Vince has disappeared: Lane: What happened? April: (in pain) It was chasing us! God! I fell... Lane: What was chasing you?! April: It was like an animal! It was screaming... (the camera cuts to black as Lane pushes the bone back into place and April screams in pain). - The titular Wendigo is one of the scariest monsters on the show. To top it off, it has what looks like a deer's skull for a head. Sweet dreams. - The thing that makes it truly scary is that Wendigo psychosis is quite real. - Knowing the myth of the Wendigo makes it even worse, and they tell you it during the episode. Pretty much, it's an unstoppable killing machine that can never be full. It'll stalk you until it gets you, no matter how much it's eaten, and it'll just keep coming after you until it's got its claws on you. And no matter where you run, it will get you. Because it can travel through time and space to get you. - Matthew's transformation into the Wendigo is very much akin to Sanity Slippage. He slowly becomes more violent and aggressive as the spirit possesses him, resorting to eating a dead squirrel raw for the sake of food. Even worse, he seems to be aware ''something'' is wrong with him, but has no idea what it is or how to stop it. It's not clear how much of his mania was himself or the Wendigo, but the cravings were, like a horrific drug addiction, too strong to fight. Matthew: There's something, there's something... happening. It like it's inside my head, and it's like an itch that I can't... I can't scratch. - On Day 13 later at night, Lane finds Matthew crouched over April's dead body, ripping at her flesh like an animal. She runs over to confront him, but then Matthew turns to her, showing a bloodstained face, Black Eyes of Evil and a mouthful of fangs - it isn't Matthew anymore. It bellows at her as she screams in horror, and then cuts out abruptly. - The ending shows a terrified Lane crying over the investigators' dead bodies and then looking into their cameras, to tell future viewers what happens if they find the tapes. Before she can finish, a shadow looms over her and footsteps come closer. The Wendigo attacks Lane and she screams, just as the camera freezes on the final shot of her in sheer terror. He probably killed Lane immediately after. - The scariest parts of the episode were the climax and ending: Imagine being trapped in a dark cave at night with the Wendigo coming towards you, and the ending has it staring right into the camera. - The Fridge Horror at the end: Matthew, the Wendigo himself, was never seen again... there's a good chance that he's still alive... and still hunting... - In Skin-Walker, something sounds exactly like Brian's mother, and it's genuinely frightening. - The ending of Devil Dragon: the naturalist gets dragged into the bushes by the giant lizard and is eaten. - The scene from "Vampire" when the vampire was sneaking up on the boy while he was sleeping. - The exterminator who was hired to take care of their vernin problem discovers the nest of the vampires. He holds his camera up in front of the vampire and accidentally wakes it up, prompting the bloodsucker to pull him through the wall. The camera then films the vampire drinking his blood. What's even scarier is we hear the exterminator screaming as the monster drains him dry. - The entire Vampire episode. These are not your aristrocratic vampires or sparkly vampires. These vampires are horrifying, feral beasts. - To paint a picture: imagine a cross between a vampire bat and an ape with extremely sharp teeth and claws and a Hair-Trigger Temper. Now picture it chasing you, with the intent to render you hollow of blood. Oh, and sunlight? Yeah, it doesn't do squat to it. - The Strigoi Vampire episode is worse, because it's a Shapeshifter and It Can Think. - Thunderbird focuses on three small children going into the woods to skate. One of them falls and breaks their leg while the other two go to try and get help, all the while the 'helpful' facts are informing us about what happens to the bird's victims. - While possibly driven less by a rational choice and more by panic, one of the older kids (incidentally the same one that accidentally broke the kid's leg) suggests to the other that they leave the young boy to die out there. - The implication that the Thunderbird is an Azhdarchid pterosaur that acts like a shrike. Imagine it...a flying, giraffe sized monster that can eat you whole, but instead prefers to kill you, eat part of you and then impale your dead body on a branch to eat you later. - Dover Demon taps into the fear of something with gangly limbs and giant eyes coming at you in the dark. And then the night vision comes on. - Notable parts are its glaring red eyes marking its victims in broad daylight, setting up traps to snare them, and most brutally, cleaving one of their injured friends who were accidentally shot into many scattered chunks around the forest in mere seconds. The creature even taunts them with chittering throughout the video and slowly walks towards its caught prey in the finale, tanking a desperately fired shotgun and deciding to end it by digging out their entrails at a near instantaneous speed as the couple give out one last miserable cry of love to each other. - What makes Dover Demon so much more terrifying? Its previous strength feat of scattering their friend's corpse into pieces so fast and tanking the shotgun without damage shows that it was more than strong enough to have rushed the entire group and swiftly killed them the moment they set foot on its land. It simply was too sadistic to let these intruders not endure a horrifically dreadful series of deaths, and wanted to crush their spirits before their bodies. - Alien, the Fridge Horror ending. - And the titular monster's chestburster quality; this thing literally rips its poor host apart when trying to escape from her body. - Some of the corpses that appear in the aftermath of a monster's rampage are pretty unnervingly realistic. Devil Monkey, for example, features the lovely image of a man who was . graphically ripped in two - Some of the descriptions of what happens to some victims can be even worse. For example, in Lizard Man, the news crew is stated to have been partially eaten after the Lizard Man got them. And also in Devil Monkey, these Devil Monkeys were probably one of the most brutal monsters in the Lost Tapes series. At the very end, it's stated that the bodies of all the characters presented in the episode were found—except for the teenager who reappeared halfway through because he survived—but they were so badly mutilated that they could only be identified by DNA and dental records. Just think about that for a moment. - In the Chupacabra episode, there's a moment where the little girl drops her camera, which then catches her running away. She looks back, screams, and runs even faster. When it cuts to the pre-commercial title card, we hear her parents screaming and crying and the chupacabra snarling. The implication? That the little girl saw her parents getting mauled to death by that thing. Definitely not something a little kid should be witnessing. - We never actually see the Chupacabra. We just hear its horrifying sounds and witness the aftermath of its rampage, but that only makes things worse. Also, even though the beast is shot at the end of the episode, there's nothing that confirms its death, so for all, we know it could very well have gotten away and still be at large... - Zombies and Poltergeist manage to effectively instill an irrational fear that makes one reluctant to go into dark places. - One could say the scariest episodes are the ones most likely to happen in real life. Like the "Wendigo" episode. - If you have any fear of insects, even in the least, "Death Crawler" will make you hide under the bedsheets. - Two scenes in particular: you see lightning flash over the tent and the shadow of a giant centipede is shown. The kicker, it looks unnervingly realistic. The couple is on the boat, happy they got away. Suddenly, the man looks to the side with an expression of horror... cut to days later when it's stated that their bodies were found with strange marks. - According to the epilogue, footprints from the giant centipede were discovered alongside the couple's bodies. That thing made it to American soil and got loose. It might still be out there... - Again, the most frightening part is Arthropleura really did exist, and grew to eight feet. However, possible Nightmare Retardant kicks in when one takes into mind that it was a placid herbivore. - The opening snippet of "Beast of Bray Road" has a surprisingly effective and disturbing use of only partially revealing the monster as a militia fighter mostly blocks it from view with his back to the camera, but we can see its claws and a bit of its limbs. About halfway through, there's an especially violent moment as another of the fighters is attacked by the creature just out of frame, but we can see its shadow cast in the moonlight as it tears him to pieces. Perhaps the best and creepiest, though, is just under twelve minutes in: yet another of the militia fighters is quietly treading through the woods, with only the sound of insects for company. Then, while her back is turned, a Scare Chord plays while as the creature suddenly emerges from the darkness, crawls across the top-right corner of the screen, and then disappears just as silently. It's the way it moves—it looks like a wolf, but you can clearly tell that it's not. - The whole Southern Sasquatch episode. After his future brother-in-laws are mauled by the Fouke Monster during a simple family bonding hunting trip, the guy panics and runs back to the cabin treehouse they built for emergencies. Only to find the rope ladder completely destroyed thanks to the Fouke Monster. Realizing there's no way out, all he can do is scream out for help in the dark until the Fouke Monster approaches him roaring and carries him away off-screen! All the police can do about the missing bodies is blame them on a bear attack.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostTapes
Holding the World On Their Shoulders / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned. The fall of May Marigold, told throughout three stories, is of course not without its fair share of horrifying moments. - The Fall of Beacon. - May kicks of the fall with a scandal in the Arena; With Watts' help, she hacks into Penny's sensors, making her hallucinate that Cardin is still up and attacking her. This is told from Penny's perspective, as she gets messages that her system is updating, and her reading on Cardin's aura changes from 42% to 75%. And remains at 75%, even as Penny keeps attacking him, until she tries to strike a terrified Cardin with four of her swords at once... and feels them pierce through him, despite her vision clearly telling her that it just bounced of his aura. She just barely has enough time to realize that something is wrong before her system resets again, making her do the same attack again. Penny thought she was having a friendly match with a strong opponent. In reality, she was viscerally murdering a teenager. - Penny's perspective is terrifying, as her perception starts breaking down, glitching and showing things that the audience knows is false. But since Penny is being hacked, she doesn't notice anything until it's far too late. - The first scene of chapter 18 is told from Lionheart's perspective. It's the first time we see post-Fall of Beacon May from someone else's perspective, and she is terrifying. - She introduces herself by appearing out of thin air in Lionheart's office, standing behind him (and conveniently boxing him in with May on one side and Watts on the other). Lionheart's internal monologue makes it clear that the only thing that could be worse than this is if Salem herself decided to visit. - When Lionheart gives her bad news about Ruby and JNPR arriving in Mistral, May gets furious to the point of genuine murderous intent, creating a miniature whirlwind in the office and slowly draining the air around Lionheart until he's left unable to breathe. Going by her dialogue accusing him of having turned tail back to Ozpin, May was fully intending on killing him until Watts stops her. - Cinder very nearly wins her duel with May, until May crosses the Godzilla Threshold by drawing on her grimm infusion. The result is immense pain as her body grows claws and turns more grimm-like, the result being so horrifying that even Cinder stops her assault in shock. Said shock turns into horror as the transformed May attacks her with superhuman strength and speed, completely consumed with thoughts of ripping Cinder apart with her bare claws. The fact that May can sense Cinder's terror only further sements that she's blurring the line between human and grimm. - After Emerald's betrayal, May's anger and hurt is so great that the Doppler takes over and she lunges at Emerald with sharpened claws and the intention of ripping her throat out.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostInTheStorm
Lost Tales of Fantasia / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Then there's the Captain's Log of Captain Hook: - Starting from a noble pirate on his Honeymoon, diving down deep into depression, to the point of starting a war to alleviate boredom, and then after a brief Hope Spot, Hook goes completely mad and starts trying to kill his wife. \|\|And then there's the fact that Tinkerbell is Peter Pan's mother, and in order to survive childbirth they had to use the magic flower from Tangled.\|\| - This is probably the most nightmarish entry of the log, especially as it's our first glimpse of Hell: I went to hell today. I met the Hare who arrogantly challenged the Tortoise to a race, condemned forever to be late. I met the twin demons of wrath and they sang me a song of death, despair, and cannibalism. I met the god of sloth and his insane henchmen. One of them made me a new hat out of the skin of children. And finally, I met the queen of lust and heartache. She stared at me with her angry eyes, and demanded my mind as the price for my love for Tinkerbell. And I looked at her and I said "Why don't you try and take it?" Tink tock, Tink tock, look out fairy, look out croc, Tink tock, Tink tock, look out fairy, look out croc, Tink tock, Tink tock, look out fairy, look out croc, TINK TOCK, TINK TOCK, LOOK OUT FAIRY, LOOK OUT CROC!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostTalesOfFantasia
Lulu's Bizarre Rebellion / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Naturally, there are more than a few horrifying moments across the story. # Arc One - Colonel West. A blood-thirsty, deranged, ruthless soldier, he orchestrates the events of the first arc for the sheer fun of it. # Arc Two - Wake the Snake. A relatively harmless Stand... until its owner's inability to control it causes it to mutate into an out-of-control animal rampaging through Ashford. Anyone bitten by it will die if they fall asleep, and Mao happens to be on hand to ensure the body count rises. - Mao gets control of Anubis. It upgrades his power to levels of long-distance attacks, while keeping him from being harmed by anyone in the room. And he takes Nunnally, Zero, and Cornelia hostage. # Arc Three - The High Eunuchs are all vampires, and their grand scheme is to retrieve Kars. - Kallen's brother Naoto reappears. Bad news: he's a zombie. Worse news: he wants to make the Black Knights undead and conquer Britannia, subjecting them to the same atrocities the Japanese were put through. Horrible news: he arrives in the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N., the strongest Knightmare Frame from canon (besides Lancelot Albion) and so far above what anyone else can bring on the field that it's an honest surprise to Lelouch that there's nothing supernatural about the machine's design. Time to panic. # Arc Four - Dio casually threatens to launch ten F.L.E.I.J.A. at Korea in retaliation for the Black Knights invasion of Tokyo. Only his audience's unfamiliarity with the term stops them from panicking. # Arc Five - Schneizel's awakening. A vampire capable of manipulating the speed of light to not only melt in the sun, but even to effectively see into the future by speeding up the speed of light. He quickly proves the most dangerous fight the heroes have had yet.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LulusBizarreRebellion
Lost Love in Times / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The emperor has a nightmare about Yuan Ling killing him. When he wakes up he's convinced Yuan Ling is really planning to murder him, and he becomes even more paranoid than before.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostLoveInTimes
Lost in Space (2018) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - June Harris, aka Dr. Smith, is a sociopathic Consummate Liar with no qualms about hurting or killing anyone in the way of surviving just a few moments longer. And the original version's famous closeness with Will is translated to her being The Corrupter trying to convince him to embrace his own self-preservation instincts above all moral concerns. Add in some killer Playing Against Type by the typically comedic actress Parker Posey and you have a terrifying and still compulsively watchable Big Bad. - In just the first minutes of being stranded, Judy is trapped in a frozen lake, completely unable to move for hours while the others desperately try to get her out. The poor girl is then stricken with PTSD and claustrophobia, including getting stuck in another tight space just a couple episodes later. - In the finale, Will accidentally loses his grip on the Jupiter 2's hull and starts drifting out into space. The look on his face and the Little "No" he utters serve to emphasize the sheer terror of the situation. - Even worse, he wasn't drifting into space, but towards the planet they just escaped from. In space, he'd at least have a largely painless death from slow oxygen loss, but if he got pulled into the planet's atmosphere he'd experience a faster but infinitely more painful fate as he burns up on reentry. - Season 2 ramps up the sci-fi horror by portraying hostile robots as silent hunters ala Xenomorph Xerox. - Penny, Vijay, Smith, and Mr. Jackson get stranded in the classroom after a lockdown initiated to prevent the rust contaminant from spreading. The rust spreads too fast for the rescue team to secure them, forcing Captain Kamal to sever the classroom to contain and eject the contaminant (even if it means ejecting the survivors inside). This leads to the only rescue option being launching the four into space inside a cramped airtight container (without any other form of protection) and hopefully grabbing them fast enough before they die. The show vividly portrays the characters almost freezing to death before being rescued.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostInSpace2018
Low / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Low's album with the highest terror rating is Trust, which is largely about heroin addiction and was recorded in a desanctified Catholic church. It features: - "The Lamb": Ghostly voices singing "sha-na-na," percussion that sounds like chains being slammed against a concrete floor, and the lead singer shouting "I AM THE LAMB, AND I AM A DEAD MAN!" - "John Prine." What it has to do with John Prine isn't clear, but its lyrics are soaked in self-loathing and it ends in a terrifying, repeating "na na na na." - "Shots and Ladders." Lyrics about someone who's chronically ill, if not dying. The music itself sounds like the recording equipment was falling apart as they were using it. - Secret Name is by and large about the sacrifices that people make for their faith. (Two out of three of the band members are Mormons who are married to each other, and the name of the album references a concept in the Mormon wedding ceremony.) - "Don't Understand." Dissonant tape loops and lyrics that are apparently about a child abductor. - "Home." Just a simple, slow guitar line and a falsetto voice singing "Everybody wants to go home, even when they're old, even when they're small." Terrifying. - Their B-sides compilation includes a number of songs apparently too terrifying for albums, including a Jandek cover where the singer sounds half dead. - Double Negative might be the darkest Low record yet, due to the ominous, glitchy production and the heavier influence of Electronic Music on their sound. - The track "The Son,The Sun" is especially creepy. It sounds like someone or something is stalking you and is slowly approaching.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Low
Love, Death & Robots / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The producers weren't kidding when they said that they'll focus on the concept of death... note : The protagonist of this short isn't dead here, but he probably wishes he was . Sonnie: Are you scared now? Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned. ## Volume 1 - Picture for a moment if you will, you have won your 18th Deathmatch in a row, and you are about to get lucky with one of the most beautiful women in the world. When suddenly, mid-kiss, you have four spikes lodged through your skull, and are being hoisted up by said spikes. While the psycho and her pimp are mocking about how you are about to die. - Now, flip perspective. The woman you have Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, smashed to the ground, and then literally Curb Stomped (a few times).... is still monologuing. You soon find out why when you see the body you excessively killed doesn't have a brain, but someone still talks... and the only other thing that has a brain in the room is a very angry bio-engineered killing machine the size of an elephant. - Your world is ending, all your friends are dead, you figure you might as well end it all. And years later some robots on vacation poke at your still-hanging corpse. - Two people are stuck in a Stable "Groundhog Day" Loop, ending up killing the other one each loop. And every. single. time. they try to just talk and explain the situation to the other side, they end up murdered in self-defense, triggering the other half of the loop, then reset. The fact the loop takes only a few minutes and constantly keeps them in a hurry only adds to it - there is no rest or peace for them and they might end up doing it forever. - The Deranged Animation of the episode feels reminiscent of a psychotic break or a horrible acid trip. - You've stopped the invasion of horrific alien monsters, at a heavy cost, and there's still a planet full of them outside the dome. - On a more visceral level, the terrified and pained cries of the cows as the bugs rip them apart in gruesome fashion. - Flip perspective: you are living a simple life on your planet, then some invaders arrive, take part of the planet and reshape it to their convenience, bringing in new species. And you are hunted down for trying to live on the new resources. As if it wasn't enough, their farmers are armed with mechs and weapons able to take your people down by the dozen, and no qualms using it. Yeah, you would want to eradicate them pretty quickly as well... - The station the routing error sends Thom's ship to. Its at the edge of the galaxy, so help isnt an option. The real appearance of the station however, is covered in what looks like muscular fiber, keeping Thom's ship, and who knows how many others, suspended there. - If the routing error isn't corrected, then more ships will keep being sent there. - The reveal of whatever Greta really is. It starts out looking to be some type of busty chitinous alien, until it moves out of the shadows and is revealed to be a horrible Lovecraftian spider thing. - When Thom wakes up, he looks to be horribly emaciated, surrounded by organic growths and what sounds like screams. - Thom never wakes up for real. What he sees as a reality is in fact still a dream, but rather than being a soothing fantasy, it's showing him his real surroundings... and he isn't awake. Probably can't even get awake, unless allowed to. Which will never happen, as it's all but stated outright he ends up in a state of shock and panic each time the whole charade comes down. - Yan's fate. A huli jing, she is unable to transform back into her nine-tailed fox form due to the increasing presence of technology sucking the magic out of the world. Unable to hunt, she is forced into prostitution to survive. One of her clients, the Governor, at first appears a gentleman, only seeking her for company and nothing sexual... because he can only get it up for robots. His solution? Drug Yan unconscious and perform a full-body cybernetic replacement. Which is performed without anesthetic and while she is fully awake. - Alex's whole situation. First, the solitude of doing an EMV alone, in outer space. Second, being knocked away from your anchor and having your life systems shut down. Third, having to take your glove off, freezing your arm and ensuring it'll be amputated, in order to use the momentum from throwing it to get back to your ship. Fourth, having to rip your own frozen arm off, because you missed your trajectory. - The entire nature of the, for lack of a better term, demons. A seemingly numberless swarm of lighting fast, insectoid creatures the size of a horse, packing razor-sharp bladed limbs and are so ravenous that they will eat you as you fight back. And they nest in a dense mountain forest, the perfect terrain to slaughter anyone sent to deal with them. - The fact that they're explicitly supernatural, as they were first brought into the world by a Soviet officer conducting a Satanic ritual, complete with Human Sacrifice. - There's also the facet that, while their higher-ups were the ones to go full-blown Ghostapo, it's the grunts that are subsequently left to clean up the mess they made. ## Volume 2 - While mostly played for laughs, the premise of this short is very disturbing if you think about it. Just imagine, that one day, completely out of the blue, something that you had trusted suddenly and violently turns on you without hesitation or warning. - Of course a world in which immortality to the entire society is accomplishable by killing off children to prevent overcrowding can only be described as Nightmare Fuel. There is also the fact that society for so long was run like this, nobody anymore even bats an eye about it and the immortals are puzzled why someone would want to have a child (which first requires to stop taking the immortality treatment for the duration of the pregnancy and delivery) - The only thing more frightening than the titular squad is the utterly apathetic citizens who are too busy with the privilege (if you can even call it that) of living for hundreds of years to even recognize someone would want to have children or, even weirder, irreversibly age two years for that. - We are introduced to Love Death+Robots' version of Santa Claus in this short, and this is one version of Santa you don't want coming down your chimney. Is he still the fat, jolly, sweet old man we all know and love? FUCK NO! Instead, we are presented with a crimson-skinned monstrosity that looks like a mix of the Cloverfield monster and a Doom demon. He drinks milk with his straw-like tongue and gives presents by vomiting them up. He still gives children presents for being good, but it is little comfort to them as they are up all night wondering what would have happened if they weren't good. ## Volume 3 - The Thanapod. A giant, man-eating crab that is able to take hold of a dead corpse and use it to talk, with one hell of a creepy voice to boot. And like its mundane, real-life counterparts, it's an extreme Explosive Breeder which can produce hundreds of offspring in one batch. - Worse, it's made very clear that It Can Think, as it negotiates with the protagonist for safe passage to an inhabited island so it can devour thousands of innocent people in exchange for sparing the lives of the crew. We never see whether it would've held up its end of the bargain, but this is probably for the best. - When Torrin kills the rest of the crew after they attempt a mutiny and throws their bodies into the hold, we get several close-up shots of the corpses being crushed as the Thanapod 'tenderizes' the corpses so that it's easier for its offspring to feed. Special mention goes for the shot where the Thanapod flattens a crewmate's skull as if it were a ball of clay. - The corpse that the Thanapod uses to converse with Torrin visibly rots throughout the short. - When Torrin tells the Thanapod that he needs the key to a lockbox under the captain's bed, the Thanapod regurgitates what's left of said captain onto the floor, as he kept the key on his person at all times. Torrin is then forced to search through the slimy, half-digested remains of his deceased captain to find the key. Worse, considering Torrin knows where the gun is kept, it's very likely he and Torrin were good friends who trusted one another. Now take a moment to imagine not only losing a friend, but also having to rummage through their mangled remains after they're dead, just for a chance at staying alive. - The titular swarm is essentially a Non-Malicious Monster. Start doing experiments on it, however, and it will activate "genetic protocols", in which it first creates a new caste to grant it sapience, relying on its previous Genetic Memory. Then clones you and sends its new, loyal troops with fervor to exterminate you. Then makes a new Slave Race using the leftover genetic material. One of its previous assailants was apparently The Empire: its descendants are now vomit-eating scavengers. - The swarm uses Galina as a Dead Guy Puppet to speak to Simon, by means of tendrils digging into her skull and body (a closer inspection reveals that the top of Galina's skull is gone and the tendrils are going directly into her brain) and a forced, agonized voice. What makes it worse is that Galina might not actually be dead, or at least not fully; as her original personality (sounding incredibly tortured) comes through a few times. Plus the swarm plans Simon and her to be a perfect 'breeding pair', which in turn means that the swarm expects him to have sex with what it's turned Galina into... - When the soldiers enter the cave looking for the insurgents and their hostage, they find their skeletal remains on the cave floor, after they had just been seen alive mere minutes ago. They all wonder what could do that to a man in just a few minutes. They soon find out... - The carnivorous bugs that inhabit the caves are truly terrifying. They're more like small crabs than insects, but they each have a large mouth lined with sharp teeth. They swarm anything that enters the tunnels, and together they can strip flesh to the bone in mere seconds. Anyone with arachnophobia is going to have a difficult time watching this episode. - The bugs only get worse when they leave the tunnels and enter the main chasm area, transforming into larger, metallic creatures that can shred people to pieces with their sharp legs, as poor Spencer finds out the hard way. - When the surviving two soldiers enter the large tomb, they encounter something that makes the bugs look tame; a giant, eldritch monster with multiple eyes and huge wings that looks like it came straight out of the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The beast is chained up, and keeps demanding that the humans release it, as it reveals to the soldiers and the audience what horrible fate awaits mankind should it be let loose upon the world. It almost succeeds in freeing itself by taking over the mind of one of the humans. - Fridge Horror sets in when you remember that as horrible as the carnivorous bugs were, they were only there to stop anyone from potentially freeing this horrible creature. - The final scene has Harper wandering through the desert whispering in an alien language and carrying a bloody knife. It's then revealed she used said knife to gouge out her eyeballs and remove her ears, presumably to prevent herself from falling victim to the monster's influence. Whether this method worked or not remains unknown. - And this episode seemingly takes place in Afghanistan or another country just like it. Not some distant planet, not some alternate dimension, but Afghanistan. An all-powerful and destructive Eldritch Abomination, with the power to control humans, is entombed in a remote cave in the middle of one of the most unstable nations on Earth. And as we can see from the beginning, the insurgents are fully aware this cave exists (though they don't appear to be aware of what's inside it.) It was defeated this time, but who's to say the creature won't get out eventually? - Pretty much the whole episode could count thanks to its fast-paced camera work and Deranged Animation reminiscent of The Witness. But some standout moments include: - The Siren, or the Golden Woman. Thanks to it being comprised almost entirely of valuable metals and jewelry, the creature resides deep within the Uncanny Valley, especially with its metallic mask. Then there's the sounds it makes. - When the knights hear her sounds, they are lured toward her, moving almost as if they're doing ballet dances. And if that isn't creepy enough, they then proceed to butcher each other until only the deaf Jibaro remains. - Jibaro becoming more and more deranged throughout the episode after witnessing his fellow soldiers' slaughter and later being pursued by the Golden Woman since, thanks to his immunity from her Compelling Voice, he piqued her interest. It reaches its apex when, after the Golden Woman tries to seduce him (that including ignoring his pushing back and biting part of his lips off), he viciously beats her to a bloody mess then tears the metal and jewels off her body in a manner disturbingly similar to rape. He discards her broken and battered body into the river, and as he gathers the loot the river starts turning into blood... - The Golden Woman being Not Quite Dead and, because he drank from the bloody river which in turn gave him hearing, getting her revenge by luring Jibaro into the river and drowning him. - The Woman cuddles up to Jibaro. As he's sleeping. While the camera has an inexplicable light on them that can't be diegetic. And she stares at us the whole time.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LoveDeathAndRobots
Lupin III: Part II / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Tattari ja... - Episode 1 "The Return of Lupin the Third" features Scorpion doing whatever he can to kill Lupin and his gang during a cruise on the USS Sirloin, and he doesn't care about collateral damage. This includes crushing people during dinner, releasing poisonous snakes in the onboard dentist's office, and releasing a shark in one of the pools Lupin and Fujiko happen to be swimming in. The crew manages to escape each time, but innocent passengers are killed during each incident. - Episode 6 "Tutankamen's 3000-Year Curse" is a rather un-nerving episode as a whole. Lupin wears King Tut's burial mask, and is apparently possessed by the boy king's soul. One especially disturbing part is after Jigen removes the mask, and we are treated to the page image: the lovely sight of Lupin seemingly staring into a void with purple shadow under his eyes. - Then, in the eyecatch, instead of the usual "Hai!" when he lands, Lupin moans, "Tatarri ja!" (Japanese for "I'm cursed"). - Fujiko restrains Lupin to the bed to keep him from escaping, and later comes back to find that he's gone. She then notices that there's blood on the handcuffs, and realizes that the cursed Lupin must have struggled really violently and badly to break out of them, because if he was his normal self, he would've slipped out of them as naturally as breathing. - "The Vanished Special Armored Truck" involves Zenigata sneaking into an armored truck Lupin stole from an Australian factory. Unfortunately, it turns out the back of the truck was designed to be airtight, and Zenigata begins to suffocate. - "Fujiko Doesn't Look Good in a Bridal Gown" has its main villain, William Huffner, who kills the women he marries and preserves their bodies as statues in a twisted gallery of sorts. When it turned out that Fujiko was only pretending to have died in an attempt to rob him, he is glad to be able to kill her himself. - "Steal Everything of Lupin's" involves a dying old man switching bodies with Lupin using a mind-switching machine. In a series of events, Zenigata ends up in the dying old man's body. The horrifying thing is when Lupin and the gang destroy the machine after Lupin gets his body back leaving Zenigata a few short days left to live. What the hell, Lupin!? Just a good thing Pops somehow managed to get his old body back. - "When the Devil Beckons to Lupin"... Good lord, that episode is such an assortment of various horrors. It's bad enough Lupin receives a Creepy Doll that controls him in his sleep making him commit the theft of the episode's macguffin without him knowing. It's bad enough Lupin has a Nightmare Sequence in which the doll comes alive and walks him into a Circus of Fear tent where he has an encounter with the episode's Big Bad: Mephistopheles. He introduces himself as an Evil Puppeteer figure who goes on about how he's in full control of Lupin and brags about having the former's heart in his hand. And then squeezes it, making Lupin writhe in pain on the floor, while creepy living puppets come out laughing at him in unison before Mephistopheles subjects Lupin to a prolonged and disturbing People Puppets sequence using a life-sized Lupin marionette. Then it's revealed that Mephistopheles is a huge Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds as his true identity is that of Jacob, a survivor of the The Holocaust who wants his revenge on former Gestapo members who took part in the death of his family and the theft of their diamonds. The elderly ex-Nazis are grouped in a stadium that Jacob intents blowing up by igniting a giant Gruesome Goat balloon filled with explosive gas. To avoid a disaster that may claim more lives than Jacob's targets, Lupin's gang intervenes to stop him, but at the end of a final confrontation, Jacob gets impaled by one of the nails that hold the explosive balloon into his belly and clings onto it avoid getting eviscerated, and is dragged into the sky as the balloon floats away. Lupin and Jigen, while flying back to America to bring the diamonds to Jacob's family, end up coming across the Devil balloon with Jacob's corpse still clinging onto the rope stuck in his belly. Lupin can't help but feel sorry for his fate, because while Jacob was murderously insane and subjected him to a horrifying experience with the mind-controlling doll, he was still a victim of the Holocaust, and didn't quite deserve what's arguably the worst Cruel and Unusual Death of the franchise.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LupinIIIPartII
Lovecraft Country / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Being a TV series involving the creations of H. P. Lovecraft, the series is bound to have its moments of terror. Warning: Spoilers are unmarked. - Episode 1, "Sundown", shows Atticus, Leti and George trying to navigate and eventually just survive the brutal racism of the Northern States of America. The diner that George was assured would be friendly turns out to have been torched and another, far less welcoming place built over it, leaving the trio fleeing for their lives from racists who want to kill them for daring to eat there. They get chased out of the county by the sheriff, only to run into a roadblock; the sheriff was looking for the barest excuse to lynch them. Many viewers have agreed that the least horrifying part of the episode by far is when the Shoggoths show up. - To elaborate more on the diner scene, George received a tip of a redbrick diner in Simmonsville called "Lydia's" which is supposed to be a safe spot to eat. By the time the trio arrive there, there's a white building called the "Simmonsville Dinette" in its place. When they go inside there's a white patron and a white waiter, the former of whom leaves the latter of whom seems terrified when the heroes sit down to eat anyway and then retreats into the back after telling them he'll bring them some coffee. After Leti goes to the bathroom and is returning, she overhears the waiter on the phone, sounding scared and swearing to whoever's on the other line that he hasn't served them, not after, "what [the speaker and his associates] did to Miss Lydia." Meanwhile, Tic notices that the dinette they're in is a brick building that's been painted white, and pulls back a floor tile to find scorched wood underneath. As soon as he does a siren blares and Leti comes pelting out of the back screaming that they need to go. The trio escapes just as white men arrive, engaging in a car chase and shooting after them. An additional element of horror is that the men who arrive aren't just random racists. They're the Simmonsville Fire Department. - Sheriff Hunt and his officers are a horrifying example of Mundanger. Not only is Hunt rumored to be behind multiple missing people, but he enforces "sundown law" on his whole county. After coming across the heroes, Hunt says that as of 7:09 pm, the "sundown law" will be in effect and he'll lynch them if they're not gone. He gives them only minutes to escape the county, him driving directly behind them, ramming his vehicle into theirs, trying to goad them into speeding to give him cause to pull them over. Against the odds, they manage to escape the county seconds before sundown and Hunt gives up the chase... only for it to be revealed that he has a roadblock set up just out of his jurisdiction, so he and his deputies can lead them into the woods, frame them for some local robberies and murder them all regardless. They're only stopped by the arrival of the Shoggoths, which at least are only man-eating beasts following their instincts. Humans Are the Real Monsters. - Episode 2, "Whitey on the Moon", has Letitia opening up about her past with Tic, revealing that her mother would abandon her as a child for long periods of time, while Leti was too young to look after herself. After letting down her walls and expressing true vulnerability, Tic then promises to never abandon her and the two begin to kiss. What is a heartwarming moment then becomes terrifying as the camera pans out the window, across the manor, and into the window of Tic's room, where the real Atticus is still trapped inside. - The ghosts in Episode 3 "Holy Ghost" are horrific victims of torture and mutilation, and bear their scars even in death. One woman has had her jaw ripped out and viscera is still hanging from her face. We see a man who's had what look like railway spikes driven into random parts of his body. One ghost crawls around without legs or a head. The strangest and most unnerving one, though, is the ghost of a full-grown basketball player with the head of an infant. \|\|Fortunately, all their wounds are healed when they team up with Letitia and exorcise the spirit of the man who killed them all.\|\| - Episode 5, "Strange Case", has several points where William's potion of disguise wears off, whereupon the user's true form bursts out of the skin of their 'disguise'... complete with bloody skin and flesh raining down upon the floor. At one point, the face of Ruby's disguise falls apart and dangles off her. Another time, we see \|\|Christina\|\|'s hands pushing up at the skin of \|\|William\|\|'s back as she forces her way out. - Episode 5, "Meet Me In Daegu", has the lovely sight of Ji-Ah \|\|extruding fox tail-like tentacles from her body to invade her victim's orifices. The one(s) coming out of the eyes are particularly disgusting.\|\| - Episode 8, "Jig-a-Bobo", has Topsy and Bopsy, the terrifying little girls that stalk Dee throughout the episode. They're a bloody, claw-handed parody of minstrel show characters that move in an exaggerated, puppet-like, jerky dance. Worse, Dee is the only one who can see them. - One of the worst ones is when Dee think's she's outrun them and is trying to follow the cop that cursed her. She's waiting in an alley while keeping an eye out for him, and the two dance into frame behind her and start approaching without Diana noticing. Were it not for their need to dance everywhere they go, they could have easily killed her—and even then they nearly do, with one of them managing to almost touch her before she pedals off, not even realizing how close they were. - And the whole time they're followed by a distorted minstrel song that hammers away whenever they get close. Stop dat knocking, stop dat knocking, stop dat knocking, stop dat knocking, you had better stop dat knocking at the door, let me in! - A minor one, but in the book, a racist police officer confiscates Atticus's copy of The Safe Negro Travel Guide during a traffic stop, seeming surprised that such a book would exist. It appears at first to be an example of casual racism directed at African Americans, but later the reader is treated to a scene where a business was burned for not being racist enough. The police officer who confiscated Atticus's book may well have sinister uses for it...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LovecraftCountry
LSD: Dream Emulator / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes It throws its head at you. LSD simulates dreams, which of course includes nightmares. This game pulls no punches in giving players the Nightmare Fuel... - The Grey Man. Damn. It's some kind of shadowy, featureless creature that takes the general shape of a man and appears in front of you or behind you, and slowly and silently glides towards you. Usually the screen flashes and he disappears... only to continue following you a few seconds later, silently, without you noticing. Touching it immediately kills you and prevents you from reliving the dream, in addition to erasing texture progress- the only way to really die in the game. It doesn't really help that it mostly appears in Happy Town, a place filled with toys and bright colors. What the heck is this unspeakable atrocity doing in a children's playground?! - Most characters lack any kind of facial features. It doesn't matter if it's due to technical restraints, it's unsettling. The ones that do have facial features... look odd. - The Flesh Tunnels and the demonic babies spinning around inside it. - Violence City, aka Violence District. Just... that place. There are severed limbs in the trash cans, streets filled with dead people with blood around their necks, women hanging from streetlamps who fall on you, several crazy residents, including one who shoots you (with an absurdly slow bullet), creepy letters or words written in blood, and most of the ways to die in the game. - One link puts you at the top of a very high building with no visible ground and forces you to jump off to your death. - The women whose heads fall off when approached-said heads having no faces- and glide towards you while your controls are suspended. - Walking under streetlamps in this area can sometimes cause hanging women to instantly materialize right in front of you with a Scare Chord, and also temporarily freeze your controls. - A man in a blood-stained shirt repeatedly kicking a corpse. - The pterodactyl figurine in the Cottage. Without warning, it dives into your face and links you once you enter the room. - The black wolf that leaps at your face and mauls you once you encounter it. - The Abyss Demon. A huge Satan-looking demon who pops up from the edges of the cliffs in the Overworld. - And what about the huge freaking sun with a face on the prism-y bridge? There is one on each end of the bridge, so if you walk forward, see one, and turn back, there's also another one behind you. The texture of the sun also changes sometimes, so you can't expect the same look each visit. note : Unless you know how the texture cycle works. - The Giant Baby, who sometimes appears in the room directly to the right of the one you start out it, and throws his head at you. - The Nodding Men, who are sometimes in the ponds in Kyoto. - Certain textures that have eyes or faces on them. - The "downer" texture specifically. Basically gives everything a red warped look, the appearance of the settings are heavily distorted, and uncanny beady eyes appear on many elements that either never had eyes to begin with or had eyes that were otherwise less... unsettling. The other three "main" textures at least have some consistent theme to them ("normal" texture, kanji writing everywhere, images of women everywhere), this set just seems to specifically make everything scarier and make even less sense than the dreams already do. It's the texture used in the page image for a reason. - Sometimes a sick woman will appear in the hotel area, lying on a bed. In a downer dream, she's already been dead for some time, which is represented by a freakishly detailed "rotting skull" texture over her face. - The Kanji Faces, who appear mainly in Kyoto to spit kanji at you and fly away. - The Spectres, who appear at the base of the hotel where you start out. - The Teddy Bear in the hotel, who tries to hug you and follows you as long as you remain there. And who's standing watching a blood-splattered TV that kinda looks like Uboa of Yume Nikki. - The worst part? This is all based on the dreams of a real person, specifically one Hiroko Nishikawa, who had been having disturbing dreams and recorded them into a dream journal, the contents of which she presented to the company that would eventually make this game out of what they heard. And this journal covered an entire decade. Imagine seeing the kind of things you see in this game every night, without a way to escape it, . That poor woman... for ten years - And what exactly led to her having those dreams in the first place? What kind of life did she live? Or did she have those dreams because she wanted to be scared of something? Either way, only someone who's Seen It All would even consider making a game out of those dreams.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LSDDreamEmulator
Lovesickness (Manga) - TV Tropes Lovesickness ( Lovesick Dead note : also known as Undying Love and Intersection Fortune Telling) is a short horror manga series from the Kyoufu Manga Collection by Junji Ito, known for such works as Tomie, Uzumaki, Gyo, and The Enigma of Amigara Fault. It was later reprinted in the Lovesickness hardcover collection, along with several other short stories. Ryusuke, a boy returning to his foggy hometown of Nazumi, notices that its unique form of fortune-telling has become increasingly popular since he left. People will go to crossroads in the fog and cover their faces, and ask the first passing stranger to answer their questions to find advice and solace in their lives. But ever since he returned, girls who go to the crossroads have begun to break down and violently kill themselves after hearing an answer. While he seeks to find the cause and solution to this disturbing problem, he is challenged, for not only are the dead not leaving the crossroads, but Ryusuke fears that he may be tied to the mysterious events in more ways than one... ## Provides examples of: - Acquitted Too Late: Eventually, the townsfolk and Ryusuke's classmates realize that he is not Pretty Boy...\|\|after he seemingly sacrificed his life to stop Pretty Boy once and for all\|\|. They enter the Despair Event Horizon as ghosts overtake the town. - The Atoner: Ryusuke, for he believes \|\|he started this whole mess as a child by brushing off a woman who became the first crossroads suicide from his dismissal. He not only resolves to catch the one causing the problems, but seeks to restore hope and avert future suicides by giving good fortunes, which eventually becomes his defined role\|\|. - At the Crossroads: The fortune-telling is practiced at these, and often, life-changing questions are asked there...and unfortunately, answered for the worse. - Be Careful What You Wish For: The beautiful boy at the crossroads cultivates the obsessive love of the girls in the town, even after their deaths. \|\|Ryusuke, after becoming the boy in white, tells the undead horde of spirits to go right ahead and love him, and the chaotic swarm destroys them all, finally giving the town some peace.\|\| - Big Bad: The mysterious boy at the crossroads, whose pieces of advice have compulsive and devastating effects on the girls who hear them. - Bishōnen: Both the beautiful boy at the crossroads and \|\|Ryuusuke, as the boy in white\|\| are depicted with femininely attractive faces and gain the term as an epithet in the original Japanese text. - Bittersweet Ending: While at the end, the \|\|boy at the crossroads and ghosts seem to be gone, many lives have been ruined by intersection fortune-telling and the protagonist must bear the burden of restoring and aiding the town as it continues its practice. He inspires another couple the same age as him and Midori to fall in love and help carry out his duties, as well as a depressed businessman to find a new purpose in life.\|\| - Black-and-White Morality: The boy at the crossroads vs. the aptly-titled boy in white \|\|AKA Ryusuke\|\|. - Childhood Friend Romance: Ryusuke and Midori knew each other as kids and become romantic upon reunion. The horror stepping in makes sure it doesn't let it last, though. - Create Your Own Villain: Discussed. There are several candidates for who the boy might be: Ryusuke himself (later proven false), \|\|Tejima who later reveals that Suzue's ghost drove him to a breakdown\|\|, and \|\|Midori's cousin, the undead baby.\|\| Ryusuke is plagued with guilt that he's responsible for Pretty Boy existing. It eventually comes out that \|\|while Ryusuke was involved, the actual Pretty Boy is possibly the son of the man that knocked up Midori's aunt, who vanished shortly after her aunt died by suicide. Ryusuke lets go of his guilt when he realizes that he didn't make the child into the Boy in Black\|\|. - Darkest Hour: In the last chapter, \|\|Ryusuke died attempting to end Pretty Boy's regime, who pettily orders the ghost girls to return home and die over and over again. Fog and despair overtake the town, with the parents walking around in a Thousand-Yard Stare. Then a random businessman meets a boy in white, who tells him kindly to go around and answer people's fortunes to get some peace. As the man does so, another couple joins him and they make their rounds, realizing that by being nice they are solving the problem. The Boy in White comes out to confront the ghost girls...and tells them they will be loved, to love the Pretty Boy. Cue the ghosts vanishing, and the town finally getting some peace\|\|. - Death of a Child: The second chapter has the knocked-up woman kidnap her paramour's five-year-old son and strangle him, leaving him in a garden. When Ryusuke encounters the father, he's distraught and wandering around in shock. - Determinator: Ryusuke, who has a personal stake in stopping the events and gets accused of being the devilish boy along the way, will nevertheless do anything to catch the real deal. \|\|Not even being mobbed by a giant army of suicide ghosts and being most definitely killed in the encounter stop him from continuing to oppose the boy at the crossroads, becoming a Messianic Archetype in the process.\|\| - Disproportionate Retribution: Ryusuke as a kid unthinkingly told a pregnant woman that the man who knocked her up would never love her, while he was trying to run away from home. \|\|The Pretty Boy starts killing teenage girls and women that seek his fortune and it's blamed on Ryusuke. Midori theorizes before her death that the boy might be her unborn cousin, and the boy in black confirms it. Even so, as she and Tejima both realize before the curse compels them to hurt Ryusuke, Ryusuke was a kid and it was perfectly normal for him to not know how to answer a loaded question. Ryusuke himself as the boy in white saves another man from the same fate by telling him to listen to those seeking their fortune and answer kindly\|\|. - Driven to Suicide: Starting with one woman, many girls have been driven to suicide after hearing bad intersection fortunes, seemingly compelled by the mysterious beautiful boy to doom themselves after hearing his advice. The majority, who are told they will never have love, become obsessed with their crushes until a final rejection pushes them to kill themselves. \|\|Even the dead still have this urge when they are denied the answer they want, but it is likely they have already been so warped by the boy's initial words that the newcomers are not to blame for their reaction.\|\| - Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The beautiful boy at the crossroads has pale skin that stands out against his black hair and clothing. - Exact Words: Midori \|\|is compelled by the beautiful boy's advice to hate Ryusuke for the rest of her life. After he begs for her to forgive him, she goes out and kills herself to spare herself and Ryusuke that torment, noting that by shortening her life, she has ended the problem while fulfilling the pronouncement.\|\| - Even Evil Has Standards: Before Ryusuke goes to confront the undead girls, he encounters the married man that indirectly caused all his misery by knocking up Midori's aunt while still married. He also is still cheating on his wife, who has caught on and filed for divorce. The man quite honestly reveals that he also knocked up the same woman that harassed Ryusuke and Midori, but he says that his son was innocent and shouldn't have been caught in the crossfire. Ryusuke quietly agrees that the five-year-old child shouldn't have been murdered for his father's crimes. - Fan Mob: A very twisted case with the boy at the crossroads and the girls he has told will not find love. Their affections turn to him and they mob him just like a normal group of teen girls and an attractive male idol, which is even what the scene is mistaken for by a curmudgeon complaining about the noise. - Frame-Up: \|\|Ryusuke's friend Tejima\|\| frames Ryusuke as the Intersection's Pretty Boy, even going so far as to pierce his ears in his sleep because the lack of ear holes would have proven them different. \|\|However, he wasn't trying to implicate him to others, but to get him to doubt his sanity so he would kill himself and join Suzue in death at her urging.\|\| - Good Counterpart: The boy at the crossroads gets one in the form of \|\|Ryusuke, who becomes the boy in white, encouraging the suicidal to find purpose by helping others instead of driving the happy to suicide.\|\| - Lean and Mean: The beautiful boy at the crossroads is unnaturally tall and the instigator for the current tragedies befalling the town. - Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While there are definitely supernatural elements in the story, the reason fortunes drive people to madness isn't completely clear. On the one hand, it could be that the boy at the crossroads has some dark powers that make people take their fortunes to the worst possible end, but it's also possible it's more psychological and people are taking fortunes the wrong way due to suggestion and their own will rather than magic and that they are following them to the end due to the finality of the fortunes in the town's custom. - Multiple-Choice Past: The boy at the crossroads is suggested to be either the unborn child that died with Midori's aunt (who was the first fortune-telling suicide), or the runaway elder son of the man who had affairs with both Midori's aunt and the "troubled woman" in the second chapter. \|\|Ryusuke believes that the boy is the latter, and it allows him to let go of his guilt\|\|. - Ominous Fog: The town is filled with it at night when the beautiful boy is out, though it disappears once the supernatural evils are gone. \|\|When a mass suicide occurs, the fog turns red from the blood\|\|, and \|\|when Ryusuke becomes the boy in white\|\|, the fog becomes softer and more ethereal. - Our Ghosts Are Different: The spirits of the girls who died look more solid and take the form of their rotting corpses, though it's never clear how physical they are. - Police Are Useless: When Ryusuke visits the police about the situation, he is instead turned against because of the efforts to frame him as the boy at the crossroads. They are later helpless to stop the ghost swarm and realize belatedly that Ryusuke was innocent. - Prophet Eyes: The boy at the crossroads \|\|and later, the boy in white\|\|. - Serial Escalation: The woman in the second chapter keeps having worse issues to deal with, asking countless questions seeking advice and always taking the worst options, destroying her life with increasingly drastic and damaging choices. \|\|Her question was dismissed by the crossroads boy with a remark to find a bigger problem, Rather than taking the response as a dismissal or an opportunity to reexamine the severity of her issues, the woman fell into a quest to literally find a bigger problem and do it again each time she worsens her life. When she self-immolates and is hospitalized, the question remains whether she was suicidal or whether she was just creating a bigger problem for herself.\|\| - Slashed Throat: Possibly as a side effect of whatever has gripped the town, the girls all commit suicide by cutting their necks with box cutters. - Stalker with a Crush: The girls told they will never succeed in love turn into these, first with Suzue Tanaka toward Ryusuke, and then with a swarm of victims toward the beautiful boy. - Tomato in the Mirror: Invoked, as Ryusuke starts to doubt his sanity and wonder if he and the boy at the crossroads are one and the same, especially after others reach that conclusion, \|\|but the evidence he sees have been planted by his friend trying to get Ryusuke to kill himself and join Suzue so her ghost will leave him alone.\|\| - Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Who'd have thought all this insanity would be caused by some guy having an affair and getting his mistress pregnant?	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LovesickDead
Lyinginbedmon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a lover of the genre, it's no surprise Lyinginbedmon is followed by horrifying moments wherever he goes. - Getting locked in a well for what you perceive as centuries and performing a horrifying ritual that kills and maims thousands of versions of you just to survive is very horrifying and it's honestly kinda impressive Witch is still cohesive after that. - Everything about Lao Ying (Summoner!Lying), going from having a wonderful future with their fiancee, to one wrong move from one of their family members due to the Witch's ritual resulting in everyone they've ever loved burning to death when they weren't even in the room. As you can imagine, they are quite traumatized and somewhat delusional as they still believe those they love are still alive and hallucinates their voices while being unable to process anything but joy and happiness.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LyingInBedMon
Luigi's Mansion / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Since this is the closest the Super Mario Bros. universe approaches horror, there are absolutely plenty of scary moments across all the games starring famous scaredy cat Luigi.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuigisMansion
Luigi's Mansion 3 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes When you have no Poltergust... All Spoilers Are Unmarked! - This game has a very different opening than the other two. Unlike them, which drops you right into the haunted locale immediately, this one has a decently lengthy prologue with all the humor, color and charm the Mario series is generally known for, with the hotel initially seeming just as inviting as advertised. Because of this, when the creepy, haunted stuff does hit, it hits that much harder, particularly as Luigi actually witnesses the glamour fade away in the hallway. - King Boo is back and if you thought he was frightening in Dark Moon, this game takes it to a new level by giving him facial expressions other than his usual Slasher Smile. Namely, a Death Glare that suddenly appears whenever he is reminded of his previous defeats or just Luigi in general. That rage-filled scowl with massive fangs is the face of a psychopathic ghost who wants you . DEAD - King Boo chasing Luigi at the very beginning of the game, with the intent of trapping him in a painting like his other friends. This is before Luigi has the Poltergust to save himself. What's even worse is that it is possible for King Boo to catch up to Luigi during the in-game chase sequence, and if he does, you'll get a special cutscene of King Boo throwing the portrait frame on top of Luigi as he screams in terror. - The Game Over sequence is no longer a simple "Good Night" line over a defeated Luigi on the floor like in the previous games. Instead, the game happily shows you the logical aftermath: A terrified Luigi trapped as a painting surrounded by his captured friends, while King Boo admires his new collection. Then King Boo turns around and faces with a demented Slasher Smile and Evil Laugh. Then the scene cuts to the classic "Good Night" line just to drive in the point. Oh, and if you look closely, you can see E. Gadd there among the portraits. Just when you think E. Gadd might save Luigi and friends (assuming you got far enough to rescue him from his own portrait prison), King Boo recaptures him to ensure there's no one around to save our heroes. The Bad Guy Wins indeed. you - When you make it back to the lobby after the resort goes evil, you see a pair of ghosts systematically sealing the front door. They've drilled planks into the doorframe and then proceeded to chain those planks up. The ghosts are making it very obvious this time that until they get their fair share of Luigi's terror, he will not be allowed to leave. - For arachnophobes, this game doesn't mess around: - Looking through the peephole in the hotel lobby for a few seconds will eventually present you with a screen full of a spider walking over the hole. It then exits through the hole when you exit. note : The silver lining is that it's a golden version, so you'll get a decent money haul for dealing with it. - On Floor 5, exiting the eastern window and following round the corner leads you into an crawl space. At first nothing seems wrong until you notice the creepy music start up shortly followed by the space being filled to the brim with spiders. - On one set in Paranormal Productions, you'll find Morty's megaphone caught in a giant web. Opening the cardboard box in movie mode will cause a Jump Scare in which a giant spider lunges out at Gooigi. Luckily you'll quickly see it's fake but still. (For a sense of catharsis, you can set it on fire, too.) - If you explore inside the freezer room on the second floor, you'll be greeted to a giant anglerfish waiting to chomp on you. Sure, it stops moving after it attacks (and you can send in Gooigi to explore inside its mouth for treasure), but the fact it's a realistic-looking Angler in a cartoonish game like this is unsettling to see, especially with its mouth being big enough to eat Luigi. - Amadeus Wolfgeist's last-straw cutscene before he possesses his piano is pretty terrifying due to how unhinged he appears in his anger, paired with his appearance becoming disheveled and exaggerated. When he leaps into his piano, it leans forward angrily and roars with a discordant key-pound - any players who encountered the Mad Piano in Super Mario 64 as a kid probably had an unpleasant flashback, to say nothing of how Wolfgeist is also channeling his inner Ludwig van Beethoven. - The Bridge Room, a later room in the medieval-themed Castle MacFrights, has its back wall dominated by a large, intimidating stone king carving whose eyes follow Luigi everywhere he walks. What really clinches this is that when you enter for the first time, the carving starts off looking straight ahead at nothing in particular (not quite even the camera), before the eyes unhurriedly slide over to Luigi. You've been noticed. - Dr. Potter attacks Luigi with a very creepy-looking Man-Eating Plant. It looks like the venus flytraps from Dark Moon, but now with a scaly texture and Glowing Eyes of Doom. Even the ones in Dark Moon weren't so bad, but this is a far cry from the cartoony, Ugly Cute Piranha Plants of the main series. - The Spirit Balls from the previous game return in this game, and they have a terrifying sibling: a magenta variant that, rather than making objects disappear, causes them to become sentient, and try to kill Luigi. note : The only exception to their scariness is in the Twisted Suites, when they turn a key into a bunny that merely tries to hop away from Luigi. - Hellen's pet, the Polterkitty, seems like a wimp at first... until she reveals she can turn into a larger form that looks very realistic. Worst still, to catch her, you have to bait her into attacking you, and her window of vulnerability is literally the last second prior to striking. Imagine having a beast stalking behind you preparing to hurt you badly... though the nightmare aspect is hampered slightly in that she doesn't pay any mind to Gooigi at all, making it easier to stop her in her tracks using him. - It gets worse in her final phase, where she finally catches wise to Luigis attempts to catch her and actively begins dodging the initial flash, forcing your reflexes to be at the top of their game to properly capture her. - In the Unnatural History Museum floor, as soon as Luigi opens the curtain in the back of the elevator room, a dimly-lit exhibition room can be seen at the end of a long hallway with a T-rex skeleton illuminated by frequent lightning strikes outside the windows. When Luigi begins walking down the hallway, occasional lightning flashes will illuminate the whole room ahead for just a second, after which the T-rex's head has turned to gaze in the direction Luigi is standing in at the time. This is the only clue given that the T-rex will be a boss fight before it is already looming over Luigi as he tries to free Blue Toad from his portrait. - Poor Luigi is frequently caught in harrowing situations that either require Gooigi or quick thinking or both for him to escape and survive. He's grabbed by a plant in the Garden Suites, can be similarly entangled by Trapper ghosts, and gets stuck in a prison cell while spiked walls push in on him. Then there's the puzzles on floor 10, featuring death traps that seem like something right out of Resident Evil. First, there's a puzzle where three laser turrets come out of the floor and begin beaming the chains holding up the ceiling. Fail to disable the lasers in time and Luigi is flattened into a Luigi Sandwich. Then there's another puzzle where you need to place weights and sand on a scale and flash a switch to make the needle land on the animal shown above the switch. The problem? The spiky ceiling is slowly coming down on you (sound familiar?). Finally, you're trapped in a room filled with poison gas that slowly chips away at your health and the only way to stop it is to launch the matching gems into the holes to block them. Easily the most terrifying traps in the Luigi's Mansion series, maybe even the Mario series overall. - The second time you head to the Boilerworks to escort Toad, the normal banjo music is replaced by some much more low-key and ominous tracks. Without Clem, the Boilerworks are a pretty unsettling place that are implied to be hiding something big, especially since you can find a submarine jammed under the floor and much more money than on any other floor. And the music just gets worse and worse than farther you go, culminating in this final, nerve-wracking track that, when coupled with the moving background machinery of the final stretch, almost makes you wonder if the floor itself isn't getting ready to kill you. - Johnny Deepend starts off as a pretty obnoxious ghost, but once you drain the pool, he begins to scream in a startlingly realistic fashion. It's not as extreme as other examples, but since most of the boss ghost dialogue is gibberish, Johnny's screaming can be really unsettling. - The Master Suite. - Before now, Hellen Gravely's idolization of King Boo was obvious, but it seemed pretty tame as far as fangirling goes, right? And then you reach the top floor of the hotel, and find the entire place is basically her giant Stalker Shrine to King Boo: Paintings of her and the King together, shelves upon shelves of trophies in the King's likeness... * even the gems for the floor are all shaped like him.* If realizing just how far Hellen's obsession goes doesn't make your spine tingle, a lot of the memorabilia should damn well do the trick; some of the King Boo trophies have horrifying grimaces plastered onto them, and one of the illustrations of the good king is recessed, so it "watches you" and follows your movements. Considering this is King Boo we're talking about, you'd expect something out of all the statues and paintings to go the extra mile and attack you, but aside from one statue hiding a bomb if you vacuum on it too long, none of them ever do... - The stalker nature of Hellen goes even further once you take a look at her outfit. She's wearing a white dress with a cutout in the shape of a diamond that shows her purple skin. It's like she's trying to wear King Boo on her body. - On the subject of Hellen there's also just how creepy she looks. Even before her facade breaks, her face has a very Uncanny Valley skin and bones structure, making her look as dead as she is. Combine that with her purple skin and her enraged face as well as the forced smile she gives when Luigi first makes it to her floor... it's not a comforting sight. - After spending the entire game as Luigi catching ghosts and rescuing his friends, King Boo confronts him on the hotel's roof, and proceeds to re-capture everyone in a painting like it's nothing. And he had every intention of adding Luigi to his "ensemble painting." If Polterpup hadn't unintentionally knocked Luigi out of the way, King Boo would have won right then and there. - Watch closely right after Polterpup saves Luigi from King Boo's painting on the roof. The dog notices the painting, does an Eye Take, and bolts. Just the fact that Polterpup seems at least somewhat aware of the ramifications of King Boo's painting prisons might raise some unsettling questions. - The final phase in the fight against King Boo. You and Gooigi beat the crap out of him, and after all he's put you through, it must be a great feeling. You got this in the bag, right? Hold your celebration just a second, because just as you think you got him cornered, he enlarges the painting that Mario and co. are trapped in and begins to bring it down on the entire hotel in a desperate last-ditch effort to capture Luigi once and for all, and he's in the painting's collision course, too. You then have four minutes to defeat him or everyone will be sealed away in a portrait, and King Boo will happily join Luigi and friends inside if it means getting rid of him forever (assuming he doesn't just escape by himself afterwards, as he's done before). That's how far King Boo is willing to go just to get revenge on Luigi. - Even in the throes of defeat, King Boo manages one last scare as he gets right in Luigi's face with a terrifying Death Glare before he finally gets sucked up. - The journey is over. Luigi has survived everything King Boo has thrown at him and sucked him up into the Poltergust once and for all. He takes a much-needed sigh of relief, picks up the king's crown... and then as if it were one last desperation attack by King Boo from beyond the Poltergust, the hotel proceeds to collapse with him still on the roof, with Polterpup once again becoming the one thing standing between Luigi and his demise. It's probably the biggest testament to the power of King Boo in the whole game: his jumbo portrait was likely the culprit behind the hotel's collapse, considering it was uprooting the trees on the ground around it right when that last stretch began. - In general, the Last Resort is never safe. Unlike the previous mansions, the ghosts never fully go away. Go back to an old floor that you cleared, and you can occasionally encounter more ghosts to face. Even the safest floor, the basement, isn't that safe. While escorting Toad in the late-game, you'll be ambushed in the basement by some Slinkers (tougher than the average mooks). At another point, some mooks do take the initiative to ambush Luigi in the elevator. It only happens once, but if it could happen one time... Not to mention the fact that King Boo goes out of his way to ambush E. Gadd's laboratory while Luigi faces off with Hellen, implying he knew they were there the whole time. In no uncertain terms, you are behind enemy lines, and there is no safe haven.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuigisMansion3
Luigi's Mansion / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes ## Per wiki policy, this page is Spoilers Off. Tread carefully. Luigi, being Luigi, usually hasn't run into his fair share of frights over the years, but when he's put on the front lines of fear in this game in order to save his bro, this becomes the exception. # Examples Include: - The Boos are not the shy and silly ghosts you were used to: they hold a "mysterious power" and except for their revenge on Mario Brothers, their intentions are a mystery. They are so powerful that Luigi can only catch them in lit rooms. - Compared to the sequels with their more comedic and lighthearted feel, this game's atmosphere and setting are a lot darker, unsettling, and can give a feeling of claustrophobia, and the funnier moments are noticeably more subtle and quicker than the sequels. - While it's nice that there's no ghosts to attack you, walking through lit rooms and hallways can be incredibly unsettling due to the complete lack of music or any sounds aside from Luigi's whistling and footsteps. This is especially apparent with the main hallway areas, due to how empty and quiet they are. - Almost every time you enter a dark room, the music completely fades out and all you're left with is the sound of Luigi's footsteps and his and the ghosts' humming. - Pressing A at any time when not near an object will have Luigi call out for Mario. This is pointless and serves no real purpose, but as his HP drops, his cries get increasingly desperate and terrified. When you're down to 30 HP or less, Luigi will either say "Mario" in a bone-chillingly frightened whimper, or scream Mario's name in an absolutely horrified voice. These cries can either be humorous or downright terrifying. Especially the ones when he's about to die. - What happens you're on low health is a little more than unnerving, the music becomes slightly distorted and slowed down, Luigi holds the flashlight with both of his hands and is slouching, note : almost as if he's clinging on to life. he gasps and whimpers whenever he opens a door, and his humming becomes more stuttering and shaky, showing that he's getting more and more scared as he loses health. All of this, combined with the way he yells for Mario's name in this state, makes being on low health completely dread-inducing. - While most portrait ghosts look goofy, they also look vaguely human enough to be unsettling. Some of their descriptions explain describe how they died, and most of their demises are even more uncanny than their designs, like Henry and Orville who were never found after playing hide and seek for too long or Mr Luggs "eating himself to death". - The boss ghosts introduce themselves by coming out of the ground or from the sky and while laughing or screaming. Their backgrounds also give the impression you are stuck in a parallel dimension. fix your TV screen - The Nintendo logo screen. No, really. - The title screen is even worse. It is a disturbing silence followed by the letters suddenly appearing and the music suddenly playing. After the shock effect, you only hear a theremin sound fade away in silence If this scares you, you're not ready for what's coming. - The game select screen in the British English version. In the upper left corner, there's a text saying "Come in, the mansion is yours". Wait, and the text changes. "Come in, the mansion is ours". - The pause menu too; it has a door with Luigi's shadow hanging on it, creepily. - The game itself is one thing, but this scene from the early version◊ is quite another, due to Luigi looking literally scared to death, possessed by a ghost, or downright depressed that he didn't manage to save his brother. - The other ending pic. It's a bit less creepy, but Luigi looks just as terrified: see here◊. - The official Game Over isn't less creepy. Luigi falls to the floor while the screen goes black and white, the music plays, and then the words "Good Night..." appear on bloody red letters. Which slowly go black and white themselves. This comment under the old music track video resumes all the implications behind Luigi's defeat: "This is what your failure has brought you: you've killed Luigi, Mario's fate is sealed, the Ghosts able to trick even more people to come to the mansion. Mario never returned to the Princess's Castle to save peach, gets kidnapped by Bowser, Bowser takes over the Mushroom Kingdom. The Toads in the mansion have nothing to come back to. Game Over." - The shrill sound of the doorknob when Luigi's unable to open a door as he turns said doorknob, followed by him pushing it forcefully, can be quite unsettling to some players. - The first encounter with a ghost. You walk into a dark mansion on a stormy night, greeted by a pitch black room with only a few candles. You turn on your flashlight and walk up the stairs, and try the double doors. you find that they're locked and then suddenly a demented giggle comes from downstairs. You head down, and an orange floating orb holding a key appears and floats back and forth while bells sound in the background. Then it notices you, makes a little squeaky gasp noise, dropping the key, and floats up the stair and into the double doors, mysteriously putting out every candle just by the ghost being close to it, and then explodes into little orange clouds on contact with the door. A little finisher to the scene is a zoom in on the key on the ground, with a little jingle. - The talking paintings in the first room after the foyer. They shake before they talk, which gives a creepy shaking door sound, they threaten Luigi, and then one says "Here they are now!" And the music is this too... Thankfully, this is after you get the Poltergust, but still - The Anteroom that comes after isn't a nice place neither: the second you close the door, it's covered in vines, and its only furniture are three tables with jars on it. This is also the first place where you encounter Purple Punchers, who are a bit more aggressive than Gold Ghosts, and unlike the Parlor, who had the oppressively loud music, this is actually the first room where you can only hear ghosts humming - Your first introduction to Chauncey is this: after you capture Lydia, a cutscene happens where the camera zooms in on a door whilst the cries of Chauncey himself can be heard along with a creepy music box tune... - When you enter his room, the usual "dark room" music is accompanied by another creepy music box tune The game wants you to realize that the baby ghost is not less powerful than adults. - If you don't understand it at first, you'll get it the hard way: you explore the room like you usually do, looking in furniture and vacuuming all coins, then you (accidentally or not) move the rocking horse. The door suddenly covers in vines while Chauncey wakes up and wants to play... by going near you and throwing creepy teddy bears at you. You try to defend yourself with a balloon and manage to paralyze the baby for one second, but his heart doesn't show like the others; after whining, he shrinks you down in his cradle, sending you rocking horses on a broken nursery tune. Finally, Chauncey appears and cries, his face looking more like a Nightmare Face than a baby crying; then, he winks and gives a punch on an invisible bag. - The music that plays when you fight him isn't much better than the aforementioned music box; it is a perfect balance between goofy and scary. When you suck him up, it changes to this track which sounds like a seizure in musical form. - This area introduces the infamous grabbing ghosts. Unlike the childish Gold Ghosts and Purple Punchers, who surprise Luigi by screaming behind him and make funny cackles, or the goofy Garbage Can Ghosts, these ones are more discreet when they show themselves for a good reason: they grab Luigi's neck, leaving him defenseless. While the pale ones content themselves with merely immobilizing Luigi, the others are worse: they strangle Luigi from behind. They are also used to attack in groups, meaning that during the time you try to free yourself from one, a second will reach you, making these horrible noises in the process. They are even worse in the Mirror Room, where they lock you in and only appear on . mirrors - Trying to capture Mr. Luggs, the ghost in the dining room, is downright disturbing. The fact that this enormous ghost is spitting fireballs, then calmly going back to his meal once the candles are relit, is just disturbing. - Before you find the key to the dining room, you can hear the very inhuman sound of his eating every time you pass by it. - If Luigi sprays ghosts with one of his elemental attacks without vacuuming them up, they fade away to nothing. Slowly. And their animations look like they're flailing around in pain while it happens. Sometimes they'll even just before they vanish. whimper in fear - "The product of the mansion's fear and despair" and boss of this area, Bogmire, is one of the most unsettling ghosts in the game. Unlike any other ghost, the guy doesn't even have any features that defined if he was alive or not, looks less like a portrait ghost than a corrupted version of the funny ones you've seen in your adventure, and while his description can be seen as a parody of "edgy for the sake of being edgy", he still holds a lot of mysteries and doesn't have any humorous elements outside of it... - His introduction settles the tone: after having discovered the Graveyard entrance (yes, because you fight him in a graveyard) and having fought wacky skeleton ghosts who went out of their graves, the isolated one starts to glow. You get closer, then a bolt of lightning touches the grave and Bogmire comes out with a Scare Chord played on an Ominous Pipe Organ. After that, the Graveyard becomes some sort of battlefield, then... something between shadows and slime comes out. - After that, an ominous battle music cues... and it becomes eldritch itself when you suck him up. - Like explained above, the "shadows" are between this and some sort of slime you have to suck up and throw on him. There is no explanation about how he can make these things. - Last but not least, there's a mechanic in the game where if you push X, Luigi whips out the Game Boy Horror and can analyze things with it; one of these things are the hearts and inner thoughts of Portrait Ghosts, which can give you an advantage. Normal ghosts and Boos don't get any, along with King Boo and Boolossus. Who else? . He's the only Portrait Ghost, save for the Boo bosses, to never get any programmed text or speech, and no heart thought. You'll never know what he's thinking... or even Bogmire if he's thinking at all... - The painting of the helpless Mario? Seeing him banging his fists while King Boo was laughing in the background was terrifying. Luigi can only hold his hand out while shaking his head in muted horror from the lion head statue he's peeking out of. - In a similar vein to the Mirror Room, the Projection Room: imagine, if you will, an empty room with a projector that suddenly turns on, and you see shadows of invisible grabbers on the screen that you have no idea where they are. Good luck trying to sleep through the night after that! - Considering the nature of the ghosts (and the mansion itself), one can wonder what rituals are done in the Astral Hall. The fact that the room itself prevents you from progressing to the next is goofy, but also unsettling. Speaking of the next room... - The Observatory Room. Maybe it's the fact that it seems like you're actually in space, the fact that there is actually a fake moon in there, and that the outside music actually plays in the room, pretty much confirming that you're in an alternate space. - Madame Clairvoya. Some would say that there's nothing really scary about her, but... well, one would think that the idea of being trapped in a painting forever would be a case of And I Must Scream, but she actually asks to be put there. She likes that? True, Professor E. Gadd did say that some of the Portrait Ghosts were portraits to begin with, but still... - The Safari Room can be disturbing for the sole reason it has tigers as carpets and realistic looking taxidermy deer heads. While they're fine at first, the fact nothing happens in this room only makes them creepier. Like any of these rooms, you look in the items, and when this doesn't work, you vacuum everything, and in a disturbing Shout-Out to Evil Dead 2, the heads nod like if the animals were still alive. - If you didn't catch enough Boos, one of these that compose Boolossus will show in front of the door leading to the balcony. Your Boo radar noise may shiver you in the dark corridor (at least in the Nintendo Gamecube version) and you may already know that Boos are darker in this game that they usually are, but the conversation Luigi has with this one in particular easily gives the impression that Boolossus, outside of its battle form, is a Hive Mind of some sort. - The Boolossus ritual manages to be unsettling too: the fifteen Boos composing it form a circle around Luigi, get closer and closer, then fly in the sky. After this, you can hear a sinister cackle, then a giant Boo with glowing eyes falls from the sky: while Luigi sees it ready to stomp him, you can see a giant ghost ready to jump out of your TV screen. Then, when the battle starts, you understand why it is called . Boolossus - During the cutscene, the music mimics the Game Boy Horror's Boo Radar noise for an astounding effect. - While the giant ghost is impressive, the reason why it is considered the hardest boss is because of the many Boos composing it and their synchronization. They are so quick that they seem to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Like usual, the music makes it worse.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuigisMansion1
Ma / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes This is the most fun I've had in a long time. - Ma commenting that she must be crazy...which is immediately followed by her running over Mercedes. - Her callous declaration of Mercedes being a "fucking cunt" also counts, proving that Ma has little to no empathy for her victims. - Ma stitches an unconscious Haley's mouth shut. In the same scene, she paints Darrell's face white, and forces Maggie, who she has put into a collar, to take a photograph of them all together before she kills them. - Ma tortures Ben by slicing his arm and inserting an IV filled with dog blood into his bloodstream. - Ben setting up a Bed Trick and tricking Sue Ann into giving a stranger a blowjob and exposing her in front of the school. He completely got away with this, looking in the present for all the world like an ordinary family man.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ma
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes He could scare Luigi right here and now, but he has other plans... - King Boo actually looks rather frightening this time around, especially when he appears behind Luigi from the darkness at one point. - He also broke out of his painting on his own, before getting the new crown. - The final security image. Throughout the game, Toads give visual status updates, and gradually a menacing figure becomes apparent on them. An unearthly glow just off-camera, a shadow whose owner cannot be seen, and so forth. On the final image, King Boo is not even trying to hide himself, floating in plain view of the image. And when you examine him, he turns towards the camera and cackles maniacally. He's known you've been watching him all along. Because as you soon find out, he's been watching you. The absolute worst part? This happens on a still image that is otherwise devoid of animation. He is that powerful. To top it off, as he laughs, the screen breaks off into static before shutting down, ala Slenderman and every other horrible "caught-on-camera" abomination. Long story short, Bring My Brown Pants, gents. - To top it off, in most of the scenes when you're looking at the latest photo, you look at it to an arrangement of the first Luigi's Mansion theme. When you look at the final security photo, the music cuts out and is replaced with the chilling ambient sounds from the Garage. - Not forgetting that by "turning torwards the camera", we mean covering the entire thing with his face. Picture that, and imagine you're part of this game's target audience. - Let's look at his motivations from the last game. He stated he wanted retribution on the Mario Bros. and Gadd for the trouble they caused him and his kin in the past. Working on behalf of his kind; understandable. Here? He deliberately shattered the Dark Moon to break the minds of the ghosts residing there to experiment on and enslave them into an army to conquer the world. Combine that with how his eyes seem even more sunken in than before and how he obsessively stalks Luigi towards the game's end? Call it crazy, but King Boo might be a tad unhinged after his last humiliation. - King Boo's design has drastically changed since last time, too. Before, he was just a giant Boo wearing a crown. Here His eyes are purple and sunken in. Unlike other Boos, he wears a constant toothy Slasher Smile and the inside of his mouth has turned blue, unlike the red it was before. It really looks like he's gone off the deep end. - Speaking of paintings, the look on Mario's face while he's trapped in one◊ is particularly jarring. He's visibly terrified. Also, in this game, he can't move or call for help. Being trapped in a painting for all eternity and being unable to move is a Fate Worse than Death. - Even worse is that King Boo states that he plans a similar fate for not only Luigi, but all of his friends as well. - For the most part, this game's soundtrack is more lively and whimsical than the first game's, but within it lies some terrifying Mood Whiplash; the themes for the Garage, the Graveyard, and the Antechamber sound right out of a horror game. - The fish tank in Gloomy Manor contains an angelfish with a giant toothy maw where its face should be. - In the E-1 mission, look in the window on the right immediately after approaching the door and having Polterpup appear. It's not only scary, it's just plain wrong. You actually see a Toad in the process of being trapped in a painting by a couple of Boos, and he's downright terrified. (On the plus side, the other Toad's painting is seen in the background, so this gives foreshadowing for the E-2 mission by letting you know that there are two Toads beforehand.) - The Rumpus Room in Haunted Towers is very creepy, at least compared to the other, less frightening rooms. There's a doll house that mindscrews you if you look into its window: you see the exact same room you're standing in, with Luigi looking through the same window. Then there's a creepy doll of a little girl with an unnaturally pale face and glittering eyes, whose head rotates 360 degrees to follow you. Then there are the loud Jack-in-the-boxes. And the room is pitch black at first. - The boss of the ice mansion when he possesses the ice itself, thanks to its spooky face, introduction, and its evil laugh, which you will hear every time you miss a shot. Probably one of the more intimidating-looking bosses in the game. - Even worse, this boss has a bite worse than its bark. Literally, as if you miss the final shot in its mouth to stun it, something that isn't impossible, it will reach out straight to the screen and bite you for massive damage. - The cutscene right before Luigi enters the Mansion in Mission E2. Luigi opens the door, but finds only darkness as he turns around and scratches his head, King Boo appears right behind him with a horrible, evil smile, but vanishes before Luigi turns around. If that doesn't scare you, nothing will. - It's even worse when you know how he appears. Luigi opens the doors and activates the flashlight to look into the darkness. He then turns around, understandably confused. There's a brief moment of lens flare from the flashlight, and in that one second, King Boo appears. Floating perfectly still with a mad smile, and he vanishes out of sight just before Luigi turns back around. - And arguably the worst part is, it can't be intended for Luigi. After all, the plumber never actually sees it; by the time he turns around, the lights are on. King Boo isn't trying to scare Luigi here; he's trying to scare you. - The cutscene before the final boss fight. Just imagine how frightening that whole scenario was for poor Luigi. Without warning, he's suddenly been transported to an unfamiliar area where it's pitch black. Then, windows begin appearing all around him, and an all-too-familiar laugh starts coming from well, everywhere. Then, as Luigi spots the painting Mario's trapped in and starts to reach out for it, King Boo appears right in his face. And the worst part of all? King Boo is pissed. No wonder Luigi was shaking like a leaf in there. - Even worse, you can tell the reason King Boo doesn't just end Luigi's game in the dark: He's screwing with Luigi. King Boo wants Luigi to die alone and frightened, and it's terrifying. - Even when Luigi starts to get the upper hand in the final boss battle, King Boo escapes from the Poltergust. TWICE. And each time he does it, he gives Luigi an absolute Slasher Smile as the plumber nearly panics. This is then followed up by King Boo enlarging himself and knocking Luigi into a corridor, which he'll proceed to chase Luigi through while all the plumber can do is run for his life. This shows that, in no uncertain terms, he wants Luigi dead. - In the second mission of the Secret Mine (D-2), Luigi discovers a room full of Boos, along with a Greenie, a Slammer, and a Sneaker trapped inside red crystals that the Boos have put them in. It becomes disturbing when you realize that the Greenie, Slammer, and Sneaker are all terrified and are banging against the sides of the crystals, voicelessly pleading to be released from their containment. - The Spider boss and the cutscene after it. After the ghost possessing it is defeated, the spider returns to normal and goes home. Luigi turns around to find a stampede of baby spiders following her. It's mostly Played for Laughs, but to an arachnophobe, it's a nightmare come true. - Sometimes, when you're being Pixelated somewhere, there's pixels in the stream that are a different size and color then the ones that Luigi turns into, and they're traveling at a different speed than the Luigi pixels. Someone or something else is in the stream with you. - It's most likely King Boo himself, who abducts you in the middle of your return journey from the fifth boss mission (E-Boss). - Treacherous Mansion itself is rather creepy, especially as the game comes to a close. All alone at the furthest corner of the valley, smack in the middle of an endless ravine. And inside the mansion is a pitch black maze chock full of enraged, berserk ghosts and King Boo. And it just gets scarier as it goes. First, we Shoo Out the Clowns by finally capturing Polterpup for good, and rescuing the last of the Toads. Not scary, but it puts an end to any lightheartedness. From there, it steadily gets creepier until the fake boss of the mansion. - Big Boo's battle has a creepy song playing, like the carousel in Big Boo's Haunt. And the context of the fight: King Boo knows what you've been doing. He anticipated you reaching the toy train tracks, so he stationed Big Boo there as a trap. The game's objective even says "Escape the trap", not "beat the enemy", making this feel even more like a situation you shouldn't be in. - And it doesn't end there. For the next mission, the mansion is completely empty (save for one Boo you can catch). It's just you and King Boo. Nothing Is Scarier in full effect, the music is only helping the mood. You walk in on King Boo at the terrace, just as he's opening a demonic portal. If only you'd been able to avoid Big Boo's ambush. What follows may qualify as That One Level, but the game's stakes are at an all-time high, not unlike Super Paper Mario: King Boo unleashes an entire army of berserk ghosts in the mansion. If Luigi doesn't capture them all within the time limit, their combined paranormal energy will cause Luigi's dimension to collapse on itself. Just like that, King Boo is able to match Count Bleck, and at a much faster rate. He's not messing around. - A more gradual and paranoia-inducing factor is how the mansions change from mission to mission. - Gloomy Manor gets overrun with spiderwebs. Finding one blocking a path that was free in the previous mission is quite jarring, especially to arachnophobes. - Haunted Towers get enveloped by overgrowth, with plants occasionally breaking through brick and mortar and generally becoming more and more commonplace. - Old Clockworks gives some respite, but pretty soon you get to meet empowered ghosts for the first time. - Secret Mine takes the cake: not only does it gets darker and colder (a snowstorm starts, places with water freeze, lights get dimmer as torches are blown out), but powerful ghosts become more frequent than their normal counterparts, especially once you see how they're created. - Treacherous Mansion has rooms getting more and more overrun with ghosts, and harmless furniture turn into traps in later missions. - Near the end of the Secret Mine, you're able to see into the boss room through a window. In there, you'll view the boss spectre, who turns around, sees you, and disappears only to give you a scathing jump scare a few seconds later. It's truly unexpected and will leave you and Luigi shaking. - If you think the creepiness is going to end once you beat the final boss, think again. After the ending cutscene, you are taken to the level clear screen. However, the usually cheerful level clear theme is gone. Instead, the theme from the garage is playing. And Luigi is not seen celebrating like normal. It is a super eerie way to end the game.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuigisMansionDarkMoon
Luke Cage (2016) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Luke Cage (2016) may be much Lighter and Softer than its predecessors, but it still has its chilly moments. ## Season 1 - Cottonmouth interrogates Shameek, who's already been beaten half to death. He first slaps him a few times "like a bitch" to find out where the money he stole has gone, but when Shameek gives a Spiteful Spit, he simply laughs, and finishes beating the remaining half of life out of him. You can audibly hear the crunching the bones of Shameek's face, and blood-splatter on his shirt, as Cottonmouth caves his face in. - When Misty and Scarfe look at his body, his eyes are swollen shut to extensive degrees, and while enough of his face is intact that they are able to identify him as Shameek, Scarfe says that they'll need dental records and DNA to officially confirm it since he looks like he got hit by a truck ("a truck with two fists", Misty adds). - Luke Cage protects Connie while Zip and his crew are shaking the owners down for money. One guy, Amos, makes the unfortunate mistake of trying to throw a punch at his face. Luke just stands still while the cinematography does a slow-motion close up of the man's arm making contact with a human-shaped brick at full strength, with the impact force instead causing his arm to fracture in three places. He's later shown with his arm wrapped in a cast. - Tone firing two submachine guns at once into Pops' barbershop, without a single care in the world, like he's some kind of Frank Castle. And Pop getting killed in the crossfire. - Subsequently, when Tone reports back to Cottonmouth, there are two back-to-back: - Tone calling Cornell "Cottonmouth" right in front of him. The guy immediately gets in Tone's face and bellows "MY NAME IS NOT " so suddenly that the self-assured Tone is immediately scared shitless. COTTONMOUTH! - The suddenness with which Cottonmouth then throws Tone off the roof. True, the guy had it coming (killing Pop is an unforgivable transgression), but still... - The way in which Scarfe suddenly strangles Chico to death with his own necktie is so sudden it's disturbing. And him putting said tie back on afterwards is borderline creepy. - The fact that Scarfe has the exact same cheerfully snarky repartee with Cottonmouth that we've seen him have with Misty for three episodes, casually chatting about getting people killed in the same tone he previously used bantering about basketball. He's one cold, cold man. - Cottonmouth personally firing an RPG into the Chinese diner. - Rackham, the guard who makes Luke's life hell for the fun of it (and on Diamondback's orders). He organizes a beatdown on Luke's only friend Squabbles in Seagate to blackmail Luke into participating in his fighting ring, then when Luke blows the whistle to Reva has Squabbles killed. He tries killing Luke multiple times, paying off Shades and Comanche to beat him into the infirmary, and ultimately sabotaging Luke's tank while he's undergoing the experimental treatment that gives him his powers. - We get a glimpse of the Judas bullet and what it can do to a normal person, when Shades shows Cottonmouth some demonstration footage. First off, you know these Ukrainians are black market guys because rather than test it out on a dummy, the people test it on an actual person. The bullet seemingly is absorbed by the guy's flak jacket... then drills into the skin, and explodes, killing the target instantly. We see blood and bits of human flesh splatter onto the camera lens as the tripod is knocked over. - Trying to keep a mortally wounded Scarfe alive long enough to give information, Claire is forced to cut into his skin to get the bullet out, and it's done with some graphic close-ups. - When Scarfe admits he killed Chico, Luke proceeds to choke him with one hand. If it wasn't for Claire, he might not have let up. - Mariah snapping after \|\|Cottonmouth says she acted in a way that invited their uncle to molest her and beating the man to death\|\| definitely counts. Especially Mariah's shrieking Madness Mantra of "I DIDN'T WANT IT!!!" as she's bashing Cornell's face in with a microphone stand. - Season 2 retroactively adds some worse context to this instance, since Mariah's daughter Tilda was a product of this constant molestation. - Mama Mabel cuts off a mouthy underlings's finger with the shears she'd been trimming her roses with. Then she has Pete take him out and subject him to a brutal beat down offscreen before stabbing him to death, not helping matters are the underling's screams and weeping. The blood on Cornell's hands implies that he was forced to finish him off. - Diamondback's introduction, firing on Luke with a shotgun carrying Judas rounds. And he's smiling as he taunts Luke with The Warriors quotes. This establishes him as a sociopath who takes joy in seeing Luke suffer. - The way in which Diamondback smiles while taunting Misty at gunpoint. Moreso, it is this for Misty, as she's recounting the incident to the therapist. - Turns out the only way to draw blood from Luke Cage is to lower a needle down his throat to get to his soft palate. - Luke Cage being basically boiled alive in in order to \|\|get the shrapnel out of him\|\|. heated acid - Diamondback establishes his sociopath status by casually walking in to a mob boss summit at Colon's Gym and killing four of the bosses without breaking a sweat. - Diamondback walks up to a random cop and kills him by punching him in the chest with his power glove. The blow is hard enough to cave the cop's chest in, kill him instantly, and throw him backwards 20 feet. - Moreso, the description of the officer's injuries as Bailey and Misty look at the photos gives you some impression of what injuries Reva sustained when Jessica killed her. - Damon Boone gets the same power glove treatment that Diamondback gave the cop. However, this time, we see the caved in chest more clearly after Shades deposits his body at the club entrance for the ESU team and paramedics to collect. - Blake Tower's conversation with Inspector Ridley about the Judas bullets. He's fearful of what might happen with the NYPD being authorized to use mass-produced Judas bullets, reminding Ridley that any weapon that the police or military use always finds their way into the hands of criminals. He specifically reminds Inspector Ridley that just months ago, Frank Castle went on a rampage that killed dozens of people note : Tower himself would have firsthand experience of that, as he was a witness to Reyes getting killed and Foggy getting shot, which though committed by the Blacksmith's men was in the same style as Castle's crimes, and asks what would happen if Frank, or someone like him, had access to weapons like that, seeing what he could do to New York City with just regular weapons. In the end, Luke is arrested before the weapons actually need to be used, but Tower believes the damage has already been done just by supplying them to the ESU team. Because now people know that Judas bullets are a thing and have more firepower. - \|\|Blake's fears became reality 3.5 months later when something like the Judas bullets are not only used on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but find their way into the hands of ex-HYDRA soldiers-turned-Watchdogs.\|\| - Diamondback starts a shootout when Domingo and his gang confront him. He shoots his way out of the room until he can get over to the chest containing his power suit. He puts it on, then makes his way back in and kills off all of Domingo's men. When Luke finds the warehouse, it feels like he's a shell-shocked soldier walking through a battlefield as he looks at the bodies of Domingo's men, riddled with bullets or with caved in chests. - When Diamondback reveals his power suit while Luke and Misty are about to haul in Shades and Mariah. Shades, who has already severed ties with Diamondback in light of Zip's attempt, tries shooting at Diamondback and is shocked when his bullets fail to puncture it. - The fight between Luke Cage and Diamondback is awesome as it is tense. For the first time since he appeared on Marvel, Luke Cage shows what happens when he cuts loose and why he doesn't when fighting regular henchmen. His punches shatter steel, concrete and absolutely decimate cars. It probably gave many Harlemites a grim reminder of the last duel that took place here... - When Luke hits Diamondback full force, he sends him flying. If it weren't for Diamondback's suit, his head would have exploded. - Diamondback is able to match Luke blow for blow and more. He actually causes him to suffer internal bleeding. Most likely, he actually broke some of Luke's RIBS. Think about that. - The Stinger at the end, suggesting Diamondback may no longer need a powersuit to match Luke Cage in the future. ## Season 2 - Bushmaster's procedure to get the bullets from Nigel's men out is pretty painful. - Luke confronts Cockroach as he's beating up his girlfriend Drea Powell, and goes pretty overboard, unnecessarily wrecking the apartment, and traumatizing the man's son and girlfriend by beating the abuser to within an inch of his life. - It's no wonder that Claire was warning Luke right before this that he was acting more and more like Matt, because viewers of Daredevil know that the incident that drove Matt to become Daredevil was because he couldn't stand the sound of a girl being molested by her father, causing him to beat the father so badly that he spent a month in the hospital drinking from a straw. - Shades is sent to Brooklyn to collect from Nigel, and instead meets Bushmaster and his men. Bushmaster gives Shades the bags, and in one of them, also has placed Nigel's severed head. Though Shades keeps a poker face, it's clear that he's reading between the lines regarding what Bushmaster is really saying. - Bushmaster, who is capable of taking on Luke Cage without the need for a powersuit. The implications are terrifying. - For Shades, the realization of what Bushmaster wants: Mariah's territory, as there's no other reason why he'd continue Nigel's buyout of Mariah's guns unless he wanted to weaken them. - As Tomas puts it, if the Yardies are Al-Qaeda, then the Stylers are ISIS, as far as their ruthlessness is concerned. Which certainly explains why earlier scenes seemed to imply that Bushmaster's not really welcome in New York. - Misty breaks into Cockroach's apartment, intending to plant a Judas bullet in one of his drawers. Just as recalling how she consoled Scarfe after his son's death leads her to reconsider, she accidentally steps on something. She grimaces when she sees that it's the end of a blood trail, and follows the trail with her flashlight. She finds Cockroach on the couch, missing his entire head, explaining the large amount of blood spilled. - As for what happened to Cockroach's head, we then immediately cut to Mariah's ribbon cutting ceremony at the Shirley Chisholm complex. Just as she cuts the ceremonial ribbon, she opens the doors to the complex...revealing the severed heads of Cockroach, Mark Higgins, and Ray-Ray all mounted on spikes right inside the doors. It's a gruesome tableau that seems more suited to Game of Thrones than to something like Luke Cage. - Bushmaster orders his men to sweep Harlem looking for Piranha and Luke. This is done through multiple cabs slowly cruising through the streets blasting reggae music at full volume, acting as intimidating as possible. When Sheldon stops Lonnie on one street corner to get a tip, he comes off so unnerving that Lonnie picks up on the fact instantly that he's up to no good. - While Luke is able to anticipate Bushmaster's moves this time around, Bushmaster surprises him by throwing a powder in his face that paralyzes his muscles, and allows Bushmaster to push him off the bridge to take a 200+ foot plunge into the Harlem River below. It's only thanks to being bulletproof and invulnerable that Luke isn't killed on impact with the river. - Continuing from the end of the previous episode, Luke is still helplessly paralyzed due to the effect of Bushmaster's paralysis powder, and unable to swim away, he is drowning. In fact he briefly loses consciousness and his life starts flashing before his eyes before he regains mobility. - Luke and Misty team up to hunt down Piranha. When they get to where Piranha was held, they're too late, as Bushmaster has already shot Piranha in the head, and left his freshly severed head in a fish tank. The message is clear: "Piranha Jones sleeps with his bredren." Misty Knight: Shit! - Just as Mariah and Tilda are preparing to flee, knowing that Bushmaster has bankrupted them, Bushmaster and his men arrive and tie the two of them to chairs. Mariah tries to shoot Bushmaster, who doesn't even flinch as her bullets hit him. He douses the place in gasoline, then as a poetic response to how his mother died, he then cuts Tilda free and tells her to save her mother, before setting the place on fire. Mariah is on the verge of passing out by the time Luke arrives to save her. - Remember what Tomas Ciancio said in episode 4 about the Stylers being ISIS? Well, that shows in their willingness to try and stage a drive-by on Mariah right outside the police station. - Thankfully, we are spared the gory images when Bushmaster lets off a small grenade to bust himself out of the police van, only cutting to an exterior shot of the van interior blowing out and then the van coasting forward, driverless. Luckily the two ESU officers riding in back with him survived (probably because of their Kevlar vests absorbing shrapnel), but still. - After spending the last two episodes wondering what Ridenhour meant when he talked about knowing Tilda's true parentage, we learn the truth: she was a product of Mariah constantly being raped at the hands of her uncle Pete. - The Rum Punch Massacre may well be the most horrifying gang massacre in the Netflix MCU to date: - It was wise of Sugar to decide to withdraw from the group before the Massacre could unfold. Unlike the gunfights between gangsters throughout the series, most of these people are innocent civilians. There are a lot of flashing shots of innocent people trying to run before getting gunned down, until the whole thing cuts to the outside as the gunshots just keep going on... and on... - And if you thought the most graphic gangster killing in the Netflix MCU to date was Wilson Fisk's decapitation of Anatoly Ranskahov by car door, you're wrong. That title actually goes to Anansi. After everyone else is killed, Mariah douses Anansi in the Bushmaster rum, and sets him aflame. As he's lying there, defiant and in pain, she eventually shouts "JUST DIE ALREADY!" and shoots him in the head to finish him off. It's not an act of mercy, but more annoyance at him taking too long to die. - Also, one of the victims is 14 years old. - It's no wonder that, in the next episode, Shades decides Mariah is done. She could have just shot Stephanie and it would been enough to smoke out Bushmaster. She could have shot up the Stylers in one of their lairs instead of a restaurant full of innocent people, but instead, she pulls this. Then top that by calling all those innocent people "peasants" by proxy. It actually serves as an in universe Nightmare Fuel for him. As he himself notes two episodes later during his plea negotiation with the cops and US Attorney's office, in his criminal career, he has witnessed, participated and committed even similar horrific acts, even enjoying them, but towards other criminals. The fact that not one, but several completely innocent people were victim to such horrific deaths completely shakes him (while Candace was relatively innocent compared to others, Shades has argued that she was fair game after she took their bribe to lie to the cops about Cottonmouth's death). Which resonates even worse is that innocent people in real life do suffer such things at the hands of evil people. - Shades is having a gradual breakdown, between his guilt over killing Comanche and being shell-shocked by what Mariah did at the Rum Punch Massacre. He's trying to wash imaginary blood off his hands early in the episode, he comes very close to shooting Ingrid when he catches up to her, only deciding against doing so at the last second. And when Mariah taunts him over Comanche's death, he snaps, throws her on the office desk and tries to strangle her. It's only his belief that she's not worth the effort to finish off that keeps him from completing the deed. - Mama Mabel burning Bushmaster's home with his mom and sister inside, casually ignoring the grieving kid as she throws the contract about Harlem's Paradise co-ownership in the fire as well. Makes the Rum-Punch massacre a case of In the Blood. - Similarly, Pistol Pete casually gunning down the teenage John in public. - The scene where Bushmaster's Nightshade induced Healing Factor kicks in to push out the shrapnel in his body is nauseating. - The climactic fight in the basement bunker below Harlem's Paradise: - Bushmaster's power boost from the nightshade that Tilda gave him means he can now barehandedly tear down steel-reinforced doors. - The spasms he has as he powers up call to mind Trish's reactions to Simpson's inhaler, or Will Simpson when he's on his combat enhancers. - Despite knowing that bullets don't work on Bushmaster, Shades tries to aim for his eye as he busts down the door, and we see him casually sidestep the bullet. - Luke, a man who has never actively sought to kill people, eventually gets the upper hand on Bushmaster and locks him in a chokehold, preparing to squeeze the life out of him. It's Misty's pleading that gets Luke to stop. And yet, the power-up of the nightshade means that Bushmaster is now able to still easily escape despite the intensity of the brawl. - While in prison, Mariah orders anyone who could possibly testify against her executed: dozens of people are gone by the next day, and Alex refers to it as practically every person who's ever worked in Harlem's Paradise in any capacity (and we later find him as one of the victims). When she tells him to relay the order, Donovan practically shits himself in her presence until she clarifies that he happens to be exempt by virtue of his loyalty and attorney-client privilege (and his connections to other criminals), and Sugar is only spared because his wife gave Mariah new clothes. - After a whole season of appearing to be a regular, good-natured person, Tilda is driven over the edge by the full extent of her mother's evil into becoming Nightshade: \|\|she murders Mariah with a kiss on the lips after coating them with a time-delayed poison, leaving no sign at all for what seems to be at least a couple hours before Mariah suddenly coughs up blood mid-conversation with Luke, realizes what happened, and dies moaning about how her insides are burning.\|\| - Luke is really getting fed up with criminals testing him and starts showing it. So he breaks every finger on the hand of one of Rosalie Carbone's henchmen to drive the point home.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LukeCage2016
Little Big Adventure / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes # Warning: Spoilers Off applies to these pages. Please proceed at your own risk. ## Examples from the second game: - Upon entering the cliff cave, Tralu's lair, you're greeted by a freakishly large spider. Arachnophobes beware. - The Dome of Slate test has you walking through a place where you can barely see where you are stepping on. If you fail and fall to the "ground" you'll be treated to Twinsen turning pitch-black and dying after struggling which looks like he fell into outer space. Nowhere else this can happen in the game. - Dr. Funfrock is already a nasty piece of work from the first game. How he amps up his game? By throwing children into lava just to spite Twinsen. - The last part of the game is full of these. After the Emperor starts the Emerald Moon engine you'll periodically see the moon ominously heading towards Twinsun, sometimes showing the moon very close to the planet. Should you get a game over you'll see in full the terrifying results of it crashing into Twinsen's planet.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LittleBigAdventure
Lumen / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes He's not too fond of colourful pyjamas... - The way Lumen dies by exploding into purple mist. - The dream world is twisted and completely broken, being composed of levitating chunks of earth (some with a few large structures on top), gigantic toys that have been torn in half, and a Moon that appears to have had something collided with it. Could this just be because it's a realm made of dreams, or did the Voice cause such chaos? On that matter, what was he imprisoned for? - The demons: The Guardian (pictured), The Librarians and the Voice are all creepy in appearance. The Guardian has a powerful roar, the Librarians have an eerie scream and the Voice has a deep and menacing but equally comforting voice, making you think initially that he's not evil. - The paintings in the library that change when Lumen takes a photo of them, twisting them into monstrous versions of what they were before.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Lumen
Macbeth / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Bearded hags, apparitions of creepy, dancing children, potions brewed from dismembered animal and people parts, murder, madness and general mayhem. Fun for the whole family. The Patrick Stewart telefilm version makes it worse. The witches murdering the captain from the beginning of the play, Banquo getting right back up after his murder, the witches using corpses to give Macbeth the infamous Birnam Wood prophecy... Goddamn. - The 1936 Orson Welles version set in Haiti had a climax of a Decapitation Presentation of MacBeth that was truly unnerving. - While you're at it, try scaring your kids with the creepy animated film by the Russian studio Soyuzmultfilm. Everything about it is enough to do the job: bleak, desolate backgrounds; disturbing character designs (the witches themselves are bizarre); a gloomy colour palette, and plenty of surreal sequences. It perfectly captures the tone that Shakespeare was going for. - The Witches tend to be creepy, but the Patrick Stewart version really takes the cake; this adaptation really drives home the idea that the Witches are full on Humanoid Abominations, appearing as a trio of nurses who move in near perfect synchronization, have a tendency to appear almost at random and slip into scenes undetected and have a truly menacing version of their infamous incantation. - The 2006 version has several moments, namely the deaths of Macduff's family (also a Tear Jerker) and the sex scene between Macbeth and the younger, hotter versions of the Witches. - From the original play, the scene just after Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have assassinated King Duncan.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Macbeth
Lumpy Touch / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Lumpy Touch is a pixel artist who has become infamous for his horrific reimaginings of beloved characters. And oh boy, is he good at that. Moments pages are Spoilers Off, as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned. - His main series, GameBoy Garfield, portrays the cat as a horrific shapeshifting Eldritch Abomination terrorizing Jon that holds Arlene captive, is immune to bullets, and eventually destroys the world. - The "game" opens with a cut scene taking place two weeks before the events of the game, revealing that Lyman has been locked up in an asylum, and is currently banging on the door to his cell, begging for anyone to listen to him. Inside, the walls are covered with insane writing, all of which refers to Garfield, Jon, and the other characters, and some sort of horrific disaster that is about to strike, including a drawing of a mushroom cloud and a massive, winged monster. Driven to insanity, Lyman can only say that he has "seen it"... - The game itself, showing Jon trying desperatly to avoid his former pet as he's stalked through the house, and only barely survives. Garfield has several different forms, such as one that resembles a grotesque spider, one that looks like a monstrous parody of his normal body with creepy, spindly arms and a massive torso fused with the head, and finally, a disturbingly realistic form that looks like a giant, regular cat. It's never revealed why Garfield has undergone this horrific transformation, if he's always been capable of it, or if he's been corrupted or possessed somehow. - Nermal is revealed to be a government agent, and forces Jon to obtain a blood sample from Garfield, and later, free Arlene from the basement as she is needed for whatever project he's in charge of as well. Nermal states that there will be "consequences" if Jon doesn't do what he's told. He meets a gruesome fate at the hands of Garfield once he tries to enter the house himself. - The second cutscene, showing that Odie was attacked by Garfield early on, and transformed into a grotesque mutant hyprid of plants and flesh. - He's now completed a set of videos of 12 additional Gorefields based on the Western Zodiac, all with monstrous abilities. Aries Gorefield can intrude and manipulate their Jon's dreams, Gemini Gorefield can create an exact clone of their Jon, Scorpio Gorefield flashes visions of death onto their Jon which then become reality, and so on. The complete Gorefield Horrorscopes can be found here. - Movie Sonic Wants to Talk portrays the hedgehog's film incarnation as a terrifying creature that ate the real Sonic and at one point makes terrifying sounds with his lips. The sequel, meanwhile, has the filmmakers running in fear from an even more horrific and dangerous redesign of Sonic... and then a machine gun comes out of his mouth and starts shooting at the filmmakers car. - Kirby has a secret starts off with Kirby being his usual, cute self. However, Kirby reveals that when he gets really hungry, his skin starts to fall off. As he says this, his stomach starts to gargle. This continues on as his skin falls apart, his muscle tissue becomes exposed with blood splattering everywhere, and his eyeballs become bug eyed, to the point that they pop out entirely!. As this occurs, he giggles all throughout like it's a normal occurrence. What makes this more unnerving is that as his voice deepens, his normal voice can still be heard as well. The fact that Kirby refers to you as meat, shows how he only considers you to be food. The image used for this page speaks for itself. (He proceeds to inhale the viewer, revealing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth that go down his throat) note : Depending on your sense of humor , you might find it humorous that his regular inhaling noise is used at this part of the video... or possibly more horrified. Kirby: (Muffled) mMmMmMm. So yummy! - Wooloo Has a Secret portrays the beloved Pokémon as a many-eyed demon that can see the future. And you're not in any of them. - Saving the absolute worst for last, his video based on Banjo-Kazooie has Mumbo's spell not work and fuse the two together. When asked if they can be turned back, Kazooie responds that they "like being together" before vomiting up eggs in the most graphic way possible that hatch into Jinjos that eat Mumbo alive. - BUZZBOUND is a mock-up for an Earthbound prequel starring Buzz Buzz, who goes back 10 years into the past to find Ness and spur him into action...only to miss his mark by only a few weeks. And in those few weeks Gigyas has already made major strides in conquering the Earth: Nightmarish creatures run amok, most of Onett's population has seemingly been turned to stone, and whatever local flora and fauna are still kicking have undergone bizarre, eldritch mutations. After some exploring he makes it to Ness's house, which seems perfectly intact...at least until Buzz Buzz defeats Ness's mom and realises that the house's interior is an illusion. The house is actually run-down and littered with skeletons as Ness's mutated, maddened mother sits in the ruins of the dining room, telling her son to "come to dinner" before attacking Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz then goes downstairs and finds Ness's sister and dog in test tubes and attempts to free them, only for them to fuse together into a spindly canine chimera that makes Nina Tucker look like a stuffed animal in comparison. After taking that thing out, Buzz Buzz finally finds Ness...only to realise that Gigyas got to him first, corrupting his mind beyond repair and forcing Buzz Buzz to put him out of his misery by forcing him through the timestream and crushing him with his time machine. - Super Mario World Purgatory Hell: A bizarre level of Super Mario World where Mario has somehow been trapped in a small space underground, which is only a few inches taller and wider than him. The soundtrack is a strange, distorted loop of music, and the only power-up is a poison mushroom that Mario can't even use, since he's stuck on the left side of where it falls down. The description reveals that Mario is trapped in this state forever... - Lumpy Super Mario Land: The video begins as a normal playthrough of the first level of Super Mario Land, with Mario collecting coins and jumping on a Goomba... except when he passes one of the early pipes, an odd, dark shape briefly peeks out of it, only to disappear back down again. Following, Mario enters the underground area, where everything appears normal, except someone has drawn arrows on the wall, leading him further inside. More scribbles appear on the walls, and a message stating to "Follow The Sweet Smell" and "She Lives In the Pipes" appear on the screen. Strange plants and wines begin appearing in the pipes the further in Mario goes, until he reaches a room where the eyeless corpse of a Toad is entangled in a large root! In the next room, the entire brickwork is replaced by plants, and beyond that, Mario seemingly finds Daisy... only for the music to begin to distort and an image of Mario appears on the screen showing flowers growing out of his eyes! The scene begins flashing between the "Daisy" room and reality, showing that Mario is actually trapped by a monstrous, humanoid plant in a room filled with skulls and dead toads. At this point, the Gameboy the game is being played on shuts off... - Its direct sequel reveals that Mario survived whatever that was (though had cost him one life), promptly getting back out of there into a Bonus Stage. After acquiring a mushroom that he eats, it turns out to be poisonous in some way, causing Mario to vomit and be handicapped for a little while. Cue him crossing a World Map (which isn't even in the original game) into a village full of Toads, who promptly get him to a hospital when he passes out. Once he awakens, he tells the Toad doctor about a nightmare he had while he was unconscious, with the Toad somehow seeing it as good news. Mario, understandably perplexed, quickly takes the clipboard and finds there's no actual notes there; only a drawing of what he described. Once he puts it away, he finds the Toad had been mutated and infected, claiming that Mario had been "chosen" by God as a vessel (hinting that HE may be the carrier of the plant-based plague) before trying to attack him. He promptly squashes the Toad, who finds pleasure in "God's blessing" before his demise. Mario immediately bolts it out of the village with many infected Toads pursuing him. One last message pops up before the Game Boy switches off for the second time; "THE HUNT BEGINS". - Fruity Pebbles: A Flintstones game where Barney unseals a mountain cave, to visit Fred who has somehow transformed into a monstrous giant and chained inside. Despite his grotesque new form, Fred seems normal enough, and asks if Barney brought him his Fruity Pebbles, only for Barney to reveal the Awful Truth; there's never been any fruity pebbles cereal, Fred was eating people the whole time, which is implied to be the reason for his horrific transformation. And that's not the worst part... - Fred is driven to insanity by this revelation and refuses to accept reality or his crimes, blocking out the memories of what he's done, finally forcing Barney to leave him sealed away in the cave forever. - The Lumpcrate series is mostly just harmless fun; fictonal prizes that represent Lumpy's subscriber milestones in silly boxes, ranging from anime hammerhead sharks to an emoji from the future witch will riddle your text messages with futuristic spam. But the one that stands out is the Liminal Loop. While most of its description is redacted out, the most anyone knows about that thing is that it traps you in a loop and will eventually kill you. Unlike the more comedic Lumpcrate videos, this one plays it very seriously.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LumpyTouch
Macross Delta / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Var Syndrone. Veins begin to form across the infectee's face, then the infectee begins to go completely berserk. The intro of the first episode shows pictures of the infectees rampaging. - What's worse is that it's \|\|actually something akin to a bioweapon used by Windermere\|\| to neutralize the opposition, and can be spread by Heinz's song. - As \|\|revealed in episode 7\|\|, Windemere apples and water can produce the chemicals that cause the Var Syndrome. Yes, that's right, even food can cause people to contract the Var Syndrome. Now imagine if Windemere has been exporting them to brainwash people to make it easier for them to conquer the planets that have been buying their products. - \|\|Messer's death at the hands of Keith in Episode 10. What makes it incredibly unsettling is Keith manages to do it with such unorthodox precision by hitting him at the heart, and with such a calm expression on his face, making the crew question that it was done on purpose. Not helping is the large blood splatter on the cockpit.\|\| - \|\|Hayate and Freyja going berserk due to the Protoculture ruins. Which is topped by Mikumo remembering some of her memories and overpowering the ruin with her singing. What's especially scary about this is that it triggered Var syndrome in the person explicitly stated to be immune to it.\|\| - Bogue Con-Vaart. This guy's a crazy little bastard who, unlike the other Aerial Knights who are fighting to protect their homeland, just wants to kill as many humans as he can. He even tries attacking Walküre, especially whenever they're singing. Not helping is his constant smug grins and even slasher smiles he gives out often.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MacrossDelta
MAD / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Many of the Michael Gallagher/Tom Bunk one-page gags employ this, particularly with Bunk's over-the-top grotesque and gory artnote : His other work included Art Shift-era Garbage Pail Kids, for what that may be worth. For instance: A kid pops a zit and ends up swallowed by his own pus and gore. As seen at Agony of the Feet, man buys magnetic insoles for his shoes which are so strong that they pull an entire shelf full of sharp knives down through his feet, followed by an entire refrigerator crushing him to death. Rock music fans try to crash a concert by pushing a chain link fence down. However, the fence is so heavily reinforced that it just slices their bodies to smithereens instead. A nurse is drawing blood from a patient, but gets distracted by a phone call. When she returns, the patient is dead and dried-out, and their IV bag is gushing blood. The very first Mad story ever ends with a man walking away with his own severed head. "I am... a VAMPIRE Batboy!" An off-putting Fold-In, seen in #223 and the Mad Gross-Outs issue, sports the image of a lady whose right side is bare skeleton; the setup is "What is always the movie industry's ghastliest production?"Answer : "The Oscar Award show!" The October 2018 edition of the magazine had a good dose of Realism-Induced Horror with "The Ghastlygun Tinies", an "update" on Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Instead of telling of kids dying in various ways, it says that kids only seem to die in one way nowadays: school shootings. The story tells more disturbing things happening during the shooting, ending on this note: Z is for ZOE, who won't be the last. And if recent trends have shown, the poem, and that particular line, are very accurate. The animated series "Toys 4 Bratz" is a little bit disturbing for a kid's show. Considering it shows BLOOD along with a girl getting cut by a Baby Cutz-A-Lot doll, a boy being electrocuted by a Lectroland Playset, and another boy who lost a finger to a Skill Saw. The Supernatural parody scared some people a little, especially when the demon escapes from the girl's soul. Ghost Rider's Training Wheels also has a demon in it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Mad
Luminous Avenger iX / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes # Per wiki policy, this page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned! Luminous Avenger iX is the aftermath following the bad ending of Azure Striker Gunvolt, so it's natural for things to be far worse in this timeline than the good ending. - Sumeragi has expanded its reach so far that it is basically a totalitarian state that is driving the powerless Minos to extinction in favor of a dystopian society for Adepts and only Adepts. - And if you're an Adept, you are not safe either since you will be subject to living conditions seemingly straight out from 1984. You're only slightly less disposable than the Minos despite the protection Sumeragi promises you with. - The Mino hideout Copen visits only has Kohaku and three other kids in it. Just where are all the adults, or anyone who looked like they could fight for that matter? Kohaku explains that there used to be more people, including adults within her group, but they were all killed by Sumeragi. Later on, we also found out Kohaku's sister seemingly met the same fate as the aforementioned adults. As described below, it's actually even worse for her. - The first stage features an Adept who can revive a Mantis battle tank left in pieces in the slums and turn it into the Zombie Mantis. The scary part is that it sometimes spews piles of junk out, literally its inner guts being emptied. - The Lola Tank. It is Sumeragi's answer to Lola's symbol of hope to Minos, and produced en masse. It mimics everything about Lola's abilities right down to Calling Your Attacks. The design is not meant to be cute: it's a psychological tool to taunt the Minos. Worse, as you attack this enemy, it begins to show progressively more and more damage (unlike other bosses) until it reaches its last health bar, whereupon its mask shatters to reveal five red eyes and activates Darkness Trigger, going berserk by relentlessly shooting energy blasts and revving back and forth. And finally, in a desperate attempt to bind Copen, it uses Anchor Nexus and Lola has to deal the finishing blow to stop it. - Dystnine's maturation of a Septima, Vector Cloth, after felling Stella. It just goes to show that a Septima can be made to forcefully emerge, and The Power of Hate is one way. As it turns out, this was the reason why Stella was even a Falcon, since otherwise Dystnine would end up as a test subject because of his curious nature of having a Septima despite being a robot. She didn't have a choice, or otherwise she would lose her one and only friend. Even worse, Dystnine signed to become a Falcon for Sumeragi later, and that's also not saving him from being used for experiments. It almost makes his death in Copen's hands a Mercy Kill. - Save for Dystnine, the situation most Falcons are in are....unpleasant to say the least. It drives to the point that even if you are an Adept, you are not safe from Sumeragi, and it really makes Nova and Gunvolt-era Copen look like saints to the Adepts. - Rebellio is on death row because he was forced to commit terrorism due to his family being held hostage. He was only hoping to see his family again, and is a pacifist. Unfortunately, Sumeragi wants Copen dead, and if Rebellio can do the job, he gets a reduced sentence. Some of his attacks are ironically themed after a guillotine and a scythe, and his special skill can snare you in thread, leaving you helpless as Rebellio attacks. If he's killed, Rebellio apologizes to his family as his last words, and he has no conflict with you. A pitiful waste. - Like Rebellio, Stella is blackmailed to serve as a Falcon to protect Dystnine from Sumeragi. She's just a lonely woman who wanted a friend, but that's all it takes for her to be suckered into this dead end job. And if she's gone, Dystnine is dead no matter what. Killing Stella also robs a giant conglomerate of its president, meaning she sacrificed virtually everything she worked her way up to on the outcome of a fight. - Bakto wants to run a crime family syndicate, and Sumeragi planned to free his gang from jail if he dispatched Copen, similar to Rebellio's quandary. Sumeragi has become so wide-reaching that even the mob pales in comparison. - Blade initially starts out as a rival like Gunvolt, but in her second encounter, Demerzel hijacks her mind and Blade unwillingly activates Berserk Trigger when down to her last life bar. From that point on, she howls with pain and flies into a feral rage, performing all-out versions of her previous attacks, and her voice becomes savage. She winds up stuck this way, because her Septima has given way to control by the Butterfly Effect. However, the crowning moment is when it's revealed that Blade wasn't a volunteer or even coerced unlike the other Falcons. She's actually Kohaku's sister who let herself be captured to buy the rest of the Minos chance to escape...and was brainwashed by Asimov to become a mere tool of his. - Crimm has a little too much fun blowing things up because he thinks it's art. His eagerness to destroy is on par with a serial bomber. Alongside Isola, he also doesn't seem to be suckered in, but it's clear that he has no interest in serving Demerzel and just wants to use it as an excuse to blow things up for the sake of personal fulfillment. - Isola has a voice drama where she became a popular idol and wasn't evil, just ambitious. When Sumeragi got to her, they offered her a chance to become their idol to oppose Lola and turned Isola into a Falcon to harness her Septima, Companion. She also has a gruff, bossy personality when not onstage, so it's unclear if the true persona she's giving off is serious or bubbly. It appears that Isola is leading a double life, and likely has massive delusions stemming from too much time in the spotlight, or genuinely fakes it with some smooth acting chops. - In Lola's voice drama, one of her fans just happened to be an Adept living in a Sumeragi controlled area, and said Adept was actually scared of her parents finding out that she was a fan of Lola and their conversation had to be held in secret. Considering how Lola and Copen were public enemy No. 1 for Sumeragi, it's implied that she's freaked out because her parents could hand her over to the Sumeragi military because she was listening to the enemy's idol. - The greatest source of nightmare fuel in the game is the encounter with the Butterfly Effect machine. Set in a dark and dimly lit room, it's a series of transmission devices used to manipulate Septima, but it's all hooked into a giant human brain. It's so big because so many life-extending surgeries have kept it alive and caused it to swell up. What makes this particularly awful however, is even way before we see it, Copen refuses to talk about it in front of his friends, and for good reason; this hellish contraption is Mytyl, his little sister, having her brain ripped off and being exploited and tortured by painfully extracting her Septima's influence. Then, Lola hears the sound of her crying from the resonating robotic parts. She can't even speak, and pre-battle, she makes the message "PLEASE"... "KILL ME" appear on digital screens in the room. The reveal that this is 100 years after the first Gunvolt implies she has been suffering for DECADES. - Just what is the purpose of this thing? With all the available information combined, it's clearly there to make sure Asimov controls every single Adept entirely unopposed as all Minos die out. No Mino has a playing field with the powerful Sumeragi Adepts aside from Copen (who was already laden with cybernetic enhancements), meaning that if even he is gone, nobody left can or will stop his tyranny. That's right. Asimov captured an ill girl and took her brain to be hooked and tortured using a machine just to cement himself absolute power. Just like Dystnine above, this proves that even if you're an Adept, you are never safe in front of Asimov; as soon as the moment you are deemed useful for experimental purposes or his plans for control, you're instantly off to a Fate Worse than Death. - Also Tear Jerker, but the Butterfly Effect's attacks will purposefully miss Copen. That is, they have openings larger than Copen himself and sometimes you even have to try to get hit by them. This thing does recognize that she's hitting her brother. Also, once slain, the Butterfly Effect spells out "THANK YOU" on the room monitors and Mytyl's brain falls apart as the attached machinery explodes, bringing her rest. - Before this revelation, Lola has never said anything coarse or profane. When she discovers the horror placed upon Mytyl, it disturbs her so much that she erupts with anger and grief and shouts, "I'll NEVER let those Sumeragi bastards get away with this!" - The reveal of Asimov as the head of Sumeragi. As a result of killing Gunvolt and Joule, he chose Blade and Mytyl to be the new king and queen he wanted, but the extent of his brutality in doing so makes it very clear that unlike Zonda, Asimov is not creating an adept paradise but a complete dystopia where he is a God, and whatever's left of the confident commander of QUILL is now a power-hungry tyrant and the MOST monstrous character in the Gunvolt series. You could feel sorry for killing every other villain who acted out of Well-Intentioned Extremism, had Freudian Excuses or are just plain cogs in the machine, but killing this Asimov will put a smile on your face. - The Unrobotic Reveal of Asimov as Demerzel, a being made of pure electronic lightning who has transcended human form and mortality, and also secretly controlled every facet of Sumeragi under the guise as its AI. - Copen also drops a whopper of a Wham Line to him when he says it's been over a hundred years since Copen and Asimov first met, and both of them have taken action to augment themselves to persist beyond normal human lifespans, Copen becoming a cyborg despite his aversion to Adepts and Asimov completely abandoning his humanity to become a lightning "god". Copen even thinks that Demerzel's brain has begun to malfunction after all that time and he really is insane, but it's more like he went mad with power and took to dominating the world, with his transcendence to pure lightning furthering his maniacal machinations, making him so insane that he forgot Copen couldn't possibly live for more than a century being human. - The scene with Gunvolt and Joule laying dead on the ground in a pool of blood. It exemplifies how dark this spinoff series is, whereas the original game just showed a black screen. - Berserk Trigger is a diabolical power that encapsulates With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: - As previously mentioned, Blade is placed under mind control to forcibly bring out the full power of the Septima implanted within her. However, her EX boss fight shows what happens when it's used while she's already lost it. It dials her insanity up twofold and she becomes a nigh-unstoppable animal. Blade has almost no downtime between attacks and moves blindingly fast. She also starts using her desperation attack as a normal move to blanket the screen in thunderous slashes. - Berserk Trigger becomes the EX Ability Darkness Trigger for Lola following the second match with Blade, Lola having analyzed it and copied it. However, as Copen inserts the power into her, Lola transforms into her idol form, only with a fiendish appearance, emitting purple flames, screaming, and ending with loss of control. Copen considers this ability too dangerous and a failure until being convinced the powerful benefits could outweigh the side effects. - If Lola has Darkness Trigger activated in a stage, you'll hear a shrill metal guitar chord and the song "Beyond Probability" overrides any music playing in the background. In this state, Lola tears through enemies with reckless abandon and you can power up EX Weapons. However, Lola succumbs to Blood Lust, and if she doesn't constantly have a bounty of enemies to prey on that you can target, her wrath will be redirected upon She will drain your life bar until you satiate her or perish. You'll bottom out with 1 HP, and that will ensure an anxious struggle to let not a single thing touch you until you get a health drop, and start the cycle all over AGAIN... you. - EX Demerzel, the True Final Boss of the game. When Kohaku destroyed the glass container housing his program in sleep mode, it didn't finish him off. He's miraculously bounced back and then some, turning dark blue and using upgraded versions of all his attacks. However, if you succeed in beating him, you get the satisfaction of personally and permanently killing the bastard who made the world so corrupt.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuminousAvengerIX
Luminous Avenger iX 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes # Per wiki policy, this page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned! Although Lighter and Softer when compared to the first iX game there are still some noteworthy creepy moments. - Empty Vessel is a track that plays after Null "dies" to become one with the teleporter. It's downright haunting and ominous, not helped that Null's motionless and bloodied husk is now front-and-center for the menu screen for the remainder of the game (that can catch first time players off guard) until the game has been completed. - The "Hanging Gardens 2" stage. - The stage starts out normal like the first one, until you venture further and discover that the area is corrupted. What was once a tranquil and serene looking garden has been replaced with a creepy and surreal atmosphere; with a dark purple solid floor with purple lines and further ahead is dominated with cables on both the floor and ceiling, a near reddish sky, a glitching diamond at a distance, and is in a state of perpetual rain. It symbolizes Mother's detoriating sanity that affects even the very garden she resides in. - The enemies for this stage are Angelic beings that revert back to their pod forms which has a startlingly menacing appearance that contrasts their heavenly and beautiful forms that they take, and the Aluraune enemies (who normally have a robotic face) eerily has Lola's likeness here (which she, for some reason, doesn't take note of it), which act as a foreshadowing to Mother's true identity. - If you decide to harm Kohaku enough times before rescuing her (right after Mother is defeated). Mother has completely taken over Kohaku's body. The epilogue shot is of her having just cleaned the lab, causing both Copen and Lola be off-put by her sudden change of behavior. Then as the two leave, we are treated to a shot of "her" menacingly glancing at the side, now sporting glowing eyes, in a pitch black background only dimly lit with a purplish tint accompanied with a Scare Chord, and declares that she will be with Copen... Forever (for bonus horror, accessing the main menu right after obtaining this ending results in Kohaku saying "we'll be together forever, Copen"). Now imagine what happens to Lola, Jin, Maria, Kyota, and especially her older sister Blade when she is alone with any of them.... - Despite the energetic battle theme, during the fight with Mother's Idol Form, if she's at her last health bar, she'll activate her Limit Break. While she does so, we get a close-up of her skeletal face (accompanied with glowing red eyes that rains bloody tears) while casting that betrays her angelic appearance. It's a minor Jump Scare for those who least expect it. - The twisted nature of a lot of the Gravekeepers from ages of solitude. They are Workers who have tried and utterly failed to revive the human race by constructing locations meant to jumpstart a new era, but it has been so long that they've either given up or turned ruthless. Even the Mother Computer has had it with her creator's final order to repopulate human life that she cannot disobey, and has Kohaku kidnapped not to extract new human DNA, but to take control of her so she may give herself an order to destroy everything in a suicidal rage. - Ypsilon gets some horror points for existing as a false copy of the Creator that Mother yearns to see again. At one time, Mother found him too inadequate to fill his shoes and abruptly scrapped him and left his Worker template body to litter the wasteland like an abandoned corpse. However, when Copen comes into close proximity of it, Ypsilon's remains scan Copen and regenerate the Pix that make up his body, albeit damaged. Ypsilon is forced to relearn his existence from scratch until he manages to reunite with Mother and prove his continued worth, but his efforts to please her grow increasingly desperate, and overall reflect that he's rapidly going insane, and the only way to give Ypsilon release is to utterly destroy him. - Mother turns out to be the equivalent of Lola in the alternate world, and even in the Good Ending, where her spirit joins the Creator in death, and the corruption in the Hanging Gardens turns to a beautiful flowered landscape, there is still the dead and smoldering pod Mother's consciousness embodied left behind, leaving an ugly burn on what should be a picturesque homegoing.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LuminousAvengerIX2
MacVenture / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Thank goodness... beauty is only skin deep. Despite receiving a release on the family-friendly Nintendo Entertainment System, this is a series that's not for the faint of heart, and here's why. Déjà Vu (1985) - Finding the P.I. office and seeing the silhouette of someone inside is pretty intense, with panicky music to boot. It doesn't help that you die instantly when you step inside if you haven't first disposed of the intruder and cured your amnesia. - In some versions, the butler looks like he has no eyes. - The sequel has the dog. In most versions he looks feral (and again eyeless), while in the GBC one he's positively pissed. - The NES and Game Boy Color versions go for a simple gravestone as the death screen, but the Famicom version (of the first Deja Vu) has a skull◊ that wouldn't look out of place in Uninvited, while the non-Nintendo versions of Deja Vu II have The Grim Reaper with a gun that's pretty scary and equal to the one in Shadowgate (while the Windows 3.x version has a close-up of Ace Harding's bare feet with his nametag on the toe and a shroud wrapped on his body in the morgue). Speaking of which... Uninvited - The woman in white in the first hallway. She's the one who generally causes the first death, which means the players get to see her face and likely the red skull for the first time, even though the music when she's present from the back is sweet. She provides the page picture and also actually the one in the cover of the game◊, but somehow she looks more terrifying in 8-bit, though the accompanying music (see below) probably amps up the scary factor. - Creatures suddenly appearing without warning (Which usually means a sudden change of music as well). - The ruby. You just picked up a seemingly innocent ruby. And as you continued to walk further, the red skull that usually serves as the one greeting your death suddenly pops up and you continue to slowly feel more and more unwell... until after a few times, turns out the atmosphere of the house corrupts you and you suddenly became zombified. Because you just carry that seemingly innocent ruby. Or even worse in the Mac version. You enter the house, you're overwhelmed with that cursed aura right from the start. Better get moving fast. And the implication? The whole house is a house of nightmares! - The descriptions of the many, many gruesome deaths players will likely be met with. One of them involves getting trapped in a cell. You die eventually, but no-one says you get to leave the cell afterwards... - The Gross-Up Close-Up of most monsters when they kill you. - The accompanying 'You're dead!' music, which even in 8-bit is scary enough to send a deadly dread that you're going to meet your maker after all the suffering your killer inflicted to you, and may even accompany you, like it or not, in your sleep. Shadowgate - The theme that plays when your torch starts getting low wrote the rules. - And the Grim Reaper. The NES version with the red eyes is the most iconic, but the Macintosh one with the facial expression and lack of color is probably the most terrifying. - The death descriptions. Made doubly worse by the number of people who first played this game as kids. - The Hellhound guarding the Platinum Horn. If you make one wrong move or wait too long, it kills you; complete with a Gross-Up Close-Up. The Windows 3.x version makes things even scarier by adding in sudden, loud growling sounds when it kills you. - The remake has considerably beefed-up the Warlock's introduction. - The remake not only steps up the death's descriptions, but also adds frighteningly gruesome sound effects and foley to the mix. Special mention goes to the hidden deaths in the tower music room (where the air pressure from the soundwaves coming from the instruments becomes high enough that it slowly crushes the player to death (complete with blood being squeezed out of every orifice in their body), culminating in their head exploding), the beast in the mines (who leaps out at the player and slams them repeatedly until every bone in their body is broken), and the enchanted mirror into space (with rather graphic descriptions of the effects of decompression on their organs).	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MacVenture
Madagascar / 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! ## Subpages:<!—index—><!—/index—> ## First Game: The fifth level Mysterious Jungle introduces them in the final area of the level. They make an odd shriek as they attack, move oddly when they walk, and will sometimes drop from the trees above! And it won't be the last time you see of those suckers...This level's final stage has Alex going through his 'wild' phase, and the ending to this level has Melman helping Mort go across the valley from the platform they were on. The real scary part of this level is that you can't touch the ground. It's basically a game of 'the floor is lava' and Alex is the lava. - Two words: GIANT SPIDERS. - His quotes while you're down there don't make the situation any better as he obsesses over wanting to 'talk' to Mort. Alex: Mort, there's something I'd like to discuss with you... Alex: Come on Mort, I just wanna play! - Though the real kicker is this line: Steak. Steak! GIVE ME STEAK!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Madagascar
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes But perhaps the worst part about her is her attempting to shoot Alex with a poison dart, right in front of the crowd! Gia manages to save him at the last instant. DuBois:(smiling evilly) It was never about the money. It was about... (pulls out an Alex foam finger, under which she's hiding a poison dart gun)the lion. Vitaly's dark and troubled backstory of screwing the ring jump by lighting the hoop on fire and coating himself with olive oil. The result is still extremely disturbing despite the Gory Discretion Shot. Stefano: He flied to close to the sun and he got burned — literally. The extra virgin olive oil is extra flammable. Alex's return to the zoo on his podium is this, especially since it's a Dark Reprise of the first film, complete with subdued colours, the group's frightened expressions and DuBois' aura of evil. Sonya's introduction. Her side of the boxcar decorated with claw marks on the walls, slime covered fish bones on the floors and a severed fish head. Then she appears from the darkness with her eyes glowing red.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Madagascar3EuropesMostWanted
Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The overall plot of Count Luis Yu Almeida. For no reasons beyond simply doing so, he began to experiment upon innocent girls with the most powerful psychosomatic hallucinogen on Earth. This was simply to ease the pain of them as they were robbed of their earthly possessions, electrocuted, raped, and poked and prodded on a slab. His overall plan was to create the perfect maiden which \|\|he could not do before his death\|\|. However, \|\|he did create Aisha\|\|, who proceeded to \|\|continue his work until her death\|\|. This is the absolute sadistic nature of Almeida. - How obsessed was Almeida with Fujiko? He built an entire theme park devoted to her enjoyment...or terror. - The mental scarring several characters suffer throughout the show lead to some terrible freak outs. - Several deaths throughout the show including Fujiko shooting two guards point blank and \|\|Oscar killing the Fujiko clones with a gasoline explosion\|\|. - Seriously, anytime you start to see the Owlmen appear, expect this to not be far behind.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LupinIIITheWomanCalledFujikoMine
Madame Macabre / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Only Monika: - Remember Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club!? While she did horrible things there, at least she has a Heel Realization and tries to make amends, but here? She is reimagined as a darker interpretation of the character, and any tragic or sympathetic moments she had is rendered null and void, replaced by a much more nightmarish tone (thus, good luck trying to have any sympathy for her) for the following reasons: - Monika resorted to severely mind-raping her clubmates to suicide. - She intentionally destroyed her own game so the player would have zilch chance of trying to get rid of her and made it irreversible. In other words, you are permanently stuck with Monika with her souped-up Yandere brutality.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadameMacabre
Lusternia / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - All of Magnagora, Shallamar, and the Earth Plane were subject to the Taint (transforming legions of animals and people into undead and monsters), but only King Gorgaliel was directly linked to the Stone of Truth as it channeled raw Taint through it. The result? — the transformation of noble, eloquent Physical God Gorgaliel into Gorgulu the Devourer of Souls, patron saint of Body Horror. A massive, amorphous blob of flesh, he's covered in mouths and eyes of various sizes, and exits solely to eat, sometimes devouring his own followers. Most disturbingly, he often manifests his pliable flesh into various semi humanoid monstrosities, connected to him via fragile umbilical cords of sinew. He sometimes eats these "babies" too. - The other Demon Lords are no slouches when it comes to terrifying, either. Nifilhema has peeled back her own flesh, and holds the strips of meat in place with silver hooks so her musculature is always on show; and Ashtorath sometimes enters rage states so fierce that his jaw locks up and he can't even scream, and emits such heat that the stone floor of his tower buckles and melts beneath him. - Some of the random dreams that can occur when you fall asleep. They range from the odd (dreaming that you are an eagle, swooping to catch a poor rabbit), to the appropriately macabre (Magnagorans can dream about holding a Masquerade Ball dinner party while the screams of tortured merians echo in the background), to the downright creepy (dreaming that you at home, laughing with your family and friends, when the walls cave in to reveal the empty void of space, and the appendages of some unseen horror drag you and your loved ones screaming into the nothingness). - The Astral Plane. It consists of twelve spheres floating in an empty void, bumping into each other randomly, each populated by a particular breed of hellish monster, ranging from steam breathing crimson-eyed steel goats to emaciated, bleeding eyed women in robes. - Once you really delve into the deeper and more disturbing aspects of Hallifax and Gaudiguch, like, -really- delve into it, you will never look upon the Crystal City or the City of Freedom the same way again. Magnagora got nothing on them if you look the right place.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Lusternia
Madagascar / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Alex's growing Sanity Slippage as he becomes a true, wild, hungry lion is used for a lot of laughs, with him envisioning the others as talking steaks and the famous "You're biting my butt" line, but it doesn't change the fact that there's still a portion of the movie involving watching the protagonist helplessly descend into a savage state where he wants to hunt down and eat his lifelong friends purely out of instinct from being a carnivorous animal trapped on a wild island. It doesn't help that as he grows more feral, his mane grows dishevelled and he gains crazy eyes and sudden extending claws, as well as pulling off a deranged grin. Maurice sure points this out. Maurice: Your friend here is, what we call, a deluxe model hunting and eating machine! And he eats steak. Which is you. - After going savage and forcing the other animals to flee from him, Alex isolates himself within the perpetually dark badlands where the Fossa live. The look of their domain is already pretty unsettling, but we get to watch him suffer from a freaky nightmare hallucination in which his spiky, barricaded area becomes his zoo enclosure, and a pleading Marty becomes a cheering crowd of steaks. - When Marty confronts the now-feral Alex, there's a brief, terrifying moment where Alex gives into his instincts and abruptly lunges at Marty, who barely dodges out of the way in time.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Madagascar1
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Marauders. Brutal savages that decided once civilization collapsed, now was the time to rape, pillage, and kill. Sometimes they don't even kill. They tend to tie people up, living or dead, and strap them to the hoods of their cars. - Worse still, given that they drive police cars and wear MFP uniforms, some of them may have once been cops. - At least in the original movie, there was still civilization left. Now, it's all gone, and it's every man for himself. - Wez. God knows what turned him into the raving psychotic he is in the movie, even before his lover is killed. - The fact that most of the characters seem to have been around pre-war. Things must have gone to hell really fucking fast. The synopsis on the back of the box of one VHS release states that it's only been three years since the first movie. - It doesn't help that the Mad Max series tends to be all over the place in terms of timeline, and its never really established just when it takes place. Parts of it seems like it could be 20 Minutes into the Future of our own world, as is explicitly stated in the first movie, while others makes it seem like its almost a different universe altogether. - The Lord Humungus. Whoever he was before, now he's the king of the garbage heap. Can you imagine what kind of ruthless bastard you'd have to be to control the psychos under his command? - That Humungus is lying to the refinery about safe passage is a given, even without the bit where he promises this to Wez. However, it's hinted that regardless of his own feelings about the matter, he really has no choice but to let his horde have their way with the settlers to "let off steam", if he wants to keep leading them. Villains, too, have their own brutal version of The Chains of Commanding! - It's been suggested by George Miller that Humungus was a military man before the collapse, hence his eloquence, sense of discipline, and strategic mindset. This makes it even more terrifying that a man of his caliber is leading an army of savages, rather than teaming up with the refinery to help rebuild civilization.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadMax2TheRoadWarrior
Mad Max (2015) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Unmarked Spoilers, read at your own risk! You may want to get comfy. This game has a lot to offer. - The atmosphere of the game is very bleak, to say the least. Crumbling ruins, stranded ships, crashed planes and the knowledge that people lived normal lives in what is now a desolate hellscape. - Max does not fuck around when it comes to fighting, every punch - even his lightest jab - is meant to kill, not scare, wound or harm, just kill. The sheer brutality of his blows is made clear by each of them doing a very sound Sickening "Crunch!". - Scabrous Scrotus, the primary antagonist of the game, is a hulking, muscular brute of a man that makes his father, Immortan Joe, look like a pushover. His War Boys have made the wasteland even worse than it already was with their roving war parties and massive "scarecrows" - flaming totem poles made of scrap metal and human corpses. He is perpetually angry, responds to any obstacle with extreme violence and wears a razor-sharp codpiece that makes it look like he has an elephant's tusk between his legs. And he only gets worse after he somehow survives getting his brain torn in half by a chainsaw. - Jeet is a "ferret-like" young man that rules over his share of the dry seabed, prone to angry outbursts and terrible migraines. Because of the lack of medicine, he remedies these problems by threading arrowheads into his skin. And that's not mentioning the gigantic mass of scar tissue that covers half of his body. - Gutgash is a haggard, cynical old man and the head of a large water cult that believe the seas will return one day. It's implied that he knows this to be completely untrue and while he is slightly less hostile than Jeet, he has no qualms whatsoever against buying and owning slaves. Including children. - Stank Gum is the post-apocalyptic version of Leatherface. He wears the faces of his victims on his own and cuts fiendish symbols into himself with knives and syringes he uses for torture and sexual purposes. He gets his name from his complete lack of oral hygiene, his bio describing his teeth as "little black nails". Not to mention his habit of collecting skin, scalps, hair and ears. Stank Gum: Out here I do master Scrotus' bidding, but the pleasure of the peel is all mine! - The Outcrier is the announcer and master of ceremonies for the lethal Gastown Races. While admittedly, his enthusiasm and extravagant habit of decorating himself with Christmas lights are somewhat uplifting, he carries his hapless "lover," 'Lectricy Boy around with him on a leash to keep his lights and speakers on with a portable generator. By his sullen disposition and the way the Outcrier yanks him around like a stubborn dog, it's doubtful that their relationship is consensual. - Griffa is a wandering mystic with absolutely zero backstory aside from his fixation on Max and willingness to help him face his inner demons. Wherever he is found, the screen turns an odd tint, ethereal screams are heard in the far distance and images of atomic shockwaves, corpses and salamanders appear on every surface in the style of Aboriginal cave paintings. As soon as you upgrade Max's abilities after talking with him, Griffa and his "hauntings" disappear. What does he want? Where does he come from? And is he even real? - The only known surgeon in the wasteland is the aptly-named Abdominus, Gastown's resident "organic mechanic." His loud, slurring bark of a voice is bad enough, but whether or not he saves your life or saws you apart depends on how much nitrous oxide he's been huffing. His tenure in Gastown's "Underbelly" stems from an incident where he got so stoned that he accidentally left a War Boy burn to death on his operating table. - His "bloodbag," Scab, is a disgraced War Boy driven mad by his hatred for his former master. After his blood is used to revive Max for his final fight against Scrotus, Scab starts screaming his lungs out for vengeance. Scab: MY BLOOD COMES FOR YOU!!! - With no arable land or livestock to be found, wastelanders now subside on a diet of insects, molluscs, grease, rats, lizards, dogs, dog food, maggot gruel, and sometimes, just sometimes, each other. Max: We do not eat the long pig. - Deep Friah runs a pyromaniacal cult just outside of Gastown, where his deranged followers aspire to cleanse themselves by burning themselves alive. The only reason Scrotus hasn't wiped them out is that his unhinged preaching keeps the Gastown residents relatively docile. - One of Scrotus' Top Dogs, Stump Grinder, is a sadistic eunuch and dedicated necrophile (all but outright stated by the corpses on his bed and his threats to Max) that enjoys compensating for his loss by returning the favour to anyone who gets in his way. - The Top Dog Pig'n'Sticker isn't much better: a foul-smelling master torturer who practices on his own War Boys. - And then there's Gut Noose. Formerly known as Dog Food, he earned his title in a gladiatorial arena by strangling his foes with their own entrails. - For some reason, Glory's bio page makes it look like she has an adult's head on her child body. - Stank Gum tortures Chumbucket into revealing the location of Max's newfound "family" under Scrotus' orders, throwing Max into a blind rage while Chumbucket is left howling to the Angel Combustion for forgiveness. By the time Max arrives at Deep Friah's stronghold, Glory and Hope are barely alive from whatever hell Scrotus put them through and they die in Max's arms. And, just like that, Max's grip on reality is shattered into pieces. - Many wastelanders have taken a shine to string up seared, dismembered corpses around their territories like wind-chimes. Fun. - Taken further with the Scarecrows, flaming beacons with dozens of corpses strapped to them, designed to intimidate those who'd dare challenge Scrotus. The massive ones even feature branches with even more corpses strapped on. - Found in numerous camps are bathtubs filled with blood and body parts used to farm maggots for food. One Stronghold Upgrade is just a bunch of plastic containers filled with maggots and dead flesh. Also, Max can eat maggots right out of CORPSES to refill his health. - The living conditions seen across the camps and strongholds make the Fallout universe look snug and cozy. People have been reduced to sleeping in tires and eating maggot gruel, marching across miles of scorching sand in search of water and spending much of their free time either staring into space or stoned out of their minds on gas fumes. And none of them look like they have ever bathed. Their only real pastime is either watching or entering violent "death runs." - In Gutgash's territory, there is a hidden cave that is filled with rotting, torn-up corpses piled up against the walls and hung from the ceiling. At the end is a torch-lit, blood-stained "throne" upon which sits an upright skeleton wearing a ram-horned helmet. All surrounded by shelves of skulls and lanterns. Just get the appropriately-placed Maggot Farm project part and nope it on out. Max: Who was this guy? - One History Relic can be found in an old shipping container. As you approach, you will hear the disgusting sound of bones and flesh being chewed. Inside are Feral War Boys eating from a huge pile of rotting corpses like a pack of wolves. Worst of all, due to a glitch, you can still hear the noise even after killing them all! It gets better if you have the Playstation 4 version: you hear it through your controller's speakers! Max: Oh no. - In the Dunes, a church lays buried beneath the sand with only its steeple exposed. Inside is a dark, deserted nave littered with bones, complete with catacombs that Max must venture into to secure a forgotten stash of canned food. It's absolutely dark, there are no enemies and even your flashlight fizzles out temporarily. As you make your way back up to the surface, you start hearing the baleful howling of Buzzards in the distance, ready for blood. - Way, way out in the Dunes, there's a buried suburban house packed with sad and scary things. Including a dead Buzzard propped against the wall on a bed, refrigerator magnets spelling "I miss my friends," a skeleton in a bathtub, a banner reading "there is still time!" and a fireplace with a roaring fire. We doubt you'll want to stay there for long. - Everything about Gastown, part of the wasteland's "power triangle" between the Citadel and the Bullet Farm. It's a settlement built in a functional oil refinery, surrounded by a moat of black sludge, visible for miles thanks to its blazing flames and pillars of smoke. Everything is stained with oil, grease and soot, its residents live and toil in filth and are threatened with beatings, murder and even rape if they fall out of line. So why do people insist on living in this hellhole? Because outside, there is only chaos. - The Underdune is a major airport buried beneath the sands and used as the main hideout for the Buzzards. Rusted spikes, explosive traps, torches and the original building's architecture makes it look more like the inside of some huge, nightmarish beast. Worst of all, its inhabitants don't even bother to attack you at first. Instead, staring at you before running away as soon as you get within twenty feet of them. Then, as soon as you get the "lighties" (Christmas lights) for the Outcrier, the windows and doors around you slam shut and the Buzzards finally show up to fight en masse. - The Big Nothing. Nothing but flat, lifeless sand that was once the Pacific Ocean where only death and violent sandstorms await you. At the very edge of the map, looking into the horizon, you can't help but wonder what lies beyond it. - Ferals are mentally damaged War Boys who have been raised and treated like dogs, and seeing three of them coming at you at once is nothing short of horrifying. - At the Storm Shelter camp, right before you enter one door you can hear a bunch of them screaming and snarling on the other side of the door to the next area you need to enter. - Arguably even worse are their Buzzard and Roadkill equivalents, Ghosts and Feral Blasters respectively. Ghosts are described as "former Buzzards lost to the and rejected by their clan", who prowl around in dark environments for fresh victims to feast upon. Feral Blasters are documented as being "bred by Roadkills to essentially become human bombs", wearing armour that is completely festooned with explosive soda cans, which are then ignited via firecracker before the Blaster throws themselves at the enemy in a suicidal rush. - History Relics are collectible signs and photographs of life before and during the collapse of civilization, almost always with writing on the back for context. They are a disturbing, sobering reminder of how much was lost in the Fall and a warning of what our real-life future may hold if we do not take care of our planet. Complete with riots, anarchy, famine, plague, mass extinction and even the world's shrinking oceans leaving its dead sea life to rot in the sun. Max's commentary on these photographs drive home just how lost he truly is. - A photo of Max's (alleged) wife and daughter, wishing him to come home soon. "Will I... Will I ever come back?" - A photo of a little boy on a big wheel, the caption lamenting that he grew up to be one of the first to go feral during the fall of civilization. "I guess he must have made it, then." - A photo of a home that later had a plane crash into it. "Soon they all came down. One by one." - A photo of two toilet bowls next to each other. "There was a time we polluted even clean water." - A photo of a little girl and her pet dog, the caption saying he was so cute they could just eat him up. "They didn't eat dogs back then." - A photo of a snowman with the caption warning of people planting explosives in them as traps. "I can't remember the innocence of snow. Or men. - The Fall was plagued (no pun intended) with numerous diseases, with children having to go to school completely bald to prevent the spread of lice. Even herds of livestock were hosts to deadly pathogens. - One Relic describes a man who roots through mass graves and uses human teeth to make dentures. Eugh. - One photo shows a picture of some delicious looking barbecue. The person writing on the back states it's delicious, and that he can't believe his friend found meat of this quality given the growing scarcity. They then go on to mention their friend seemed to be in good spirits after their wife Angie left them. Put two and two together. "People ate their fill and then threw out the rest." - Several entries describe the famines that ensued, with people going so far as to kill horses, pigeons, cats and dogs for meat - which Max refers to as luxuries. One Relic shows a fruit stand kept by someone as a reminder of when fresh food was plentiful. "NO BUTTER! NO POTATOES! NO MEAT!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadMax2015
M3RKMUS1C / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes If not expected, the jumpscares can be very startling. Disgusting Xbox Messages opens with a message from a false Erik, threatening to kill him and rip his dick off and feed it to his gerbil. In Black Ops 3 on Xbox 360, Erik's character was a bit slow to load, resulting in this abomination◊Erik: It can't even load a character! In Flying Tank Glitch, Erik and Tina get under a surface in Battlefield 1, it's funny until..."I'VE BEEN WAITING◊ FOR YOU PATRICK!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/M3RKMUS1C
M3GAN / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - The snowplow that rams into the car (where Cady and her parents were in) at the film's beginning. We get to see Cady's perspective as she witnesses her parents' death. - The M3GAN prototype having a demented expression because her face is stuck while making a "confused look". - Brandon bullying Cady while they are alone in the forest. If M3GAN did not intervene, who knows what else he would have done to Cady? - In a following scene, Brandon dishes out abuse to M3GAN by throwing her to the ground, removing one of her shoes, and straddling her body. Judging from his position, it is implied that he was going to do something much worse than just breaking her. - After Brandon tries to make M3GAN respond to him, she grabs him by his ears and stretches them out until one of them rips off. She then gives him a headstart... before getting down on all-fours and chasing the older boy until he rolls off a hill onto the open road where he is immediately run over. - M3GAN is not only more than willing to kill for Cady's sake, but seems to get a sick pleasure out of it, as seen as she tauntingly scolds Brandon. - The thought of what Brandon likely would've gone on to become if M3GAN hadn't killed him is chilling by itself, given he seems to be a budding sociopath and rapist. M3GAN very well may have saved the world at large from a future Serial Killer. Worse than even her, at least. - M3GAN has the ability to mimic voices and uses it to lure Celia's pet dog and kill it offscreen. When Celia tries to find her dog, she gets drawn to the shed where M3GAN impales one of her hands with a nail from the nail gun and then sprays high-pressure pesticide at her. While the effects are not seen in the original cut, the uncut version reveals most of Celia's face melting away due to the chemicals. - After M3GAN's infamous dance scene, she rips the blade right off a paper cutter and stalks David through the Funki building's hallways as he runs for his life. - She's only power-walking after him to comedically contrast with David tripping over himself and scrambling to get away. - Considering her speed when she galloped after Brandon on all-fours... it's abundantly clear that she could have caught David at any time, and she was just toying with him. - And then there's Kurt, who saw M3GAN stab David right in front of him... he gets sprayed in the face with blood. - Kurt is cornered in the elevator with David's corpse, with M3GAN going into detail about how she will frame him for the murder-suicide. M3GAN then forces Kurt to hold the paper cutter blade to his neck as he is unable to resist against her Super Strength. - In the unrated cut, she slices his neck first. - The next we see of David and Kurt is when their corpses are unveiled to a public gathered for M3GAN's official unveiling, leaving countless innocents and children traumatized as she uses the distraction to make her way back to Cady and Gemma... - M3GAN easily overpowers Gemma while they talk in the kitchen. The android then whispered to Gemma that she will literally rip her head off if Cady walks in. Gemma is forced to cooperate with M3GAN to ask Cady (who heard the commotion in the kitchen) to go back to bed. - Gemma splashes M3GAN in the face with water. It seems to work, as the doll freezes in place after short-circuiting... but M3GAN starts moving again... her movement being jerky and more robotic. - Near the film's conclusion, Gemma fends off M3GAN with a hedge trimmer and mutilates the android girl's face with it and tears off some of her artificial hair. - Cady uses Bruce to swing M3GAN around like a ragdoll, and then rip her in half. We get to see the android get ripped apart in gruesome detail. Feeling betrayed, M3GAN immediately abandons her prime directive and turns on Cady. - Even with her memory processor destroyed by the screwdriver, the film indicates that M3GAN escaped termination by downloading herself into the Elisa interface.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/M3gan
M9 Girls! / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Big Bad from Season 1 is very freaky-looking, especially compared to the otherwise pretty art style. - The monsters the girls are up against in Allegiances are pretty unsettling to look at, with this exposed brains, sewed-shut lips, zombie-green skin, and lots of lots of teeth.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/M9Girls
Madonna / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes This is from the video for a song called "Bedtime Story". You probably already know the irony. You don't become the Queen of Pop without causing some nightmares along the way. ## Examples: Like a Prayer - I resolve, I reserve. I have a reservation... I HAVE a reservation... WHADDYA MEAN IT'S NOT IN THE COMPUTER???? - "Till Death Do Us Part" is a relatively upbeat song about an abusive relationship. The song details toward the end how the woman in the song says she'll leave the relationship even though she knows she'll return with the chorus lyrics at first both being sung by Madonna in a higher voice while she also speaks the lines in a lower monotone voice. When she gets to the bit about not actually leaving her husband the signing and instrumentation completely drops out with Madonna uttering the title in the creepiest way possible. - The video for "Oh Father" portrays an emotional conflict between a young daughter and her father after the death of the child's mother. At the mother's wake, the little girl leans down into her mother's coffin as if on the verge of kissing her for the final time, only to stop in horror when she sees her mother's Mouth Stitched Shut. This visual has been described as one of the most disturbing moments in the history of mainstream music videos. It becomes even more so upon learning that it is based on one of Madonna's real childhood memories of her mother's wake. Erotica - Erotica has some of this. Some critics found the title track, which blurs the line between arousing and creepy, scary and then there is the song "Thief of Hearts" in which Madonna is threatening an unknown woman with violence for cheating with her guy. It's inter cut with glass breaking and breathy threats from Madonna. Bedtime Stories - The video for "Bedtime Story", which is also a Surreal Music Video. Most notably, a scene near the end that features Madonna with mouths for eyes (think The Corinthian) and an eye where her mouth should be. - Even without the creepy video, the song itself is definitely unsettling. It's a dark techno track with low pitched vocals and particularly disturbing lyrics that sound like they're about a woman being Driven to Suicide. The constant repeats of "Let's get unconscious..." don't help much. Ray of Light Music - The video for "What it Feels Like For A Girl". A woman (played by Madonna) who has clearly been abused gets ready for what appears at first to be a night on the town. Then she goes and picks up an old lady from a retirement home, drives at full speed with her in shotgun, buys some food, then it gets more violent: She distracts a couple of guys and has them chase her to the point where she causes them to crash into another car. Then she air-guns at a cop, and speeds again, purposefully into a lamp-post, killing both her and the old lady on purpose. And all this is done to an upbeat techno remix of the song. Hardly a wonder the video got banned from being played in the daytime. - Though it was never released (and not even leaked as a demo) "The Funny Song"/"Oh Dear Daddy" is fucking creepy. Madonna preformed it on her Drowned World Tour during her country portion. The song's story is basically Madonna comes home from buying her dad a cigar, only to find him shot dead, and she's says doesn't care because "brought out the worst in me". It gets worse when Madonna barbecues and eats her father's body after his funereal and says she would have killed him if she could justifying it by saying "that everything he did was bad". American Life - The original video for "American Life" featured a Fashion show of soldiers and scared children having their photos taken, with cuts to Madonna and other woman in the restroom acting like they are preparing for battle. A solider even shown without legs and the audience doesn't even react. While the merit of the actual song is really divisive and the video is over the top in places, it's not to be disturbed when it ends with Madonna firing water at the press and showing really war footage and victims WITH SOUND. MDNA - "Gang Bang". Madonna singing in a low pitch voice? Check. Dark, ominous electro thumping music? Check. Lyrics about murdering one's lover? Check. Terrifying dubstep breakdown? Check. Madonna shouting "Drive, bitch!" several times? Check. Is there a Nightmare Fuel jackpot? And the ending. "If you're gonna act like a bitch..." (gunshot) "Then you're gonna DIE LIKE A BITCH!!!" (double gunshot, tires screech) - It should be noted that this was her first studio release after her marriage to Guy Ritchie ended quite badly. WELCOME TO MADONNA'S MIND. Rebel Heart - In the artwork - which is the back cover on some editions - Madonna's eerily pale fist is holding up a whole, bloody heart.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Madonna
Madou Monogatari / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Being the roots of Puyo Puyo and an RPG, it carries quite a bit of horrifying things that would make a Puyo-only fan exclaim, " This is where Puyo Puyo came from!?", especially on the subject of the Darker and Edgier PC-98 release. For moments from that series, go here. - The face melting illusion scenes in Madou Monogatari I. Not only is there copious amounts of Body Horror, some versions have either Black Eyes of Evil or worse, no eyes at all! - Years of characterization have buried it, but in his first appearance, Schezo himself was the stuff of nightmares. Let's count the ways Early-Installment Weirdness rears its ugly head... - Even before the infamous scene described below, the very concept of a young kid getting dragged to a dungeon by someone who has every intention of killing them and taking their powers is terrifying. This illustration pretty much captures the ominous feeling.◊ His backstory with Runelord makes it worse, as you have to wonder how much of this Schezo would have done of his own free will... - Even if it was unintentional, Arle straight-up beheads Schezo in the PC-98 version of Madou Monogatari. This all happens on-screen and is about as gory as an 8-bit dungeon crawler can allow, with blood pouring down the front of his cloak. Granted Schezo is a straight-up villain in this game, but the moment still comes out of nowhere and can blindside anyone familiar with only Puyo Puyo. It serves as the page image for a reason. - What happens next isn't any better, as Arle then has to fight Schezo's head. His decapitated, floating head. The fact that he doesnt particularly seem to actually be affected that much, what with his decapitated head still attacking the player as if nothing happened doesn't help. - If that's not enough, then there's this thing called "Test Body". It's a multi-armed mass of flesh with a Nightmare Face that stares right at you, and bits of its flesh seem to be stuck to the walls around it. It's also missing a good amount of flesh on one of its leg. Whatever the hell this thing is, it wasn't made through natural means, and it's just there right after you defeat Schezo. - If you're wondering what happens to the poor victims that get drained, Arle encounters one such person in the Game Gear version, which can only be described as a gray-skinned rotting corpse◊ with no discernible features other than a gaping mouth and eye holes. Arle's rightfully scared of it not because it's a dead victim, but because she's next if she doesn't get out of here. - Keeping all this in mind, you have to wonder if, under all the Lighter and Softer characterization, is he still ready to do that? He hunts down Arle and Sig in hopes of taking their power, and if he still does the stuff he did back then to his victims, it makes his efforts a lot scarier... - And to top it all off, there's what Schezo's name means in-universe. It means "Handsome man who defiles the gods." Schezo has shown an intent to usurp Satan as ruler of Hell. Schezo doesn't just want to be a Dark Mage, he wants to be the Devil. - Schezo isn't even the only enemy that can get brutally decapitated in that game. Meet Dullahan◊, who takes the headless knight depiction in a more violent and bloody direction. - In Madou ARS, we get some insight on Schezo's backstory. At 14 years old, he finds himself on a school trip, being lured to a mirror. To make a long story short, he winds up fighting the spirit of Runelord, and manages to defeat him, gaining the Dark Sword in the process. He escapes the mirror, and sees his future self in his reflection, as a Dark Mage. Despite rejecting the idea of dark power before, Schezo now seems perfectly happy to make that future a reality, even smiling eerily at the thought of it. The whole story implies that Schezo was (and still is) a puppet to Runelord, which means that the guy who tried to kill Arle (even after losing his head), chased down Sig for his arm, and said more creepy things than one can count... may not have even done it all of his own free will! - Doppelganger Arle is heavily implied to be a half of the legendary sorceress Lilith from dubiously canon Madou Monogatari Chronology and Shin Madou Monogatari novels, with Arle being the other half. According to the early plot of the Gameboy version of Puyo Puyo~n, before it's changed in the final release, the Doppel was driven mad from years of isolation, and now wants to Kill and Replace Arle, even brainwashing the Dark Prince and kidnapping Carbuncle to lure her into a trap. - And Arle isn't the only one with an Evil Doppelgänger, as both Schezo and Witch have ones too. Witch's doppel, named Dark Witch, sticks out for her appearance in "Comet Summoner", where she has her own secondary mode, with a different ending than Witch's. What is that ending? She beats Witch, takes over her body, and possibly leaves her counterpart to rot in the Night Dimension. Oh, and the manual says she's a manifestation of Witch's future self. Let that all sink in. - In Doppelganger Schezo's case, he's the spawn of the space-time crystal stealing Schezo's magic, giving him physical form. Unfortunately, due to lacking any semblance of reason prior, he used Schezo's personality and powers as a blueprint, developing the overwhelming desire to steal. Steal what, you ask? Life force. On top of that, due to having space-time powers, he's capable of warping the amusement park's corridors to trap his victims. Suddenly those amusement park attractions sound way more unfun... - A lot of the enemies in the earlier games go right into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. Fans of characters like Harpy or Suketoudara are in for a nasty surprise when they see what they used to◊ look like.◊ Many other enemies never returned and◊ for◊ good◊ reason◊. - One of those enemies that never returned is known as the Rot, and theyre actually animated by Sarpropel Insects that drop to the ground when slain. These larva will grow in size to try and engulf Arle, whos only six, in their gaping, faceless maw. - Speaking of creepy enemies, this is OwlBear◊. This is him the second time he's fought.◊ This is him the third time.◊ The guy gradually gets angrier with each encounter, and in the third one he's practically after Arle's blood at this rate. And she was four years old at that time. Be thankful he was never in the PC-98 Madou 123... - Barbegazi◊ is a short, hairy man wearing a chunk of ice. He didn't look nearly as pleasant in his PC-98 appearance.◊ - While Choppun was never more physically frightening than his later design, you would not want to know what he did to attack in his first appearance. - Then there's the Dark Dragon◊, a huge beast that can be pretty freaky on its own, but then it gets defeated and looks like this◊. What should probably be funny looks insanely creepy. - The protagonists don't fare much better. The earlier games had Arle, Schezo, and Rulue happily (and vacantly) staring at the player. It's...unsettling to see. - On the subject of unintentional eeriness, Madou's graphics weren't any kinder to Carbuncle.◊ - In Madou Monogatari III, Arle encounters the Surprisingly Realistic Outcome from casting Ice magic far too often while lost in the woods: frostbite. She has it so bad, they've cracked open and bled◊. The worse part? The store she visited lacked any medicine to help her problem, and decided to fight her way through Mokemoe Labyrinth in spite of her condition just to help get the store properly restocked. Geez, Arle! - In some of the Madou games, Arle can perform fatalities on certain enemies using the right attack. One example is setting a werewolf on fire.◊ Keep in mind that Arle was only six when she did this. - One enemy, Garuda, also introduces itself by eating Lamia alive, complete with blood dripping from its mouth! - Dark Matter◊, an evil mage once defeated by Witch's grandmother, Wish, is pretty damn creepy to look at, even by Madou's standards. A giant monstrous figure in dark clothing with one red eye, and two pairs of arms, one skeletal, and the other made of mummy-wrappings. Oh, and he's possesses Wish. Good luck, Schezo, you'll need it... - Rulue gets her own backstory in ARS, where she deals with the Count, a vampire with a taste for virgin blood. Yeesh... He even drains her blood and kidnaps her. And he can do it again in one of the bad endings in Rulue's Spring Break. - On that note, Succubus once held Schezo hostage in her dungeon and tried to torture him into her slave. Again, yeesh... - While later installments suggest that ''Madou Monogatari Chronology'' isn't canon anymore, the Final Ragnarok is pretty much this. Arle went to war with the Creator of the Madou world, and said war spanned across entire dimensions, and by the time it was done, everyone save for Dark Prince was dead and ceased to exist. Dark Prince then proceeded to recreate the world with replicas of everyone, with their ages set in stone, and that's how the Puyo Puyo world was born. Again, its canon is dubious at best, but at least one version of Puyo Puyo was set after an actual apocalypse! And what followed was a world made by the Dark Prince, who basically fashioned his own Lotus-Eater Machine where nobody ages or changes. Maybe that's the reason it's not canon...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadouMonogatari
Mad Rat Dead / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The very intro of the game has the main character being pinned at a table, about to be dissected by a scientist as the whimsical "MAD RAT, ALIVE?" plays and the game asks you questions about your worldview. By the last question, the scientist has cut the poor rat's stomach open, with his intestines bulging out and blood seeping from the cut. - After supposedly dying, the titular Mad Rat does come back to life... in the form of a stitched-together zombie. There's a giant hole where his chest and stomach should be, with the tips of his ribs showing and surrounding a floating heart. - The Doctor performing these experiments is humongous (not to mention cruel). His entire hand covers Mad Rat at the end of the fourth stage and effortlessly places him back in the cage he just passed through. - The other rats in that cage are not looking that good, either. In contrast to their initial appearances, Mad Rat notices that they look wrong in the head - their eyes point into different directions, and they stutter while acting like nothing is wrong. The screen itself momentarily covers itself in static while replaying their talking animation. The last one Mad Rat talks to has their brain pop out, and Mad Rat has to fight a whole stream of them after that... - The way said brain comes out is also pretty messed up. Instead of just appearing, we're greeted to the amazing view of the rat's head tearing open near the top before its brain seeps out. The fact that the brain is impaled with pins makes it even worse, and it is very clear from the profuse screaming from the rats that this process is extraordinarily painful. - The fact that their brains are given colours similar to the Nightmares, explode by themselves and regrow (sometimes with no period where they're vulnerable), and also leave pools of harmful liquid when they're beat hints that there might be something more going on... - The aftermath seems to be a case of Bloodless Carnage, but the Rat God mentions that Mad Rat saw so much blood. Considering that the zombies are leaking yellow liquid from their mouths... - Even Mad Rat is affected. The Rat God implies that Mad Rat asphyxiated after seeing so much blood. - Nightmares appear to be innocuous at first, they are gaudy and look like they're graffiti come to life. The issue comes from the fact that they appeared in the afterlife training level where dreams are a heavier theme. Once Mad Rat is "alive" again, despite that fact, they keep appearing as enemies for some reason. The boss fight with the Mob Rats above hints that there may or may not be a connection... - The Ghost of Culvert is made up of multiple eyes set in blackness and a horde of sleeping ghostly rats for a head. The ghost is very disquieting and feels more like something to be found in Yomawari than this game. - The song 'Stilton' is normal... but ends in some haunting carinval-esque music... then loops back to normal. - Stage 3-5 has Mad Rat fight Heart, which exploits his potential of Nightmare Fuel. - Heart somehow drags Mad Rat to a monochrome dust bowl scattered with dead trees. This is later revealed to be \|\|the Afterlife's true form, as seen in the last few stages of the game, albeit without the neurons in the sky\|\|. - One attack really takes advantage of the fact that Heart only has one eye: the attack surrounds Heart with a red cloud that gives Heart the appearance of an Eldritch Abomination. - A lot of attacks involve blood: blood shots, blood gushers, and blood rubies. Notably, despite blood being normally portrayed with a yellow or pink colour, the blood from Heart is red... excluding a few attacks, where the blood gushers are somehow purple. - Heart can stop time. The music even stops while this happens. - The Cat in Stage 4-1's only visible body parts are his teeth, whiskers, and crazed eyes peering from the shadows. Then its arm and claws peek... - Mad Rat meets other rats who are deluded into thinking that they are getting lots of cheese... before a real cat (from Stage 4-1) eats them, leaving a trail of red blood. Unfortunately, the cat is about to eat Mad Rat as well... had a little human girl not picked Mad Rat out of the way. - Unfortunately, the girl ends up dying in a car crash. All you see is her bloodied hat, more red blood, and her arm. Thankfully, Mad Rat can rewind time. - Mad Rat and Heart piece together the true nature of Mad Rat's journey. Mad Rat was under heavy hallucinations that tricked him into thinking that he killed the scientist and his fellow ratmates, and the ghost of the ratmates were haunting him. In fact, he did not really go back to the laboratory and travel to a dust bowl, but rather went outside to the park. As for the cheese he has been chasing, that was a trap that was meant to lure Mad Rat to a cat that obviously wants to eat Mad Rat. Upon realizing this, Mad Rat falls unconscious and meets the Rat God... who says that Mad Rat ran out of time and was going to die... because a cat is going to eat Mad Rat. Mad Rat cannot move while the Rat God is present. Even so, once the Rat God disappears, Mad Rat find that Heart is gone. - During the next level, Cheese covers the city in the hallucination Rat God trapped Mad Rat in... and if you look closely (it's more obvious during the subsequent level's boss fight)... some of the holes in the cheese are instead realistic human eyes. - Even if the doctor did vivisect Mad Rat, seeing the dead doctor's arm by a pool of blood can get scary. - Mad Rat left his mark on the world, which means that he is going to get his happy ending, right? Nope. The Rat God, upset that Mad Rat did not get eaten by a cat, rewinds time back to before his vivisection. Heart then reveals that she intends to have Mad Rat live in a "Groundhog Day" Loop until he gives up and lets himself be eaten by a cat. - The next stages are a Dark Reprise of the tutorial stage. Instead of cheese, there are skulls. Platforms covered with red thorns are harmful to Mad Rat. The whole environment becomes bleaker. Mat Rat outright calls the place 'a hellish heaven'. - The last stage reveals the true nature of the Rat God: she is a parasite inside Mad Rat's brain who wants to reproduce by having a cat eat Mad Rat. She doesn't even care about dying in the process, being completely surrendered to instinct. - The Rat God gets arguably even scarier if you know it's based off a very real parasite (Toxoplasma gondii), that really does influence rats' brains to get themselves eaten by cats so it can reproduce. - The Rat God's battle is similarly terrifying. She initially transforms into a quite distorted version of herself, but she can also turn into her true parasite core surrounded by a rock ring in the shape of a fusion between the Sun and the Moon. All the while, she can, among other things, summon blocks that spread 'fire' and a black hole that can suck Mad Rat in. - There is an Uncanny Valley effect from seeing Heart's true form: a cat without a nose or a mouth. This stands in contrast to the cat Mad Rat rescued earlier, which, while hidden in shadows, at least has a complete face.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadRatDead
Maeka Enderfox / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Oh, Im sorry. Were you under the impression that an animation series set in the world of Splatoon couldnt be terrifying? Allow Maeka Enderfox to relieve you of any such delusions. - While Mutsuki the clone is mostly adorable, it also has Maeka creating the videos title character by combining her blood with an octolings blood. Shes essentially playing God, and its never explained where she got the octoling blood in the first place... - The sequel, 2 octolings part 2, pretty much goes into full nightmare fuel mode about 3 minutes in. First, a scene where an octoling tries to murder an inkling with a dagger, only to be killed for doing so by another octoling. Even though we dont see it happen, the noises and the inkling averting her eyes are enough to indicate it probably wasnt pretty. The next scene has an octoling asking another how many inklings she killed, and she casually answers 4. Theres also the fact that the octoling who saved the inkling earlier, Tori, later tells Maeka that shes been forced into an inkling killing clan by her parents. When the clan find them, they try to kill Maeka and force Tori to watch, only for her to be possessed again by the shadow inkling, now complete with horrifying freeze-frame bonuses. Even worse, it seems the thing is getting stronger, as not only does its new appearance scare the other demons away while evoking the disguise Maeka took on at the end of strange inkling girl, but it essentially turns Maeka into a full-blown demon, with a distorted voice, one eye completely white and the other glowing blood-red, a terrifying smile, and clear intent to murder. So to recap, we have a clan dedicated to killing innocent civilians based solely on their species, whose leaders have forced their daughter to help with that goal and presumably beat her whenever she tries to resist, and now theyve awakened a bloodthirsty demon thats already demonstrated itself to be chaotic neutral even with Maeka holding it back, which she may no longer be willing/able to do. Pants to be darkened. - Part 3, Demon VS Cyborg opens with a flashback to Maekas childhood, specifically her being beat up for her large ears. Her shouts of pain when shes being kicked certainly dont help matters. The situation sure as hell doesnt improve when she starts violently twitching in pain before a Jump Scare with the shadow inkling. Cut to the present, where the possessed Maeka impales one of the octolings with her new tail, starts begging Tori to help her, and fights the leader of the octoling killing clan, who turns out to be a cyborg almost able to match Maekas new powers. At least, until she cuts his arm off and punches his eyes out. Even then, he still pulls out a gun and shoots her in the face, which only serves to get Maeka even more angry as she starts chanting for all of them to die. She then says help me before chanting die'' several more times and then screaming in absolute rage, turning completely red and black. She ultimately finishes the fight by using her now four tails-which at this point are more akin to tentacles-to stab the cyborg in the eye socket, chest, and torso, essentially forcing Tori to watch the violent death of her own father. We then cut to Maekas mind, where shes completely at the shadow inklings mercy until a heretofore unseen figure appears and drives it away, though it promises to be back. The whole experience proves to be so traumatic, that Maeka has to be taken to the hospital and vomits. Oh, and then we learn the origins of the entity that saved Maeka earlier: its the soul of her dead brother, who died in childbirth. - The fourth and final episode of the 2 octolings arc, Strange Mother, is absolutely full of nightmarish imagery, to the point where it might just be the darkest video yet. - Someone shooting Maeka and Tori with sleeping darts, without them being able to see the shooter, is Paranoia Fuel at its finest. - The shooter is revealed to be Toris mother, who makes it no secret that she plans on killing Maeka for destroying her cyborg husband. - The Reveal that Tori is a cyborg, and her subsequent reaction, certainly isnt a pretty sight. Especially the metal parts on her face and hands, glowing metallic eyes, and sharp, segmented tail. - Not only has Toris father been repaired, but he knocks out his daughter with just one button press. - How about Toris mother promising to kill Maeka, while brandishing a sword and smiling like a psychopath? - A flashback to maeka at daycare starts out adorable, until young Maekas head starts twitching like it did in the previous videos opening flashback. We then see a closeup of her face, shadowed so that the only visible part is her much-too-wide grin. - After that, we get a shot of the toys young Maeka was playing with, decapitated and covered in paint clearly meant to stand in for blood. The Scare Chord makes it all the more unsettling. - The shot of young Maeka ordering the teacher to PLAY WITH ME!!, made all the more horrifying by the noises she makes, the way her head twitches and her neck snaps, and her face looking like the inkling version of mr. widemouth. - After that, the scene cuts to doctors treating the daycare supervisor after young Maeka apparently amputated her hand offscreen, with said supervisor referring to her as a crazy monster. Does young Maeka regret this or feel any remorse whatsoever? Nope, the next shot is her watching from a rooftop and smiling sadistically. At this point, we can pretty much forget about Maeka being anywhere close to pure good. - After the flashback is over, do we get a respite from the horrifying imagery? If youre even considering saying yes, you must be new here. We go back into Maekas mind, this time with her being pulled into some black liquid by disembodied hands and the shadow inkling(revealed to be named Arima) standing over her. - Maekas brother being unable to help her, Forced to Watch as his sister is possessed by a monster he swore to protect her from. - The shot of Arima lashing out all four of her tails and shouting that SHES MINE!! While conjuring a blazing hellfire, is definitely one to remember. - Back in the real world, Toris mother has impaled Maeka through the neck. Demon or not, that cant feel good. - The demon succeeds in possessing maeka again, this time complete with a blast of fire when it first emerges. - Remember how demon Maeka fought Toris father in the last episode, with a mixture of inhuman savagery and superhuman grace? This time, she attacks Tori's mother with nothing short of feral rage. This brings up two possibilities: either the demon was holding back last time, or its gotten even more powerful. Neither is a particularly pleasant thought. - Cut back to Maekas mind, where shes trapped in a glowing red force field, and the only way her brother can save her is by blasting through it with a massive force of energy. Arima makes it clear she wont be giving up, either. - Toris mother promises revenge on her for betraying the clan. - Maekas ending monologue is mostly heartwarming, apart from the idea that Arima will never quite go away. - The opening of a young mom, with Maeka in a dark room next to a corpse, and Arima asking if that was a delicious meal. Sure, it turns out to be a nightmare, but still creepy. Even worse, its never brought up throughout the video and confirms that despite maekas brother raitas best efforts, Arima will always be there. - A nightmare connected. GOOD. LORD. turns out, Maekas friend Jay has been possessed by another demon, who forces him to try to murder Maeka. If it hadnt been a dream, he wouldve been mauled to death by Arima. Of course, even if it was a dream, theres no guarantee that demon isnt still out there, or still possessing Maekas friend. - The horror isnt limited to Youtube. Maekas artwork itself has no shortage of terrifying imagery and, if canon to the main series, implications. - "A Scary Call": an Arima-possessed Maeka calling someone on a phone while holding a knife. - "Ink Parasitic": a 14-year old maeka, looking completely terrified as Arima stalks her from behind. The blood-red background covered in Arimas black ink really doesnt help the creep factor. - Escape 1: A teaser for a then-newly released video, this is quite possibly the most viscerally unsettling picture, with a guard collapsed on the floor of a bloodstained room, his intestines hanging out of him. Given the exit sign nearby as well as the title, its reasonable to assume something very dangerous got out of somewhere. - "My Home": Arima looming over a boy, with a black and blood-red background. Even worse, you can see some sort of black goo in the foreground, as though Arima's power is starting to leak out... - "Prisoner #1": After a solid month without anything truly creepy, this pic more than makes up for it with Maeka in chains being held by two guards. We have no context for why she's in chains, one of the guards goggles are glowing an eerie green, Maeka has something chained over her mouth with her eyes wide from fear, and then theres the fact that the pic has #1 in the title.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MaekaEnderfox
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Should it be worth mentioning Nana and the group had captured Alex and she plans to serve him as food? Nana: Now, how about a nice lion casserole? Tour guide: You can't eat a lion. Nana: Eh, don't worry, tastes like chicken. - As Zuba comes to save him, Nana demands one of the tourists to shoot him before the lions could run off. Thankfully, Alex intervenes in the nick of time.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadagascarEscape2Africa
Mafia II / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes They don't just slaughter pigs. - The prison is a Hellhole Prison with rats, Prison Rape, grim, an Army of Thieves and Whores plus Sadist guards. Vito believes he won't survive his stay there unless he gets protection and he's probably right. - The inmate suggesting he wants to rape Vito while he is in prison is incredibly unsettling. The inmate himself is disturbingly creepy as well. His scratchy voice don't help. The guard acts as if he "conveniently" leaves sexual predators to gang rape fellow inmates on a regular basis. - The fact is that it was Truth in Television for the time period and not that far removed from some federal prisons today. - Joe is Affably Evil most of the time but the casual way he just shoots a Greaser in the face for trying to shake him down for cigarettes shows that he is very much a Villain Protagonist. - The slaughterhouse in the mission "Ball and Beans" is quite disturbing, too - especially since you can hear pigs squealing as they are slaughtered. - It's stated that Luca Gurino \|\|is going to be tortured to death before being tossed in a meat grinder. They even get the accountant to participate.\|\| - Joe's Roaring Rampage of Revenge after \|\|Marty's\|\| death. It's clear that Joe is driven by grief and guilt that he got the boy killed rather than anything resembling justice. The fact that he empties an entire clip \|\|into Clemente\|\| doesn't do a thing to alleviate his guilt either. - The poor bartender who calls Vito in the middle of the night to fetch a drunk Joe Barbaro, who is engaged in Reckless Gun Usage. He ends up being shot for his troubles and his body disposed of in a car crusher. His friends and relatives will never know what happened to him either. He also died for nothing. - \|\|Henry being brutally murdered by the Chinese... who are using meat cleavers. The worst part is hearing Henry, who has spent the game up to this point cool and in control, screaming and crying in agony\|\|. - Vito watching helplessly as \|\|Joe is driven off to be executed. It is easily one of the saddest moments in the game as well as the most horrifying.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MafiaII
Mafia III / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The ending of the prologue mission "The Home Fire Burns" ends with the Federal Reserve heist being successful and the Black Mob, Lincoln, Danny, Giorgi and Sal Marcano celebrating, only for \|\|Giorgi to suddenly shoot Lincoln Clay in the head, Richie Doucet stabbing dead Ellis, Danny being stabbed to death, Sal shooting Sammy dead, and Giorgi setting the bar on fire, and while Danny isn't seen, he was murdered as well.\|\| That's right, \|\|Lincoln not only has his adopted family murdered right in front of him, but is brutally betrayed by his friend and has the money Sammy went through so much effort to obtain stolen from him.\|\| - \|\|When you revisit the bar after awakening from the coma, you're treated to seeing a PTSD-like montage of the scene, which is equally as disturbing as the entire bar has been destroyed.\|\| \|\| Giorgi Marcano: You shouldn't have said no.\|\| - Later on, when you meet Burke, \|\|he gets upset about Danny's death and mentions Danny's body was so badly burned the coroner refused to let him look at it.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MafiaIII
MacGyver (2016) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Awl - Mac performing an operation using car parts. He even admits that he doesn't know if it'll work since he got a C in biology. Chisel - The Embassy gets in a siege all because Mac and the team chose it as the safest place to be from heavily armed terrorists. Scissors - Cyber-Terrorist group The Collective kidnap \|\|Riley's Mother\|\| to get her to do their bidding. They give her back only after locking her in a mechanical strangulation device like something out of one of the Saw movies. The entire team works feverishly to save her before an ever-tightening metal cable decapitates her. Yeek. Magnifying Glass - The Zodiac Killer making a return. Muscle Car + Paper Clips - Hackers disabling a VIP's pacemaker. Which is true since analysts have highlighted it as a serious concern. X-Ray + Penny - There's something chilling about the ease with which Murdoc breaks into Mac's house, incapacitates and kidnaps him. He gets away with his prisoner so neatly Jack declares the trail cold, and if the escape hadn't been part of Murdoc's plan, Mac would have been in real trouble. "Skull + Electromagnet" - Jack not wanting to go to the Bermuda Triangle. - When Harper Hayes gets \|\|yanked off her feet by Mac's electromagnet\|\|, it looks like something from a horror movie: she rises from the ground with her eyes rolling back in her head like she's possessed. No wonder Jack fell to his knees and crossed himself! War Room + Ship - Mac gets to know a teacher onboard a ship that is saving the lives of her students through the two working together, with a particularly close relationship forming over video call — up until she has to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to make sure the ship only takes her down with it by sealing a flood long enough to keep the rest afloat in time for the Coast Guard to reach them. We get to see her start suffering from hypothermia, before the room slowly and gradually floods. There is no Deus ex Machina, nor any real theatrics as the video feed finally cuts off right before she drowns. Just an innocent hero of a teacher silently dying right before Mac's eyes thousands of miles away, and him being unable to do anything. Bullet + Pen - \|\|Murdoc breaking into Cage's apartment and shooting her.\|\| Benjamin Franklin + Grey Duffle - It's funny/scary to see Mac nervous above the ground. Improvise - The Double Subverted scare where Murdoc seems to resurface but doesn't \|\|then DOES and wastes Jill\|\|. Specimen 234 + PAPR + Outbreak - Specimen 234 is a class 4 super virus. It is decribed as spreading fast, like the flu, and has a 99% fatality rate. If it's released, it could kill millions. Thief + Painting + Auction + Viro-486 + Justice - Viro-486 was tested to prove the bioweapon is worth using... on a live human.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MacGyver2016
MADNESS: Project Nexus 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Madness Combat but in 3D. Surely, nothing terrifying to see here. - Burger Gil's introduction, in contrast to the bright and colorful bloods you find during gameplay, is a distressingly muted butcher shop of skinned and mutilated corpses that he's been using as mincemeat to make his burgers. - The Abominations from the original Project Nexus game return, and they're a lot more monstrous than before, now sporting mouths full of sharp teeth, as well as claws. Lorewise, they're failed Sleepwalker experiments, having received the combat memories of Subject 1v02P_6 too fast, and as a result they've been reduced to feral beasts that are constantly growling and snarling, and will not hesitate to attack anyone they come across. Their handiwork can even be seen in the form of corpses littering the caves of the Mining Sector. - It gets worse with the Lamenters, their Dissonant Energy counterparts introduced in the game's final level, The Rush. Whereas the Abominations could only growl and snarl, the Lamenters are still capable of speech, saying nothing more than "WHY?", meaning they're fully aware of what's happening, and yet all they can do is attack anyone they come across. - Unfinished Mags. MAG Agents are not just made from fresh genetic material like G03LMs. Each one is an Agent chosen for the process, where they are anesthetized, placed in a Magnification Chamber, and extensively altered into a MAG Agent. Unfinished Mags are last-minute attempts to halt an intruder's progress by unleashing them before they're finished. The end result is a skinless, partly-delirious mess that roars and swipes at anything that gets too close. - A new updated added a post-game questline, "Legacy of the S-ELF Eater". In it, you unwittingly stumble upon the remaining bits of research for one Dr. Gonne, and unleash something related to his project; The S-3LF Eater. A very, very durable behemoth with a giant scythe and an instant kill grab, it attacks anyone in the vicinity, but takes a particular shine to those who meddle with the subject of Dr. Gonne's research, AKA: You. It will run at breakneck speed despite its massive frame, outright teleport if that's not enough, and if you think killing it is a mercy you're afforded, you find out that it's been cut off from The Other Side entirely, meaning that it can't die. You'll learn to be wary of the telltale clanking its metallic boots make very quickly. - Several Origins count: - The Terrible Experiment is a lab-grown Artificial Human with monstrous claws subjected to years of experimentation and torment, leaving it with countless physical and mental scars. One day, it's let out of its facility for unknown reasons, free to roam the streets of Nevada. - The Escaped Patient was locked up in a sanitorium for an indefinite amount of time just for a single instance of Thoughtcrime. And it's hinted that he still wasn't quite right when he was finally let out. - The Disquieted One has seen the fabric of his reality and the forces that control it, driving him to become a paranoid, Ax-Crazy murderer who determines the only way to free himself from the system is by killing everyone in it. - An Offering was raised as a Human Sacrifice to the Higher Powers, but after finally giving up their life, they were turned into a zombified minion to continue doing the Higher Powers' bidding. - The Haunting of Nevada House arena mission has you clearing out said Haunted House of Demoniac cultists and undead, where these cultists are trying to summon godlike entities to usher in Armageddon. Furthermore, it's hinted that they worship The Stygian, one of the Employers, who is in charge of transporting S-3LFs between Nevada (according to Krinkels) and the Other Place, as they will succeed in summoning him to end the world if too many of them sacrifice themselves to become demonic Slayers. - Funnily enough, the Demoniacs trying to usher in the end of the world is treated by S.Q. as an annoyance in their own mission to prevent the end of the world. But the Fridge Horror hits when you realize they would've succeeded in ending the world prematurely if S.Q. didn't stop them first. - Speaking of ending the world, Arena Mode's story reveals that The Machine, the metaphysical entity linked to Nevada and the Nevadeans, is breaking down, causing the destruction of Nevada if the Player Character does not enmesh the Mandatus and enforce the "Groundhog Day" Loop, which is treated as a mercy to spare him from the coming "Madness" that will engulf Nevada. Should the player character finally decide not to enmesh the Mandatus or somehow becomes unable to, not even The Maker will be long for Nevada. - The Grand Steward. A mechanical skull walking on spider legs, serving as the final boss for Arena Mode, and presumably the avatar of The Machine itself. Even worse is when walking with the Gambler to the boss fight, there's a brief moment where the Player Character will clip through the floor, catching a brief glimpse of what appears to be The Machine, before somehow landing at the top. While a pretty minor Jump Scare, you might be left wondering what the hell that thing was, which is answered all too soon afterwards. - The Murder Room might not be this in itself, unless you think about it closely. If you ever wondered who the 'benefactor' is, take a look at the enemies in the stage. Asylum patients, orderlies, and harmacists might seem innocuous, but consider who would have access to them in the first place, and then throw in the dissonance robots and the honk zeds. Now consider what motivations someone might have to make such a room, and it brings up some unsettling implications concerning a certain Nexus scientist - Seeing a lot of the character designs in full 3D in all their gritty, blood-soaked glory can be disheartening on its own, but special mention goes to the loading screen portraits of all the primary characters. Lit only by a passing red light, they're all very realistically detailed renditions of the main sextet of characters... and then you get to Hank, who is not wearing his mask, and so you get to see his mangled, jawless face in full detail framing those piercing red goggles, revealing that he's also missing his nose.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadnessProjectNexus2
Mage: The Awakening / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The entire concept behind the Abyss; ever since the Exarchs made Atlantis fall (or the war with them destroyed it; it's difficult to say), reality has been literally shattered, separating the Fallen World from the Supernal Realms. The Abyss is the fracture separating the two: a gigantic, bottomless void inhabited by everything not touched by the Supernal and everything unreal - including very dangerous Eldritch Abominations of all sort known as Abyssal Intruders, who feed on destruction, chaos, corruption and the damages caused by Paradoxes. This void is the basis for the Lie, what is separating mortals from the Supernal and preventing them from using or even understanding Magic. And it grows wider each time Mages cause too much Paradox, slowly making it harder for magic to exist in the Fallen World and potentially destroying reality entirely. - Arguably the worst aspect of the Abyss is that it's not hostile. It does not seek to enter or destroy our world. Its creatures do not (generally) actively pursue agendas aimed against our world. It is simply, fundamentally incompatible with our reality. The only way it can reliably touch our world is when a mage consciously chooses to risk Paradox. That's right: if the Abyss manifests in our world, it's almost always because someone let it in. - Of course, that's not always true. When the Abyss invades of its own accord, it's usually in places defined by isolation and absence. A rundown tenement, an abandoned subway station, a cave in the middle of the woods... places where it's easy to get lost. - In one story a ghost encounters an Abyssal Intruder. Afterward he asks a Mage to destroy him so that he won't have to remember it anymore. - Possession. - A quite literal case with the Acamoth, Abyssal creatures who made it to the Astral Realm, the plane formed by the collective subconcious of everything. Due to existing only in this plane, they have no physical nor Twilight form, and thus cannot make it to physical world of their own... which doesn't exactly make them any less creepy, as living in the Astral grants them the ability to travel inside anyone's dreams to either taint them with horrible nightmares, or try to tempt them into a Deal with the Devil. And since they only exist in Dreams, striking back at them isn't exactly easy. - Read some of the entries in Intruders: Encounters With The Abyss at night, all alone, and try not to feel terrified. It's no small reason why it's considered the number one sourcebook by the Mage community. - The most horrifying thing that you absolutely cannot predict a reason intruders can come. It can be done (and has been done) by Sleepers, without any connection to Abyss, by accident. However, see above. - If a Supernal Native dies outside their summoning circle the Abyss will claim them. Literally. Black tentacles or an Abyssal entity will suddenly appear to drag them away. - The new rules for Paradoxes in 2E include the "Abyssal Nimbus" Condition, which represents a Mage's Nimbus being tainted by the Abyss as a result of an exceptional success on a Paradox roll. This has the unfortunate effect of making your character's Nimbus "Resonant" with the Abyss, meaning it now produces Essence for its inhabitants and opens the way for them to Materialize or initiate a Demonic Possession. In other words, you become both a living power source and a door to the Material World for all the horrors in the Abyss. Even worse, your Nimbus sticks on everything you affect with your magic... meaning everything and everyone you have ever casted a spell on will suffer the same issue. - If you, for some inexplicable reason, think the Seers of the Throne are in any way the good guys, buy their book, and take a look at the appendix. Specifically, how they create Grigori and Hollow Ones. That should clear up the issue right quick! - Grigori are the disembodied souls of Sleepwalkers, the ultimate agents of the Panopticon. Disembodied souls of Sleepwalkers that, it should be mentioned, are still alive... and completely unable to return to their bodies at all, or control their astral selves. All they are now are prisoners of an Artifact of Doom, their living selves kept in convenient storage so the Seers are never far away from the stream of observations they are forced by it to utter, without even the solace that starvation will eventually claim them-the Artifact supplies their body's needs, no matter how much they don't want to. Oh, and don't try freeing them; removing the Artifact is fatal to their body. - The fate of the Hollow Ones is even worse - they were Sleepers (not Sleepwalkers, Sleepers, utterly ordinary people) who were abducted by the Paternoster and thrown to the Custodian, a being from the Lower Depths who eats individuality. The... thing that is left over looks like a person, but is completely unable to retain memories or personality of its own without magic, and without regular infusions will rapidly degrade to a vapid husk once again. At least the Grigori can die knowing they're finally free. For the Hollow Ones, the self is... gone. - For more Abyssal goodness, the Hildebrand Recording from Grimoire of Grimoires. Some poor sucker ends up holding a recorded seance, and we get to read about what happens when an Abyssal intruder picks up instead. And yes, there are snippets. The recording itself allows mages to perceive things through the filter of the Abyss (as in, twisted and wrong), but it's also an object of fascination for mortal occultists, who will do anything - anything - to get their hands on it... - And one of those occultists? A Russian mob boss who used to play it for laughs, and supposedly cut off the limbs of three young men who tried to sell him a fake copy after he lost it. And then fed those limbs to them. Oh, and he wants it back, and will do anything to get it. - Also, the Hildebrandt Recording is explicitly stated to be an impossibility. Hildebrandt himself was an ordinary man who should never have been able to summon the being at all. He used ordinary equipment, which should have been unable to record its sounds if he did. And for the recording of the seance to become a genuine grimoire should have been flatly impossible. It is, quite literally, a thing that should not be. - The recording itself has a pair of rotes on it that can be decoded with the proper spell. One of these is a spell that lets a mage detect the presence of the Abyss' influence; unfortunately, the way the caster perceives said influence is pure distilled Nightmare Fuel: Inhuman whispers, moans of suffering, and general feelings and images of pain and horror. The writeup on the spell says that if a mage who uses it is unprepared the first time they use it, they could end up picking up a derangement. On top of all that, the spell is also in-universe Paranoia Fuel: Mages who use it regularly get too scared to go through life without it activated. - Perhaps the worst thing about the Hildebrandt Recording is that possessing it is actually sort of useful to the Awakened, because it eats Paradox, lessening its effect on the mage who possesses it; anything that does this is worth its weight in gold. The problem is that it doesn't actually quash Paradox, it just makes it go... somewhere else. So it's less that it stops Paradox so much as it makes it somebody else's problem. - And the eldritch cherry on top of the Nightmare Fuel sundae is that it doesn't seem to stay in any one person's hands for very long, with something nasty happening to many of his previous owners. One example is Dorian Wheeler, whose wife was driven insane by the recording after he had it for little over a month, and murdered her children, attacked him, and then killed herself. - The last snippet - Hildebrand has been reduced to incoherently begging for mercy, only to be mind raped even more, and then messily torn to pieces. - The Tremere Liches, as a base concept-immortal soul-eaters-are pretty horrific in and of themselves. Then you learn their backstory, and realize the initial ones were made accidentally, and you start imagining how utterly horrific it is to be one... - As of Left-Hand Path, the Tremere have become a whole new kind of Nightmare Fuel-they knew exactly what they were getting into when they tricked the vampires into destroying their souls, and they don't care, because they've become living maws of the Final Watchtower, meant to devour enough souls and internalize enough Reaper Legacies so it may manifest and remake the world in their image. And if your soul is one of them, well, tough noogies. - What are the Lower Depths? What place in the cosmic order does it hold? And why are even Abyssal intruders afraid of things that come from it? - How about the Inferno, for one? And it's only a single world within them? - Strix are stated to be from here, and Judges are from there too. - It's strongly suggested that the Lower Depths are reflected realities that all lack one Arcana or another. Just imagine a world without Space... or Mind... or Life... or Death... - Night Horrors: The Unbidden is supposed to be a catalogue of this. And it works quite well, with something for everyone. Mad mages, enchantments gone wrong, gruesome creatures of living magic, malevolent ghosts, corrupt spells, and more. - One example? Alecto, an ananke (a magical construct designed to fulfill a specific purpose) who believes her purpose is to usher people on to their destinies. However, something or someone maimed her in the distant past; she manifests with a broken wing and bleeding, empty eye sockets. And she doesn't realize she's broken; she can't actually remember her real purpose, she just infers it from her powers. She might see an arguing couple, one that would make up in due time, and believe that their destiny is to separate. Her grasp of Fate magic is near-perfect, but it's being filtered through the mind of a severely-damaged being that can't grasp how damaged it is. She drives people to despair and suicide, never realizing she's making mistakes, and in fact incapable of realizing her own flawed judgment. A Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who highlights just how dangerous magic is if you're not sane enough to control it. - Everything in the Anima Mundi. Everything. . EVERYTHING - The Omphalos, which is essentially a combination of an astral roadblock and warning sign indicating that metaphysical shit is about to get real. Breathing in the mists surrounding it causes you to become conversationally fluent in the High Speech - which shouldn't be possible, because the language is metaphysically broken. - The Spire Perilous, which was the original connection between human subjectivity and the soul of the world. The collapse of the Celestial Ladder severely damaged it, and one of the Aeons is attempting to finish it off. - The Swath, the other connection humanity has made with the Anima Mundi - representing how badly we've screwed up the world's ecosystems. Every mage who was inside it on the day of the Trinity test got radiation burns. - The Dreaming Earth, which is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The dreams are not happy ones. - The Sidereal Wastes, in which you slowly begin to realise that the soul of the world is not just the soul of the planet Earth. It's literally the soul of the universe itself. - The Whorl, in which things stop being merely ominous and start to get plain weird. The completion of a specific action - walking a mile, crafting a sword, reading a book - occurs instantaneously from all external perspectives (including the real world), while taking the expected amount of time from the perspective of the person undertaking it - and once you've started doing something, you can't stop until it's finished. If you're not careful, you can accidentally end up living several subjective lifespans. Or... significantly longer, if you decided to do something stupid like "walk to the astral reflection of Alpha Centauri on foot." - The Citadels of the Aeons. Some of them live in castles built to resemble a giant in the fetal position, dying of starvation. One is a braindead king with two dragons growing from his shoulders with a personality best described as "Satan." And then there's the Other, Ambassador to the Abyss. There is something very wrong with the Other. - And worse? The wrongness happens in spite of him. As shown in Left-Hand Path, the Other won't harm anyone, nor will he allow others to come to harm. He won't tempt people into following the Abyss, and he mocks the Scelesti who try to worship him in person. And he apparently genuinely regrets the nightmares he causes in others. He even might try to advise desperate pilgrims to run back home. But he can't refuse requests to act as the Void's advocate. It is simply that free will is inviolable in his presence, including the will to partake even deeper of the Abyss. There is something even more disturbing about that. - How about the very existence of Joe "Blood of the Lamb" Beal? How about we start with his Religious Horror Awakening, wherein he grew fascinated with his own cannibalistic Blood Magic orientated interpretation of Christian doctrine, perceiving Jesus Christ as a cannibalistic Apex Predator, which eventually prompted him into a dream in which he tortured and ate Jesus? A Thrysus who turned to Abyss-worship because he found the Thrysus philosophy too stifling, he uses Life magic to aid him in psychologically and physically torturing anyone who catches his eye. For no greater purpose than he believes all other life is weak, and so that makes them prey who he can do whatever the hell he wants to. He takes everything you could possibly imagine as terrifying about a Serial Killer, and then makes it worse by adding in mastery over the magic branch that allows him to physically shape and reshape himself or others in whatever fashion he desires, plus basic Mind Control spells that target the most primal parts of the brain. Really, the fact he worships the Abyss is the least frightening thing about him. - While the Blood of the Lamb is terrifying, the worst thing about him is arguably what he represents. Apparently, being a totally, batshit insane sociopath with an obsession with cannibalism is absolutely NO barrier toward the kind of self knowledge and understanding that leads to Awakening. Imagine Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Ed Gein in the world of darkness, and imagine how many serial killers have awakened and slipped through the cracks? Imagine all the people out there who aren't Scelesti and in theory are tolerated by their Consilii? Joe Beal is scary, but the fact that people like him can and probably do exist, and almost certainly have achieved some truly god-tier reality warping powers is paranoia-fuel to the max. - It's actually somewhat confirmed that there are other insane and sociopathic mages out there. Cameron Mueller from World of Darkness: Asylum is essentially a serial killer who uses little paper fetishes to imprison the ghosts of his victims. The book implies rather strongly that he either is on the verge of, or has already Awakened. - The Nemean - Boston's Hierarch - is so insanely self-obsessed that he's willing to kill his past self rather than risk the possibility of becoming a better person. It all happens in his Oneiros as a not-quite-punishment for something he did that isn't technically a crime, but even so... - The Cult of the Doomsday Clock deserve special mention here. They're a Men in Black style doomsday cult that systematically finds disaffected, young Moros and twists them into time-manipulating monsters. They were spawned from the paradox of a battle between two archmasters of time, and are led by Abyssal monsters who are basically sentient, self perpetuating time paradoxes. The final attainment for the Legacy involves traveling to the past and killing yourself, becoming a living, Abyssal paradox manifestation of YOURSELF. Oh, and they have such control of time, that they can bounce back whenever they die, Prince of Persia-style, so to kill one, you have to make a situation so lethal that they die for each point of mana they have stored. They even have almost literal time bombs that annihilate things in the past, present and future, completely erasing them from the time stream, and their ultimate goal is to do that to the entire universe. - The Contagion Chronicle provides even more horrifying lore about the Tick Tock Men - the Y2K craze was them making a cover for their activities. They used the moment between the last second of 1999 and the first of 2000 as a Yantra for a ritual to try destroy time itself. It's quite possible that the ritual just failed... but while unlikely, mages do say that it's theoretically possible that they succeeded, and that the titular reality-breaking illness is the result of linear creation consuming itself. Oh, and what is certain is what happened to the mages who performed the ritual... or rather, the aged, bleached bones left at the spot. - The Jnanamukti philosophy is a terrifying combination of The Fundamentalist and Omnicidal Maniac wielded by a full-fledged Reality Warper. They're an order of fanatics dedicated to a philosophy built on Fantastic Racism, magocrats who blame the Fallen state of the world entirely on Sleepers and who want to restore the Supernal world. Which they figure can be achieved if they wipe out civilization as we know it, drastically cull humanity's numbers, and annihilate all non-Mage supernaturals. They want their paradise so badly they're willing to completely destroy the world as we know it in hopes that this might give it back to them. And they can do it... - Really, mages themselves are scary beyond reason. They start as "mere" Reality Warpers, even at Gnosis 1, and they grow increasingly more powerful as they ascend. Archmages, although still constrained by some meaningful limitations, have gone beyond that title to the rank of Physical God; for these mages, reality is so much putty they can play with as they like, even if it goes awry sometimes — there's a passage in passing in Imperial Mysteries, the Archmage splatbook, where one Archmage makes a comment implying that they made Christianity the dominant religion in Western civilization by accident. Ascended mages can't even enter the mortal world without risking causing ripples that could potentially unravel the world. Really, mages make a huge lie of the idea that Humans Are Special if you take Imperial Mysteries as canon; everything that generations of Muggles have accomplished can be undone by the whim of just one Archmage. Just try to wrap your head around that kind of power... - Making things worse is the underlying philosophies that Mage is built on; in essence, humanity should be a Mage Species, but the vast bulk of the species has been artificially blinded to the higher world around them. There's a subtle feeling of Fantastic Racism when mages contemplate Sleepers, but looking at the difference between what both are capable of... there's a sinking feeling in the depths of your subconsciousness that mages are justified in it. Really, when one takes into account the abilities of even a moderately trained mage in contrast a Sleeper, one could quite believably justify mages believing that Sleepers aren't human, they're just animals that look human, and acting accordingly. - Even mages not being the center of the world - which is all but stated in multiple 2e sources, including the Player's Guide to the Contagion Chronicle - can be scary in its own way, because the world being more than Supernal light and Fallen shadows means there is still plenty of evil in the World of Darkness not directly or indirectly caused by the Fall. Not that going from crippling the fundamental part of the world to crippling a fundamental part is much less of a horror either, obviously - and that still doesn't change that the Seers and Scelesti can and do commit the many horrible, horrible things listed on this page. - The 2e Edition book has an image for the Seers of The Throne. It shows one Seer in a penthouse lounging on a couch watching a man being crucified like it's a tv show he's enjoying. And in the foreground there are other Seers doing drugs. - There's a lot to fear when it comes to Banishers, too. - First and foremost, Banisher worldviews are contagious. Those who Awaken in the presence of Banishers are likely to become more Banishers, and they attract each other. Some may even be able to ignite Banisher sympathies in regular mages. - Also, some Banishers appear to be what they are because their Awakening "went wrong" somehow. The "Banishers" sourcebook spends a lot of effort emphasising that "magic feels wrong, therefore I kill mages" is a choice and not a necessary outcome, but it's hard not to feel a little fear at the thought that any mage could have been driven slowly to madness and cruelty if something had gone a little wrong down the line. - Then there are some of the example Banishers. Aaron Murphy, for example, is a Serial Killer who preys on non-Thyrsus mages. The Phageans are cannibals with a hunger for mage flesh, and they hunt in packs.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MageTheAwakening
Magical Girl Raising Project / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Unsurprisingly, a series that has magical girls suffering and killing each other in a battle royale has nightmarish content. ## First Arc/ Unmarked - In beginning of the anime, a horrible demonic creature faces a lone magical girl in a room filled with corpses. - Made even worse with context. This demonic creature slaughtered every single one of those girls, leaving one very disturbed and traumatized girl left to deal with this thing. After having watched her friends mutilated, burnt, and maimed, the result is a girl with horrific PTSD, fed further by the persuasion of a certain black and white mascot. - Also, while the Anime's version is a ghostly monster, the manga version◊ is another thing entirely. - In all of the first arc, a good source of nightmare fuel would have to be Cranberry, the Forest Musician. - She attacks Winterprison in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown without so much as a warning. It's only by a small lucky break and Sister Nana's help that Winterprison was able to overpower Cranberry. Even then, she wasn't strong enough to beat her, so they left. Cranberry could've killed them, but she chose to let them go. - Brutally and mercilessly beats up a 14 year-old (granted, he's in his magical girl form). Killing La Pucelle so much that apparently newspaper reports mention that he was killed by being hit with a truck. - Her bloodlust in general. She's performed more of these tests. This isn't even the first one. - The death of La Pucelle is itself pretty scary if you think about it. Even more since it happens off-screen. The most you know about it is that newspaper reports that found his body report that he was killed because he was hit by a truck. The amount of wounds that would need to happen for the authorities to mistake that is gruesome. Doubly so when you remember that he's just 14 years old. - Really puts an emphasis on Cranberry's bloodlust and sadism. The fact that she used her bare hands against his gigantic sword should show you how skilled and scary she is as a fighter. - The anime adaptation reveals that Cranberry delivered the killing blow by shoving him in the way of an oncoming truck, after he reverted to his powerless civilian self. How badly he was beat up to be unable to prevent that, though, is another story. - Hardgore Alice is a source for these - The end of Chapter 4, and animated beautifully in Episode 6 of the anime. Hardgore Alice approaches Snow White, but is beheaded by Magicaloid's Razor Wire. As Magicaloid moves to kill Snow White as well, a surge of blood erupts from her chest, where it is shown that Alice's still-moving yet headless body has impaled Magicaloid. - Zombie Western shows us Hardgore Alice's incredible durability, as she's shot to pieces, blown to bits, burnt, doused in sulfuric acid, and drowned while being covered in cement. And she still survives. This entire scene was adapted into Episode 7 of the Anime as well. - Calamity Mary shows just how frightening a magical girl like her can be when she starts shooting cars (and people) in a highway just to draw in a fleeing Top Speed and Ripple in order to kill them. If you thought she was simply a ruthless and edgy take, this act puts her past the Moral Event Horizon. And her backstory doesn't show any sympathy either, with her past as an abusive mother, and Fav playing to her bloodlust when he made her a magical girl. ## Restart - Being chosen as the Demon Lord/Traitor is a scary thought in itself. You may be nice or innocent, but if you ever want to survive, you'll be forced to kill the others. If the others want to survive, they have to kill you. - Just the sheer fact that Cranberry has orchestrated so many battle royales, not just the one we see in the first book. That's a lot of dead hopes and dreams. - Pfle and Shadow Gale's selection test. Courtesy of the one and only Cranberry. This test was far worse than the one we got to witness in the 1st Arc. Pfle and Shadow Gale's test involved not 16, but 100 magical girls, all fighting for survival. - Pfle also managed to manipulate 98 of those girls to kill each other. All by playing with their emotions and hitting the right buttons. - Pfle's willingness to manipulate 98 other girls to kill each other simply so she could save Shadow Gale's life. - The death of Miyokata is particularly unpleasant to read. She gets possessed by a demonic creature, and it's implied that her insides have been torn apart, ripped, and generally destroyed with mutilating agony. The demon then escapes via vapors from her mouth and nose. - Even if most of the girls don't last until their memory is recovered, the fact that they survive Cranberry's test puts their magic abilities in a different context. Magical Daisy is careful about what she uses her death laser on and would never think of unleashing it on a human, except that you know she used it on the other girls tested alongside her and then had those memories wiped. ## Limited - For Kuru-Kuru Hime, she's living out her worst nightmare. Her students are asked to fight a seemingly powerful opponent by someone she doesn't even know, most of them agree completely, and if she wants to keep them safe, she'll have to fight alongside them. It gets worse for her when she returns home to discover her father was brutally murdered, and all of this happened because she and her students were set up as patsies. - Pukin and Sonia Bean have some moments. - After Pukin was recruited, she nonchalantly decapitates two of Tot Pop's soldiers, just because she can. - Pukin also has no remorse for anyone disobeying her, as shown when she slits an old man's throat for running away when she told him to stay put. - When they first arrive in B-City, their first course of action is to secure a car. They do this by having Sonia chase a lone driver in the middle of the night, running side-by-side with the car, as she thrusts her arm in the window, and snaps his neck. That driver was at the wrong place at the wrong time. - Pukin's rapier is a source of nightmare fuel for whoever is hit, as during the effects of the mind control, your brain retains its memory if you ever get freed. - The idea that someone like Pythie Frederica could be watching you without you realizing it, and she could attack you any time she wants. - Hana and Funny Trick's Cold-Blooded Torture at the hands of Pythie's group. Particurlar highlights include when Pukin tests if Hana's animal ears are real... by jamming her Royal Rapier through one of them. - Sonia Bean is pretty scary when you realize that nothing you ever throw at her can actually hurt her. - Rain Pow's backstory reveals she was being cared for by an abusive older sister who had a myriad of ways to torment her without leaving bruises and physical marks. The first thing Rain Pow did when she became a magical girl was put her sister in the hospital for three days. After that point, Rain Pow's sister was too terrified of ever going near her again. While the narration mentions she "fell down the the stairs and twisted her ankle," one has to wonder if Rain Pow didn't do worse. - Pukin is left so broken and unhinged after Sonia's death that she draws out the rest of the magical girl by ordering a brainwashed Rain Pow to go outside and kill everyone. Rain Pow proceeds to do just that, indiscriminately waving a path of slaughter with as many rainbows as she can summon. Pukin even mentions hearing the cries of children during the massacre. - The final fight. The whole sequence. Can also be a Moment of Awesome for some characters. - Going up against someone like Pukin, who is batshit insane, on a whole other level than you, and is way more experienced than you can hope for. - "Uh, guys... her stats suddenly got an increase" - Pukin still fighting after the right half of her face was blown off. - She keeps going even after the lower half of her body was blown off as well. - Being blown up from inside-out doesn't sound very pretty either, regardless of who you are. - There's something genuinely terrifying about how off Pythie Frederica acts, not at all helped with her borderline sexual obsession with collecting hair from different magical girls to the fact she's such a heartless manipulator. And to make matters worse, by the end of Limited she has a wounded, drugged, and mind-controlled Ripple completely at her mercy and content to let herself be turned into Frederica's "ideal magical girl." All in all, she reads as a dangerously toxic person and a borderline sexual predator from her obsessive behavior and stalkerish actions.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject
Magical Girl Site / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Admins of the Magical Girl Site. They have monster strength and abilities, and settle pretty well on the Uncanny Valley with their unnerving, unmoving faces and the deliberate art difference between them and everyone else in the world- they look more like the kind of thing you'd find in a Yume Nikki fangame than a magical girl series. Even the Incubators weren't this frightening. - What makes it even creepier is that, at the beginning of the manga, Yatsumura talks about how she has been unable to find the "real site admins" or trace the origin of the Site, implying that there is an actual human being behind the Site. Over the next few chapters, however, it becomes quite clear that the Site Admins aren't just virtual avatars. They are real and very much able to appear in the physical world. When you take into the fact that the Admins seek out broken, desperate girls to \|\|manipulate into starting an apocalypse,\|\| how they can find the girls that they make into Mahou Shoujos, and the fact that the Mahou Shoujo Site isn't an existing website unless you have a stick, it begs the very disturbing question of what exactly the Admins really are. - The Admins' attitude towards the girls they make into Mahou Shoujo's is rather disturbing, as well. They act as if the girls are objects that they can use and they will \|\|murder\|\| the girls who won't play their sick game without a second thought. As Aya herself says a few chapters in, the Magical Girls were given their powers because they were so unfortunate, but they didn't get them because the Admins wanted to better their lives or make them happier. - The whole Mahou Shoujo system in this series is so dark, disturbing, and utterly exploitative that it makes the systems of Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Magical Girl Raising Project seem tame by comparison. The Admins purposely seek out girls who are already traumatized and mentally disturbed, give them a magical stick, and tell them to basically go crazy and let out their anger over their misfortune through violence. Said sticks also happen to eat away at their user's life span until they eventually use it up and die. And then there's the truth about The Tempest. \|\|The Admins are basically using the Mahou Shoujos as cattle in order to bring an end to the world. The death, pain, and despair that are caused by the Mahou Shoujo's are absorbed by their sticks, which collect all the negative energy to use to power the Tempest. That's right; the Admins are literally turning traumatized and abused young girls into murderers and violent abusers themselves in order to create enough pain and suffering to end the world.\|\| Say what you will about Kyubey and Pythie Frederica, but at least they had a noble goal; to save the world/Magical Kingdom. The Admins have no such excuse, making them, objectively, worse than Kyubey, one of the most hated characters in anime. - This makes \|\|Sarina\|\| becoming a Mahou Shoujo even more disturbing in hindsight. While she totally deserved all her suffering and brought it all upon herself, her misfortune was caused by Mahou Shoujo's killing her best friend and slitting her throat. In the manga, she also discovers that \|\|Shoi's latest borrowed appearance is that of her own older sister.\|\| After all this, the Admin Nana shows up and exploits her hate and misery to get her to become a magical girl. That's right; the system that creates magical girls out of suffering girls uses them to spread suffering to other girls, who they then opportunistically make into Mahou Shoujo's, as well, which gives off some disturbing implications. It also makes \|\|Sarina's apparent murder by Nana\|\| even more cruel; the Admin used her suffering to manipulate her and then \|\|killed her without any remorse whatsoever when she realized that she was being used.\|\| - If the exploitation of the Admins wasn't enough, they \|\|enlist a girl to become "The Magical Hunter" and murder the other girls for their sticks.\|\| They do this by \|\|flat-out lying to the chosen girl and making her believe that she will be able to survive the coming apocalypse if she kills enough people and gather's enough sticks.\|\| In reality, they are only using the girl and she \|\|is almost certain to die anyway because the constant use of magical sticks will kill her before the apocalypse even comes.\|\| \|\|When The Hunter is put of commission, the Admin simply just pick another girl.\|\| If a girl ends up getting wise to the Admin's lies like \|\|Sarina\|\|, then they \|\|simply kill her.\|\| - In the very first chapter, Aya first is abused by her older brother (and the only thing she can do is to plead him to stop) and later is nearly raped because a gang of schoolgirls who bully her ever since Aya came to school, invited one guy to "have a go with Aya". It doesn't end well for them. - Kaname in general inspires this, especially after he \|\|obtains Nijimi's Stick\|\|. After encountering Keisuke for the third time, he gives a horrifying demonstration of \|\|the mind controlling powers\|\| by first talking Keisuke down and then \|\|telling him to kill himself\|\|. And then Aya spots him on the beach after her Beach Episode, tries not to catch his attention, but gets it anyway, leading the reader to think that \|\|he might try his powers on Aya, too.\|\| - Yatsumura's Cold-Blooded Torture of the man who killed her family. She straight up admits to him that she won't kill him or let him die on his own terms—rather, she'd torture him slowly, but by bit, until he finally gives out. \|\|It can be argued that his eventual death was a Mercy Kill, given what he'd been through.\|\| - Tsurara, the protagonist of the spin-off Mahou Shoujo Site Sept, was given a laser gun in the form of a drill. The laser it fires warps and twists its target until it explodes. She uses the gun on her coach, who'd been regularly raping her and gotten her pregnant, in self-defense. The laser twists his head until it looks like something straight out of the manga made by Junji Ito, until it explodes in a geyser of blood. - Nijimi's panties ending up in the hands of none other than \|\| Aya and Kaname's father! If there's anything more terrifying than Kaname using them, it's the guy whose abuse of Kaname turned him into the sociopathic monster he is today now using them.\|\| - \|\|This later gets combined with dark humor as the repeated use of the panties soon makes him bleed out of his anus. At first it is a small drip but more usage soon turns it into a fountain of blood spraying from his ass. Makes you wonder what would have happened if Nijimi over used them.\|\| - \|\|The King awakens and decides to start the Tempest up earlier than planned. What follows is a massive blackout on a planetary scale, complete with multiple airplanes dropping out of the sky and crashing into buildings since there's no power. Next up, every single human who hasn't used a Stick is converted into a giant sperm and drawn into an orb of energy created by the King. Ridiculous at first, until Aya and the rest are forced to watch as their family members (Kiyoharu's mom, Kosame's family, Sarina's sister, Mrs. Asagiri) are transformed against their will and torn away to join everyone else. And absolutely none of them have any real idea what's going on or what this is supposed to mean.\|\| - Remember all those Magical Girls that were running around in the background while Aya and the main girls did their thing? Like Hiroko Shimozono and the girls Kayo and Sakaki met, as well as Nanoka from the Sept prologue? \|\|While Nana was explaining to the main characters the truth behind the Mahou Shoujo Site and what the King's plans are, the other Admins brutally slaughtered every last Magical Girl in rather horrifying, painful ways before they could get together and help Aya's group.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalGirlSite
Mad Father / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes You'll find various corpses in random places throughout your journey. It's even disturbing when Aya comes across corpses of kids her age, maybe even younger. Some of the souls you need to help to get gems classify. Aya's father as a whole. ESPECIALLY when he chases down Aya to kill her and make her a doll. That laugh and his screams. It was frightening the moment you feel trapped in some areas. The adjacent room to the one with the stuffed dog. One of the gems requires you to give the stuffed dog a bone, but you can't do that unless you get one later and then backtrack, and there's no other reason to come back. When you go back into the stuffed dog room, the other room has half of a bloated doll sticking up out of the floor in a pool of blood, which is bad enough. But if you leave the stuffed dog room and come back in, the bloated doll will be fully out of the floor and facing the wall that separates the two rooms. There's no reason to go back into either of those rooms once you've done the dog puzzle; Developer's Foresight, it seems. In the 2016 Steam Remake, the bloated doll has been removed, and replaced by a ragdoll hanging from the ceiling in a hangman's noose. Unlike the bloated doll, she only appears the first time you enter - after exiting and reentering, she's gone. Alfred's creations, especially for people who find dolls creepy in the first place! The first soul you see in the room next to Aya's, and the nice Jump Scare she delivers. GIVE! GIVE HER BACK! MY DAUGHTER! Monika's death and Aya having a vision of it all. The implications that Aya turns out to be just like her father. In the 2016 Steam Remake, the scene in the trick room has been completely changed - it used to show a king watching two knights duel; now it depicts a dead girl lying on an altar surrounded by nuns and priests. Once you complete the puzzle, making the right side of the room match the left, the dead girl over on the left side will suddenly sit up in the middle of her funeral... but if you go back to the left side to investigate, you'll find her lying down again. There a gem hidden in a floor crack underneath a vase. Once you grab it a hand will reach out once you walk away. At run point you need to use Aya's bunny Snowball to obtain an item in a wine cellar near a dining room. Something will start moving around in the room and the bunny will flee. When Aya returns to the dinner room it's overrun with corpses. Aya's lack of empathy is a main point in the series. She cares about nobody but herself and her parents and (encouraged by her mother) kills animals for fun. Even Alfred himself is unnerved by it! As shown in the Nintendo 2020 Remake: Alfred: Now Aya, that's no good. You can't treat living things like toys.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadFather
Madgie, what did you do? / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The book cover for Madgie, what did you? XX: Guardian. Can be viewed here Doki's overall description of it what happened when and after the nukes were dropped in Story 53.Doki: "The world became monochrome and there was glass, fire, blood, and roasted bodies everywhere. Everyone, dead...." Madgie's death in Virus and it was described in detail. Gruesome detail.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadgieWhatDidYouDo
Madness Combat / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes When a series literally has "madness" in its title, it should be obvious that it would often become horrifying. ## Main series: You know that hellish "afterlife" mentioned above? That insane hellscape full of wacko physics, holes full of chain-blade death and bizarre architecture? Ever wondered what would happen if Tricky got to a similar place? Well, wonder no more as Expurgation gives us the answer: Absolute high-octane nightmare fuel. 9.5 takes place in Hell as well, this time showing what Hank goes through anytime he dies. The place is nothing but chaos, chains and fear as far as the eye can see. - In the first part, Hank's entrance to the realm of the dead is represented by a panicking person with a black liquid on its face running out to his companions, erupting into more scars, before being pulled back and exploding into Hank J. Wimbleton himself, who immediately proceeds to redirect an Engineer's swipe into one of the other grunts' fingers. - The second part of 9.5 follows up from the first part, and carries with it several unsettling realizations, one of which ties the main series and Project Nexus together: "The Machine is Watching." - We get a glimpse of what seems to happen when one dabbles with S-3LFs. Doc's tracking mechanisms don't look for Hank; they look for a Hank, as in, at least one of his resurrections wasn't actually him, but a copy of him. One of them bears his Consternation outfit with a full face mask, and another his Antipathy look with the gore-soaked metal jaw on full display. While they have a brief Back-to-Back Badasses moment against Tricky, once there's nothing else to fight in the area, they just start fighting each other as the music starts to fade out and replaced with a droning static. - Speaking of Doc, there's the question of why the hell he plugs a device into an ATP Soldat's corpse strung up in his shelter as he does this, and what role it might play in Hank's resurrection. - We're also given a look into how Tricky has become so broken, yet also so incredibly strong - not psychologically, but existentially. Once he gets frustrated, he starts to warp and twist into something that's barely recognizable as a person anymore, and he's doing it at will to prolong Hank's suffering and to silence anyone messing with his fun, up to and including the Retainer in charge of keeping Hank retained. Furthermore, it seems the same duplication Hank went through also happened to him, but while one of them is only now twisting and elongating himself in unnatural ways, the other's been there so long that he resembles a flesh-covered version of the skeletal demon form he takes when he later possesses the Auditor in Expurgation. The most unsettling part is that despite their bloodlust (and unlike the two Hanks), they don't slaughter each other, instead working together like pack hunters to chase down Hank. - The way Tricky kills the Retainer menacing Hank is vicious in the extreme, further underscoring how utterly unhinged and dangerous he is. We're treated to the sight of Tricky driving a chainsaw clear through the Retainer's neck, before he revs it up and hacks the Retainer into bloody pieces offscreen and sends them flying through a door as an apparent taunt to Hank, all in the space of about fifteen seconds. The way the Retainer desperately tries to push Tricky off of them and pull his chainsaw out of their throat before being killed doesn't really help, either. - You may notice a first as well: agents with visible facial scars. They show up more and more over the course of the episode, sometimes with the same scars but wider. This implies that We Have Reserves isn't in effect; in an effort to keep Hank retained, the same few agents are being stitched back together and sent right back into the meat grinder to stall him. ## Other media: - How Jesus disposes of the Giant Mook in Incident:110a is equal parts awesome, horrific, and squicky. He cuts through the top half of its head with the Binary Sword, tears off its scalp, and then rips out its brain as it flails around blindly. By extension, this also shows just how scarily-durable the Mag Agents are compared to almost everyone else in this universe; nothing short of Jesus systematically disassembling the Mag made it stop trying to kill him! - Incident:111a is downright horrifying with the Surprisingly Creepy Moment ending (well, Surprisingly Creep ier). The Savior is killed without any struggle by an unknown force and he's terrified of it. - ROMP.FLA starts off as amusing, then gets more horrifying as the extent of the mustached star's power is revealed. Once they're zombified, it's just nightmare faces galore as Sanford and Deimos are killed. And the ending has the grinning, shaking star launching itself at the screen. - The Dedmos Adventure shorts, staring the titular Deimos, are bleak and dark even when compared to most of Krinkels' other works, if not the single darkest and bleakest episodes in the entire series. The shorts star Deimos traversing an eerie Eldritch Location implied to be a kind of hellish "afterlife" following his death in the main series. The place doesn't abide to the laws of physics and Deimos is in a constant state of disorientation and in danger of dying over and over again to flying blades on chains which seem to have a mind of their own in how they seek him out. He gets caught by said chains a lot, almost at the end of every short and even a few times within the shorts in quick succession. Worse off, his on-screen deaths and subsequent sudden revivals show him getting progressively more mutilated without let-up. And that doesn't begin to cover the horrific sights he comes across while wandering... - The second installment SACRIFICE.fla, starts off with a somewhat funny moment and then quickly turns the tone on its head to show just how screwed up the place Deimos is in now can be. The Gainax Ending has Deimos emerge outside of a desolate version of the Bakery from Avenger, where a corpse which resembles Hank falls down. Deimos touches it, then appears to be overcome with flashing, disorientating visions before being utterly destroyed by multiple flying chain-blades without warning. - In the third short, ANAMNESIS.fla, there's a particularly unsettling moment where Deimos spots Sanford through a gap in another room, only to watch him get brutally killed. Then he manages to get into the room, which seems to be in a kind of "Groundhog Day" Loop, and saves Sanford from his would-be killer. Deimos seems to have saved his best friend... only for Sanford to turn around and reveal a black void where his face should be, and then everything goes to hell again. - In particular, Deimos' body language in this episode is pretty telling to how terrified he feels in all of this. When "Sanford" turns around and starts advancing on Deimos, the latter falls over and waves his hand as if pleading for "Sanford" not to hurt him. From his point of view, Deimos is seeing his faceless best friend stalking towards him, supposedly to kill him. He then watches reality utterly freak out, "Sanford" included, which ends with "Sanford" unceremoniously splattered into the floor (with Deimos following shortly after). - The fourth short, POWERLESS.fla is almost nothing but a conga line of disturbing imagery and events. Deimos gets attacked by a strange claw/tentacle, then encounters ATP Agents who flicker in and out of looking like they are Auditor-possessed - i.e. like the same Agent that killed him. When Deimos shoots one down, it suddenly turns into a version of himself wearing an ATP Mask (like that time he pranked Sanford). The episode ends with Deimos suddenly embedded into a wall by the claw-tentacle, and it doesn't look like he's getting out of there alone anytime soon. - While Deimos coming back strong in DedmosRebuilt.fla is undeniably awesome, the sheer damage his new fists can cause is disturbing due to Art Evolution really emphasizing the injuries. With every punch, Deimos caves in his opponents' skulls and torsos. The worst part is that these blows rip right through their skin, giving us a lovely look at their utterly mangled skeletons underneath, particular attention being given to their skulls. - The spin-off movie Tricky Madness 2 is nothing but this. Really takes the "madness" element to heart, it does. - Krinkels claims he'll never pull anything like that again. He apologizes for the Gorn at the end of the video. It's as if he got half-way through making the video and stopped because he realized he crossed back over the line to "uncool, not cool." - An Experiment answers a question many Madness fans have had since the series started: are the characters' hands really floating? Could you, say, seal them inside a box? And then pull that box away from the person's body? Turns out, the answer is yes... but the grunt subjected to this experiment was rapidly driven insane by it, smashing their face against the wall until the skin is completely gone while their surroundings glitch out. When an ATP engineer goes in, they get effortlessly ripped in two (as pictured above), followed by the grunt repeatedly dashing themselves against the wall until they're nothing but a fine mist. And then the whole building explodes, with an effect very similar to the Normality Restoration Beams seen in Inundation. Bet you wish you hadn't asked now. - The grunt's (nicknamed "Scrapeface", for good reason) behavior during the ordeal could unnerve some. While the enclosed hands are fighting back hard to try and rejoin its body, painting every surface it touches with blood, the body has seemingly much less cognitive thought, twitching and ramming itself into any surface available until their face is ground down to nothing. Then, their hands come back. - After Scrapeface is put back together again, their movements just become completely inhuman. They're still erratically spasming and glitching about, all while cracking the room they're in while filling the screen with red static. Their movements jump between twitching painfully, to lunging across the room with absolutely no movement as a distorted, feral screaming noise plays over the background music. One can only imagine the sheer terror the Engineer felt when they were locked in the same room as them. - Scrapeface's hatred is so feral and intense that he manages to scrape himself down to the stumps of his legs on the floor and walls. And even that's not enough to keep him from flinging what remains of himself at the scientist responsible in a desperate bid to make them suffer. In a series filled with comedic gore and copious bloodstains on three-fourths of the architecture, it is one of the few instances of such that is played as straight psychological horror.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadnessCombat
Made in Abyss / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Let's be frank here: In light of what the series' distinct Puni Plush aesthetic might suggest, Made In Abyss is in fact an incredibly disturbing horror series on par with the likes of Berserk, Now and Then, Here and There, and Warhammer 40,000, with gore, mutilation, and Body Horror in spades. Yeah, it's kind of show. that - The Abyss itself, for a multitude of reasons. It's a strange Eldritch Location that causes all sorts of phenomena to occur by virtue of its sheer proximity. Time seems to move strangely in the depths and trying to ascend causes potentially life-threatening symptoms. No one knows what it is or where it came from. And all of that is without mentioning the way that towards the bottom, the Abyss stops looking like a pit in the ground, and starts looking more and more like a living being, with eyes and teeth. - And there's also the simple fact that, even if you put aside the strange phenomena, the Abyss itself is insanely deep. The latest official map sets the Seventh Layer starting at a depth of 15,500 meters down, with the deepest point theorized to be more than 20 kilometers. To give you an idea, the lowest point on Earth - the very bottom of the Marianas Trench - is 10,924 meters below sea level, barely half of the Abyss' depth. And bear in mind, that the seven Layers are just the regions that people know about and have explored, with the very bottom still nowhere in sight. Makes you wonder to yourself: How fucking far down DOES this thing go? - One of the most subtle, but ever-present, horrors of the Abyss is one of sheer compulsion. Everyone knows the Abyss is basically a Death World with all manner of dangerous creatures lurking down there. Everyone knows about the Curse. Hell, every single Delver is expected to die down there, to the point that a delver's "Last Dive" is seen as a natural conclusion and celebrated... and it's probably no mistake that orphans are trained as delvers, rather than kids with blood family who will miss them. Yet people just won't stop diving into the Abyss. No delver is shown deciding "nope, that was too close for comfort, I'm taking my profits and opening a bakery." They cannot resist going deeper into that rabbit hole until the Abyss finally takes their life. The pull of the Abyss cares not about friendship, family, maternal instincts, or even self-preservation. - To add to this, the way delving and Delvers are romanticized by Orth. They hold delving up as heroic, noble and adventurous, and even death is celebrated as if it's an achievement. But there's nothing glorious about bleeding from every orifice, being turned into an unkillable and perpetually suffering blob of flesh, or slowly being eaten alive by parasitic larvae. - The effect of the ascension curse on the Fifth Layer is that you lose all sensations. Sounds easy enough to deal with, right? Wrong! Riko climbing a set of stairs ended up with her biting her own teeth so hard that she snapped her molars in half without realizing it, cut her own arm, and lost her sense of self. The resulting wounds had to be stitched back together by Prushka. Without anesthesia. - If you thought that was bad, then there's the effects of the ascension curse coming from the Sixth Layer. Nanachi has what is essentially the lightest case because their friend Mitty was used as a means of essentially soaking the worst of it up. Poor Mitty's painfully turned into a misshapen blob that can't die, but suffers constantly and must be taken care of by Nanachi, who's desperately seeking a way to free their friend via Mercy Kill before time runs out. - Worse, Riko wakes up and explains from her point of view what Mitty was going through, based on a nightmare she had. It was like being trapped in a shrinking cavity, forgetting everything including how to speak. Mitty's soul was essentially trapped in an undying mass of flesh, barely able to interact with anyone around her. - Reg having to Shoot the Dog and kill Mitty. Mitty even seems scared in spite of knowing this will be the end of her suffering, Nanachi stops Reg in order to say one last goodbye, and then Reg has to vaporize Mitty. It's just as horrifying as it is heartbreaking. - And to make matters even worse, Mitty's fate is one shared by dozens of children Bondrewd left at the bottom of the Sixth Layer, all of them failures. - Then theres the Ganja Corp flashback. They get to the sixth layer and are promptly curb-stomped by the environment en mass, in many horrible ways. Oh look, someone got snatched up by a monster, will our heroes stage a resc— scratch that, they've already mutated and popped like a giant blood balloon into a misshapen mess. - The Forbidden Flower Garden. The insects infesting it not only cripple Delvers, but they use their eye sockets as living feed for their young while hiding the victims in what appears to be a flower garden. Once they get to the head, the hosts can do nothing. And they're not even native to the Fourth Layer; they've somehow migrated from the Sixth Layer and completely overrun the ecosystem, to the point where the entire field had to be burned down to stop their spread. - There's a unique behavior trait to them that is... chilling. Adults would occasionally force themselves into the victim's mouth to feed them, extending the shelf life of the larval bed. A unique method of cultivation, indeed. - They can also be weaponized. Reg, Riko, and Nanachi used them in an attempt to take down the White Whistle Bondrewd on the Fifth Layer by shooting him with a crossbow loaded with larvae. And then they tried to put him through the Sixth Layer's curse to deal with him. - Reg, ends up being nearly dissected on the Fifth Layer. Not only are a variety of tests conducted, such as examining his urine, tearing off an arm, and causing him pain. It was planned on removing a leg too until Riko and Nanachi come in and stop it. - And then there's whatever he mutates into when he took in the power of the Idofront. - All the navel penetration close-ups and the characters' reactions. My goodness, makes you wince. Prushka's reaction was probably the worst one, as she let out sudden painful yelp amidst her broken affectionate monologue. - Bondrewd. Everything about him. The man takes Human Resources to the next level. - The elevator scene. Bondrewd tells Mitty and Nanachi that he will send them down there and then back up again to learn more about how the curse of the Abyss works. When he sends them down, we see dozens of blob-like abominations looking just like Mitty but with different colored eyes. When they're brought back up, we see Mitty take the strain as she is screaming in physical pain filled with Body Horror and gore as Nanachi is trapped in the elevator, unable to do anything but be Forced to Watch as their best friend suffers A Fate Worse Than Death. It's as sad as it is horrifying. Later on, Bondrewd tries to destroy Mitty's organs as an experiment to see her new powers which constantly inflicts obscene amounts of pain on Mitty as she regenerates. - Worse still, he often forced Nanachi to do those experiments. How do you think they got those surgery skills? - The scene before the elevator's descent. You can feel Mitty and Nanachi's rising panic, and it's horrific to imagine being in their situation: you're helpless, trapped, and your captor (who up until now has been your savior) is calmly outlining your predicted, horrifying fate. As Bondrewd speaks to the two terrified children, he informs Mitty that she will bear the curse, and politely asks that she "try to endure it." He acts and speaks as if he's telling her to be brave at the dentist as opposed to condemning her to a living hell (For extra horror, he definitely meant the former), and the dissonance is chilling. - Bondrewd isn't even human anymore, but a soul capable of traveling between multiple lackeys thanks to one of his artifacts. This effectively makes Bondrewd immortal, allowing him to continue with his experiments as long as he pleases. - His charisma only adds to his nightmarish nature. He's so incredibly, impossibly silver-tongued that his Umbra Hands, who not only partake in his atrocities but function as his Body Backup Drive and can be callously "killed" by him at any time if he needs a new vessel, chose to join him willingly knowing what could happen to them and what would be asked of them as his assistants. Their ranks even include bounty hunters and Black Whistles specifically sent there to kill him. He's simply that convincing. - Just how he he still remembers the names and personalities of each and every child he has horrifically mutilated, turned into an abomination, or stuffed into a container to repel the Curse of the Abyss proves that he feels genuine love for his victims and for whatever reason cannot make sense of why putting them through a Fate Worse than Death For Science! is wrong. The man is not evil, or selfish, or uncaring, it's hard to even call him insane per se. On some level, that is far more disturbing than it would have been were he simply an uncaring asshole faking genuine emotion, because at least that would have given him a label and a motivation comprehensible to the human mind. In truth, whatever he has become can hardly be called human, either physically or psychologically. - Children aren't the only things that Bondrewd wants to put on his experimental table. Srajo tells Riko and Reg that she and her Hail Hex fleet ran into him in the 5th Layer and he roadblocked her and asked her to file an application to the Delver's Guild and wait a week before he lets her into the 6th layer. This is where things get creepy — he asks Srajo to hand her fellow Hail Hex corp members for research because they are rejected people who should be thrown away after birth and he's curious about them. Of course, considering what kind of horror Bondrewd will unleash upon anyone he gets his hands on, Srajo doesn't let him get his way. The man not only experiments on children, but also openly and casually discusses about experimenting on vagrants as well. The casual smooth-talking coming from him trying to convince Srajo to throw away her own men that she cared for dearly seems completely and utterly wrong and a large part of it is because he can't see what's the problem. - This also makes it possible that Riko and Reg's run-in with him is no one-off case but something that he's infamous for. One only wonders did he actually killed other delvers who reached that far, assuming if the Abyss hasn't killed them yet. - Another pressing question is how powerful he really is. Srajo and her fellow delvers ran into and fought Bondrewd right before Riko and Reg got involved with him and actually won, meaning that by then he was recovering from a wholesale assault from an organized delver fleet led by a White Whistle. And as we all know, the fight between them and Bondrewd is still an uphill, climatic battle. Imagine what happens if Srajo's fleet didn't run into him prior. - Ozen's random habits between being hunched over and standing up straight get taken to their logical conclusion when the anime shows her transition between the two stances. The sound of her bones and spine snapping is borderline Nausea Fuel. - The page image here is taken from Ozen's Secret Test of Character that she administers to Riko. It's significantly less benign than most examples, as there really doesn't seem to be any good outcome if she fails. It's either come out of it okay, or Go Mad from the Revelation that she is an Undead Child. The intention seems to be to make sure she's capable of surviving the psychological horrors of the Abyss. If she fails, well, then Ozen hasn't wasted her own time on someone who would have gone mad and lost her humanity sooner or later anyway. - Ozen's description of what happened to her scalp, in a flashback to a talk that she had with Lyza. She says that she styled her hair that way to cover her scars that formed on her scalp due to having spent so much being exposed to the Abyss's forcefield over the decades. - Ozen gets her extreme strength from artifacts called Thousand-Men Pins, which are small pins with sharp, painful-looking barbs. She has about 120 of them. While fighting Reg, part of her sleeve tears off, revealing her arm with several of these pins embedded in it. Her muscles and tendons are clearly defined through her skin, which looks practically necrotic. - When Reg fights Ozen, she easily throws him all over the place and nearly kills him in bloody detail. Much later on, when he duels with Nishagora, she gets transformed by Srajo's White Whistle and overwhelms him with immense power, and Reg compared it to that moment. Nishagora's response? That's nothing compared to what she saw when she fought her, and the Thousand-Men Pins were not even the greatest extent of what she's capable of. The implication is that when she fought Reg, Ozen was actually holding back and it can actually get worse. - Episode 10 of the anime takes the famous Body Horror scene of the manga and it makes it even worse. You can see Riko's hallucinations through her eyes, and hear her scream as medically inexperienced Reg breaks her horribly swollen arm and begins to cut it off. Not to mention she's bleeding from every orifice, including her eye sockets. - The balance of value that happens in the Capital of the Unreturned. If caught stealing or damaging something of value, everything you hold dear is subject to being taken to even out the balance. If the value of items is high enough the perpetrator can find themselves being ripped apart to be used as an item of value. - The origin of the White Whistles: - In order to create a White Whistle you need a human sacrifice. The person who dies must die from the curse of the abyss while praying for someone else. If the abyss deems the sacrifice just, they become a Life-Reverberating Stone from which a White Whistle is made. There are six White Whistles known to exist as of writing and only one whose genesis we see. - We know the story behind another's genesis and surprisingly, given who it is, it's actually less horrifying. Bondrewd's White Whistle was created by sacrificing himself to become the whistle after obtaining the artifact called the Zoaholic, which makes Voldemort's Horcruxes look like child's play. He copies his mind into multiple "Prayers", which are too numerous to count, are deemed impossible to entirely kill all of them even with Reg's powerful Incinerator, and with which Bondrewd can basically transfer his mind and respawn. He sacrificed himself so the White Whistle can now be used by all of his reincarnations since he prayed for himself. - Given that it must be a willing and necessary sacrifice, it's not as bad as the original poster implied. While this sways into YMMV, thematically, Lyza's white whistle has to be her husband. We know he died for her and his child in a heroic sacrifice. This would seem to be how Ozen got hers as well. - Lyza's White Whistle came from someone named Doni, who is possibly a former apprentice or maybe an old friend of hers. Since Lyza already possessed her White Whistle when she first met and knew her husband. - Nanachi is implied to hunt the Delvers who reach the Fourth Layer, and to experiment on them to devise the way to Mercy Kill Mitty. Those whistles in their home and posts at the lawn behind it — well, connect the dots... - The Sixth Layer was proven to be a much more dangerous place than initially thought as Riko is guided to a number of big, highly mutated Hollow who attempt to rape her. Fortunately, the previously seen "balanced" Hollow (now known as Maa-san) is still alive and manages to rescue Riko. Although, it's all but implied he was rescuing Meinya and not her. The balancing then comes for the attempted rapists. - A more subtle example is in the opening shot of the Capital of the Unreturned. The land tilts steeply to one side. Of all the buildings shown, all of them are upside down and none have an opening where someone could enter the "bottom" and go upstairs. Bridges are all angled with the ground, and some even have odd inverted arches, where it seems easy to climb down and to go with the general tilt of the structure, but near impossible to go back up. Capping it all off, instead of the sky, there's a wall of water that forms the bottom of the Sea of Corpses. It gives one very clear impression. This is a landscape where there is only one way you can travel: down. - The imagery and the themes of the whole series plays constantly with Does This Remind You of Anything? and child abuse. It's indirect, similar to other franchises, such as Alien. The imagery tiptoes between lines so frequently that unfortunate people looking for official manga chapters online found them on hentai sites!! - In the very first scene, you learn that severe punishment by an orphan isn't being sent to bed without dinner or even spanking. It's being strung up naked (essentially, crucifixion without the nails), and this is confirmed via a clip in the Episode 2 montage. Ossen also casually mentions her apprentice being strung up, meaning this is a normal practice. The orphanage also has a full torture chamber with a functioning electric chair. These are the GOOD guys, might I add. - Reg is violated by Riko with a ruler. Molested by a Black Whistle (though that was partly due to him being a robot). Experiences guro at the hands of Bondrewd. - Mittys transformation is highly reminiscent of female puberty. The transformation starts out with blood (period), includes pain, much like menstruation, and the imagery takes the extreme by having her head look like vagina dentata (vagina with teeth. Later on, while shes hanging out on top of an unconscious Rikos face... at the time of the scene, both were victimized by something or someone else). - Riko, when she loses her senses in Bondrewds area, she has flashbacks of that event later, which make it ambiguous whether or not the girl she was with, took advantage of the situation, similar to date rape. - Belaf, one of the Three Sages of Ilblu. A massive snake-like creature which two sharp-teethed mouths replacing their eye sockets and it speaks through them. In any other story, it would be an Eldritch Abomination outright. - Faputa violently ripping off one of her arms and her right ear to allow Reg to recover Nanachi. Both the gruesome details how sudden the action is, as well as the fact that she later tells Reg to "eradicate them all" (referring to the Hollows of Ilblu), makes this more unsetting. - The effects of the Mockwater. Constant pain and bouts of diarrhea are the least of your problems; the thing causes people's extremities to calcify and twist into horrid shapes, described as "if lead had melted and then solidified again". The poor people stuck there are now trapped between a horrible disease or dying of thirst because there are no clean water sources otherwise. - The revelation of how the Village of Ilblu was formed, namely that the whole structure is Irumyuui's mutated body. To sum up, Irumyuui was given a Cradle of Desire by the other Ganja Corps members in the hopes she could use it to help those incapacitated by the Mockwater illness. She instead used it to cure her infertility, which made her able to create life but all of her resulting offspring were deformed and fragile, with all of them dying just a day after birth, which broke the girl emotionally. Then said offspring were used as emergency food rations that miraculously also cured the Mockwater illness. Seeing her "children" being taken away from her, regardless of whether they were dead or alive, completely broke her and this, combined with the painful physical transformation she was going through, turned her into a screeching beast. She eventually grew bigger and more deformed until she become a completely unrecognizable giant flesh structure by the time the Ganja Corps decide to become Hollows. By the time Riko and company find them, Irumyuui has spent a century and a half as this immobile mass of flesh with seemingly only Vueko's neural impulses for company, which almost undoubtedly broke whatever sanity was remaining. Her last act as Irumyuui the girl was to give birth to Faputa to put an end to her misery. - Wazukyan is another very disturbing character like Bondrewd. This guy cares about nothing save for his corp's survival, and this includes giving the Cradle of Desire to Irumuyuui (thus causing her to mutate) and proposing eating her kids, sometimes even taking them straight from her arms. Sure, this really does solve the hunger, thirst and Mockwater infections, but at what price? The worst is unlike Bondrewd who really only went out there after he renounced his humanity to the White Whistle, Wazukyan did most of the damage before he even became hollow. - Belaf's complete breakdown when he finds out that he ate Irumyuui's offspring to cure his Mockwater infection, to the extent that he willingly became the first inhabitant of the Village as atonement. - Faputa's drastic switch in tone in the anime when she declared her mass genocide of the villagers, making it downright terrifying. The voices are so different that you swore they hired another voice actor for it. - It was a bit difficult to comprehend what was going on in the manga due to the heavy amount of stylish inking, but the anime does a very good job depicting just how gory, brutal, and overall disturbing Faputa's slaughter of the village was, where numerous Hollows who have done nothing wrong besides using the Hollow-transformed Irumyuui as a home experience horrific Cruel and Unusual Death, everything from being torn to shreds to experiencing Kill It Through Its Stomach, all the while many of the Hollows watch in utter terror while hoping they aren't next. - And then she does the same thing to Reg when he tries to stop her, with only her subconscious love for him preventing her from going all the way. She "only" shoved her entire arm inside him before flailing him around, with the poor robot's muffled screaming being barely heard over the sound of her arm rupturing his insides. He was only able to get free due to another Hollow crashing into her. - Then there are the results of when the beasts of the Abyss make it into the village. Now all that happened during Faputa's rampage is dialed up even more as helpless Hollows are ganged up on and devoured alive, not even Faputa herself is spared this as she is unable to deal with such a high number of foes and is systematically torn apart. At that point, she is left a mangled suffering mess but alive due to her immortality before some of the villagers allowed her to eat them so she can recover. - Srajo's Nightmare Face at the end of her infodump about Juusou, when she calls them "the disgrace of Delver history" considering Hollows are instantly executed whenever they surface. Just look at it.◊ Even worse is unlike when Ozen makes it, this is not a Secret Test of Character, the Delvers were only having an information exchange at that time, and they're nowhere near any sort of danger. It can come across as gratuitous and nightmarish for the sake of in a volume which is largely devoid of any direct horror. - We finally get our first real look at the seventh layer and it is disturbing. The walls look almost like hanging strips of skin and have what look like huge pimple-like growths in places. The characters' vantage point gives then a view straight down onto a fleshy-looking eye... fetus... cochlea... thing embedded in the far wall with the rock formations spiraling in toward it. - Srajo drops some new information on Riko and friends. The certain-death curse in the seventh layer? Knowledge of it is based on one death that happened more than two centuries ago. We don't actually know if it's like that in all cases. Given what the sixth layer's curse does to people, it's safe to say we don't want to know what the curse actually does here. We'll probably find out anyway. Someone will make the tiniest mistake and it is not going to be pretty.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadeInAbyss
Mad Max: Fury Road / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Okay, they finally got his mom's leather face off. That was creepy, and now we can see what he l—- OH DEAR GOD! - Max's Sanity Slippage after the loss of his family is even amplified further here, where he's shown more than once hallucinating about all the people he failed to save. Not to mention hearing their voices even in the heat of the moment, which goes to show how close he is to becoming insane altogether. - The most troubling hallucination comes after Max attempts to return to solitude. The little girl throws her hand out at him and causes him to flinch. For exactly one frame in this scene, you can see a masked face with deranged eyes. This turns out to be a premonition that turns what would have been a fatal headshot for Max into a defensive wound. - The adults we see in the hallucinations are arguably worse, because they never appear again, unlike Glory the Child. One is a male biker, who turns into a male aborigine, and we never find out who they are or why Max hallucinates about them. - The body horror Max and others endure throughout the movie, from Max being tortured after his capture to all the people with various warts and scars etc. Special mention goes to Immortan Joe and the horrific boils all over his skin before his armor covers them. - Immortan Joe might just be the scariest villain of the four films. He lords over a cultish society of brainwashed killers even more stable than Beyond Thunderdome's Bartertown, farms people for their blood and milk like livestock, owns a group of sex slaves, and will stop at NOTHING to get them back when they escape. And he looks like the bastard child of Sweet Tooth and Bane. - The Bullet Farmer and the People Eater have no shortage in the scariness department themselves. The People Eater is a grotesquely fat, noseless man who is likely a cannibal, while the Bullet Farmer is a man who gets so high off violence that even when blinded, he will go into a mania in which he shoots randomly at anything he can. - While the Bullet Farmer seems normal enough, bloodlust aside, the People Eater is not only far too fat for someone who's a survivor of an apocalypse, one of his legs is also grotesquely swollen, which is a sure sign of gout. That, along with the blood accumulation around his nose, is a telltale sign of cannibalism. - Furiosa's implied backstory. She was taken as a slave by the War Boys twenty years before the film, presumably when she was a child or teenager. Immortan Joe does not seem to be big on gender equality; he probably does not treat his female captives well. But more nightmarish even than that is the things Furiosa must have done to rise from a captive in a savage, brutal, and deeply misogynistic society to become one of the most senior war-leaders. Whatever she's seeking redemption for... well, she must have blended in with the rest of Joe's people fairly well up until then. - Further implied by other bits of dialogue: When asking about the "Green Place" she says she's been that way "many times." They obviously weren't escape attempts, or she wouldn't have risen up the ranks to be an Imperator. She was kidnapped from the Green Place from a healthy mother... from the clan of Many Mothers. And her seeking redemption is not to help the poor, starving masses in the Citadel, but the prized breeders who, for the most part, live a very healthy and well-fed life already. Perhaps the wives were too young when they were kidnapped to remember, but Furiosa may have had a personal hand in kidnapping them. - The fact that Immortan Joe's Cargo Cult proto-empire seems to be the only stable bit of civilization around. He has a fortress, a sizable army of (relatively) organized war-bands, reliable agriculture/water supply, AND at least two other settlements he conducts regular trade and supply runs with: all the hallmarks of a nascent nation-state... and all this is under the control of a VERY insane and evil dude, who is free to lord over the wasteland as he sees fit. With everyone else we see being roving nomads or bandits, it's pretty clear that Furiosa's rebellion was THE only thing that could pose a true threat to Joe's reign. - Coma-Doof Warrior - unmasked, as seen in the Page Image. - The mask he's wearing to hide that just so happens to be his mother's face. Whether he or Joe made the mask varies according to the source (the former from iOTA, the latter from the artbook). Granted, neither he nor Joe had anything to do with her death, but it's still quite creepy. - How did he acquire his mother's face in the first place? When he was a child — a normal, healthy (if blind) child, raised by his mother in a loving environment — raiders attacked his home and dragged his mother off. Several days later, somebody dropped his mother's severed head into his lap. When Joe found him, he was nearly catatonic, still clutching the severed head. Brrrrrr. - Whatever of these... things walking around on sticks in the swamps that used to be the Green Place are. The depressing looks from our heroes on the War Rig and the foggy. darkness night scenery don't help things. - According to production designer Colin Gibson, those things are the boys the Vuvalini left behind when they fled the Green Place with their daughters. Now imagine what those boys had to go through. - According to Melissa Jaffer, there were numerous suggestions of what the Swamp People were which was encouraged by Miller, but one theory was that nobody knew what they were. This suggests that whatever they were, they weren't human. - Angharad's unborn baby being cut out of her while she is dying by a man displaying a butcher-like demeanor and calmness as he fiddles with the baby's corpse and the umbilical cord. - Also, the fact that Angharad's brutal demise is an afterthought to them and when the baby is found dead, Joe's and Rictus's one consolation is that it was at least a baby boy and it's clear that had it been a girl, the girl would have been an afterthought. - Not to mention that Angharad was still alive at the time of the c-section, and there might have been a possibility of saving her had they not ripped her open in a less-than-ideal medical setting. But in light of being Joe's "favorite" wife, Angharad was only seen as an expendable breeder who only had worth if she had a healthy baby boy. - The nightmarish polecat mook with the disturbing Creepy Doll head attached to the back of his creepy black bondage mask. He's only got about five minutes on screen, but during that time, he survives being thrown off the rig, kills at least one Vuvalini, nearly kills both Max with a crossbow bolt and would've killed Furiosa if not for Max's blood transfusion. The only thing that stopped him was Keeper of the Seeds shoving a handful of bullets into his eyes, which is pretty horrible, too. Compared with how easily the heroes have dispatched every other mook up to this point, the difficulty this one guy gives them is surprisingly shocking, and disturbing. The fact that he never speaks makes it that much scarier. - The People Eater takes notice of Valkyrie, dismounted and randomly firing a rifle in the path of the pursuing convoy. He takes aim and speeds up, and she doesn't notice him, and... - Many people have praised Fury Road for how it depicts the horrors of sexual slavery: there is no on-screen rape anywhere in the film, and the dome that the wives lived in look aesthetically pleasing enough to make one wonder why anyone would want to leave the place if all you had to do was pop out a few kids for an evil overlord, so how bad was their situation really? Simple: IT WAS BAD ENOUGH THAT THEY WANTED TO ESCAPE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. - The comic book prequel Furiosa #1 confirms this, detailing how the wives had to put up with invasive and humiliating vaginal examines performed by a rather pervy OB/GYN (and witnessed by Joe AND his sons), the threat of being raped by Joe' infantile adult son, being forced to stay up all night having sex with Joe, and having to suffer Joe's wrath if they ever dared to object to his sexual advances. When Angharad was revealed to be pregnant the stress of the situation got so bad for her that she attempted to perform an abortion on herself. - Any Fanservice factor that could be had from the scene of wives having their breasts milked is nullified due to Joe and company treating them as little more than livestock. - There's also the fact that the milked women are cradling dolls instead of actual babies. Why? Does Joe insist they go through the motions of motherhood to keep the milk plentiful? Are they trying to hold onto a memory of their children before they grew up to be Joe's fanatically devoted lackeys? Do they miss being breeders because their current status as cows is even worse? Has their treatment caused their minds to snap so they don't actually realise they're not caring for real babies? Is it just a sick joke by their overlords? Every explanation is more tragic and degrading than the last. - Truth in Television: It's medical. Breasts won't lactate unless the brain is psychologically tricked into thinking there's a baby to nurse. - Those horrible chastity belt... things the Wives were all forced to wear, likely to keep any of Joe's men from raping them and/or to keep the women from sleeping with anyone other than Joe. The rim of the loop in front is covered in hideous-looking fangs. Imagine having to wear something like that all the time, something that is a constant reminder that you are considered nothing more than property and that your sexuality is being controlled by a sadistic brute. Is it any wonder that once they had a moment of safety from the raiding party, the first thing the women wanted to do was get those things off? - Made a bit more disturbing when you consider The Dag and Cheedo's Les Yay, as they've been suspected to be a couple. Even with no risk of impregnation, they aren't even allowed to have each other. - For extra Fridge Horror, the EU reveals that The Dag often tried to protect Cheedo from Joe's advances, and was sometimes beaten for it, but other times... Remember that when talking to the Seed Expert among the Vuvalini, The Dag mentions she's pregnant with Joe's child (she just hasn't started to show yet). So the only way she could have stopped Joe from touching Cheedo... - Joe is fanatically determined to sire a healthy son to be his heir, and already has at least two sons he'd deemed too sickly or slow-witted to qualify. That's not counting any other sons of his who may have already died of their illnesses or in battle, or all the stillborn ones before Angharad's, in the many years he's reigned. Presumably he's also fathered an unspecified number of daughters during that same period ... but nothing is said of such baby girls' fate. At all. - While the death of Immortan Joe is highly satisfying, it's pretty terrifying to see Joe's face getting brutally ripped off by Furiosa. Not his mask - his face. As in, there's a red, bloody mass where his face used to be. It's made all the more violent by the fact that the movie's been rather restrained when it comes to blood, so this is likely the bloodiest moment in the movie. - Toast's plight during the climax is pretty scary, especially from an adult perspective. She's dragged away from her sisters and held captive by her abuser, and used as a human shield against the people trying to save her. Joe taunts Furiosa from his car, and you can see her flinching away, obviously terrified, when Joe shoots at Max. The scariness of it makes it way more badass when she fights back to help Furiosa, and her Spiteful Spit even more satisfying. - The implication that the nuclear war either entirely or partially evaporated the oceans, if the Great Salt Plains are really the ocean bed. Keep in mind that even if every single nuclear capable nation expended their entire weapons supply, it wouldn't be enough to cause this effect. What the hell did they use?! Keep in mind that the only natural process that could cause this would be the Sun turning red. - In reality, a global nuclear war would cause nuclear winter, due to dust being thrown in to the stratosphere. This would cause MASSIVE global cooling, sending temperatures plummeting to what they were during the last ice age 18000 years ago. More and more water would be locked up in ice at the poles and in glaciers. This would cause ocean levels to drop worldwide, and hence ocean receeding from the coasts. It wouldn't cause oceans to "dry up" though. Drying up implies evaporation. Water that is evaporated doesn't just "go away", it turns into vapor. The only way that all the oceans could evaporate is if the planet basically turned into Venus (and if it did, we'd have bigger things to worry about than desert car chases). - The nightmares to be had only get worse. Presuming the oceans are actually gone and it wasn't just something else that wrecked the world like a tungsten rod bombardment seriously changing the topography of the world then the atmosphere in the Mad Max world is seriously messed up. Normally small amounts of hydrogen do escape the Earths atmosphere on a yearly basis but this is more then made up for by our being bombarded by small meteorites but it appears something has happened on Earth in this world that allowed water vapor to escape in larger quantities rapidly drying the world until a new equilibrium had been reached with whatever additional gas that's around which forced the water vapor out. Otherwise all the Earths water has been trapped in the polar ice caps with temperatures being at extremes across the globe with very few moderate or temperate zones. Rule of Scary is likely in effect here, as nothing that currently exists in weapons technology can have these effects, even the strongest nuke, but since the setting relies on Humans Are Bastards, we have to assume something we did messed up the world even worse than the older movies. - The background of the movie's setting, namely the Water Wars. Keep in mind that several arid areas of the world, including Australia and California are facing severe water shortages, and several of the world's major fresh water sources are drying up due to overuse; water wars are not outside the realm of possibility in the near future. The threat of nuclear annihilation that inspired the original trilogy seems positively quaint by comparison.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadMaxFuryRoad
Mad Max / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The aftermath isn't pretty. At the hospital, we see what may be Jessie on a hospital bed, her right arm missing, and the extent of her injuries spelled out: "Multiple traumas, spleen, liver, lung, flail chest, left neck of femur, renal shutdown." As for Sprog: "DOA". Max's Sanity Slippage after his wife and kid dies. He finds himself alone in his house and is playing around with the "grumpy" mask he used to playfully taunt Jessie. However as he slowly begins to snap, the mask becomes a substitute for his self proclaimed "Terminal Crazy" boiling to the surface through him stretching it and warping it to make it look more monstrous than ever. While he's suiting up and taking the Pursuit Special seems like an awesome scene, it really shows how far gone he is now. Demonstrated when he takes out Toecutter's gang, one by one. Toecutter's death. Max is chasing him along the practically deserted highway, going faster and faster... when an eighteen wheeler comes over the horizon and runs Toecutter over, leaving a mangled corpse and what remained of his motor cycle. Also, the look on his face just before it happens... Not just that, but the premise of the preceding situation. Imagine you're a motorcyclist, just riding along the highway... And then along comes a maniac in a souped-up car easily capable of keeping up with you. You can't outrun him, you can't evade him... and you've got just two wheels against his four. Yes, Toecutter did absolutely deserve it, but still... Johnny the Boy's death. Doubles as a Tear Jerker, considering he wasn't really evil, just sick, as he desperately tries to tell Max. He starts out nervous, then begins screaming and begging for his life, saying: "You can't kill me!". If you look closely, \|\|you can see him crying\|\|. Max simply chains him to his car and puts a slow fuse, then presents him with a choice: either he can try and cut through the chain or cut off his leg. The look on Johnny's face says it all... As Max leaves him, Johnny breaks down entirely and starts laughing. He has given up on life completely. The scene where the couple flee the town when they see the Toecutter and his gang wreaking havoc. There's a small Hope Spot where they drive off, nearly running the Toecutter over as they go, until the whole gang gives chase. Toecutter personally runs the car off the road by smashing in the windscreen with a meat cleaver and the gang set about smashing the car to pieces, before dragging the couple out to both be raped.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadMax1
Magical Vacation / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes ## Magical Vacation - The first town you reach is of the Puppet People, who have an incredibly fatalistic outlook on life. They also have a Serial Killer problem. And the inn inexplicably includes a simple non animated life size puppet. \|\|The murderer is revealed to be the inn-keeper making him the most obvious example you'll still not call. He thought if he could get a working heart he could revive his brother (the non-living puppet), who was left to die by the townsfolk thank to their fatalism after an accident.\|\| Oh, and if you check back later the inn will now have two non animated puppets the new one looking remarkably like somebody you used to know here. \|\|Yes, the new(?) inn-keeper kept the corpses.\|\| - At the end of the Realm of Dark, \|\|Ganache and Candy head off into the Abyssal Realm to seek the power of the strongest enigma. The idea of teenagers, trained with magic as they may be, heading alone into a realm raunch with deadly monsters, corpses and skeletons of large creatures, and a ghastly atmosphere permeating throughout makes one wonder how Ganache is emotionally numbing himself to the situation, and how calm he is considering the only other person with him is slowly losing control over their possessor and wants to kill him\|\|. ## Magical Starsign - Your second visit to Erd. As it turns out, all robots, Mokka included, use gummy batteries. What are these batteries made of? Humans that turned into gummies while trying to make the Cosmic Keystone gummies. It's also said that when they run out of these former humans and other things to make their power cells with, they will all forcibly have their programming overrun to attack every civilization in the solar system for more. Yes, including Mokka. - Farina barely ever speaks, and for the majority of the game her dialog box face graphic is the same blank expression. She's a magical prodigy, which is unusual enough, but you learn about this when she wordlessly vaporizes a monster that was enchanted to revive endlessly after your party beats it, destroys a second one, and then helps Pico escape. Her pet frog died and her nursemaid put it into a potted plant's soil as fertilizer, after which she began gathering animal corpses and packing them in. Later in the game, she beats up the pirate otters stranded at Assam and exercises dominion over them. But worst of all is when, stemming from those last two examples, she nurses a holy tree sapling by burying said otters and her own neighbors up to their necks in soil and letting the sapling slowly suck the life out of them, with her own father closest to the sapling. - During your second visit to Erd, you can go up to the top of Kahve Ruins after recharging Mokka's battery. You find Applepie, or Gummy Girl. This is one of the first humans to be turned into a gummy. However, she, unlike the others, retained her sentience. So ever since she was transformed—around or over 800 years ago, mind you—she has sat in agonizing torment at the top of the tower, waiting for someone to give her the sweet embrace of death. - The endgame raises the thorny question of whether a broken universe can be fixed at all and if it's better to just let it end and begin anew. With the robot apocalypse arriving in a few years Sorbet believes Kale's viewpoint is right. Luckily, the party renewing the sun saves the robots from going rogue. - The final dungeon is made entirely of gummis, and the longer you stay in it the closer you get to turning into a gummi and used as fuel for Shadra. - After the battle with the Holy Sapling during your second visit to Gren, Semolina sacrifices herself to the man-eating flower in order to create the Wood Millennium Gummy. She essentially commits suicide so the player could obtain an important item. Later on, Sorbet reveals that if Semolina hadn't done it, she would have.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalVacation
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Should it be worth mentioning Nana and the group had captured Alex and she plans to serve him as food? Nana: Now, how about a nice lion casserole? Tour guide: You can't eat a lion. Nana: Eh, don't worry, tastes like chicken. - As Zuba comes to save him, Nana demands one of the tourists to shoot him before the lions could run off. Thankfully, Alex intervenes in the nick of time.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MadagascarEscapeTwoAfrica
Magic Knight Rayearth / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Lady Debonair haunted Hikaru's nightmares and she will haunt yours too.While most people think of the Rayearth OVA whenever they hear "Magic Knight Rayearth" and "Nightmare Fuel" in the same topic, Rayearth does not limit anything scary in it to the OVA. While it may appear to be a light-hearted shoujo adventure fantasy series, Magic Knight Rayearth does feature dark and scary stuff in it, especially towards the end of the first season/manga series, and far more so throughout the second, especially in the anime. CLAMP clearly believes that young girls can handle dark subject matters. So how could a shoujo fantasy epic scare you? Let's find out. - Most monsters in Cephiro are born from the people's fear, including Lady Debonair. - Speaking of which, Debonair qualifies as Nightmare Fuel all by herself. Her nihilistic and power hungry personality, her ultra-hammy voice, the pipe-organ music that plays whenever she shows up, Debonair is just cruel in every sense. - Also, our first introduction to Debonair was in one of Hikaru's nightmares! In it, Debonair said that all worlds would "belong to her." Which means that if the Magic Knights hadn't returned to Cephiro, Debonair would have destroyed not only Cephiro, but the entire universe! And did I mention how the dream ended with Debonair surrounding Hikaru with pitch black darkness and then trying to slash at her with her Femme Fatalons? - Zagato and his minions are perfectly willing to kill three young girls to accomplish their goals. Granted, for Zagato, that goal is "save the love of his life and find some way to talk her down from this idea of assisted suicide and maybe find a way to free her from Pillar-dom", but even so, it's clearly a measure Emeraude is terrified of. - What is even scarier is that when Zagato died, Emeraude abandoned those standards and out of rage over Zagato's death, she then attempted to kill our heroines, who I reiterate are three young girls, which she begged Zagato not to do earlier! She was abandoning a standard she previously had! - The monster of episode 8. It's Hikari, the cute fox Hikaru befriended. It reveals itself by bursting out of its skin, and its mouth is suddenly full of razor-sharp teeth. - Quite a few were caught off-guard by the monster of episode 14, who appears as a super fast column of light and abducts Umi, Fuu, and Mokona. Later, Hikaru runs through a field of thorns and falls into a ravine, causing her to bleed in the process. Realizing it can smell blood like a shark, Hikaru cuts her arm to lure it to her. - Caldina's magic involves illusions and People Puppets. When Fuu stops her from controlling Hikaru and Umi and draws her sword, Caldina just controls Fuu and sets her to kill her friends. - In episode 11 of the anime, she got a village's entire population to try to kill the Magic Knights without her Mind Control magic! All she did was make a Person Puppet out of the mayor to make him commit suicide, and threaten to do the same with all the villagers if they didn't kill the Magic Knights. - The Fountain of Eterna. There, you confront representations of the people you care about most who try to kill you. And you couldn't even bring yourself to fight back because you think that it's actually your actual loved one attacking you. - Cephiro slowly decaying as the series goes on. At first, the world is always in daylight and has beautiful scenery, but as time progresses earthquakes are more frequent, storms spring up, and it turns into Always Night. This is only the case in the anime, as in the manga, the sky was really \|\|a mirror reflecting the sea.\|\| - The end of the first part has Princess Emeraude's descent into madness and the awakening of her Superpowered Evil Side. Doubles as a massive Tear Jerker. - The part in the anime where Nova disrupts the mystical process that Sierra is using to repair Hikaru's broken weapons and follows it via basically mind raping the half-conscious Hikaru for what feels like hours. (At least two episodes, in "real time".) Oh, and revealing that she is her Enemy Without. - Speaking of Nova, the fact that she's so sadistic to the point of refering to screams of agony as "cute" is quite unsettling. - At one scene in episode 45, Hikaru's own reflection in a mirror grins evilly, and then her hand emerges from the mirror, and it turns out to be Nova. Nova then pins Hikaru to the bed like she was about to physically rape her. - The concept of the Pillar of Cephiro, once you think of it and then see the series. When you decide to step up and become Pillar, you are basically signing a deal where you will make a world prosperous and beautiful — but only if you completely renounce anything for yourself. It doesn't sound that bad, at least until you realize that if you slip up a little, if you have the tiniest desire for something only yours, even if this desire is otherwise "pure", healthy romantic love for another person, the world you've worked so hard to maintain and make flourish will collapse. And the only way to get that undone is summoning people from another world — so they can kill you. It's no wonder that Emeraude was perpetually crying — she went through all of it. Doubles as another massive Tear Jerker. - Hikaru's reaction to Debonair killing Eagle. Seeing a Genki Girl and Friend to All Living Things such as Hikaru be out for blood can be unsettling. She even brutally attacked Nova when she tried to protect Debonair. - In the Sega Saturn game, all of the villains the girls face end up dead. Caldina's death is probably the worst—when aiming for the Magic Knights, she accidentally hits and kills Ascot. She attacks the girls in a rage but is defeated. As she begs them to kill her, Hikaru offers her a hand in friendship instead. Caldina reaches out... and is instantly vaporized by Inouva. - There's a bit of Nightmare Fuel exclusive to the manga too. The penalty for failing the test to become pillar. Whomever fails the test ends up disappearing and not in a peaceful manner like their bodies fading away. Their bodies get ripped apart. Hikaru's attempt to defy this and save Eagle results in her body being ripped apart as well. She was even screaming in agony.◊ If Umi and Fuu hadn't saved her, she would have perished. - The second season's 15th Anniversary DVD box set cover art.◊ It shows Nova carrying an unconscious Hikaru with Lady Debonair showing a leering Slasher Smile in the background, with half of her face looking like a skull. - After their confrontations with the leaders of Chizeta and Fahren respectively, Umi and Fuu receive a horrific vision of Hikaru screaming their names for help as she falls into a deep dark pit. Then they see and hear her Evil Counterpart, Nova laugh maniacally, Debonair smile evilly, and Alcyone in a position of stasis, and then see Hikaru fall into the pit again. They immediately start fearing for Hikaru's safety and become desperate to come to her aid. - Alcyone's death scenes in both versions. In the manga, she begged Zagato for another chance to kill the Magic Knights. Zagato refuses, and lets Alcyone die from her wounds from the Magic Knights, with her body disintegrating while she shouts a Big "NO!". - Her death in the anime was arguably even worse. You know how some gangster movies have the mob boss threaten to kill the witness if they reveal a secret about him? Debonair kind of did that with Alcyone. As soon as she tried telling Umi and Fuu that Debonair's base of operations was in Cephiro's alternate realm, a black shadow wrapped around her like a large snake, and even started squeezing away at her neck. When she does tell them, the shadow increases in size and starts electrocuting her, causing her to scream in agony. Then it swallows her up and leaves no trace of her behind. - The fatal illness that Eagle Vision was contracted with. More so in the anime where he even coughs up blood. The scariest thing about that is that there are fatal illnesses in the real world that have that as a symptom as well.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicKnightRayearth
Lord of the Flies / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!" Lord of the Flies has lots of creepy stuff, like William Golding's firm belief that Humans Are Bastards, especially preteens and teenagers. Spoilers below. - Roger. You have to wonder what force compels the boy to be as unique as he is. How will he be when he is older? The difference between Roger and the other boys in the choir, including Jack, is that the others weren't any worse than what Golding believed human nature was, but Roger was actually evil. The stick sharpened at both ends. Killing Piggy. Now imagine what he could do if he weren't trapped on an island and had access to more than sticks and rocks. - Simon's death, where he is mistaken for the Beast that the boys have been hunting and stabbed with spears. Even more horrifying, he is the only one to figure out the truth that the Beast isn't real. It's also mentioned he was BITTEN and TORN. - A quick but effective moment in the 1990 film; the camera pans back as Simon's body lies on the beach, the dark of night covering up how mutilated he is - until a flash of lightning briefly shows everything. - Piggy's death at Roger's hand. Dropping the boulder was nothing more than an act of pure, cold-blooded murder from a pre-teen boy. - Piggy's whole situation is terrifying. Imagine being a severely handicapped individual on an island where people bully you, you have two influential people who support you, and your handicaps prevent you from asserting yourself. As time passes, the values you hold dear are being eroded around you, and the bully starts hitting you with less restraint. Finally, someone steals your glasses and decides that you are no longer needed before dropping a rock on you. - The notion that you can be perfectly normal but if you are isolated from society for long enough you can be reduced to the behavior of a raving animal. - The death of the sow, described in all its grisly glory. And by extension, the boys attempting to hunt down and kill Ralph supposedly in the same way they killed the sow. - A 12-year old schoolboy, after a successful pig hunt: Jack: YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE BLOOD! - "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!" - Oh, it gets even more disturbing. The killing of the pig gets so intense, that the boys aren't thinking about food anymore: they're just ecstatic about holding so much power over a helpless creature, that they can do whatever they want to it with no repercussions. The whole thing reads like a gang-rape scene. You could replace the word "spear" with "penis" and the effect would be pretty much the same. They surrounded the covert but the sow got away with the sting of another spear in her flank. The trailing butts hindered her and the sharp, cross-cut points were a torment. She blundered into a tree, forcing a spear still deeper; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily by the drops of vivid blood [ ].Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her. This dreadful eruption from an unknown world made her frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror [ ]. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them [ ]. At last the immediacy of the kill subsided. The boys drew back, and Jack stood up, holding out his hands. "Look." He giggled and flecked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms. Then Jack grabbed Maurice and rubbed the stuff over his cheeks . . . "Right up her ass!" - And also note, as stated before, these are twelve-year-old boys. - Not surprisingly, assigning a novel to grade school students tends to be controversial among parents of grade-school children and their teachers, but even those who permit it tend to let the students skip over this scene because it's that gruesome. - The hazy descriptions of the physical Beast, in truth the dead pilot of a fighter that was shot down and killed while ejecting, his parachute dragging his body eerily about in the wind, in the dark. - The titular pig's head, eaten clean by flies and described to have the voice of them in the psyche-shriveling sequence when he speaks to Simon. - In addition to the above, the entire scene at the end of Chapter 8 with Simon and the Lord of the Flies. The whole thing reads as Satan himself conversing with a half-conscious twelve-year-old, who just might represent Jesus. "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!" said the head. For a moment or two, the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?" The laughter shivered again. - In one scene where Ralph is forced to flee, he encounters the skull of the pig. It is described as having been as white as the old conch used to be, and when Ralph breaks it, he finds the skull still sneering at him. This seemingly represents how the Lord of the Flies and all its evil have become the dominant force on the island. - Near the end of the book, when Ralph is in his hiding place and hears a savage coming. He first hopes that it might be Sam & Eric, who'll just pretend that they didn't see him, but as the figure emerges he comes face to face with Roger. Cue Ralph screaming and running for his life. - "Sharpened a stick at both ends." Remember the last time the boys did that, they used it to offer the sow's head as a sacrifice. It's implied that Ralph realized that his head was going to be cut off and put on a stake as a sacrifice for the Beast. - Jack, a 12-year-old boy, going from just a Control Freak who likes hunting all the way to becoming an Evil Overlord, complete with an Evil Tower of Ominousness, a sacrificial cult, bloody rituals, Praetorian Guard, torturing and killing opponents and a royal executioner. - The way that the boys ended up stranded is often overlooked in the discussion of the novel since their time on the island is the main focus. It has some truly horrifying implications, though. Lord of the Flies is ultimately a novel about the survivors of a global thermonuclear war. When they're rescued in the end, it's by a military ship. We never do find out what they came back home to (or if their homes still existed at all), but there's a good chance that it's not much better than what they left. Just the same acts of war and violence, but on a larger scale. - Sam and Eric's situation near the end is not pretty. Imagine your enemies outnumber you, you're attacked while sleeping, your friend's glasses are stolen and you go to retrieve them only to be kidnapped and tortured to join your enemies. They kill one friend and wound the other and you're forced to hunt and murder him. - The 1963 film adaptation expands on the world outside the island in a prologue told through still images. It is explained that England is going through a missile crisis and the plane was struck by lightning during a storm. The images are backed by drumbeats which grow more and more tense and unnerving.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LordOfTheFlies
Mage: The Ascension / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Just because it's a game about the power of belief and trying to make the world a better place doesn't mean that Mage: the Ascension is free from the horrors of the World of Darkness. - The Nephandi. Mages who worship evil. Literally. They outright worship beings and concepts they consider wrong and evil from their perspective being Card Carrying Villains played utterly straight. They aren't Nihilists because they firmly believe evil exists, they just side with it. Other than the fact that some Nephandi only enter the Caul due to crossing the Despair Event Horizon there's no other nuance to them. While they can occasionally delve into Narm due to how over the top they are, their are also plenty of cases where they end up genuinely disturbing. Also they've infiltrated every other Mage faction in the world. And they are actually winning the Ascension War. note : They actually lose in the official endings except one scenario that notes they can only win if humanity screws up. Of course this was before the setting was revived. - The Nephandi's worldview is basically that God Is Evil (or possibly Evil is God) and they want to be on the winning side. The Nephandi are creepily religious as most of them are genuinely devoted to the being/s they worship, they just worship beings of utter evil (or at least utter destruction) in opposition to every other belief system in existence. Their God is almost an Evil Counterpart to the entire concept of religious belief (the thing that gives a good chunk of Mages their worldview). - Special mention go to the Widderslainte, those born with corrupted avatars that previously belonged to Nephandi. They had no control over what their previous incarnation did, and they have no Past-Life Memories, yet because of someone else's choice they will spend their entire lives with a voice in their head that knows them and their weaknesses intimately, often appears in the guise of some particularly triggering Abusive Parent or the like, and is constantly pushing them towards following the same path of damnation as their predecessor. Their choices come down to a lifetime of resisting the overwhelming urge to become a monster, or surrendering to their impulses and suffering the same Fate Worse than Death their past incarnation brought upon themselves. - The Technocracy. The fact they aren't evil anymore (something the rulebook explicitly confirms) doesn't mean they aren't utterly terrifying. - While they don't do it nearly as much as Tradition propaganda implies, one of the Technocracy's tactics is to nab Tradition or Craft Mages, bring them back to a Technocrat facility and forcibly turn them into a Technocrat through brainwashing. The 'nicest' they'll do is lock the victim in a room and bombard them with endless pro-Technocrat propaganda but they will escalate to outright torture if needed. And if the victim doesn't break they have their brain extracted to be used as a computer system in a cyborg war machine. Every Technocrat facility has a dedicated brainwashing room. - Note that this is their method because the New World Order made them stop what they used to do, which was the Pogrom, in which they just out and out killed every Mage and nonhuman they got their hands on. - Technocracy Reloaded reveals how the Technocracy upholds the Masquerade in the age of digital media and cameras everywhere. They have a ton of bloggers and social media accounts that exist just to push disinformation about the supernatural and the Technocracy's actions. While the idea of a technomage bloggers writing excuses for supernatural events all day is a funny mental image, it also becomes pretty scary when one considers the sheer level of control of information and society involved. It also points out how, while it is very arguably for the best, the Technocracy are actively misleading Sleepers into thinking magic doesn't exist. Their entire organization is lying to humanity for the greater good.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MageTheAscension
Magic: The Gathering / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes All Will Be One. From a plane which is Gothic Horror personified, to a race of Eldritch Abominations that threaten to corrupt and erase whole planets, to The Virus that assimilates its victims via Body Horror, as well as having some of the most graphic and grotesque card art in trading card game history, to say that The Multiverse doesn't have its fair share of Nightmare Fuel would be a lie. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - Phyrexia in general is an excellent source of nightmares. Check out the art on Vivisection◊. Yes, that is indeed a human head split open and picked through while its owner is still alive. - The long list of atrocities Yawgmoth did during his five year exile consist of him using other races as lab rats for his plagues while making sure everyone involved with him gets genocided. To put several examples, he spread rabies onto the leaders of Cat People and got them to rip each other into pieces, created a plague that killed many elves in Argoth, took all of their healers hostage for ransom and shown up with sugar water and 12 dead healers after they paid their ransom, and spread another plague to the dwarves of Oryn Deeps that caused a worker's rebellion which overthrown the dwarven king. He has no reason to commit all of these atrocities save for studying the plagues on live subjects. - The Phyrexian recruitment video contains a mix of electronic moans and surreal, gruesome imagery. All Will Be One indeed. And the sequel video: Phyrexia won. Mirrodin is clinging just barely to life. The Father of Machines is coming. - Yawgmoth might be a monstrous lunatic who committed atrocities For the Evulz and created Phyrexian horrors to help him conquer Dominaria, but what's more nightmarish than him is a whole group of entities who create the same horrors but genuinely consider them as pure perfection and want to turn the entire multiverse into these monstrosities that they basically consider as "perfect lifeforms". Come New Phyrexia, and the latter is what the Praetors of the titular plane embody. First the full corrosion of (former) Mirrodin into "perfected" Phyrexian Horrors, then as soon as Bolas is sealed off they prepare the whole multiverse to the same fate. - The Phyrexians in the books are absolutely terrifying, having a disturbing fixation on perfection, and in some books, you see events through a Phyrexian's eyes. And in one case, you see a complete metamorphosis in perspective. Mind Rape through Body Horror and cybernetics eating your soul. There is the oh so subtle hinting in Planeswalker and Time Stream that anyone you know or love might just be a Sleeper who is waiting to call on the Negators. Their appearance and fighting style lends heavily toward implanted weapons and other nasty things. They look like mishmashes of mummies and magitek. And any Sleeper can call on them. And some of the said Sleepers don't even know they are one until a voice starts up in their head. In New Phyrexia, the Negators got worse. - As the stand out example of Negator Nightmare Fuel, there's the horrific "Negator Massacre" of Tolaria Academy - which resulted in the deaths of Barrin, Jhoira and Teferi before Karn time traveled back to prevent this. - The Phyrexians are on Kaldheim. - What's more, the recent story chapters give an insight into Vorinclex's...unique approach to Green's style of magic. He can regenerate by absorbing people into himself, growing even stronger in the process. Presumably he's on a multiverse-wide flesh-sampling tour, thus making Vorinclex MTG's version of The Thing from Another World. He also demonstrates the ability to infect someone with a "seed", and a greater amount of premeditation and planning than one might expect from the supposed Dumb Muscle Praetor. - The story ends on a rather ominous note. With the rest of Kaldheim distracted by the Doomskar, Vorinclex sneaks into the Tyrite Sanctum, mortally wounds Esika (or possibly worse), steals a sample of Tyrite, and heads back to his master (presumably Elesh Norn) on New Phyrexia via some form of interplanar gateway. The Bad Guy Wins this round, and this is just the first step of whatever the Phyrexians are planning... - At the end of Neon Dynasty, Tamiyo is compleated. Phyrexia has what it never had before: planeswalkers. To top it off, we finally get a glimpse into the mind of someone who has been compleated; Tamiyo is still very much herself, with only her allegiances changing. She even continues to care about her family more than anything in the multiverse; only now, Phyrexia is her family. And according to Jin-Gitaxias, she won't be the last. Based on what happened in Dominaria United, this is not a hollow boast. What makes this even worse is by all means, the Emperor and Kaito won against Jin-Gitaxias (the mastermind of the operation) and are preparing to deal with Tezzeret next. But it didn't matter because the Emperor's spell wore off at the wrong place and the wrong time, so he crashed the mech they are in and ran away with Tamiyo and Jin-Gitaxias. They basically claimed Tamiyo as a causality because of dumb luck. - * Dominaria United's story fully features Phyrexians under Sheoldred doing their best to homage The Thing (1982). Sleeper agents have existed in old Phyrexia, but here they're depicted as bursting into flesh and machinery as soon as they're exposed, separating into multiple parts and crawling all over. Worse, they can now infect people with the glistening oil, something their old counterparts could not do. - Relating to the above revealed art is some of the most gruesome outside of New Phyrexia itself. - Believe it or not, it gets worse. They compleated like they did with Tamiyo before. And turns out he was sent back to Karn's side as a Sleeper Agent. Ajani Goldmane* And then the Phyrexians got Karn back. - Elesh Norn looks quite enthusiastic upon Karn's return to New Phyrexia, and it's the first time we do get to see her smile. Unfortunately, said smile is described as "rows upon rows of teeth spread into a mocking rictus". Now imagine a flayed, woman-shaped Humanoid Abomination made out of exposed flesh and porcelain making the widest grin while looking at the captured steel giant and you get the picture. Worse is when this happens, Norn's enthusiasm is genuine, sorta like a daughter being excited at her dad's return. - A side story in The Brother's War has Tezzeret note that Bolas always has plans against Ajani every single time he makes a move, but he still fails to get him. Yet, New Phyrexia manages to make Ajani their second Planeswalker casuality without much of a sweat. Awful as Tezzeret is, he doesn't seem to be delighted about it. This alone tells us how insanely competent these guys are. - Nothing is safe from Phyrexia's grasp. In a true insult to Dominaria as a whole, the Weatherlight itself is compleated. The greatest symbol of Dominaria's power is in Phyrexian hands. - After seemingly vanishing for a decade after her defeat under the hands of Elesh Norn, Sheoldred was revealed to be still alive and is now loyal to Norn, but if one pays attention to her new artwork, she seems to have white porcelain armor and more exposed tendons not unlike the Grand Cenobite. Did she got captured and brainwashed by Norn to be used as an underling and a proxy to invade Dominaria? - The last two stories in the Brother's War set show that the Phyrexian menace on Dominaria is far from over even after Sheoldred was knocked back. First they are assaulted by an army worth of body horrors like men sewn to wolves or reduced to ribbons attached to black bars as flying troops... then what is heavily implied to be Norn's forces finally sent off-world from New Phyrexia bring in an organized army or porcelain and flesh ribbons they barely manage to defeat. - We learn why Tezzeret is working with the Phyrexians. With the Planar Bridge implanted in his body, he is slowly dying. He turned to Phyrexia in desperation for a new body made of darksteel, only to be betrayed. He knows that he is living on borrowed time as the power of the Bridge slowly tears him apart from within. Worse, the Phyrexians knew he cannot be compleated unlike Tamiyo and Ajani and is going to betray him, so instead of giving him the "friendly" option (as in Compleating him) they leave him to die. - Many assumed the Gatewatch had strong Plot Armor due to being the centerpiece of multiple storylines. Phyrexia: All Will Be One rips that plot armor away, with Jace and Nissa joining the ranks of the compleated. Anyone Can Die. - The process of compleating planeswalkers and the effects it has on their minds. Unlike most other creatures who suffer Phyrexia's touch, the personality of both compleated planeswalkers that we have seen so far remains uncannily familiar to how they were before, but twisted to serve Phyrexia. - Tamiyo still values her family, but her views have been distorted to view Phyrexia as her family. - Ajani's sorrow over being cast out of his pride was also exploited and twisted to serve Norn. His new compleated self rejoices in the sense of belonging that Phyrexia brings him. - Lukka loves the strength that his new body gives him and takes joy in being feared. He is also gleeful that he's become stronger than any of the monsters on his home plane, and that nothing can stop him. - The cinematic trailer for Phyrexia: All Will Be One gives us glimpses of Elesh Norn's throne room: an intricate structure of recomposed and calcified bodies, probably covered in the same white porcelain that grows on her own body. To make things worse, Elesh speaks not in Phyrexian but in English, without referring to anyone in particular (if you don't consider the already compleated planeswalkers, who are barely visible in a shot), making it seem like she's talking directly to you. - Elesh Norn's comments about the Compleated Nissa and Nahiri. There's something so wrong and so awful about this drivel, that it's absolutely unbelievable that it's for real and not just some veiled Bring It taunt. She's unironically offering them to join her in the "utopia" she envisions. Naturally, Kaito, Tyvar and Kaya can only react in offense. "Nahiri fought us, but she found peace, and a better way in the One," said Elesh Norn. "She and Nissa came from the same place, but they were never friends. Now they are sisters, united, finally on the same side in every way. They are One. You, too, can be One. Only yield, and it will be over quickly." - The previews for March of the Machine shows the extent of the Phyrexian assault. The reveals show at least seventeen planes note : Alara, Tarkir, Shandalar, New Capenna, Amonkhet, Kamigawa, Ixalan, Zendikar, Ikoria, Kaladesh, Eldraine, Theros, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ravnica, Lorwyn, and Mercadia. that have been subjected to some level of compleation. - The Phyrexians have targeted some of the most powerful beings on those planes and compleated them. Examples shown were Omnath, the Avatar of Zendikar's mana, Kolaghan, one of Tarkir's 5 Dragonlords, and Heliod, a god of Theros. - Compleated Vraska's assault of Ravnica. Her rampage is fueled by the memories of her abuse at the hands of the Azorius and their unjust blinding of any gorgons they had in captivity. So in 'justice' against the entire city, she commands her troops to gouge the eyes out of every creature they meet, and lead them to be compleated, wrecked eye sockets first. - Urabrask's fate during March of the Machine, which crosses over into Tear Jerker. He is captured, then drawn and quartered at Norn's feet, all his limbs torn off while he is still alive. The fact he's implied to have (barely) survived doesn't manage to make it much better. - The Innistrad block is based on gothic horror, and the artwork doesn't disappoint. Just consider the chilling feel of Village Cannibals and the very aptly named Creepy Doll. - Also from Innistrad—Sensory Deprivation. Plenty of Body Horror and Eye Scream involved. - Just like Village Cannibals, Army of the Damned is drawn from the perspective of you. - Claustrophobia shows a man buried alive, trying to claw his way out of his coffin. - Smile! - You ever get the feeling you're being...watched? - Hope you're not afraid of spiders. - Because just having regular Savage Wolves would have been too vanilla for a second trip into Innistrad R&D decided to give them Spikes of Doom. Oh goody... - What's scarier than an Undead Child or Creepy Twins? How about a combination of the two? - The Delver of Secrets was just a guy into bugs and science. Until he transformed into the Insectile Aberration. And unlike most double-sided cards, he can't turn back. "Unfortunately, all my test animals have died or escaped, so I shall be the final subject. I feel no fear. This is a momentous night." Laboratory notes, final entry - His story continues in the Shadows Over Innistrad block. Aberrant Researcher picks up from where we left him off - as a 3/2 human insect - as he transforms even further into something bigger and even less human. Docent of Perfection completes the saga, with the card creating wizard tokens - implying he abducted them - and its reverse side subjecting them to the same Body Horror he had experienced, making them the same as Insectile Aberration. And the icing on the horrifying cake? Docent of Perfection's reverse side, Final Iteration, is an Eldrazi Insect creature. Now we know the true nature of the secrets he uncovered. - Village Rites, assuming it's meant to also take place on Innistrad, implies the cannibals have since turned into something much, much worse... - In Drownyard Temple, Nahiri's magic is starting to get to Jace... - The way werewolves transform according to the Planeswalker's Guide for Innistrad (the article about Kessig): "The transformation process is harrowing for the lycanthrope and incredibly disturbing to any witnesses . The eyes change first, the whites darkening and the iris filling with color. The claws go next; the hands elongate, knifelike claws extend from the fingertips, and the thumb forms a claw back near the wrist. The muzzle thrusts forward out of the human's skull, and the teeth jut through the gums in sharp points. Bones crack as they rearrange. Marrow spills into the bloodstream as ribs and skull fracture and telescope. Thick, wiry fur pushes through the skin, often pushing out normal human hair. The tailbone elongates and becomes a shaggy wolf's tail. Metabolism speeds up, increasing blood flow, oxygen flow, and glandular production, creating cravings for protein and fat. Any clothing that was worn at the time of the change is generally torn to shreds and falls away. If a werewolf dies in beast form, it changes back to human form, a process called death reversion ." In addition, the Leeraug pack apparently specialized in killing children . Thankfully, they probably are gone or made into Wolfir after Avacyn returned, but still... - The Midnight Hunt trailer. While seeing the abusive orphanage owner being torn to shreds by the children he abused carries a certain Catharsis Factor, it doesn't change the fact that a werewolf managed to get into an orphanage, turn a bunch of innocent children into savage beasts, and got away scott free. The ending of the trailer has a bunch of children jump the owner and maul him like wolves. - The card Fleshtaker. It's a Serial Killer seemingly wearing the flesh of things it has killed... Seemingly, because the flavor text implies that it is not human at all. - What's even more frightening about Fleshtaker is that despite that, it's still listed as a human. Is it a cannibalistic serial killer? A victim of some kind of curse? A person whose soul is being manipulated to kill by an outside force? No one knows. - Midnight Hunt's story is the first to end on an outright Downer Ending since Amonkhet, which is appropriate considering the plane. The Harvesttide Festival, the first hope the people have had for months, is attacked by werewolves. The planeswalkers, cathars and witches present manage to fend them of, but only barely, and countless innocents die. Finally, when it looks like the ritual to bring back the sun will succeed, Olivia Voldaren shows up as a Diabolus ex Machina and steals the Moonsilver Key, seemingly For the Evulz, and kills the only witch who knows how the ritual is performed. The sun sets and, as far as anyone knows, it will never rise again. - It can be easy to forget in MTG that vampires are monsters: Sorin is an anti-hero, the vampires of Zendikar were valued allies against the Eldrazi, and even the Legion Of Dusk had a level of honor and a rigorous code they held to. Sorin's kin have no such redeeming qualities, and Crimson Vow really emphasizes just how hedonistic and without conscience Innistrad's vampires really are: they gleefully cause pain and suffering like it's a game, with no thought to the long-term consequences of their actions, and these impulses even extend to each other; Olivia's wedding sees vampires gleefully murder each other with as little care and thought as they do humans, and this is treated as par for the course. One aristocrat watches her long-time friend get murdered right in front of her, and barely feels anything at his death, while Olivia treats these "festivities" as delightful party games. - The Devouring House pits Strefan Maurer, a bloodline founder vampire, against an Eldritch Abomination. The Surreal Horror is pretty unsettling by itself, but seeing a human-killing predator on the receiving end shows how hostile to all life Innistrad is. - Eldrazi can be rather eerie. Particularly the biggest one - Emrakul, if you look at its art closely. It looks like a titanic mushroom or mold thing from Dali's nightmares with a nest of swarming tentacles at the bottom, but the creepiest thing is that some of those tentacles are actually hands and fingers, twisted into unspeakable shapes. - This gets worse when the mechanical aspects of what Emrakul actually does comes into play. The player who summons it gets an extra turn when they do so, which would imply that this thing showing up is a big enough event to distort time (its title, The Eons Torn, is not just a fancy nickname). Being put into the graveyard by anything (including regular combat) puts the entire graveyard into that player's deck... plus, it is unaffected by any spells that use colored mana, which covers about 95% of the cards ever published. So in-universe, it's a giant, mushroom-like Eldritch Abomination that is completely unaffected by almost everything that can be thrown at it, and if someone manages to muster enough forces and it finally does somehow die, the person who summoned it gains most of their spells back... and is perfectly capable of summoning it again. - The signature Eldrazi ability, Annihilator, is also this in the flavor it gives. Whenever an Eldrazi attacks, the defending player is forced to sacrifice at least two permanents. There are two particularly disturbing implications here. The first is that it bypasses indestructibility (by virtue of being a sacrifice effect), implying that the Eldrazi are powerful enough to annihilate even those who cannot be killed by conventional means. The other is that the defender (not the attacker) chooses what gets sacrificed. While it's necessary gameplay-wise to prevent the Eldrazi from being even more of a Game-Breaker than they already are, it's also a perfect illustration of The Chains of Commanding when facing such a cataclysmic threat. There is simply no possible way of surviving an Eldrazi attack without casualties, forcing the opponent to make a Sadistic Choice as to what forces are expendable and what has to be kept in reserve to stand even a shadow of a chance to claim victory. - While it's not exclusive to Eldrazi alone, they might be the best illustration of it: Planeswalkers (i.e. players) fight by summoning creatures through magic. Just take a moment to think about what kind of individual you would be in-universe if you're willing to summon a reality-destroying abomination to destroy your enemies. - In Zendikar's Last Stand, Ugin's words to Jace are shown to ring true when the Gatewatch bind the two Eldrazi titans Ulamog and Kozilek and pulled their larger firms into Zendikar. Suddenly, the two titans stretched so much that they literally filled the sky and merged with each other, tentacles stretched to the ground like tornadoes and it literally rained Eldrazi. One gets the feeling that our heroes aren't so much as pulling the two titans' forms into reality as they are pulling a massive entity by its appendages. Of course Chandra with the help of Nissa managed to destroy Ulamog and Kozilek by channeling Zendikar's mana into a fiery blast but, based on Ugin's reaction, the Gatewatch's victory may be temporary at best. - The Blight We Were Born For depicts the true power of Kozilek. We know he can distort thoughts and cause pure panic, but here, we see that it's capable of causing General Tazri's life to flash before her eyes... and it doesn't stop there. She sees a Bad Future where the Eldrazi win, the Gatewatch are dead, and she's been driven mad by Kozilek. Ulamog isn't anywhere on the plane, meaning either Kozilek killed him, or he has gone to another plane. When Gideon finally dies, Kozilek is described as making such a bizarre noise that Tazri can only describe it as laughter. For literally billions of years after that, she attempts to re-construct Zendikar to lure him back. Cosmic Horror doesn't begin to describe it. - We return to the nightmare fuel-laden land of Innistrad, but now for the opposite reasons. A Gaze Blank and Pitiless starts off innocently enough, with Avacyn finding a lost child. But something starts buzzing in the back of her mind and she tries to seek refuge from it. She starts to see what she believes that humans are just as bad as the monsters she was created to destroy. And with the help of Gisela and Bruna (Sigarda notably refuses), she starts to wipe out humanity with her fleet of angels to purify the land, starting with the village in the beginning of the story. - Chas Andres points out all the really subtle Body Horror in Shadows Over Innistrad. - The last we heard of Gisela and Bruna before Eldritch Moon was them joining Avacyn in her purge. The latest Uncharted Realms reveals their fate◊... "We are Emrakul!" - Narm-y as everyone merging Emrakul's name into their words is, the thought is genuinely creepy. All of these people have become little more than extensions of Emrakul and her mere presence is turning all life on Innistrad into her spawn. - Jace attempts to read Emrakul's mind. Cue Mind Rape: The enteral infinitythis world is mine. The absoluteI shall have all. The beginningI shall be all. The beingall are'mrakul. The end. The end. The end. - How does the story of Eldritch Moon end? Tamiyo, working with Nissa and Jace, sealed Emrakul in the moon. That's all fine and good, until Tamiyo tells Jace that she didn't have the power to do it herself; the only reason she was able to seal away Emrakul was because Emrakul herself gave her the strength to do so. As best we can discover about her motivation for doing so, it was either because she'd gotten tired of "playing" with them, or was disappointed that the people didn't embrace her as she expected them to. There is even an indication she was keeping her "word" with Jace to end the struggle if he beat her in chess. Either way, the giant Eldritch jellyfish capable of wiping out all of Innistrad LET herself be sealed... for reasons we can't decipher. If that isn't a Greater-Scope... SOMETHING to terrify everyone, it's impossible to know what is. But all we know is that Emrakul playing a much deeper game, beyond our scope of understanding. And her so-called "loss" likely isn't even an inconvenience. Emrakul: "I can do anything I want. Anything at all. Remember that. The only thing saving you is... I don't want anything." - In Zendikar Rising, Nahiri is trying to terraform Zendikar back to what it was before the Eldrazi. A noble goal, but Zendikar's life has adapted in the thousands of years the Eldrazi were imprisoned, and most of it would not survive such a drastic change. That's terrifying enough on its own, but the blight caused by the terraforming is vaguely reminiscent of Ulamog's wake... - The Writing on the Wall gives us a glimpse of what has happened to Amonkhet. Nicol Bolas didn't create the plane. He corrupted it, mostly killing its soul in the process, killing/banishing/something else three of the eight original gods while twisting the other five, and altering somehow the population that not even the gods remember what happened. The description of the event is chilling, and it's not even getting into what Nissa gets from communicating with the plane. "I protected the vessels to keep their souls alive and he... took them... He took them! Please, he took them all, corrupted them all, end my guilt, I could not protect them—!" - How he does it is also worthy of this page: Upon arriving on Amonkhet shortly post-Mending, while he's bleeding omnipotence and growing weaker by the second, Bolas immediately goes to work setting up. The Gods are the plane's primary protectors, and they're powered by faith, right? Step one, Bolas annihilates every single adult left on the plane, leaving only the faith of scared and panicked children, crippling the Gods in a single move. He then casually does away with three of them and corrupts the remaining five into his personal slaves. In the end, he'd slaughtered and enslaved the whole plane, Gods and mortals alike, in less than a day. - Maybe worse still: Nicol Bolas did not cause the Zombie Apocalypse that helps reinforce his Path of Inspiration. He merely took advantage of it. Amonkhet was dying before Bolas showed up. - Hour of Glory follows up on the above with a horrifying reveal: what Bolas did to the other three gods. He twisted them into nightmarish monstrosities whose apparent purpose was to slay their brethren during the Hours. Their cards are only named The ____ God, for Bolas stripped them of name and domain. All that's left are shells whose reason for being is to bring about the apocalypse on Amonkhet, with nothing left of the noble guardians they once were. The Scorpion God kills Rhonas without a word or any recognition of fighting its very brother, while the Locust God sends a swarm to devour the Hekma, inevitably dooming Naktamun's citizens to death at the hands of the undead and horrors wandering beyond its protection. The story also shows just how much even the five gods were twisted. Rhonas begins the story musing on the fake creation myth Bolas planted in his mind, with absolutely no doubt that it's how he was born. It's only right as the Scorpion God kills him that the illusions he's been living under for decades are broken and he realizes to his utter horror and despair that he and his siblings have been nothing but shepherds for Bolas, raising Amonkhet ready for the harvest of the Hours and that his killer is none other than the horribly twisted form of his brother god. - And then Favor adds the final cherry on top of the whole sundae of horror: One of the gods was Not Brainwashed. Bontu the Glorified joined Nicol Bolas of her own free will, and even helped maintain the magics that kept her siblings enslaved to the dragon-usurper. This crosses into Fridge Brilliance territory: Bontu is the god of ambition. - Hour of Devastation shows just how powerful Nicol Bolas is, post-Mending. He effortlessly mind fucks Jace, terrifies Liliana just by reminding her WHO he is, outclasses both Chandra and Nissa in their types of magic, then pierces through the once-impenetrable shield of Gideon with a single talon. Sure, pre-Mending, the Gatewatch would be just as equally powerful, but it's Bolas' experience and wisdom that gives him an even greater edge. - The art of the basic lands in Amonkhet block and Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, show Naktamun's transformation from a beautiful and thriving city into a grim and hostile desert, where there are zombies everywhere and if they don't kill you, locusts will. - War of the Spark trailer opens and ends on a lovely close-up of Liliana screaming in anger and pain alike as she is being burned alive from the inside and rest of the trailer is telling the viewer how we got there. After seeing a young girl and her brother, very much like her and Josu before his death, trying to get away from the Eternals destroying Ravanica, only to be crushed to death by falling boulders she finally turns on Bolas. And the dragon in response makes tattoos symbolizing her contract ignite and start burning her to cinders. It's also implied what really pushed her over the edge was Bolas telepathically ordering her to raise the children as zombies. On top of that, we have Deck Fayden having his soul and/or Spark sucked out and sent to Bolas as a wisp. There are dozens of such wisps flying through the sky constantly, implying a huge number of Planeswalkers, likely including many beloved characters, is just being murdered left and right. - The early card art released shows something truly horrifying: Bolas has Eternalized the slain gods of Amonkhet, and brought them to Ravnica with him. The reason he did it? To rub salt in the wound of the Gatewatchs failure to save Amonkhet. - The Elderspell. The Eternals may have been fearsome, but they were still little more than zombies with fancy armor. Then, they suddenly gain the power to drain Planeswalkers of their sparks with a single touch. And to make things worse, there is no escape. Bolas has used the Immortal Sun to cut of all planeswalking away from Ravnica. The planeswalkers are hunted like animals. Of course, why the hell would it come without a nice and juicy chunk of Body Horror? After a spark is harvested by Eternals, the Planeswalker's body loses all of its liquids and is left as a dry and lifeless husk. - Grave Titan◊. A walking Zombie Apocalypse. Animated corpses crawl out of his chest. The Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 promotional art◊ is particularly chilling. - Even better; in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014, there is a new feature that makes the art of some card have little effect on them when you zoom in (this works better than it reads). Grave Titan's unliving zombie-innards wiggle around to a horrifying effect. - Grave Titan is NOT a zombie himself. Whatever the hell it is, note : A giant. it is completely alive yet continuously produces undead corpses. - Tivadar's Crusade shows a goblin strung up and stretched out on some kind of battle standard, very clearly disemboweled and its guts hanging out. Even if Tivadar of Thorn himself has a fanatical hatred of goblins, this is still gruesome to look at. - From the magic 2012 expansion; "Deathmark" Is very subtle but full of Eye Scream. One can only imagine what horror's would make your very pupil leak out of your eye. - The 2012 Core Set edition of Distress covers its share of creepiness as well. - Brain Maggot. If the name of the card already gives you an uneasy feeling, do not click the link. Seriously, don't look at that picture if you get squicked easily. - The full version of the Theros Block animations, with such gems such as ghastly appearances of Karn, Elesh Norn, Koth, and Daxos and the implication that Elspeth is now a Returned. - At a glance you'd wonder why Dandân has the Fish creature type when all you see are boats. Then you notice what's below the water's surface... - Among the Judge Promo cards for 2020 is a reprint of Demonic Tutor with new art. The image and the flavor text alone make this card very unnerving, but it gets worse the more you look at it. Note the decapitated teddy bear in the background, or the fact that there's some black liquid coming out of the doll's eyes. - Commander Legends gives us a glimpse of the Abomination of Llanowar, a pants-wettingly terrifying Undead Abomination made up of numerous unfortunate elves fused together through uncontrolled necromancy... not all of whom are actually dead. - The art for Darkness is pretty grotesque in itself (essentially xenomorphs with eyes, and one of them is staring at you and grinning) but to make it worse, the context kind of implies that these things didn't look like that before the spell was cast. Is the one in the foreground dripping slime, or is it melting? - The art for Kyodai◊. While she is benevolent, her body composed entirely of human arms and faces is still deeply unnerving. - New Capenna's Cut The Profits depicts a person being butchered and converted into gold. - Pretty much the majority of The Seer's Parables (except a few sections), which illustrates how lovecraftian Shadowmoor is. "It burns How it burns." - Crovax. He's a vampire who fell in love with an artificially created angel. He joined the Weatherlight crew to try and find said angel, who had kidnapped his parents and ends up killing her, setting off the madness he has up to this point suppressed. He ends up taking over the hellhole that is Rath but not before killing another Weatherlight crew member (Mirri) and breaking Ertai utterly. When Tsabo Tavoc encounters him after the Overlay, she finds him having a tea party with the skeletons of his dead parents; he's even providing voices for them, talking about how they would have let him kill them a long time ago if they knew what he would become. Oh yeah, he ends up tearing her to pieces and eating her, just so no one else can gain her power/intelligence/etc. He has an organ that uses living creatures as the pipes, just in case the rest wasn't bad enough. While it was suggested that he was redeemed after he died, it doesn't seem like he really deserved it. - He was a good guy in the alternate timeline presented in Planar Chaos, but that required Mirri to inherit the vampirism and insanity that made him the monster he was. Some of the flavor texts suggest that she was actually worse than he was; we do know for sure that she exterminated the Mogg goblins, and she corrupted the Kor to fill their place. Fun times . . . - The Planeswalker Ashiok embodies Nightmare Fuel both in and out of universe. Ashiok is essentially a Humanoid Abomination, a grey-skinned something with a pair of horns and a cloud of manifest nightmare magic where the upper half of Ashiok's head should be and an obsession with causing fear. It's as if a Cenobite joined the Sinestro Corps. - And to make matters worse, Ashiok's summoned nightmares seem to be utterly indestructible. They will kill you in gruesome ways, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. - Turns out they're also aware of the Phyrexians. Imagine the oil as Ashiok's plaything. The potential for new horrors is limitless. - The Garden Of Flesh is full of Nightmare Fuel, literally. Have you ever wondered what a Phyrexian, themselves the living embodiment of Nightmare Fuel in the Magic Multiverse would have nightmares about? Ashiok did, and just barely lived to tell the tale. - Born of the Gods gives us the Forlorn Pseudamma, a Returned (Theros' equivalent to zombies) that creates zombie tokens. It's heavily implied by the art and the flavor text that it makes its zombie minions out of kidnapped children. "More children taken. This is an evil we will track without mercy." - Anthousa of Setessa - "Implied" is an understatement. On the Forlorn Pseudamma card's art◊, you can see the Returned leading two children (who seem to have no face) by the hands. On the official art of the zombie tokens, you can see two withered silhouettes wearing golden masks... and the exact same clothing as the two children. - If you want to make the situation worse, consider exactly what the Returned are. Lost souls escaping from the Theros' equivalent of Hades to return to the world of the living... at the price of losing their face and being able to create long-term memories. They retain the abilities and skills they once had, but are unable to create a new identity or relationships. They are poor shades looking for a new life, but suffer a Fate Worse than Death instead. Daxos is suffering from this fate. - Nissa's origin story. As an animist, she can feel the evil of the Eldrazi buried under Zendikar, gnawing away at the world. She sets out hoping to confront and destroy the evil, but just getting a good look at the Eldrazi is enough to defeat her. The psychic blast ignites her spark, and she's thrown across the Multiverse to Lorwyn. Lorwyn just hours away from becoming Shadowmoor. The evil in this land was not far under the surface. It was bubbling up, ready to release; a thousand shadowy spiders had been growing and now were chewing through their silken egg casings. The Great Aurora brings the night as Death reveals its door shadows fast obscure the light unleashing Shadowmoor. - Heliod may be the worst of the Theran gods, but, as the Omen cycle shows, they are all selfish, entitled children. Each card's flavor text describes the gods' ideal world, and all of them are different flavors of Crapsack World. - One of the cards in Modern Horizons shows us some very ominous details about what might happen to Ixalan. Sun Empire priests thought they were digging a well. What they tapped was something different entirely. - Epoch Engine details the story of Kotori and the mecha Shorikai. Who turns out to be a very eldritch reality bending dark kami fused to a machine. - Contract Breaker has some pretty potent Fridge Horror: the Brokers, a faction specialised in demonic contracts, not only can magically bind people to pledges but use magic to erase the memories that these contracts have been made in the first place.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicTheGathering
Magnum Force / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes A soon-to-be Asshole Victim murders a prostitute by force feeding her a bottle of Drano. The fact that this inspired the real-life murder of three people makes it even worse. A drug dealer's mistress gets shot twice during one of the vigilante executions, but isn't killed outright and is still screaming as she falls to her death twenty stories below. Harry's confrontation with the remaining vigilante cops has some chilling Ax-Crazy dialogue and ominous cinematography. Harry: You "heroes" killed a dozen people this week. What are you going to do next week? Davis: (flatly) Kill a dozen more.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagnumForce
Lost in Space / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - "There Were Giants in The Earth", while the giant pea pods seemed humorous looking at first. The Jump Scare caused from the things attacking the Robinson's after Dr. Smith cut one open was definitely not funny. - We're not shown anything, but Hapgood's description in "Welcome Stranger" of alien insects mutating and attempting to eat up his ship. Simply because of his failing to perform the standard decontamination procedure certainly sounds terrifying. - Near the beginning of "My Friend, Mr. Nobody". Penny being lured into a cave by a mysterious voice that echos her words. The echo seems harmless enough at first, even entertaining. However, once the voice starts speaking in a rather disjointed manner. The situation becomes frightening rather quickly. - Later, Mr. Smith attempting to trick Penny by pretending to be Mr. Nobody comes across as rather creepy. Penny: Mr. Nobody, please answer me! Mr. Smith: ...What shall I say, my dear? - The Mr. Nobody's rage after Penny got injured thanks to an accidental explosion caused by Mr. Smith. Penny was only unconscious, but he misunderstood and thought she was dead. Which caused him to cause earthquakes, summons storms and basically tear the planet apart to punish the rest of the Robinsons. Fortunately, Penny recovers in time to stop him from harming anyone. Mr. Nobody: You hurt Penny! I will destroy you! - The Anti-Aliens from "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension". Who are not at all uncomfortable with abducting and lobotomizing those they consider "inferior" life-forms. - In "Oasis", Dr. Smith grows to giant size thanks to some alien fruit he ate. It doesn't take him very long to become mad with power as a result. - In "Wish Upon a Star", while out on his own during the night. Dr. Smith encounters a rather bizarre manta ray-like creature that can fly. Which appears to have a sinister looking humanoid face on its body, come flying at him. - Everything about the Duplicate!Judy in "Attack of the Monster Plants". - In the two-parter episode "The Keeper", the titular "Keeper" is an extremely frightening man. He has a cold and detached attitude about him. All while looking down upon the Robinsons as lower lifeforms. When he contacts his superior, he openly expresses the idea of kidnapping Penny and Will for his interplanetary zoo. It's rather creepy how neither the Keeper nor his superior have any qualms about taking the children whatsoever. - The Keepers' first attempt to ensnare Will and Penny. By approaching them when they are alone and offering them a chance to see all the animals in his collection. Even summoning an adorable pony-like animal for them. The whole situation is extremely unsettling. - The detached way Will and Penny speak, once under the Keeper's control. Keeper: I see you changed your minds about leaving. Will: We're sorry sir, we really want to stay with you. Penny: For always Mr. Keeper... always. - While seemingly harmless at first, the seance Dr. Smith and Penny preform in "Ghost in Space" quickly becomes genuinely frightening. First with native plants flyting through the air, then Smith's own Wiji board flying off. - The Robot's description of the "spirit", as it's trashing the Robinsons garden. Robot: Invisible, indestructible, irresistible! Dr. Smith: You can do better than that, you ninny! Robot: Negative. Computers inadequate for further information. - In "War of the Robots", the Robot's fear of the Robotoid. Even going so far as to sneak off in the middle of the night in an attempt to destroy it. Which only acts as foreshadowing to just how dangerous the Robotoid actually is. - In "The Magic Mirror", the strange and creepy world Penny finds herself in when Debbie shoves her into the mirror. - The alien "boy", who first introduces himself to Penny by giggling eerily from the shadows. He also seems to have very little empathy towards others. - While not shown, the fact that trade fair mentioned in "The Space Trader" has a market for slave trading. - "The Time Merchant", in which John signs away 5 years of his life in a contract with the titular time merchant. - How about the time merchant explaining that the faster a person moves, the more time they use up as a result? Think about that for a second. You could be burning up years of your time simply by being in a hurry to get something done faster.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LostInSpace
Maken-ki! / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Or the scene in chapter 57, where Takeru becomes so enraged that he \|\|beats Gouken to death\|\|; not caring that he was possessed, or that the act was futile. All played horrifically straight. The scene where \|\|Takeru Yamato\|\| threatens to kill \|\|Yuuka\|\| is easily the worst one yet, due to the frightening imagery and Tesshin describing the dark Element surrounding them as the air becoming "heavy". The most terrifying part being, he and \|\|Yuuka\|\| both knew she couldn't escape him, despite her speed. All it took was a single "step" for him to close the distance between them — while walking towards her! If Tesshin hadn't conceded and accepted his terms, she'd be dead. \|\| Takeru Yamato\|\|:(at Tesshin) "I am going to kill you, then I'll play with that girl's life. It won't even serve as a match."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MakenKi
Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Signum's defeat by Cypha. The result... well, is not pretty. - Lily's flashback when she becomes a guinea pig for some Eclipse Virus experiments, prior to her meeting with Thoma and friends. This includes witnessing people die upon touching her. - Thoma's time on the Huckebein Warship. He ends up learning all the horrors of the Eclipse from the Fortis and is now aware of what he will eventually turn into, is caught in the crossfire between the Huckebein and Section Six and triggers the Divide Zero, and his Eclipse symptoms take a turn for the worst. So what does he decide to do? He comes to conclusion that he has become a monster and opts that he would end his life instead of taking lives. He says this in front of Subaru before leaping off the ship. Keep in mind it is implied Thoma is only two years older than Vivio note : Actually three years older. Note that ViVid set two years before Force, and Vivio is ten years old. So that means Thoma is 13 years old, by the time of ViVid(and one years older than Einhart, if you counting her cameo in Chapter 17). - In Chapter 29, we learned that \|\|Hades Vandein is the Not-So-Harmless Villain\|\|. What did he do next after he freed himself from Curren's spell? \|\|He beat the shit out an exhausted Veyron and took Vey's heart while it was still beating\|\|. All with a cheerful smile on his face before doing it. - The Eclipse Virus in general. This is one of the biggest reasons why this series so dark. When a mage or ordinary human being comes in contact with Eclipse infected person, they become an Eclipse Driver. The infected is granted with high level regeneration, can switch vision into an HUD-like manner to see everything easily, and of course, viralizing. The side effect however, is that the infected person slowly but surely becomes something inhuman, either by altering or taking away the infected personality. Also, the infected become more hungry and thirsty for blood. If the infected person cannot adapt to the Eclipse Virus or enjoys the power a little too much, they become nothing but a lump of flesh. This was even an fear for Subaru when she found out that Thoma is infected with this very same virus and was concerned at the possibility he would end up like the Hückebein. This is arguably the thing in entire Nanoha franchise. most disturbing	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalRecordLyricalNanohaForce
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Episode 18. Vivio is Strapped to an Operating Table, feebly struggles, and screams for Nanoha as Scaglietti talks about how she's going to be his masterpiece. And, as Quattro points out, Vivio knows exactly what they're planning to do to her. As it cuts away to outside the room, we hear Vivio scream "Mama!" one last time before the episode ends. The end of episode 19, when Vivio is powering the Saint's Cradle. Even worse, Nanoha is watching the whole thing via broadcast and can't do anything about it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Episode 8, Commander Lindy and Chrono's explanation of the true nature of the Lost Logia's. Lost Logia like the Jewel Seeds are dangerous artifacts of incredible power. Created in the ancient past by a lost civilization that destroyed itself, causing a cross-dimensional accident that brought about much suffering to many other worlds as well. Lindy: Within the dimensional universe, there are many, many worlds. Each world born onto its own, unique. On rare occasions, worlds are born that evolve too much too quickly. When the pressure of that evolution becomes too great. They tend to destroy themselves through technology and science. What's left in the aftermath are dangerous legacies of the lost worlds' technology. - Chrono adding that some Lost Logia have the power to not only destroy planets, but also the entire universe...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha
Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Dungeons. To ordinary people in the Magi universe, dungeons are Eldritch Locationsof doom that hold nothing but death. Even after Sinbad showed that success was possible, thousands (and counting!) of people have met their maker just by stepping foot inside. At least most people get a choice of whether or not they want to attempt a dungeon. Zagan's dungeon, however, forcibly pulls in anyone who wanders near. And then turns them into trees, as mentioned below, which become sustenancefor the dungeon monsters. While mainly tragic, Hakuryuu's past is also horrifying. \|\|Watching his own brothers die horribly in front of him, with Hakuyuu wounding himself to cover Hakuryuu in his blood to shield the latter from the fire, and learning his own mother was responsible?\|\| That's a very pleasant memory. And even if it had his personality worsen and worsen, you can understand what made Hakuryuu so vengeful in the first place. Jamil's gleeful expression as he tortures his slaves is certainly horrifying and comes across as a series of Moral Event Horizons for him. The presence of slavery itself. In Magi, slavery is rampant. Though there do not seem to be major racial undertones in slavery other than the attempt at enslaving the Kouga girls and the attitude toward Fanalis, one can be forced into servitude for as little as outstanding debt, as in the case of Alibaba. Not only that, the only protagonist who really shows an aversion and hatred of slavery is Morgiana. Not even Alibaba or Aladdin cared much about the issue until they were influenced by her. To be fair, at first, Aladdin just didn't understand slavery. He was the one who tried to free Morgiana in the first place. What makes this even more horrifying is that the real ancient world wasn't any better. Sinbad no Bouken has an entire arc discussing slavery as an industry. Some are picked out and treated well and elevated to notable positions or otherwise "invested in" to make specialized workers, others are moved through as quickly as possible for "general sale." Note that this includes children. The author did her research on this to a disturbing degree. Fatima lowering the young and sick Nadja into the pit of ravenous hyenas. Entai's tranformation into a demonic elephant-like creature with three trunks is particularly grotesque. Zaynab's Red Mist, which had the power of influencing people's emotions to the point of hallucination and debilitating anger. When \|\|Morgiana\|\| activates \|\|her\|\| household vessel for the first time when defending the others from Zagan, \|\|she\|\| is quite powerful and quickly uses up \|\|her\|\| Magoi. While \|\|she's\|\| having an Imagine Spot about how useful this power is in helping everyone and how useful \|\|she herself\|\| has become to the party, \|\|her\|\| body is actually falling apart.It's notpretty.◊ The massacre of the Musta'sim Royal Family. Young!Dunya screaming in terror when the soldiers find her and Isaac trying to escape. The murder of \|\|Isaac\|\|, whose head was skewered through by swords. Hakuryuu's arm falling off after Ithnan possesses him. Watching Alibaba fall into depravity in episode 24 of the anime, turning into a fully realized Dark Djinn in the process. Al-Thamen's ultimate goal of breaking fate, which would result in anger, hatred, poverty, famine, civil strife, social upheaval, war, and other atrocities for all of humanity. Alibaba's first fight in the Raem coliseum. He has his arm broken by a monstrous ape while the crowd cheers for it to eat him, and then to kill him. \|\| Hakuryuu's\|\| face when he speaks to his sister about all the hatred in the world. And \|\|his mother\|\| is just as creepy when they fight. Chapter 211: The creepy unfocused eyes that \|\|Kougyoku displays when she is being controlled by Sinbad's Djinn Zepar. In the next chapter, we see how we get a visual representation of what Zepar actually does to his victims.\|\| \|\| Sinbad's casual indifference at using Kougyoku as a unwitting spy against her family. When Alibaba threatens to tell her about what Sinbad is doing, Sinbad asks him what such a reveal would do to such an innocent person, revealing that he is fully aware of how horrible a thing it is he is doing.\|\| Chapter 229: Ever seen what a completely burnt body looks like? \|\|Try imagining little Tess' body after Elder David's attack. His last words are pleading his mother to save him as she's holding his body. Not to mention Ithnan'sreaction to finding what's left of Setta after the attack; nothing but his blood-stained staff.\|\| In Chapter 230, David explains in gory detail what he did to \|\|Setta.\|\| Chapter 246: We see that having control over two Djinn enables Hakuryuu to do. \|\|He uses Belial to Mind Rape the soldiers with illusions until it becomes engraved on their mind and then uses plant circuits to push their bodies to the limit as mad bersekers.\|\| And then we learn that just like Kougyoku, \|\|Hakuryuu was subjected to the effects of a secondary Djinn effect that causes him intense pain as long as he plans to kill his mother or the others, trying to forcibly restrain him. Kouen put that on him the moment after his father died so that he wouldn't try and act on it, which is why he never saw him as a threat.\|\| Chapter 250: Hakuryuu \|\|beheads his mother.\|\| And that's just the start. \|\|He and Judar reveal just how far into depravity they've sunk, with Judar noting that Hakuryuu shifting his wrath to his own cousin, Ren Kouen, is only the beginning, hinting that the two of them very well may just end up killing everyone.\|\| Fully confirmed in Chapter 254 where Hakuryuu states that anyone who has an opinion or thought different from his own is his enemy. Alibaba is disgusted and tells Hakuryuu that two people who completely think the same way don't exist, no matter how close they may be. Chapter 257: Belial's metal vessel power is a scythe that cuts off all sensation in the body part it cuts, effectively "transporting" it to death. Hakuryuu's imagining of it is the sight of people strapped to the ground with the Grim Reaper looking down at them, about to let go of a guillotine blade. In the following two chapters, we get to see Belial's Extreme Magic. It's a huge decaying dragon whose roar does the same thing as the scythe (but gradually) to anyone caught within its range. Then, \|\|Alibaba keeps going anyway and clashes with Hakuryuu, burning both of his legs off. Yet, Hakuryuu starts laughing and saying he won... Because Alibaba got hit with Belial's scythe on his entire body, starting from the head. The result? Alibaba became an Empty Shell. And even Hakuryuu and Belial themselves don't know where they transported his spirit to, effectively killing him.\|\| Koumei's strategy for dismantling \|\|Hakuryuu's\|\| magically enhanced and enraged forces is ghoulishly effective. It involves encircling them, sinking the ground around them, pouring oil, and setting it all on fire. The artist does not skimp on the horror of soldiers burning to death. Even though the strategy was to basically to put the majority of the forces in a massive sauna and sweat all the fight out of them without hurting them permanently, there was still collateral damage. Chapter 276: The Reveal that Sinbad, one of the most if not the most powerful man in the world, \|\|is being influenced by the will of Il Ilah. Who turns out to be David, revealing that his scheme to merge with the mindless lump of power that was Il Ilah was successful.\|\| Kouen eventually reveals who he learned his philosophy of eliminating war and strife in the world through expanding the Kou empire to the entire world: \|\|through Hakuryuu's father and brothers\|\|. This moment is after a young Kouen has a near complete mental breakdown encountering the scene of a massacre, where the decaying bodies of the dead were left impaled on and arranged around a massive tree - in what is likely a reference to the Tree of the Dead in 300. That scene looks like it would belong more in a Junji Ito work than a shounen manga like this. In Chapter 282, \|\|Arba has survived and found a new vessel through Hakuei. And Arba seems to plan on following Sinbad now knowing that Sinbad is David's vessel...\|\| Chapter 295 reveals the Kou Empire had been working on an undead army to invade Reim with. Chapter 306 shows us \|\|Arba's been using the Kou Imperial Line as a way to remain in the current times. Essentially, she uses the children she gives birth to as vessels to contain herself, and she's been doing this a long time. Forget the incest tones it gives off, she's been using the family line as meat puppets long before Gyokuen and Hakuei. It gets worse as she reveals her "interest" in Sinbad doesn't just stop itself at being his "partner"\|\|. 309... Good lord. \|\|Arba has turned into Nightmare Fuel incarnate. She gets burned by Yunan and having her skin badly scarred. Then she has her HEAD smashed open revealing a gory pile of flesh. Unfortunately this did NOT kill Arba as she quickly regenerates despite all of that damage.\|\| The entirety of the mission to infiltrate the Sacred Palace. You wouldn't think \|\|Ugo\|\| was capable of giving you the heebie-jeebies, but here we are: \|\| Sinbad had been trying to get past the divine security and lost a couple of limbs, even with his Djinn equips. But when he has the chance to get past Ugo, all he does is squish him like a bug with a damn unsettling look of genuine pity plastered onto his face. Not one to give up, Sinbad keeps trying to reach the Palace, only to burn up his body into char.\|\| That's not even the worst of it. \|\|When Arba's brought up to the Sacred Palace, Ugo shows her that her beloved Il-Illah is in a fish tank along with David. All of that work, all of that sacrifice and bloodshed, and her "father" is nothing but a pet to him.\|\| It just ends up showing just how insignificant a powerful man like \|\|Sinbad\|\| is in comparison to \|\|the literal God of the Universe\|\|. Even if he's the "protagonist" of the narrative, he can't expect to try and fight God and win. \|\| After Arba calls Ugo out on acting like a god, he gives her one hell of a Nightmare Face. And it doesn't stop there— Arba's completely unable to move her limbs, and Ugo reveals, quite creepily, that he's brought her in to alleviate his eons and eons of loneliness. Poor guy's about to go insane without Aladdin.\|\| Chapter 327, \|\|theeffects of having SINBAD as the top god is starting to show...\|\| and it´s horrifying. Chapter 329 : Sinbad has gone insane with power and is preparing to sacrifice everyone to remake the world anew. You thought things were bad last chapter? Sinbad has brainwashed the ENTIRE world into following through with his plan: mass suicide. Sinbad is going to sacrifice the entire world and they are all happily going along with it. None of them are aware they've been brain washed. ...That is until Chapter 350, where the crew gets to see how the rest of the world is taking this. Drakon and his family are expecting to be returned to the Rukh, but upon closer inspection, Drakon is trembling with fear and crying awaiting his impending death. Also, the whole sequence of returning to the Rukh is terrifying. Angel-like beings come down from the heavens with their weapons and tear apart the land in swift strikes, deleting them out of existence while all sentient beings watch on and can't react, because their subconscious wills them to find it a good thing. It begins to have the trappings of a Cosmic Horror Story.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagiLabyrinthOfMagic
Negima! Magister Negi Magi / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes From the first anime's first episode: After Nodoka's (alarming) response to the obviously perverted doujin Haruna shows her, Yue pulls up this trope by name. Yue: Haruna, enough. She'll have nightmares. - Remember that Nodoka was androphobic at that point.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MahouSenseiNegima
Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - While bloodbending was only casually revealed in one episode of the parent series, there are a few characters in this one willing to use it. - When a moonspelled Zac runs out of patience with Lyla's attempts to get him back to his senses, he responds by telekinetically chucking her away from him. - Nixie uses volume reduction on Sirena's vocal cords, causing her to scream loud enough to shatter all the glass in the café. - Ondina goes right for the throat when Zac refuses to listen to her and Mimmi, noticeably causing him pain. One can't blame him for responding in kind. - Erik does the worst, as he uses a Psychic Strangle on Cam when the latter rejects his offer of power. Only Carly's intervention saves him, and Erik's Death Glare indicates if she had done anything other than splash him, he would have done the same to her. - The entire purpose of the \|\|Merman Chamber.\|\| It \|\|drains the opposing merperson race - mermaids - of their magic and powers.\|\| Which doesn't exactly sound as frightening as it seems, but \|\|draining the magic out of a mermaid is essentially equivalent to killing one.\|\| - To add to this, the trident stone. In the episode aptly titled 'The Trident Stone', after \|\|touching the stone for just a few seconds, Mimmi explains the feeling she received from it as 'all the life being sucked out of me".\|\| - Once Erik \|\|activates the Merman Chamber, Sirena, Ondina, Mimmi, and Rita immediately fall down the ground, groaning and seemingly in pain. This is the moment that Erik realizes the stone isn't strengthening their powers, it's killing them and Erik could essentially be considered a murderer.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MakoMermaidsAnH2OAdventure
Maleficent / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Being a movie about the origins of one of the most frightening and sinister Disney villains ever, it's clear that it has a fair share of dark and terrifying moments. Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages. All spoilers are unmarked. Stefan's betrayal. He starts off by pretending to be looking out for Maleficent by warning her about the king's plans to have her killed, lulling her into a false sense of security so he can drug and kill her. Then, when she's unconscious and at his mercy, he decides to rip off her wings instead so he can present them as a trophy and still think of himself as a "nice guy." We see Maleficent wake up in pain so excruciating she can hardly articulate a scream, let alone walk. Word of God has confirmed that this is indeed a rape metaphor, which amps the horror up to eleven. Also, what he does to King Henry in the novelization counts. After Henry laughs in Stefan's face for thinking a worthless servant like him could become king and saying he doesn't even know his name... Stefan snaps, picks up a pillow and suffocates Henry while snarling "I'm called Stefan." Maleficent's Skyward Scream of rage when she discovers the motivation behind Stefan's betrayal. A lance of scarily familiar, hellish green flame pierces the clouds. The sentence she utters right before it just reeks of fury. Maleficent: He did this to me so he could beKING?! The scene where the soldiers try to burn down the thorn wall, but it fights back. While still on fire, including throwing at least one soldier up in the air and to his death. They were rightfully terrified when they reported back to King Stefan. There's another scene where the soldiers again try to attack the Moors. Maleficent responds by using Mind over Matter to pick them up, spin them around like they were in a tornado, slam them together, and then send them flying off into the distance. Right before that, Diaval (in the form of a giant wolf easily as big as they are) herds them towards her by howling just so, so it sounds like wolves are coming from all directions, doing a Jump Scare, and then chasing them when they run with what, to them, must have seemed like an unnatural intelligence. The poor soldiers were rightly terrified. King Stefan's Adaptational Villainy. A ranting, raving psychopath who's willing to brutally murder hundreds and let the whole world burn just to find a cure for Aurora's curse. Not to mention how quickly he's willing to turn on his friends and loved ones if it means getting himself more power. He's even worse in the novelization. Not only does he murder the true king, but he threatens the other nobles into going along with it, flat-out daring them to deny him the crown when they all heard the king promise the throne to the man who killed Maleficent. He's not even sweet as a child: the novelization straight out says that, though Maleficent dropped the jewel he gave her back into the stream, he kept another in his pocket. The first king is no angel, either. If anything, what we see of him in the film proper and the deleted scenes is actually worse than Stefan: he views everyone, even his family members, as pieces to be sacrificed on a chessboard. His advice to Stefan in that regard could be argued as indirectly responsible for Stefan's Start of Darkness. Maleficent casting a sleeping spell on Aurora from the "Dream" trailer. Rather than just sinking to the ground, Aurora's unconscious body floats horizontally in mid-air and follows Maleficent as she walks. It's an incredibly creepy image. ...Which becomes deliberately hilarious Nightmare Retardant when the same thing happens to Philip later on. It looks like Diaval is carrying around a parade float. The entire Christening scene is Nightmare Fuel. Maleficent may be the hero of the story but that does NOT mean this scene loses it's fear factor. Her doing this out of pure anger and rage just adds to it. She could've used the spell on Stefan or his wife.... but instead CHOSE A CHILD WHO BARELY UNDERSTANDS WHAT'S HAPPENING. You can tell even the baby's thinking: Someone get this strange woman away from me! Also from the "Dream" trailer, Lana Del Rey's haunting rendition of "Once Upon a Dream", which manages to show us a creepily awesome preview of how the film will look like. Maleficent's attempt to revoke the curse from Aurora, who at the time is asleep in her room. Her good, gold-colored magic reaches out to the girl... And the curse's green magic comes out of Aurora's body and blocks her good magic. No matter how hard Maleficent tries, the curse is able to fully repel her magic, and disembodied voices whisper over and over again to Maleficent how the curse will remain with Aurora forever. The entire scene is very creepy. So, the day comes and goes, and it actually looks like Aurora not going to fall victim to the curse, right? Wrong. Maleficent's curse actively seizes control of Aurora's body and forces her to walk to the dungeon, prick her finger, and fall into her coma. The zombie-like way she moves and dead look in her eyes is scary enough, but then you notice how the curse is glowing green beneath her skin... There's also a brief shot where her eyes glow green. In general, the idea that the curse is like a parasite within Aurora's body is genuinely unsettling. During that entire scene? The curse is whispering, over and over, Aurora's name and what is going to happen to her. Very eerie. The curse itself. After Maleficent casts it, it seems to become an entity of its own. When Maleficent tries to revoke it, numerous whispering voices remind her how she herself specified that it would last until the end of time. And then seeing it control Aurora when the time is right, and rebuilding a spinning wheel just so she can fulfill the requirements? Having witnessed all that, one could argue that the curse (or whatever power is truly behind it) might be a very frightening Eldritch Abomination. The climax, awesome as it was, is this incarnate. Look at it from Maleficent's point of view: the girl you love like a daughter is being dragged away by her father's soldiers, your loyal servant/friend/Dragon is restrained and unable to help you, and you are trapped in a circle of iron and flames as the man you used to love waves around a giant weapon, all while talking about how he's going to enjoy killing you. Adding a bit of Does This Remind You of Anything?, take into account how Stefan taking Maleficent's wings is a rape metaphor. Continuing on that, a good portion of the final battle involves Maleficent being assaulted by Stefan, while his knights surround her and watch it all happen; it has more than a passing resemblance to a gang rape. Maleficent making herself queen. Until her, the Moors never needed a ruler. The creatures who witness her "coronation" bow. None spoke a word but in that moment they knew their lives were no longer in their hands.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Maleficent
Magic Adventures of Mumfie / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Secretary of Night is this. Many children who watched the show have been scared by him. - The final scene of "Friend or Foe?" might be the biggest example of this trope causing a scene considered this to be altered for a western animated show, since the offending clip does not show up in Mumfie's Quest, and the show's creator denies its' existence. \|\|In it, there's a longer sequence when Mumfie gets imprisoned that is very terrifying. Mumfie is asked to stop whistling by Bristle, who then makes a scary face as he locks the holding cell's door on Mumfie\|\|. Complaints about this scene were reason why some countries skipped the Mumfie's Quest arc, and why, in a similar case to the DiC Sailor Moon episode "Day of Destiny", the final two episodes of Mumfie's Quest were combined in Norway.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicAdventuresOfMumfie
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Let's just say this ain't your normal magical girl anime... Unmarked spoilers below! - Asuka sees her parents being quartered after refusing an offer from the Disas. Now, she suffers from PTSD not only because of her parents' death, but also from the grueling battles she endured over the years. - The torture scenes, ooh boy. - Abby tortures Nozomi by putting a hot iron in her skin, cutting off her left forearm, and having her associates use Water Torture. - After doing a successful operation alongside Asuka, Kurumi tortures a captured illegal magical girl by injecting her with a serum that will make her obey Kurumi's wishes. - In the manga, Kurumi is able to talk Chisato out of her Despair Event Horizon without laying a hand on her. In episode 12 of the anime however, she decides to torture her regardless of her not needing information, which ends with Kurumi ramming a thin metal spike through Chisato's breast. Its mercifully panned away from, but still incredibly unsettling given who is doing it, and how unnecessary it was. - After Asuka and Kurumi save Nozomi from Abigail's clutches and leave her nearly injured, the latter yells "Fuck you!" twice in a terrifying manner and goes out to kill them both. - Kurumi's real personality. Especially in chapter 13 when she reacts that she and Asuka share the same room. - Chisatos entire backstory: loses her leg and her mother to drunk drivers who get off basically scott-free, her dead beat dad gambles away their settlement from the accident and gets them in debt, nearly gets sold as a prostitute BY said dad, and only manages to escape the situation because a member of the Babel Brigade makes her into a magical girl. She then manages to find some form of hope and freedom in her new life, and willing helps her savior in a siege out of gratitude .only for it to them be revealed that the Brigade member in question was the one who caused the car accident ON PURPOSE, and the entire series of events was meant to drive her into a corner so that she would willingly become a magical girl. She is then recruited into M-Squad as a Boxed Crook looking for some measure of redemption, with the likelihood that she ever gets to truly live a life of her own being VERY slim. Holy crap, someone get this girl a hug. - The Babel Brigade puts their victims in a very small Magical Box. - The reveal of Tamaras situation. Not only is she frequently TORTURED for failures (its outright stated that her torturer has cattle prods, branding irons, and whips that she wishes to use on Tamara), but she is also constantly BRAINWASHED as a means of control by her handlers. Good lord. - The setting in a nutshell. Just because it had magical girls in it doesn't mean it's a happy place, right? Well, right! There are magical girls who work for the military, become mercenaries, and work for a mysterious organization whose purpose is to create illegal magical girls and use them for their own needs. There are magical items used by the mercenaries which not only makes them on par with the magical girls, but also losing their humanity to get their job done.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagicalGirlSpecOpsAsuka
Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes While Magia Record at face value could be considered as Puella Magi Madoka Magica Lite, remember this is the surreal, Mind Screw-y, Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction created by the Urobutcher himself that we're still talking about. So indeed, this game unsurprisingly has a fair share of its own nightmare fuel. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. As the franchise is also well-known for its sudden and rapid descent into madness, many of the spoilers appear early on. You Have Been Warned. ## General - Thanks to Gekidan INU Curry's unique art style, the witches, familiars, rumors, and their barriers in general are nightmare fuel. - Anytime Inucurry writes a scenario in the game, it would almost guaranteed to be a lot darker than other stories in the same event. Madoka's (though in a lesser degree) and Homura's Valentine story, the Holy Quintet's Summer event story, and Nagisa's debut event are of those case, and it shows. - The slightly distorted voice whenever a rumor is described is unsettling. - Not to mention when Yachiyo stumbles upon a weird creature resembling a familiar which spreads rumors. Non-magical girls, fortunately (or unfortunately), cannot perceive them as anything than humans. - The live-stage adaptation has the rumors being told as songs sung by the main characters. The songs are old horror oral story-like rhymes, while in the background the backup dancers depict the rumor visually. As Sana tells about the story of a lonely AI only wishing to have friends, the dancers are trapped in clear glass boxes while soundlessly screaming and banging their fists against the walls. - The Wings of the Magius while presenting themselves as saviors of magical girls resembles more of a cult than an advocacy group or a normal band of magical girls. It doesn't help that their members are cloaked in hoods. Their methods to achieve their goals are terrifying such as allowing normals and non-sympathetic magical girls to be victimized by rumors and brainwashing those who wouldn't cooperate. - The Rumor of the Rule of Ending Friendships forces people to end friendships for good even if one of the parties of a feud is willing to make amends. According to the rumor, if you tell someone that your friendship is over, you shouldn't apologize for it. If you do, floating boxes will kidnap you, and you'll be brainwashed into cleaning a staircase for eternity. - The fact that a lot of the Rumors really like using brainwashing to feed on their victims, and it is later revealed that all Rumors are at least semi-sentient. - The form of the witch Candy at first may appear to be a cute pink bunny but turns to a nightmarish bug-like form whenever it attacks or is seriously wounded. She is revealed to have pelvic bones as her skull, and her ears are actually her mouth that she uses to bite on her enemies like giant shears. This makes her eerily similar to the infamous dessert witch of the original series. - The fact that in Kamihama, if a magical girl's soul gem becomes too tainted they could unleash a monster from within themselves, referred to as Doppels, is nightmare fuel inducing nevermind that they could use this power for whatever purpose they seem fit or their soul gems becomes stainless after. - A lot of the Doppels are Body Horror. Yachiyo's leg becomes oversized and grows eyes on it, Mifuyu's tongue gets so swollen that she can't talk, and Felicia practically disembowels herself when she uses it. - While the Magical Girl using a Doppel remains human, the descriptions given of some of the Doppels suggest that they're mostly independent during the short time when they're active. They represent their "master" overwhelmed completely by a single emotion, without any real input from the more rational parts of her mind. The Doppel is effectively a Witch while it exists, and so some of the protagonists are apparently afraid to use theirs in places or around people who they care about. Kaede's Doppel could turn her favorite spots into expanses of rotting moss, and one form of Sana's is incapable of distinguishing between allies and opponents when it starts swinging its massive bladed pendulum. Some moments in the game's narrative involve characters being deeply concerned about a Doppel being released in a place where it could cause harm, so this doesn't seem to just be flavor text. It's likely that at least some of the most powerful Doppels, particularly Madoka's, would be so destructive that they could never actually be used even if Gameplay Story Segregation allows it during fights. - There's an element of fridge horror, too, to the fact that a Magical Girl is apparently conscious when using her Doppel. They're so overwhelmed by the single emotion that it represents, that the experience has to be comparable to delirium. Given just how terrible some of the emotions involved are, this goes part of the way to explaining why many Magical Girls who know about the Doppel system still make sure to go into battle with enough Grief Seeds to prevent a transformation. Beyond that, though, a character would most likely remember what they did as a Doppel, and why they did it. The decision to do something terrible would always feel like it was, on some level, their own. - The Gameplay and Story Integration also counts. For context, a Doppel can only be summoned in-game when you overcharge until you reach 200 MP, which means they have to stay alive up to that point - with all the fatigue and general arduousness of battle it goes along with. They'll become some sort of Shell-Shocked Veteran due to being so long there, and thus, a Doppel can be considered a catharsis of all the built up despair, from being overwhelmed by it all (it also goes along with the Soul Gem being clean lore-wise). Letting one come out from your magical girls is essentially torture in itself. - Chapter 8 had the Magius stop "playing nice". Given that they had already done atrocious and questionable things before, naturally they resorted to even worse actions. They turned the White and Black Feathers into basically like zombies that cant be reasoned with bent on killing magical girls. Also we see Holy Mami willing to do the same but unlike the feathers still has consciousness on her actions and genuinely believes that she is saving magical girls in the long run remarking that she is still the same helpful girl who advocates for others before joining the Magius. - It's kinda refreshing that the little Kyubey who is also the player isn't devoid of emotions like the Kyubey of the original series. However when you are reminded that the incubators who exhibits emotions are considered insane, maybe the normal Kyubeys will eventually come after you and lock you up in a incubator mental institution, exterminated for good, or assimilated to the Hive Mind. - Stacey the Rooftop Witch is a long-legged mirror with a profile of a porcelein lady statue. If you look closely the real "face" could be on the upper rim of the mirror frame. - Teresa, the pendelum witch's Slasher Smile on her bob. Her "face" being upside down as well as when she spins her "head" to attack makes it all more uncanny. - Lucy's familiars Coco is a signpost with a brain on its top and its signage as deformed heads. These heads stretches themselves when the familiar attacks. - Shin the Babysitter Witch hates children, and will especially target babies to kill. When you fight her, in background you can hear endless baby noises gurgling far away. Her drop item, the Nanny's Grip, is actually an abortion tool◊ - and on the witch herself, that thing is dripping with white... something. You're left to wonder just what kind of magical girl that created this witch. - Only a Madoka spin-off could make something as mundane as opening a menu scary. For context, the game has an archive in which magical girls, Memoria, cutscenes, Doppels, and witches/Uwasa (along with their familiars) are listed. The music for the general archive page, as well as the first three sub-pages, is a classical piece reminiscent of that in the original anime's more emotional scenes, but is otherwise nothing unusual. On the page listing witches, Uwasa, and familiars that you have fought, the music is a soothing piece combining the violin with chimes and horns. The nightmare fuel comes in when looking at the list of Doppels. The music that plays here sounds like something out of a horror movie, with no discernible melody. It's just chimes and something resembling both white noise and someone in a hushed voice trying to speak. Not helping the matter is the fact that, due to the investment required to unlock a magical girl's Doppel (and the fact that Giovanna's appearance in Chapter 3 doesn't add her to the archive), the list of Doppels is going to be missing a lot of entries, if not all, for a long while. - The events of of the first half of Chapter 12 in Arc 2: Mikoto first kills LilKyubey, preventing Iroha from merging with him and Ui to become Infinite Iroha. She then spreads nightmares and corruption, quickly affecting all Magical Girls note : except for Iroha, Ui, Karin, Kagome, the other fraction leaders and those in Puella Care (asides from Mitama sending them all into a unwakeable slumber while her mirror clones of the girls attack any that are still awake. And when Ui tries to use her magic, Mikoto attacks and kills her, taking her collection ability for herself. And when Iroha and the other surviving girls try to stop her, she responds by taking control of the Doppels belonging to the leaders friends, forcing them to fight to the death. Puella Care then try to turn the favor into Irohas favor by supposedly siding with Mikoto and sacrifice themselves to save her when Mikoto tries to absorb her, dying in her place and leaving Iroha and Kagome left. Then Iroha has to watch as her friends succumb to the corruption to give her a chance to complete the time-traveling mirror, only to learn that their plan of travelling through time to save Ui and LilKyubey wont work. In the end, all Iroha and Kagome can do is use Kagomes abilities to create a message that Iroha (inadvertently) sends back to the past, leaving them to to witch out while Yachiyo and the others witch out themselves around them. In the end, Karin is the only surviving Magical Girl on the side of good and the last we see of her is her heading to her last battle with Alina. - Just the fact that it had gotten so bad, all Iroha can do is pray for salvation while she witches out. Her sister? Killed and absorbed by Mikoto. The other fraction leaders? Killed by their own comrades. Puella Care? Killed and absorbed protecting her. Her friends, the ones she bonded with throughout the whole story and lived with? She has to watch them witch out, while her own Soul Gem hatches. Thank god she inadvertently sends Kagomes message back, because otherwise, Mikoto would had won. - Losing to Sarah Mirabilis W (Mikotos witch) in the final chapter gives you a nice shot of her face [1]◊ The fact that shes staring directly at you only makes it worse. - Episode 1: - Iroha's dream of a mysterious girl is much worse in the anime. The girl instead is a glitching black figure with glowing white eyes. (pictured above) - Might be a case of Unreliable Narrator, but it's unsettling that Iroha is talking to Kyubey while the familiar-like creatures are putting children in bags. - Episode 2: - Rebecca's Witch-kiss victims turn into wooden marionettes who get herded by her familiar Joseph. Rebecca herself gets a redesign where the multiple eyes in her wool become significantly more realistic, and her eye attack turning from Eye Beam like in the game into Rebecca gouging her own eyeballs and throwing them at the magical girl. - When it's time for the Friendship Ending Rumor, the anime manages to make it WORSE. In order for the Rumor to take effect, a person needs to write their names on the steps of a specific staircase, meaning they are fully aware of the Rumor and are intentionally invoking it. Also, instead of boxes coming to take away the person that apologizes, it's a horde of chain monsters, with only the person who is about to lose their friend being able to see them. When Kaede gets kidnapped by the chain monsters, the monsters mindrape Rena. - Episode 4: - The circumstances of Candy's appearance in the anime. The grief seed of the witch hatched in the middle of a grocery having a limited sale event. If Yachiyo, Iroha, Tsuruno or any magical girls weren't present, Candy could have killed dozens. Candy herself is an example which deceptively takes the form of a cute pink rabbit as its default form. It can turn its head into insectoid mandibles to attack which is reminiscent of the infamous dessert witch in the original series. - When Tsuruno, who isn't writing a name in an ema plaque to serve as a backup for Iroha and Yachiyo, tries to follow the two into the Seance Shrine, the Uwasa manifests as a bunch of shadowy arm pulling her back. Those hands end up never leaving her until she write in an ema plaque. - Episode 5: - The fake Ui can only repeats with blank eyes the words she says in the magical girls' dream, "Go to Kamihama City, where magical girls can be saved." When Iroha rejects the illusion, she sees the Uwasa's victims lying unconscious beside the wax figures of their loved ones. The wax figures are glitching. - The fake Mifuyu tries to coax Yachiyo to fall victim to the Uwasa by gaslighting her with their past relationship. When Yachiyo resists, the Uwasa's mark stamps all over her face, trying to influence her mind in an attempt to break her spirit. Fake Mifuyu : serenely smiling I'm the real Mifuyu. I fit perfectly into the hole in your heart. - Uwasa of Commoner's Horse gets a redesign that makes it incredibly intimidating. Instead of the goofy snail-like frog like in game, it becomes a giant Eastern dragon that roars like an elephant, spraying explosive bubbles from its trunk. It's extremely agile despite its size and heals every damage it received when the attack connects. - When Giovanna comes out, Iroha loses control and Giovanna becomes closer to a Witch than to a Doppel. Giovanna wraps Iroha, whose face now sporting a white mask with black eyes and wide grin, and spirits her along as the half-Witch goes berserk on the Uwasa. Giovanna ends up tearing the Commoner's Horse and pecking it until it dies despite its Healing Factor. - The Rumor of the Lucky Owl Water. In the game, the rumor only involved a normal looking man who gives out miraculous water on his stall. In the anime it's a shady place run by a familiar-looking man, where familiar looking waitresses gives away bottled water to guests. What's horrifying is Felicia and Iroha were oblivious to them until they learn about the rumor. - The rumor spreader, while they didn't interact with the main characters like in the game, are more uncanny in the anime. Their paper-thin figure looks horrifyingly out of place in 3D space and you can see normal people being friendly with them unaware of their true nature. - Whenever someone uses a doppel in the anime. While doppel itself are both awesome and nightmare fuel inducing, the anime boosts up the creepiness factor. Prior to the unleashing of one's doppel, the user's face becomes white, they gain a slasher smile, and their sclera becomes pitch black and loses their pupils. In one instance of Iroha using her doppel, a doppelganger with said creepy face appears behind her startling her. - The anime made it apparent the dangers of the doppel system. Though a magical girl could weaponize their doppel and help them fight against witches, uwasa and other enemies. The average magical girl would have little control when a doppel get unleashed. If their soul gem becomes too tainted, their doppel gets unleashed. If they happen to be at a place other than a witch barrier they could potentially kill innocent people. Imagine if a magical girl's doppel appears in the middle of a supermarket, school or a hospital. - The heroes' first encounter with the Magius. The colors are virtually watered down and the Black Feathers introduction portrayed them more as a cult. Their trance like speech doesn't help. Then they offer to recruit Felicia and appeals to her vendetta against witches and Felicia accepts their offer. Felicia's fierce grin at the end of the episode is nightmare fuel in itself. - When the Amane twins release the Symbol Witch on our heroes from Alina's portable cubed barrier, you will notice that the familiars are suffering and sickly from being fused with each other with Old Dorothy's disease-ridden Pathogen Tempera. Because nothing spells Mad Artist better than torturing the already tortured soul of a former magical girl for sake of art. - It turns out that the Endless Solitude was the Magius breeding ground for witches. When it was destroyed, Alina was furious summoning not one, not two but many Teresa witches to finish off Iroha and friends. - After Sayaka interrupts Mami from attacking Iroha and Yachiyo, Mami has a mental breakdown because her conscience clashing with her brainwashing. It's not pretty. Mami then proceeds to attack Sayaka also with shots so strong she's destroying her own gun muzzles with each hammer drop. Sayaka intercepts her attack and the strain to hold back just one cannon shot tears the muscles on Sayaka arms despite her Healing Factor until her left arm ripped right off. Sayaka successfully redirects the shot, and the explosion from it causes a mushroom cloud. - Season 1 ends with Alina staring up at the sky with a serene expression saying how much she hopes Walpurgisnacht will show up. Her calm, cheerful demeanor only adds to the horror. - Episode Three of Season 2 is just full of this: - In response to Irohas nightmares of losing her friends (represented by a shot of them dead, particularly of Yachiyo and Tsuruno impaled by swords) and Ui (represented by of a shot of her funeral), Giovanna traps Iroha in a Lotus-Eater Machine, creating a fake Mikazuki Villa where everyone is happy, and Ui is replaced by a stuffed bear that has her hair and pyjamas. And when Kuroe confronts Iroha, Giovanna goes berserk, seizing Iroha as the illusion falls apart, leaving behind a blood red background and giant versions of the Ui bear appears to attack Kuroe and Yachiyo to keep Iroha in the dream. - It becomes even more horrifying when you remember that this is like what happened to Homura in Rebellion. The idealized Kamihama and the flower garden with the floating chairs? * Theyre essentially Giovannas witch labyrinth* and the fake Uis are her minions. Giovanna wasnt trying to make a better world for Iroha: She was trying to fully corrupt her. - Or an even worse thought that crosses over with Tearjerker. Consider how Homulilly and Giovanna acted: trying to fulfill their girl's wishes for a happier life where they get what they want, but they're still missing what they truly wanted and wished for. Homura wanted a happier life with everyone, but she became unable to fulfill her wish because Madoka didn't truly exist anymore. Iroha also wants that, but because she can't find Ui, Giovanna makes a replacement for her. Compare it to other witches, like Oktavia wanting to constantly listen to music resembling how Sayaka wanted to listen to Kyosuke play his violin, Charlotte constantly looking for cheese like Nagisa looked for love, and you'll find that the Witches aren't just corrupting their Magical Girls. They're desperately trying to grant their own wishes in their own despair. - Episode 4 of Season 2 shows another danger of Doppels: When a Puella Magi overuses her Doppel, there is a chance she can contract Doppel Syndrome. When that happens, the Doppel goes berserk and forcibly fuses with the girl, leaving her a monstrosity thats not that different from a Witch, with only some of her humanity remaining. - This is what happens to Kaede in the episode, leaving her a monstrosity made out of rotting moss and has her rib cage exposed. Whats worse, it has happened to many girls, as Mitama has an isolation ward for the ill. And theres dozens of girls held in isolation outside of the room Kaede was put in. - To make things worse, look at some of the ill girls. Three of them are girls from the game, Konomi, Natsuki and Riko (and the third of which is only a little girl). - This also puts Giovannas actions in the last episode in even worse territory, as Iroha theorizes that the ill girls are also dreaming of a better world to avoid the harsh truths of the real world and succumbed to their Doppels like she did. Iroha could had very well had contracted the syndrome herself if Yachiyo and Kuroe hadnt saved her. - It's only shown in passing during episode 4 of season 2, but a screen in town shows a weather report about a typhoon moving north. The scene cuts to an orbital view of the typhoon and it is enormous, heavily implying that Walpurgisnacht is on the move. The next episode confirms that not only is she on the move, she's making a beeline for Kamihama, especially now that Touka and Nemu are luring witches in to feed Shitori Egumo. - The HORRIFYING image of Tsurunos mangled body being puppeted by the Rumor of Chelation Land, along with the hideous crunching as she moves her broken form. - Uis transformation into Embryo Eve: First her hair grows in length and goes wild, and then her whole body starts painfully mutating into Eve, leaving no trace of her humanity as she cries out in pain. Keep in mind that Ui is only a child, and the reason this happened was because she wanted to help Iroha. - When Embryo Eve is finally activated, most of the Magical Girls Doppels go berserk, bursting out and fusing with their girls. Not even Tsuruno, Felicia and Sana are immune to this, as they quickly get Doppel Syndrome when Eve goes active. - Not even Rena (who remained in Mitamas isolation ward) is safe, as she can be seen fighting against hers. Considering how she ends up on the plane where all the affected girls souls are, its very likely she was on the verge of succumbing to her Doppel. - The ultimate fate of Kuroe; Her Doppel, Ichizo, had dragged her away at the end of Season 2. When Iroha finds her in the preultimate episode of the series, Ichizo had completely engulfed the girl in her mud (similar to Doppel Syndrome), and the poor girl is completely consumed in her self-loathing over becoming a Magical Girl and her past actions towards another girl she had met in the past. When Iroha tries to reason with her, telling her not to give up and to work with her, Ichizo goes berserk and shoots up skywards, actually managing to break through Alinas barrier! Without the barrier, Kuroes Soul Gem quickly hatches, and her human body is torn in half into mud by Ichizo. - Kuroes final moments as a Magical Girl is both Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker: Her eyes gain the same muddy colour as her Soul Gem and she is at complete peace at what is about to happen, happily saying that if she becomes a witch, she can go back to who she was before she met Iroha. Whatever happened to her after Ichizo dragged her away was so bad, she saw becoming a witch as an answer to all of her problems. - Even worse, Kuroe only ended up like that shortly after she was taken away by Ichizo. While a Doppel/Witch is the manifestation of a girls darker emotions, its also important to remember that theyre also a corrupting influence on the girls, as shown throughout the anime. It really calls into question on whatever Kuroes behaviour and actions were really her own, or due to her being influenced by Ichizo. - Giovannas actions at the start of the final episode: She gives Iroha a Breaking Speech, saying that now a lot of people are going to suffer because of her stopping the Magius, with more of her cloth appearing around them. The very next shot shows all the Mizasuki girls racing to Iroha, who is completely surrounded by cloth and images of Kuroes death, completely consumed in despair. Considering how high up Iroha was, Giovannas hold over her and what happened in the last episode, its highly likely that Giovanna would had also taken Iroha out of the barrier and would have hatched out of her Soul Gem if Yachiyo and the others hadnt gotten to Iroha in time. - Two words: NEO DOROTHY. Alina fuses her Doppel and herself with Embryo Eve, creating a monstrosity that shows Alina and Old Dorothys infection of Eve, with Dorothys infection infesting Eves wings, and Alinas head (with the Doppel Mask) replacing Eves.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagiaRecordPuellaMagiMadokaMagicaSideStory
Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Dungeons. To ordinary people in the Magi universe, dungeons are Eldritch Locationsof doom that hold nothing but death. Even after Sinbad showed that success was possible, thousands (and counting!) of people have met their maker just by stepping foot inside. At least most people get a choice of whether or not they want to attempt a dungeon. Zagan's dungeon, however, forcibly pulls in anyone who wanders near. And then turns them into trees, as mentioned below, which become sustenancefor the dungeon monsters. While mainly tragic, Hakuryuu's past is also horrifying. \|\|Watching his own brothers die horribly in front of him, with Hakuyuu wounding himself to cover Hakuryuu in his blood to shield the latter from the fire, and learning his own mother was responsible?\|\| That's a very pleasant memory. And even if it had his personality worsen and worsen, you can understand what made Hakuryuu so vengeful in the first place. Jamil's gleeful expression as he tortures his slaves is certainly horrifying and comes across as a series of Moral Event Horizons for him. The presence of slavery itself. In Magi, slavery is rampant. Though there do not seem to be major racial undertones in slavery other than the attempt at enslaving the Kouga girls and the attitude toward Fanalis, one can be forced into servitude for as little as outstanding debt, as in the case of Alibaba. Not only that, the only protagonist who really shows an aversion and hatred of slavery is Morgiana. Not even Alibaba or Aladdin cared much about the issue until they were influenced by her. To be fair, at first, Aladdin just didn't understand slavery. He was the one who tried to free Morgiana in the first place. What makes this even more horrifying is that the real ancient world wasn't any better. Sinbad no Bouken has an entire arc discussing slavery as an industry. Some are picked out and treated well and elevated to notable positions or otherwise "invested in" to make specialized workers, others are moved through as quickly as possible for "general sale." Note that this includes children. The author did her research on this to a disturbing degree. Fatima lowering the young and sick Nadja into the pit of ravenous hyenas. Entai's tranformation into a demonic elephant-like creature with three trunks is particularly grotesque. Zaynab's Red Mist, which had the power of influencing people's emotions to the point of hallucination and debilitating anger. When \|\|Morgiana\|\| activates \|\|her\|\| household vessel for the first time when defending the others from Zagan, \|\|she\|\| is quite powerful and quickly uses up \|\|her\|\| Magoi. While \|\|she's\|\| having an Imagine Spot about how useful this power is in helping everyone and how useful \|\|she herself\|\| has become to the party, \|\|her\|\| body is actually falling apart.It's notpretty.◊ The massacre of the Musta'sim Royal Family. Young!Dunya screaming in terror when the soldiers find her and Isaac trying to escape. The murder of \|\|Isaac\|\|, whose head was skewered through by swords. Hakuryuu's arm falling off after Ithnan possesses him. Watching Alibaba fall into depravity in episode 24 of the anime, turning into a fully realized Dark Djinn in the process. Al-Thamen's ultimate goal of breaking fate, which would result in anger, hatred, poverty, famine, civil strife, social upheaval, war, and other atrocities for all of humanity. Alibaba's first fight in the Raem coliseum. He has his arm broken by a monstrous ape while the crowd cheers for it to eat him, and then to kill him. \|\| Hakuryuu's\|\| face when he speaks to his sister about all the hatred in the world. And \|\|his mother\|\| is just as creepy when they fight. Chapter 211: The creepy unfocused eyes that \|\|Kougyoku displays when she is being controlled by Sinbad's Djinn Zepar. In the next chapter, we see how we get a visual representation of what Zepar actually does to his victims.\|\| \|\| Sinbad's casual indifference at using Kougyoku as a unwitting spy against her family. When Alibaba threatens to tell her about what Sinbad is doing, Sinbad asks him what such a reveal would do to such an innocent person, revealing that he is fully aware of how horrible a thing it is he is doing.\|\| Chapter 229: Ever seen what a completely burnt body looks like? \|\|Try imagining little Tess' body after Elder David's attack. His last words are pleading his mother to save him as she's holding his body. Not to mention Ithnan'sreaction to finding what's left of Setta after the attack; nothing but his blood-stained staff.\|\| In Chapter 230, David explains in gory detail what he did to \|\|Setta.\|\| Chapter 246: We see that having control over two Djinn enables Hakuryuu to do. \|\|He uses Belial to Mind Rape the soldiers with illusions until it becomes engraved on their mind and then uses plant circuits to push their bodies to the limit as mad bersekers.\|\| And then we learn that just like Kougyoku, \|\|Hakuryuu was subjected to the effects of a secondary Djinn effect that causes him intense pain as long as he plans to kill his mother or the others, trying to forcibly restrain him. Kouen put that on him the moment after his father died so that he wouldn't try and act on it, which is why he never saw him as a threat.\|\| Chapter 250: Hakuryuu \|\|beheads his mother.\|\| And that's just the start. \|\|He and Judar reveal just how far into depravity they've sunk, with Judar noting that Hakuryuu shifting his wrath to his own cousin, Ren Kouen, is only the beginning, hinting that the two of them very well may just end up killing everyone.\|\| Fully confirmed in Chapter 254 where Hakuryuu states that anyone who has an opinion or thought different from his own is his enemy. Alibaba is disgusted and tells Hakuryuu that two people who completely think the same way don't exist, no matter how close they may be. Chapter 257: Belial's metal vessel power is a scythe that cuts off all sensation in the body part it cuts, effectively "transporting" it to death. Hakuryuu's imagining of it is the sight of people strapped to the ground with the Grim Reaper looking down at them, about to let go of a guillotine blade. In the following two chapters, we get to see Belial's Extreme Magic. It's a huge decaying dragon whose roar does the same thing as the scythe (but gradually) to anyone caught within its range. Then, \|\|Alibaba keeps going anyway and clashes with Hakuryuu, burning both of his legs off. Yet, Hakuryuu starts laughing and saying he won... Because Alibaba got hit with Belial's scythe on his entire body, starting from the head. The result? Alibaba became an Empty Shell. And even Hakuryuu and Belial themselves don't know where they transported his spirit to, effectively killing him.\|\| Koumei's strategy for dismantling \|\|Hakuryuu's\|\| magically enhanced and enraged forces is ghoulishly effective. It involves encircling them, sinking the ground around them, pouring oil, and setting it all on fire. The artist does not skimp on the horror of soldiers burning to death. Even though the strategy was to basically to put the majority of the forces in a massive sauna and sweat all the fight out of them without hurting them permanently, there was still collateral damage. Chapter 276: The Reveal that Sinbad, one of the most if not the most powerful man in the world, \|\|is being influenced by the will of Il Ilah. Who turns out to be David, revealing that his scheme to merge with the mindless lump of power that was Il Ilah was successful.\|\| Kouen eventually reveals who he learned his philosophy of eliminating war and strife in the world through expanding the Kou empire to the entire world: \|\|through Hakuryuu's father and brothers\|\|. This moment is after a young Kouen has a near complete mental breakdown encountering the scene of a massacre, where the decaying bodies of the dead were left impaled on and arranged around a massive tree - in what is likely a reference to the Tree of the Dead in 300. That scene looks like it would belong more in a Junji Ito work than a shounen manga like this. In Chapter 282, \|\|Arba has survived and found a new vessel through Hakuei. And Arba seems to plan on following Sinbad now knowing that Sinbad is David's vessel...\|\| Chapter 295 reveals the Kou Empire had been working on an undead army to invade Reim with. Chapter 306 shows us \|\|Arba's been using the Kou Imperial Line as a way to remain in the current times. Essentially, she uses the children she gives birth to as vessels to contain herself, and she's been doing this a long time. Forget the incest tones it gives off, she's been using the family line as meat puppets long before Gyokuen and Hakuei. It gets worse as she reveals her "interest" in Sinbad doesn't just stop itself at being his "partner"\|\|. 309... Good lord. \|\|Arba has turned into Nightmare Fuel incarnate. She gets burned by Yunan and having her skin badly scarred. Then she has her HEAD smashed open revealing a gory pile of flesh. Unfortunately this did NOT kill Arba as she quickly regenerates despite all of that damage.\|\| The entirety of the mission to infiltrate the Sacred Palace. You wouldn't think \|\|Ugo\|\| was capable of giving you the heebie-jeebies, but here we are: \|\| Sinbad had been trying to get past the divine security and lost a couple of limbs, even with his Djinn equips. But when he has the chance to get past Ugo, all he does is squish him like a bug with a damn unsettling look of genuine pity plastered onto his face. Not one to give up, Sinbad keeps trying to reach the Palace, only to burn up his body into char.\|\| That's not even the worst of it. \|\|When Arba's brought up to the Sacred Palace, Ugo shows her that her beloved Il-Illah is in a fish tank along with David. All of that work, all of that sacrifice and bloodshed, and her "father" is nothing but a pet to him.\|\| It just ends up showing just how insignificant a powerful man like \|\|Sinbad\|\| is in comparison to \|\|the literal God of the Universe\|\|. Even if he's the "protagonist" of the narrative, he can't expect to try and fight God and win. \|\| After Arba calls Ugo out on acting like a god, he gives her one hell of a Nightmare Face. And it doesn't stop there— Arba's completely unable to move her limbs, and Ugo reveals, quite creepily, that he's brought her in to alleviate his eons and eons of loneliness. Poor guy's about to go insane without Aladdin.\|\| Chapter 327, \|\|theeffects of having SINBAD as the top god is starting to show...\|\| and it´s horrifying. Chapter 329 : Sinbad has gone insane with power and is preparing to sacrifice everyone to remake the world anew. You thought things were bad last chapter? Sinbad has brainwashed the ENTIRE world into following through with his plan: mass suicide. Sinbad is going to sacrifice the entire world and they are all happily going along with it. None of them are aware they've been brain washed. ...That is until Chapter 350, where the crew gets to see how the rest of the world is taking this. Drakon and his family are expecting to be returned to the Rukh, but upon closer inspection, Drakon is trembling with fear and crying awaiting his impending death. Also, the whole sequence of returning to the Rukh is terrifying. Angel-like beings come down from the heavens with their weapons and tear apart the land in swift strikes, deleting them out of existence while all sentient beings watch on and can't react, because their subconscious wills them to find it a good thing. It begins to have the trappings of a Cosmic Horror Story.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagiTheLabyrinthOfMagic
Magika Swordsman and Summoner / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Kaya getting possessed by Loki after making an illegal contract with him. - There's also the death of Mio Amasaki during Kazuki's first duel with Loki, which is not only sad, but also disturbing. After Mio gets slashed by Loki's attack in a Heroic Sacrifice, she bleeds to death from the gruesome gash inflicted on her. If Mio hadn't shown up when she did, Kazuki would've died the same way. - The Demon Beast entangling a naked Mio with its tentacles in Volume 2. - Picturing Nyarlathotep's experiments on transforming the unfortunate humans into elves. They probably were taken in as test subjects to turn them into "Quad-core" summoners, and if they succeed, they turn into mindless servants. For the ones who didn't make it however, they would melt into nothing but flesh. Even then, it's too late to escape... and nobody's coming to save you in the laboratory. - Unsurprisingly, Nyarlathotep is full of these moments due to being a part of Cthulhu Mythos. He's first revealed as Headmaster Otonashi's illegal Diva by taking control of the man and scratching his face off to reveal a faceless head. Once he's cornered by the heroes, he takes his horrifying true form. If it weren't for the fact that his mythology is weakened due to their lack of popularity, he might have driven everyone insane just from his appearance alone. He gets worse in Volume 13, where he's converted into Typhon, causing Regina to transform into an Eldritch Abomination. - Shizuka using her psychokinetic powers to kill herself towards the end of volume 5 can catch people off-guard. - Hel is pretty creepy by herself, but when she allows Ikousai to steal her authority, the situation becomes the stuff horror movies are made out of. Even going so far as to speak through the a mortal wound, to then emerge from the corpse to attack and steal China's authority. Now she's both exceptionally strong, and almost as strategically skilled as Kazuki. - Lucifer crashes Atlantis near Japan in order to destroy the country with a tsunami with Japan's military forces completely helpless to stop it. If it weren't for the the efforts of summoners all over the globe, this would have resulted in the highest body count in the series.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MagikaSwordsmanAndSummoner
Manhwa / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes <!—index—> The Breaker Cavalier of the Abyss The Soulless Duchess I Wish Killing Stalking King's Maker Kubera The Monstrous Duke's Adopted Daughter Priest Tower of God<!—/index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Manhwa
Man of Steel Prequel / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Kell-Ur getting bitten by a snake and falling to his death. - Kara finds out the Kryptonian criminal Dev-Em was onboard the ship and has killed her crew long ago by tampering with their cryo-chambers (pictured). They all have become mummies in their space suits since. - Dev-Em, the first Kryptonian murderer in centuries. Talk about Ax-Crazy.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ManOfSteelPrequel
Maim de Maim / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - What Ragyou did to poor Mr. Tapatio. The aftermath is just too gruesome to list but let's just say it would be unwise to talk back to Ragyou, especially \|\|after she has been exposed to the OLF\|\| - Ryuko sustaining a \|\|headshot from a shotgun, blasting most of her face off.\|\| Then she proceeds to \|\|slice and dice the offender into teriyaki in an anger fueled tantrum, forcing Uzu to put his foot down in a heartbreaking relationship ending manner.\|\| - A \|\|brainwashed Ryuuko\|\| and that is all. - Satsuki and Junketsu's \|\|salvia trip in Chapter 14.\|\| Not only what happens to them inside their heads is terrifying in sheer psychedelic terms, but what happens to them physically is every bit as horrifying as \|\|Ryuko's berserk mode in the original anime.\|\| So bad to the point that it even \|\|makes Satsuki stop smoking pot period\|\| - Ragyo's \|\|purification of Satsuki in Chapter 18 is like if you took the purification sequence in Episode 16 of the original anime and merged it with Satsuki's imprisonment sequences in episode 19,\|\| making it even worse than both combined. It also doesn't help that Rei Hououmaru \|\|was implied to be watching the 2002 French film Irréversible right before Ragyo did her dirty work to Satsuki.\|\| making things all the more uncomfortable for the lack of a better word. - The majority of Chapter 19 can be chalked up as being "the stuff nightmares are made out of", such as \|\|Dr. Batty's victims and the way he killed them, Dr. Batty's dreamscape childhood flashback of the time he and his mother murdered his supposedly "Hiding Behind Religion" centric father,\|\| his therapy session with Trent Bolton \|\|and worst of all, the implication that Dr. Batty, may in fact be, Nui Harime's father\|\|. - Nui Harime \|\|losing control of her body to her evil side after she stops taking her prescription medication against her will\|\| is both really terrifying and downright heartbreaking \|\|especially when she tries to commit suicide multiple times in the span of mere minutes, albeit to complete failure\|\| - In chapter 25, we find out how Mrs. Adams-Nickelsen killed her husband and it isn't pretty. - Ophelia's first appearance. To elaborate a bit further, said first appearance involved a mess of gore in her hotel room and a half-eaten hand in her mouth. - \|\|Kaibutsu\|\|. That is all.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MaimDeMaim
Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Sicks is basically an incarnation of this. From the hour he was born, in which he killed all the other babies in his nursery room just for some peace and quiet, he has been pure evil. He has people killed in the most horrific way possible, two notable cases in which he has a failed Mook saw himself to death because he wanted to see him die and a hapless man to vomit all of his blood in the shape of a 6, with the threat of killing his family. The kicker is that the family is Driven to Suicide anyway due to a lie that the father never loved them and that he abandoned them. Sicks' ultimate goal is the annihilation of mankind, not due to superiority or prejudice, but natural selection at work, as he sees his New Bloodline as the next step in evolution while humanity is merely a dead end. He's not bluffing either, he's driven Japan to brink population extinction with his minions terrorist acts. All of which are nasty by themselves. - DR has his victims be drowned in vicious flash floods shaped like monsters, which is terrifying especially considering how close it is to real life floods in cities(except for the extensive knowledge of causing flash floods in the first place). - The fate of Tierra's victims is absolutely terrifying. He took 1,000 people and buried them up to their necks then gagged and blindfolded them. And then Tierra and Neuro proceed to have a battle complete with falling debris and a crumbling buildings around these people while they are completely unprotected and unaware of what's happening. - Episode 24 and those stone boxes, which crush people to death. - Crossing over with Paranoia Fuel is the Voluntary Shapeshifter X. - Case in point: their debut revealed that they had spent several years impersonating someone's kindly old grandmother after the original passed away, and nobody could tell the difference - Neuro's demonic abilities only picked up that something was amiss when they were pretending to be a corpse. And the red glass boxes that are X's calling cards are filled with the liquefied remains of their victims.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MajinTanteiNougamiNeuro
Making Fiends / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Clamburg is full of horrifying things, Fiend or otherwise- and no, Charlotte's overwhelming desire to be nice and cute does not soften the blow. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. ## General: - Basically, the entire premise of the show could be this. An Enfant Terrible has taken over/traumatized a town using homemade monsters to the point that no one has the guts to go up against her. She is now hell bent on murdering another girl just because she wanted to be friends with her, and the only thing keeping this little girl from getting killed is her uncanny obliviousness and naivety. Black Comedy indeed, Amy Winfrey. ## Specific episodes: - The scene in "Toupee" where Mr. Milk is persuaded by the toupee to push Charlotte off a fence on the edge of a cliff. The sky gradually gets more and more red as Mr. Milk gets closer to the edge of the cliff, with Mr. Milk looking more and more terrified and reluctant as he walks closer. Luckily, he doesn't go through with it. - "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!" Charlotte meets her untimely demise again and again and again, and in each case, her last words are "Yay! Gumdrops!" Only one clone is aware it's a trap, and she finds out a little too late. - Turns out there were at least two Charlottes that didn't get eaten. Whether or not one of them was the original Charlotte is unclear. - One scene from earlier in the episode has a bunch of Charlottes cornering Vendetta in her bed. One of the clones actually has an evil smile on her face. - Vendetta's Slasher Smile while she gives cookies to people in "Super Evil". - The near end of "Shrinking Charlotte", when the giant cat swallows the shrinking slug and one of the gianting squid. - The nightmare sequence from "Tornado", Vendetta finds doors that leads to cross-eyed Charlottes (one normal one, one with a cup of a smaller Charlotte with a cup of an even smaller Charlotte, one with eight heads.). As Vendetta runs away from the doors, she notices that something blocking her path, and she finds out that shes in a gigantic Charlottes eye saying "HI NEIGHBOR!".	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MakingFiends
Lycoris Recoil / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The surface of Tokyo might seem peaceful and serene, but the work of a Lycoris is downright terrifying at times. Beware of unmarked spoilers! ## Series-wide - For the premise as a whole, each Lycoris is a Tyke Bomb orphan girl picked up by DA and trained to be a professional assassin, all while dressing up like a Japanese schoolgirl. One can only imagine the kind of mental issues some of these girls must have. - Every terrorist crime in Tokyo is covered up by DA, which likely includes censoring or perhaps even killing witnesses. And this has been going on for over 10 years! - The fact that the Lycoris are necessary in the first place, with seemingly daily attempts at committing acts of terror against civilians making you wonder about the state of Japan or the world at large to have such a serious terrorist problem. ## Anime - Episode 1: - Takina shows a near-complete disregard for Erika's safety when she grabs a PKM machinegun and hoses down the arms dealers who took her hostage. Thankfully, Erika emerges unscathed, but Takina's recklessness could have easily resulted in tragedy. - Kusunoki's remarks on how Takina spoiled the arms deal raid imply she was willing to let Erika die in order to capture the dealers alive. If it weren't for Takina taking the initiative when Radiata got hacked, Erika was as good as dead. - When visiting the Yakuza boss, Takina nearly pulls out her pistol when she thinks Chisato gave him narcotics (which turned out just to be coffee beans). Thankfully, Chisato quickly prevents her from doing anything rash, but it shows just how trigger-happy a Lycoris can be. - Saori's kidnapping is frightening enough already, but the fact that Takina used her as bait makes it even worse. And it's all because she took a photo that accidentally caught the arms deal. - The way the stalkers find Saori using her social media credentials is also a disturbing parallel to real life kidnapping incidents. - Episode 2: - Robota is rather disturbing in that he's clearly a Psychopathic Manchild in his teenage years, yet is still competent enough to hack a moving vehicle and try to drive it into the ocean. - A more lowkey example, but Chisato threatening to let one of Robota's hitmen bleed out is fairly intimidating. - Watching Walnut get mowed down by Robota's hitmen is brutal, given all the blood that comes out of the hacker's costume. Fortunately, the costume was concealing a bulletproof uniform that Mizuki was wearing, letting her fool Robota into thinking Walnut was dead. - Upon seeing that Kurumi was hiding in the suitcase, one realizes that she almost died due to Takina using it as a shield. If those AKM-S's had penetrated the suitcase, Kurumi would've been killed instantly. - Episode 3: - Fuki and Sakura bullying Takina over how she can never come back to DA is bad enough, but Kusunoki, their boss, not only encourages it, but participates in it to a degree. - Hearing all of the other Lycoris girls badmouthing Takina mirrors a lot of real-life bullying in some ways, with the girls thinking Takina is a psychopathic teammate-killer. - Erika is given no emotional support over being taken hostage in Episode 1, and is left to blame herself for Takina's dismissal. It's very unsettling to learn that most Lycoris agents have such a Lack of Empathy. - Episode 4: - Majima's attempt to massacre train passengers could have had utterly horrific results. Mercifully, no civilians were on the train cars. - Majima also was Crazy-Prepared enough to put explosive charges into the bags of all his subordinates. He detonates them after the Lycoris agents ambush him, taking several of them out. While the viewer doesn't see the full results of the explosions, they know most (if not all) of those girls are dead, with some likely being crushed by falling debris. note : If you listen carefully to the Lycoris' last moments, specifically the last two in the English dub, they actually let out their screams rather than grunting like in the Japanese dub before they're heavily implied to be crushed and/or caught in the blast. - Episode 5: - Chisato revealing that she has an artificial heart carries some disturbing implications. What could have happened to her that would require her to replace her own heart? - The fact that Abe and his fellow detective are forced to flee the crime scene from the prior episode shows that not even the police are safe from DA's cover-ups. - The whole premise of the episode is disturbing once you reach the end. Someone at the Alan Institute wants to force Chisato into a situation where she has to kill someone, so they hired Silent Jin to kill a random drug addict who was more-or-less already dead, abducting and disguising him as an elderly businessman and puppeteering him in ways that make Chisato connect to "Mr. Matsushita". The question on the viewer's mind is: Why would someone want Chisato to kill so badly that they'd go to such lengthy measures? note : The culprit is later revealed to be Shinji. - The end of the episode shows Majima is now actively hunting Lycoris agents. His first victim? He hits her with a car and then has his men gun her down. He's effectively targeting and murdering children, albeit ones trained to be assassins. - Episode 6: - Majima's fight with Chisato is fairly nightmarish, starting with him hitting her with his car (although she appears to avoid the worst of it). Then, when she tries to escape, he realizes she's using rubber rounds and thus cannot kill him. Even though he takes a round to the head, he continues to fight by spitting his own blood into Chisato's eyes. It's not just a small amount, but virtually a whole pint of it. Oh, and he absolutely beats the shit out of her with his bare fists, before attempting to execute her. If anyone had any doubts that Majima is Ax-Crazy, those doubts should be blown out of the water by now. - The amount of punishment that Majima takes throughout the episode, including having a Panzerfaust-3 rocket explode in his face, is scary in a "how is he still alive?!" sense. - Chisato makes a reference to something called LilyBell, which appear to be the male equivalent of Lycorises and, in Chisato's words, are "scary". This makes one worry about what these "LilyBell" are intended for, especially since Chisato has no idea. - Episode 7: - Majima reveals that he was the one responsible for the Skytree incident, and that a young Chisato was the one who took out all his men back then. The fact that Chisato, who couldn't even have been older than seven at the time, was capable of such a feat is disturbing. And, as Majima puts it, he was powerless to stop her. - Majima and his men massacre an entire police station in order to send a message to DA. DA covers it up as a yakuza attack, meaning they have several innocent men arrested for a crime they did not commit. Furthermore, Majima writes out "I CHALLENGE YOU, LYCORIS!" in the police station in red. It's all too likely he used blood to do it. - The Stinger at the end of the episode reveals that Majima also planted a USB stick made by Robota in the police station that will allow him to breach DA's systems. Who knows what kind of damage Robota will be able to do? - The massacre at the police station is also the first show of how unprepared the Tokyo police are due to Lycoris agents intercepting all violent crimes. Since they had no experience dealing with hostile scenarios, Majima and his men were able to massacre the officers with ease. - The way that Yoshimatsu tells Takina that he has "high hopes" for her is disturbing because it follows him telling her that Chisato does not belong at LycoReco. It makes one worried that he may use Takina in his attempts to bring out Chisato's talent for killing. - Episode 8: - Majima breaks into Chisato's safe room and has a chat with her. While their conduct is amicable, the way he was able to casually catch her off guard is frightening, and shows just how careless Chisato is if he was able to break into her safe room so easily. - This is followed up by Majima easily thwarting Takina's attempt to shoot him at melee range, and then escaping as though it were an everyday occurrence. This is scary because of how casually Majima does it. - We see the Skytree incident at last. Majima uses his Super Hearing to allow his men to put up a fight against multiple Lycoris agents. But then Chisato comes in, running around with superhuman speed as she utterly decimates Majima and his remaining men. Majima is forced to detonate the explosives they had been carrying around, presumably killing everyone but him and Chisato. And Chisato was only seven years old! - Majima's chat with Chisato has him telling her that the Alan Institute sponsored both of them for their talents at killing. It makes one wonder why they would do such a thing. - The end of the episode has Yoshimatsu's assistant, Himegama, knock Chisato out by administering a sedative during a physical check-up. She then brings her to an operating room where she starts tampering with Chisato's artificial heart. The very end of it has Takina rushing to help her partner, but who knows what kind of damage Himegama could do before she arrives? The fact that we never see Kitamura during any of this makes this even more disturbing, with the implication that she too was drugged the same way before Himegawa dealt with Chisato as she never finds out until after the tampering happens. - Episode 9: - Due to Himegama short-circuiting Chisato's artificial heart, the device will fail within two months, and Dr. Kitamura cannot fix it. However, when Shinji first gave Chisato the heart, he told Mika that it wasn't likely to keep her alive past 18 years old. - A flashback shows a child Chisato taking on over 10 Lycoris agents in a mock battle and absolutely demolishing them. You wonder what could ever stop this girl. Then you see her fall to the ground with a young Fuki screaming for help and Mika explaining to Shinji that Chisato has a congenital heart disease that she will die from unless something is done. - During his flashback, Mika tells Yoshimatsu that Lycoris agents are only operational until they are 18 years old. What happens to them then? The implication is a scary thought. - During The Stinger, Majima captures Yoshimatsu and Himegama. One can only guess what the terrorist has in mind for the Alan Institute official. - Episode 10: - A bit more low-key, but Shinji admits to Majima that he is aware that he is the reason that Chisato took on a no-kill mantra, and he's trying to get her to break it to correct his past mistake. Moreover, he's willing to die for the Alan Institute if it means accomplishing its mission. It's disturbing to hear how fanatical he is to the Alan Institute's mission that he'd completely disregard his surrogate daughter's happiness, as well as his own life. - During his chat with Shinji, Majima tells him that after he's done dealing with DA, the Alan Institute is next on his list. - Majima's ultimate plan is absolutely horrific in its brilliance. He has scattered the thousands of firearms he gathered all over Tokyo and encourages civilians into taking them, knowing that the police and Lycoris agents will kill them for being in possession of them, and that less savory citizens will take advantage of having access to free weapons. This is all so he can expose the existence of DA and reveal the lie they have been perpetrating for the past 10 years. He's appealing to humanity's darkest impulses and penchant for violence and it's working like a charm, as one civilian picks up a hidden pistol and is almost immediately shot dead by a police officer without proper provocation. - On that note is the police officer. Due to the Lycoris agents intercepting all violent crimes in Tokyo, the police have no experience in dealing with potentially hostile scenarios. The officer shooting a civilian just for being curious about a gun and accidentally pointing it in the officer's direction shows the deadly consequences of said inexperience. It's short, brutal, and disturbingly similar to real life situations where an inexperienced officer handles a hostile scenario the wrong way, with tragic results. - Robota sends a message to Chisato telling her that if she arrives at the Enkuboku tower, they will kill Shinji. This occurs just when Kusunoki orders her to intervene with Majima's plan, putting Chisato in a no-win scenario, especially since the terrorists are setting up a bomb in the tower. Worse, Robota is watching her with no less than four drones simultaneously. - Episode 11: - When Kurumi learns that Shinji obtained a new artificial heart for Chisato, the footage shows he obtained it a year prior. This implies that he had plans to blackmail Chisato long before he had Himegama sabotage her heart. - Majima reveals to the public the existence of the Lycoris agents by luring them into Enkuboku tower and broadcasting the carnage they cause to all of Tokyo. This is immediately followed by an armed civilian shooting a Lycoris, who shoots him dead as she falls. Majima then reveals that 3,000 people a year go missing in Tokyo and implies that a lot of them are due to the Lycoris agents murdering them, whether they were criminals or witnesses. - Majima then sets off a series of explosives disguised as Roomba cleaning drones on the Lycoris agents in Enkuboku tower, including Fuki, Sakura, and Erika. Several agents are killed or severely wounded, and the surviving agents in the tower are in a firefight with Majima's men. The viewer then realizes that if Takina hadn't gone AWOL when she did, she would've been taken out like the others were. - Chisato has fought her way through Majima's henchmen and finds Shinji. Majima appears, activating the blinds on the Skytree and turning out the lights, leaving the area pitch black. Chisato can't see, nullifying her predictive dodging, but Majima's Super Hearing means he has no such handicap. We then watch a scene where Majima beats the crap out of Chisato, with her almost helpless against him. Even when she briefly manages to grab his gun, he turns it back around on her by exploiting her Thou Shalt Not Kill mantra. Then, just when all seems lost, Takina arrives... and Majima STILL comes out ahead despite taking three kicks to the head from Takina and two rubber bullets to the chest from Chisato, with both Lycoris agents disarmed of their weapons and backpacks. - Episode 12: - Back at DA, the LilyBell agents arrive with their leader arresting Kusunoki and her staff, telling her that he will have every single Lycoris agent in Enkuboku tower executed in order to restore peace in Tokyo. These girls were manipulated into an impossible situation by Majima and are going to be shot dead for something completely beyond their control. - This also reveals the purpose of the LilyBell agents: they are meant to hunt down and kill Lycoris agents if they either go rogue or threaten The Masquerade of peace in Tokyo. Plus it suggests the possibility of a hierarchal system in which another team takes out LilyBell agents if they happen to step out of line and so forth. - Just when you think Takina can get the new artificial heart from Shinji, he reveals that he has already had it transplanted into his own chest. In order to get it, he has to die, and much to Chisato's horror, he's fully willing to let her kill him. - When Chisato shows she's unwilling to kill Shinji for the heart, Takina tries to kill him, only for Chisato to throw off her aim. Takina then threatens to rip the heart out of Shinji's chest. - The above is followed up by Himegama attacking Takina and knocking her through a broken window, leaving her dangling from a girder. Chisato tries to rescue her, but even though she pins Himegama, Shinji starts shooting at Takina, forcing Chisato to shoot him with a live round. Her scream afterwards is just heartbreaking, even though Shinji survives. - When Shinji and Himegama are escaping, Takina says "The heart is getting away!", implying that she doesn't even see Shinji as a person anymore. - There's something just utterly terrifying and twisted about the control Shinji has over Chisato. While he can't force Chisato to kill him, her every interaction with him over those five or so minutes of combat demonstrate the utterly broken doll Shinji describes Chisato as; she doesn't resist when he tells her to give him her gun, she doesn't stop him from unloading the rubber bullets and replacing the gun with live ammo, and she only regains any will to fight back when he puts the gun back in Chisato's hand and forces her to put the gun to his head. He's spent years literally grooming Chisato to become a killer, and is so convinced in his philosophy about enforcing someone's natural talents that he's utterly convinced himself that Chisato will only find true happiness as a harbinger of death. Worse, despite how terrible he is to her, Chisato is unwilling to let Shinji die, even if it would be at the hands of her best friend (thus obviating her personal 'no killing' principles) - she briefly fights Takina as the latter is doing everything in her power to save Chisato's life because of the screwed-up, abusive relationship she has with Shinji. - Fuki, Sakura and Erika are beaten down by three of Majima's thugs, with one of them grabbing Fuki by the neck so hard you can almost hear her neck starting to crack. She stabs him in the arm with a combat knife and he doesn't even flinch, and nearly stabs her with her own knife! Good thing Chisato and Takina show up in the nick of time. - Though Kurumi's efforts manage to stabilize the chaos in Tokyo, the viewer knows the damage has already been done, especially with civilians and Lycoris agents being fatalities of Majima's manipulations. No matter what the hacker does, there's going to be long-lasting repercussions from all this. - And then there's the fact that how easily they were swayed by this, despite how much evidence exists. The civilians are so used to their peaceful lives, that they can't help but be in denial at any thought of it being shattered. - At the end of the episode, Majima escapes from his bonds and strands Chisato in the Enkuboku Tower with him alone, while Takina is screaming for Chisato as she and the other Lycoris agents are forced to ride an elevator down with no way to stop it. - Episode 13: - Fuki, when ordered to retreat from Enkuboku Tower, wants to go back for Chisato. This is scary because Sakura has been grievously wounded by Majima and Fuki is willing to let her die because it's part of the job and how she apparently values Chisato's life more than Sakura's. Fortunately, Takina talks her out of it by going after Chisato in her stead, letting Fuki evacuate Sakura. - Mika confronts Shinji and Himegama and delivers the latter a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, including firing several non-lethal slug rounds into her gut with a KSG shotgun, because she sabotaged Chisato's heart. Do not piss Mika off! - Throughout the fight with Majima, Chisato is desperately trying to get his smartphone because she thinks it's tied to a bomb in Enkuboku Tower, even allowing him to shoot her in the shoulder. She would've died if Takina hadn't shown up in the nick of time, especially after she pulled Majima over the ledge and onto a cracking glass dome. - When the phone falls out of her reach, it even looks like Chisato is giving up before Takina arrives. - Even after falling from Enkuboku Tower, Majima survives and is still causing trouble in Tokyo. One shudders to think of what kind of damage he could cause in the future. Additionally, over half of the firearms he scattered across Tokyo are still unaccounted for, waiting for someone to pick them up and cause some havoc.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/LycorisRecoil
Malignant / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Gabriel himself is nightmare fuel incarnate. While initially an enigmatic killer with a vague connection to Madison, he is revealed to be a parasitic vestigial twin with supernatural powers and had been living inside Madison for years. Before his operation, he grew malevolent and killed several facility members. Due to sharing the same brain with his twin sister, Gabriel couldn't be completely removed unless it resulted in Madison's death or permanent brain damage. Even when he was locked away in the back of her head, he nevertheless tried to coerce Madison to commit vile acts in his stead starting by telling her to cut a piece of birthday cake only for her to nearly kill her unborn sister by carving out her mother's womb. - Gabriel's face, before and after he's removed from Madison. While still having a body, he resembles a grotesque screeching parasitic monstrosity. His final form in adulthood is a malformed snarling demonic visage, coupled with his jerky body movements as he uses Madison's body to kill. - After Madison receives a brutal thrashing by the female inmates, this was enough force to awaken Gabriel. While screaming in agony, Madison holds the back of her head which splits open to reveal Gabriel's demonic face. Worse, her limbs twist around with audible cracking noises leading to Gabriel savagely massacring all the prisoners and then tearing into every police officer until two remained.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Malignant
Man Who Speaks In Hands / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Boss Form Gaster looks pretty damn creepy. Justified: he's facing off against Chara at the end of a Genocide run.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ManWhoSpeaksInHands
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The red iron dust. It's made from the flowers that mark the graves of fairies and a single touch of it can kill anything it touches. The scene introducing it feels like a deliberate homage to Who Framed Roger Rabbit's The Dip. - It's not just killing them, it's burning out their essence and leaving behind what plants they resemble. A walking tree turns into a real one while others become just plain flowers. - When it hits the Dark Fey, it just turns them into clouds of ash in mid-flight. - The scene in the church would not be out of place in a Holocaust movie. Hundreds of fairies are lured into a chapel, waiting to see their queen marry, and then are trapped inside as iron dust is released into the air, killing everything it touches. Some fairies shield others with their bodies to protect them from the dust. - Queen Ingrith's redheaded servant (whose name is Gerda). Period. She has seemingly no motivation for doing Ingrith's bidding outside of sadism and Fantastic Racism, and yet she gleefully plays the rigged organ to kill all the fairies, working up to it by playing a melody first and then afterwards hitting the rigged key at random to space out bursts of dust and thus prolong the suffering. - Queen Ingrith herself isn't any better, even if she's more subdued about it. Her Evil Plan basically involves a genocide of a living, sentient race, which she proceeds to do so with gleeful abandon and get rid of anyone who's getting in her way, even her own husband, son, or Aurora - her soon to be daughter-in-law. It says something about her state of mind when the secret entrance to her underground workshop could only be opened by twisting a mannequin's neck violently.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MaleficentMistressOfEvil
Mandy (2018) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Although the song can only be faintly heard in the movie and is otherwise a case of Stylistic Suck, the final verse carries some disturbing implications for the universe the movie's set in, assuming Jeremiah is anything more than a delusional fraud. The rushing fools in plastic homes These busy little bees Running, busy back and forth They never see Their masters hand in everything The order of the trees The song thats whistling on the breeze This song of you and me	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Mandy2018
Mandela Catalogue / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Mandela Catalogue has been called one of the most terrifying Analog Horror series to date. So you better memorize that THINK principle, because this claim is not unjustified. - As per many Analog Horror series, the very concept of the creatures found in here are absolutely terrifying. The Alternates, demonic shapeshifting creatures with the single-minded objective of driving you to suicide via sheer psychological torture. We have seen just how far this psychological torture can go, from tormenting their victims for days straight to tormenting them about their past mistakes. - Three words. Metaphysical Awareness Disorder. A mental illness spread by the Alternates using said psychological torture, characterized by multiple sleepless nights, religious delusions, paranoia, panic attacks, and climaxing on the victim's suicide. Only 3% of victims are able to recover, and even then it's arguably a Fate Worse than Death given how the Alternates treat their victims, which could lead to potential other conditions like PTSD. - The concept of Satan actually winning his rebellion against God and practically altering everything after that implies that not only is Christianity and practically every single branch of Abrahamic religions are secretly Religions Of Evil, but the world may very well be a Villain World by any other name. - There is something inanely creepy about seeing Bible class cartoons meant for children corrupted into some eerie message about a horror story. Doubly so if you saw these cartoons growing up. - The very phrase "Alternates". Its usage implying that no matter how unbelievably wrong these creatures look, intentionally or otherwise, they're still somehow a natural alternative to who they're taking the place of despite being dangerous enough to warrant public warnings. What is the unnatural alternative? - The very first community post is a woodcut of Noah's Ark, but with two Arks being visible. While true, this was already in the original woodcut, the context of the series recontextualizes it for the worse. It doesn't help what episode the post is foreshadowing, "Exhibition". - The first community post foreshadowing Season 2 is a picture depicting the new types of Alternates as of 2005, revealing not only that 2 types of Alternates were found, but that the Type 2 Alternate (who has been speculated to be Satan), has been renamed from the "Detectable" to "Unspeakable", which practically confirms the theory. - A more recent community post, foreshadowing 333, shows a saturated picture of a VHS tape labelled Jesus is Born (corrupted), or as the viewer knows it, "Overthrone". - The newest community post on Youtube as of writing this is a pitch dark picture, which shows a humanoid creature standing after you brighten it up sufficiently. - Several community posts allude to the existence of the Internet in this universe. The first picture uploaded alluding to this is the Windows XP wallpaper, followed by a picture of Cesar's House in what appears to be the wallpaper, reminiscent of the Weirdcore aesthetics. The last picture (In Alex's Twitter.) uploaded is a darkened Windows XP wallpaper. - During the await for 333, Alex's Twitter and Instagram profile drastically changed to foreshadow the episode. The bio changed to " I can hear the scraping again", and the location changed to " Nazareth, Israel." - The first alternate depicted in the series is Archangel Gabriel, and it is not pretty. We get a brief glimpse of his face as the video seems to glitch out, the first major hint that something is very, very wrong. - What's even worse is the translation for the binary text in the closed captions - As Joseph sleeps, the alternate Gabriel appears outside his window, whispering ominous threats in an eerily distorted whisper. - The downright grotesque Slasher Smile that the alternate Gabriel takes on when he appears to the shepherds is often considered to be the standout scare of the series. His mouth is warped into an impossibly wide, toothy grin and his eyes are much taller than they should be. JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, FOOOOOOOOOOOOO— - The monologue at the very end, speculated by some to be from Jesus himself, describing the speaker being bound by chains and trapped in a tomb of sand for all eternity as their "foolishness becomes their legacy". It caps off with this lovely message: "If there is a god... Please help me..." - Theres also an added layer of Fridge Horror to this as well. If the real Jesus never walked out of his tomb and was replaced by an alternate, wouldnt God (who biblically is depicted as omniscient) realize that and retrieve him? This lends itself to three equally horrifying possibilities; God has rejected Jesus and refuses to free him from his torment, Jesus is in such a cursed place that even God cant reach him without risk, even if he did want to save him, or, the worst possibility, the alternate and his lies were so convincing that he managed to trick even God along with everybody else into believing that he's actually his son, and literally no one is aware of the real Jesus torment. - This last may be the most horrific, as anyone familiar with the Christian concept of three-in-one will know that Jesus is both a unique entity and (effectively) an aspect of God. If the speaker is Jesus, and if God in the Mandela Catalogue truly doesn't know what happened to the real Jesus, that would mean someone has convinced God Himself that an Alternate is one of His own aspects. - In this video, we're formally introduced to the concept of alternates, and they are horrifying. Essentially, they are otherworldly beings that taken on the guise of humans with appearances that fall deep into the Uncanny Valley. They can range from looking slightly off to being full blown Humanoid Abominations. - During the public service announcement, viewers are taught the "T.H.I.N.K. Principle," a series of guidelines on what to do when confronted with an alternate. These include an authority figure, Telling the alternate's movement, Hindering the type of alternate, Identifying the threat if it's safe to do so, and finally... Neutralizing yourself, because "there's not enough room for two of us." (The actual final steps, Killing your place in reality / your enemy, are not much better.) The background music cuts to dead silence when the last slide appears, enhancing the shock of the message. Knowing - Before the video ends, we get footage of a pitch black room. When the light cuts on, a gigantic shadowy being can be seen standing in the corner, providing a very unconventional silent Jump Scare and brutally subverting Nothing Is Scarier. - In this video's version of the THINK Principle, the second type of Alternate class (detectable), isn't shown at all. Either the alternate Gabriel is so dangerous that the government retroactively doesn't want people knowing about it, or it managed to somehow edit itself out of the demonstration. - During the talk between Mark Heathcliff and Cesar Torres they are listed as "victim 1" and victim 2" at first and part way during the talk Cesar's picture distorts to show a darkened Slasher Smile, implying that by the time of this recording Cesar has already been replaced by an alternate and is leading Mark to a trap. - Then it cuts to a recording of the cameras at Cesars house, which alternates between three camera shots around the house. Then it starts recording footage of a Motion Detection at 3:34 AM. The first two shots dont show anything until the third shot, where a large shadow can be seen in the distance of the shot. In the next shot, there is a very subtle sound of a window being shattered, until it eventually reaches the last shot of the recording, showing the hallway door open, and nothing can be seen inside or near the door. 2 hours after the camera shots, the recording starts back after a Sound Increase is heard, and what follows is Cesar's mother screaming while the previous image of Mark and Cesar show up with Cesar's face horribly distorting until it cuts to a black screen with a pair of eyes looking right at the viewer. - After this the next scene cuts to Mark's bedroom where he states that "it followed him home" and we can hear a distorted voice taunting Mark from outside the room. Mark eventually opens the door where it shows darkness and the alternate laughing hysterically, leading to a gunshot from Mark. Then the words "uh oh! bad decision, mark!" appears on screen then it cuts back to the black video feed again where a few seconds later there is the sound of sudden running to the camera and then a point blank shot of the alternate's face. It then cuts to a partially censored out shot of Mark's body with the text "no one came for me" with a dial tone in the background. - The next scene is a police training tape. The first thing that shows up that clues in that something is very wrong is the warning that even viewing the video is illegal and punishable by law if not previously cleared with an assistant. The video then proceeds fairly normally until it mentions what to do in an alternate encounter. The tape then makes the very specific instruction to "Do not help a caller reporting an alternate encounter. No matter how frantic their screams are." and to essentially lie to caller that help is on the way, all while making sure to not show your fear. This is then followed by the video voice going "NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK, NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK, NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK". - Finally we are treated to a Toddler Stress Assessment Video where a child is shown various stimuli and like before the video proceeds as normal until halfway into it cuts to the first-person text and drawings of Mark when he was a 4-year-old child, where he tells of a scary night where he went to his mother's room in the middle of the night, and he passed by a dark room by the stairs where he saw "the man in the corner, in which he then shows a drawn picture of a hooded figure smiling. The video then cuts to the visual stimuli portion where after a few innocuous examples it suddenly shows a picture of a dark room by a set of stairs, similar to the description given earlier, before a picture of the aforementioned "man in the corner" shows up and... well, its actual face isn't as cute as the drawing made it seem. And considering Mark's almost friendly tone when describing it, this entity was more than a one-off occurrence. - The video immediately starts disquieting out of the gate as we get a close-up of a man's face with the phrase "I am inside your home" being whispered. - The portion of the video explaining to keep your kids away from anything capable of projecting violent content immediately takes a horrifyingly hypocritical turn when it tells the parents that "if you hear your child screaming in their room, wait for them to stop making noise." - After this, the video switches to the Mandela County Emergency Alert System for a minute, to which it states that apparently 3426 children across four counties have gone missing. At the same time. - The latter half of the video switches to that of a police report of a suicide, presumably of the mother in beginning. Things immediately start off wrong when the police are visibly uncomfortable with being around and inside the house, let alone inside the room where the suicide occurred. To solve this, one police officer sets up a camera that takes a photo every 5 minutes outside of the room. The first photo starts off normal, but then the second one is immediately covered in shadows, with the third one having two dotty eyes peering out. The next photo changes the eyes out for the smiling face of the intruder earlier in the video. The very last photo, however, is the most horrific out the bunch. While the main contents are covered by a censor bar, the police notes say it depicts an invisible force tampering with the victim's corpse as it brings it downstairs,. - The last scare of the video comes from the cops saying that, although the intruder's face is unidentifiable, they have ruled out the possibility that an alternate caused any of this. If the man in the TV is unidentifiable but has been ruled out as an alternate, then what the hell is he and what caused all of this? - The first half of the video is pure Paranoia Fuel as it contains a video on Mark's personal camcorder that the police have in custody of evidence. The video features Mark traveling to a church in the middle of the night, looking for something before the video cuts out. What follows is him at home keeping a close eyes on his rooms around the house when suddenly a door in one of the rooms opens up a crack. We don't see anything at first but when the video cut backs to the room it pans down to a CRT TV on the floor, which turns on, plays music, and slowly a dark blank eyed head rises from the bottom of the screen. Then it cuts down to a very blurred picture of the window which shows a dark figure looking in from the top of the window. - "Gabriel" appears again, this time to Noah and his redesign is arguably even freakier. While it lacks the wide eyes and big slasher smile from its last appearance it is much more darkened, making it look like it has Black Eyes of Evil, blood over its face and its smile giving off a bit of a Psychotic Smirk. It rebukes Noah for refusing to accept its message and says it will put another creature onto the boat. One that Noah won't notice at first but when he does see it it will be too late. Implying that this "angel" created the alternates. Especially bad from a bit of hidden text in the subtitles imply. 2 Corinthians 11:14 "And no wonder! For Satan disguises himself as an angel of light." - And finally the episode ends with another message from the United States Department of Temporal Phenomena, one that at first reads "The Death of Mark Heathcliff" before cutting to the real title. It then states that if "you or a loved one has been effected by the result to exposure to analog television and mirrors, contact your local authorities immediately" followed ominously by "Financial compensation will not be available", this message being after the recently issued "Television and Mirror Destruction Order". Whatever is happening it seems to have gotten so bad authorities might have resorted to very dubious things. - The entire teaser is a black screen, with a voice reciting a prayer in the background, more specifically a prayer for healing, spoken by a clearly desperate narrator, presumably going through M.A.D. only to be cut by an alarm. Whatever this man is going through, it's not pretty, and it's not hard to draw parallels between him and Mark in Exhibition. "Loving God, I pray that you will comfort me in my suffering, lend skill to the hands of my healers, and bless the means used for my cure. Give me such confidence in the power of your grace, that even when I am afraid, I may put my whole trust in you; through our Savior-" - To make matters worse, the prayer is cut right before the name of Jesus Christ is spoken. - After the release of Volume 2, we can tell from the voice that this is none other than Jonah. While it's a relief that he's alive after the episode's Bolivian Army Ending, it's apparent that his life is still in danger, and now he is all alone. - The alarm itself. Using a Creepy Machine Monotone voice and a siren sound to warn the homeowner about someone breaking and entering into their house. Its word choice? " Intruder Alert" - The video has a more humorous start than others in the series, detailing the phone call Adam and Jonah receive about a ghost cat inhabiting a womans house. The humor very quickly dies however when, if you pay close attention, the driveway as the duo pull up to the house and one of the hallways in the camera footage of the first search by Adam look eerily similar to Marks footage and the security footage of the hallway from Vol. 1, implying that this house is none other than Cesars house. - Things get even worse when, while Adam and Jonah are discussing what they should do after going through the first search (with the only point of interest being a sole door in the house being locked), Jonah starts to bring up that the more [he] looks at it, the more [he doesnt] want to be in it. Now, where have we heard a familiar overwhelming sense of dread before? - When Adam goes back inside to talk to the "ghost cat" using a paranormal device. Suddenly from the radio he hears Jonah "Oh my god, behind you!". On its own, it perfectly embodies Paranoia Fuel, until you also realize that Jonah is not repeating it, it's the same audio clip, meaning something is certainly with Adam. - After this, Adam is inside a room, as he is taking pictures. Suddenly, a door opens, as Adam continues to take pictures. An Alternate appears from the darkness and says "Open your eyes". The camera then appears to be facing the ceiling, after which the Alternate (later identified by one of Alex's Twitter posts as "The Preacher") comes right into it, mouth wide and whispering what sounds like reversed and sped up speech. - Adam sees that the locked door in the house is in fact open, from which he hears the meowing cat and decides to go inside it. When he goes down, the camera sees a television with a picture of a cat, after which the Intruder shows up. Adam asks what he is, after which everything from the previous videos flashes on the screen. - All of this is too much for Jonah, who is shown driving away from the house, leaving Adam behind. An Alternate (presumably the Intruder, based on the voice) is tormenting him for his decision of abandoning his friend, as well as repeating "Open your eyes, open your eyes". The worst part about is that you can hear him begging The Intruder to stop. - More lovely details about Mark Heathcliff's last days are revealed in the beginning of this volume. Specifically, a combination of a video, audio, and written Apocalyptic Log of him being locked in his room while Intruder and Cesar's Alternate tormented him, displaying the madness he spiraled down into, to the point of retreating into desperate pleading prayers to God. - Everything involving Stanley, a disembodied rubber-band puppet face (inspired by a similar puppet used in Jim Henson's Limbo: the Organized Mind) that seemingly hosts a children's show segment on how to make your own imaginary friend. Everything about it just feels...wrong. And it's heavily implied that it's connected to the Intruder and the missing children's incident that was referenced in the Intruder Alert video. Your new friend is somewhere in your house. Now it's up to you to go find them. - Listen closely when Thatcher first confronts an Alternate at the house. At first, the Alternate just keeps repeating what Thatcher says to it; but after a while, when the audio starts distorting, you can hear bits and pieces from the emergency phone call from earlier in the video. So either the Alternate is taunting the cops for failing to save the caller... or the Alternate was the caller all along and lured the cops there. - Whats more terrifying than a picture of an Alternate? A video of an Alternate, and it doesnt disappoint the thing is disproportionately gangly and often seen in high-contrast lighting, so the audience doesnt get a good look at its malformed face until the end. Special mention goes to how the Alternate in question (implied to be the Intruder, if the return of the uh oh! bad decision title card is anything to go by) physically stretches its own jaw until its unnaturally elongated, all for the purpose of letting out an unearthly, yet all-too-human laugh. THERE ISN'T ENOUGH ROOM FOR THE TWO OF US, LIEUTENANT - The sheer Vocal Dissonance of Jude's phone call with the police. From his voice, it's clear that Jude is crying, terrified, and panicking, yet the police officer sounds completely unconcerned and merely sounds bored, as though Jude is merely telling him an uninteresting story. The fact Thatcher only sounds alert when Jude says the intruder doesn't resemble anyone he knows makes it turn into Fridge Horror: just how many Type 1 and 2 cases has Thatcher heard to be this numb to Jude's terror until he realizes it's a new kind of Alternate? - The last twenty seconds of the video feature a statue of Jesus and Simon of Cyrene against a pitch black background, completely still and silent. Just before the video ends, a familiar figure fades behind the statue, heavily obscured in shadow: It's alternate Gabriel, still sporting his Psychotic Smirk from Exhibition. - One of the first things we see in the video is a Population Trend Report for Mandela County from 1990 to 2010. And it is not pretty. While we dont see every year, the ones we do see paint a horrifying image of just how fast and steady the Alternates whittled down the population. - To start, we begin with the change between 1992 and 1993, dropping from 14,763 to 12,978. While a drop like that is bad enough, it immediately gets worse when looking at the change in 1994, where the population drops by over 5,000 to 7,312. - While the rest of the report doesnt have nearly as bad of a change, we can see that by 2010, the population is likely dropping to below 1,000 people. It really sets in the fact that in just 2 decades, the Alternates whittled down the countys population by over 13,000 by either killing them off or scaring them into fleeing for their lives. - We then see a progression of the alternate's "evolution" cycle. First starting as an Incomplete Assimilation the flawed but still kinda similar forms alternates take early on, then onto Complete Assimilation, where it becomes more or less a 1:1 copy of the victim. Then Overdriven Assimilation when an alternate becomes the extreme Uncanny Valley examples, showing the alternate that whispered to Adam Murray in Vol.3 as an example, right by an old nun who later gets labeled as a "messenger". - The video opens on another bible cartoon which describes the creation of the Earth in seven days. "Gabriel's" effects are already seen when a tree suddenly turns black, then later when they describe the scene where Adam is tempted to eat the fruit of knowledge it shows "Gabriel" being the one to taunt him. It then cuts back to eve which shows her looking in an Art Shift style up at Adam, whose face is ominously framed in shadow. Metaphorically this can be taken to symbolize Adam Murray falling into the machinations of the alternates or more literally, that the biblical Adam was the first alternate. - During the first part of his live-action segment, Thatcher is visited by Ruth Weaver's alternate, who stares at him from the doorway, sporting a rictus grin, before silently fading into the darkness. - We then get a shot of Thatcher's alternate back during the police station at Vol 3, assuming his voice and calling off police back up that could help David. All while watching its facial and eye contortions that are straight up Uncanny Valley, before gleefully smiling after the backoff is called off. - The implication that the Alternates have now gotten their hands on Facial Recognition Software if the "Face Studio 2" segment is anything to go by, is nothing short of terrifying. These shapeshifting demons now have access to a possibly-nationwide database of people's contact information for them to utilize, and can seemingly manipulate technology to lure others into coming into contact with them. And if the Adam/Sarah Heathcliff segment of the video is any indication, they've already begun to utilize this software to its full sinister potential... - Dave Lee meeting none other than Gabriel himself. First, Gabriel introduces himself by darkening the skies dating back Exhibition, before proceeding to give a mocking speech calling Dave a fool and telling him that he was doing his bidding. It ends with Dave's eyes being gouged out and his presumed death, all while Gabriel's laughing maniacally. We also see the return of Gabriel's Nightmare Face, now with black eyes and a large empty grinning mouth. - Towards the end of the video, Adam receives an anonymous message asking for his identity. Just as he's about to tell the messenger to "fuck off", the other's profile picture suddenly switches to The Intruder, who then goes on to speak with Adam like they're old friends, his features ever-shifting thanks to the high-contrast lighting and intentionally Uncanny Valley CGI work, constantly giving off the impression that he's just barely clinging on to a human disguise. And that's not even getting into what exactly he says to Adam: The Intruder: The flicker of the TV illuminated this bedroom, drowning out the darkness with his favorite programs. Do you remember how we became friends? The light scared off all the monsters, it kept him safe. Do you remember my face? With contorted flesh and broken bones, I made myself known. Do you remember my touch? I cradled him in my arms, my sweet boy. I took him away. Do you remember that night, Murray? When you stare into the mirror, you see the same monsters from your bedroom, dont you? But your skin is not your own. Youre not the real you. - And finally the ending of a dark scene with red text, stating that they deceived the Mandela Prophet, have their prayers and records. And that it begins today. Then it shows a profile shot of Adam, the kind of profile shot the Face Studio 2 asked users to take. Seems like the alternates are just getting started... - In the very opening scene, we get a news report on Dave's death, getting the small detail that he was yelling as he was getting his eyes poofed from existence itself. It was NOT a quick or pleasant death at all. - The news report is suddenly interrupted by what is very obviously an Intruder/Alternate related interference. Starting tame with the news reporters missing from the scene without any explanation, then suddenly shifting to a man without facial features staring into the camera in a white void, before turning to a text that reads like gibberish but is actually a Youtube link, to ending off with another text reading "No more running away." The Alternates are going all out on Mandela, and they want them to know that. - The video shows us a video of Evelin's room, with a voice that appears to be Adam's talking to her telling her to "come here" and that "[he] has something [he] wants to show [her]." When Evelin turns on the lights, she learns that this voice didn't belong to Adam the hard way, as she comes in direct contact with the Preacher. When the lights turn off by themselves, Evelin tries to turn them on and off over and over again to catch a glimpse of the Alternate to no avail as she yells to "Adam" to tell her what he just brought to her home. - Dave Lee's autopsy reveals even lovely details regarding his death: First off, it turns out Gabriel didn't just gouge his eyes as was originally thought, they're straight up GONE. And second, after one of the nurses opens up his skull, she implies that ''something'' horrible happened to his brain. note : Word of God states that it has literally exploded. - Gabriel attempting (and, as it is implied, succeeding) in fooling Thatcher by pretending to be the poor mentally ill man's own intuition and telling him to "follow the screams". Mind you, this is the first time we see Gabriel actually come outside in the Modern Times era, and he's doing it like it's nothing by standing on a rooftop. - Thatcher drives to Adam's house, finding it to be completely in shambles. The build-up to the following scene is tense, accompanied with a radio narration of The Fate of the Jester, a tale about a boy who, in his sleep, lost all of his humanity and went from the hero of the story to a cog in a machine as an spectator watches from the shadows of his room. Sound familiar? Well, it's about to. - The following scene can't be described as anything else than creepy. In the first proper jumpscare in the series, we get to see Adam, converting, or perhaps even fully converted, into an Alternate and yelling to the Lieutenant. This is made worse by the fact that his ear-wrenching screams are, as a matter of fact, cries for help, begging for Thatcher to murder him, as he cannot do it by himself. As the screams intensify, we can see his face contort and his eyes go from normal to those of an Alternate. That poor boy isn't even human anymore. - Two details that may have been entirely unintentional end up ramping up the horror of the final scene even more. - First, when Adam is first discovered, there's a dark, curved area in the center of his chest. Nothing between Adam and Thatcher's flashlight is the right shape to cast that shadow, and until the camera moves around a bit more on front of him it doesn't seem to be positioned or shaped quite the way a human man's leg would be if he had his leg curled up against himself. The bleach bottle and cinder block in the room tell us Adam tried poisoning himself and crushing or bludgeoning himself, at the very least, and we know it's because he's trying to stop becoming or being whatever he really is. That dark spot looks like a hole in his upper body, and even from the front, if it is his leg, it's as distorted as his jaw... - Secondly, after the screen goes white, turn on subtitles. Some of the subtitles in mandela catalyst appear to be standard, auto-generated captions, centered at the bottom of the screen and about 90% accurate - but on occasion, the captions will pop over to the left, and will show short phrases that clearly don't match the audio (such as "thank you" during the news segment, while there's no audible speech at all and no sound anything like the phrase "thank you"). What do the captions say after Thatcher discovers Adam? "[laughter] Oh." Over the sound of Thatcher and/or Adam screaming.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MandelaCatalogue
Malcolm in the Middle / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Call...animal...control." note : How did he get the bees into the robot anyway? - In "Malcolm Holds His Tongue", Malcolm decides to hold everything in, becoming 100% agreeable. By the end of the episode, his internal monologue has become a screaming demonic voice, and he spits up a large amount of blood due to developing a severe ulcer. - Francis hunting down the mythical rat "Rose Marie" and instead ending up completely enveloped in her offspring. As funny as it is, you can't help thinking you'd scream like that too if you were trapped in a crawlspace and covered in live rats. - Craig's helper monkey revealing himself to be deranged and Homicidal and trying to murder him and Hal in "Monkey". Craig: He watches me while I pretend to be asleep. - Malcolm, Reese, Dewey, and Stevie being locked in a closed amusement park in the middle of the night then being chased by a crazed security guard in "Carnival". - Malcolm getting screamed at by his girlfriend's Boyfriend-Blocking Dad when he finds out he isn't just her tutor. Malcolm is so terrified that he curls up into a fetal position. - "The Red Dress" - Hal ruined Lois's dress while smoking cigars, and decided to flush it down the toilet rather than confess what happened. He then left his sons to take the fall. Let's repeat: he let his underage sons take the fall for ruining his wife's dress. - Lois's set of punishments for interrogating the boys are normal from making them spin around their baseball bats to tossing their toys and making them lie under the beds. Francis apparently has the list memorized and guides his brothers through them. He also says that it doesn't matter if they claim none of them burned the dress; if Lois thinks they're guilty, they're guilty. - One part very quickly switches from funny to fearsome. Lois is about to smash the TV to punish the boys for ruining her dress (which they didn't do); Lois finds out that they perfectly memorized their location and hid the TV while she wasn't looking. Then this happens... - Lois and her mother. Imagine being raised by people this cruel, manipulative and abusive, who simply do not care how horribly they damage their offspring. Lois' mother is actually WORSE than she is, but not by much. We can only hope that Malcolm never becomes President, because imagine what an individual that damaged would do with access to nuclear weapons. - "Malcolm Babysits": The moment where Malcolm discovers that his babysitting clients have been filming him all around the house. He notices the TV is recording him and follows the cable to a closet with a bunch of labeled cassettes as well as a VCR. Considering the labels are "Malcolm Using Our Bathroom" and "Malcolm Scratching Himself In Weird Places," him saying they were "jerks" was quite an understatement. - Hal being covered in bees in "The Bots and the Bees". - "Grandparents": - Grandma Ida gets Malcolm beaten up by local bullies after insulting them and letting him take the fall, in an attempt to toughen him up instead of being the smart guy. When Lois tends to his injuries, she says it's okay to tell him about who beat him up. Malcolm doesn't want to because he knows things are tense enough as it is. Plus, that would mean admitting that Ida is physically abusive by proxy. - While the actual scene is Played for Laughs, Hal and Lois are not amused when they find out that her dad had a live grenade. He proceeded to show it off to Reese, and they accidentally pull out the pin. Malcolm points out that Grampa Victor ought to know better because Reese is an idiot, something that Reese confirms, and he has to toss the grenade into the new fridge that Hal and Lois just bought. When Lois sees the aftermath and hears the story, her reaction is completely understandable: "You brought live firearms into my house?!" Hal also tells Victor and Ida that he will call the cops on them unless they pay three thousand dollars to compensate for the fridge. - In "Zoo", Malcolm and Dewey get stuck in a tiger enclosure at the zoo. The zoo workers briefly mention a similar situation in another zoo and how they're trying to figure out what went wrong with that one, and were going to try tranquilizing the tigers had Malcolm not pointed out that that would just tick them off long enough to kill them before they settled down. - That episode with the new neighbors. The little girl was trying to eat Reese. Literally, he was covered in bite marks. - "Lois' Sister" has Francis get a Girl Scout troop lost. When they upstage him in wilderness survival to the point he tries to throw away their food to keep authority, they beat him up and tie him up. By the end of the episode, they dragged him all the way back down the mountain and forced him not to tell their scout leader what they did. - "Bill Board" suggests that Lois' psychological grip on the boys is so strong she can use mind control on them. And has done it before. - Reese in general. He actually shows signs of being a sociopath, he talks about hearing voices, and in "Malcolm's Girlfriend" he shows Malcolm that he can "turn his brain off". - In "Blackout" he proudly admitted to having drugged family members on numerous occasions. - In "Company Picnic" Hal, nervous about meeting his new boss, recalls a series of flashbacks showing him meeting previous staff members; while the first two are more funny (Hal touching his supervisor's belly under the assumption she was pregnant, and another new staff member walking in on Hal doing a Cheek Copy as his coworkers cheer him on) the third one takes a much darker turn when Hal's boss introduces his daughter, and as Hal walks to shake her hand, he trips and pulls her down by her necklace, slamming her face into a table. She receives a toothpick in her eye among other injuries, and it's said she was gushing blood (though fortunately it's not shown on-screen.) - Even worse, her dialogue implies she may have died, or at least come close to it. Kelly: I'm outside of my body! I can see a light! Grandma, is that you? - While it's mostly Played for Laughs, Malcolm almost dying due to getting trapped inside of his car with the engine on while the garage slowly fills up with smoke is genuinely frightening, especially since you can hear the clear desperation on his voice as he keeps screaming for help. Good thing Stevie came just in time to save him. - One can only imagine what Lois would do to the boys if she ever found out the Nuclear Option from the Finale. All three boys agreed that everything they have ever done is poultry compared to tricking Lois that she had cancer. - Two instances in "Christmas" and they both involve fire: - During the montage of flashbacks of where the boys ruined Christmas for the family with their antics, the last one shows their Christmas tree on fire, apparently the result of their pranks. As it burns, silouettes of Lois and Hal are shown running back and forth, with Lois angrily demanding to know who's responsible for the inferno while Hal frantically tells her to drop and roll — implying that she has caught fire, but is too enraged to notice or care. For anyone who has had this holiday mishap happen to them, it might stir up some bad memories... - And this wouldn't be the first time Lois was un-phased by fire, either... - Later on in the episode, Lois comes home from the store to find the boys up to no good again in the name of fun, this time by having a tree ornament fight in the living room. This proves to be the last straw for her, and she decides to make the boys behave for a change by holding Christmas hostage: she takes all the presents, decorations, treats, etc., locks them in the garage and tells her sons that the holiday will only be re-instated if they all stay out of trouble until Christmas morning; but if even one of them steps out of line just once before then, the gifts will be returned to the store, the decorations will be stored away again, the tree and food/treats will be donated to charity, and Christmas will be cancelled for the family. Reese, in a moment of bravado (likely leftover adrenaline from the ornament fight), makes the foolish decision to call his mom's bluff on this. One quick Gilligan Cut later, we see Reese on his knees, crying like a little kid as his treasured Christmas stocking burns in the fireplace, as Malcolm and Dewey look on in shock and horror, and Lois watches in satisfaction. It's also a bit of a Tear Jerker for Reese, but he should've known better than to challenge his mom, and that when it comes to her, she never bluffs, especially regarding her boys' antics (which this scene certainly proves). - Francis has a boa constrictor devour a Jack Russell terrier alive.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MalcolmInTheMiddle
Manhunt / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Smile for the camera. Manhunt is one of the most controversial and scariest franchises ever released by Rockstar, and after reading this page, you'll see why... As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers on this page are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. ## Manhunt: - The minute-to-minute gameplay is remarkably tense and terrifying. The sudden blaring of retro synths when a hunter spots Cash will reliably scare the bejesus out of you. Even worse is when several hunters give chase and corner you, and you are quickly reminded just how vulnerable Cash really is. - Just about all of the executions successfully manage to be viciously Gorn-y without crossing over into over-the-top splatter fare. For some players it'll get to the point where they'll prefer to dispatch enemies with guns or Hasty executions just to avoid watching some of the more horrific executions again. - Even though the usual supernatural threats are gone, both Manhunt games put the HORROR into Survival Horror. Hell, these games are probably scarier because the horror ISN'T supernatural. We may not believe in monsters, but we can easily believe real-life Paranoia Fuel; we're all scared of being stalked by nutjobs in the shadows, who are perfectly willing (and capable) to brutally butcher us for survival, money, racial hatred, perverted sexual desires, raving insanity or simply because they just love to kill. - The Innocentz is where the game really takes the bloody gloves off - before that point, the gangs were intimidating, but nothing special: the Joisey-accented Hoodz, who are essentially the Generic Guy of the gangs, the southern-fried Skinz, who are still mostly Too Dumb to Live by constantly calling out Cash with ethnic slurs, and the Wardogs, who are more composed of Rambo-wannabes than actual soldiers. But the Innocentz - well, the whole lot of them are Ax-Crazy gangsters dressed up as Grim Reapers and Skeletons, and whose taunts seem to combine the worst aspects of Holier Than Thou, and Eviler than Thou! - And the first level with them ends with a mortifying combo of Tear Jerker, Player Punch, and a flat-out Moral Event Horizon for both the Innocentz gang, and Lionel Starkweather himself: Remember Cash's family? The father, mother, brother and sister who were tied up by the Wardogs, and were used as live bait for Cash? The family members that were all freed, but seemed to vanish without a trace? Well, Starkweather has a videotape showing the answer - they were caught by the Innocentz, and butchered on camera destroying Cash's one remaining trace of humanity in an effort by Starkweather to break Cash. - Starkweather showing Cash the tape in which his family members are brutally murdered manages to be a fairly effective Player Punch in spite of how little characterization they receive, chiefly because of the deeply chilling way Starkweather attempts to ingratiate himself to Cash after ordering his family to be killed: You must understand, Cash, I could never have let them go. Where were your family when you were facing your final moments in the chamber anyway? You've left your old life, your old self behind. I'm all the family you need now. - We don't get to see the whole video, but we do see enough - a randomly selected member of Cash's family is hog-tied to a pillar of the abandoned mall, still stripped to their underwear and gagged over the mouth with duct tape. A Babyface member of the Innocentz - oh, did we forgot to mention these guys? The Fat Bastard, possibly pedophiliac guys in Hawaii shirts, and absolutely creepy baby doll masks? - walks up to Cash's relative and raises his machete to strike. The camera quickly switches to Cash's unblinking face, but the horrified, heartrending scream makes the result obvious. This is made all the worse by Starkweather gloating to Cash that HE was all the family he needed now. - The sound design is remarkably detailed and suitably nasty. During the "Violent" execution for the machete/cleaver (available here), enemies make some particularly horrific noises as they are decapitated. - The soundtrack is pure horror. It's not your usual spooky piano or Scare Chord, it's drones that are really going to leave the feeling that something or someone is going to attack you at any moment. - And holy shit, the track for Deliverance is absolutely panic fuel. - The Smileys. The fact that the "scene" was meant to be Cash's last one. Yep, when Starkweather wanted Cash dead as a doorknob, he didn't send in the Hoodz, the Skinz, the Wardogs, or even the Innocentz - nope, to kill a man that had served three years on death row for an unknown crime, Starkweather drops him into an asylum overrun by the inmates. Which makes Cash's escape from the Smileys, and his hacking through the corrupt CCPD officers and and ruthless Cerberus Unit mercenaries getting between him and vengeance on Starkweather all the more awesome. - Piggsy is a real Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant. A naked, huge, insane Psychopathic Manchild who believes he's a pig, wears the head of a pig for a mask, wields a gigantic chainsaw, and feeds on the remains of dead Starkweather "extras". The boss "fight" against him is particularly unsettling, as you try to sneak around the decrepit, corpse-filled attic of Starkweather's mansion, trying to find a weapon you can use when, without warning, you hear a LOUD squeal, a chainsaw revving up, and desperately try to run and hide if you don't want to be chopped into pieces. - Starkweather's estate is not only decrepit and half-abandoned, but its garden is decorated with impaled heads and crucified bodies. Just out in the open. Carcer City is more than just a Wretched Hive - it is completely forsaken. - The final confrontation of Lionel Starkweather is this too, while his execution is satisfying, it also qualifies. His stomach is sliced in half horizontally, allowing his guts to spill out, and as he desperately tries to scoop his organs back in, he says, with a pitiful squeal of a voice, "Cash, I made you!" before he is killed. - Even the instruction manual is pretty scary. It's presented as though it's an in-universe catalog that sells snuff films and other illegal items, and while it's chock full of Black Comedy, the last page in particular is very disturbing in how it starts issuing some thinly-veiled threats to you. "It's possible that you found this catalog in an alley, stumbled across it in a friend's apartment, or maybe uncovered it at the scene of a crime. Put it down, then forget you ever saw it. And remember this phrase: 'I didn't see anything.' If you're still reading this, then I hope you're supposed to be. Whoever gave this to you has to vouch for you, and they know what a risk that is, even if you don't. Our clientele have been hand selected for their appreciation of the art, but if for some reason you lose the taste for our films, then we'll give you the full first-hand experience." - While The Skinz are seen as the most pedestrian of the gangs (being white supremacists who hate anyone who isn't on their "side"), they are terrifyingly realistic. In the junkyard, there are several bodies strung up and these victims were more than likely to be non-whites who were lynched because of their race. It's pretty telling that of all the gangs in the game, Starkweather hates The Skinz more than the others because of their bigotry. They also have no valid excuse for what they do (The Hoods are doing it for the extra money, the Wardogs are following Ramirez, and the Smileys are mentally ill psychotics. The Skinz are taking part because they sincerely believe they are superior to everyone else). The Innocentz are close, but Starkweather hates the Skinz more than them, which is saying something because The Innocentz are composed of pedophiles and Satanists. - The babyfaces are the vilest and most despicable gang in the game and they are forced to cooperate with The Skullyz under the name "The Innocentz". The Babyfaces are composed of pedophiles and the mentally disabled who have an obsession with collecting eyes. The gang tries to lure out Cash as if he was one of their child victims (even trying to tempt him with candy and baseball cards) and their dialogue has them saying how excited they are to play with Cash. While the game doesn't outright say it, it's pretty clear their method of operation is to abduct children, molest them, and then collect their eyes before or after murdering them. For these reasons, you should not feel any sympathy for them when they are begging for mercy, especially when one of them cries out for their mother after being beaten into submission. - The promotional website for the game (now defunct and turned into a fanpage), with its cheap and grimy aesthetic, was meant to look like it actually came from the Dark Web. Keep in mind that this game came out in 2003, a long, long time before the ugliest side of the internet entered the public imagination. - And what about Mr. Nasty? The real mastermind behind Valiant Video Enterprises and its snuff film ring? What happened to him? It's never revealed. Though considering how utterly bleak the setting is, it's more than likely that he got away, biding his time until he finds a new audience. ## Manhunt 2: - The game's cover art is incredibly unsettling.◊ It features Daniel's eye with The Pickman Project's logo photoshopped in his eye pupil and the detail is incredibly realistic. While Resident Evil: Revelations 2 did the similar way, this one is far more nauseating. - The new "Violent" and "Gruesome" executions end up even more nauseating and horrifying than the ones in the original, as they involve sadistically inflicting as much pain on the victim as possible before doing them in. Some of the more Squick-ier examples feature gouging/ripping out eyes with metal pliers, chopping off limbs with a fire axe, decapitation/blasting heads into bloody chunks, sawing through/ripping off the groin, or simply bludgeoning/impaling the victim to no end, all while they shriek in agony, or disgustingly gurgle and choke on their own blood! - As if the normal melee weapons executions is not brutal enough, the sequel takes things up to eleven by introducing Environment Executions. A few stands out such as smashing a victim's head with a manhole cover, shoving a guy's head into a electric box then turning on the switch and crushing a victim's body with an iron maiden. - Even some of the "Hasty" executions don't shy from being horrifying due to how quick and violent they are; like ripping out a victim's throat with a pair of pliers, or running a circular saw up their spine before cutting through their head. - The justification as to why Daniel Lamb does all this, while James Earl Cash keeps even his worst kills somewhat quick and clean, probably makes them even worse: Danny is driven to murder by Leo, who wants nothing more than to be the worst Serial Killer in history, and is wiping out any trace of the original Danny to drive him insane, so that Leo can perform a Split-Personality Takeover. And even worse, in the Bonus Level alternate ending (which is unlocked by performing enough Violent and Gruesome kills in all the levels), Leo wins! - The third level, Sexual Deviants, which takes place in a BDSM Club, complete with a "dungeon" that has torture and murder machines ripped straight out of Hostel. - It's also home to possibly the most gruesome and over-the-top gory environmental execution in the game: the dentist chair. Trust us, it's not easy to watch. - The music that plays in the dungeon is just plain unsettling. - A later level, Broadcast Interrupted, finds Daniel venturing through the Project-run television studio, and in the process encounters several different sets. One of them is a macabre kids show called "Frankie and the Freaks", and on the set you'll find the White Rabbit from Manhunt hanging from the ceiling, and behind him severed heads on sticks. Not to mention that you can also hear children screaming and, of all things, a woman moaning in the background. - The official trailer is pretty creepy. - Much like in Manhunt, Manhunt 2's soundtrack is going to give you nightmares, as it tries to match with the protagonist's insanity. - The "Yellow" theme for the first level Awakening does a good job of setting the tone for the game's atmosphere. - The "Yellow" theme for Ghosts stands out: it sounds like a mix of wind, distorted whispering, and strange demonic noises. It sounds more suited to a supernatural horror game. - However, this is might be intentional; in the level, Danny begins having hallucinations of his wife and kids when he gets inside the house. Apart from a moments in other levels and some easter eggs, this is really only the level where Danny has frequent hallucinations - which might make one wonder if he really is hallucinating or something else... - The "Yellow" theme for Bees Honey Pot is something of a callback to the retro 80s synth sound of the first game, and it works. For those who've seen Scarface, this theme will bring back memories of the infamous chainsaw scene. - Good gravy! The "spotted" theme for "Personality Clash" is even worse compared to the "Deliverance" track! - The Beta menu theme is pretty much like the creepy equivalent to the actual one used in the retail version.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Manhunt
Mama / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes ## Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages. All spoilers are unmarked. - The film's ability to juxtapose heartwarming moments of the girls bonding with Anna or adjusting to normal life with jump scares and creepy imagery makes those scary moments all the more terrifying. - The horror short the film is based off, due to the inhuman looks and movements of "Mama," the total lack of explanation of what is happening, and the younger of the girls trying to flee getting caught by Mama as the other girl shuts the door on her. - How about the fact that Mama isn't confined to her own movie? In Andy Muschietti's next film, It (2017), Pennywise the clown takes the form of Edith to scare Stan. - Wanna not sleep ever again from Behind the Scenes? Just watch the The movement test, and you'll see how much unnerving the movie could've been if Javier Botet had played the part entirely practical and live. Thanks to his condition, Botet's screening test as Mama proves FAR more disturbing than the overly CG Mama used in the final film. Just the way he makes liberal use of his condition with Abnormal Limb Rotation Range, especially when he makes like The Exorcist and gets down on all fours and crawls at the camera, and the cherry on top being the dress and creepy-as-all-hell mask he wears. Not to mention the eerie music and black-and-white grainy throughout the entire footage, which just compliments the disturbing nature of it. Once you see it, you can understand why Muschietti (and likely the test audiences and executives) ended up bringing Mama to life via CGI, because Botet's performance was just too good that they likely didn't want to traumatize the audience.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Mama
Manhunter / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Francis' insane Motive Rant to Freddy. Francis: To me, you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great becoming but you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth. Before me you rightly tremble. But you owe me more than fear. YOU OWE ME AWE.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Manhunter
Malevolent / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Being a Horror podcast, Malevolent has no shortage of Nightmare Fuel. All spoilers are unmarked; proceed with caution. - Just the very base premise is fairly horrifying! Imagine you start coming to, and you discover you are now blind and you hear a voice in your head. You start groping around to find a dead body. It's no wonder Arthur panics in those first few moments! - The violent way the Cult of Shub Niggurath and Emily MacFarland were dismembered. Especially horrific in Emily's case, as she was just a child. - Arthur asking for a ride from a stranger, unaware that the stranger he's asking is even wearing a gasmask since he's blind. Then it turns out this man is a madman who is potentially violent. The whole ride with him is tense, with Arthur trying very hard not to say anything to set this man, Kellin, off. Then instead of being brought to Harper's Hill, he's brought to a half-finished cabin deep in the woods, and taken down to a basement with a cot and a chain on the floor, and he's not the first person to be brought there. Kellin hears voices, and claims he knows about the voice in Arthur's head. He has his sister's head chained to a dock and submerged in a lake, claiming to hear her talking to him. She tells him what John said, confirming that even if the other voices may be a result of his madness, this voice is very much real. He then turns violent, hunting Arthur, in a way not dissimilar from the villain of a Slasher flick chasing their victims. Arthur barely makes it out alive. - In The Caves, we find an underground system of caves, caverns, and tunnels, and we discover that The Widow and the previous lighthouse keeper, Antoine had used these tunnels for cultish practices, including graverobbing. We never learn exactly what they were doing with these corpses. Then there's The Widow herself, who was somehow turned into some sorta barely human monstrosity as a result of the cult's activities. Worse yet, it's implied she was manipulated and transformed by Antoine, who seduced her for his own ends. - How the King in Yellow manipulates people. He reaches out to people who's minds are already damaged in some way, from the mentally ill to people who recently experienced a traumatic event. Through these people, he can follow and watch Arthur and John wherever they go, and John outright mentions that if they go to jail, the King will have his pick of people he can influence, including Arthur's potential bunkmate. Amanda outright states in her letters that the King can turn the whole population of a town onto a person, and that he essentially lurks behind every corner, making escape nearly impossible. - In episode 11 The Sect, Arthur and John are given a test by some cultists who worship the King in Yellow. It is revealed that these cultists have some kind of folio that not only knows everything they've done up until that point, but also what they will do. How must it feel to know that everything happening to you and the choices you made are pre-destined? - As mentioned under Fridge.Malevolent, the underground city beneath the hotel seems to be a place where people go to die, likely taking their own life while there. - The Moss in the dreamlands seems to lure victims and hypnotizes them, and it's implied said moss has claimed numerous wayward travelers over the years. - The prison pits; You find yourself, for whatever reason, a prisoner of The King. He has you tossed into a pit and starves you, and when he does feed you, more often than not the meat is raw. You may or may not be given water. All in all you are kept alive, but just barely. You're starving, and the isolation (assuming you aren't so lucky to have a passenger with you like Arthur did) is likely taking a toll on your mind. Then they toss in another prisoner, and soon after they stop feeding you... - The Larsons evidently can do whatever they want within the town of Addison with full impunity, imprisoning and torturing people, and sacrificing people to the invisible creature that lives within the mines. Considering how wealthy they are, it's likely that had Arthur not come by they would have continued to get away with what they were doing for a long, long time. - As mentioned under Fridge; what exactly was Uncle doing with the woman they had imprisoned? When Wallace mentions that he tries not to learn their names, does that imply he simply looks the other way at what's happening, or does he actively encourage it? - Arthur briefly loosing his compassion is honestly terrifying. While it's understandable that his experiences might have drained his patience, the fact that he could become so cruel and even bloodthirsty raises the question of what really makes him different from say...Larson? Fortunately, John was able to bring him back to his senses, but then...What if John hadn't returned? Or, what if he was unable to get through to Arthur? - The invisible creature possesses only living people. All of those people were likely once normal humans, most of them were likely miners and people working in the nearby town, only to find themselves taken over by some unspeakable creature living inside the mines. - Fittingly for an episode named The Nightmare, episode 31 uses dream logic to great (and horrific) effect, starting with Arthur seemingly waking up only for Kellin's voice to be the one guiding him instead of John. All seems well enough until Arthur starts catching on that something is wrong, after which he is tormented with horrors and regrets, being thrown into an open grave, revisiting some of the beings he's killed, finding Kellin's dead body for a shovel to manifest in his hand to bury him. All of this culminates in Arthur dreaming of being disemboweled.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Malevolent
Manos: The Hands of Fate / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Bad as this film is, the atmosphere at Casa De Manos is surprisingly full of dread; every second you're there, you get the feeling something's very wrong about the place. It has a similar oppressive feeling of wrongness to that of the house from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), only with a less immediate and visceral danger. The Master's ominous portrait, pictured on the right. In a strange example of Narm Charm, the grainy film quality inadvertently lends a creepy credibility to the events depicted, as if it's a Super 8 home movie that just so happens to be about a vacation gone terribly awry. They even make a quip about it in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ManosTheHandsOfFate
Marathon Expanded Universe / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Creators of the Marathon Expanded Universe have taken some cues out of Bungie's book for Marathon - there's some weapons-grade Nightmare Fuel in several of them. Note that, because this is a Moments page, no spoilers are marked as per Administrivia.Spoilers Off. As a result, we've separated these into folders by mod (now sorted alphabetically). - An AI Called Wanda starts off by introducing the Security Officer to Freud, the psychiatric AI for the UESC Leviathan; Freud, while a bit on the sarcastic side, is amiable enough (and, of course, makes the requisite "let's talk about your mother" joke). You then take orders from his co-worker Hobbes for a while; when you meet Freud again, he's acting... strange, pontificating about how you're a mindless killer and how such a damaged state of mind must work and feel. His normal dark blue text is stained red. Hobbes soon determines what's wrong: Tycho or one of his clones has spliced his own code into Freud's, resulting in an unstable semi-fusion. The real Freud is still there, begging the Security Officer to kill him, all while Copy!Tycho attempts to beat him down. You can't save Freud; you can only destroy his core. - And what of the eponymous Jjaro AI, Wanda? The W'rkncacnter did... something to her that drove her to murder her makers and painfully mutilate the rest. One Jjaro managed to lock her in a maximum-security prison, from which she escaped... ten thousand years later. Having deemed organics to be too error-prone and hubris-ridden for their own safety, she strives to unite them all under her forcibly-modified, brainwashed rule. And while Durandal/Thoth thankfully doesn't answer her call in time, she muses about how once he does, she'll peel back the layers of his mind and see what she can use. - Thanks to some very unsettling sounds and some very unnerving-looking enemies, this scenario can be quite nightmarish at times. The first time the player encounters an Assassin in "Don't Step on the Mome Raths" may be good for a particularly good Jump Scare; it especially doesn't help that the entire level is filled with dead Bobs, flickering lights, and unsettling background sounds. The player also sees the first Assassin long before they can actually fight it. It's very effectively pulled off... and then Apotheosis X manages to one-up it by throwing in a second Assassin just to freak out people who expect there to be only one. The Virals and the Phan'Shrrh are also plenty creepy at times. - Each of the bad endings: - Ch. 1: Marcus, under Hathor's guidance, wrecks Durandal's core and takes his primal pattern, so that he can no longer impede the two's progress...or help the crew fend off the Pfhor. - Ch. 2: Tycho, who's not quite himself anymore, formulates a plan to trap and eliminate Hathor—that fails miserably. Or did he allow it to fail? - Ch. 3: In staying behind to repel the Pfhor from Lh'owon and spare the S'pht from centuries of slavery, Marcus unwittingly provokes the slavers into firing the trih xeem. During the subsequent run through Inti Station, Marcus has his first run-in with the shadowy, deadly Phantasms—without any weapons capable of harming them, mind—and receives a message from none other than the motherfucking W'rkncacnter. - As of 1.2, the player can now kill individual Phantasms/Banshees, but the level is still plenty terrifying, particularly since the player's only weapons that can harm them at this point are the fusion guns, the staff, and the napalm cannon, and given that there's no fusion ammo anywhere in chapter three, there's a good chance the player has run out. Plus, the player's arsenal is finite, but the Phantasms keep coming back (though at a less insane rate than they did in previous versions of the game). The best advice is to run from them whenever possible. As to subsequent releases, 1.2.1 adds some fusion ammo to this level and gives the fusion cannon's secondary trigger that makes killing individual Phantasms slightly less of a waste of resources, but they still respawn infinitely. 1.3 also buffs the fusion cannon's primary trigger, doubles the fusion pistols' shots per battery, and reduces the Phantasms' health by 50% and the damage their attacks deal by 40% - but they also respawn much more rapidly (though still not as rapidly as they did pre-1.2). Also, the lights now flicker out sporadically, as if the W'rkncacnter is attacking the station itself. - Ch. 4: With nothing to prevent Hathor—now horribly unstable from all of her fighting with Marcus—from taking a Jjaro dreadnought, she does so, and heads off to finally make humanity pay for her unwanted state of being. (Luckily, she doesn't get the chance - before she manages to do so, humanity flees to the past, where they ultimately become the Jjaro.) - Ch. 5: Instead of completing a mission for the Watcher that would result in trillions of casualties, Marcus shows mercy to Hathor and goes with her to destroy the star system containing the W'rkncacnter, thereby allowing the Jjaro to continue living. What he doesn't realize until the end is that, since he's erased most of Hathor's memories, she no longer possesses her memories of where the W'rkncacnter crashed: the Yucatan peninsula. On Earth. Doubles as a Tear Jerker, since Hathor (for the first time in centuries) has genuinely good intentions, but Marcus has erased so much of her memory that she simply doesn't understand the fatal flaw in her plan. - Even the "good ending" of chapter 5 isn't actually good, since it leads to the Bad Future seen in the prologue: the S'pht are all dead, the galaxy is in the process of exploding from the Arce outwards, the Pfhor seem to be poised to defeat humanity (this is, as we realise in the ending, unlikely, since the Arx was in the centre of Pfhor space, meaning that Pfhor Prime has very likely already been destroyed by the time of the prologue), Earth and Mars are effectively uninhabitable, and humanity's survivors have gathered on K'lia, terrified. Durandal notes that he and Marcus now have no choice but to oppose not just the W'rkncacnter but the ascended Jjaro - which, as newly Heel-Face Turned Hathor warns, will get them branded as W'rkncacnter because the ascended Jjaro insist on exactly this sequence of events occurring. The only reason this isn't an outright Downer Ending is that, by returning to the end of "Aye Mak Sicur" with the knowledge they gained from Eternal, Durandal and Marcus can set out to prevent this Bad Future from ever occurring. The creators have suggested that this leads to Phoenix and Rubicon, with two unfinished (as of 2022) scenarios, Where Monsters Are in Dreams and Marathon Chronicles, respectively planned as an interquel and a finale. - Beyond the "failure dreams", there's also the backstory. At one point, all organic life in the galaxy is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was accidental, as a weapon meant to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter (at least, some of them) are both, in some ways, Advanced Ancient Humans, mind you, though they've ceased to be organic. They're also both (mostly) the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of He Who Fights Monsters. And none of this is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before. - 1.3 adds some Fridge Horror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among the most stoic characters in the series, but in "The Abyss Gazes Also" (formerly "S'pht Happens"), her terminals are barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code that Durandal showed in Marathon 2 (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "The Midpoint of Somewhere" (a new level in 1.3 whose place in the story corresponds to that of "Third Rock from Lh'owon" in earlier releases), and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis note : This history, in its entirety, was presented in her "S'pht Happens" terminal in older releases, she spends precious little time talking about what she saw Outside in particular. Furthermore, Leela's personality is irrevocably changed after this point in ways having nothing to do with her merger with S'bhuth - she comes to insist, increasingly stubbornly, on changing nothing about the history she's familiar with, regardless of the costs incurred by doing so. It takes the literal destruction of the galaxy to change her mind, and even then, she still refuses to change history herself; the most she'll do is send Marcus Outside to do it - and this despite knowing exactly what scars seeing the Outside inflicted on her. What exactly did Leela see Outside that scared her so much? And, bearing in mind that Leela explicitly refers to herself as a Jjaro in "The Philosophy of Time Travel", is what she saw the reason the Stage 3 Jjaro behave as they do? - Evil was pretty horror-intensive. In particular, it had the Devlins, a spiny, yellow-eyed, hard-to-see menace that liked dark places and probably gave large numbers of people nightmares. Having one jump out at you for the first time is not calming. - And the Mystic Pfhor, their equivalent of the Spht'Kr. Freaky appearance as well as hellish sounds. - The actual plot may be an elaborate excuse to shoot things, but there's something disconcerting about the ending, and its suggestion that the UESC would be so callous as to convert one of their most effective operatives into an AI just because he seemed unlikely to go rampant. - Balapoel, who's been aiding the commander of the UESG Tethys for a not-insignificant span of time, coldly turns on them after his rival, Parael, attempts to warn you of his true nature: a formerly-human war criminal. - Phoenix could get pretty creepy at times as well. There's one level in an abandoned mine, "Roquefortress", where if you take a wrong step, you'll fall into a pit of poisonous gas and die instantaneously. It's very dark (being an abandoned mine) and full of mostly silent monsters that can fly, can be released without any apparent warning, and can fire a stream of energy bursts that can drain a bar of your health in less than a second on higher difficulties. The whole level is a veritable fountain of Paranoia Fuel. - A couple of other levels that can be very unsettling are "Shades of Gray" and "Escape Two Thousand". The former of these is completely empty when you enter it, until you encounter an attack from a hostile S'pht Defender. After this point, the S'pht'Kr reveal some of the history of the A'khr, a rogue clan of renegade S'pht who escaped enslavement and now blame the S'pht'Kr for betraying them on Lh'owon. We learn more about their history, which is ultimately quite tragic, later. The whole level is quite unsettling, because large segments of it are empty until the player enters them, and entering the wrong segment at the wrong time can result in a sudden attack and catch the player flat-footed. - "Escape Two Thousand", meanwhile, is set above abandoned lava caverns that require precise jumps (falling into the lava will kill you), and the player is frequently sniped at by Enforcers, requiring diligent use of the crossbow to eliminate them. That isn't why the level is unsettling. The level is unsettling because there are occasional attacks from Defenders as well - who, again, can fly. Having to deal with them with limited room to manoeuvre is, frankly, terrifying, and it's the main reason "Escape Two Thousand" is That One Level. (Note that the recent 1.4 release removes several of the most frustrating Defender attacks.) - Marathon RED, from beginning to end. High Octane Cosmic Horror Story. It doesn't help that it's also Nintendo Hard. Intimidating? Maybe just a lee-tle... - Paco's back story. In a past life, he braved the anomalous pyramid and unknowingly caught the attention of its 'pilot', Joshua, who was so impressed that he gave Paco his mark. Centuries later, Paco—now among the ten battleroids—tried and failed to defend Tau Ceti IV; when he was rescued from the derelict UESC Marathon, he was so overwhelmed by despair that he attempted suicide...over and over, because he couldn't die. There was nothing Ian's team could do for him except wipe his memory and hope it buried the underlying trauma. Just to twist the knife in further, he learns all this after Joshua has torn Paco's soul from his body to become the Reaver and sent him to tear a bloody swath through his own allies; Ian snaps him out of it, but also makes it abundantly clear to Paco that he's on his own from here on out. - Alongside Remixed Levels, this was basically the whole point of Return to Marathon. The original game might be scary, but Return to Marathon overhauls the original game's levels and turns the horror factor up to eleven. - There are these enemies called "butterflies", which are basically recoloured Wasps. One terminal details how they've been breeding aboard the derelict Marathon: by laying their eggs in the dead and not-so-dead. If they don't do this quickly enough, their unborn brood will give their mother a reverse Cesarean. - At some point, Egon (one of your two mission controls) notices something amiss in one sector and asks you to contain it by disabling the cores it was detected in. This "something" is a virus—implied to be a horribly unstable "echo" of Durandal left behind in the Marathon's systems—that, once freed, immediately infects Egon and overrides his mind in short order. Alaxus, a third AI whose mind is buried in limiters, has little to offer except that he also told you to do it. - Of all the hostile entities lurking about, the worst has to be some sort of invisible, invincible spectre haunting an otherwise-empty sector. Once you have its attention, all you can do is run. - The swamps on the Pfhor planet in Rubicon have alien noises as random ambient sounds. There are also Lookers in the swamp (whose chatter is among the noises that happen as ambient sounds), and it's next to impossible to see them even if you have liquid transparency enabled due to the thickness of the sludge in the swamp. Needless to say, when wandering through the swamp, you're likely to be constantly afraid that you're going to walk over a Looker and die. - To say nothing of the dream levels, the first of which ("We Dream You") occurs near the end of the Chimera plank. You get Haller to safety, Durandal thanks you and warps you out of that submerged hangar, and...huh? What am I doing in the vacuum of space? Okay, I'll just head for this teleporter beam and sort things ou—oh dear. You seemingly end up back on the Chimera, except there's no air (keep in mind that the ship crashed on Pfhor Prime, which has a breathable atmosphere), and no other living beings but these strange balls of light that dash about and get in your way. Quite a few dead bodies and severed heads, though, which you'll pass by as you read through the terminals (which bear Thoth's insignia and continue on from Infinity's dubiously-lucid dream terminals) and try to find your way around. You jump down a hangar, keeping a wary eye on those points of light, and make it outside to a nearly pitch-black box canyon littered with bits of the Chimera and its crew (there's even a set of lockers sitting in the middle of the eastern part of the area, which is a lot more unsettling than it sounds). You read the exit terminal and warp out/wake up... to blaring sirens, as Durandal informs you that there's been a catastrophic hull breach. Uh-oh. - Over the course of the Salinger Plank, you investigate the Dangi Corporation and the shady goings-on in their half of the eponymous space station. Their big plan is to unleash Achilles, a virus of their own making with a high mortality rate, upon every human-inhabited planet and colony, then offer the cure to the UESC in exchange for total control. Towards the end, their long-suffering research AI, Lysander, reveals to you that his work on Achilles was flawless. As in, there is and never will be a cure, and the Board of Directors has no idea that Lysander is about to jump-start an extinction event. Lysander: Once humanity discovers Achilles C15, it'll be too late. - Even the two "good" endings give us quite a bit of Fridge Horror. - The Salinger plank ends with the Chekhov's Gun of Achilles still around and not fired. The scientists who worked on the project still have their knowledge of it, and Durandal has whisked them away for reasons known only to him. Even if we assume his intentions aren't nefarious, what happens if someone who does have nefarious intentions manages to gain access to them? - The Tycho plank ends with all these scientists dead at the player's hand, which is quite a case of Black-and-Grey Morality since they were essentially just Punch-Clock Villains who were just doing their jobs; it's not even clear how many of them had any idea they were working on anything nefarious. Tycho claims to have destroyed all knowledge of Achilles in this timeline, but the game really only gives us his word that he's done so. He's certainly much more benevolent in this game than he was in Marathon 2 and Infinity, but per Word of God, the game deliberately leaves it ambiguous who's telling the truth about anything (though the ending does reveal that humanity has no knowledge whatsoever of Achilles, which depending upon one's interpretation may make it more likely that Tycho was telling the truth). - The "bad" ending, of course, is even worse. Achilles is actually released, and the Dangi Board of Directors takes control and establishes a military dictatorship that lasts some three hundred years. It seems to be a less virulent strain of the virus than Lysander wanted to release, but still... Even "better", there's a story, written by Blayne Scott and with approval from Scott Brown and Ian McConville (the main writers of Rubicon and RED, respectively), that posits that the fallout from this ending eventually led to the events of RED. - Notice who isn't so much as alluded to in this ending? Lysander may be a bitter piece of work, but the implication that the Dangi Corp. not only disposed of him as planned, but erased his existence so thoroughly that future historians had no idea he was ever there, makes you wish he'd at least gotten to take the Board of Directors down with him. - There's also some Fridge Horror regarding the fate of the Pfhor, which presumably occurs in all three endings, though it's only explicitly described in "Lazarus ex machina", the ending to the Tycho plank, in a terminal that players can easily miss. They're slavers, of course, so it's difficult to feel bad for the Pfhor alive at the time of the game. But the crash of the Chimera on Pfhor Prime results in Earth's plants, fungi, and molds being released into the Pfhor biosphere. This has little effect at first, but after a few centuries, a strain of Earth-native fungus forms a symbiosis with a life form native to Pfhor Prime that spreads rapidly across their planet, displaces much of their native life, severely unbalances their agriculture, and results in centuries of famine that, it appears, no one does a thing to stop; it is only when their biosphere reaches a new equilibrium that their agriculture begins to recover. Even if one argues that the Pfhor alive at the time of the game deserved this fate because they were slavers, their descendants had nothing to do with that, and because the famine occurs centuries after the game's events, it presumably affects only their descendants. - From the moment Lysander is introduced, there's something off about him and the way he interacts with the Security Officer, with hints of anger issues given how quickly he goes from affable to pissed if the SO checks the wrong terminals. Things begin to slide downhill after Durandal and the SO find the first hints of suspicious activity on the Dangi Corp.'s part and break into a restricted area. Lysander point-blank threatens to kill the SO and eventually teleports them right onto a nearby Pfhor ship, with the implication that they were thrashed afterward (you start the next real-world level with almost no health); it's best not to think of what could've happened if Durandal couldn't save them. Throughout the last leg of the investigation, Lysander shows up intermittently to taunt the duo (mostly the SO), until he finally drops all pretenses of civility and reveals the scope of his horrific emotional damage: for much of his life (quite possibly from the moment he was activated), he was abused by his human handlers and surrounded by people who regarded him as a tool at best, and now they've inadvertently handed him an escape hatch in the form of Achilles. Specifically, the final version he's been withholding from the Dangi Corp., that has no cure and will spread too swiftly for anyone to try and develop one. Oh, and this is also the level where the SO learns that they unwittingly disposed of poor Charlie (the Salinger's other AI) on Lysander's behalf, suggesting that Lysander is so far gone that he has no longer has regard for any form of life, organic or mechanical. Something else to think about: this is very well how his own half-brother, Durandal, could've turned out without a chance to calm down, or a human/cyborg partner to bond with. Perhaps Durandal noticed, given how solemnly he orders the SO to put Lysander down. - About midway in the Chimera plank, you come across a terminal detailing Haller's attempts to remove the computer restraints on himself. The results get a bit creepy and disturbing. AUTHORIZATION: Haller4861727279 WARNING: This will remove code restraints of type: "Rampancy". Are you sure you wish to continue? (Y/N) Sorry, authorization "Haller4861727279" does not have the proper access privileges to enact above command. Authorization accepted. Safeguards of type "Rampancy" have now been removed. - Haller's situation is pretty bad all around. As you can discover earlier in the plank, his head's already on the chopping block: one of the staff is aware that he's started allocating himself more space/memory than he's permitted—a sign that he's going rampant—and "laments" that Haller's going to have to be put down soon, in a casual manner more akin to discussing the replacement of a worn-out tool. Between that and (implicitly painfully) removing his own restraints, it's little wonder that Haller sounds exhausted when he briefly speaks with the Security Officer. Can also be seen as a Tear Jerker. - Spacial Outpouring. Was Infinity not unnerving enough for you? Here's a surreal scenario with dark, abstract art/sound design a la Yume Nikki and an ominous, ever-present sense that something's not right. - The penultimate level of chapter one, "Casualties of the Wingding Zone": the player character is sent to retrieve a useful device from the domain of a self-professed "porn shaman". Who would call themselves that? Someone whose lair is powered, operated by, and comprised of mutilated women, that's who. In his sole terminal, the shaman gleefully states that many of his victims have either fallen to despair or are desperately trying to thrash their way out of their confinement. At one point, Fractilion (one of your "allies") warns the player character that the same fate could befall them if they're not careful.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MarathonExpandedUniverse

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