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A Canterlot Wedding: Aftermath / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The Nightmares. Every. Single. One of them. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACanterlotWeddingAftermath |
Abandoned by Disney / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Hey... wanna see my head come off?
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- In the first story a curious blogger sneaks into Mowgli's Palace, an Expy of the Discovery Island Disney resort, whose very existence Disney has attempted to censor after inexplicably abandoning it. At first it appears to be just an impressive case of urban decay but then the author started noticing things are "off", with meat hooks in the kitchen swinging for no reason, the water still running despite everything else crumbling, hearing whispers, and dangerous animals from the resort still living in the ruins. And after encountering some of the Resort's released wildlife he finds the Mascot Dressing Rooms... and discovers there was a very good reason why Disney pulled out and wants no-one getting into the resort... or
*anything* getting out.
- The same author later released a parody prequel of this story in the form of an employee suggestion box for the resort while it was still active.
- And now there is a fully fledged sequel by the same author "Room Zero" in which the same blogger has to deal with being stalked by some unknown party which is extremely irritated at his publicizing the truth about Mowgli's Palace (and anyone else who reposts his story) all while he delves into a series of even more sinister events at Disney World as told by some anonymous employees, including the "Gascot" sightings of unknown people wearing disturbing Disney themed Gas Masks◊, the eldritch events at a waterslide, the sinister "corpse disposal" procedure for Mascots who suddenly die, and the seedy underbelly of Disney's exclusive clubs. All of which subtly or directly revolve around an unspeakably nightmarish incident in the 1970s which seems to be the cause of all the demonic events at the Disney resorts.
- The final installment Corruptus explains pretty much everything. You see, Disney promotes "wishing upon a star" and believing in things in movies, right? Well, that's because if people believe hard enough, things
*will* happen. Disney has been conditioning people to believe something they can exploit into existence. And it worked. But something went terribly wrong, these things weren't born out of 'wishing on a star', they were born out of hate and fear
of Disney. The Gascots, the inverted Mickey, and the Room Zero incident were all caused by the people affected by Disney's actions; the potent fear of nuclear war as terrified patrons were rushed into Room Zero, the unanimous hatred of Disney wrought by the citizens as Disney was destroying their neighborhood to build Mowgli's Palace, was what brought the beings (the Corruptus) into existence. These things are the imperfect prototypes of *monsters* born out of raw, ultra-concentrated hatred and loathing. And every time we've read these stories, every time we've shared them with a friend, or watched a reading online, we've only been fueling these things. We're creating new ones. We're breaking reality as we know it. And we learn that *there are more.* **And there's the implication they could be formed from sources other than the corporation that inadvertently made them... including YOU.**
- Despite the majority of the cases being unresolved, Disney at least managed to identify the culprit in most Corruptus incidents. The culprit for "Room Zero"?
**Unknown**.
- The sheer Paranoia Fuel the author is subjected to: his phone and internet services abruptly terminated; his library card revoked, due to late fees on fetish material, self-help books for various mental illnesses, and a detailed book on weapons of mass destruction (none of which were his); Mickey silhouettes appearing everywhere he goes, including
*inside his house*; a crime scene outline in yellow paint, in his parking space, with the word RETRACT; and black suit-wearing people carrying clipboards and red pens follow him anywhere, *everywhere* he goes — and when he manages to subdue one of them, it turns out that the "notes" they've been taking are undecipherable random scribbles and Mickey silhouettes. And the author somehow knows that the worst is yet to come...
- The worst part? It turns out Disney, as horrifying as their actions in the story are, might actually have a good reason for doing these things: as mentioned, the Corruptus are brought about by hatred and fear of Disney...and the Narrator, by publishing these reports about Disney's shady past,
*may actively be making the Corruptus situation worse, *. **and possibly even creating more** | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AbandonedByDisney |
Abbott and Costello / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
-
*Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer* is full of this. In particular, the Peek-a-Boo Corpse scenes in Costello's room and several on-screen murder attempts. But the scariest part is the climax in the local caverns, where Costello is alone with the masked killer who is consistently one step ahead of him.
- Another Peek-a-Boo Corpse scene in
*Hold That Ghost:* While in a guest bedroom in a haunted tavern, Costello discovers a hidden door behind a curtain. He assumes there's a dead body behind the door, but the body is actually hidden in the curtains next to it.
- Earlier, the above-mentioned murder victim is searching the basement when a pair of hands reach out of a secret door and strangle him to death.
- In
*Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde*, the boys chase Mr. Hyde backstage at a theater. Hyde hides from Costello, first in a dressing room, then later in a nearby wax museum, and ambushes him when no one else is around.
-
*Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein* is often called the most legitimately frightening slapstick comedy ever made. From Costello finding himself alone in a morgue-like wax museum as the Monster and Dracula come to life, to his later being cornered in a stairwell by the Monster, to the final sequence on the pier, it's pure nightmare fuel. (To the extent where it's the only one of the A&C horror comedies to be officially considered part of the 1931-1948 Universal Monsters series.)
- One scene has Lou innocently wandering around Larry Talbot's apartment. He goes around in his usual goofy, childlike manner, unaware that the Wolf Man is stalking him the whole time...
- In
*Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy*, Costello stumbles into the mummy's burial chamber and is nearly strangled to death by it. When he returns with Abbott, they try to trick the mummy into attacking again so they can capture it, but it turns out that it's hiding behind a statue instead of laying in its sarcophagus.
- Costello encounters plenty of scary stuff on the way to the mummy's tomb, including several hidden skeletons and a giant lizard.
- The part in
*Abbott and Costello In The Foreign Legion* where Costello is stalked by the dagger-wielding members of a hostile Arab tribe while Abbott is trying to check into a hotel room. This scene even uses the Scare Chords normally reserved for the horror-themed Abbott and Costello films.
- In
*Go To Mars*, the Venusian queen declares a curse that causes any woman who kisses a man to lose her youth. And since these women are all hundreds of years old, guess what happens when Costello kisses one of them? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AbbottAndCostello |
Accounting / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
For an obscure VR game about virtual realities within virtual realities, Accounting can become surprisingly horrific whenever it so pleases.
- As a method to prove how bad you are to the gang in order to let you join, you have to pick up a brick and throw it at a nearby window. The gang's reaction to this is one of complete and utter terror, which ends up being somewhat justified as the police respond by summoning the entire police force to chase after them while opening fire.
- Try holding the brick for a long while without throwing it or putting it down. The brick will start talking to you, trying to convince you to throw it... and he manages to sound genuinely threatening.
- You are forced to kill the King of VR by rather gruesomely cutting his stomach open with a knife, and then rip out his heart (which is a literal VR headset) to enter the next level, which takes place inside his stomach.
- Imagine you're the King in this scenario. You are quite possibly a very lonely person stuck in this dank dungeon, when suddenly someone who might be the first legitimate person who could help you out appears and proceeds to murder you so they can progress through the game.
- In terms of advancing in the stomach level, you can pick your poison: either exit the current layer of VR by pouring stomach acid on yourself, or use a coin to enter a secret level where you assist two teenagers in summoning Satan. The latter then proceeds to kill all three of you without hesitation.
- Even better, if in the latter you decide to bail and reset back to the main menu, you'll discover that Clovis' level loader is now
*bleeding*, with the word HELP being printed out from the machine. *Not even Clovis knows what the fuck is going on, either.*
- In the Car Chase scene you can watch your gang buddies get shot by cops and die
*right* in front of your eyes (literally).
- Taking the apple-headset in the "burning tree world"-level will take you to the room of the "biggest fan", which is scary experience for a variety of reasons. On one hand, the "fan" is a very tall, bald and skinny figure sitting in the dark and fixating you with lidless eyes. On the other hand, the room is completely out of proportion: The computer, the chair and the items laying on the ground are too small. However, the head of the "fan" almost touches the ceiling. Thus, this level is a claustrophobic nightmare.
- Before an update, taking the Fan's VR goggles just led you back to the first level - except that instead of the normal phone calls, you received creepy calls from the Fan.
*After* the update? You go through a creepy and dark version of the game:
- The office seems glitched, with objects appearing much bigger or much smaller than normal. All the posters have been altered to display depressing or threatening messages.
- The forest is littered with batteries and trash left by the Fan. The angry ghost that usually insults you? He's now the Fan's "roommate", and he's so scared of him that he can't say anything.
- The dungeon is completely devoid of its regular occupants and paintings. In return, you can just look up to see
*a gigantic Fan staring at you from the darkness*. Instead of proceeding to the "stomach" level, you exit the dungeon and go to...
- ...A desert, where you can somehow hear the sound of water. The only things here besides you are a deformed, wheezing
*thing*; and a baby carriage, where a baby is apparently crying. Looking into the carriage reveals... a battery. Except that now, the cry has been replaced by a heartbeat. Take out the battery, and you'll hear a soft ripping sound, the heartbeat will stop, and you'll discover that the bloated entity has disappeared while you weren't looking. Then the game resets. Nothing of this is explained. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Accounting |
A Bug's Life / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The entire sequence from Flik accidentally destroying the food offering to when the grasshoppers finally leave. Flik's whimpering "Oh, no" upon seeing the food destroyed, his desperate screaming for Atta, the constant, droning buzz of the grasshoppers approaching, and Atta's panicked repeating of the "They come. They eat. They leave," mantra all add up into a scarily good job at building tension regarding just how terrifying Hopper's gang is. This continues to them breaking their way into the anthill, threatening to feed Dot to Thumper, Hopper intimidating Flik into backing down when he tries to defend Dot, and finally Hopper's threat that they have until the end of summer to double the standard food offering or else.
"They come. They eat. They leave", referring to the much larger and more threatening grasshoppers terrifying the ants into giving them a huge portion of their food. This line could literally be the tagline for a zombie movie.
Ironically, it also accurately describes what ants - fire, army, and driver ants in particular - regularly do to grasshoppers and anything else that just happens to be in their way/tries to mess with them.
Hopper menacingly approaching Flik, fire burning in the background, with the greatest murder-face on a family movie villain.
In the scene after that Hopper uses Dim to launch himself out of the "cannon." The look on his face perfectly encapsulates a single phrase aimed right at Flik: "YOU'RE DEAD."
During the entire chase scene Flik is terrified out of his mind, screaming desperately for his friends to help him. He knows exactly what will happen if Hopper gets away with him.
Hopper when he lands right in front of Flik and slowly advances with the full intent of killing him. Flik begs for mercy, but Hopper grabs his throat and attempts to strangle him.
Flik: Hopper! Hopper: You think it's over? Flik: No, no, no! I-I can explain! Hopper: All your little stunt did was buy them time! Flik: No, please! Please, Hopper! Hopper: (snatches Flik by the throat) I'll get more grasshoppers and be back next season, but YOU WON'T.
The bar at the insect city has both human blood and Black Flag (an insecticide) on tap.
Grasshoppers trudging out of the mist with no music, only the howling wind.
This movie manages to make a rainstorm pretty terrifying. After all, normal raindrops hit the ground like a watery avalanche; the ants' only hope is simply for run for cover.
The entire sequence at the end of the movie, beginning with the rain. What is a normal and perfectly harmless occurrence for us humans is amplified into a nightmarish and regular disaster for all bug kind. Amidst the chaos, Hopper still manages to spot Flik, and with a furious roar, lunges at him, and snatches him and flies off. Flik's friends from the circus try to come to the rescue, but their rescue attempts are all foiled. (Admittedly, the incident where Hopper lost one of his antennae is pretty funny.) Not even Princess Atta can keep Hopper away for too long, and his final death, albeit very karmic and well-deserved, in and of itself was very unsettling.
On top of that, when Hopper loses one of his antennae to the Pill Bugs, he roars again before glaring at Flik dangling from his hand as if to say "I'll make sure you pay for this one too."
The movie does a pretty good job of making an otherwise adorable little summer tanager and its chicks absolutely terrifying. While a bird feeding its young obviously isn't scary, quite the opposite in every other situation really, Hopper's Family-Unfriendly Death shows how horrifying it would be if you were a bug. Consider the sounds the bird makes; they did a convincing job of depicting what birdsong must sound like from a bug's perspective, because the deep and loud screeches it makes would be right at home in Jurassic Park. It's a harrowing reminder that despite the widespread belief (especially at the time of the movie's release) dinosaurs still walk strong among the living. Even more terrifying is the speed in which the bird jumps in front of Hopper, and then snaps him up to feed to the chicks. It's 100% clear that, from the moment that the bird saw him, there was no escape.
Hopper was eatenaliveby the birds. When the camera cuts away from the scene, he's still in the adult bird's beak, and note that it is NOT doing any attempt to snap his neck or whatever to give him a quick and painless death; on the contrary, it looks to be about to just drop him into (one of) the chicks' mouths. He'd still be fully conscious when given to the chicks as food.
Its so horrifying that even Flik and Atta, despite knowing how horrible Hopper has been to them, cant bear to look and shy away just as the bird lowers Hopper down.
A minor one occurs with P. T. Flea during his song when he is leaving the anthill with the circus bugs and a banished Flik. He sings the morbid line of "The streets will be paved with golden retrievers".
The Daddy Long Legs' you first encounter in "Riverbead Canyon" can be quite scary to little kid players, given their large sizes, ugly looks, and the Unintentional Uncanny Valley faces on their models.
At the end of the game's credits, a rather frightening still of Hopper is used. It can serve as a Jump Scare to the uninitiated.
The boss fight against Thumper can be a bit tense and scary for younger players the first time. It has very tense music, Thumper looks scary and moves fast while making animal noises, and he first appears in a Jump Scare, showing up out of nowhere and flying down at you at fast speed when you near the center of the room!
The Game Over screen that plays when the player runs out of lives. Its the clip from the movie when Hopper lays into the colony for apparently slacking off, and even though it gets a little meta since we are actually in a game, its no less terrifying.
Hopper: Have you been playing all summer? You think this is a game?!? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ABugsLife |
ABBA / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Waterloo" is about resigning oneself to a toxic relationship, indicating abuse with lines such as:
Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo, promise to love you forever more
Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you
My my, I tried to hold you back, but you were stronger
Oh yeah, now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ABBA |
A3! / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- Itaru showing his rude persona for the first time in the anime can be pretty unnerving. When Izumi enters his room, it is all red as Itaru complains about losing his game. Then he rushes at her and pins her against the wall, all while being chillingly calm.
- While hilarious, Homare's [A Heartfelt Resolution] and [Peerless LIVE] backstage stories can be Accidental Nightmare Fuel with the Bolivian Army Ending and Scream Discretion Shot.
- In [A Heartfelt Resolution], Homare has so much fun writing calligraphy and accidentally spills some ink at Tasuku. Tasuku is very angry and approaches Homare, who pleads with him to resolve this peacefully. Tasuku agrees, but not before he gets his revenge on Homare. Cut to Homare screaming and Izumi saying that Homare is off to a rough start of the year. And the backstage ends there. We never get to see what Tasuku does as a revenge.
- In [Peerless LIVE], Tasuku overhears Homare talking about muscle training to help with vocals. Tasuku immediately thinks of various exercises for Homare, such as putting weights on his abs and making him do three-hundred squats. Homare is horrified at the idea, but Tasuku reassures Homare that he knows what to do and proceeds to drag Homare off-screen. Cut to Homare screaming for help and Izumi wishing him luck. We never get to see the Training from Hell Tasuku is putting Homare through.
- While lacking Bolivian Army Ending, his Glitter backstage still has Scream Discretion Shot. Homare's birthday wish is thrill, and the Celestial Sphere grants it. And next up, Homare dreams of waking up to Tsumugi wearing a Hannya mask and getting hit in the face by a konyaku and a soccer ball. Then cuts to real world, with Homare screaming and Hisoka noting it happening while he sleeps. We never actually see how terrifying Homare's nightmare ever gets.
- In Guy's [Mankai Glitter] backstage, when Hisoka accused Homare of stealing marshmallows and got ticked off, he attacked Homare and there is the sound of something cracking. From what Homare said afterwards, it sounded like Hisoka tried to twist his arm. Thankfully it is All Just a Dream.
- The play for
*The Liar Night is Forever* is a psychological horror, and the setting is nothing short of eerie. Then there is Shisui, who works on dissecting corpses and later kills himself by slitting himself with a glass shard.
- The blizzard scene in
*Snowfall Street* can be one due to Realism-Induced Horror. A blizzard rages and the road is congested. Meanwhile, Homare and Muku are out there trying to reach the bus stop, and it is noted how hard it is to traverse across the snowy terrain. And then Muku trips and twists his ankle. Homare carrying Muku on his back to go on together is indescribably awesome and heartwarming, but let us not talk about the danger of doing this in a blizzard. Tsukumo even lampshades it.
- In the etude segment of BRIGHT WINTER audio drama, you can hear the sound of waves and thunder. Made scarier by that all the staffers and passengers on the ship, performed by everyone except Homare, are audibly panicking. Some are also accepting their fates as the thunderstorm rages. Meanwhile, Homare is simply screaming in fury and trying to drown the ship. The etude ends with a particularly loud crash after Homare's bloodcurdling roar. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/A3 |
Abadox / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
MY EYES
- Despite it being an NES game, the setting of Abadox is gruesome and horrifying, and the developers got away with the censors and pulled out all the stops to make the whole experience freaky. The main antagonist is a planet-eating Eldritch Abomination that you must go inside in order to rescue Nazar's lover. Along the way, you must fight a variety of creatures, presumably parasites that live inside the alien. The first stage alone pits you against a giant skinless hellhound and a face that stretches its eyeballs at you by its optic nerves. The worst of these is the Cilia Monster; not only is it a really big foe, when you first encounter it, the music is replaced by heartbeats and it pulsates as you descend towards its weakpoint.
- The fact that in the Japanese manual, Parasitis is suspected to have
*once been a human infected with Parasite X*. The thought of some luckless astronaut turning into... *that*...over a period of time is not a pleasant prospect. A possible other interpretation is even worse, however—Parasitis's host human was *Nazar and Maria's unborn child*. Imagine Maria finding her malign baby has decided to *encase her* in demonic tissue, then proceed to *grow* that into the Parasitis body... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Abadox |
Accel World / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Niko's speech to Haru in LN 13, about why she and Pard and all the girls in Nega Nebulus look out for him (he's so honest and forthright that they all feel safe and secure around him).
"... us F-type Neurolinkers are always afraid when we're in the real world - just a little, but still."
"A...fraid? Of what?"
"...Other people. Or more specifically, real-world M-types, I guess. [...]When we're duel avatars in the Accelerated World, we're protected by hard armor. F-types and M-types all have enough power to fight as equals. But once the duel's over and we return to the real world, that power disappears. The more hours you spend as a Burst Linker, the more you end up feeling how weak and helpless your real body is. [..] I mean, at school, just ending up alone with a boy for some weird reason is enough to make me nervous. Even though I know in my head, he's not gonna do anything to me, it's still no good."
"Even with the social cameras?"
"Yeah. You can't not feel it. The fact that I'm not protected by armor, that I don't have special attack or Enhanced Armament or anything at all - that fear just gets bigger the more time you spend in the Accelerated World. At any rate, maybe you just always end up having fear wrapped around you when you're in the real world." | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AccelWorld |
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The third mission "Narrow Margin", features a good bit of it in its mid-mission cutscene, when a downed jet crashes into the sea among a load of sailors who've abandoned their sinking ships, spreading burning jetfuel over the area. It's presented simply as a black screen with the sounds of screaming behind it. **Chopper:** Please... somebody stop this... I can't take it any more...
- There is a dialogue choice right after that if you let expire indicates Blaze himself is too stunned to speak | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar |
Absentia / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Unmarked spoilers below!**
- Lots but especially any scene taking place in the abandoned tunnel.
- What the Eldritch Abomination living in the tunnel
*does* to its victims is pretty horrific. Imagine being held prisoner for *seven years* or longer, tortured and fed raw animal parts, bones and all.
- Callie makes a desperate plea for the thing to trade back her sister for her. It brings back Trish's fetus instead. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Absentia |
Abarat / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- From the first book, we have...
- The John brothers. One man... and six tiny heads growing out of the horns on his head. The book is illustrated, so even if you don't
*want* to picture it, you see it. Hello, Body Horror! Though the horror does decrease quite a bit when you discover they are both pretty goofy and sincerely good guys.
- On that note, Shape — The Dragon. A one-legged man who walks just fine on the stump of his missing foot... and has
*swords embedded in the flesh of his back,* which he can pull out and put back in as well! And unlike the John brothers who are nice and helpful, Shape is a sadistic murderer who will sing an Ironic Nursery Rhyme just to terrify those he is chasing.
- The Stitchlings, zombie-like minions filled with mud, and occasionally random internal organs, stitched together from random bits of old rotting flesh, by an insane old woman who never sleeps, and who once sewed her grandson's lips together for daring to say the word "love".
- One Stitchling is described as having a fully functionig colon, but no anus. Poor thing's been stuck with a permanent case of constipation.
- The brothers on the Time Out of Time, who have no faces; just random facial features on crablike legs, that crawl around their otherwise blank faces.
- And of course, there's the Big Bad himself, whose face is surrounded by a vat of liquid in which electrical, pulsing nightmares swim. They come from tubes embedded in his skull.
- Then you get to the second book, and you add to this...
- Leeman Vol, one of the Big Bad's henchmen that lost his nose to a spider and wears a crude leather nose in place, and is able to speak to insects because of his three pointy-teethed mouths. Not helping is that Vol has an insect-infected head. He has so many lice and ants and things living on him that when Shape hits him, some bugs actually fall off.
- The Sacbrood, a voracious, highly adaptable and eternally reproducing kind of insect that inhabits the pyramids of Xuxux. The picture may not be very definite, but then again, depending on the strenght your imagination, the scene where they kill Mendelson Shape may be scarier. Carrion and Motley are cultivating them specifically so that their numbers will grow great enough to
*literally* blot out the Abarat's sky end to end.
- Carrion's nightmares are pictured even more terrifying, including a scene right in the first chapter when they suck the fear out of a rather innocent man.
- Then there's the picture of Christopher ||right before he dies.|| A freakin' skull, screaming out of a dark abyss!
- And then the third book intentionally tones the danger down on average
*so it can ramp the horror*.
- Mater Motley fully displays just how psychopathic she actually is, from intentionally making a friend for the explicit purpose of
*betraying and murdering said friend for ritual components*, to bragging about how she orchestrated the deaths of her entire family, with a literal special place for her grandchildren as she *harvested her souls to enchant her flesh*, and outright allying with eldritch abominations to cause terror and destruction across her home planet.
- The Nephauree, Those Who Walk Behind The Stars, are Mater Motley's benefactors and the series' greatest apparent evil. They are an entire alien race with magic and technology like nothing seen on the Abarat. They are essentially amorphous blots of smoky darkness concealing a true form so evil and grotesque that those few who can see it and survive remember nothing about it, and they are so terribly powerful that Mater Motley trusted just
*one* to personally kill every one of the *thousands* of people present at the third book's final battle. Yet even Mater Motley, the most maniacal and shamelessly wicked character we have seen thus far, is absolutely terrified of the Nephauree and just glancing at one was enough to unnerve her greatly. Their true motives are as yet unknown, but they are apparently looking forward to a "harvest" of the Abarat that will bring all life there to an end. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Abarat |
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Considering it's a show about all sorts of Eldritch Abomination creatures existing to scare the crap out of people and an actual inspiration for many nightmares in future shows and films, Nightmare Fuel is to be expected. Especially the more you know about the world of monsters.
- The anatomy of many of these monsters in this cartoon can frighten young viewers.
- Some of the monsters' scare tactics can be really creepy to younger viewers, such as Ickis transforming his body to giant size with blood-red eyes (pictured above) or most infamously, Oblina pulling out her internal organs.
- Throughout the series, there are a few references to the "Era of Disbelief", a period sometime in the forties when humans stopped believing in monsters. If one tracks all the hints, one can work out that this period lasted from 1943-1945 — the period of World War II where the Allies managed to turn back the Axis Powers. Since the show later establishes that bad times for humans are good times for monsters, the implication is that the monsters gorged themselves on humanity's fear and horror during the Great Depression and the Holocaust, nearly disappeared as the world economy recovered and the Axis fell, and then recovered thanks to the Red Scare and the Cold War.
- This is shown literally in the episode "Where Have All the Monsters Gone?". It features monsters disappearing due to their failure to scare people. That's right, failing to scare people pretty much
*erases them from existence one body part at a time*. And it nearly happens to Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm, who respectively lose their body, arms, and eyes. Also a Tear Jerker.
- The episode also confirms monsters exist because Your Mind Makes It Real. The Pool of Elders, the collective source and wellspring of all monsters explains to Ickis that monsters were born out of the fears of the human mind. It is that very fear that fuels the pool and continues to give existence to monsterkind. If the pool ever dries up, then monsters will begin to vanish from existence altogether. Monsters are literally forced to scare people just to survive.
- When the gang meets Krumm's uncle Grungy in "Monsters, Get Real", he's introduced stalking along behind them like a predator until he and Krumm recognize each other. Thing is, as the previous episode established and other episodes will hint at, Monstrous Cannibalism is perfectly alright in this world. Oblina herself even threatened to eat Ickis once. When you put the two together, you realize Grungy might have been stalking Ickis and Oblina in hopes of eating them!
- In "Smile and Say Oblina", Oblina gets hooked up with a metal device wired to her jaws with corkscrews and a timer on it. Fast forward to 2004, and we have a movie featuring a torture device that looks similar to that.
- In the case of Krumm's father Horvath, the method in which he lost his right eye as the infamous bullet in "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" is extremely terrifying. Imagine having one of your eyeballs loaded into a gun, this being the last thing it sees before the barrel clicks... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AaahhRealMonsters |
A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The "Auto Swag" scene, due to Sparky's screams.
- If the accidental innuendos didn't convince you that this isn't the type of feature you show to a Nick Jr. audience, the Igor scene will. Basically, Sparky and Speedy are stuck via shoes, and Diesel's minion
*is about to chop them up.* So, they can't move, and somebody is about to murder them on the spot. Jesus, that is pure Paranoia Fuel! And Speedy is seemingly killed. Sure, Sparky is saved (by a rocket launcher, no less) and Speedy somehow survives, but it's still pretty chilling. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACarsLifeSparkysBigAdventure |
A Brother's Price / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The characters' fear of venereal diseases is entirely justified. Eldest Whistler talks at length about how one woman's ill-fated visit to a crib before getting married resulted in her passing syphilis to her entire family, causing all their children to be stillborn and cursing her sisters and new husband to die a slow, agonizing death over many months.
- The cribs themselves. The buildings are essentially prisons, brothels and breeding pens rolled into one, where men are force-fed drugs which keep them in a constant state of arousal and studded out for ten crowns a night. The conditions in many are implied to be filthy and the chances of catching one of the aforementioned diseases are not inconsiderable. Worse still is that the vast majority of their occupants are rape victims or men sold to them in order to cover family debts. Many characters talk about how horrible it is that they exist, but men are so rare and breeding is so important that they simply can't be abolished without destabilizing society at large.
- What's more, the cribs are explicitly stated to be extremely unpleasant for the women who make use of them as well, and not just because of the conditions described above. Those same drugs that keep men forcibly aroused also apparently send them into a state bestial lustfulness; One character describes a typical crib visit as going into an unlit room where "a man half-incoherent with drugs ruts on top of you," hopefully impregnating the visitor before it's time to leave, and the whole experience is dark, painful and (sometimes) bloody. Most crib visitors are women from families too poor to afford a husband and have no brothers to trade for one, and so their only option is to pay to have a man violently rape them in the hopes of getting pregnant to continue the family line
note : Or pressure their younger sisters into it; at one point the protagonists cross paths with a poor family on their way to a supposedly clean-run crib so that one of their number can try for a baby *ten nights in a row*, and their most likely candidate is the youngest sister who is outright stated to still be a teenager, and gods help them if they catch one of those infamous diseases...Rather than going out of their way to make the cribs a safe and enjoyable experience for paying customers like one would ideally expect from a brothel, all evidence points to the women running them being greedy, cost-cutting business owners trying to squeeze as much money as possible from desperate, unmarried, and often lower class women.
- Keifer Porter. All he did, and what he could have done to the youngest sisters. And once you think about how many men like him there are in the whole country, and that most families won't be willing to throw their valuable husband out of the house for any reason ... pure nightmare fuel.
- Consider how furious the princesses were over Jerin's abduction, even knowing who the guilty parties were and knowing that those parties' plans required Jerin to remain unharmed. Also, consider that when they did get him back uninjured and unraped, they still found it totally reasonable to wipe out the entire family involved. Now, try to imagine, if you can, the royal wrath had they not gotten him back safe.
- The setting as whole qualifies, particularly when you consider that a significant part of society involves chattel slavery and commodification of an entire gender, far beyond anything in Real Life. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ABrothersPrice |
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- If you listen to the "Grandma" cube, the title character's secret ingredient in her cookies is the ashes of her own son who died while skydiving. She also counts as a Nightmare Fetishist since, while everyone else says her cookies taste like roaches, she actually likes those cookies.
- Another example being the piglet cube, wherein the person who teaches you how to "clean and de-bristle" a pig instead teaches you how to brutally mutilate the pig, then reassemble it Frankenstein-style, ending the video by saying that said pig was your only friend in the world.
- Nevin's news reports, though funny, seem to paint the entire game as a Crapsack World. Base jumping appears to be illegal, for good reason, one would assume. But the authority of the city is blind and/or indifferent to them repeatedly mutilating themselves on their jumps.
**Nevin:** *[...] Police say one of [The Midnight Jumpers] even left an arm behind. From what I hear, it was a really nice one, too.*
**Nevin:** *The city has begun removing shrines erected to dead jumpers. Police say that they were causing traffic accidents, and also, they were ugly.*
- The "Anti-Relaxation" video, a would-be relaxation video which is basically a creepypasta-esque Tone Shift of the Relaxation video. An eerie tune plays, the image from the Relaxation video is shown redder and darker, and a warped voice tells you, in a creepy way, to do things like touching your earlobes, while constantly repeating the Suspiciously Specific Denial that there are no insects crawling on your body or into your nose. You can also occasionally hear a baby crying in the background, and at one point there is a Repetitive Audio Glitch.
- In
*For the Awesome*, the image shown may remind you of Anothink's games. The horror ones. Especially FUN. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaARecklessDisregardForGravity |
A Beautiful Mind / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The baby that almost drowns in a bathtub. Alone. And crying for mommy as the water pours into its mouth. Though the baby was rescued, it's still extremely haunting, especially to a parent.
- Basically, the whole concept of the movie is chilling: a genius who is also a paranoid schizophrenic but almost never realizes it until somebody points it out to him. Imagine suddenly learning that someone like a good friend of yours is nothing but a figment of your imagination, all while interacting with them up to that point as if they were as real as everyone else. (Granted, this is technically artistic license since Nash only heard his hallucinations, but the movie's portrayal of this idea is still nightmarish.) | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ABeautifulMind |
Ace Attorney / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Watch out, Edgeworth!
*Ace Attorney* may be an over-the-top series about lawyers, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its share of creepy and nightmare-inducing moments...
## Specific works
<!—index—><!—/index—>
## Other examples
**Special Mentions:**
- Because the series is entirely driven by Always Murder cases, it's almost inevitable that the cause of death of certain victims may make players uncomfortable, especially if the victim in question was said to be nice and likable when alive. The fact that photos of their corpses are present in almost every case as evidence doesn't help.
- Depending on how sensitive you are to scary stuff, many witnesses can start to become this as they get more and more upset.
- It's especially jarring when the last witness' freak-out was actually pretty funny, and then the next witness goes absolutely
*insane*. It just goes to show that it's not just the perpetrators who can fall victim to a breakdown.
- A special mention must go to the film, where you're treated to the scene of Yanni Yogi burning off his fingerprints in acid.
- Think about the many corrupt and amoral prosecutors you've seen in the game and to what lengths they'll go to secure their victories, even if it means innocent lives being sent to death row. This makes these prosecutors indirect murderers. Then comes the "Dark Age of the Law" brought up in
*Dual Destinies*, where "win at all costs" becomes not only a tactic, but an entire philosophy (more exactly, "the end justifies the means"), advocated by Themis Legal Academy instructor Aristotle Means...who is a *defense attorney*, showing that both sides are willing to go to extremes.
- The police system isn't trustworthy either. For at least two years, the corrupt Chief of Police kept the Chief Prosecutor under his thumb via blackmail and (it's strongly implied) used her to fire or depose anyone he disliked, even if it meant forging evidence. (Edgeworth in particular nearly goes into a Heroic BSoD when he realizes that he scored at least one conviction on false evidence.) Before them, we had Blaise Debeste, an Amoral Attorney as bad as they come, as the Chief Prosecutor. Then in
*Dual Destinies*, the Big Bad kills and replaces a detective, with no one the wiser; Phoenix and Edgeworth only discover him because Edgeworth was running a long game to expose the spy.
- Even before the Dark Age of the Law, the entire justice system is in dire need of help. The crime rate is so high, trials can only afford to run for three days. The concept of perjury is a myth, and oftentimes members of the court will encourage people to patch up their testimonies. The police, while well-intentioned, are full of hotheaded fools at best, and corrupt murderers at worst. Prosecutioners are more than willing to send innocents to the gallows for their success rate, and many defense attornies can only hope to minimize the damage. Honest men and women can help to change the above, but their careers and personal lives are typically marred by tragedy and loss to the point where even
*mentioning* it can send them into a Heroic BSoD. That anyone is even *close* to a sane and moral person in this world is a damn *miracle.*
- The worst thing? Prosecutors obsessively caring for their perfect win streak, defendants already having confessed to the crime before trial starts, defense attorneys having the odds so stacked against them, and the negative view on the police are all more or less Truth in Television when it comes to the legal system of Japan. It has a scary reputation of having one of the highest conviction rates of all legal systems, regardless if the one who is convicted was actually guilty of the crime or not. A story in the link tells about a innocent man who was basically forced into confessing he murdered children, and spent years in prison as a result until a DNA test way later would fully prove his innocence. While this is eerily reminiscent of the in-universe case of Simon Blackquill, it is all the more creepy that this is real and it is something still happening in our world.
Forum 90, a Japanese anti-death penalty group, conducted a survey of 900 ex-judges. Over 80 percent believed, that under the current system, miscarriages of justice were inevitable. Take the case of Toshikazu Sugaya. He matched the profile and blood type of a child murderer, but the police lacked any evidence. "They barged in and told me to sit down," recalls Sugaya. "Then they kept saying, 'You killed that kid, didn't you?' I said 'No, no,' but they didn't believe me." After a 13 hour interrogation without food, water, or a lawyer, Sugaya confessed
.
- While some defendants end up having more ties to the murder than they originally admitted (though still innocent of the act of killing), plenty of them are simply people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and/or were blissfully unaware of the fact that someone else wanted to frame them for a crime. Consider Will Powers, who was
*sleeping* the whole time and woke up to find himself accused of murdering his costar. The idea of being sent to death row despite having no connection to the real crime is chilling.
- From
*Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth*, ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Proto Badger (pictured). Whether he's ever-so-slowly sneaking up behind you, a sword in hand or popping out of the ground staring directly at the player, this azure abomination will frighten the pants off of you, more than any murder in this game. Pleasant dreams indeed...
- Case 4: Calisto pointing a gun at Edgeworth. In a series where the player character is rarely put under threat of death by another character, this can make the player's heart jump. To make things worse, Calisto shoots, and Edgeworth barely dodges it.
- It's painful for him to reminisce about because he had to deal with that all the way back in the fourth case of the first game.
- Case 5: That Shih-na is a psychopath.
note : Okay, yeah, it reminds us of *them.*. In addition, the psychotic laughter and Slasher Smile involved in that Villainous Breakdown, and the lopsided Psychotic Smirk that increasingly replaces her normal expression as time goes on just gets more and more unsettling.
- Quercus Alba gets his own
**Objection!** clip, despite not being an attorney. It is fairly harsh on the ears, and the fact that it's an audible Objection shows you just how powerful he is within the context of the law.
- Alba is a corrupt diplomat who is also the head of a major smuggling ring and uses his power to keep his name clear, whose dealings resulted in the death of an innocent witness and the catastrophic damage of the economy of an entire country with counterfeit bills. Scandalous ambassadors and other people in positions of political power who use their power to subvert justice unfortunately exist in real life. And worse still, many of them, like Alba, will stop at nothing to escape responsibility for what they've done.
- There's also Quercus Alba's breakdown, where his skin begins to chip away and is blown off, leaving only his mummified-looking husk.
- In Case 1, Edgeworth, Kay, and Gumshoe are inside an enclosed space with Shelly de Killer and a hostage. Then the lights go out... He doesn't kill anyone, but it's abundantly clear that he
*could*. Easily.
-
*Investigations 2* has the second case's introduction, which features Knightley lying dead in a dank, eerily-lit prison, bleeding heavily from a neck wound inflicted by a hound with a bloodied snout...
- When you question Sahwit about Knightley's death, he'll provide a graphic description of how he was supposedly killed by the dog in question, which freaks Kay and Ray out.
- Case 2's Villainous Breakdown. The killer yells that they didn't do anything wrong, and the real bad guy is Sirhan Dogen the assassin, as images of him appear on a black background and his bell rings. The rings get more and more frequent, as she starts covering her ears (implying she's hearing the sound in her head, as we are) until they blur and turn into an
*emergency siren* as she screams. In short, you're basically watching her Sanity Slippage, caused by the imprisoned assassin repeatedly reminding her he has agents who can go after her family at any time. Probably one of the most disturbing breakdowns in the series on a psychological level. You later find out Dogen had a good reason for going after her, but at the time you're led to believe he was doing it all For the Evulz, which makes you wish he *was* guilty.
- How about the first time you encounter Dogen in person? Between the creepy music and the fact that he looks like he's looking at you
*despite being blind*, some players find him to be something of a Jump Scare.
- In the very least it's Paranoia Fuel but the description of Dogen's method can leave you unnerved. The charming sound of a little bell could mean you've actually been marked for death. And he doesn't do it with a rifle or anything uncivil like that, oh no, he will come right up and do the job hands-on with a knife.
- In the 5th case, 14-year-old Simon Keyes's drawing of what he witnessed happened in SS-5. Especially at how he draws Sirhan Dogen the assassin.
- In general the setting of the SS-5 Incident is unsettling. Using an orphanage as the site of a presidential assassination (followed by murdering a witness at the scene) is pretty dark (not to mention Huang's pleading just to see his son before he's killed, making it all the more depressing). The fact the orphanage director was in on it and they buried his body on the grounds where children play is even worse. Furthermore, the fact the murder of the president was covered up so thoroughly in the aftermath gives you a chilling look at how influential and vile Blaise Debeste is.
- Blaise Debeste is practically Nightmare Fuel personified. The very idea of a
*68-year-old* Psychopathic Manchild is incredibly disturbing in itself, and almost from his first appearance he's horribly verbally abusing his own son. And it only gets worse as you learn more of what he did... holding a foreign president for ransom and *having him assassinated anyway*, auctioning off *evidence from past cases*, brutally murdering another person who found out, forging evidence in the past and using that fact to blackmail the coroner who helped him, and her family, later on, kidnapping the judge's son to manipulate his own trial... and then you remember that this guy was Chief Prosecutor for who knows how long, and that he's had a lot of people "disappeared" during that time (implied to be getting them sentenced to life in prison on false charges). Including *his own wife*. And to make matters worse, *he has a voiced Objection*, and it somehow manages to be worse than von Karma's and Alba's *combined*. If von Karma was a demon, Blaise is *the Devil himself*. He also gave von Karma the only penalty during his entire career which set the DL-6 incident in motion, making him the Greater-Scope Villain in the *entire series*.
- His determination to get Kay falsely convicted for Jill Crane's murder is extremely disturbing, especially when he shows up to an at-the-time self-resigned and imprisoned Edgeworth during his Darkest Hour and
*makes a mockery of his logic and search for the truth right to his face*, claiming that because Blaise is the one on top, he can do as he pleases and have his actions remain just and absolute. He even enunciates Kay's "guilt" so strongly later on in the case that it is emphasized the same way as the series' dreaded guilty verdicts.
- How about the Big Bad of all of
*AAI2*? Simon Keyes is one of the most fiendish final bosses in the franchise. Why? Because he was responsible for a majority of the murders in the game...and didn't lift a finger for any but the last. He was able to easily manipulate everyone, even getting Edgeworth into bailing him out of suspicion in Case 2. He had nearly everything under control, the only slip-up until Case 5 was his aforementioned issues in Case 2. The only reason he was even caught was due to an utter Spanner in the Works in Justine Courtney who brought the fake Huang to the roof on April 4th. Had she not done so, everyone would be none the wiser, AND even if they had, he would have had no direct hands in any murder, and gotten away with EVERYTHING! The only bright spot is that all his targets were true Asshole Victims.
- And, unlike every other villain, he actually accomplished everything he intended to do. He took down all his enemies. He will be able to plea justified self-defense and beat his murder charge, as the body double was trying to kill him in earnest with a gun, and he had no way to flee, as he would have been shot out of the sky if he tried. And while he will do some time, he'll be with his assassin father figure, and likely be an amazing assassin himself once he gets out of prison, and no one will be able to do a thing to him. If you anger him, he will destroy you, either by getting someone else to murder you, getting you to willingly murder someone else and then leaving you at the mercy of Miles Edgeworth, or, if you're the fake Huang, stepping in and doing the job personally. And yet he's sympathetic...
- Despite being an overall sympathetic figure, Simon's misanthropy can be downright
*chilling* at times, especially one of his dialogues for presenting wrong evidence, which has him asking Justine to prove Edgeworth wrong in his stead *just so he can laugh at Edgeworth being betrayed by his friends.* The fact that he's dressed as a clown at the time doesn't help. He could very well be a sympathetic version of The Joker or Kefka.
- Something about amnesiac Kay◊ clutching her head and screaming without any sound to go with it (other than the usual 'beep-de-beep' effects) is unnerving (since the visualization is less like memories returning and more like being haunted by demonic voices that won't leave her head). Even the idle version◊ with her grit teeth and erratic, eye-twitching stare is unusually deranged for this series.
- In the flashback of Case 3, Jeff Master was subjected to an all-night questioning session that caused his hair to turn white, during which time he was not allowed to see his defense attorney. Apparently, this went on for
*months* until Master falsely confessed. The entire episode leaves hardened detective Badd disturbed, and gives a chilling indication of how awful it is to be wrongfully accused in the *Ace Attorney* universe.
- The Masked Man's true Leitmotif is a downright disturbing Dark Reprise of Kazuma Asogi's theme. Listen here. (Beware of major spoilers)
- In the second case, after you reveal that William Shamspeare is an escaped convict desperately trying to get into a death-row inmate's old apartment to find a treasure he was promised, the normally comical character
*suddenly becomes a deranged lunatic* (spoilers in the link, obviously). Made worse by his being in some of his normal poses, but now sporting a *really* disturbing Un-Smile and accompanied by slightly off-key sound effects. The unsettling music doesn't help either. Even the jurors are horrified in-universe!
- Shamspeare's method of trying to move into his cell mate's apartment: by creating a gas leak that kills the other tenant. Soseki Natsume describes waking up to the sensation of being suffocated for multiple nights in a row, with no explanation as to why it keeps happening. It's even horrifyingly depicted in the intro where a monster made of black smog is outright strangling the Japanese student (the stand-in for Natsume).
- Genshin Asogi's death, at first glance. Imagine being sentenced to death by hanging, said execution getting botched, having a metal mask placed over your head, being placed in a sealed coffin, and after how many hours pass by, when you come to and try to come out of your coffin, you get shot out of nowhere. As it turns out, the seemingly-botched execution was planned, but it's still a terrifying thought.
- Related, Madame Tusspells, the wax sculptor's testimony in Case 3's trial, which involves her describing how hard it is to make a mold out of a dead body's face before rigor mortis sets in, in vivid detail. And she talks about it in a way that implies "The Professor"
*isn't the first dead body she's done this to.* Not helped by her theme playing through this sequence.
- Daley Vigil remembering his past. The flashback shows him in Barry's office, thinking about how badly he screwed up by allowing the Professor to escape, and deciding to kill himself by jumping out of the window. Then the screen shatters back to the present as Daley screams for several text boxes, his eyes turn white, and he passes out.
- The entire premise of the game's backstory. Someone relatively high-up in the British judicial system caught a Serial Killer in the act and blackmailed him into becoming his personal hitman, using him to kill his way to the top. Then, he coerces several key figures in both Britain and Japan into a massive conspiracy cleaning up every loose end. Part of this involved setting up Van Zieks' "Reaper" reputation by killing everyone he prosecuted, another part involved taking advantage of international extradition treaties to assassinate key targets without fear of retribution. At least part of
*both countries' governments* were in on this. Paranoia Fuel sets in when you find out *the Japanese judge*, someone you probably never suspected for a moment, is a killer working for the Big Bad. Imagine being caught in the middle of all this.
- What makes it even scarier is the crowd's reaction to The Reveal: they start
*cheering* for Stronghart, agreeing that he did what he had to do to reduce crime in Britain. This despite the fact that he's just confessed to being the mastermind behind most of the Professor killings that terrorized London.
- And as if
**that** wasnt enough, during the moment you have to choose between raising an objection, presenting evidence, or waiting to see what happens, one wouldnt be blamed for saving before making a choice. BUT!!! While saving, you can still hear the court chanting Strongharts name. The pressure is that high.
- After Enoch Drebber has been captured and his time bomb set to destroy his workshop was disarmed, he cackles at this, with an ominous zoom onto Gina holding said bomb, at first implying that Sholmes actually failed to disarm it and everyone here will die, only then stating that the heroes only managed to disarm
*"that"* one. It's then revealed that Harebrayne's machine has one as well, which blows up with at least two police officers nearby.
- In the anime adaptation, we get to see animated interpretations of the crimes as they happened. This also applies to the false testimonies of what say, the real suspect, claims to have seen. For example, the First Turnabout shows Frank Sahwit actively seeing Larry exit Cindy's room after the murder and deciding to call the police, when we already know that's not how it happened. That's all fine and dandy, but then we get to the cases where one of the heroes is the defendant; in other words, we get to see the lovely image of Maya, and later Phoenix himself, murdering Mia.
- The portrayal of the "murder" of Robert Hammond at the beginning of the first Turnabout Goodbyes gives a very eerie atmosphere to it. The dark night and leafless trees make the murder lifted straight out of a horror movie.
- Redd White's Nightmare Face when he kills Mia is quite unsettling and doubles as a Jump Scare.
- Manfred von Karma's depiction in the Turnabout Goodbyes episodes is far more chilling than the game counterpart. Here, he shows a great level of intelligence and fear towards anyone who stands in his way. This is shown in greater detail with episode 10, in which instead of meeting Phoenix and Maya in the files room regarding the DL-6 incident and tasing them to get the evidence, he gets it right when Phoenix and Maya arrive, showing how well he knows about the clues that might lead to the murder of Robert Hammond. Lastly, when Karma taunts Phoenix about the usage of evidence of court at the moment where the guilty verdict is given, he ends his taunt by calling him an amateur and, unlike the other episodes, where a dramatic pointing results in someone being blown away, Manfred does it by SLAMMING his fist on the table. The episodes make von Karma truly live up to his reputation as a "demon" prosecutor.
- He certainly sounds like a demon too, especially in the English dub. You thought he was terrifying already? Try listening to his dub VA channeling his inner
*Tony Jay* every time he speaks!
- During the arc, we also get to see Phoenix's flashback of the class trial as a child. On top of the children accusing him of stealing the money, we're also treated to seeing the teacher trying to goad him to confess to an incident he wasn't responsible for with a twisted take of a smile. Even if you assume that the teacher is probably just trying to get through the day without a hitch, the studio put the effort into making sure you're seeing it through the eyes of a child being scapegoated understandably feeling that everyone is against him.
- The moment Maya reveals that she found the bullet that killed Gregory Edgeworth hidden in Manfred von Karma's office gives a close-up on von Karma's face: his irises have shrunken and his gums start showing as he clutches his shoulder, where the second DL-6 bullet is located. His eyes keep bugging out all the time, and then he lets out the scream that haunted Edgeworth for 15 years. The moment in his testimony when he describes picking up Yanni Yogi's pistol is just as unsettling. His voice gets all raspy and he mimics holding a pistol with both hands as he says that he "knew it was destiny". As he gets off the witness stand he looks frail, barely kept standing by his walking cane that is shattered by Phoenix's outburst.
- Morgan Fey's sprite where her pupils seem to be missing are adapted in this version into Glowing Eyes of Doom. There's also a more sinister air surrounding her this time around, and the calm demeanor as she talks to Ini (Mimi) about getting her off the hook is enough to send shivers down your spine. let alone when she chillingly talks to a portrait of Misty Fey.
- We all know how scary Ini (actually Mimi) is when she starts to show her true colors, but in the Anime version, we can get to hear her nasty demeanor towards the defense and it's quite unnerving to listen to her threatening voice in the latter half.
- Unlike in the games, Franziska getting shot is actually shown, and it seems to be worse than the injury she sustained in the games since she actually seems to have fainted. Further, while in the original games, her shooting might have been a Kick the Dog, or a Take That, Scrappy! (depending on your opinion of her), but since the anime toned down her bad demeanor, it also gives her a more sympathetic P.O.V..
- Matt Engarde's reveal of his true self is even creepier in the anime. Why? Because he does it while giving out a burst of very disturbing laughter that can be unnerving for many people, especially that the original material wasn't voiced. It also shows that this is pretty much a nightmare in-life to Phoenix, because at this point, he was begging that Engarde being the culprit was a lie, he wanted to believe in the goodness of his client... until that reveal slams him down that he's working for an evil bastard this time.
- Then comes his breakdown, where he scratches bleeding lines into his face with his nails. Think the anime wouldn't show something like that? It does. Twice.
- Dahlia's demon face is shown in full, and it will send shivers down your spine. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceAttorney |
Aboriginal Australian Myths / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
40,000 years of everything from megafaunal encounters to still living animals to flash floods to pure imagination have left the many indigenous cultures of Australia with a remarkable and heightened sense of a Death World.
## Creatures
- The Yara-ma-yha-who is easily one of the most infamous "vampires" the world has to offer. A grotesque fleshy frog thingie, it stalks during the day and targets children with a vengeance. It swallows its victim whole then regurgitates it multiple times, each time the flesh discolored and the blood sipped, until the victim becomes another Yara-ma-yha-who.
- The Yowie. Despite its frankly silly name this creature silently stalked the shores of the Milewa river, devouring whole families while they slept.
- The Dulagal is a creepy Humanoid Abomination with bright red eyes that stalks Mount Gulaga, walking sideways for maximum unnerval level.
- The Nadubi is a grotesque echidna dog man thing covered in spikes (some in its vagina) that stalks and kills people at night.
- The Malingee similarly hunts at night stabbing people with a knife. You can only hear its rattling knees until it is too late.
- The Bunyip. A vicious and demonic Swamp Monster universally feared amongst the Aboriginal tribes that can appear as a beautiful woman or turn invisible according to some legends. But what makes the Bunyip really stand out from other monsters?
*No one can agree on what the creature actually looks like.*
- Burrunjor. Descriptions of it say it is a large scaly predator that stands on two legs with two tiny arms. It is 25 feet in length, and eats large animals, like cattle. Casts of its footprints show it has three toes. Does that sound familiar?
- The Quinkins are spirit-folk from the mythologies of the Yalanji people of Cape York. There are two major tribes; the Imjin and the Timara. Whilst the Timara are largely inoffensive, being more playful mischief-makers than anything, they're still eerie-looking, being impossibly slender figures, tall as trees yet so skinny they can hide in the cracks of rocks or bark, depicted as featureless save for two great staring eyes. The Imjin, in contrast, are fat-bellied, big-eared goblin-like creatures with knobby tails and vicious fangs and claws, capable of leaping a mile In a Single Bound — worse, they hate humans, and like to steal children by luring them away from the safety of the camp and into their own, where they eat them. Fortunately, the Timara hate the Imjin, being very fond of human children, and strive to thwart them. A story of two children who are nearly eaten by the Imjin, only to be saved by the Timara, was adapted into a beautifully illustrated children's book in 1982, and can be seen online.
## Gods
- Pretty much all cultures have a God of Evil that sends plagues and nasty insects with the explicit intent of killing all life. Special mention goes to the Gamilaraay Marmoo, who can corrupt people into their worst impulses, and the Tasmanian Rageowrapper just for being associated with Tasmanian devils.
- Bila the sun goddess from Adnyamathanha and Ngadjuri traditions. She's a cannibal that drags her victims with black and red dogs that apparently look like people, burning the poor bastards in her fireplace, the origin of sunlight. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AboriginalAustralianMyths |
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Examples from the book include:
- The introduction to the book details the author's friendship with Henry Sturges. Henry was a frequent customer of his general store, and eventually the two bonded over the author's failed writing career. Then Henry left him a series of books and addresses before leaving. The author later reads the books, believing them to be a hoax... until Henry reveals his vampiric form, as well as something even worse that was sworn to secrecy.
- Henry recounting his transformation into a vampire. It turns out he was one of numerous victims of a vampire massacre on the infamous Roanoke Island. The doctor, whom everyone had taken as kind and charming, eventually killed and fed off of everyone on the island before turning Henry out of fear of a lack of companionship. The last we see of Dr. Crowley, he is feeding from
*a baby*. He is not killed for his transgressions, either. At least not in that book. When Henry narrates the Roanoke slaughter in *The Last American Vampire*, he mentions eventually killing Crowley.
- The incidents of Lincoln's life are literal nightmare fuel for him. Two of the four dreams accounted for in the book are not introduced as such, so it seems that Lincoln is truly being suddenly and viciously betrayed by Henry before he wakes up. However, his last dream - detailing a visit to his own funeral in the White House just days before his assassination - is terrifyingly truth in literature.
- Jack and Speed are sent to dispatch a vampiric surgeon/professor, Joseph McDowell ([who really existed, by the way). They track him down to a room of glass tubing connected to various
*living victims*, feeding blood constantly to a single source. During the battle, they accidentally destroy the fragile tubing, which shatters all at once sending a rain of blood down upon them.
## Examples from the film include:
- The scene where Union troops are massacred by the vampire soldiers during the battle of Gettysburg is rather chilling. The vampires are dressed like normal Confederate troops, but as they rush towards the Union lines they begin dropping their rifles, to the bafflement of the Union soldiers, who proceed to fire at the vampires anyway, to no effect. Suddenly the vampires go invisible en masse, and all of the cannons and gunfire go silent; the Union officer is left speechless, and he slowly turns around to see his men already lying dead and the vampire horde charging onward, leaving him as the lone survivor.
- This scene also qualifies as a Tear Jerker, with one of the soldiers (a young fellow who is clearly quite green and has no clue what he's doing) kissing a photo of what is presumably his wife... and the next time we see him he's got a hole through his stomach, at which he gasps disbelievingly before keeling over, while the photo falls to the ground, covered in blood.
- The first time we see a vampire with their Game Face on. Edward Cullen they ain't!
*Especially* when they lunge at the camera.
- During Abe's fight with the pharmacist, he falls through a trap door and ends up suspended upside down. He can't reach his axe, and then hears a strange dripping sound. He looks around, quickly realizing he's surrounded by the vampire's previous victims, all of them dangling upside, sliced open, and dripping blood for the kindly seeming old man to harvest.
- The flashback to when Adam kills Henry's wife. Henry is in the middle of undergoing a very painful transformation into a vampire as it happens, and is completely helpless to protect her. Not only that, but when Adam bites her throat, he starts spinning her around almost like a dance partner. As they spin, we slowly see the poor woman go from kicking, screaming, and fighting for her life to just hanging limply in Adam's arms. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AbrahamLincolnVampireHunter |
Absurd (1981) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The murders, which are not only quite visceral and explicit, but are prone to lingering. It's no surprise therefore that this film had such a hard time with the BBFC. In more detail: Nurse Thelma is skewered through the temple with a massive drill (pictured). Emily is shoved into an oven, where her face is burned off in graphic detail before Mikos finally finishes her off by stabbing her in the neck with a pair of scissors. Peggy is stabbed to death with a pickaxe a la My Bloody Valentine. An unnamed machine shop owner takes a circular saw to the forehead courtesy of Mikos. Reportedly, Joe D'Amato used an actual cadaver for the close-up shots in that scene. Mikos in general. A Nigh-Invulnerable Ax-Crazy psychopath built like a professional athlete with accelerated healing and an immunity of bullets who will stop at nothing to kill you, often while pulling off◊ one hell of a Nightmare Face. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Absurd1981 |
A Certain Dark Railgun and Imagine Breaker / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The whole idea of comatose people suddenly decomposing like in a time lapse. Any of the numerous, absolutely brutal executions Mikoto performs after the first arc. Everything about Sashura V. Makarova. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACertainDarkRailgunAndImagineBreaker |
Ace Ventura / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Yes. Even Jim Carrey movies can have creepy moments.
*Ace Ventura: Pet Detective* *"It's not Snowflake! IT'S NOT SNOWFLAKE!"* *Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls*
- In the second film, a human antagonist is
*literally raped by a gorilla.*
- For animal lovers like Ace, Cadby's Trophy Room.
- While the scene with the crocodile isn't too scary with how Ace isn't phased by it, what is scary is how beforehand there is wide shot where you see just how wide the river is and that there's something motionless behind him. While its thankfully just a log, your mind can easily assume its a croc itself stalking Ace. Then comes the part where it emerges in a split second out of nowhere. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceVentura |
A Certain Magical Index / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Shizuri Mugino after she ||Came Back Wrong.|| She gains ||Glowing Eyes of Doom|| and her already freakishly crazy personality makes matters even worse. She even threatens to ||burn off Rikou's virginity||!
"Gya ha ha!! Oh, now where to start burning her? Maybe I should roast that little face of hers? ||Or maybe I should press against her pink *** and burn it pitch black!!|| Hey, what do you think, [Shiage]? You'd better come out, cause I'm gonna burn her into a black mummy! ||Or can you still get off to fucking a hole like that?|| I'll count to three. If you don't come out, ||I'll burn [Rikou's] *** as punishment.|| Of course, if you'd rather just abandon her, ||the you can just sit there masturbating to the stench of her virginity being burned away.||" | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACertainMagicalIndex |
Ace Attorney / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Watch out, Edgeworth!
*Ace Attorney* may be an over-the-top series about lawyers, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its share of creepy and nightmare-inducing moments...
## Specific works
<!—index—><!—/index—>
## Other examples
**Special Mentions:**
- Because the series is entirely driven by Always Murder cases, it's almost inevitable that the cause of death of certain victims may make players uncomfortable, especially if the victim in question was said to be nice and likable when alive. The fact that photos of their corpses are present in almost every case as evidence doesn't help.
- Depending on how sensitive you are to scary stuff, many witnesses can start to become this as they get more and more upset.
- It's especially jarring when the last witness' freak-out was actually pretty funny, and then the next witness goes absolutely
*insane*. It just goes to show that it's not just the perpetrators who can fall victim to a breakdown.
- A special mention must go to the film, where you're treated to the scene of Yanni Yogi burning off his fingerprints in acid.
- Think about the many corrupt and amoral prosecutors you've seen in the game and to what lengths they'll go to secure their victories, even if it means innocent lives being sent to death row. This makes these prosecutors indirect murderers. Then comes the "Dark Age of the Law" brought up in
*Dual Destinies*, where "win at all costs" becomes not only a tactic, but an entire philosophy (more exactly, "the end justifies the means"), advocated by Themis Legal Academy instructor Aristotle Means...who is a *defense attorney*, showing that both sides are willing to go to extremes.
- The police system isn't trustworthy either. For at least two years, the corrupt Chief of Police kept the Chief Prosecutor under his thumb via blackmail and (it's strongly implied) used her to fire or depose anyone he disliked, even if it meant forging evidence. (Edgeworth in particular nearly goes into a Heroic BSoD when he realizes that he scored at least one conviction on false evidence.) Before them, we had Blaise Debeste, an Amoral Attorney as bad as they come, as the Chief Prosecutor. Then in
*Dual Destinies*, the Big Bad kills and replaces a detective, with no one the wiser; Phoenix and Edgeworth only discover him because Edgeworth was running a long game to expose the spy.
- Even before the Dark Age of the Law, the entire justice system is in dire need of help. The crime rate is so high, trials can only afford to run for three days. The concept of perjury is a myth, and oftentimes members of the court will encourage people to patch up their testimonies. The police, while well-intentioned, are full of hotheaded fools at best, and corrupt murderers at worst. Prosecutioners are more than willing to send innocents to the gallows for their success rate, and many defense attornies can only hope to minimize the damage. Honest men and women can help to change the above, but their careers and personal lives are typically marred by tragedy and loss to the point where even
*mentioning* it can send them into a Heroic BSoD. That anyone is even *close* to a sane and moral person in this world is a damn *miracle.*
- The worst thing? Prosecutors obsessively caring for their perfect win streak, defendants already having confessed to the crime before trial starts, defense attorneys having the odds so stacked against them, and the negative view on the police are all more or less Truth in Television when it comes to the legal system of Japan. It has a scary reputation of having one of the highest conviction rates of all legal systems, regardless if the one who is convicted was actually guilty of the crime or not. A story in the link tells about a innocent man who was basically forced into confessing he murdered children, and spent years in prison as a result until a DNA test way later would fully prove his innocence. While this is eerily reminiscent of the in-universe case of Simon Blackquill, it is all the more creepy that this is real and it is something still happening in our world.
Forum 90, a Japanese anti-death penalty group, conducted a survey of 900 ex-judges. Over 80 percent believed, that under the current system, miscarriages of justice were inevitable. Take the case of Toshikazu Sugaya. He matched the profile and blood type of a child murderer, but the police lacked any evidence. "They barged in and told me to sit down," recalls Sugaya. "Then they kept saying, 'You killed that kid, didn't you?' I said 'No, no,' but they didn't believe me." After a 13 hour interrogation without food, water, or a lawyer, Sugaya confessed
.
- While some defendants end up having more ties to the murder than they originally admitted (though still innocent of the act of killing), plenty of them are simply people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and/or were blissfully unaware of the fact that someone else wanted to frame them for a crime. Consider Will Powers, who was
*sleeping* the whole time and woke up to find himself accused of murdering his costar. The idea of being sent to death row despite having no connection to the real crime is chilling.
- From
*Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth*, ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Proto Badger (pictured). Whether he's ever-so-slowly sneaking up behind you, a sword in hand or popping out of the ground staring directly at the player, this azure abomination will frighten the pants off of you, more than any murder in this game. Pleasant dreams indeed...
- Case 4: Calisto pointing a gun at Edgeworth. In a series where the player character is rarely put under threat of death by another character, this can make the player's heart jump. To make things worse, Calisto shoots, and Edgeworth barely dodges it.
- It's painful for him to reminisce about because he had to deal with that all the way back in the fourth case of the first game.
- Case 5: That Shih-na is a psychopath.
note : Okay, yeah, it reminds us of *them.*. In addition, the psychotic laughter and Slasher Smile involved in that Villainous Breakdown, and the lopsided Psychotic Smirk that increasingly replaces her normal expression as time goes on just gets more and more unsettling.
- Quercus Alba gets his own
**Objection!** clip, despite not being an attorney. It is fairly harsh on the ears, and the fact that it's an audible Objection shows you just how powerful he is within the context of the law.
- Alba is a corrupt diplomat who is also the head of a major smuggling ring and uses his power to keep his name clear, whose dealings resulted in the death of an innocent witness and the catastrophic damage of the economy of an entire country with counterfeit bills. Scandalous ambassadors and other people in positions of political power who use their power to subvert justice unfortunately exist in real life. And worse still, many of them, like Alba, will stop at nothing to escape responsibility for what they've done.
- There's also Quercus Alba's breakdown, where his skin begins to chip away and is blown off, leaving only his mummified-looking husk.
- In Case 1, Edgeworth, Kay, and Gumshoe are inside an enclosed space with Shelly de Killer and a hostage. Then the lights go out... He doesn't kill anyone, but it's abundantly clear that he
*could*. Easily.
-
*Investigations 2* has the second case's introduction, which features Knightley lying dead in a dank, eerily-lit prison, bleeding heavily from a neck wound inflicted by a hound with a bloodied snout...
- When you question Sahwit about Knightley's death, he'll provide a graphic description of how he was supposedly killed by the dog in question, which freaks Kay and Ray out.
- Case 2's Villainous Breakdown. The killer yells that they didn't do anything wrong, and the real bad guy is Sirhan Dogen the assassin, as images of him appear on a black background and his bell rings. The rings get more and more frequent, as she starts covering her ears (implying she's hearing the sound in her head, as we are) until they blur and turn into an
*emergency siren* as she screams. In short, you're basically watching her Sanity Slippage, caused by the imprisoned assassin repeatedly reminding her he has agents who can go after her family at any time. Probably one of the most disturbing breakdowns in the series on a psychological level. You later find out Dogen had a good reason for going after her, but at the time you're led to believe he was doing it all For the Evulz, which makes you wish he *was* guilty.
- How about the first time you encounter Dogen in person? Between the creepy music and the fact that he looks like he's looking at you
*despite being blind*, some players find him to be something of a Jump Scare.
- In the very least it's Paranoia Fuel but the description of Dogen's method can leave you unnerved. The charming sound of a little bell could mean you've actually been marked for death. And he doesn't do it with a rifle or anything uncivil like that, oh no, he will come right up and do the job hands-on with a knife.
- In the 5th case, 14-year-old Simon Keyes's drawing of what he witnessed happened in SS-5. Especially at how he draws Sirhan Dogen the assassin.
- In general the setting of the SS-5 Incident is unsettling. Using an orphanage as the site of a presidential assassination (followed by murdering a witness at the scene) is pretty dark (not to mention Huang's pleading just to see his son before he's killed, making it all the more depressing). The fact the orphanage director was in on it and they buried his body on the grounds where children play is even worse. Furthermore, the fact the murder of the president was covered up so thoroughly in the aftermath gives you a chilling look at how influential and vile Blaise Debeste is.
- Blaise Debeste is practically Nightmare Fuel personified. The very idea of a
*68-year-old* Psychopathic Manchild is incredibly disturbing in itself, and almost from his first appearance he's horribly verbally abusing his own son. And it only gets worse as you learn more of what he did... holding a foreign president for ransom and *having him assassinated anyway*, auctioning off *evidence from past cases*, brutally murdering another person who found out, forging evidence in the past and using that fact to blackmail the coroner who helped him, and her family, later on, kidnapping the judge's son to manipulate his own trial... and then you remember that this guy was Chief Prosecutor for who knows how long, and that he's had a lot of people "disappeared" during that time (implied to be getting them sentenced to life in prison on false charges). Including *his own wife*. And to make matters worse, *he has a voiced Objection*, and it somehow manages to be worse than von Karma's and Alba's *combined*. If von Karma was a demon, Blaise is *the Devil himself*. He also gave von Karma the only penalty during his entire career which set the DL-6 incident in motion, making him the Greater-Scope Villain in the *entire series*.
- His determination to get Kay falsely convicted for Jill Crane's murder is extremely disturbing, especially when he shows up to an at-the-time self-resigned and imprisoned Edgeworth during his Darkest Hour and
*makes a mockery of his logic and search for the truth right to his face*, claiming that because Blaise is the one on top, he can do as he pleases and have his actions remain just and absolute. He even enunciates Kay's "guilt" so strongly later on in the case that it is emphasized the same way as the series' dreaded guilty verdicts.
- How about the Big Bad of all of
*AAI2*? Simon Keyes is one of the most fiendish final bosses in the franchise. Why? Because he was responsible for a majority of the murders in the game...and didn't lift a finger for any but the last. He was able to easily manipulate everyone, even getting Edgeworth into bailing him out of suspicion in Case 2. He had nearly everything under control, the only slip-up until Case 5 was his aforementioned issues in Case 2. The only reason he was even caught was due to an utter Spanner in the Works in Justine Courtney who brought the fake Huang to the roof on April 4th. Had she not done so, everyone would be none the wiser, AND even if they had, he would have had no direct hands in any murder, and gotten away with EVERYTHING! The only bright spot is that all his targets were true Asshole Victims.
- And, unlike every other villain, he actually accomplished everything he intended to do. He took down all his enemies. He will be able to plea justified self-defense and beat his murder charge, as the body double was trying to kill him in earnest with a gun, and he had no way to flee, as he would have been shot out of the sky if he tried. And while he will do some time, he'll be with his assassin father figure, and likely be an amazing assassin himself once he gets out of prison, and no one will be able to do a thing to him. If you anger him, he will destroy you, either by getting someone else to murder you, getting you to willingly murder someone else and then leaving you at the mercy of Miles Edgeworth, or, if you're the fake Huang, stepping in and doing the job personally. And yet he's sympathetic...
- Despite being an overall sympathetic figure, Simon's misanthropy can be downright
*chilling* at times, especially one of his dialogues for presenting wrong evidence, which has him asking Justine to prove Edgeworth wrong in his stead *just so he can laugh at Edgeworth being betrayed by his friends.* The fact that he's dressed as a clown at the time doesn't help. He could very well be a sympathetic version of The Joker or Kefka.
- Something about amnesiac Kay◊ clutching her head and screaming without any sound to go with it (other than the usual 'beep-de-beep' effects) is unnerving (since the visualization is less like memories returning and more like being haunted by demonic voices that won't leave her head). Even the idle version◊ with her grit teeth and erratic, eye-twitching stare is unusually deranged for this series.
- In the flashback of Case 3, Jeff Master was subjected to an all-night questioning session that caused his hair to turn white, during which time he was not allowed to see his defense attorney. Apparently, this went on for
*months* until Master falsely confessed. The entire episode leaves hardened detective Badd disturbed, and gives a chilling indication of how awful it is to be wrongfully accused in the *Ace Attorney* universe.
- The Masked Man's true Leitmotif is a downright disturbing Dark Reprise of Kazuma Asogi's theme. Listen here. (Beware of major spoilers)
- In the second case, after you reveal that William Shamspeare is an escaped convict desperately trying to get into a death-row inmate's old apartment to find a treasure he was promised, the normally comical character
*suddenly becomes a deranged lunatic* (spoilers in the link, obviously). Made worse by his being in some of his normal poses, but now sporting a *really* disturbing Un-Smile and accompanied by slightly off-key sound effects. The unsettling music doesn't help either. Even the jurors are horrified in-universe!
- Shamspeare's method of trying to move into his cell mate's apartment: by creating a gas leak that kills the other tenant. Soseki Natsume describes waking up to the sensation of being suffocated for multiple nights in a row, with no explanation as to why it keeps happening. It's even horrifyingly depicted in the intro where a monster made of black smog is outright strangling the Japanese student (the stand-in for Natsume).
- Genshin Asogi's death, at first glance. Imagine being sentenced to death by hanging, said execution getting botched, having a metal mask placed over your head, being placed in a sealed coffin, and after how many hours pass by, when you come to and try to come out of your coffin, you get shot out of nowhere. As it turns out, the seemingly-botched execution was planned, but it's still a terrifying thought.
- Related, Madame Tusspells, the wax sculptor's testimony in Case 3's trial, which involves her describing how hard it is to make a mold out of a dead body's face before rigor mortis sets in, in vivid detail. And she talks about it in a way that implies "The Professor"
*isn't the first dead body she's done this to.* Not helped by her theme playing through this sequence.
- Daley Vigil remembering his past. The flashback shows him in Barry's office, thinking about how badly he screwed up by allowing the Professor to escape, and deciding to kill himself by jumping out of the window. Then the screen shatters back to the present as Daley screams for several text boxes, his eyes turn white, and he passes out.
- The entire premise of the game's backstory. Someone relatively high-up in the British judicial system caught a Serial Killer in the act and blackmailed him into becoming his personal hitman, using him to kill his way to the top. Then, he coerces several key figures in both Britain and Japan into a massive conspiracy cleaning up every loose end. Part of this involved setting up Van Zieks' "Reaper" reputation by killing everyone he prosecuted, another part involved taking advantage of international extradition treaties to assassinate key targets without fear of retribution. At least part of
*both countries' governments* were in on this. Paranoia Fuel sets in when you find out *the Japanese judge*, someone you probably never suspected for a moment, is a killer working for the Big Bad. Imagine being caught in the middle of all this.
- What makes it even scarier is the crowd's reaction to The Reveal: they start
*cheering* for Stronghart, agreeing that he did what he had to do to reduce crime in Britain. This despite the fact that he's just confessed to being the mastermind behind most of the Professor killings that terrorized London.
- And as if
**that** wasnt enough, during the moment you have to choose between raising an objection, presenting evidence, or waiting to see what happens, one wouldnt be blamed for saving before making a choice. BUT!!! While saving, you can still hear the court chanting Strongharts name. The pressure is that high.
- After Enoch Drebber has been captured and his time bomb set to destroy his workshop was disarmed, he cackles at this, with an ominous zoom onto Gina holding said bomb, at first implying that Sholmes actually failed to disarm it and everyone here will die, only then stating that the heroes only managed to disarm
*"that"* one. It's then revealed that Harebrayne's machine has one as well, which blows up with at least two police officers nearby.
- In the anime adaptation, we get to see animated interpretations of the crimes as they happened. This also applies to the false testimonies of what say, the real suspect, claims to have seen. For example, the First Turnabout shows Frank Sahwit actively seeing Larry exit Cindy's room after the murder and deciding to call the police, when we already know that's not how it happened. That's all fine and dandy, but then we get to the cases where one of the heroes is the defendant; in other words, we get to see the lovely image of Maya, and later Phoenix himself, murdering Mia.
- The portrayal of the "murder" of Robert Hammond at the beginning of the first Turnabout Goodbyes gives a very eerie atmosphere to it. The dark night and leafless trees make the murder lifted straight out of a horror movie.
- Redd White's Nightmare Face when he kills Mia is quite unsettling and doubles as a Jump Scare.
- Manfred von Karma's depiction in the Turnabout Goodbyes episodes is far more chilling than the game counterpart. Here, he shows a great level of intelligence and fear towards anyone who stands in his way. This is shown in greater detail with episode 10, in which instead of meeting Phoenix and Maya in the files room regarding the DL-6 incident and tasing them to get the evidence, he gets it right when Phoenix and Maya arrive, showing how well he knows about the clues that might lead to the murder of Robert Hammond. Lastly, when Karma taunts Phoenix about the usage of evidence of court at the moment where the guilty verdict is given, he ends his taunt by calling him an amateur and, unlike the other episodes, where a dramatic pointing results in someone being blown away, Manfred does it by SLAMMING his fist on the table. The episodes make von Karma truly live up to his reputation as a "demon" prosecutor.
- He certainly sounds like a demon too, especially in the English dub. You thought he was terrifying already? Try listening to his dub VA channeling his inner
*Tony Jay* every time he speaks!
- During the arc, we also get to see Phoenix's flashback of the class trial as a child. On top of the children accusing him of stealing the money, we're also treated to seeing the teacher trying to goad him to confess to an incident he wasn't responsible for with a twisted take of a smile. Even if you assume that the teacher is probably just trying to get through the day without a hitch, the studio put the effort into making sure you're seeing it through the eyes of a child being scapegoated understandably feeling that everyone is against him.
- The moment Maya reveals that she found the bullet that killed Gregory Edgeworth hidden in Manfred von Karma's office gives a close-up on von Karma's face: his irises have shrunken and his gums start showing as he clutches his shoulder, where the second DL-6 bullet is located. His eyes keep bugging out all the time, and then he lets out the scream that haunted Edgeworth for 15 years. The moment in his testimony when he describes picking up Yanni Yogi's pistol is just as unsettling. His voice gets all raspy and he mimics holding a pistol with both hands as he says that he "knew it was destiny". As he gets off the witness stand he looks frail, barely kept standing by his walking cane that is shattered by Phoenix's outburst.
- Morgan Fey's sprite where her pupils seem to be missing are adapted in this version into Glowing Eyes of Doom. There's also a more sinister air surrounding her this time around, and the calm demeanor as she talks to Ini (Mimi) about getting her off the hook is enough to send shivers down your spine. let alone when she chillingly talks to a portrait of Misty Fey.
- We all know how scary Ini (actually Mimi) is when she starts to show her true colors, but in the Anime version, we can get to hear her nasty demeanor towards the defense and it's quite unnerving to listen to her threatening voice in the latter half.
- Unlike in the games, Franziska getting shot is actually shown, and it seems to be worse than the injury she sustained in the games since she actually seems to have fainted. Further, while in the original games, her shooting might have been a Kick the Dog, or a Take That, Scrappy! (depending on your opinion of her), but since the anime toned down her bad demeanor, it also gives her a more sympathetic P.O.V..
- Matt Engarde's reveal of his true self is even creepier in the anime. Why? Because he does it while giving out a burst of very disturbing laughter that can be unnerving for many people, especially that the original material wasn't voiced. It also shows that this is pretty much a nightmare in-life to Phoenix, because at this point, he was begging that Engarde being the culprit was a lie, he wanted to believe in the goodness of his client... until that reveal slams him down that he's working for an evil bastard this time.
- Then comes his breakdown, where he scratches bleeding lines into his face with his nails. Think the anime wouldn't show something like that? It does. Twice.
- Dahlia's demon face is shown in full, and it will send shivers down your spine. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceAttorneyInvestigationsMilesEdgeworth |
Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- In the mission Bug Hunt, Nemo, Rena, and Erich are tasked with destroying nanobytes that have grown out of control. At one point however, Rena flies too close to one of the hives of nanobytes, and she gets infected with them, and they proceed to Mind Rape her, which messes up her memories, making her unsure of whats her real past, and whats not her past. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat3Electrosphere |
Ace Combat / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Despite your being the badass pilot of various, often advanced, jet fighters through the game, the game at times still depicts war as it is with the only way to sugarcoat them being making a lot of things implied, War Is Hell...
How the entire series (with the exception of Assault Horizon due to obvious presence of blood and human combatants in action and Infinity due to being an online game) got away with an equivalent of Everyone rating in Japan is everyone's guess... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat |
A Clash of Kings / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The demonic shadow creatures used by Stannis to assassinate people. Even more disturbing is the revelation of Melisandre's rather unconventional method of transporting them: they are Stannis's children, birthed by Melisandre.
With Renly, his shadow appeared to be moving on its own then it stabbed him in the chest.
The Mountain's March and subsequent use of Harrenhal as a prison camp may be some of the most brutally realistic depictions of war crimes in the entire series. Arya is forced to watch as multiple men, women and children get tortured to death on the way to Harrenhal, a toddler is bludgeoned with a mace for crying for his father, and Gregor Clegane in general shows absolutely no mercy.
The old man-at-arms, Chiswyck, recounting how Ser Gregor led his men on a gang-rape of a thirteen year old innkeeper's daughter and killed her younger brother for walking in on it. Even worse is that Gregor only did this because he was in a bad mood after losing the Hand's Tourney, and the innkeeper was annoying him unintentionally. And Chiswyck thinks this story is absolutely hilarious because after Gregor and his men were done raping the girl, he made her father give back some of the money he "spent" on her because he wasn't satisfied with her "service".
A young mother volunteers herself to be tortured and interrogated if they'll spare her daughter. Then the next day, Gregor has the daughter tortured too, just to make sure her mother didn't leave anything out.
After the Boltons and the Brave Companions retake Harrenhal, the women who slept with Lannister soldiers are stripped naked and put in stocks to be raped by the Bolton soldiers. Goodwife Amabel tells Arya the same will happen to her when the Lannisters retake the castle, and threatens to sodomize her with a broom handle. She's only stopped when the girl throws the bucket of water she's carrying at her face.
He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the end. Lord Tywin's won now, he'll be marching back with all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal. And don't think he won't know what you did! I may have a turn at you myself. Harra had an old broom, I'll save it for you. The handles cracked and splintery
Dany's trip into the House of the Undying in Qarth, where she encounters visions such as rat men raping a beautiful woman (a metaphor for the War of the Five Kings' devastation of Westeros), dead men feasting with severed hands (metaphor for The Red Wedding), a man with a wolf head sitting on the Iron Throne foreshadowing Robb Stark's fate; (whose eyes follow her with "mute appeal") and a dragon bursting from Mirri Maz Duur's head (metaphor for Dany's hatching of her dragons), and which ends with the Undying whispering and screaming in her skull while sitting under a great, blue, rotting heart; they then try to sap Dany of her life-force and eat her alive.
Just read this extract from the same scene and try not to quail.
It seemed as though she had walked for another hour before the long hall finally ended in a steep stone stair, descending into darkness. Every door, opened or closed, had been to her left. Dany looked back behind her. The torches were going out, she realised with a start of fear. Perhaps twenty still burned. Thirty at most. One more guttered out even as she watched, and the darkness came a little further down the hall, creeping toward her. And as she listened it seemed as if she heard something else coming, shuffling and dragging itself slowly along the faded carpet.
Drogon hears it too!
Ramsay Snow's treatment of Lady Hornwood, an elderly woman who he forces to marry him to acquire her lands, then rapes and locks her in a tower without food. She starves to death, but not before eating some of her own fingers.
Jojen's green-dreams, such as the one about "Reek" skinning Bran and Rickon's faces. Then the one about the sea coming to Winterfell and the drowned bodies, foreshadowing the Ironborn attack.
During the war-induced food shortages in King's Landing, widespread hunger starts to drive the people mad. A baker is roasted alive in his own oven by a mob that claimed he charged too much for bread.
Tyrion's narration: Prices had risen sickeningly high on greens, roots, flour, and fruit, and Tyrion did not want to think about what sorts of flesh might be going into the kettles of the pot-shops down in Flea Bottom. Fish, he hoped.
Combined with the peasants' growing hatred of the Lannisters for their cruelty and the nobility for eating well while the poor starve, tensions finally explode on the day Myrcella sails for Dorne, when someone throws a handful of dung at Joffrey as the royal procession rides by, triggering a riot. The mob screams insults at the nobles, shouts for bread, and pelts them with stones, shit, and rotten vegetables as they flee back to the castle. Lollys Stokeworth (a mentally handicapped woman) is pulled from her horse and gang-raped behind a tanner's shop, Aron Santagar gets held down by four men and has his head bashed in with a cobblestone, the fat High Septon is torn to pieces by the mob, Tyrek Lannister disappears without a trace, and Preston Greenfield is found dead, stabbed and hacked so brutally that his corpse is "red-brown from head to heel".
And, of course, it's Joffrey who really kicks things off by behaving like the little monster he is, when he starts screaming for the culprit's head.
This bears emphasis: imagine seeing someone you love dying horrifically. The way to free yourself to save them is right in front of you, but just barely out of reach. You struggle to reach it, but the more you struggle, the harder it is to breathe. You know you're just being tricked into making your death more agonizing, but you have no choice, so long as there's a chance, no matter how slim, that you could succeed. But you grow weaker and weaker, and your attempts grow more feeble, and your last thought before you die is that you failed. That is why Jaime felt he had to kill Aerys.
Jamie's comments that there were "trials of a sort" before describing what happened. His plural use of "trials" suggests Brandon's companions and their fathers may or may not have died in quite the same way but were almost certainly subjected to similar sadistic games. This also raises the question of whether Brandon's young squire survived due to being deliberately spared or had to go through such an ordeal but somehow survived.
Near the Gods Eye, Arya finds a wooden gibbet strung with corpses so rotted and bloated they hardly look like people at all, their eyes and faces eaten away by crows. Of the sixth corpse, nothing remains but a single leg, tangled in chains and swaying in the breeze.
The effigies of the Seven in Dragonstone's sept being burned in tribute to R'hllor in Davos' first chapter. By itself, it wouldn't be especially disturbing to anyone except the Faith's followers in-universe, except that Davos' narration makes it sound as if he's seeing subtle signs of actual, pained,humanreactions from the silent, burning gods. Considering how there are most certainly supernatural forces in play in the world and how often similar symbolic visions turn out to be true, it might even be that the Seven are also real (in some form or another) and if so, that the sacrifice is actually harming them.
"The Maiden lay athwart the Warrior, her arms widespread as if to embrace him. The Mother seemed almost to shudder as the flames came licking up her face. A longsword had been thrust through her heart, and its leather grip was alive with flame. The Father was on the bottom, the first to fall. Davos watched the hand of the Stranger writhe and curl as the fingers blackened and fell away one by one, reduced to so much glowing charcoal." | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AClashOfKings |
A Christmas Horror Story / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Caprice watching her family be picked off by the Krampus, one by one. Pretty much the entirety of the elf zombie massacre. Especially when its revealed that it was the delusions of a mall Santa who killed countless employees and customers. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AChristmasHorrorStory |
Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
You get a taste of how ruthless the Eruseans are in "Escort". Mobius-1 is dispatched to fly escort for a pair of airliners carrying defecting Erusean scientists, and from the *dozens* of aircraft sent to intercept the airliners, they do *not* want them getting to ISAF custody alive. You can hear the panic in Flight 701's voice as she pleads with the Erusean fighters:
Flight 701:
*This is Air Ixiom Flight 701. We're carrying civilians!* **Don't shoot!** *I repeat, there are civilians on board!* **Hold your fire!** | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies |
A Christmas Story / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Scut Farkus: When he first shows up, he's laughing maniacally and chasing Ralphie, Flick and Schwartz.
- Schwartz's screaming "uncle!" while being tortured is pretty disturbing. It's
*very* convincingly agonized.
- Just before that freak gets the beatdown from Ralphie, he taunts the latter with faux-crying. The zoom-in on Scut's face while he does that and the shrill noise he makes is just....*shivers*. Gawd! That's one UGLY kid! Fortunately, Ralphie proceeds to beat the shit out of him shortly thereafter.
- The scary department store Santa going into slow motion, with the music in the background slowing down to match. Aided and abetted by the 1st Person POV fisheye camera shots as Ralphie goes up to see him. We see a distorted and fast view of a very bitter Santa (with lurid red nose) and two mean elves! HO... HO... HO.....
- Schwartz being the victim of quite audible child abuse after Ralphie scapegoats him for the fudge incident. This qualifies more as Narm, though, since, although child abuse is terrifying in reality, the mom sounds like a chicken or a duck as she's screaming. Granted, as funny as her sounds may be, the sheer deranged fury she emits is unsettling.
- The expression on Ralphie's face in the DVD cover◊ for the movie is rather... disturbing.
- The adults dealing with Flick's flagpole situation. When a wet extremity is stuck to a cold surface, what you want to do is pour warm water over it until it can be pulled away safely. This does not happen.
- Ralphie's fantasy about himself becoming blind from "soap poisoning" from having to put soap in his mouth for accidental cursing, and his parents blaming themselves for it. Though as Narm as the sobbing is, there is a reason children don't have soap put in their mouths as punishment anymore as children have suffered accidental poisoning and hospitalization in the first place. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AChristmasStory |
A Clockwork Orange / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*"Stop it, stop it, please, I beg you! It's a sin! It's a sin!"*
- Alex's unsettling Kubrick Stare during the opening scene of the film.
- The rape/violence scene done to the Soundtrack Dissonance of "Singin' in the Rain".
- Half the soundtrack is Soundtrack Dissonance, including Timesteps by Wendy Carlos, the Suicide Scherzo (an incredibly synthesized re-working of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which was initially composed to glorify peace and universal brotherhood!), and the theme music itself.
- Alex's face and voice as he tells his story; it's just as creepy as any of the acts of ultraviolence he commits.
- A detail of Nightmare Fuel that comes solely from the book. While skipping school, Alex goes to his favorite record shop and comes across two ten-year old girls whom are also playing hooky. So he decides to lure them back to his apartment with the promise of music and drinks. So when they get to his apartment and have to climb ten floors to his room, he encourages the tired girls to drink Scotch, which made them very drunk. And after he plays their pop music on his record player, by this time both girls were naked on his bed, he decides to bring out Beethoven's Ninth to play and a hypodermic to jab into his arm to give him energy for what he was about to do next:
There it was then, the brass strings like govoreeting away from under my bed at the rest of the orchestra, and then the male human goloss coming in and telling them all to be joyful, and then the lovely blissful tune all about Joy being a glorious spark of heaven, and then I felt the old tigers leap in me and then I leapt on these two young ptitsas. This time they thought nothing fun and stopped creeching with high mirth, and had to submit to the strange and weird desires of Alexander the Large which, what with the Ninth and the hypo jab, were choodessny and zammechat and very demanding, O my brothers. But they were both very very drunken and could hardly feel very much.
- And while he's doing this, the two girls wake up to what he was doing to their bodies, and were both utterly horrified and furious. They called him a wild beast and a hateful animal, not to mention that they were bruised and pouty. All these heavily imply that he raped them
*hard* with violence.
- And the predatory way Alex alludes to his actions. He claims in his narration that since they aren't going to school, they should at least
*have their education*, with him as their teacher. These girls are going to have serious PTSD from this.
- Not to mention that he was
when he committed this. **fifteen years old**
- The Ludovico treatment itself: imagine being put in a strait jacket, with your eyes held open by small hooks so you can't close them and having eye drops put in your eyes every few seconds while watching violent videos that eventually will make you sick because of a serum you were given beforehand! And you can't look away!
- Alex's torture at the hands Dim and Billy Boy (who are now police officers), where he's beaten while his head is dunked in a pig's trough filled with water. Even more since it is a case of Leave the Camera Running, with actor Malcolm McDowell genuinely having his head dunked for a full minute. He later said that he was repulsed by the very smell of it after being forced to do
*27* takes of it.
- The very idea a bunch of street hoods can become police officers and have a certain degree of impunity for their actions is frightening, whether or not you feel Alex deserves their abuse.
- The final scene, where Alex envisages himself having sex with a girl, surrounded by 19th century type people applauding him. And then his mocking quote: "I was cured, all right!" For some reason... it's so weird, it's disturbing. And when he says "I was cured alright" he means he was cured of his "cure". | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AClockworkOrange |
Ace Combat 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- In the original game, the Z.O.E. was just a bonus boss that could fought on multiple levels, and served no purpose in the plot. But in the remake, the Z.O.E. gets expanded upon, and its all but implied to be an Artificial Intelligence. Whats more, the Rebels dont know anything about it. It just shows up to assist them, with little to no information on why its assiting them.
- The sheer length the Rebel Forces take to destroy Phoenix, eventually leading to them to
**FREAKING NUKE HIM**, along with all of St. Ark. Did these idiots **NOT** learn from what happened in the Belkan War?
- The cutscene that plays if you fail to shoot down the missile is pretty chilling as well. St. Ark goes down in flames, then the game cuts to the briefing room where you are told, while the alarm is wailing in the background, that a great number of lives was lost, and
*then* you get to the credits. Thankfully you can try and beat the level again if you want the good ending. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat2 |
Ace Combat: Joint Assault / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The attack on Tokyo as early as the second mission. After the mission, you are treated with a rather disturbing news report of how Tokyo is under attack, straight out of a disaster news report. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombatJointAssault |
Act of Valor / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The ice cream truck bombing at the beginning. What really seals the deal is that, right before the scene cuts to black, a child comes running from behind the corner screaming, looking bloodied and severely burnt. Thankfully, you don't get to see the kid or the aftermath of the blast in much more detail.
- Morales being tortured by the narco-traffickers. The beatings are bad enough, but then we see the
*drill*. And implied electric torture and possibly rape, if the bed she is tied to when the SEALs reach her is any indication.
- Miller's interrogation of Christo is terrifying psychological Nightmare Fuel. Miller is being polite and friendly the entire time, and Christo knows he's in deep shit and is trying to remain cool and calm, right up until Miller gets
*pissed*. Then Miller goes right back to being polite and friendly, and lays out the painful truth to Christo that he will never see his family again, because he'll be in prison for the rest of his life. You can *see* the pain and fear in Christo's eyes as he contemplates this.
- Speaking as someone who has actually lost a family member in the military, the last few scenes are
*horrifying.* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ActOfValor |
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The "Chandelier", not only was it designed as a last ditch effort to save Estovakia from devastation, even after ceasing construction before Ulysses, it was repurposed into a weapon of mass destruction only for destroying a capital city. One can only wonder what hatred concocted such a plan. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat6FiresOfLiberation |
A Cure for Wellness / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*All* spoilers on this page are left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
We'd think it's best not to watch this scene before a dentist appointment.
- The part where Lockhart goes to see the vet. The vet cuts open a cow, her guts spill out and reveal a stillborn calf and a bunch of eels.
- The scene where Volmer has Lockhart in the iron container, shoves a tube down the executive's esophagus, and sends multiple eels inside him.
- Dear god, the Soundtrack Dissonance in that scene. Good luck getting images of your stomach getting pumped out of you head when you hear Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 "Pastoral": II. Andante molto mosso.
- Volmer drilling through Lockhart's front tooth a la
*Marathon Man*. Even worse, it *isn't* a Gory Discretion Shot.
- When we see Volmer's hideously burnt face. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACureForWellness |
A Christmas Carol / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Works with their own pages
## The novel
*Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name,* Ebenezer Scrooge
- The scene where Scrooge enters his lonely mansion late at night. He sees the ghost face of his former partner Jacob Marley on his door, then a ghostly hearse riding up the stairs. Later he goes to his room but still can't forget the image he saw earlier. Then the bell in his room starts ringing on its own and Scrooge hears chains rattling from beneath the cellar and slowly coming towards him. Then Marley's ghost flies through the door.
- When Scrooge mocks Marley, the ghost flies into a rage and his jaw falls open unto his chest.
- This part especially is something that few people know these days, the cloth tied around Marley's head and his jaw opening creepily wide is because the ligaments in the jaw are among the first part of the human body to decay after death, resulting in the unsettling "screaming corpse" effect. To prevent this, before embalming was developed, people were buried with their jaws held closed with cloth ties. So yeah, Marley isn't just a ghost, he's a rotting corpse of a ghost too.
- Marley's fate in general. He warns Scrooge how he is doomed forever and carries a chain with the weight of his crimes. When Scrooge sees him disappear through the window, the night sky is filled with ghosts of former colleagues of Scrooge, all doomed to wander around with chains and weights. One of them tries to help a poor woman crying over her child, but since he's doomed, he can no longer do anything for her.
- Even worse, Marley mentions that he's seen the set of chains waiting for Scrooge, and it was
*longer* than the one Marley was burdened with. And it's only gotten longer in the years since Marley's passing.
- The second paragraph describing the Ghost of Christmas Past makes it sound like some kind of Eldritch Abomination. No wonder most adaptations don't bother trying to match it on screen.
"... its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever."
- The Ghost of Christmas Present showing Scrooge the children Want and Ignorance from under his robe. These starved and bony children even frighten Scrooge.
- The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a towering, wraith-like figure in a dark hood whose face is never seen, and who never utters a word, simply pointing and letting Scrooge's Bad Future speak for itself. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AChristmasCarol |
Ace Lightning / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Chuck getting hit with an electrical blast by an emotionally disturbed Ace, after accidentally firing Mark's wrist cannon at him. Chuck lies on the ground motionless and Ace freaks out until Mark arrives. Chuck awakens moments later, but it is still pretty shocking to the show's primary source of comic relief get hurt like that.
|| Sparx's Disney Death. She is electrocuted by her own sword wielded by Googler's puppets, and is sent back to the Sixth Dimension flickering and disintegrating. She comes back later on in good shape.||
If Ace doesn't power himself up with electricity, he starts flickering and becomes fuzzy like a bad TV station. It turns out if he doesn't charge himself, he will eventually fade into nothingness.
Lord Fear is usually treated as a quirky Saturday morning villain, but he is a talking skeleton who often is accompanied by creepy cracking bone noises, particularly when he stretches his limbs. Oh, and he also plays the pipe organ, takes pleasure is scaring kids senseless, and has a wicked cackle.
Lord Fear and Lady Illusion's...disturbing romantic relationship. We never see them kiss or anything apart from one embrace, but considering Lord Fear is a lich and undead. Well, the rest can be left to your imagination.
Random Virus is technically a good guy, but that doesn't stop his Ax-Crazy evil side from taking over to attack anyone he deems to weak or useless to live. His evil side could be viewed as a twisted version of his sense of justice, vowing to remove all weakness in the world - the only problem is that he thinks kindness and good virtues are evil.
And the worst part is, we don't even know how he became a cyborg, other than he had some sort of accident.
Rotgut is perhaps the most pathetic of the badguys, mainly because he's so useless and ineffective as a villain, but that doesn't stop him from being grose when his limbs keep falling off. And then there's the time he possesses Chuck's body.
There's one point where Kilobyte rewards Lady Illusion for her loyalty to him by stroking her cheek with one of his tentacles.
Kilobyte's change of character after he is freed from Rick's control. At first, he is a very cold, calculating with the mind of a hunter who wants to hunt Ace slowly and painfully. After being freed, he still has the basic personality but is now Ax-Crazy with a desire to take over the world. He becomes hellbent on trapping humanity in the game world, eliminating all loose ends in his plan like Mr. Cheseborough and Random, and laughs like a nutter. No wonder Ace and Lord Fear team up to defeat him.
And let's not forget his giant wasp Fred, who was an ordinary bug until it stung Kilobyte, taking on his power and become a gigantic monstrosity.
The eleventh episode starts with Mark having a nightmare where he is lost in the carnival being chased by the villains, and Ace isn't there to save him. Lord Fear then starts stalking Mark around school and the streets in Duff's ice cream truck. Mark takes a wrong turn and the truck pulls up in front of him. Mark can only stare in terror as Lord Fear's head and arms poke out and he says "Come to Papa!" before kidnapping him. Mark escapes at the carnival and his nightmare plays out in real life, with Lord Fear and Anvil cornering him. Mark lets out a Skyward Scream, but this time, Ace does come to his rescue.
Brett, Heather, and background characters get trapped in the carnival funhouse by Lord Fear and there's no way out. The camerawork makes it look and feel very claustrophobic.
Chuck's urban legend of the Radioactive Guy goes to near creepypasta levels. The story involves an astronomer named Cornelius Fowler (portrayed in Chuck's imagination by Mr. Cheseborough) who spots a radioactive comet crash on Earth. He chisels the remains apart, only for it to suddenly break in two and expose him to radiation. Chuck then reveals Fowler went nuts and sealed himself in the observatory, and his ghost haunts the building. We then cut to Fowler, with crazy white hair and a psychotic expression barricading himself in the astronomer. A man outside shouts at him to come out for help, and we get this creepy chat:
Man Outside: "Cornelius, we just want to help you."
Fowler: "You can't come in. No one can ever come in again! I'm radioactive! I'm radioactive! I'M RADIOACTIVE!"
Mr. Cheseborough's predicament throughout the series. He is kidnapped by Lord Fear and replaced by Lady Illusion in a plan to destroy Mark, and kept in a cage at the carnival. Lord Fear frees him but has Dirty Rat erase his memory of the experience. Turns out that only partially worked. Mr. Cheseborough remembers the whole thing, thinking he was abducted by aliens, and slowly goes mad over the course of the series with everyone thinking he is a looney. This costs Mr. Cheseborough his job at the elementary school, and by the end of the series when he is trapped in the game world, he has gone quite frantic and is condemned as a wanted man by the police.
The Carnival of Doom is quite a creepy place. While it avoids the Amusement Park of Doom traditions, it still has a lot of disturbing noises like creaking rides and spooky gusts of wind. Not to mention it is home to a bunch of supervillains who could jump around the corner to capture any unsuspecting intruders as Mark, Chuck, Sparx, and Kat have experienced.
A moment from the first episode where Mark hears noises on his roof and looks out the window, only for Lord Fear's head to appear upside-down. Think about this from his perspective - he is thirteen, living in a new country, a blackout occurs, the only people he knows are at a party, and strange noises can be heard on the roof. Then a skeleton appears outside his window.
Lord Fear and Staff Head's return in the second season. Wayne goes looking for them in the carnival at night. Going to the haunted house, a ghost train mysteriously slides out to meet him and Wayne goes around the ride looking for Lord Fear. In the back of the cart are two skeletons that start glowing. When Wayne exits the ride, Lord Fear and Staff Head have replaced the skeletons and sitting behind Wayne. They then scare the pants off of him.
Ace's story arc in the second season. He is infected with Lady Illusion's Emotion Bomb, erasing his original programming and leaving him with out of control emotions that effect his actions - he spends one episode really angry and taking his rage out on Lord Fear, Random, and Chuck. In the next episode, he encounters Kilobyte and is terrified out of his mind to the point he has an Heroic BSoD and thinks there is no reason to being a hero anymore until Mark proves him wrong.
Lady Illusion has her moments. Aside from her Yandere qualities around Ace, she can shapeshift into any person or animal. Paranoia Fuel indeed. Then there's the episode she shapeshifts into Mark and tries to destroy his social life while the real one is in bed with a cold. Imagine that happening in real life.
The episode "The Not So Great Outdoors" has Mark wandering in the dark forest with creepy spotlights accompanying him - then he runs into Staff Head, Pigface, and Dirty Rat who gang up on him to kill him. He deceives them with Chuck's portable version of the game.
Video Games
We only see glimpses of the Sixth Dimension, but it looks like a dark Crapsack World with Everything Trying to Kill You. You get a more better look in the PC and Playstation 2 games, but it is still a nightmarish hellhole where everything is a monster trying to kill you.
The Playstation 2 game's version of the carnival is dark, empty, and quiet. The haunted house has giant animatronic heads of Lord Fear and Staff Head, staring out over their domain. The Gameboy Advance's version looks quite ordinary aside that the villains can jump out of nowhere to issue a sudden boss fight.
The game's soundtrack can be very unnerving and creepy.
In the Gameboy version, the first level is a ghost train where you encounter a vampire who jumps out of a coffin. The player has to dispatch the vampire immediately with an electric blast or he will follow the player throughout the level, even if you use the flying power up to try to move on to avoid him, he flies after you!
The Sixth Dimension comes with a Circus of Fear, Lady Illusion's terrifying manorhouse which is nicknamed the "Freaky Funhouse" right out of a Disney Acid Sequence, the Weird West where everything is undead, and a medieval castle built atop a volcano.
Among the monsters of the Sixth Dimension are - acrobats whose bodies have been twisted back-to-front, killer robotic clowns, evil garden gnomes whom Ace despises in the series, zombies riding mowing machines made from bones, giant flytraps, killer wardrobes, ovens, and fridges, maids, butlers, and chefs who have been bitten by the infestation of spiders and turned into mutant freaks, the giant spiders in Lady Illusion's boss fight, the Mad Bomber canaries who are strapped to time bombs and explode in your face, zombies dressed in cactus suits, Circling Vultures, Hellhounds, strange freaky one-eyed chicks, and weapon-wielding ferrets. Heck, even the tumbleweeds attack you! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceLightning |
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown* is easily the darkest entry in the series, with a more realistic depiction of War Is Hell, its high body count number, and the fear of not knowing friend from foe.
- Mission 3 "Two-pronged Strategy" is where we are first introduced to Mihaly and the Arsenal Bird.
- Halfway through the mission, Brownie is ordered to retreat due to her aircraft being damaged. Gargoyle One is sent to escort her outside the operational airspace, when they're ambushed by Mihaly. Mihaly effortlessly wipes out Gargoyle One, and proceeds to go after Brownie. Only, he doesn't finish her off right away, and simply toys with her, causing her to have a mental breakdown, until she's screaming and begging for support. Unfortunately, it's at this point that Mihaly decides to put Brownie out of her misery, and there's nothing anyone can do to help her.
- The Arsenal Bird shows up just before this. Its design is clearly reminiscent of the Arkbird, but unlike the Arkbird, the Arsenal Bird is completely unmanned and was designed solely for combat. It can also deploy a huge number of unmanned drones to defend itself, but the most nightmarish part about the Arsenal Bird is its Deflector Shield that renders it invulnerable to almost every attack. A large chunk of the plot revolves around just how powerful of a monster this airborne drone carrier is; even after both are taken down, there's always someone around to comment how even in death, they're still intimidating. The disturbing strains of "Two-Pronged Strategy" only make things worse.
- The
*contrast* between the Arsenal Bird and the Arkbird is a bit terrifying itself, if symbolically; the Arkbird was a bird of peace...but the Arsenal Bird is a bird of *war.*
- For Mission 7 (
*First Contact*), picture the following: You and the 444 Squadron have been tasked with taking out anti-air and radar facilities. Simple enough. Then, the Cyclops and Strider Squadrons are pursued by the UAVs and you have to help them out even though there's a risk of getting your plane electrocuted. Not as simple, but still manageable. But then, an Su-30SM ambushes and effortlessly dispatches your squadmate, Champ. Bandog tells you to keep the new arrival busy while everybody else flees, and you'd think this would be the perfect opportunity to avenge Brownie, right? Instead, you desperately try to keep your cool as Mister X pulls off aerial stunts that you can barely keep up with, even as his on-board computer constantly issues serene warnings such as "Systems malfunction. Systems malfunction." and "Over-G! Over-G!" And as the fight drags on throughout the swirling winds, thick clouds and ever-present lightning strikes, you notice that Mister X is breathing laboriously. As the two of you trade missiles and gunfire, you realize that he sounds... *old*. And despite his age, hes easily the most dangerous pilot youve had to fight against since the Lighthouse War began, and hes determined to see if you can provide him with the challenge he so desperately craves. And in the end, he calmly withdraws with his squadron, but its only a brief respite
because deep down, you know youll probably have to fight him again.
- IFF systems are meant to make it simple enough to identify friend or foe. The second act of Mission 09, however, opens up with what appears to be Osean fighters approaching Spare Squadron, staying silent when Bandog asks them to identify themselves...and then
*opening fire on the Spares*, leaving the Spares helpless and unable to not only unable to distinguish who's enemy or otherwise, but not even able to lock onto enemies they *can* identify since their IFF systems don't let them target aircraft marked as friendlies, including these fighters that are clearly non-Oseans spoofing their IFF signals. It takes some quick thinking on Tabloid's part in the midst of Spare Squadron's numbers being horrifically reduced for Bandog to be able to sort out who's friendly and who's enemy.
- During McKinsey's escort mission to Bulgurdarest's border, everything seems to have calmed down after you took down all the SAM sites and the Erusean interceptors. Then a white unidentified aircraft flies past you and the cargo transport, ignoring all hails to identify itself as it stays motionless for a few seconds, before diving down in a twirl and engaging you in a brutal dogfight to the sound of its theme; because the song takes drum cues from "Zone of Endless", it becomes clear to
*Ace Combat* veterans that this is an advanced drone unlike the other ones seen in the war. During the Battle of Farbanti, Mihaly pulls a similar maneuver in his introductory cutscene, meaning that the ADFX-10's pattern was *not* a coincidence.
- After the Osean/Erusean ASAT strikes take down communications, order within both armies completely breaks down, to the point that there's factions committing outright warcrimes. One cutscene shows Erusean soldiers lining up a group of civilians, including children, and shooting them all dead for suspicion of being tied to the radicals in the armed forces... all while the Erusean Princess watches with silent horror.
- Everything about Mission 16 is this. From the eerie electronic synth playing in the background to the chaos occurring in the city below as the Osean forces clash with the Erusean Radical and Conservative factions, neither side being able to determine friend from foe due to the collapse of the satellite network. Later in the mission, you're tasked with protecting an EASA transport plane carrying Schroeder and Mihaly's granddaughters when the drone fighters escorting the transport suddenly attack you without warning. Even worse, the drones' AI hacks the land based UAV launchers to summon reinforcements, overriding Erusean commands to abort their launch, indicating that the drone program Schroeder worked tirelessly to perfect has gone rogue and has put all of Strangereal in danger.
- Remember when it seems like you killed Harling in Mission 04? And when you and the rest of Spare Squadron got attacked by "Osean" fighters in Mission 09? Labarthe, the Erusean defector who's the escortee of this mission gives a pretty nasty reveal: The Erusean Radicals were giving their drones and IFF spoofings a spin, with two of their deployments being in Mission 09 with that "self-identify as Oseans and then attack Oseans" stunt, as well as in Mission 04, where he reveals that yes, one of those drones killed Harling and made an Osean (read: you) take the fall for it. Those bastard drones were the reason you got kicked out of the regular forces, had your reputation as a soldier completely ruined, and sent off to a penal unit to die, and who's to say that they aren't capable of other Frame-Up jobs with their IFF-spoofing technology?
- After the Osean-Erusean coalition manages to destroy the second Arsenal Bird, the war appears to be finally be over. Cue the arrival of Hugin and Munin, two highly advanced UAVs containing Mihaly's flight data that decimate the Osean-Erusean forces in quick succession. Worse, in the final mission where you have to confront them, they are seen trying to use the space elevator's transmission capabilities to transmit all their combat data to automated drone factories across Usea and mass-produce an army of drones that combines the advanced technology of Hugin and Munin's construction with the skills of the top ace pilots in the world and none of the human restrictions. Even worse, in the final battle, they are still learning: the drones are recording and analyzing Trigger's flight style on top of the already-formidable data they have from Mihaly. In short, these two drones came very close to triggering a Skynet-esque revolution that would have plunged all of Strangereal into an apocalyptic Robot War.
- As the final fight progresses, casualties among your allied aces pile up as Hugin and Munin brutally mow them down without giving them a chance to eject, with Salamander 3 and Skoll 2 being killed within seconds of each other right after they panic over the comms.
- What's even scarier than that? What sounds like a screech can be heard several times over the radio feed. Hugin and Munin are
*communicating* with each other. Or worse, they're *laughing* at you.
- Just how smart they can be? During the underground tunnel chase below the space elevator, the fleeing ADF-11 manages to hide itself and ambush you from behind with its laser guns where there is no room to dodge, and funneling you into a single tunnel to boot. Everything could've gone wrong if it wasn't for Count blocking the shot.
- Then there's their nature and origin. The A.I. program is derived from the latest iteration of the Zone of Endless system, marking its first appearance since the Usean coup d'etat in the late 90s. Then comes the reveal that the drone program given to Erusea, as well as the origin of Z.O.E. itself, came from none other than Belka. It seems that whatever the conflict, the grudge of the fallen nation will come back haunting the free world of Strangereal, and this time, their revenge really was a hair's breadth from being fulfilled.
- The cutscene that plays prior to the final mission shows what appears to be recordings from previous cutscenes being displayed as the Z.O.E. activates while an eerie choir is playing in the background (a darker rendition of the game's credits theme that's sung at several points in the story). The implication is that Z.O.E. has been silently watching the events of the war unfold in real time, gathering data and information to improve itself before being unleashed upon the world.
- The shot of Z.O.E. activating, revealing an eerie red electronic camera lens very similar to the HAL 9000's infamous camera eye, amidst a completely dark background, provides the page image.
- And the worst part? It's all for nothing. Electrosphere's Omega Ending reveals that Nemo, its protagonist, is actually an AI acting out a simulation, no doubt a descendant of Z.O.E. Out of malice and revenge, it's ultimately released to the world to recreate whatever route you followed (with one route basically described as killing everything/everyone in sight). Every single action made at the Lighthouse, all for naught, thanks to one man's desire for revenge. Not crazy enough for you? According to concept art, that one man
*worked* for Schroeder.
- The VR mode, funny enough. Since you can't have sudden camera changes in VR without risking motion sickness, there is no perspective shift when you die! If you're shot down you get the pleasant experience of being in a burning cockpit as the flames creep towards you, before the screen mercifully blacks out.
- Imagine you are in a massive air battle where you are significantly out numbered. However, you making headway on the enemy. Then suddenly two unknown fighters come into the battle, one of them takes out an enemy fighter. Reinforcements? Nope. They're coming after you and only you and they are relentless and by now you may be low on ammo. This is what Trigger has to deal with in Unexpected Visitor.
- Rage and Scream's Villainous Breakdowns when you kill their other sibling first in "Anchorhead Raid" are quite unsettling. The former goes into a murderous fury as he spends the rest of the mission screaming that he will kill Trigger, while the latter alternates between tearful, maniacal giggling and begging Trigger to kill her. Should Scream be shot down last, in her final moments she will state that she's sure her brother will be in heaven... because she will be waiting for Trigger in hell.
*Rage's aircraft is shot down.* *Rage's aircraft explodes.* **Scream**: "AAAARGH! [sobbing] I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME AN IDIOT!" **Count**: "Only one left! We'll run 'em down together, but the death blow will be from you, Trigger!" **Scream**: "NO!" **Long Caster**: "Don't let the enemy's emotions make you lose your cool." **Count**: "Hah, I don't pity 'em, not one bit." *Scream's aircraft is shot down*. **Long Caster**: "That's a hit! We got the bat!" **Long Caster**: "Unidentified aircraft, eject." **Scream**: "No." **Long Caster**: " **Eject now.**"
- If Rage is shot down last, his final words are more unsettling than Scream's. Instead of saying she's going to heaven, he admits they're both going to hell, but he'd still rather go to hell than live in a world where Trigger's alive.
*Scream's aircraft is shot down.* **Scream**: "(hyperventilating)" *Scream's aircraft explodes.* **Rage**
: "SCREAM!
Dammit, you'll pay for this, Three Strikes!"
**Count**: "Only one left! We'll run 'em down together, but the death blow will be from you, Trigger!" **Rage**: "Oh, I'll kill him! I'll kill him, alright!" **Long Caster**: "Don't let the enemy's emotions make you lose your cool." **Count**: "Hah, I don't pity 'em, not one bit." **Rage**
: "I'll kill you!
(hyperventilation) I'll kill you! [Laughing Mad
] I'LL KILL YOU! You'll pay for this, Three Strikes! How dare you! You're dead...! She was my one and only...! What makes you a hero?! We tried to be heroes too! We really tried!
I'll kill you! I can tell... I know you're with me! Here we go, Scream
, we do this together! I can't do this alone, but if I have you with me... I'll kill you!"
*Rage's aircraft is shot down.* **Long Caster**: "That's a hit! We got the bat!" **Long Caster**: "Unidentified aircraft, eject." **Rage**: "(hyperventilation) Aaargh!" **Long Caster**: " **Eject now.**" *Rage's aircraft explodes.*
-
*Anchorhead Raid* demonstrates what it is like to be on the other side of the slaughter Trigger commits. In the mission, if you kill all targets, you destroy four fleets made up of battlecruisers and air defense cruisers with escorts, a divisions worth of ground equipment, multiple air wings, five targeted strikes on Erusean Royal Navy officers including the Vice Chief of Naval Ops, a fleet admiral, two war hero captains and a task force commander being groomed as future commanding officer of the entire Navy and the Mimic Squadron is finished off here. After high command flat out refuses to believe one squadron could do all that this exchange takes place: **Erusean Command**: Four aircraft destroyed the entire port? You must be hallucinating! **Radar Officer**: It's not a hallucination, it's a nightmare!
- Even if it's wartime, the detached way Osean military announces the deaths of targeted Erusean officers (at your own hands no less), along with effects it would have on future Erusean government
*in relation to Osea's own gain* during *Anchorhead Raid* can be quite chilling to some people, that widespread killing is now done by just casually pressing buttons often with lost-lasting ramifications no matter who did it to whom. Even more so when you put Torres and later the drones into focus.
- Torres and the crew of the
*Alicorn* can come across as pretty unnerving once you learn more about them. To start, when the *Alicorn* started her initial shakedown cruise, something went wrong and the crew ended up stranded at the bottom of the ocean for *almost two years* before they managed to be rescued. But...something had changed in them. Now, *every single member* of Torres' crew is utterly devoted to him, and the man himself is a borderline-manic extremist who can be best described as the bastard lovechild of Colonel Kurtz and Marko Ramius. To get an idea of just *how* fanatical they are for Torres, listen carefully to the SACS squadron as they flee the airspace: They're *reciting a mantra* as they fly, and the escorts even go so far as to *throw themselves in front of missiles aimed at the payload plane.* When you finally down the payload plane, the pilot screams, *"SALVATION!"* and *detonates his payload* rather than eject. What Torres has done is created a *cult...* one that has the keys to one of the deadliest superweapons in Strangereal history. **SACS Pilots**
: "I hereby swear
that I will be a proud, brave, and vigilant soldier. To uphold the honor of our nation and its military.
**To submit to the orders of my superiors.**
"
- The
*Alicorn* is an terrifying weapon in her own right. Originally built by Yuktobania, she is the bigger and more vengeful sister of the *Scinfaxi* and *Hrimfaxi*. Her standard armaments and force projection capabilities are staggering and the equivalent of an entire carrier strike group. This includes two side railguns that have immense firepower and tracking capabilities (and are incredibly durable, capable of sustaining multiple missile impacts before failing), similar to Mihaly's railgun in his final fight. The railguns and standard armaments wiped out an entire Osean fleet sent to capture it without taking a scratch. Then there's the hidden, 600mm (as in, larger than a *battleships* main guns) monstrosity of a rail cannon underneath the runway that can launch thermobaric shells from long distance, as well as nuclear warheads, with a range of over 3,000 kilometers. Add onto that VLS launchers that can send a miniature Macross Missile Massacre at all sorts of targets and the capability to launch swarms of multi-purpose drones (that are armed and capable of engaging targets alongside advanced "barrier" drones that project EM fields that nullify missiles and cannon fire) this level of blistering firepower makes the *Alicorn* a mobile Stonehenge with the destructive capability of Belka's V2 nuclear weapon and the ability to stay submerged and hidden for long periods of time before emerging to strike its target. Not to mention it's durability; *Scinfaxi* and *Hrimfaxi* for the most part were powerful, but withered under sustained fire as soon as they surfaced. *Alicorn* on the other hand, can take multiple volleys of sustained fire to its hull, shrug off a combined ASROC (dedicated anti-submarine munitions) strike from a fleet of Osean missile destroyers, lose multiple ballast tanks, and still be capable of submerging and retaliating. It's almost as if Yuktobania when designing her, looked at the *Scinfaxi* and *Hrimfaxi* and decided to combine each of their capabilities into a far more durable, nightmarish and powerful weapons system. Then Erusea bought it and went even farther in enhancing its capabilities...
- The
*Alicorn* is an upgraded successor of the already powerful *Scinfaxi*-class submarine; Yuktobania sold the *Alicorn* to Erusea as scrap after the Circum-Pacific War only for Erusea to extensively refit her and deploy it to the frontlines once the war began to turn against them, making the *Alicorn* yet another relic of Osea and Yuktobania's Cold War that has come back to haunt Strangereal. In terms of raw destructive potential, the *Alicorn* outclasses every other superweapon that has been shown in the franchise thus far. And as mentioned above, it's in the hands of a madman that's willing to use it to butcher millions of people.
- The sheer lengths that Torres is willing to go through to nuke Oured in
*Ten Million Relief Plan*, from faking his surrender in order to buy time for the *Alicorn* to prepare its rail cannon, which is a massive violation of the international rules of war, to flooding the sub and *forcing it to sink* just so that the rail cannon can gain the elevation it needs to fire and hit its target, regardless of the risks to the ship and her crew. At the same time, Torres' true nature comes to light as he rants over the radio about how "beautiful" and "elegant" it is to kill a million people and demands to know why Trigger and the others cannot comprehend and appreciate this. Beneath all of his posturing of wanting to end the Lighthouse War, Torres was nothing more than a monster that got off on the thought of butchering millions of innocent people. **Torres**
: A powerful boat, a powerful gun, powerful ammunition! Add to that lots of people and a precise aim! Then sprinkle death over all of it, and the formula is complete!...Don't you see?!
*Don't you see?!*
[laughter
] Landing a clean shot on a difficult target!
*That*
is what makes it elegant!
*That*
is true beauty! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown |
Achievement Hunter Minecraft Series / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
While the conversation is Played for Laughs, the conversation in "Achieveland #2" about Lindsay potentially having a stroke in the future (due to that running in her family) proposes the hypothetical situation of Lindsay having a stroke at work, and **no one noticing the issue** due to them mistaking it for a bit. **Lindsay**: See, I'm fucked, 'cause everyone here's just gonna be like "Lindsay's being weird again," [and] I'll be like "(violent stroke noises)" | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AchievementHunterMinecraftSeries |
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Mission 12 seems like just another bomber intercept mission, albeit this time the bombers are carrying nuclear ordnance. At first success looks like success, all bombers shot down without any nuclear devices initiating. But then, there's a flash in the distance and the screen goes white...
The story scene that would follow that mission depicted an act of malevolence that would break any hardened gamer's psyche. The nuclear detonation you just saw was followed by six more, and all of them were dropped on civilian cities. That flash you just saw was several thousand civilians dying. By the express order of their own government.
If you played Ace Combat 5 and happen to remember the dates of the seven nuclear detonations, loading the mission and seeing "June 6th, 1995" will send a chill down your spine.
Mission 11 (also known as Operation Cannibal), where you are helping Allied forces destroy/secure a Belkan Industrial center via providing escort for bombers that pretty much carpet bombing the entire place. Keeping in mind that you are literally helping cause the deaths of untold military personnel and civilians.
"This isn't a weapons factory! What are you doing?!"
"All facilities in the main sector have been destroyed! Damn those Allied forces!!"
Lampshaded by Pixy. "I thought this was supposed to be a precision bombing mission..." In the mission briefing, you are told that the targets are inside a city. And then your bombers get there, where they promptly start dropping bombs all over the place, deliberately trying to destroy everything. Keep in mind, this is a city. Full of civilians. And you actually get to hear some of them die, having been right next to an exploding target. Pixy and PJ are both completely disgusted.
Pixy: Damn them all...
And it most definitely doesn't help when the Belkans themselves start contributing to the destruction out of spite.
PJ: This is PJ, something strange is going on down there. The number of burning areas suddenly increased! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar |
Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The **Gleipnir**, an absolute *monster* of an airborne fortress. With its Shockwave Ballistic Missiles capable of decimating entire squadrons from long ranges, an optical camouflage system to render it undetectable until it attacks, a Shock Cannon for vaporising ground forces below, and to top it all off, a terrifying theme that sounds like it came straight out of a horror movie.
- Its first appearance is right at the end of the
*very first mission*, where it straight up **annihilates** the Gryphus squadron at Cape Aubrey with just one SWBM fired from the Puna Plains, leaving Eugene "Crux" Solano absolutely **devastated**. **Crux**: This...there's no way anyone could call this mission a success...I'm sorry.
- The captain of said airborne fortress. So determined in his cause to destroy the Southern Cross, that in one version of the battle over Santa Elva,
*Standoff in the Skies I*, he **flips the Gleipnir upside down** just to try and kill you with the shock cannon!
- In the
*Standoff in the Skies II* version of the Santa Elva battle, you face off against the Gleipnir at **full strength**. Worse, during the Gleipnir's death throes, the captain pulls off one last ditch attempt to destroy the city with the shock cannon, *just to spite Gryphus One*. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AceCombatXSkiesOfDeception |
Adekan / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Under all the Ho Yay, Scenery Porn, and Fanservice,
*Adekan* has more than enough Nightmare Fuel to keep you up all night, between monsters, madmen, and a massive unsettling conspiracy run by a clan behind the scenes...
- In the first volume, the Copper Demon hunting an innocent young girl is utterly horrifying ||even if it is only a mask.||
- The very first story shows Shiro being befriended by a kind but poor neighbour woman, Mitsu, who takes in abandoned babies and cares for him. ||Mitsu turns out to have been killing the babies so she could horde the money for their care and give it to her lover, who'd promised her they would be married once he had enough to escape the gang he was in. Not only that, but the guilt of her crimes drove her to madness, causing her to black out and wander around in a bloody wedding dress, and hallucinate the demonic shades of the babies she'd murdered. Brrrr...||
- "Onna-neko... help me..."
- Kusuko's insane father is terrifying enough: a powder box merchant who enslaves low-born young women and sells them to men to be abused, after murdering his low-born wife for unverified suspicions that she was cheating on him, he then turns around and imprisons his daughter in a Gilded Cage while telling her terrifying tales of the outside world...and having sex with a girl who looks like a carbon copy of her on the side. Not horrifying enough for you? To keep his daughter in line, he tells her scary stories about a monstrous yuurei, Nainai-sama, who haunts their box-maze mansion. Except Nainai-sama is
*real*...
- Everything that happens to Ippei after he gets captured and enslaved for use as a tool against Anri qualifies as this, including ||being the front-line witness to the triple murder-suicide of his new master, his new master's boyfriend, and his new master's pregnant wife, in an epic case of Murder the Hypotenuse.|| Keep in mind that Ippei is a sweet kid who idolizes Kojiro and has trouble standing up to people and saying no in the best of circumstances...
- How he falls into the part of town where half human cannibals live.
- The taxidermist. Dear god, the taxidermist...
- Anri and Shiro's backstories.
- Anri deliberately makes himself into Walking Fanservice. From what we've seen, his reasons for doing this were less than family-friendly. There's also his general psychotic nature which once led him to cut off two of his subordinates arms because they were arguing too loudly and it annoyed him.
- The half humans which are excluded from regular society, for good reason. They're cannibals and if one should happen to fall into their domain...
- There are numerous bitches in sheeps clothing in the manga that make extremely unsettling nightmare faces and have sociopathic natures.
- The worst had to be the Alpha Bitch who's tormenting of a poorer but prettier girl including having her raped and beaten and she later tried to cover it up when she believed she returned but has lost her memories of the incident including trying to kill her.
- The Nehates are made of Body Horror. They are huge ugly men with huge boils all over their body and they are unstable in nature.
- Anri threatens to rape a guy at one point and gets on top of him. It's horrifying even though Anri ends up stopping and admits he was kidding.
- Spider fights with poisonous bugs and nearly has his arm chopped off at one point.
- Shiro is impaled with spikes and two guys nearly chop his arm off as well with a knife.
- The introduction to the Southern Troupe's leader. He sees his men begging for forgiveness, dangling over a cliff for their execution. The leader just callously listens to their pleas and dismisses them, sending them over the edge. Keep in mind that the group of men he executed for failing him was enough to fill a large
*fish net*.
- And when another one of his blood brothers protests about the excessive nature of the executions, he squishes that man's head with one arm. He then orders the execution of that man's entire family line straight afterwards. Not only do we witness the horror of the Lack of Empathy towards hundreds of lives, we see a socially untouchable tyrant willing to end clans if their opinions aren't shared.
- The true leader of the Ha clan, despite looking delicate, is just as viscous as the rest of the people under her thumb. She claims she wants Shiro and is betrothed to him, but as we see with the bodies of the rest of her previous "husbands", he won't like ending up with her one bit. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Adekan |
A Christmas Carol (2009) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
And you dare to say that this is "a movie for kids".
- Marley's corpse at the very beginning of the movie has two coins placed over his eyes while his glasses are turned up on his forehead. The overall look is somehow creepier than when Scrooge steals the coins back.
- The whole scene with Jacob Marley. He's introduced by throwing his ghostly safes through Scrooge's door, he floats in midair, his eyes rarely focus - and that's just his general appearance. He's constantly scaring Scrooge by screaming and howling, and at one point he
*dislocates his own jaw* and, still needing to vent his anger, he jerks it up and down with a whole lot of cracking sounds.
- Even worse is his very first appearance: after Scrooge approaches the door to his home, he drops his keys. After bending down to pick them up, he is surprised to see a green ghostly face (Marley) in the door knocker. Reaching out to touch it, we are then greeted with the horrifying sight of
. Many have commented that this is the scariest jump scare in the film, and for **his eyes and mouth suddenly opening, complete with his teeth flying out and a very loud bang** *very good* reason.
- Once Marley has given his warning, he leaves through the window and drags Scrooge towards it... where he sees the streets of London FILLED with screaming ghosts of tortured souls, some bound to their own tortures. One is seen banging his head on the cinder block he is chained to, and another flies around a homeless woman clutching her child to keep it warm, shouting how he wishes he could help.
- The Ghost of Christmas Past is presented as a candle with a face inside its flame, which is even more Uncanny Valley than everyone else - particularly with the creepy whisper he speaks in.
- The death scene of the Ghost of Christmas Present, which is more disturbing than in any other adaptation. As in the novel, he rapidly ages, but instead of just disappearing when his time is up, he
*clutches his heart in pain* with each chime as the clock strikes 12, then collapses. Then he *turns into a skeleton, still laughing all the while*, and then crumbles to dust.
- Ignorance and Want. Instead of just being shown as two starving, ragged children, they also age before Scrooge's eyes into the type of adults that such children become if they're not saved. When Ignorance grows up, he becomes a vicious knife-wielding criminal and is locked away in jail. When Want is shown as a grown-up woman (most likely a prostitute), she is strapped in a straitjacket and dragged away screaming (which was a common fate for "women of loose morals", either for their families to get them out of the way or as a result of syphillis). And they are
*laughing* as they quote Scrooge's line back to him, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"
- The beginning of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come scene involves Scrooge being chased by Marley's funeral wagon, driven by ghostly horses complete with Red Eyes, Take Warning.
- The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a Living Shadow, and is almost never seen in 3D, being up against the wall, floor, in Scrooge's shadow, or slithering across bedsheets as it tries to make Scrooge look at his own corpse.
- An overlooked moment is shown when the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sits on the staircase with Scrooge when he's watching the Cratchit family reminisce about Tiny Tim. You can see the ghost's hand on the wall behind Scrooge's head. In any other Christmas movie, this would be a gesture of comfort, but here, the gesture screams "Don't you dare look away, look at what you've done" and looks like the ghost is holding Scrooge's head so he won't be able to look away. (Of course it would do so — he's the embodiment of Scrooge's
*shadow self*, the worst aspects of him.)
- Then there's also the graveyard scene where Scrooge receives confirmation that the man whose death people celebrated over was his. Scrooge tries to run away only for the ground beneath him to sink and open up to reveal an empty coffin. As Scrooge is desperately clinging to a branch in the open ground, the ghost hovers in front of him and stares at him with cold black eyes in a manner not unlike the Penance Stare. By this point, it all becomes clear: Scrooge wasn't looking at a ghost that's the spiritual embodiment of his negative traits. He was looking at
**Death himself.** *No wonder Scrooge is absolutely scared shitless!*
- Given how the coffin is lit with an eerie red glow, one could be forgiven for thinking Scrooge is being dropped into Hell itself. And this wouldn't be the first time this happened in a Disney adaptation of this story.
- There's also the snow gradually coming off the gravestone. His death date is explicitly December 25th.
*The events of the movie, from Marley's arrival onward, could very well have been a Dying Dream!*
- Yet to Come's stare might actually be
*more* frightening in the motion capture studio footage that can be viewed on the Blu-Ray release. Jim Carrey's face is both intimidating and inscrutable at once. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AChristmasCarol2009 |
A Demon Among Devils / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- Chapter 16 is full of this!
- The look we get at the battle between Minato's army of Persona vs Erebus and The Shadows, while it's full of awesome moments where each individual Persona pretty much wipes out an army's worth of Shadows each, the sheer hopelessness that can be felt from fighting against an enemy that is literally respawning endlessly is chilling, especially as we see how everyone, Heroes, Demons, Angels, Dragons, and even Gods, are slowly overwhelmed and cut down until only Metatron, Belial, and Thanatos are left. That's not even taking Erebus into account who in all likelihood could have probably soloed all of them even without the help of The Shadows.
- The very fact that Trihexa is described as being at least a magnitude greater than Erebus in strength, or just how close humanity had come to inadvertently awakening it back when they built the tower of Babel.
- The detailed descriptions of the army of brainwashed Sacred Gear users, of the sheer damage that they take without feeling it, of the sheer carnage that they deal out and are dealt to them how their expressions were completely blank due to the mind-wiping they had undergone. It's scarily reminiscent of a Zombie Apocalypse.
- The moment when it becomes clear to Sirzechs just how far the Old Satan loyalists have managed to infiltrate their ranks when he sees the symbols of Leviathan, Asmodeus, and Beelzebub on their soldiers' armor.
- Remember how Rias' peerage felt when Minato summoned Nidhogg? Well... The real thing shows up later in Chapter 17, and it damn well deserved the dread it gathers. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ADemonAmongDevils |
A Dance with Dragons / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The end of the prologue is some of the most terrifying writing Martin's put in the series.
When they reached the crest the wolves paused. Thistle, he remembered, and a part of him grieved for what he had lost and another part for what hed done. Below, the world had turned to ice. Fingers of frost crept slowly up the weirwood, reaching out for each other. The empty village was no longer empty. Blue-eyed shadows walked amongst the mounds of snow. Some wore brown and some wore black and some were naked, their flesh gone white as snow. A wind was sighing through the hills, heavy with their scents: dead flesh, dry blood, skins that stank of mold and rot and urine. Sly gave a growl and bared her teeth, her ruff bristling.
*Not men. Not prey. Not these.*
The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life.
*She sees me.* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ADanceWithDragons |
Adolescence of Utena / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Spoilers Off applies to all Nightmare Fuel pages. You Have Been Warned.**
- A flashback shows that Akio slipped a drug into his sister Anthy's drink and then took advantage of her sexually. This is icky enough, but it then goes on to show that afterward he realized that she was awake and began to panic, and wound up stabbing her and then falling out a window to his death. Yikes.
- The revelation of Anthy's scar during the nude sketching scene is made all the creepier when you can hear what sounds awfully like a dentist drill. Not to mention that said scar is shown as a huge hole in her chest.
*Or* that the collection of Akio's paintings turns into a composite image of Anthy being raped. Say whatever else about the English dub, but Sharon Becker's delivery of the line "This is the secret of the Rose Bride" carries with what could only be described as coming close to sickening amusement as she reveals to Utena the open wound in her chest and the fact her brother raped her. And it is fucking terrifying.
- Saionji makes some downright terrifying Axe-Crazy faces during his duel with Utena. He also acts like he's trying to kill her.
- Touga was raped by his adoptive father as a child.
- The entire butterfly scene, for that matter. Shiori growing butterfly wings may be beautifully animated, but even besides the obvious fact that all this is combined with a scene of child rape, it's creepy how she rants about how much she hates Juri at the same time, all in the same sugary-sweet voice she always has. What's more, the butterflies themselves symbolize all sorts of squicky things: 1. Parasitism; they're cabbage white butterflies, and fittingly enough, the scene takes place in a cabbage patch. 2. Cruel innocence, a phrase associated with Shiori in the series; note how the butterflies perch on the child Touga in his worst moment.
- Kozue holding a razor to Miki's throat while they're both in the bathtub together and calling him a traitor when he refuses to divulge details of his personal affairs to her. And then the rubber duck that had been in the bathtub along with the two of them during that scene reappears in the garage (near a car with a license plate reading KOZUE) on the ground, in a puddle of water that reflects the red lighting in a way that looks like blood...
- Anthy is just as miserable and emotionally broken as her series counterpart. It's implied she's about to commit suicide before Utena finds her in the Rose Garden at night. And whereas in the series, it's a Heartwarming Moment when she stops her, here, Anthy's subtle jabs at Utena make her
*fly into a rage*, throwing her down to the floor and screaming at her. And just after that scene, Anthy is swinging an ax and looks *very close* to decapitating Utena.
- This generally comes far behind the rest, but some viewers find the infamous "car wash" scene rather scary. Mainly due to the fact that
*this scene* is where they choose to play the notorious "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" song from the series.
- The area outside of Ohtori Academy appears to be a wasteland. What happened to make everything outside the school so utterly wrecked? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AdolescenceOfUtena |
A Certain Scientific Railgun / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Episode 12. ||Screaming psychic fetus monster fits the bill nicely||.
- Episode 23. Therestina. Think of Major's looks of madness, just that look of "I shall kill you, and it won't be a quick death," And amplify that to 11. And then add the idea that she's either doing this For Science!, or maybe just for power, but either way she has this unsettling look, a look that says "Don't fight, become a guinea pig." Brrr...
- A huge amount of the "Sisters" story arc. The series depicts Mikoto's breakdown into despair a little
*too* well.
- ||Accelerator ripping off a Sister's leg and crushing her with a train car, then laughing about how tonight's "entertainment" is over.||
- The resultant fight between Misaka and Accelerator has some too, as while we thought we saw Misakas full strength against the AIM Burst and Telestina, this shows that she was demonstrating restraint on both occasions as she is trying to murder Accelerator, and his powers allow him to casually deflect every attack and almost kill her in return on multiple occasions.
- Right when Mikoto thinks that it's all over, and is finally able to relax a bit after expending enormous effort, ||another Sister arrives and confirms that the experiment is on-going: Mikoto barely slowed it down.||
- Mikoto finally gives up and sees no way out of this situation except by sacrificing herself. The girl is ready to do something literally suicidal just to get this pain to end. Thankfully, Touma shows up to help.
- Railgun T, Episode 10. Where do we
*start*?
- ||Exterior is a giant brain formed from Misaki's. The purpose? Allowing anyone to use her powers.
*Anyone*.||
- ||Gensei hijacking Exterior for his own use.||
- Even Gensei's line about Mikoto being "||Aleister's favorite||" is incredibly creepy in context. ||How long have they been planning to use her like this?||
- The episode ends with a single, terrifying statement: ||"Now, let the experiment begin; Can Misaka-kun reach Level 6?", all while a demon-like Mikoto is just sitting there with an empty gaze|| Thanks for that, ||Gensei Kihara.||
- To make it worse, ||Mikoto is supposed to be able to No-Sell those kinds of things. It's that powerful where it can easily overwhelm a Level 5, and mutate her
*entire* appearance to boot.||
- Railgun T, Episode 11: ||The possessed Misaka is apparently able to be controlled. And the ones doing it have no trouble nuking buildings as a testing method||.
- ||Seeing transformed Misaka stand there with an empty look just looks chilling||.
- Railgun T, Episode 12. Just on that episode.
- It's no longer a question of ||"Can Mikoto reach Level 6?"||, it's a matter of ||"Can they stop her from reaching Level 6?"|| To make matters
*worse*, ||Touma can't stop the transformation even if he does touch her, he can only *slow it down*.||
- ||Mikoto becoming even less human-like.|| It's even mentioned by ||Gensei that when she's 53% of the way there, her personality won't be that of a human anymore.||
- ||Gensei is using Level Upper to give himself Multi-Skill.||
- The whole prospect of ||the experiment succeeding: Mikoto will die, and the entire city will go down with her.||
- Railgun T, Episode 17: The visual analysis of Shaei Miyama's abilities can be disturbing to look at. Examples are:
- Megumi Ookawachi about to be crushed by steel beams.
- Pero the stray dog being caught up in a fire.
- In Railgun T, Episode 16, a schoolgirl about to be hit by a car.
- Railgun T, Episode 22: The 'Soul Diffusion' theory. According to Ryouko Kuriba, who is a young expert in cybernetics, when a soul gets released from a mechanical body, this "free soul" can possess anything in its surrounding and can devour the whole city. ||And to fix that, Ryouko created Indian Poker so that the soul of her Doppelganger can be erased from her body.|| True to Mikoto's words, this sounds really occult and is even weirder that this is not even related to science.
- ||We find out in Episode 24 that this is not actually the case. The doppelganger used mixture of artificial muscles and mold to absorb materials on its surroundings. So indeed, no occult involved and still sticks to science.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ACertainScientificRailgun |
Ad Astra / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Monkeys see, monkeys chew.The sheer, vast and hostile emptiness of space is enough to drive you insane, let alone how it's played up for its sheer terror in
*Ad Astra*. Suspense isn't the only element of horror this film dips its hands into.
As with all Moments pages,
**beware of unmarked spoilers!**
- The initial destruction of the International Space Antenna is horrifying, seeing infrastructure break off and astronauts falling to their deaths, in addition to the screams of the terrified dying personnel on board. It's even worse from Roy's perspective, where he probably knew these people he heard screaming in horror as the antenna collapses.
- Roy himself barely manages to escape alive, having one major hole in his parachute, with debris around him threatening to perforate his lifeline even further.
- That scene with the baboons. Dear god, those baboons.
- To elaborate, Roy McBride and the Captain of the Cepheus are investigating a distress call from a Norwegian space vessel which has been seemingly abandoned. They decide to split up, all the while tension continues to build as they dont know what has gone on on that ship. McBride eventually pushes back a metal plate to find the Captain wiggling unnaturally, with something unknown on him. Eventually, a horrifying-looking baboon peeks over the Captains shoulder and
*launches itself with surprising speed* to tear him apart.
- The claw marks on some of the ships interior and our inability to see just what is eating the Captains face makes it unclear at first if the creature that got on the ship is even
*of Earthly origin.*
- After a second Baboon charges McBride, him turning it into Ludicrous Gibs via Explosive Decompression offers no relief whatsoever.
- The Captains chewed on, mangled face isnt exactly easy on the eyes, either...
- The fact that there are healthy-looking lab animals drifting about (a rat is briefly seen in one of the modules) while there's no sign of the human crew whatsoever implies that the baboons
*specifically targeted and devoured only the humans*, which raises all sorts of horrifying questions about what the hell the Norwegians were doing on this station. It's eerily reminiscent of how the Zombie Apocalypse in *28 Days Later* began.
- The last messages sent by Clifford McBride are obscured by a muddy, old cathode-ray effect that also distorts his voice. This, coupled with his Creepy Shadowed Undereyes, gives you a feeling that there's a much darker side to this man than it seems, and it makes you wonder about the horrible deeds he's done- and is still doing by the time the film starts.
- As Roy McBride travels through the Project Lima ship (with his father
*still alive on it*), a lifeless corpse floats by (one of Clifford McBride's victims), truly enhancing the feeling that Roy is Alone with the Psycho.
- The first corpse has a spacesuit but no helmet, only a bloody bag over his head, suggesting he tried to prolong his life by covering his face, but was killed via Explosive Decompression before he could find a proper helmet.
- Both Clifford McBride and the baboons in the Norwegian station give the viewer one message: going into space will drive you
*batshit insane*, as life was never built to go beyond Earth in the first place.
- There are no borders on the Moon, but rather than creating a spirit of international cooperation, this has only led to anarchy as nations try to pirate each other's resources and frighten off rivals with random attacks. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AdAstra |
A Christmas Carol (1984) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
On Scrooge's doorknocker appears Marley's blue-glowing, deathly staring face. As though from a distance, he calls Scrooge's name.
Scrooge's disused bell ringing on its own, Marley's face appearing in the tiles around the fireplace, and the triple-locked door unlocking on its own and slamming open. The music is very ominous, and the mounting, disbelieving dread of this most unflappable of Scrooges stretches the tension to its breaking point.
Jacob Marley is ghastly. Unwrapping his jaw initially causes it to flop open, and his chains are so heavy and long he can barely raise his arms. His deathly glare and furious, sorrowful voice imply that regret has driven him to the edge of sanity. They do indeed disturb the very marrow of one's bones. His screams are even worse. And as he leaves the room other spirits' screams are heard from outside, but never seen.
As Fred's house party fades out, the last simile given is "silent as the grave" over a completely black screen.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is fine right up until the end, when he reveals Ignorance and Want, yells at Scrooge while using his own words against him, and disappears abruptly to leave Scrooge in an empty snow field, with enough of a Beat that Scrooge genuinely thinks he's been left to die in the dark before The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come arrives.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is generally seen from a distance or as a shadow, and what we do see has creepily long fingers. Whenever it "speaks" a sound like a rusting iron gate is heard, and the scene where it shows Scrooge his own body in an attempt to make him lift the cover is set during a lightning storm.
Scrooge's body lying there in the dark is one of the scariest versions put to screen, especially with the storm and blue lighting included in the scene. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AChristmasCarol1984 |
[adult swim] / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As the Darker and Edgier counterpart to Cartoon Network (itself a darker version of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel), [adult swim] takes full advantage of its watershed format with a penchant for Surreal Humor
*and* Surreal Horror. It's designed to scare kids away from watching... and the adults can certainly vouch for its effectiveness.
<!—index—><!—/index—>
- The Dawn Is Your Enemy, a former [as] sign-off bump that aired from 2005 to 2010, designed specifically to scare away children. It has gained infamy for it not being outwardly scary, but
*incredibly* creepy. It contains a static composite image devoid of color that focuses on an uncomfortably large pair of fearful, nervous eyes and a glowering sun in the background. What makes the bump especially creepy is the quiet, ominous background noises they use — resonating, rumbling, and scraping metal.
- As if that wasn't scary enough, a creepypasta was eventually built around the bump (which was roughly remade here). In this story, the bump that we all know is actually an abridged version, and the full version contains what appears to be the audio of a
**mass murder**, including a deafening cacophony of screams, slicing flesh, grinding bones, and gushing blood, topped off by the sun in the background **winking** at the viewer.
- In May 2020, [as] unexpectedly brought the bump back as "The Dawn Is Your Frenemy", striving to make it less creepy by adding piano music, a red balloon, and making the sun wink (just like the creepypasta mentioned above). It is
*still* creepy, though; the piano music combined with the original sound effects make the environment much scarier, the red balloon will remind those of *It* and the sun's wink could catch those by surprise. Hell, this version might be scarier than the original (though not as scary as the creepypasta), which is actually lampshaded at the very end.
[not sure it's working]
- From the 5th to 7th of September 2021, it returned as the sign-off bump in glorious HD.
- On November 14th, 2021, the Adult Swim Twitter account posted an HD rendition of the creepypasta version, effectively rendering it Ascended Fanon.
- As of 13th of May 2022, it turns out that the audio sample is taken from a hip-hop track titled "Violence is a Menace" by Bola Adekimi. While the full rendition's quite good, it still can invoke unease to listeners due to the ominous sample being present through the entire track.
- Before The Dawn, this was the sign-off, an assault of flashing, distorted images and odd sounds ending with a synthetic voice telling the audience "Good night, sweet dreams".
- This interstitial, where a child's voice narrates society going to ruin over a sauce that makes everything it is put on taste good.
**Everything**.
- Their Fall 2014-2016 sign-off bumper can be pretty unnerving, but absolutely mesmerizing.
- It was then replaced with a pixel art sign-off for only a year or so... then it was replaced with something a million times worse.
**WARNING: DO NOT WATCH IF YOU ARE PRONE TO EPILEPSY!**
- This new bumper was so much worse, in fact, that over halfway into the year they replaced it with a still somewhat surreal, yet much less freaky one.
- So far, this obscure bumper has appeared very rarely aired on AS, and for good reason.
- Any bumper that Cyriak has made for the block has at least some form of horror in them.
- Some of the station IDs can be quite unsettling and can catch a lot of people off guard in the middle of the night, like this one.
- This bumper, which is centered around the Nightmare Face of a creepy Japanese robot.
- This odd variant on the typical [as] introductory message, as recorded by a freaked-out little kid. After the regular content warning is displayed, three buttons pop up ("ANSWER", "ANSWER WITH VIDEO", "DECLINE") and the Skype call sound starts playing on loop. Then the message gets menacing.
- Watch Harder has similar energy to The Dawn Is Your Enemy, with a still close-up shot of a Creepy Doll while a nursery rhyme plays, eventually transitioning to an increasingly louder scream of anguish... and then cutting abruptly.
- Franky Bartol 1 depicts an utterly terrifying scenario.
- Anyone remember the "This is fine" dog? Well, that very strip was animated as a bumper, and it's just as unnerving as you'd expect when put to motion. Are you still okay with the events that are unfolding currently?
- Any bumper made for the 2017 Heart and Brain Co. ARG. Not only the bumpers themselves are pretty creepy by all means (especially the music), but when you learn more about the context, it become worse.
- Several of the Adult Swim infomercials are dark or upsetting in some way. For example, "Fartcopter" is about a sinister Creepy Child who becomes obsessed with a toy called "Fartcopter", which is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin, leading his family to stage an intervention. The kid appears to reform his ways, ||but he then proceeds to murder his entire family with a fart noise so intense it causes their internal organs to explode.|| Sweet dreams!
- In October 2014 they aired this with no prior advertising.
*Too Many Cooks* starts out as a parody of sitcom intros featuring large families a la *Full House* with Adult Swim's typical absurdity, but turns into some of the most violent and nightmarish imagery ever seen on the network. The horror starts around the 4-minute mark.
- Unedited Footage of a Bear. What starts off as being Exactly What It Says on the Tin ||is interrupted by an ad for a decongestant that slowly goes off the rails and becomes the closest thing the channel has gone to genuine horror.|| The tie-in website, accessible by clicking "Skip Ad" in the linked video, is equally disturbing.
- This House Has People in It is just the start of an entire ARG of unnerving events.
- What also helps is that the ARG eventually reveals that Unedited Footage of a Bear was not only made by the same guy (Alan Resnick) but according to the creators it might also take place in the same universe. Even they're not sure.
- The idea that either the house itself is an Eldritch Location or a experiment of some sort is equally creepy either way. ||And what IS THAT PINK CREEPY PERSON DOING?!||
-
*Flayaway* is an infomercial about a new beauty procedure for women that removes unwanted body hair and blemishes by *cutting off all their skin*. What follows is 11 minutes of some of the grossest imagery Adult Swim has ever aired, including the hideous costume portraying someone who has just gone through the procedure (which, if you click on that link, is the image that appears as the video is loading). | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/AdultSwim |
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Dataset Card for TvTroper-Cleaned
TvTroper-Cleaned is a cleaned dataset on TvTropes.org page.
Dataset Summary
TvTroper-Cleaned is a cleaned dataset consisting of text from at most 651,522 wiki pages (excluding namespaces and date-grouped pages) from tvtropes.org.
Supported Tasks and Leaderboards
This dataset is primarily intended for unsupervised training of text generation models; however, it may be useful for other purposes.
- text-classification
- text-generation
Languages
- English
Dataset Structure
All the files are located in jsonl files that has been split into 100,000 pages.
Data Instances
{"text":"<Title>\n\n<Article Content>","url":"https://tvtropes.org/<...>"}
Data Fields
There is only 2 fields in the list. URL and content retrieved. Content retrieved may contain errors. If the page does not exist, the 404 error page is scraped.
URLs may not match the final url in which the page was retrieved from. As they may be redirects present while scraping.
Q-Score Distribution
Not Applicable
Data Splits
The jsonl files are split into 100,000 chunks.
Dataset Creation
Curation Rationale
We have curated TvTropes.org as it serves as one of the best resource for common themes, narrative devices, and character archetypes that shape our various stories around the world.
Source Data
Initial Data Collection and Normalization
None. No normalization is performed as this is a raw dump of the dataset.
Who are the source language producers?
The related editors/users of TvTropes.org
Annotations
Annotation process
No Annotations are present.
Who are the annotators?
No human annotators.
Personal and Sensitive Information
We are certain there is no PII included in the dataset.
Considerations for Using the Data
Social Impact of Dataset
This dataset is intended to be useful for anyone who wishes to train a model to generate "more entertaining" content. It may also be useful for other languages depending on your language model.
Discussion of Biases
This dataset contains mainly TV Tropes used in media.
Other Known Limitations
N/A
Additional Information
Dataset Curators
KaraKaraWitch
Licensing Information
Apache 2.0, for all parts of which KaraKaraWitch may be considered authors. All other material is distributed under fair use principles.
Ronsor Labs additionally is allowed to relicense the dataset as long as it has gone through processing.
Citation Information
@misc{tvtroper-cleaned,
title = {TvTroper Cleaned: Tropes & Others.},
author = {KaraKaraWitch},
year = {2023},
howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/RyokoExtra/TvTroper}},
}
Name Etymology
N/A
Contributions
- @KaraKaraWitch (Twitter) for gathering this dataset.
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