History NightmareFuel / Animorphs

* In #31, Jake orders Ax to [[ColdBloodedTorture torture]] Chapman. Ax still is still an adolescent like the other Animorphs. To make it worse, throughout the night he can hear Melissa Chapman crying for her father. It is such a terrible experience that Ax tells Jake will will never do anything like it again, saying <I will gladly fight this Controller and even, in fair battle, kill him, but I am not a torturer.>

* In ''The Underground'' it's revealed that Instant Maple & Ginger Oatmeal drives Yeerks insane. The Animorphs' first encounter is when a host throws himself out a window trying to commit suicide. Later on the Animorphs shoot open a barrel of oatmeal in a Yeerk pool, and it's implied that Visser Three will simply [[WeHaveReserves let the thousands of affected Yeerks die]].

** Rachel imagining [[EarAche sticking a fork]] in David's ear was incredibly disturbing.

*** Or even wore, the Yeerk ''acting'' the part of the terrified host to keep throwing Tobias off-kilter.

** To see Cassie, usually the most in-control of her morphs, so panicked and freaked out by the experience of the termite morph that she demorphs while ''still inside a piece of wood'' is chilling.

* The fate of [[spoiler:David, the sixth Animorph. He turns against the Animorphs, so the team decides to trap him in rat form and leave him on an island with dozens of other rats. People boating by months later could ''still'' hear him mind-screaming]]. Not to mention that Rachel and Ax are forced [[spoiler: to wait the two hours with him to make sure he's stuck.]] As Rachel said, you can't block out thought-speak, and she notes that she would hear his screams and pleads and threats every time she fell asleep.
** David himself crosses into nightmare territory when he remorselessly murders [[spoiler: a hawk he thinks is Tobias, and reveals he is fine with killing the rest of them to get them out of his way. The worst part? He almost does.]]

** All the worse because there's some evidence that her transformation took place not just because she wanted it to, but because her friends needed it to, even if they wouldn't admit it (Jake, for instance, expresses guilt at using Rachel for the dirtiest work—[[spoiler:given where it gets her, you can't blame him]]). Rachel herself doesn't really become conscious of this until her little tete-a-tete with Crayak, a conversation that culminates in an argument with Cassie. When Cassie starts (as usual) objecting to Rachel's latest morally troubling but wholly necessary choice:

** Rachel imagining [[EarAche sticking a fork]] in [[spoiler: David's]] ear was incredibly disturbing.

* Megamorphs #3 where [[spoiler: Jake gets no-nonsense shot in the head and dies, Cassie briefly snaps, and Rachel gets blown in half by a cannonball.]]

** Which later becomes even more horrifying once you realize that [[spoiler: Tobias was watching his own father being eaten alive]], and most likely remembers every single moment of it.

* The One. [[spoiler: Aximili]], of all individuals, being reduced to just another tiny part of an unbelievable being's consciousness is already creepy as all get out, but then there's the mouth...
** The ending of the last book where [[spoiler:Ax ''[[BodyHorror smiles]]'' at them.]]

* The Howlers [[spoiler: are [[PsychopathicManChild literally children]], and believe that their constant mindless killing of other races is actually a game, ''and they enjoy it.'']]
** And the fact that Jake [[spoiler: doomed the entire species to nonexistence by downloading his memories into their hive-mind; the memory of Jake kissing Cassie manages to get through before Crayak erases the squad the Animorphs are fighting, and the Ellimist tells them that the next time Crayak turns the Howlers loose on another species, they will try to kiss the aliens instead of kill them]]. One imagines it wouldn't take Crayak long to get rid of them for good after that.

* Marco exhibits some slightly Machiavellian tendencies, especially in the later books. He often talks about "the straight line". It's a personal philosophy of his; there is a straight line from A to B, the simplest way to do it, ultimate efficiency. Sometimes following this line forces you to do some things that you'd rather not (like kill your family), and thus, you diverge from the line. But the line is still the line, and for that ultimate efficiency, it must be followed through (to the hilt, so to speak). This philosophy led him to [[spoiler:plan in detail -- and execute to completion -- a plan to throw his own mother off a cliff to kill the alien in her head...]]
** Marco eventually realizes that he [[spoiler: can't go through with killing his own mother]] but [[spoiler: Jake does it for him]], while holding down a screaming and crying Marco.

** What's worse is that in the next book narrated by Tobias, he mentions how he has been [[SanitySlippage having audio hallucinations of her voice taunting him]], and things go FromBadToWorse [[spoiler: when she shows up again, and in the middle of a conversation freezes up and says in a quiet voice [[ParanoiaFuel "Don't trust her"]] ]]. It's never clarified whether the "her" referred is the Yeerk or just Taylor herself.

* The fate of the Venber in ''The Extreme''. The Yeerks had cloned an extinct alien species, the Venber, to make shock troops specially adapted for cold temperatures. The problem is [[spoiler: a) they can't survive in temperatures above freezing, and b) the Venber clones are being controlled to follow programming instead of a Yeerk]]. So in the book's climax the kids run into area where there a large amounts of powerful lights. And the Venber follow. ''[[spoiler: They melt]].'' [[spoiler: And even as they slowly die [[{{AndIMustScream}} their programming forces them to twitch and writhe around and try to follow the Animorphs as their body liquefy]].]] Yikes.

* A little earlier in ''The Andalite Chronicles'', there's a passage that's not outright nightmare-inducing, but more chilling and sinister: while Elfangor works to clear away the Time Matrix from the rubble, he slowly realizes that [[HopeSpot their escape]] from the Taxxons and Yeerks was entirely ''too'' lucky. He then has a flash of insight: the other three people on his ship, who he'd thought were themselves, have been taken over by Yeerks and are waiting to ambush him. He turns out to be right... [[spoiler: One of them was Alloran, who is no longer himself but now "The Abomination", ''otherwise known in the future as Visser 3...'' That's right: Elfangor had accidentally created his and the Animorphs' worst enemy through his own actions!]]

** ...[[spoiler:''and Rachel killed Tom.'']]

** The fate of Saddler, Jake and Rachel's bratty cousin. It's never explicitly stated, but strongly implied that David put the already suffering boy out of his misery to take his place.

And then the Triceratops stopped making sounds. It hung limp. I dropped it and stood over the
fallen creature. And I bellowed.
“Huh-huh-huh-RRRRRROOOOOAAAARRR!” I roared in triumph. The sound shook the leaves
in the trees. It seemed to shake the distant stars.
“Huh-huh-huh-RRRRRROOOOOAAAARRR!” I screamed again.
I felt within me all the violence of nature, all the ruthlessness of the survival of the fittest, all the
power of muscle and bone and claw and tooth, all the ageless, never-ending lust for conquest
wrapped into one awesome roar."

-> "I shook my Tyrannosaurus head, worrying the screaming Triceratops like a dog worrying a bone.

* Father, from '''The Ellimist Chronicles'''. A massive, sadistic hive mind that stretches across the entire surface of a waterlogged moon, composed of innumerable corpses kept preserved, their brains used as computers. It keeps The Ellimist alive, floating underwater surrounded by the corpses of his crew and the last of his species, for thousands of years, playing simulated games with him that, until his defeat, he always wins. The Capasins are sudden and Crayak is evil, but Father is '''horrifying'''.

* The alternate future Cassie’s description of how the Yeerk raise human kids in “The Familiar”. They warehoused them because they weren’t useful as hosts and made them strong feeding them lots of vitamins and running them on treadmills. They punished them for acting like normal kids. Eesh