History NightmareFuel / TheStand

* The Kid is a violent, unhinged, low functioning psychopath that Trashcan Man briefly travels with on the way to Las Vegas. Aside from [[DrivesLikeCrazy driving like a lunatic]] while [[TheAlcoholic heavily drunk]], he threatens to kill Trashy if he doesn't chug a flagon of beer without throwing it up. In the extended edition he goes as far as sodomizing Trashcan Man with a pistol.

** Explained on [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Headscratchers/TheStand the Headscratchers page]]. It is arm's race logic. If a weapon can be created, it will be created. If they didn't create it, somebody else would have. So it is better to be first, and thus also have a headstart on creating the vaccine/cure.

** Also of unsettling note is when it's related that one of the men shot one of the girls in the face in a rage that she wouldn't go down on him. Said girl was only 12.

* The rape gang. A group of four army deserters decide to set up traps for passing travelers, killing all the men and taking the females to abuse and molest. To keep the women from running away or fighting back, the men force feed them drugs to instill apathy. One survivor of this group testifies that one of the rapists sodomized a woman with ''barbed wire'' in a sadistic haze.

--->There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.

** Even after the nuke goes off in Las Vegas, wiping out Flagg's society, he is still alive, and re-awakens on an island in the South Pacific, getting the natives to fear and worship him as a God.

* The aftermath of the Judge's death. For context, Randall Flagg orders his minions to capture the Judge alive and with his face intact so that they can behead him and throw his severed head into the Boulder Free Zone. Instead, the two assigned to capture him end up getting into a firefight, ending with one of Flagg's men getting killed and the Judge's face getting destroyed from several gunshots to the head. When the surviving assailant realizes his mistake, he starts inwardly panicking and plotting to flee south...only for Randall Flagg himself to appear out of nowhere, bellow with rage, and shift into a HumanoidAbomination as he attacks the poor bastard. The narration makes it clear that Flagg [[ColdBloodedTorture took his time killing the man]].

* A dead guy lying with his face in a bowl of soup in the cafeteria of Project Blue, the laboratory where Captain Trips was released, several days after the accident that started the whole mess. Which is mentioned several times across the book in disturbing detail thanks to General Starkey being able to see him through his monitors, causing him to develop an obsession with him.

* The army trying to contain everyone even though the entire country's going to shit. And by contain they mean everyone; doctors, reporters, radio announcers, university students. Many, many people are killed by the military as they try (and fail) to both quarantine Captain Trips and prevent anyone from knowing the full extant of the problem.

** The vampires of 'Salem's Lot, however, would be totally fine...and starving.

* The buildings in every town have dead bodies in them strewn about "like cordwood", turning ever town and city in the world into a massive, open air morgue.

* The Trashcan Man is a mentally challenged {{Pyromaniac}} who cannot control his urges to burn things. After Captain Trips rips through the country, Trash gravitates towards the gas tankers in his hometown and sets all of them on fire, causing the whole area to blaze out of control and giving himself several nasty burn scars. He becomes totally devoted to Randall Flagg and has an almost sixth sense for procuring devastating military weaponry for Flagg's army.

** Particularly gruesome is the death of a ''five-year-old,'' the only survivor of his entire town and family of six. After he's left all alone, he wanders off in a confused and grief-filled haze to a field. He falls down a well, breaks his arms and legs, and dies in agony and misery 24 hours later. Also qualifies as TearJerker material.

* The whole chapter or two when the reader knows [[BigBad Flagg]] has found out [[ActionGirl Dayna's]] identity and she still thinks she's successfully incognito. The reader wants her to catch on as soon as possible but knows that she doesn't have a hope of escaping, especially when the [[QuirkyMinibossSquad henchmen]] get into her hotel room. With the whole build up to her meeting with Flagg where she notices his [[UncannyValley hands]] and what happens [[{{Squick}} afterwards]]. To avoid giving away the identity of the third spy, Dayna jumps through a window in Flagg's office and ''slashes her own throat with the broken glass''.

* While Lloyd is still locked in his prison cell after everything has gone quietly to hell, he realizes that nobody will be coming by to give him food and he starts looking speculatively at the dead inmate in the next cell over. That's bad enough, but then he remembers a rabbit that he begged his mother to get for him, promising that he would take care of it and feed it and everything. His mother assented, saying that it would be his responsibility and his alone. Sometime later, young Lloyd realizes that he hadn't even ''thought'' about the rabbit in about two weeks, let alone fed or cared for it. When he goes to check on it, he finds it has starved to death, and its front paws are all mangled and bloody. The first possibility, that it had tried to dig out of its enclosure, isn't anywhere near as back as his second guess--that it had gotten so hungry that it had tried to eat itself. Good luck reading that without wanting to cuddle your pets afterwards.

* The Walkin' Dude himself, Randall Flagg. There's several unsettling implications that he's not even fully human, just evil given a human face and name, wandering from place to place (hence the nickname "Walkin' Dude") sowing discord and violence wherever he goes. His [[EstablishingCharacterMoment introduction chapter]] has him fondly recalling beating, raping, and even ''castrating'' people while part of TheKlan, helping a black nationalist go on a killing spree against police officers, and blowing up power plants. Viewing Captain Trips as a golden opportunity, he sets up a near cultish society in Las Vegas, with himself at the helm, metes out punishments such as crucifixion for dissent, and begins building an army to wipe out the Boulder Free Zone.

** His death is not much better. After holding Trash at gunpoint and threatening to kill him unless he removes a blockage in the road, a pack of wolves with red eyes, sent by Randall Flagg himself, corners him into an abandoned car. After spending several days in there with no food or water, and with the wolves having remained outside the car the whole time, The Kid tries to fight them off and has his throat bitten out.

See also [[NightmareFuel/StephenKing Nightmare Fuel/Stephen King]].

* [[SurvivalHorror The CDC]] [[AbandonedHospital hospital]] in Vermont -- '''every single chapter''' involving it.

** [[spoiler:Even after the nuke goes off in Las Vegas, wiping out Flagg's society, he is still alive, and re-awakens on an island in the South Pacific, getting the natives to fear and worship him as a God.]]

-->"It was then that she noticed, after two years of coming and going down here, that there [[OhCrap was no inside knob on the freezer door.]] By then it was too warm to freeze, [[ImAHumanitarian but not too cold to starve.]] [[KarmicDeath So Judy Horton died in the company of her son and husband after all.]]"

* The whole chapter or two when the reader knows [[BigBad Flagg]] has found out [[ActionGirl Dayna's]] identity and she still thinks she's successfully incognito. The reader wants her to catch on as soon as possible but knows that she doesn't have a hope of escaping, especially when the [[QuirkyMinibossSquad henchmen]] get into her hotel room. With the whole build up to her meeting with Flagg where she notices his [[UncannyValley hands]] and what happens [[{{Squick}} afterwards]]. [[spoiler:To avoid giving away the identity of the third spy, Dayna jumps through a window in Flagg's office and ''slashes her own throat with the broken glass''.]]

** Particularly gruesome is the death of a ''four-year-old,'' the only survivor of his entire town and family of six. He falls down a well, breaks his arms and legs, and dies 24 hours later. Also qualifies as TearJerker material.

** He's literal Nightmare Fuel for the survivors of Captain Trips, as he gives the protagonists vivid nightmares where he menaces them on various ways. For example, he gives Frannie Goldsmith, a pregnant character, a nightmare where he ruthlessly chases her with a coat hanger in his hands.

* The rape gang. A group of four army deserters decide to set up traps for passing travelers, killing all the men and taking the females to abuse and molest. To keep the women from running away or fighting back, the men force feed them drugs to instill apathy. One survivor of this group testifies that one of the rapists sodomized a woman with 'barbed wire' in a sadistic haze.

* The Trashcan Man is a mentally challenged {{Pyromaniac}} who cannot control his urges to burn things. After Captain Trips rips through the country, Trash gravitates towards the gas tankers in his hometown and set all of them on fire, causing the whole area to blaze out of control and giving himself several nasty burn scars. He becomes totally devoted to Randall Flagg and has an almost sixth sense for procuring devastating military weaponry for Flagg's army.

* After the virus settles down, there are a series of vignettes about a secondary die-off as the survivors get themselves into trouble and no one is left to help them out of it. A man gets bitten by a rattlesnake and doesn't know how to administer an antidote, a girl falls off a bicycle and dies of a skull fracture, and so on. One of these victims is a young man who steps on a rusty nail. When his foot swells up with tetanus, he tries to ''[[LifeOrLimbDecision hacksaw it off]]'' and dies of blood loss after he faints from the pain.
** Particularly gruesome is the death of a ''four year old,'' the only survivor of his entire town and family of six. He falls down a well, breaks his arms and legs, and dies 24 hours later. Also qualifies as TearJerker material.

* A dead guy lying with his face in a bowl of soup in the long abandoned laboratory where Captain Trips was released. Which is mentioned several times across the book in disturbing detail.

* The Walkin' Dude himself, Randall Flagg. There's several unsettling implications that he's not even fully human, just evil given a human face and name, wandering from place to place (hence the nickname "Walkin' Dude") sowing discord and violence wherever he goes. His [[EstablishingCharacterMoment introduction chapter]] has him fondly recalling beating, raping, and even ''castrating'' people while part of TheKlan, helping a black nationalist go on a killing spree against police officers, and blowing up power plants. Viewing Captain Trips as a golden opportunity, he sets up a near cultish society in Las Vegas, with himself at the helm, mets out punishments such as crucifixion for dissent, and beings building an army to wipe out the Boulder Free Zone.

** The miniseries also has, just prior to that, Stu spotting an elevator trying to close while there's a gurney stuck in it. He pulls the gurney out of the way, and a dead doctor lands on him.

** The miniseries has the doctors at the lab take care to dress in a Tychem suit that should protect them from the virus. Then one day, one doctor feverishly stumbles into Stu's room while not in a suit is especially alarming. [[DespairEventHorizon The precautions don't matter anymore.]]

** Flagg's power goes beyond just being a silver-tongued dictator, however. He has control over animals such as wolves and crows, sending out the former to kill The Kid (see below) and the latter to use as spies across the nation. One of Flagg's henchmen recalls a rumor going around that the Walkin' Dude was talking to a group of crows, who started suddenly speaking in plain English chanting his name. Later on Lloyd recalls having seen Flagg [[DrivenToMadness causing someone to go into a giggling catatonia]] just by looking into his eyes for a few minutes.
** [[spoiler:Even after the nuke goes off in Las Vegas, wiping out Flagg's society, he is still alive, and re-awakens on an island in the South Pacific, getting the natives to fear and worship him as a God.]]
* Trash's final appearance in the miniseries; after hauling the A-bomb across the desert to Vegas, he...wasn't looking so great. The illustration of him in the uncut text isn't exactly a picnic, either.

** Stu's escape from the CDC is laden with references to WesternAnimation/WatershipDown, during which he compares his growing desperation and paranoia to [[DeerInTheHeadLights going tharn]].

** Larry gets another one after Rita Blakemoor dies. Not only is he incapable of burying her, but his first action is to go to the nearest town to get new clothes, ''just so he wouldn't have her scent on him''. On the way back, he crashes his motorcycle. He tries to shrug it off with his usual machismo, but his inner monologue reveals more: ''He could have hit his head the right way and fractured his skull and he would have lain there in the hot sun until he died. Or strangled to death on his own puke like a certain now-deceased friend of his''. He keeps riding the motorcycle...but is too afraid to push it above 20 MPH. When he shows up again, he's gone half-mad from the heat, exhaustion, self-loathing, and morbid guilt.

* The Walkin' Dude himself, Randall Flagg. There's several unsettling implications that he's not even fully human, just evil given a human face and name, wandering from place to place (hence the nickname "Walkin' Dude") sowing discord and violence wherever he goes. His [[EstablishingCharacterMoment introduction chapter]] has him fondly recalling beating, raping, and even ''castrating'' people while part of TheKlan, helping a black nationalist go on a killing spree against police officers, and blowing up power plants. After the plague, he sets up a near cultish society in Las Vegas, with himself at the helm, and punishments such as crucifixion meted out for dissent.

* The Kidis a violent, unhinged, low functioning psychopath that Trashcan Man briefly travels with on the way to Las Vegas. Aside from [[DrivesLikeCrazy driving like a lunatic]] while [[TheAlcoholic heavily drunk]], he threatens to kill Trashy if he doesn't chug a flagon of beer without throwing it up. In the extended edition he goes as far as sodomizing Trashcan Man with a pistol.

* In general, pure, unadulterated ParanoiaFuel... Especially:
** [[SurvivalHorror The CDC]] [[AbandonedHospital hospital]] in Vermont -- '''every single chapter''' involving it. Or... "Come down and eat chicken with me, beautiful. It's soooo ''dark!"''
*** While Stu is kept there, he has [[NothingIsScarier no knowledge of what is going on outside the lab]] until his desperate escape. The employees are reluctant even to tell him what happened to his friends. The statement that ignorance is bliss does not apply when one is sealed up in a lab while his friends, and a lot more people, may be dying excruciating deaths from an unstoppable disease.
** The aftermath of the Judge's death.
** Nick Andros (a deaf-mute) being [[EverybodysDeadDave the last person alive]] in an isolated small town.
*** The fact that he winds up [[EyeScream blinded]] in one eye. Just imagine what would happen if he lost the other one...
** Tom Cullen (a [[TheWoobie mentally retarded man]]) being sent as a spy to Las Vegas.
** How the buildings in every town have dead bodies in them strewn about "like cordwood" (an uncomfortable [[HarsherInHindsight foreshadowing]] [[LifeImitatesArt of Katrina]])... and a million and one other, little things many have blocked out. Ironically, the ''other'' half of the book was an ''optimistic'' tale of [[GhibliHills nature]] and humanity [[AWorldHalfFull surviving the]] [[AfterTheEnd Apocalypse]].[[note]]Until {{Satan}} threatened the MagicalNegro.[[/note]]
** Even common cold and flu season. Seriously, sniffles and coughs have never sounded more terrifying. Do ''not'' read this book if you have a cold, or if someone in the room coughs or sneezes.
** The Walkin' Dude himself, Randall Flagg.
* The miniseries has the doctors at the lab take care to dress in a Tychem suit that should protect them from the virus. Then one day, one doctor feverishly stumbles into Stu's room while not in a suit is especially alarming. [[DespairEventHorizon The precautions don't matter anymore.]]
* [[BeneathTheEarth The Lincoln Tunnel]].

* The whole scenario of a bio-engineered plague wiping out most of humanity was scarier than Flagg for some readers/viewers, likely because it's not only a ''far'' more plausible scenario, but the symptoms of the cause are things everyone gets at least once a year from a cold.
* "Your blood is in my ''fists,'' Mother."

* Nadine inadvertently communicating with Flagg in college, via ouija board. ''WE ARE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD NADINE''
* The Kid, like when he threatens to kill Trashy if he doesn't chug a flagon of beer without throwing it up. Even worse in the extended edition where he sodomizes Trashcan Man with a pistol.

** And then there's Lloyd Henreid, locked up in his jail cell with every single guard dead...
-->"Oh no," Lloyd said. "Someone's gonna come. Sure they are. Just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket."
-->But he kept remembering the rabbit. He couldn't help it... .He loved that rabbit, and he did take care of it. But the trouble was, things slipped his mind after a while. It had always been that way. And one day while he was swinging idly in the tire that hung from the sickly maple behind their scraggy little house in Marathon, Pennsylvania, he had suddenly sat bolt upright, thinking of that rabbit. He hadn't thought of his rabbit in... well, in better than two weeks. It had just completely slipped his mind.
* A brief but terribly effective description of the deserted Arnette, Texas. King can sometimes be the most terrifying when he's simply painting a mental picture.

* A dead guy lying with his face in a bowl of soup. Which is mentioned several times across the book in disturbing detail.
* Starkey's trip through the lab, prior to his [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]].
* The whole chapter or two when the reader knows [[BigBad Flagg]] has found out [[ActionGirl Dayna's]] identity and she still thinks she's successfully incognito. The reader wants her to catch on as soon as possible but knows that she doesn't have a hope of escaping, especially when the [[QuirkyMinibossSquad henchmen]] get into her hotel room. With the whole build up to her meeting with Flagg where she notices his [[UncannyValley hands]] and what happens [[{{Squick}} afterwards]].
* Any who have read the book have to wonder whenever they get a stuffy nose and a cough...and it only took about 3 weeks for the world to depopulate. Campion escapes the base in early-to-mid June and by July 4th Larry is doing a lonely naked bump and grind to the "Star Spangled Banner" at a rest stop off the New Jersey turnpike.

* This little gem still haunts me:
--->There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.
* "The Zoo".
* The phrase "the dark, sweet treat".
* Then there's that "game show" Fran finds herself watching during the epidemic.

* The army trying to contain everyone even though the entire country's going to shit. And by contain they mean everyone; doctors, reporters, radio announcers, university students.

* Trashcan Man slowly dying from the [[NuclearNasty radiation]] given off by the nuke is quite a miserable way to go, even without the added BodyHorror from the film adaption.

*** While Stu is kept there, he has no knowledge of what is going on outside the lab until his desperate escape. The employees are reluctant even to tell him what happened to his friends. The statement that ignorance is bliss does not apply when one is sealed up in a lab while his friends, and a lot more people, may be dying excruciating deaths from an unstoppable disease.

*** While Stu is kept there, he has no knowledge of what is going on outside the lab until his desperate escape. The employees are reluctant even to tell him what happened to his friends.