History ParanoiaFuel / Literature

* ''ThePendragonAdventure'': Saint Dane. ''Anyone'' could actually be a CompleteMonster in disguise who is actually manipulating you to cause the destruction of your world all while making you believe you're helping people. Even [[spoiler: the bully you've grown up with since childhood.]] It's also implied that he [[spoiler: followed Aja her whole life in different forms in order to plant hints to subconsciously convince her [[UnwittingPawn to create what she thought would be a device to stop him but actually completes his plan.]] ]]
* ''Literature/WarriorCats''. What ''do'' your cats think about? Do they hate your guts? Are they actually the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Hitler]] of their world, or a mass-murderer? Or worse... ''are they plotting to kill you?'' After all, a cat with [[AxeCrazy S]][[CompleteMonster c]][[MagnificentBastard o]][[ManipulativeBastard u]][[ChaoticEvil r]][[ForTheEvulz g]][[CainAndAbel e's]] claws and temperament would probably find it all too amusing to slit an unsuspecting human's throat as they slept.

* ''PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' has a whole slew of mundane situations that could kill you. Did your teacher's eyes just glow? She's a servant of Hades. Do those [[WaxMuseumMorgue "garden statues"]] look [[UncannyValley eerily lifelike]]? They're victims of Medusa who were TakenForGranite. Did you...oh no, is that a CHAIN RESTAURANT you're going into? (Cue hydra heads breaking through the windows.) OhCrap.

** This is parodied in a host segment in ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', when the 'bots are as creeped out about Mike's eyelash mites and send the Nanites in to destroy them. A bloody war is fought and the mites are vanquished...causing random debris to build up around Mike's eyes. The segment ends with Tom and Crow expressing their disgust and saying he should really do something about that, and violence only being cut off by Movie Sign, as usual.

** One of the appendices to ''Illuminatus!'' admits that the books were designed to program the reader in a variety of ways that would only become apparent after a number of years. (Or maybe that's just what They ''want'' you to think....)

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

* Jeff [=VanderMeer's=] ''{{Ambergris}}''-books: There's a race of interdimensional midgets living beneath the sewers, who observe your entire city through ubiquitous fungus spores, and they manipulate people's behaviour with different spores that you breathe in or eat with your food, that affects your emotional balance and behaviour. Everything underground is their realm, not even your own cellar is safe if you stay down there too long. Oh, and they can walk through the walls. And they plan taking back over the city that was once taken from them.

* Book 3 of StephenKing's ''DarkTower'' series, ''The Wastelands'', features an example of NightmareFuel inside the actual story, in the form of Charlie the Choo-Choo. Despite being a children's book, this story gives Jake, Susannah and Eddie the creeps when they first read it. Jake imagines that beneath the sugary sweetness of the story, the titular character is evil to the core, which foreshadows the Ka-Tet's encounter with Blaine the Mono at the end of the book and the beginning of the next one. Given the [[http://www.scificincinnati.com/images/wastelands_6_choo_choo.jpg illustration of Charlie]] that some editions of the book have, it's hard to disagree with Jake's instincts, what with the evil grin on Charlie's face and the children on the train apparently screaming in terror.
** King is pretty well known for this; there's a reason the FamilyGuy parody of him said he just takes household objects and makes them creepy. You know that world-ending virus that causes coughing, phlegm buildup, delusions and eventually death in ''TheStand''? It's ''specifically'' described as indistinguishable, in the early stages, from the common cold or flu. 99.4% of people exposed to it catch it and die. Yes, that's right, you have slightly better than a ''one in two hundred'' chance you'll be one of the survivors on a lifeless, forsaken planet. Oh, and it can be transmitted just by walking past someone with it.

** This is parodied in a host segment in ''MysteryScienceTheatre3000'', when the 'bots are as creeped out about Mike's eyelash mites and send the Nanites in to destroy them. A bloody war is fought and the mites are vanquished...causing random debris to build up around Mike's eyes. The segment ends with Tom and Crow expressing their disgust and saying he should really do something about that, and violence only being cut off by Movie Sign, as usual.

* This is part of what makes the works of HPLovecraft and many [[CosmicHorrorStory Cosmic Horror stories]] so effective; the idea that our stable, comfortable reality is merely a temporary, fragile illusion behind which lurk any kind of unknowable horrors way beyond our comprehension just waiting to completely shatter us. The Gods, if they do exist, ''don't care about us in the slightest''... which, [[FateWorseThanDeath considering what happens if they notice you]], is a ''good thing''.

* ''Literature/WarriorCats''. What ''do'' your cats think about? Do they hate your guts? Are they actually the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Hitler]] of their world, or a mass-murderer? Or worse... ''are they plotting to kill you?'' After all, a cat with [[AxeCrazy S]][[CompleteMonster c]][[MagnificentBastard o]][[ManipulativeBastard u]][[ChaoticEvil r]][[ForTheEvulz g]][[CainAndAbel e]]'s claws and temperament would probably find it all too amusing to slit an unsuspecting human's throat as they slept.

* An in-universe example of ParanoiaFuel is "stealth chess", a variant of traditional chess played at the Assassins' Guild in ''{{Discworld}}''. Each player has two extra pieces (Assassins) that move up and down two extra rows at the sides of the board, can spontaneously leap out and attack ''any'' non-Assassin piece in their range, and ''may not actually be where they seem to be''. The game is '''designed''' to foster paranoia in Guild students who play it.

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

* Invoked by Deacon in ''[[RobertAHeinlein Tunnel in the Sky]]'', when the survival-class instructor gives his students a parting warning to beware of stobors as they set out on their field test. He doesn't tell them what a stobor is, [[spoiler: and indeed doesn't know about any such himself: he just says it to make sure they'll be wary of anything new and potentially dangerous they might encounter]].

** While we're on the topic of Neil Gaiman, let's add ''Literature/AmericanGods'' to the list. The world is ruled by selfish gods who feed off of our beliefs and treat humans like a commodity. And, in the protagonist's own words: "They get to break all the rules they want. We don't. Even if I tried to walk out of here, my feet would just bring me back." It's not surprising at one point, he ''voluntarily'' chooses [[TheNothingAfterDeath non-existence]] over spending the rest of his afterlife with them. Of course, the gods have other plans for him...

** King is pretty well known for this; there's a reason the FamilyGuy parody of him basically said he just takes household objects and makes them creepy. You know that world-ending virus that causes coughing, phlegm buildup, delusions and eventually death in ''TheStand''? It's ''specifically'' described as indistinguishable, in the early stages, from the common cold or flu. 99.4% of people exposed to it catch it and die. Yes, that's right, you have slightly better than a ''one in two hundred'' chance you'll be one of the survivors on a lifeless, forsaken planet. Oh, and it can be transmitted just by walking past someone with it.

** And then there's bloody ''{{Cell}}''. Pretty much, everyone who uses cell phones goes berserk and acts like a rabid dog on steroids. And since pretty much everyone uses cell phones these days... yeah. Sleep tight.

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

* An example which lives more squarely in ParanoiaFuel as opposed to NightmareFuel is ''Blit'', a sci-fi short story by DavidLangford (which one can in fact read for free online [[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm here]]). In essence, [[spoiler:modern-day mathematicians discover a certain pattern which can kill you just by ''looking at it'', and various terrorist groups paint it on walls to kill whoever's unlucky enough to wander by... and quite horribly, it transpires]]. Ever tried not looking at walls for a few days?[[hottip:* :http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/parrotTB.jpg * Wink* ]]
** Forget walls. Read the companion document, ''comp.faq.basilisk''. Do you use an HTML email viewer with embedded images enabled? Imagine being sent something a bit nastier than ''goatse''...

** Another sci-fi story was basically a transcript of a professor's lecture on types of sentences, beginning with the simple "I am." As the lecture progresses, and the professor adds more complex sentence structure, the sentences begin to take on a life of their own quite literally. The story ends with the transcript abruptly stopping, and an addendum saying the professor suffered a sudden brain aneurysm.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_School "The Haunted School"]], in which an entire small school's students in the 1940s end up [[spoiler: trapped in a permanently monochromed version of their one-room school by a sinister camera guy, doomed never to age or die, and never to see colors of any kind again. And you can sometimes hear them behind the walls in real life. And then the exact same camera guy is still alive fifty years later to take a picture of a group of students working on a big school party.]]

* The later books in ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' present a massive AncientConspiracy which "recruits" "volunteers" by kidnapping them in infancy (although sometimes they ask the parents). This conspiracy is divided into two warring factions, which are indistinguishable in practice not only due to BlackAndGrayMorality, but because they use the same disguises and codes. The LemonyNarrator (himself involved in the conspiracy to some degree) strongly implies that the reader's own teachers, librarians, and even family members could be part of it.

* This is part of what makes the works of HPLovecraft and many [[CosmicHorrorStory Cosmic Horror stories]] so effective; the idea that our stable, comfortable reality is merely a temporary, fragile illusion behind which lurk any kind of unknowable horrors way beyond our comprehension just waiting to completely shatter us. Not to mention the fact that the Gods, if they do exist, ''don't care about us in the slightest''... which, [[FateWorseThanDeath considering what happens if they notice you]], is a ''good thing''.
* In a similar vein, just about everything by Thomas Ligotti. Everything becomes NightmareFuel. Pills, paperwork, libraries, flowers, chamber music, horror stories... Hell, ''reality itself'' is the main source of terror in most of his work. In short, the AnthropomorphicPersonification of this trope.

** And of course, "Literature/TheTain"- your reflection wants to kill you! And take over the world!

** On a lighter note, Rita Skeeter. The creepy part is that she [[spoiler: does her spying ''in the form of a bug''.]]

* Some of the scariest books in R. L. Stine's ''Fear Street'' series might be the ones that don't contain any supernatural occurrences, but have the protagonist's best friend turning against him or her, and even trying to ''kill'' him or her.
* ''Flowers in the Attic'' by VCAndrews could cause children to worry that their own (seemingly affectionate and caring) parents would turn against them, and even try to kill them.

* ''TheZombieSurvivalGuide''. Brrr... you ''will'' believe that a zombie apocalypse can happen at any moment. ''WorldWarZ'' takes this threat and runs with it for an entire novel.

* ''The Watertower'' by Gary Crew. It's a Australian childrens picture book about a kid who dares his friend to go into an old creepy water tower. The layout, the imagery and the atmosphere makes it far more unsettling than any childrens book has a right to be. And even by the end, we never find out what happened in the tower, only that something was in there. Something that can possibly infect people.

* This is pretty much the entire point of all of ThomasPynchon's books.

* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': In ''At All Costs''. After an assassination attempt that was thwarted by milliseconds, the Star Kingdom of Manticore gets rather jumpy about how the assassin was compromised. [[spoiler:''He wasn't''. As the audience knows and Manticore doesn't even suspect, the people in question were hit with nanomachines, which can be delivered in food, or water, or that window-cleaning junk the driver of the taxi you took just sprayed on you. And the victims are fully awake as they watch their body kill others, or even themselves. That is, of course, if they aren't doing lovely things like altering your memory and making you think things are perfectly normal. Such as that salesman in the throne room with the "perfume" that's actually binary nerve gas.]]

* {{Mistborn}}: The [[spoiler: kandra. They can be hired by anyone, are bound by contract to do their job, and can take on the form of anyone dead. So your family members could be killed and have their bodies eaten and imitated by kandra and you wouldn't even know it. Kandra are also great actors, and people being impersonated are often tortured before they're killed to learn information about them and prevent BluffTheImposter. Also, in the later books, Ruin. He can hear anything spoken and see anything written down unless it's written on metal. He can also change anything written down if not written on metal, is a master manipulator, and, if he can get a hemalurgic spike into you, he can manipulate you with voices in your head and even change your basic urges and instincts. He is everywhere. And what's his goal through his manipulation? To cause the end of the world. *shudder*]]

* George Orwell's book ''NineteenEightyFour''. Its potency in today's politics is practically defined by this trope. [[BigBrotherIsWatching The original "Big Brother", the book leaves you thinking that there are people watching you who can derive your every thought just from the expressions on your face.]] Oh, and the ending... And concerning today's surveillance technologies, they're all plausible.

** Then there's Apt Pupil. That nice, folksy old guy who lives on a quiet little street? Yeah, he's a horrendous Nazi war criminal. And the seemingly normal boy next door wants to be ''just like him''.
** And The Bogeyman. The idea is simple: The monster in your closet is real. And it will ''kill'' you.
** Strawberry Spring: Split personality disorder and a horrifying ending as the protagonist realises just what he's been doing over the years.
** ''{{IT}}'': Every fear you've got come alive with malicious intent. He even managed to make ''beer'' scary.

** And "Stationary Bike" has the Aesop of "Not too healthy..."
** Dreamcatcher will keep you from ever going into the woods again.**

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

** One of the appendices to ''Illuminatus!'' admits that the books were designed to program the reader in a variety of ways that would only become apparent after a number of years. (Or maybe that's just what They ''want'' you to think....)
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''. Imagine reading those books when you were about 10 or so, and going to bed thinking about how anyone, from your best friend to your parents could be controlled by mind-slugs, and you would never, ever be able to tell the difference until they caught you and took control of your mind. Imagine not being able to stop reading because you think there'll be information there that'll help you to survive. All while not being able to go to anyone for help (so they'll tell you it's a fiction book) because they'll drag you to the Yeerk Pool screaming and kicking.
* Harry Dresden from {{The Dresden Files}}: "Just because you can't see the invisible demon about to eat your face doesn't mean it isn't there."

* Any and all books by RLStine, especially ''{{Goosebumps}}'', ''Nightmare Room'' ''When Good Ghouls Go Bad'' and ''Shocker Street''.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_School "The Haunted School"]], in which an entire small school's students in the 1940s end up [[spoiler: trapped in a permanently monochromed version of their one-room school by a sinister camera guy, doomed never to age or die, and never to see colors of any kind again. And you can sometimes hear them behind the walls in real life. And then the exact same camera guy is still alive fifty years later to take a picture of a group of students working on a big school party.]]
* The ''Mr Men'' stories have this in the form of a character called Mr Tickle who has reeeeeally long arms that he can use to reach hard to reach places and to tickle people with- the worst thing is....He could appear anytime and anyplace and his long arms could reach out and get you.

* The later books in ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' present a massive AncientConspiracy which "recruits" "volunteers" by kidnapping them in infancy (although sometimes they ask the parents). This conspiracy is divided into two warring factions, which are indistinguishable in practice not only due to BlackAndGrayMorality, but because they use the same disguises and codes. The LemonyNarrator (himself involved in the conspiracy to some degree) strongly implies that the reader's own teachers, librarians, and even family members could be part of it.

* In a similar vein, just about everything by Thomas Ligotti. Everything becomes NightmareFuel. Pills, paperwork, libraries, flowers, chamber music, horror stories... Hell, ''reality itself'' is the main source of terror in most of his work. In short, the {{Anthropomorphic Personification}} of this trope.
* Chapter two of the book ''That's Incurable!'', by George Thomas and Lee Schreiner, is 'deliberate Paranoia Fuel. The chapter title? "Ten Diseases You Were Better Off Not Knowing About". Some of the diseases are communicable, some genetic, and some hadn't had a cause isolated as of 1984, when the book was published. But the three things they all had in common made it blatantly clear that the chapter was intended as Paranoia Fuel:
----> 1. They are rare.
----> 2. They are real.

* ChinaMieville's anthology ''Looking for Jake'' is a whole series of paranoia fueling ideas, which deal with the world being off only slightly.

* Kurt Vonnegut's ''HarrisonBergeron''. The premise is that it takes place in a CrapsackWorld where TheGovernment creates total equality - by preventing anyone from being better at anything than anyone else. And the agency dealing with this is [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans fully permitted to use]] '''[[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans lethal force]]''' [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans if anyone tries to remove their handicapping measures]]. TheMovie is even worse: intelligent people have to pay "mind whores" to play chess and have intelligent conversation, and it turns out the smart people are all really running the world. The short story, however, was intended as a parody of the world that many anti-civil-rights and anti-politically-correct folks claimed would be created if some measure of equality was required by the government, not as a ''NineteenEightyFour''-esque piece against the stifling of individuality. [[WordOfGod Word Of Author]] on record suggests that this is the more reasonable interpretation. [[http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could Mr Vonnegut has weighed on on this one]].

* ''The Plant People'', a short story featured in ''[[Creator/BruceCoville Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens]]'', detailed a mysterious fog filled with dancing lights that slowly turned people into cacti. It seems silly until you read about them first changed into brainless, green-veined shells of their former selves, wandering listlessly around trying to photosynthesize, and see the illustration of one confused victim clutching a cactus, not seeming to mind the pain. Worse still is the end: [[spoiler: A news report says they finally found a cure, but just as they're about to reveal it, the fog descends...]]
* Anything by PhilipKDick. Example: in "The Father-Thing," [[spoiler: a little kid discovers some alien thing has killed his father and is walking around in his skin. Nobody else notices the difference.]]

** One fan theory suggests that there are no muggle-born wizards or witches, but there are some evil wizards, armed with Imperio and Obliviate.

* ''Flowers in the Attic'' by [[VCAndrews V. C. Andrews]] could cause children to worry that their own (seemingly affectionate and caring) parents would turn against them, and even try to kill them.

* ''Reality Check'' by David Brin. Apparently, [[WhoWantsToLiveForever eternal life is so boring]] that the protagonist voluntarily entered a {{Lotus Eater Machine}}, and someone is now trying to wake [[NoNameGiven him/her]] up. ''You're the protagonist'', and the story is your wake-up call. The tone becomes increasingly urgent as you demonstrate yourself "unable or unwilling to scan the text for embedded code with the scanner in the blind spot of your left eye."

* ''{{Hyperion}}''. MerlinSickness causes you to age backward in time, meaning that every day you wake a day younger, having lost a days worth of memories. So, immediately after you contract it, you'll wake up not remembering what had be to befallen you; someone will have to explain it. And then the next morning, they'll have to explain it again. And again. And Again. ''And Again.'' '''''And Again.''''' Over and over, every day until you either die or age back to before you were born. Initially, this task will be handled by doctors, but as time passes this grim chore will pass to your friends and family. But with every passing year, more and more of your friends will have to explain to you who they are, because you will no longer remember meeting them. Eventually, you will forget all of them, and be forced to rely solely on family for the daily explanation of what's happened. But then your family members will start to die, and the survivors will have to inform you of this every day. This daily task will wear upon them, until finally they give up, and stop telling you. And then you will have to face the world each morning scared and alone, confused as to why the world has suddenly changed so drastically while you were sleeping. And each night shall erase the memory of this, forcing you to face it anew each day. Have fun getting out of bed tomorrow morning.

* MichaelCrichton's ''TheAndromedaStrain'' is about an outer-space virus that kills ''everything''. And it mutates with every growth cycle. And [[spoiler:setting off a nuke ''would just make it stronger''.]]

* Shirley Jackson's ''{{The Haunting of Hill House}}'' is this trope in spades.

* ''{{After}}'' by Francine Prose. The rules are always changing, break one and it's a one way ticket to 'Operation Turnaround'[read: your grave]. What might some of these rules be? Did you have a cell phone on your person at school? What about gum? Anything red? Did you eat lunch alone? Oh, and Big Brother's watching you. And by watching you, I mean ''really'' watching you. Yes, even 50 miles away. Remember your sweet history teacher? The one who didn't report that sweet, A++ girl who broke a rule? Yeah, she had a "Health Emergency". And don't expect your parents to help you, they've been brainwashed. Everything is for your own good. And they could come for you at any time- right in the middle of a normal school day, even if you've done nothing wrong. Have fun at school, dear.
* Jeff [=VanderMeer's=] ''{{Ambergris}}''-books: There's a race of interdimensional midgets living beneath the sewers, who observe your entire city through ubiquitous fungus spores, and they manipulate people's behaviour with different spores that you breathe in or eat with your food, that affects your emotional balance and behaviour. Everything underground is their realm, not even your own cellar is safe if you stay down there too long. Oh, and they can walk through the walls. And they plan taking back over the city that was once taken from them.
* If you were a fledgling in the ''{{House of Night}}'' you would never know that your body is rejecting the Change, until you start coughing up blood and then in about 10 minutes you would be dead and then there's nothing that anybody can do.

* In Pure, by Julianna Baggott, not adhering to social conventions by, say, not going to church, can get you put in the loony bin. The government can and will alter your behavior, plant a bomb in your head and bug your eyes and ears, and you won't even know until it's far too late.

* ''{{Lullaby}}'' by ChuckPahlaniuk. There's a [[BrownNote lullaby]] that's an ancient killing curse and it kills anyone who has it read to them. It was printed as a nursery rhyme in a popular children's nursery rhyme book. You could kill your kids accidentally by reading it to them. Easily.

* Short Russian story "Spell of Body Spirits" by Lleo Kaganov). It descibes a text engineered in such a way that it critically affects the brain of any reader. After reading it their body ceases to function properly, which naturally leads to their demise. Obviously, the protagonist has already seen the text by the time he learns about it - and the reader of the story with him. The funny part? The text of the story itself is constructed using psychosomatic techniques which lead to feeling the described symptoms, such as shortage of breath, raised heart rate, constant yawning and so on. It's not like you would be afraid that one day a seemingly random set of words could kill you. You would be worried if you are going to die withing hours.
** This Russian troper [[NoSell was not affected]].
** For the record, it does have a slight effect in English. While it isn't as extreme as the one in Russian, the fact that you notice your breathing rate makes the last lines of the story a bit hard to follow. Now I must get some fresh air.
* The Alvin Schwartz collection of [[ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark]]. One example is the story where a woman, who is planning for vacation, has a dream where a lady warns her of grave danger at her vacation site. So, she decides to go somewhere else for vacation. Upon arriving at her motel, [[spoiler: she hears a knock at her door, and opens it up to SEE THE LADY FROM HER DREAM STANDING THERE]] Four good lessons from that story: Don't open doors, don't go on vacation, old ladies are evil, and don't go to sleep EVER...
** Also, the picture that went along with the story is creepy as fuck.

** If it helps, WWZ took a level of stupidity and denial that is impossible in real life. In fact, it's precisely opposite the way people would ask if they found out zombies were real; post it all over the Internet.
* Anything written by DavidIcke. Extradimensional beings with fabulous powers have taken over virtually the entire world and have enslaved the human race through propaganda and subliminal programming that starts ''at birth'' and on every level. They instigate wars in order to feed off of the dark energy that is released. ''Problem'' - ''Reaction'' - ''Solution''

* ''ThePendragonAdventure'': Saint Dane. ''Anyone'' could actually be a CompleteMonster in disguise who is actually manipulating you to cause the destruction of your world all while making you believe you're helping people. Even [[spoiler: the bully you've grown up with since childhood.]] It's also implied that he [[spoiler: followed Aja her whole life in different forms in order to plant hints to subconciously convince her [[UnwittingPawn to create what she thought would be a device to stop him but actually completes his plan.]] ]]

* In ''Film/TheGodfather'' novel, but let out of the film, was a scene of Woltz after [[spoiler: finding his horse's head on his bed.]] Woltz starts to think of revenge on TheMafia, still thinking that he's superior to them. After all, he was the one who refused AnOfferYouCantRefuse. Then he thinks twice and realises that if TheMafia could sneak onto his grounds and do what they had done, what else could they do?

* ''{{After}}'' by Francine Prose. The rules are always changing, break one and it's a one way ticket to 'Operation Turnaround'[read: your grave]. What might some of these rules be? did you have a cell phone on your person at school? what about gum? anything red? did you eat lunch alone? oh, and Big Brother's watching you. And by watching you, I mean ''really'' watching you. Yes, even 50 miles away. Remember your sweet history teacher? the one who didn't report that sweet, A++ girl who broke a rule? yeah, she had a "Health Emergency". And don't expect your parents to help you, they've been brainwashed. Everything is for your own good. And they could come for you at any time- right in the middle of a normal school day, even if you've done nothing wrong. Have fun at school, dear.
* Jeff [=VanderMeer's=] ''{{Ambergris}}''-books: there's a race of interdimensional midgets living beneath the sewers, who observe your entire city through ubiquitous fungus spores, and they manipulate people's behaviour with different spores that you breathe in or eat with your food, that affects your emotional balance and behaviour. Everything underground is their realm, not even your own cellar is safe if you stay down there too long. Oh, and they can walk through the walls. And they plan taking back over the city that was once taken from them.

* ''Jeffty Is Five'' by Harlan Ellison. Imagine, for a moment, that your child is Jeffty. He is five years old, physically, mentally, emotionally and developementally though chronologically he is much older. Because he is still five you have to take care of him, as long as he is five whih may be ''for the rest of your life''. now that may not seem so bad on the surface but then you add in the fact that even more impossible stuff happens around him. he keeps getting new issues from magazines that went out of buisiness. He keeps watching new episodes of tv shows that were cancelled years ago. And to top it all off, you can do absolutely nothing about it, nor can you tell anyone. Now who feels like never having children ever?

* In Pure, by Julianna Baggott, not adhering to social conventions by, say, not going to church, can get you put in the loony bin. The government can and will alter your behavior, plant a bomb in your head and bug your eyes and ears. AND YOU WOULDN'T"T NOTICE UNTIL YOUR HEAD EXPLODED!

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

---> The author: I always believe myself to be healthy ''physically'', but mentally, I'm a hopeless, blathering, soggy wreck. [...] The fact, alone, that I subjected myself to several months of research into mental disorders that ''I felt on the cusp of acquiring'' (emphasis not the author's) bespeaks some sort of unhealthy masochistic tenancies.

** Also, the picture that went along with the story is creepy as [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]].

* The kid's book ''L'enfant et les sortilèges / Boy and the Magic'', made after the opera by Colette. Content: When a little boy destroys some things in his home - a clock, a teapot, a cup, a wallpaper with figures, his homework - they all come alive (even the numbers from the math book!) and are very angry at him. Definitely NOT recommended for kids who don't fully understand the world yet.

* In ''TheGodfather'' novel, but let out of the film, was a scene of Woltz after [[spoiler: finding his horse's head on his bed.]] Woltz starts to think of revenge on TheMafia, still thinking that he's superior to them. After all, he was the one who refused AnOfferYouCantRefuse. Then he thinks twice and realises that if TheMafia could sneak onto his grounds and do what they had done, what else could they do?

** And then there's bloody ''{{Cell}}''. Pretty much, everyone who uses cell phones goes beserk and acts like a rabid dog on steroids. And since pretty much everyone uses cell phones these days... yeah. Sleep tight.

* ''WarriorCats''. What ''do'' your cats think about? Do they hate your guts? Are they actually the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Hitler]] of their world, or a mass-murderer? Or worse... ''are they plotting to kill you?'' After all, a cat with [[AxeCrazy S]][[CompleteMonster c]][[MagnificentBastard o]][[ManipulativeBastard u]][[ChaoticEvil r]][[ForTheEvulz g]][[CainAndAbel e]]'s claws and temperament would probably find it all too amusing to slit an unsuspecting human's throat as they slept.

* ''ThePendragonAdventure'': Saint Dane. ''Anyone'' could actually be a CompleteMonster in disguise who is actually manipulating you to cause the destruction of your world all while making you believe you're helping people. Even [[spoiler: the bully you've grown up with since childhood.]] It's also implied that he [[spoiler: followed Aja her whole life in different forms in order to plant hints to subconciously convince her to create what [[{{XanatosGambit}} she thought would be a device to stop him but actually completes his plan.]] ]]

* In a similar vein, just about everything by Thomas Ligotti. Everything becomes {{High Octane Nightmare Fuel}}. Pills, paperwork, libraries, flowers, chamber music, horror stories... Hell, ''reality itself'' is the main source of terror in most of his work. In short, the {{Anthropomorphic Personification}} of this trope.

* George Orwell's book ''NineteenEightyFour''. Its potency in today's politics is practically defined by this trope. [[BigBrotherIsWatching The original "Big Brother", the book leaves you thinking that there are people watching you who can derive your every thought just from the expressions on your face.]] [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel Oh, and the ending...]] And concerning today's surveillance technologies, they're all plausible.

** Apparently, according to the man himself, kids come up and tell him that they read it kind of like they would read an adventure story, whereas [[AdultFear their parents]] [[NightmareFuelUnleaded would go around the house and turn on all the lights]].

** Also, the [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel picture]] that went along with the story is creepy as [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]].

*** [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/proposals-for-scp-001 The encoding formula for SCP-001]] is not recommended for anyone under [[WebOriginal/SCPFoundation Overseer level]].

* Invoked by Deacon in ''[[RobertAHeinlein Tunnel in the Sky]]'', when the survival-class instructor gives his students a parting warning to beware of stobors as they set out on their field test. He doesn't tell them what a stobor is, [[spoiler: and indeed doesn't know about any such himself: he just says it to make sure they'll be wary of anything new and potentially dangerous they might encounter]].

* ''The Plant People'', a short story featured in ''[[BruceCoville Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens]]'', detailed a mysterious fog filled with dancing lights that slowly turned people into cacti. It seems silly until you read about them first changed into brainless, green-veined shells of their former selves, wandering listlessly around trying to photosynthesize, and see the illustration of one confused victim clutching a cactus, not seeming to mind the pain. Worse still is the end: [[spoiler: A news report says they finally found a cure, but just as they're about to reveal it, the fog descends...]]

* ''{{ThePendragonAdventure}}'': Saint Dane. ''Anyone'' could actually be a CompleteMonster in disguise who is actually manipulating you to cause the destruction of your world all while making you believe you're helping people. Even [[spoiler: the bully you've grown up with since childhood.]] It's also implied that he [[spoiler: followed Aja her whole life in different forms in order to plant hints to subconciously convince her to create what [[{{XanatosGambit}} she thought would be a device to stop him but actually completes his plan.]] ]]

* Despite ''knowing'' it is a parody (sort of...), ''The {{Illuminatus}}! Trilogy'' has still made readers paranoid enough to see conspiracies and TheIlluminati everywhere in life these da- OH DEAR GODS THEY'RE PROBABLY HERE TOO! Don't see the [[supersecretspoiler: fnords]] don't see the [[supersecretspoiler: fnords]]