Line #10 NightmareFuel/Animorphs


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7	[[WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld Wake up, go to school, save the world...]] [[Literature/{{Animorphs}} by morphing into different animals]] and fighting [[AxCrazy a violent maniac]], [[EliteMooks walking salad shooters]], and [[HorrorHunger giant cannibalistic centipedes.]] WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids Seriously, ''Animorphs'''s motto might as well be, "Scaring small children since 1996."
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10	* The TV series had issues, but several morphing scenes managed to capture the {{Squick}} from the book, like with Marco attempting to morph into a rat for his first time and getting stuck halfway, resulting in [[http://i.imgur.com/7I2aC77.png this.]]
11	* The nightmarish puppetmaster Yeerks, the Taxxons, insane-with-hunger giant centipedes (who are also cannibals and will eat themselves if they are injured/hungry enough—and they're always hungry), and the Hork-Bajir, benign but enslaved bladed lizard men (who started out as mooks but turned out to be really sympathetic), as well as [[PainfulTransformation morphing]] in general and the terror at getting stuck in animal form—or, worse, between forms—in particular.
12	** It's noted a couple of times that the Taxxons voluntarily gave themselves to the Yeerks, not as a surrender but in the hopes that Yeerk infestation could control their endless hunger. And even then, we see multiple cases of Taxxon hunger overwhelming its Yeerk's control.
13	* The [[HiveMind ant and termite morphs]] are also disturbing. The kids almost start ''crying''.
14	** 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. It's worth noting that Cassie is the only reason the group didn't spend the rest of their lives as termites - and that's ''only'' because she had enough control to convince herself the queen termite was an ant for long enough to kill her, breaking the hivemind. She was ''seconds'' away from losing that battle with herself before she did so, too.
15	* All the books have fight scenes that are gruesome on various levels, but there's one that takes the cake: ''The Forgotten'', book eleven, has Rachel falling unconscious on top of an ant hill in the Amazon rain forest in bear morph. They then start [[HorrorHunger eating her alive.]] Jake and the others are, of course, horrified when they see this. And when Rachel wakes up and demorphs, she screams the entire time.
16	* The fate of 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 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.
17	** David himself crosses into nightmare territory when he remorselessly murders 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.
18	** The fate of Saddler, Jake and Rachel's bratty cousin. After overhearing him deemed a lost cause, David knocks out the doctors trying to save Saddler's life and dumps his comatose form into the elevator shaft.
19	* Rachel. Just Rachel. At first, Marco's description of her as "Xena Warrior Princess" is kind of funny. The more the series goes on, the more you realize that she is, for all sakes and purposes, a violent psychopath. A very frightening one. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation Do you only realize it as the series goes on, or does she actively become more violent and unstable as the series goes on?]] Neither interpretation is particularly pleasant, since all of the kids are changing in similar ways.
20	** 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—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:
21	---> '''Cassie''': I don't think you can do it a second time.
22	---> '''Rachel''': (snapping) You know what, Cassie? I don't think I can, either. So will you do it for me?
23	---> '''Cassie''': (taken aback) I... I don't...
24	---> '''Rachel''': I didn't think so.
25	** Rachel ''actually'' [[EarAche sticking a fork]] in David's ear was incredibly disturbing.
26	*** "I fought back a nauseating urge to twist the fork, to make him squeal in pain." Rachel, ladies and gentlemen. Making plastic utensils a source of horror in one easy step.
27	* Imagine being one of those seventeen thousand Yeerks that Jake flushed into space, at first confused, then in a sudden stab of terror realizing what's happening and completely helpless to stop it...
28	** Fortunately for them, they have next to no sensation, so by the time they were aware they got spaced, they'd probably be dead.
29	* Megamorphs #3 where Jake gets no-nonsense shot in the head and dies, Cassie briefly snaps, and Rachel gets blown in half by a cannonball.
30	* In ''The Andalite Chronicles'', a Quantum Virus is mentioned. It can be programmed to target a species, and basically wipes them from existence at an atomic level. Later seen in the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Just as terrifying as it sounds.
31	** And most of the Andalites think the reports of its use are just Yeerk propaganda.
32	* In ''The Threat'', Marco almost gets stuck in a flea morph. He manages to demorph into some...[[BodyHorror THING, that's described as a flea the size of a dog.]] ''A flea the size of a dog.'' Thank God Cassie is able to talk him through the morph.
33	** Made all the worst by the fact that Marco is supposed to be the cocky, funny guy of the group, and his only response to that experience is to just collapse into tears.
34	* The beginning of the first book, when we first realized this wasn't ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}''. The kids meet a dying alien that gives them the power to morph. In a gentler story, Elfangor would have become the quirky alien mentor or something. But since this is Literature/{{Animorphs}}, guess what? Visser Three turns into the first of his [[OneWingedAngel many horrendous morphs]] and ''eats him.''
35	** Pieces of Elfangor fall out of the Visser's mouth and Taxxons, who were waiting at the Visser's feet, jump up and eat them.
36	** Which later becomes even more horrifying once you realize that Tobias was watching his own father being eaten alive, and most likely remembers every single moment of it.
37	** Don't forget Alloran. Not only is he himself being forced to eat his previous protégé, but he's from a non-meat-eating species, making the experience a whole new level of horrifying. In fact, Andalites are most likely a prey species. (V3 may very well have gotten into the habit of eating his Andalite enemies just to bully Alloran.)
38	*** Confirmed as a prey species in ''The Ellimist Chronicles''. The Andalite homeworld used to be populated by monstrously large predators that required an entire tribe to defeat.
39	* Visser Three. Sure, he's a bad guy and he's an egomaniac. But it gets worse. It gradually becomes clear that his AffablyEvil personality [[FauxAffablyEvil is only a masquerade which does little to hide his psychopathic tendencies]]. He's a violent nutcase who flips out at little-to-no provocation and will often execute his own subordinates, or ''torture them for weeks'', for no other reason than the fact that he's pissed off, which is pretty much all the time. ''And'' he's got a variety of morphs hand-picked for the fact that they can kill you in the most grotesque ways possible (one of them can shoot acid, for instance). For Christ's sake, the guy has a personal collection of torture instruments from all over the galaxy ''for entertainment''.
40	** Even worse is his disturbing fondness for eating his victims while morphed into giant predators.
41	* In a book where Jake is infested with Tom's old Yeerk, we're treated to a memory of the real Tom, who's become a broken, empty husk of a person, mentally sobbing and begging the Yeerk in his head to leave Jake alone. It's not exactly fun to read.
42	** In "The Escape" Marco encounters Visser One while pretending to be a human controller, who reveals that his host (Marco's mom) is currently having a mental breakdown upon viewing her son and believing he's been enslaved, but the Yeerk has simply learned to ignore her pleas.
43	-->'''Visser One:''' You must learn to control your host more completely. My own host is in here creating an awful racket, but I do not let her weeping and wailing disturb me.
44	-->'''Marco:''' No, Visser. I will try harder to control my host.
45	* Rachel morphs into a starfish, gets split it half, and ends up as two Rachels. One is a complete psychopath. The other gets to tell the last chapter, when they get reunited, and is terrified that the bad one is a part of her again.
46	* The One. 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...
47	** The ending of the last book where Ax ''[[BodyHorror smiles]]'' at them.
48	* Crayak. He's an EldritchAbomination portrayed mainly as a disembodied eye that lives in the space between dimensions thanks to that incident with the black hole. And his sole goal is to destroy as much life as the rules of his game with the Ellimist will let him, [[ForTheEvulz all for kicks]]. Applegate talked about him, saying she wanted him to represent true evil, on an existential level, much like Sauron from ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''.
49	** When the Ellimist was talking about the origin of his battle with Crayak, he told the gang that Crayak was expelled from a far-distant galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago by an even more powerful entity, also much like Sauron.
50	** The scariest thing about Crayak? His introduction. Jake experiences the Yeerk dying in his brain, and, just like that, is pushed face to face with something so awful, so utterly evil, that it nearly breaks him... with no explanation. None. The Ellimist hasn't even shown up yet, and Jake won't know what it is for a very long time. He mentions having awful nightmares about it in ''The Attack''.
51	* The Howlers are [[PsychopathicManChild literally children]], and believe that their constant mindless killing of other races is actually a game, ''and they enjoy it.''
52	** And the fact that Jake 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.
53	* What the Nartec [[AndIMustScream do]] [[DeadGuyOnDisplay to]] their victims.
54	* For a series about aliens, Animorphs made some of Mother Earth's own children into pure horror for many a child. In ''The Predator'' Marco describes Jake morphing into a lobster and his face "exploding" into valves. Imagine seeing a human being's face [[http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/151929993_93b08a7c11.jpg turn into this.]] Or in ''The Suspicion'', Cassie describes a giant (from her perspective) [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wolf_spider_attack_position.jpg wolf spider]].
55	-->Lobster: Jake's face seemed to open up, to spit open into a complex mess of valves. I think I would have thrown up, seeing that. Except that I, also, had no mouth.
56	-->Spider: Then, suddenly, his stomach exploded. It just exploded outward, guts flying everywhere. Eight huge spider legs appeared, like something in him was trying to crawl out.
57	** After having read the series for a while, one begins to ponder why one ever thought animals to be sweet, cool, or indeed anything other than absolutely deadly. Which is appropriate, seeing as the characters (especially Cassie) have the same realization.
58	** Apparently the BodyHorror was so bad even the author had nightmares.
59	** In the book where the group initially acquires and morphs common houseflies, Cassie, as the most-skilled morpher, goes first. She does so...and the first thing that changes is her eyes, which ''explode'' into the compound eyes of a fly, only proportionally sized to be enormous. Rachel immediately rushes out of the barn and [[VomitDiscretionShot vomits everywhere]], while the rest of the group is too terrified to move.
60	* 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 plan in detail -- and execute to completion -- a plan to throw his own mother off a cliff to kill the alien in her head...
61	** Marco eventually realizes that he can't go through with killing his own mother but Jake does it for him, while holding down a screaming and crying Marco.
62	* Tobias getting tortured as a means to fool the Yeerks into thinking the demorphing ray doesn't work. Tobias lost a sizable chunk of his sanity there, and it's really obvious.
63	** Forget the torture: the torturer herself, Taylor, aka Subvisser Fifty-one, is pure nightmare fuel. The result of an insane Yeerk infesting an already unbalanced girl, she see-saws back and forth between the two personalities, sometimes the cold, power-hungry subvisser, sometimes a broken AlphaBitch, always sadistically insane and dependent on other people's pain to get through the day.
64	** 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 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.
65	*** It's implied to be the former. It's been shown before that hosts can occasionally manage to briefly retake control of their body for short periods of time; the real Taylor was likely the one saying this.
66	*** Or even worse, the Yeerk ''acting'' the part of the terrified host to keep throwing Tobias off-kilter.
67	* Any time a Controller manages to briefly reassert control can come off this way. In #2, Chapman and his wife are nearly ''tearing themselves apart'' trying to fight off the Yeerks to protect Melissa.
68	* The Yeerks themselves. An alien slug forces its way through your ear canal and wraps itself around your brain -- then takes over controlling your body while you are trapped helplessly in your own head.
69	** Your body will be forced to kill people, or worse, force another slug into their head. You will betray everyone who ever loved and trusted you. And there's nothing you can do about it.
70	** The implications of the Yeerk going about your life for you. Have a sex life? Well, your Yeerk is going to keep up appearances and go on with it. Which means you don't get to decide when you have sex anymore, or how, or who with. Even if you don't normally, your Yeerk may see a use for it. Tom is a Controller because a pretty girl was forced by her slaver to flirt with him. When they came to Earth, Edriss and her minion took hosts who seemingly didn't even know each other and had them breed. For a whole year Edriss was still pretending to be Eva and didn't want to fight or argue with Eva's husband, so Peter believes that it was the happiest year of their marriage.
71	** One of the worst things seen about the Yeerks really drives home how horrible it would be to be a Controller. In the Yeerk pool, the humans whose Yeerks are feeding in the pool are put in cages. Most of them either cry, scream, curse, or rage at the guards, but some just sit there in silence, and wait to be called back, because they have literally lost all hope of ever being free again.
72	** Later in the same book, Jake notes how one section of the book houses all the enslaved controllers in cages, but right next to it is a nice waiting room where the voluntary ones lounge about and watch television. Jake notes that even through the cries and screams of the enslaved, he can hear the voluntary controllers laughing at whatever program was being shown. Imagine just how cruel and evil you would have to be to watch and enjoy a tv show while literally right next to you people are being locked in cages and begging to be let out. And the Yeerks have made it their mission to FIND people like this.
73	** In one of the books, the main characters find an online message board, revealing that certain other people have gotten an idea about what's going on. One poster, who's clearly very young, asks how he can tell if his father's a Controller. Another poster (who the main characters have pegged as a Controller) tells him to ''ask him about it''. (The other posters ''immediately'' tell him otherwise.) Given what would almost certainly happen to that child if his father was a Controller and found out his son knew about it, this should tell you something about Yeerk empathy... or lack thereof.
74	** On occasion, the Yeerks encounter a species that they can't make Controllers out of. These species are simply [[FinalSolution enslaved and worked to death]].
75	* Even though it might seem "minor" compared to the many instances of wartime violence and atrocity, it is extremely unnerving reading ''Visser'' from Edriss's perspective, considering her penchant for murdering her former host bodies. Be it the host body who Edriss used to become a mother, or an innocent Hork-Bajir, or a terrified soldier, or a drug-addled young woman... The last one is particularly cruel: Edriss disposes of Jenny Lines by diving her host body into a pool, taking control of her next host and then, as her last command, forcing Jenny to breathe, resulting in her drowning. Jenny's first moment of freedom from Edriss was also her last moment alive.
76	* The [[HiveMind Nesk]], plain and simple. A race of aliens attempting to colonize Earth in the time of the dinosaurs, they are capable of forming into [[WormThatWalks any size and shape by acting in tandem with each other,]] allowing them to operate stolen machinery and wage war with other creatures. WordOfGod said that they survived [[NukeEm their cataclysmic defeat at the hands of the Animorphs]] as modern-day ants.
77	* Rachel transforms into a shrew, and is very nearly overwhelmed by the instincts. Particularly notable is the bit where she's being held by the rest of team, and ''doesn't actually react to them''.
78	* 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 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. ''They melt.'' 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.
79	** Also the fact that the original Venber were hunted to extinction so they could be used for machine lubrication.
80	** From the same book, Ax takes down a Taxxon while the others are in fly morph. They can't see well, but they can sure as hell ''smell'' something...
81	-->'''Ax:''' <''I think we are in trouble, Prince Jake.''>
82	-->'''Jake:''' <''Is it dead?''>
83	-->'''Ax:''' <''In a matter of speaking. [[HorrorHunger One half of it is]] [[{{Autocannibalism}} consuming the other half.]]''>
84	* The time that Marco got swallowed by a bird whilst in wolf spider morph. Also, how about in ''The Message'' where he gets ''bitten in half by a shark'' whilst in dolphin morph.
85	* The school's principal: Stock children's-fiction villain, and host to the mind-controlling parasite aliens' leader, being given back 'the helm' inside his own head, and allowed to beg for his family's life before the Visser Three. He falls over and slurs and drools because he hadn't had willed control of his body for longer than it takes the Yeerk to feed in ''years''.
86	* The Animorphs' ages are never specified until near the end of the series. Those violent battles, having their limbs torn off, being forced to kill innocents, watching the people around them being puppetted by alien invaders? They started when they were ''thirteen''.
87	** Basically, the only militia to defend the world against an AlienInvasion is composed of six kids who would not be able to join the actual Army. Nice.
88	* The description of the man's gangrenous leg that Cassie had to cut off in #44, ''The Unexpected''.
89	* #39 ''The Hidden'', when Cassie sees an ant morphing into her. This is horrifying enough, but we then realise that the ant!Cassie is screaming because it's lost its HiveMind and become an individual. Also, the Buffa-human is just creepy.
90	---> '' Its eyes were disturbingly blank, absent of human recognition and intelligence. ... It was listening, too, gauging the tones of our communication and on the alert for any type of alarm call. A buffalo in human skin. It was unnerving.''
91	* In ''The Experiment'', the Animorphs have to infiltrate a slaughterhouse using cow morphs. Ax, before he has a chance to demorph, is herded onto the killing floor, and sees the cows ahead of him in line die, one by one, as the butcher approaches... Even after he's rescued and demorphs, Ax "could not stop trembling... could not stop shaking."
92	* There's the BadFuture seen in #7 ''The Stranger''. Apparently they made Rachel a controller and forced her to eat Tobias with barbecue sauce. Bad enough for friends and comrades in arms, but they were in love.
93	* 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 in no uncertain terms that he 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.>
94	** Ax is so furious at Jake for making him do this, that for the first time in the ''entire'' series, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Ax coldly refers to him as just "Jake", no Prince title]].
95	* Hell, the covers ''themselves'' are scary!
96	** And the covers are nothing compared to the books' descriptions of morphing.
97	* The Mercora: six kids stuck in the past decide to allow an entire sentient species to die, because if they don't humanity will never arise on Earth.
98	* In ''The Andalite Chronicles'', the whole Time Matrix sequence: given three conflicting instructions on where to go, the reality-warping device splits the difference by generating an AcidTripDimension that's a mishmash of its users' memories of Earth, the Andalite homeworld, and the Yeerk homeworld.
99	** In one particularly terrifying moment, Loren and Elfangor enter an Earth portion of the new dimension and see a [=McDonald's=] that Loren inadvertently created with her memories. Elfangor suggests that Loren get something to eat to recover her strength, so they go inside...and see that the guy behind the counter is a young man whose ''entire face'' (to the point where he [[EyelessFace doesn't even have eyes]]) is made of pulsating acne, which is described in [[NauseaFuel loving detail]]. It turns out he's based on an actual employee that Loren knows at her own local [=McDonald's=], but since the thing she notices the most about him is his bad skin, the Time Matrix responded in kind. What makes it worse is that Acne-Face is essentially a StepfordSmiler who, despite his horrific skin condition, mindlessly acts like a perfect fast food worker.
100	* 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... 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!
101	--> '''Narrator (Elfangor):''' ''More luck. Too much luck. I really was a fool. I felt a cold shiver crawl up my spine.''
102	* 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 [[DrivenToSuicide 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]].
103	* Rachel taking command in ''The Weakness,'' where she decides to [[HarsherInHindsight fly a jet into a tower controlled by the Yeerks.]] Thousands of Yeerks die in the inferno, and before that one of her plans leads to Cassie being captured and tortured by the Yeerks.
104	* The Drode. He has the ability to make time stop, and appears in "The Exposed" to torment the Animorphs one by one, [[BreakingSpeech picking apart their weaknesses in front of everyone.]] He offers Rachel a [[DealWithTheDevil deal to come work for Crayak:]] all she has to do is kill Jake.
105	** To make this worse, though? The Drode's exact words weren't "Kill Jake," but rather ''this'':
106	-->'''The Drode:''' If you ever find yourself desperate, Rachel. At the end. In need. Remember this: ''Your cousin's life'' is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak.
107	** ...''and Rachel killed Tom.''
108	* The final book has the Andalites show up and explain why they never actually returned to Earth to try and free it - Andalite military command thought that it wasn't that bad, that the few times that the Animorphs made contact and asked for help, the Andalites assumed they were exaggerating to try and get additional support. Just... For fifty plus books, the Animorphs have been a guerrilla (no pun intended) fighting force, the ONLY line of defense against an invading alien species, and the only people who were in a position to even try sending help thought that they were making things up.
109	** And when they finally DO show up in the finale, are they here to liberate the planet from the Yeerks’ tyranny and control? Not hardly. Captain Asculan arrived intending to turn Earth into a cinder to “contain” the Yeerks. And was stopped because the Animorphs managed to wrest control of the Pool ship and get Visser One’s surrender, giving Alloran freedom to utilize his authority as a War-Prince to back up Jake’s victory as actually counting, as well as Ax patching in fleet communications to the Andalite homeworld, ensuring that the Andalite public know that the war is over, and destroying Earth now is condemning billions to death for no reason.
110	* 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.
111	* The graphic novel adaptations were revealed to be the perfect medium for portraying the scarier moments in the series. Morphing looks absolutely ''disgusting'' and painful, as the characters look like half-human/half-animal abominations mid-morph. The kicker was Rachel's dream as the shrew in ''The Visitor'', which was depicted with a splash page (seen above) with a shrew eating maggots off of a dead animal. The way this is presented in the graphic novel is a JumpScare, as the previous pages give no lead up to what you're going to see when you turn the page.
112	* 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''.
113	* In ''The Departure'' Cassie has a NightmareSequence about the time (in the previous book) where she morphed into a T.rex, lost control, and ate a Triceratops. Her description is a combination of awe-inspiring and terrifying:
114	--> "I shook my Tyrannosaurus head, worrying the screaming Triceratops like a dog worrying a bone.
115	--> And then the Triceratops stopped making sounds. It hung limp. I dropped it and stood over the
116	--> fallen creature. And I bellowed.
117	--> “Huh-huh-huh-RRRRRROOOOOAAAARRR!” I roared in triumph. The sound shook the leaves
118	--> in the trees. It seemed to shake the distant stars.
119	--> “Huh-huh-huh-RRRRRROOOOOAAAARRR!” I screamed again.
120	--> I felt within me all the violence of nature, all the ruthlessness of the survival of the fittest, all the
121	--> power of muscle and bone and claw and tooth, all the ageless, never-ending lust for conquest
122	--> wrapped into one awesome roar."
123	* In ''The Proposal'' Marco's conflicted feelings over his father's relationship manifest as hybrid morphs, two of which (osprey/lobster and gorilla/trout) can't do anything because they involve aquatic animals in a book entirely landbased. The spider/skunk hybrid is useable, but understandably freaks out the people who see it.
124	* In The Deception the newly promoted Visser One has greenlit an operation to start nuclear war to make invasion easier. The Animorphs only get any intel at all because of a lucky break, and stopping this operation means crossing lines like morphing humans multiple times, and in the climax Ax nearly nukes the team's hometown and the Yeerk Pool beneath it to threaten Visser Two, the Yeerk in charge of the operation. When the Visser asks Ax if he'd really do it, the book ends on Ax not having any answer.

Context NightmareFuel / Animorphs