Line #92 NightmareFuel/SoulEater


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4	As expected of a series that takes place in a town called [[{{Halloweentown}} Death City]], ''Manga/SoulEater'' certainly has its fair share of terrifying moments.
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7	* Practically all the Nightmare Fuel from the anime is in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7AzNYh5bo this video.]]
8	* The titular {{Deuteragonist}} Soul Evans can be pretty creepy at times with his indiscriminate SlasherSmile and [[RedEyesTakeWarning piercing red eyes]]. He goes by the name Soul Eater. And he does. With great pleasure. And nobody sees anything wrong with it.
9	* Apparently Madness isn't just mental illness present in individuals. It's an unpredictable force that threatens to spread and drive all sentient beings hopelessly and dangerously insane. For all intents and purposes, Madness is a disease. And it's ''contagious.'' Just being near a person infected with Madness could infect you. And if you're not a highly trained superhuman Meister or Weapon, the odds are you have no defense against it. And even more harrowing: As long as life exists in any form, Madness will '''never''' disappear from the world.
10	* The whole idea behind the DWMA is pretty creepy with inspection.
11	** DWMA was founded to train Meisters and Weapons (who power up by eating souls) to hunt "Demon Eggs" (humans who have become corrupted by consuming the souls of the innocent), Kishin (Eldritch Abominations that form from said humans when they get too powerful) and their strongest, Kishin Asura, as well as Witches (from whom the weapons originally got their abilities). All of these Meisters and Weapons are essentially current and former children and teenagers who are given orders by their boss, TheGrimReaper, to hunt down and kill people and monsters over the world as assassins all so that they can one day upgrade Weapons into becoming their boss' personal weapons known as Death Scythes (Note it takes 99 Demon Eggs and One Witch to do so, so kids are actually indoctrinated to want to kill 99 people and a witch, innocent or not, to make a weapon). Even the nicest Death Scythes in the series were created by helping kill dozens and a witch to reach their current status. Due to the FantasticRacism towards Witches in place, the Meisters may even go after completely innocent and benign Witches as Maka and Soul's attacks against Blair would attest.
12	** According to ''Manga/SoulEaterNot'', they're learning to do all of this at what the world sees as a school for superheroes! It's a world that worships death, and the resident super hero academy is teaching kids to kill people. Either as a meister using the weapon, or as the weapon who eats the murderer's soul. [[ValuesDissonance Wow.]]
13	** Even worse is there are implied to be thousands of Kishin eggs out there, meaning there's always the threat of just one dangerous person's soul out there becoming a monstrous force of nature on any given day. The DWMA exists partly to get those with an inclination to take souls while they're still young and ethically trainable to prevent that from happening sooner!
14	* Every single SlasherSmile. Every. Single. One. And there are ''a lot'' in this world of crazy. Often overlaps with NightmareFace.
15	* The effect of Arachne's insanity: [[MindRape "There are spiders... Tearing at... The inside of my..."]]
16	* Just the thought of what happened to Crona and Ragnarok to get Ragnarok melted with the black blood, and then replace ALL of Crona's original blood with that black blood.
17	** Because of the Black Blood, Crona would be literally 'cold-blooded'. They wouldn't give off that same human ''warmth'' that most people would. It would basically make Crona inhuman. It's no wonder Spirit was so pissed at Medusa for what she did.
18	** Ragnarok manifests by ''tearing himself'' out of Crona's flesh. After Soul gets infected with the Black Blood, he has nightmares about bursting out of Maka's abdomen and killing her, too.
19	* The [[WeirdMoon Moon]]! Oh dear God, the MOON! And it's even worse up close. It's looking right at them.
20	** And the [[WeirdSun Sun]] too! Granted, it's not as bad as the Moon, but that ''[[SlasherSmile grin]]'', and that ''[[EvilLaugh laugh]]''.
21	** Here's one more reason to be afraid of the Moon. The KISHIN is LIVING ON IT!
22	* [[AfterlifeExpress The Ghost Ship.]]
23	** The [[UndeadChild ghost girl]] that Liz meets on the ship, who leads her back to Kid and Patty. In the end when Crona uses Ragnarok to [[YourSoulIsMine vacuum all of the souls the Dutchman has captured]], she gets a cameo, telling Liz goodbye before being assimilated. Nightmare Fuel with a dash of TearJerker to go with it.
24	** In the anime, directly after Kid shows off his Mortal Sin stance in this episode, Crona turns Ragnarok back into his weapon form. There's a brief red flash, and if you pause it for those 6 or so frames, you can see all the souls inside Ragnarok ''screaming their heads off'' until they dissipate into green smoke.
25	* Earth had been depicted as a weird hodgepodge of times and places. But after being defeated by the good guys, Medusa, in the form of a snake flees to a perfectly normal suburban neighborhood, indistinguishable to the Real World.
26	** She takes over the body of a little girl who was with her mother by ''crawling down her throat''. The mother and father ''know'' something's wrong with their little girl, but they don't know what. And then she disappears, and the scene shifts to signs of the little girl missing. And those signs are old, so we know she's been missing for a long time.
27	** And Medusa speaks in such a CreepyMonotone when she's trying to pass herself off as the little girl to the girl's parents!
28	** What's the only way to make Medusa's creepy-as-hell [[SlasherSmile Slasher Smiles]] even worse? Put them on a little girl's face!
29	* The Clown is insanity incarnate. And its mismatched eyes and stare ''[[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090625024327/souleater/images/c/c8/The_Clown.png will haunt you]]''.
30	* In the manga, Crona's MagnificentBastard mother Medusa forced them to KILL A RABBIT IN ONE FLASHBACK. Back to the present, they're leaning over Maka, holding Ragnarok over their head, wearing their scariest face yet, Maka's head replaced by that of a rabbit. After Crona kills it, Medusa says something along the lines of, "We'll have rabbit for dinner tonight." That's right, she didn't just make them kill the rabbit, ''she made them eat it too.''
31	* In episode 39, when the meister and weapon teams are talking about the madness-afflicted Stein, Crona (who knows it's their fault) panics and runs from the group. They drop the things they were carrying, and when they bend over to pick them up ''[[JumpScare a hallucination of Medusa comes right the fuck out of nowhere behind them]]'', complete with ScareChord and GlowingEyesOfDoom. It then proceeds to taunt Crona about how she is the only one they can return to, visibly freaking the poor kid out.
32	* The ending of episode 41. A madness-crazed Stein has left Death City and has reached Medusa at her home. When he meets up with her, he looks calm and content, and fairly normal... and then cut to black with his [[LaughingMad wild and insane laughter]] ending the episode.
33	* Additionally, the Demon God Asura leaves quite an impression.
34	** A mere hallucination of Asura ''rips the faces'' off of Free and Eruka with its ''teeth'' and then just disappears. Then later his actual body emerges, slowly, ''painfully'', creeping across the floor towards the protagonists in a way that is completely inhuman. Oh yeah, and this is after Shinigami flayed him alive and put him in a bag made of his own skin. And when the hallucination ends, Eruka is seen holding a sharpened spike at her throat, and Free has a large ass blade half way down his neck. Never mind where those objects came from.
35	** We then get to seem him, hollow-eyed and emaciated, putting his skin back on from the ''inside out''. He then proceeds to stretch it like elastic to cover himself.
36	** [[NothingIsScarier Plus the awful silence just before he's released, when all you can hear are the chains clanking]]...
37	** Right after he's freed, both Black☆Star and Kid try to take the newly-reborn Asura down, and his response is to... flick them. Gently, in an almost comical way. Which results in ''their faces becoming completely concave'' for a brief moment, followed by blood gushing from their noses and mouths, taking them down for the count.
38	** Then there's [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/800px-Kishinanime.jpg his actual face]], where there are eyes within his eyes. Looks rather cool, but jeesh.
39	** Just the sheer MindRape that Asura's madness can cause is the stuff of nightmares. There's no way to know when it'll strike, you can't stop it, it infects you and destroys your personality until there is nothing left, making you a danger to those around you and sometimes driving you to suicide. The music in those scenes, namely "Victor", does not make things better.
40	** ''Where the hell did that come from?!''
41	** Following the above episode, Sid and co. are descending ever deeper into the bowels of the Moon. They know the Kishin is down there, but they have no idea where exactly. [[NothingIsScarier And then...]] THUMP [[NothingIsScarier they see a familiar gate...]] THUMP out of the darkness... '''THUMP'''
42	* Tezca Tlipoca, the weapon of the South American Death Scythe, a monkey named Enrique. You'd think he'd be the meister as a human, but you're almost grateful he isn't when you consider the fact that he's a guy wearing a ''bear mask'' (reminiscent of Hyde and Closer) who can trap people inside horrible mirror illusions,
43	* No 'love' for the Book of Eibon? The thing has ''teeth'', is pulled out of nowhere by Noah, and Kid - who up until this arc has not been fazed by anything very much (asymmetry excluded) - is screaming as he gets dragged into it.
44	* And then there's the fight between Medusa and Stein and Spirit. Or, more specifically for this entry, the way Stein acts during the fight. Stein's shrieking and lashing out with Death Scythe is both awesome and horrible, and the grinning doesn't help.
45	* Some of the anime music is a mix between NightmareFuel and ParanoiaFuel. "Apparition" and "Like a Radio" in particular come close to stealing your sanity. Oh, and comparing "so scandalous" from the first OST to "Soul Eater - Reprise" from the second makes you want to beg Soul to please please please stop using the [[PsychoSerum Black Blood]], ''now''.
46	* Giriko's actions towards Maka are ''extremely'' disturbing, as he makes it very obvious he intends to rape and kill her. Oh, and we get a handy reminder/guess from Giriko she's 14. Great.
47	* The manga has the Clown chapters where Maka is under a hallucination which starts out as a harmless-seeming flashback, filling in a couple of bits about her past. And then everyone falls down dead. Amidst the other Body Horror and Madness tropes, a truly effective bit of nightmare fuel in this series is seeing a little Maka trying to get her daddy to wake up. The damn thing's ramblings hint that it already tried to MindRape someone else and ''succeeded''.
48	* Chapter 22: Medusa's armless torso ''crawling up onto Stein's back and attempting to bite his neck!'' Made even creepier when she whispers "I love you~" before he stabs her through the face with Death Scythe. Which we see in a nice big panel. She is ''still grinning'' with the blade sticking out of her skull. The anime doesn't show this. If anything, Okubo's simpler style early on only makes what Stein does to Medusa all the more horrifying. Ditto with Crona's mad faces and the 'rabbit' mentioned above.
49	* On the other hand, when Okubo does decide to depict bloody injury, we get stuff like Mosquito beating up Kid, leaving a trail of blood from his missing arm as he throws the boy across the floor. Ow. Oh, and Patty's still in the hand which is lying "all the way over there". Mister Okubo then goes to town with Mifune and Black Star...
50	* The Flying Dutchman getting ''brutalized'' by Crona. When he rows away (That's right, he ''lived!'') from the destroyed Nidhogg, his face is laying on the floor in two halves, so you get to see his '''TONGUE''' coming out of the top of what's left.
51	* How about Medusa's ability to put snakes in your body? When she told Eruka Frog [[NightmareFuel that she had an indefinite number of them inside her]], [[ParanoiaFuel and Medusa would always find her no matter where she ran]], [[{{Squick}} and the fact that at any moment]], those snakes could tear Eruka apart from the inside out...
52	* Death the Kid becoming an OmnicidalManiac in the manga. Sure, he gets better thanks to Black Star. But, still, the very fact that he was perfectly willing to destroy ''everything'' (including his own father and his own weapons/partners) just to achieve perfect symmetry through nothingness is terrifying. ''"My skin is crawling...."''
53	* Justin Law in chapter 86.
54	** The madness version of his 'blade of faith' speech from his debut is also a nice touch and suitably horrible. Anything Justin after he starts suffering from madness can be nightmare-inducing.
55	** Why does he start suffering from madness? Well, the insanity clown that nearly took Maka complained that it didn't work on her, like it did someone else... Justin spends most of the series under MoreThanMindControl and, instead of Tezca [[PowerOfFriendship managing to save him]], kills at least two people he'd normally consider friends and dies fighting against everything he once believed in. AndIMustScream, already, but does anyone ever figure out what really happened to him in-story? Not [[TearJerker on-screen, anyway]]. It's worth noting that the Clown(s) not being around is one of the major differences between the manga and anime, and Justin stays good in the anime. This might just be to keep the story compact enough to fit in it's 40ish episodes... or the people in charge of the anime adaptation agree with the above.
56	** "Black and Round." It's amazing what the guy's been reduced to.
57	* EVERYTHING in chapter 87! This is the first page.
58	** This is one point that needs to be made on it's own. Those spheres we saw? People trapped in those spheres ''dissolve'' and become solid madness! And Crona did that to an ''entire city.''
59	** Even the ''title'' of that chapter is fucking creepy. '''''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Just A Simple Story About Killing People."]]'''''
60	** Crona going berserk and killing Medusa. It should be a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome (don't lie, we all know the old witch didn't deserve to live), but the way it happens (Crona ranting about Medusa forcing them to give up Maka, proceeding to hack Medusa to pieces with a completely blank expression and Medusa's massive SlasherSmile and the revelation that this was exactly what she wanted) makes it horrifying.
61	** The entire sequence starting here. Crossing over with TearJerker, it is perhaps the most horrifically realistic example of [[AbusiveParents child abuse]] in the series. Simply put, Medusa gives Crona a SadisticChoice; they either kill three bunnies in three different ways or ''starves''. Crona refuses to kill the bunnies, so Medusa locks them in a room and refuses to give them food for ''five days''. When Crona is finally let out, they are given the choice again. If they kill the bunnies then they can eat. If they don't?
62	-->'''Medusa:''' If you do not do that, [[MoralEventHorizon you will not eat anything for the next five days]].
63	* Not as bad as the other examples on the page, but creepy nonetheless: The [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic fourth ending to the anime]], as well as having some apocalyptic opening images, has a long pan of all the secondary characters lying dead amongst wreckage and decay. Combined with the much darker tone of the music, it makes for an intense ninety seconds.
64	* While we all know it will (eventually) turn out okay, the scene with the secondary characters is rather similar to the one following Asura's last attack on Death. The explosion leaves the onlookers lying unconscious in the rubble, and Shinigami ''in pieces'', with Spirit having been thrown to the ground elsewhere.
65	* '''[[EldritchAbomination Don't. Turn. Around]]...'''
66	* All of the new clowns in chapter 91, especially the [[FluffyTheTerrible White Bunny]] (in the link directly above). Because one clown wasn't enough, they had to get more disturbing.
67	* The fact that, in order to put Ragnarok into Crona's body, Medusa literally had to ''[[AndIMustScream melt him down]]'' like he was an inanimate piece of metal, then mixed him with the black blood and injected him into Crona (who was drained of all their own blood). And this while he was apparently a ''child''. Exactly how terrifying and painful must it have been to go through all of that? It's surprising Ragnarok is just a Jerkass and not a mindless, bloodthirsty wretch.
68	* Professor Stein goes completely insane as a result of Medusa's plans. He got better, but still the entire collection of scenes showing his descent into madness is creepy.
69	** Pretty much anytime anyone in the cast undergoes SanitySlippage is this. Which is often.
70	** The battle on the moon is an exceptionally weird example; with Stein's almost pretty hallucinations ('unwrapping presents'?) being revealed as a blood-stained battlefield, with Spirit looking on in horror.
71	** Stein's little monologue prior to that is a good way of showing that Stein is someone you ''do not want as your enemy.''
72	---> '''Stein:''' "Why am I here? Why am I on the side of order? If this war has no reason, then I don't need one either. I just want to rip things apart. Who needs a reason to be curious about the contents of a neatly-wrapped box? You get curious, and that's it. Anyone who feels guilty about the shreds of wrapping paper left behind after the box is opened is crazy. True, presents and living beings may be different things..." BOOM "''To most people.''"
73	* Chapter 103, the chapter where [[SurrealHorror the world officially stops making sense.]]
74	** [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]] when, after Maka dispels the hallucinations, Asura is INCHES AWAY FROM SID'S FACE. Not a hallucination. Not a copy. The real Kishin. [[ParanoiaFuel And who knows how long he's been there, sitting and watching them hallucinate]].
75	** there's also the bit were during that ..something.. comes out of Maka's [[EyeScream eye]] before hallucinations are dispelled by Maka and Soul.
76	* Crona's face in chapter 106. In most other series, such a face might look kind of cute. Ookubo manages to make it terrifying because of how uncanny it is with his surroundings.
77	** The bit where Spirit explains that there is a natural bond between the souls of parent and child leads up to a CMOA for him and Maka, but also a fair dose of Nightmare Fuel and Tearjerker for poor Crona. Crona is horrified that they have apparently ''broken'' that bond by killing Medusa, and is even more convinced there's noone left for them. What's more, from the readers' perspective it's quite clear the fault lies with Medusa alone, whose ThanatosGambit was the result of a series-long endeavor to put her own child into a position of breaking that natural bond themselves in order to get the result Medusa wanted; a new avatar of Madness created of human suffering. It also emphasizes why Spirit was so furious with Medusa. Along with him being a over-sensitive Doting Parent, he sees the witch's evil towards her own child as subversive, and ''truly'' unnatural.
78	** Crona's breakdown after explaining that they killed Medusa and severed their only bond to order. In that realization, they start screaming and get engulfed in a cocoon ball. The chapter ends with the Kishin peeking out of it.
79	** As Crona is having their breakdown, they keep screaming "MAAA MAAA" over and over. Whether they are calling for Maka, calling for "Mama" (Medusa), or trying to say madness is up for debate.
80	* Stein's LaughingMad when he's pulled out of the Battle for the Brew. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AEmwSNtz0Y The anime just knows how to make him so twisted.]]
81	* Maka's scream in her anime battle with Asura. ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4od81sXEtI We all know this one.]]'' It just sounds so genuine, it's blood chilling.
82	* Speaking of final battles, Asura [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice thrusting his arm through Maka's chest and out of her back]] when he realizes that her Black Blood is resonating with what's left of Crona's consciousness within him. It is exceedingly brutal and horrifyingly ingenious. For extra horror, remember that [[PapaWolf Spirit]] is among those watching, and had previously stated he is unable to hurt Asura at all--which means that he just [[ForcedToWatch saw his only child receive what looks like a mortal wound]], and knows that there is nothing he can do about it.
83	* The absolutely ''horrific'' way Asura [[BodyHorror regurgitates the remaining forms of Noah, with his throat swelling and stretching until it's just a rubbery tube of flesh.]] All of this while maintaining a terrifying SlasherSmile.
84	* Black Star's arm being mangled almost beyond recognition by Asura's attacks.
85	* Chapter 112: the very end where Asura claims that he ''will'' return and tells the characters/reader to wait in fear until then.
86	* Stein referring to his own child as a guinea pig. While thematically the Power of Friendship/Love/Morality Pet thing fits, and has been shown to work for Stein, there's still the question of ''how far'' it works. What if something happens to Marie? What if something happens to their child, because of Stein? Too much could go wrong. That being said, one of the general messages at the end of the series seems to have been that, where humans are concerned, a lot could go ''right'' as well.
87	* Right before Maka and Soul fight Giriko in the Book of Eibon, we get a large panel of Giriko pinning down Maka's arms to a bed and this wonderful quote:
88	-->'''Giriko:''' Remember how I said you were gonna be a hot piece of ass in ten years...? Well, shit! Why wait!? I got the urge to make you all slick an' gooey right now!!
89	* Sometime after Soul gets injured by Ragnarok, he has a nightmare about being trapped somewhere dark. He hears Maka's voice calling him and sees a light leading to some sort of opening. He heads straight for it, telling Maka that he'll be there for her soon. But Maka, strangely enough, begs him NOT to come near her. Within moments, we see ''why''...when Soul reaches the opening, he ''[[BodyHorror bursts out of Maka's torso and is physically fused to it]]''. No wonder he woke up screaming.
90	* And let's not forget, from the anime, the town of Sarcophagus. The entire population of the town disappears with no trace or explanation. Later, it turns out that the people were EATEN by giant robotic clowns. Mm...

Context NightmareFuel / SoulEater