[[FarSide http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/_images_articles_112707_farside-1.jpg]]

This section is for categories of NightmareFuel that are too small in number to warrant pages of their own, but nonetheless cannot be ignored (as much as we would like to). ('''Note:''' Remember, this trope generally refers to things in pop culture that scared us. Please keep examples in the pop culture realm. This would, however, include real life events that frightened people in the general context of reported items. For real life examples of phobias, see WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes.)

'''Note:''' If a subcategory used to be here, it has gotten large enough to be split off of NightmareFuel as its own subpage so look back there first before posting a new miscellaneous category here.

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[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Mascots and Animatronics ]]

* The local college basketball team near where this troper lives has "Sam the Minuteman", a mascot in the form of a guy in a suit with ''grey skin'' that runs around with a perpetual smile. This thing actually has given this troper's cousin nightmares. Or worse, at one point they tried to introduce another named "Mr. Slice", a giant ''pizza slice'' that scared countless children, despite the director's insistence that "the kids love him!" Right...
* The guy on the oatmeal box is this troper's worst fear, in fact he's afraid of all mascots/costumed characters... he remembers one time where ''a school mascot almost attacked him''.
** Why did they have to put him ''on every side of the box??''
*** This troper fears the Elmer's Glue mascot. She always imagined it to be some poor cow covered with white glue, suffocating to death. (The fact that they make glue out of cow parts doesn't do much to diffuse the nightmare.)
* The animatronics at places like Chuck E Cheese.
** This troper shared the above troper's pain until he thought to do some research on the characters. Nothing says NightmareRetardant quite like creepy animatronics who are [[DeadpanSnarker ruefully aware]] that they ''are'' animatronics and are in some cases actually creeped out by each other.
*** However, no amount of rational knowledge can silence the pseudo-organic rasp of 'hydraulic blinking''
* The Elvis robot from Wowee- another example of Uncanny Valley at it's worst.
* Tracy Tree, the animatronic talking tree in Rainforest Cafe gift shops, particularly her unending stare and monotone voice.
* [[TheTwilightZone Submitted for your approval, one relatively normal 11-year-old American boy, on vacation with his family.]] It's at the visitor center for Mt. St. Helens, site of the worst volcanic eruption in recent American history. It's a densely foggy morning where you can barely see one car length in front of you. The scenery is characterized by gray volcanic ash and scattered tree trunks. Now imagine you wander off into another room and see a park ranger giving a lecture to the visitors. Then all of a sudden...her face ''disappears''. Turns out she's just a mannequin with a projected face, but this boy didn't know about such technology at the time. Needless to say, he's afraid to go back into that room with his parents, despite nearing adolescence at the time. It's all just another day...in the Nightmare Fuel Zone. Or would that be the Uncanny Valley Zone? Well, either way, we here in the TV Tropes Zone know they're one and the same.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Printed media (non-literature) ]]

* This troper is glad he never saw the Topps "[[http://www.bobheffner.com/dinosaursattack/ Dinosaurs Attack!]]" trading cards when he was a kid...if looking at them now was enough to make him feel like dinosaurs were going to appear in any possible daily situation...what would they have done -then-?
** This troper is unnerved by some of those (particularly "Homeroom Horror,") but others just sparked "wait, Stegosaurus is a carnivore now?"-type reactions.
** Oh dear god it's "Crushing a Canine!"
** From the same company, ''Hollywood Zombies''. These cards are ''so scary'' that the company now has put a warning on the packets and on the box. They are deffenately ''not for young children at all''.
** Also. Topps Cereal Killers which were morbid parodies of breakfast cereals.
** For this troper, it was the ''Garbage Pail Kids.'' The reasons are fairly obvious.
* We've seen NightmareFuel in all sorts of media. Television, comics, books, etc. This troper, however, was "lucky" enough to find one on a ''spelling flash card''. He can't remember what the word was, but the sentence that it was used in involved two parents not believing their child about there being a monster in the closet, opening the closet door, and promptly getting eaten. What. The. Fuck. These are supposed to be good, harmless cards to help you learn new words, for Pete's sake!
* This troper was staying late at school because of a club she was part of and went into the science lab to say hello to her old teacher. He wasn't in, but there was a booklet called "The Mysterious Liquid From Area 51" lying around on a table. Now, who could resist a title like that? The first page detailed the urban legends about Area 51 in case the reader wasn't familiar with them, and the next featured the transcripts of several e-mails between two scientists, one who said he had come into possession of a mysterious liquid stolen from Area 51, which he promised to send to the other. At the end of the last e-mail from the scientist who had found the liquid, it suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence to read "They're in my house, they're taking me away! Help!" followed by random letters as if he'd hit several random keys while grappling for the submit button. In the daytime, that seems like a parody of conspiracy theories, but when you're all alone in the lab and it's dark... (That whole bit just turned out to be a lead-in to tests students were supposed to do on the liquid, which turned out to be just water.)

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[[folder: Computer ]]

* The Atari ST would display a string of cartoon-style bombs (with smiley faces) when it crashed. This troper was terrified by this as a young child--to the point of running from the room screaming. Looking back, it was a very strange thing to be afraid of... and yet the thought still creeps me out.
* On the other hand, normal operation was scary enough to frighten this small child. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-BEh3VRSTA swooshing lightspeed sound effects logo]] made by the Apple IIGS Transwarp accelerator card immediately upon powering the computer (before the usual POST, even) made me scared of my own computer as a kid. Dad disabled the splash screen, but I never felt totally at ease so long as the card remained.
* The 'Please insert Playstation or Playstation 2 disc' error message on the PS2 is pure [[{{Nightmare Fuel}} nightmare fuel]] when you're not expecting it and just damn creepy when you are.
* Error messages in general creeped [[{{Dark Lady Celebrian}} this troper]] out intensely when she was little. The computer I had at the time had the tendency to make scary noises when an error popped up as well.
** This troper had ''nightmares'' about computers, videogames, and once an ''interactive kiosk in a mall'' going completely batshit insane.
* Likewise, this troper was always frightened by glitches in computers and video games, but the one thing in particular that always got to him was how when a Game Boy Color was turned on with no cartridge inserted, the "Nintendo" below the Game Boy logo manifested as a solid black bar.
** The original Game Boy had this too with only "Nintendo" sliding from the top and stopping in the middle. Also, there's this thing for which if the cartridge was not inserted properly, "Nintendo" was garbled.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Radio ]]

* The radio drama ''{{Adventures In Odyssey}}'', a children's radio show put out by Focus on the Family, is not immune to these.
** "Fifth House on the Left" revolves around two of the characters visiting Hollywood just as an earthquake hits. One nameless voice is calling for help to try and reach his son, buried under the remains of the house, and a lone broadcaster asking, "can anybody hear me? It's like being the only person left in the world..." This troper, a survivor of the Loma Prieta earthquake of '89, still cannot listen to that episode.
**Ironically the early episode "Nothing to Fear" contained a nightmare fuel dream that reportedly caused more phobias than it helped. Giant anthropomorphic rats threatening to eat you while a tornado bears down on your house, anyone?
** Eugene's description of what the Imagination Station showed him... of ''[[TheAloner Hell]]''.
* When this troper was in either 1st or 2nd grade, her teacher decided to let everyone hear a story on cassete tape for Halloween. The gist of the story on is that a woman is home alone and each night a pair of red eyes stares through the window. Each night she covers the window with the blinds. Eventually the eyes turn blue, turns out the thing just wants to be her friend. Despite the ending, for years this troper could not be anywhere near a window that wasn't covered during the night

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[[folder: Documentary ]]

* There's a book available at the elementary school level. The particular title escapes me, but it had to do with the plant world finally having had enough of humanity's abuses and somehow turning humans who 'had no respect for vegetation' into plants. Only those humans who nurtured houseplants with organic pesticides were immune. The image of an old woman turning into a cactus before the eyes of the rest of the cast haunts me to this very day.
** The story mentioned above might be "The Plant People" by Dale Carlson, which involved an alien invasion where people in a small desert slowly turned into cactus, including an old woman toward the end.
** There's definitely something going on with people turning into vegetation that is very visceral. Examples from other genres include a Radiohead video for the single from ''Hail To The Thief'' and the ending of the second Thomas Covenant book, in which [[spoiler: Hile Troy]] is turned into a tree.
***I heard he got better, which should put some people at ease. His friends, on the other hand...
* At school this troper and his budddies to be subjected to [[ScareEmStraight educational films]] with Nightmare Fuel written all over them including one titled ''Germ Busters'' which was about good hygiene. The most terrifying was the wicked witch-like villainess ''bent on ruining the town with filth''.
** In Home Economics class, this troper had to watch a video about the importance of keeping food refrigerated to keep bacteria from growing on it. Whenever they showed the rotten food, it was being served by this horrible evil French chef who acted positively possessed while ScareChords and strobe lights were going off.
** This troper recalls seeing a "educational" film in grade school which showed the most disfiguring diseases in the world (mostly Africa) caused by (or transmitted by) insects. That, along with plenty of scenes of millions of marching / flying bugs. The film was produced by Shell Oil Company...which just happens to make pesticides.
** Is it worse when the "educational" films are driving documentaries produced by the Highway Patrol... and show footage of the remains of an accident victim's pulped face quivering ever so slightly as the corpse is levered onto the gurney?
** So I'm not the only person who's had nightmares because of Drivers Ed videos? I had to watch this one about how road rage is bad. Apparently one person actually shot some guy with a crossbow because he wouldn't let another person pass him. Now whenever I drive (and my parents make me drive all the time), I keep imagining that happenning to me.
* This anonymous troper recalls seeing a documentary film (possibly Nova) about robots in a junior high science class. There was quite a lot of UncannyValley material, but the worst was definitely the robot ''baby'' whose rubbery face could be peeled back to reveal the metal underneath.
* ''This'' troper saw a documentary when he was younger about a test comparing beauty across cultures, which featured faces ranging from stunningly beautiful to faces that were so horrendously deformed that he couldn't sleep.
* Those education films from the 50s.
*This troper was forced ''every year'' in elementary school to watch a safety movie about the third rail (despite there being no railroad tracks anywhere near, to the point that she didn't know what this ominous "third rail" even ''was''.) One scene depicted family and pets being electrocuted by showing happy photos, which then turn to black and red, accompanied by a zapping sound. And... getting a bit upset just typing this...
*This troper was terrified by an old snowplow safety video he was shown in school. A group of VERY young children are playing outside with a stuffed bear (NOT on the road) when this creepy snowplow driver with mirrored sunglasses that made him look like a demonic housefly drives through and starts CHASING THE KIDS! He grinds up the bear as it makes little whimpering noises and then tosses it back at the kids. We watched this at the age of FIVE!
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Miscellaneous ]]

* As a kid, I spent several weeks up late at night utterly terrified that, since I wasn't perfect like church and my Sunday school told me I needed to be, I would wind up in hell. The thought of ''endless'' punishment, every day until the end of time and needing to stay perfect and pure every single day of my life in order to get into Heaven horrified me so much that I stayed up late in wide-eyed terror reading {{Garfield}} books to try to put it out of my mind. I couldn't have been happier when we stopped going (though admittedly that's also because I thought church was incredibly boring).
* There are a lot of [[MotherGoose nursery rhymes]] out there that are pretty freaky and disturbing, but only one ever gave me the legitimate heebie jeebies: "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home/your house is on fire and your children will burn!"
** For this troper it was Oranges and Lemons. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
** --->"'Nine Jack Nine, rope made of twine, hung him until he was...' ucch, I had forgotten how disturbing that nursery rhyme was."
--->"{{Zot}}... that's 'not any nursery rhyme I've ever heard.' And I published the collection."
** This troper and her friends used to love singing ring around the rosey alot when they where young, then their girl scout leader told them the morbid truth that it was actually about people dying in war (You think we would know with "Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down") after that we never sang it again.
*** It's actually "Ring a ring o' roses / A pocket full o' posies / Atishoo! Atishoo! / We all fall down." It's about the Plague.
* The [[{{Pokemon}} Hypno]] shirt shown in [[http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.dsfanboy.com/media/2008/06/hypno062608.png this image]]. As if making the silhouette more human wasn't creepy enough, it's kidnapping children.
** Hypno from Pokemon? That thing is creepy all by itself.
* The particularly famous [[http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Best-Ghost-Photos series of "ghost photos"]] that no one has ever managed to explain or prove Photoshopped. Maybe they're real. Maybe they're not. But does that really matter once you've looked at the Specter of Newby Church and then woken up in the middle of the night suddenly thinking ''that thing could be anywhere...''
** ''[[MadnessMantra It's not a plague mask, it's not a plague mask,]]'' '''''[[{{NightmareFuel/Other}} it's not a plague mask...]]'''''
*** [[{{Rabukurafuto}} This troper]] saw the Newby Church photo as a small child and imagined spectre was not a ghost but [[TheGrimReaper Death itself]]. The plague mask comparison above is a [[NightmareFetishist most delightful]] observation that enhances that idea.
*** Oh god yes, that Newby church photo is the one ghost photo that creeps this troper out every time. Faces do not look like that! The uncanny plague mask resemblance is actually quite a reassuring explanation for this troper, although that's more a statement on how horrifying the potential alternatives are.
*** I take it none of you got the memo that it was also ''nine feet tall!'' The face alone was creepy, but the inhuman size puts it BeyondTheImpossible!
* The childrens rhyme ''Little Bunny Foo-Foo'' was the scariest thing ever when this troper was 4. I still hate it.
* Speaking of plague masks... When I was 7, there was an exhibit at the Smithsonian about microbes and germs. Of course, they had to talk about miasmas and with that, the plague. Guess what part scared me? There was an animatronic guy dressed up in a plague mask. He had a deep voice and would look right at you, talking about doomsday and saying shit like "Repent! The end is near!" all creepy like, telling me I was going to hell and that I was evil. Can you imagine looking at a tall creature all dressed in black with a long hook nose like that saying you're going to die? (No, it's not subtle anti-semitism because I'm Jewish). I had nightmares for years.
** What is a 'Goon', anyway? Similar to a "Grue"?
*** I remember reading a version of the lyrics that ended with the fairy threatening to [[YourHeadASplode ''pop his head'']].
*** For this troper, it was ''I Found a Peanut''. I was afraid to eat peanuts for years for fear that I'd get the rotten one and die.
* is this troper the only one who refused to eat lolipops or cookies that were made to resemble characters due to the whole you're basically eating a tiny version of them?
* When I was little, thanks to a complete misinterpretation of one of my brother's Garbage Pail Kids cards, I was completely convinced that people's buttocks could open, like they were on hinges, and all of your guts could fall out. I was always incredibly careful whenever I needed to use the toilet. I also remember having horrible visions of my eyeball unraveling.
** Those Garbage Pail Kids things are creepy. I remember finding those cards in my grandmother's basement, of all places, once when I was little, and not knowing what the hell they were.
* This just in! From the [[Digger creator]] (oh, friend!) of the maker of biting pear, we have [[http://eng360.deviantart.com/art/Apple-Lion-78568231 Apple Lion]]
* ''Baby First TV'', a television channel for toddlers, features a bizarre case of ''reverse'' Nightmare Fuel. In the evenings, as part of its "soothing visuals and music" series to lull the young tykes to sleep, it shows animated sequences which are children's drawings with elements animated. To a child, this probably looks cute and charming. To someone elder, watching these sequences is a truly horrifying experience: more often than not, they feature distorted, semihuman monstrosities (sometimes with their mouths agape, as if screaming silently in agony) or formless, incomprehensible, colorful shapes that resemble {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. These terrifying, stiff, unchanging actors trek randomly all over the TV screen, either gliding in an unnatural movement, or vanishing and re-appearing in another place. And it all happens in complete, eerie silence (except for the vague, silent music in the background).
* [[http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11075396 This]] costume from WalMart. There was originally an error that placed this image under: Children's Costume > Parasitic Twin. The thought of this as a children's costume might have been NightmareFuelUnleaded.
* Horrorclix, the tabletop game the Nightmare Fuel built. To those who were (un)lucky enough to miss it's first run with Wizkids, a fan site has been set up with a full gallery [[http://www.itswickedfun.net/ here]].
* As a kid, this troper really loved astronomy, but in any book featuring the Hubble picture of the Hourglass Nebula, she quickly had to turn the page. Because it looked like a garishly colored GIANT SPACE EYEBALL staring at her!
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