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Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Other
Please note that this page and all Accidental Nightmare Fuel pages are intended for examples that WERE NOT meant to be scary by the maker of the media form. If it was intended to be scary, that is High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
This section is for categories of Accidental Nightmare Fuel 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 Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?.)
Note: If a subcategory used to be here, it has gotten large enough to be split off of Accidental Nightmare Fuel as its own subpage so look back there first before posting a new miscellaneous category here.
The animatronics at places like Chuck E Cheese are quite infamous for their ability to freak out children.
Speaking of which, ever seen one of those robots with no skin?
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.
It's scarier when it's broken, she just stares and her mouth doesn't move at all.
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.
Those animatronic dinosaurs from the 1980s and 1990s. When one is the sort of very serious young child who knows for a stone-cold fact that dinosaurs have been gone a minimum of 65 million years, to suddenly walk into a room full of life-sized, moving, snarling prehistoric beasts is the most brain-meltingly terrifying thing that could ever happen. What's that? Cars in road the child nearly ran straight into in blind panic? Never mind them, there's a motherfucking hungry and/or pissed off and/or evil undeadTyrannosaurus in the museum lobby! Run!
This tropper as a kid was scared of the Pepperami mascot. There was just something he found terrifying about his behavior that made him think that thing was unstable and psychotic and that it would try to attack someone.
This video, if slightly UncannyValley, isn't so bad... at first. But try not to pee yourself at 00:17. If you can make it, I dare you to watch this. Only in Quebec!
A Youtube related video to one of those was this. With a bedwethatever reason. Either way, watching that calming blue background of the PS2's startup suddenly pop back up as an angry red is a terrifying sight to behold if you're not prepared for it. The sound that plays (Sort of a warped version of the normal startup sound) probably counts as a Scare Chord, too.
Macintosh models made within the last 6 or so years all have white LEDs on them somewhere that serve as indicators of when the machine is in sleep mode. This is fine. However, when the machine is in sleep, the white LED pulses in the exact same rhythm as a sleeping human's breathing. Even creepier is when you walk into a computer lab full of the machines and they're all doing it in sync.
My sound card just so happens to have a problem that after a while, the sound becomes distorted and metallic. The worst part is that its undetectable until the sound becomes distorted. The 'new message' chime for MSN Messenger made me jump out of my seat.
Hard drives. The thought of a spinning disk with all your data at 7200rpm inside my computer... the thought that even a small movement can cause this to utterly fail and destroy everything... is enough to scare me. I wish SSDs would catch on.
I was scared out of my mind when my computer made a very alarming sound upon severely overheating...
Might sound rather Narmy, but for me, glitches in computer games/graphics. The reason? Once I was playing a game on his old PC. The game started to glitch really bad and then the entire computer crashed (this was Windows 95, so BSODs or complete system crashes wasn't rare). The PC never worked again. Eventually, after sending it to a repair shop, the cause was found: the game made the computer overheat, damaging the motherboard in the process.
For some strange reason, the "shut down" sound on W95 (the "Tada" sound) used to really scare this troper, but it was probably because of how the screen got distorted and darkened when it did.
When the DOS4GW Extender crashes, it would dump alot of nasty information over the program you are using and as its popular with DOS Games like Duke Nukem 3D, Kids will get scared by the pastered text on the screen that they will run out of the room faster then screaming SHIT!
The sound Skype makes when you log on sounds way too much like that creepy Amber Alert broadcast noise. Freaky, especially at night.
On the other hand, normal operation was scary enough to frighten this small child. The 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 Accidental Nightmare Fuel when you're not expecting it and just damn creepy when you are.
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.
Once in a while my SNES would glitch up, usually if the cartridge was dirty or if it wasn't all the way in. This manifested as a bunch of static on the screen and a loud "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" noise. I was seven at the time and it freaked me out. Sometimes it'd do it in the middle of a game too.
Yume Nikki pays tribute to these kinds of crashes (and the resultant Nightmare Fuel) in what is known as the "glitch" event.
Another game glitch to nightmare fuel was the old Windows 98 Game Crash - It would often just with out warning start a horrible beeping noise, followed by a sudden flicker of the screen from whatever game you were in to a white then blue screen then say a fatal error occurred. This use to happen a lot with old Windows 95/98 games especially the ones which were designed to run on slightly faster machines. But that beeping noise was always the scariest feature, it was loud and shrill.
That's how it sounds on a VM, however. On computers from the time the virus was made (which were much slower), the virus would play a series of random beeps, as shown here. Still creepy in its own way, though.
The Free Cell guy. It stares at your mouse quietly. And it never stops looking.
I have been unable to listen to the radioplay of War of the Worlds since I was about seven, because my father decided that it would be an education to play it for me one day. The first cry by the Martians sent me screaming to my room at the other end of the house, where I could still clearly hear it, as my father had turned it up really loud and wouldn't turn it down.
The drama Adventures in Odyssey, a children's radio show put out by Focus on the Family, is not immune to these.
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 Hell.
Episode 25 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes us to Lamuella, where Random has just run away into the woods at night. She has arrived at the wreckage of a spaceliner. Many of the trees are burned down, and the locals have mentioned ghosts around the area. Even though there are no visuals, the sounds effects, the music, and the fact that the spaceliner is loaded with corpses create quite a frightening atmosphere.
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 Hile Troy is turned into a tree.
So...that plot is basically The Happening, only scary?
Atomic Cafe. In short, a documentary about atomic bomb traing films, advertisments, and TV programs from the 1940s-1960s. The big thing about the film is how ignorant everyone was about nuclear radiation back then. It's not overtly terrifying, just...disturbing, kind of how When the Wind Blows was disturbing. The training films...oh God, the training films. Basically, several soliders in a ditch a quarter-mile away from the explosion. Our teacher told my class how that was how a lot of people got cancer back then...
You know that place it mentions? The little town called St. George Utah? I live there. Usually its like "nothing bad will ever happen here!" but then it did. They were shooting a movie here when it happened and a bunch of actors and plain townspeople got cancer. Thankfully, I wasn't born yet, and none of my family had moved here until years after that, though.
That movie was The Conqueror, with John Wayne as Ghengis Khan.
The Zap Rap, a tape shown to fourth grade classes about the dangers of electricity, featuring some truly disturbing effects to represent electrocution and presenting enough convoluted dangerous scenarios that had nothing the average student could do to prevent, to freak the hell out of the whole class.
The safe sex video I was shown in the Job Corps was straight from the military. Trust me, I will be using a condom after seeing the pictures of what it's really like to get a STD.
When Stunts Go Wrong. Full stop.
Miscellaneous
There are a lot of 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!"
The particularly famous 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...
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 Abominations. 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).
This costume from Wal Mart. 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 Nightmare Fuel Unleaded.
Actually, it's listed as an adult costume now. Thank God.
Horrorclix, the tabletop game the Nightmare Fuel built. To those who were (un)lucky enough to miss its first run with Wizkids, a fan site has been set up with a full gallery here.
The Mr. Seahorse trope in general, in all the forms of media it is found in. The male body is not equipped or designed for the production, incubation, or definitely the birthing of babies. The lack of a womb also means that a male incubating a baby would literally have a parasite growing in-between vital internal organs, possibly damaging them, possibly cutting off something important, and almost certainly killing either him. He might live if the infant gets killed, as without the protections of a womb the fetus would likely be immensely more susceptible to damage from white blood cells, physical trauma, the man bending over, etc, and the chances of the fetus not making it are just as good as the fetus killing the man, which is to say, high. If, by some miracle, both man and fetus survive nine months, any concievable route of exit is even more unimaginably painful than for females. The vagina is designed to stretch greatly to accommodate infant exit, whereas the anus and penis, the only two possible exits, are most certainly not designed to stretch much, if at all, and would as such be stressed beyond their ability to cope if an infant were to attempt passage. A male giving birth, lacking a vagina, will inevitably result in the stretching of one of those two regions. It is not romantic, it is not loving, it is fucking creepy, and in reality would result in a gushing torrent of blood as the buttocks and/or penis is torn to shreds, in the best case scenario.
C-sections would presumably have to work around several organs, and take a longer, more painful recovery.
There's also a section of the Furry Fandom that likes the idea of men laying eggs. Since you're wondering; both. Often this is combined with transformation, for horrible, NSFW results. And there's an entire series of similar pics, commissioned by one guy from various artists.
This man◊, once on the package of the German Board Game "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" (about: Buddy, don't get angry; it's similar to Ludo / Parcheesi). Besides the fact that he makes a kind of Broken Aesop - what the hell is wrong with his face?? That's not simply an angry man, that's... I don't know the right words for this. And now note that estimated 99% of the Germans know this game, and all those who played it before 1973 (and some who did so afterwards), saw this face. Dare to imagine the consequences?!
The Grickle Channel - A series of short animated videos. Although they're meant to be funny, there is still an unsettling feeling when its left to the imagination of the viewer on the camper's fate at the hands of The Hidden People, the skeleton jumping out of the Grickle's Closet and attacking him on his front lawn, the aliens in Transmission at Outpost 79, and the zombies killing the survivors in The Last Duet on Earth.
The word "Grickle" is creepy all on its own, really.
The whole point of Grickle is to tell horror stories with non-threatening looking characters...so is definitely intentional. The game Puzzle Agent and its sequel are based on it. The first Puzzle Agent has genuinely scary moments where the Hidden People will jump out at you, seemingly without warning, but actually at set moments in the game. It can be scary playing it the first time round, though.
There's this cute little San-X character called Amagurichan. Its catchphrases are "Eat me!" and "Peel my skin!". Amagurichan is a chestnut, so at least those phrases are somewhat justified, but still, they're CREEPY.
Borderline High Octane Nightmare Fuel, there is the apparent phenomenon of THIS MAN [1]. To quote the site: ""In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life. That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist's desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life. The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.""
I don't remember which page says this, but one external page says that This Man is apparently just viral marketing.
For me as a child, Santa Claus. I always had anxiety that Santa Claus was watching, waiting for me to do something naughty. And if Santa caught me doing too many naughty things, I would get a lump of coal and my parents would be very disappointed in me.
Those warnings at the beginnings of violent/gory things. You know what I'm talking about! WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM CONTAINS SCENES THAT ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. They just scare the hell out of me. I don't know why.
This Etsy shop. Go on, take a look. Be it preserved starling hearts or dried mice, there will be something here for everyone.
The decapitated head of Santa, slack-jawed and nailed to your door.
Grey Aliens.
Due to the Greys, I was, for a few years, terrified of all aliens that weren't from Star Wars. Exposure to Star Trek helped cure me of this fear.
Those greys are so cliche. The only aliens I am terrified of are the ones from Alien.
They don't fucking blink. They stare at you. Add to that the fact that they are proportioned wrongly, and you've got a recipe for freaks deep in the Uncanny Valley.
The Boston Dynamics BigDog. If this doesn't freak you out enough—and it very well should—imagine the fact that these things are only going to get faster. Now imagine a faster version of this half fly- half deer- all terror machine hunting you. *shiver*
For one terrifying moment I thought that...thing was biological. I don't care what it is, or what's it's capable of, nothing should EVER move like that.
The fact that it is funded by DARPA should remove all doubt that this will see military and law-enforcement applications long before it sees civilian ones. I'd opine we'll see this things armed and hunting infantry, suspects and dissenters within twenty years. Also expect it to cruise at 80+ kph over rubble or through dense jungle and don modest firepower (say .30 Cals and FFARs). It may become the new field soldier, if they're cheaper to muster than human infantry. Stephenson predicted similar tech (in civilian usage) in Snow Crash.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury has the mechanical hound, which relentlessly pursued Guy Montag.
Please note that this page and all Accidental Nightmare Fuel pages are intended for examples that WERE NOT meant to be scary by the maker of the media form. If it was intended to be scary, that is High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
This section is for categories of Accidental Nightmare Fuel 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 Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?.)
Note: If a subcategory used to be here, it has gotten large enough to be split off of Accidental Nightmare Fuel as its own subpage so look back there first before posting a new miscellaneous category here.
