Little Nightmares is a comic book series written by John Shackleford and art by Aaron Alexovich. The series expanded on the world of Little Nightmares but was cancelled after two issues out of a planned four.
Set in the Maw, the series begins with Six fleeing from a Chef. To escape his clutches, she crawls into a ventilation shaft and finds a group of children gathered around a fire. The children query how Six got into the Maw and after she hesitates, they share stories of their own monsterous encounters before being taken by the Ferryman.
Little Nightmares has examples of tropes:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: All of the hunchbacked child's friends wanted to be different; one wanted to be stronger, one wanted to be taller, and one wanted to have a friend who'd always be by their side. The mirrors changed them so they could get what they wanted, but in the process, they became easy targets for the Hanged Man: the strong boy was bigger and therefore easier to grab, the tall boy couldn't fit through the opening that they all came in through, and the child who was doubled literally lost half of themself when the Hanged Man ripped away their "friend".
- Campfire Character Exploration: The premise of the comics; several children loose in the Maw, including Six, gather around a fire and talk about how they got there.
- Downer Ending: All of the children's stories end this way, with the respective child being captured by the Ferryman.
- Earth All Along: Implied. In the hunchback kid's story, we see her being dared to enter an alleged haunted house, one of them scoffing that there is no such thing as monsters. This implies that this world was far less horrifying until... something happened, leaving the world populated with defenseless children and Monstrous Humanoids.
- Eldritch Abomination: The North Wind, a mysterious entity that takes the children of a village, and appears to be engaged in a game with the Maw, competing about who can get the most children.
- Fire of Comfort: Subverted; the kids stay around the campfire because it helps keep away the leeches, but not even the fire prevents a leech from showing up and devouring one of them.
- Humanoid Abomination: Multiple of the monstrous creatures are somewhat human-like, including the Mirror Monster and the Ferryman. But all of them have traits that make it disturbing clear they are not human, the Mirror Monster's head being made of tentacles and the Ferryman's abnormally large nose.
- Magic Mirror: The haunted house's mirrors of the second comic; like funhouse mirrors, looking into them shows each of the children as distorted in some way, looking like their ideal self (one as a strongman, one as unnaturally tall, and another as being two people, aka having a friend). Then, they turn into their mirror selves. Touching the mirror turns you back, unfortunately for the hunchbacked child, since the mirror she looked into was broken and presumably couldn't be touched.
- Mirror Monster: The villain of the second comic, who evidently looks like the Hanged Man from the game; he uses tentacles coming out of his collar to drag children into his mirror.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The hunchbacked child is transformed at the end of her story when she looks into a broken mirror. We never see the result, as she's constantly wearing a cloak and one of her friends covers her with a blanket upon her transformation.
- Painting the Medium: After the mirror-doubled boy loses one of his two selves, his speech is reduced to only the first half of each word (e.g. "go lu " for "good luck"). The bubbles' size remains large enough to hold the complete words, further emphasizing how he's missing half of his being.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: A nasty-looking rat snarls at the brother and sister when they enter the barn in the first story. It's roasting over their cooking fire in the very next panel.
