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 | This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab. | |
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Authors are people just like us, with likes and dislikes... and fears. Sometimes a creator draws upon their personal Nightmare Fuel in an attempt to make their villains more fearsome and intimidating. For instance, if the author as a child was bitten by a venomous spider and nearly died, as J. R. R. Tolkien was, they might make the Big Bad of their story a hideous Giant Spider.
Contrast Author Appeal.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Creator Edgar P. Jacobs of Blake and Mortimer fell down a seven metres deep old well when he was two or three years old. It took half an hour before he was able to be brought back up.The experience resulted in a lot of scenes in his comic strip where characters fall into pits or are walking through underground locations.
- Author Hergé of the Tintin series was forced to listen to his aunt singing opera arias when he was a child. It led to a strong dislike of opera music, exemplified in the character Bianca Castafiore, whose singing usually scares away everybody or makes glass break.
Film
- Peter Jackson used his own phobia of spiders to measure the effectiveness of Shelob's design and animations for the Lord of the Rings films.
- James Cameron wrote The Terminator based on a nightmare he had of a robot emerging from a fiery explosion and coming after him. It's even referenced on the main Nightmare Fuel page quote. "From the director's nightmares to yours." However, Cameron was sued because the idea bore a resemblance to two Harlan Ellison-written The Outer Limits episodes, "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand". As part of the settlement, the credits of the movie now include the phrase "Acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison."
- H. R. Giger is known to have incorporated his nightmares into his creations. Apparently, he often worked through his sleeplessness.
- Alfred Hitchcock had a fear of the police, thanks to an incident in his childhood where his father ordered a policeman to lock him up for ten minutes for being disobedient. As a result, Police Are Useless and Wrongly Accused were two of his favorite tropes.
- Mel Gibson's films are heavily criticized in England and elsewhere for perceived Anglophobia - for instance, the historical villain upgrades given to Banastre Tarleton in The Patriot and Edward I in Braveheart (his record is far more mixed than Gibson suggests). Then there is his butchery of Gallipoli in the film of the same name, specifically the (untrue and insulting) idea that the British drank tea on the beach whilst the Australians died for them. We will not mention his treatment of another group in another film...
- A Nightmare on Elm Street : Wes Craven named Fred Krueger after a bully who harassed him and based his appearance on a disfigured hobo who scared him as a child.
Literature
- J. R. R. Tolkien was bitten by a venomous spider in his youth in South Africa and narrowly escaped death. Many of his works feature giant, malevolent arachnids, including the spiders of Mirkwood, Shelob, and Ungoliant.
- Similar to Tolkien, C. S. Lewis was afraid of insects (stemming from a pop-up book that scared him as a child), a phobia that he would attribute to Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles Of Narnia. This phobia can also be inferred to be the reason why insects are rarely mentioned in Narnia, if at all.
- Deconstructed in the Space Trilogy. The protagonist is pursued through caves by a literally diabolical enemy, accompanied by a giant centipede. But when the enemy is dispatched, the protagonist finds nothing horrible or even dangerous about the big bug. Or any other bug ever again. "All that he had felt from childhood about insects and reptiles died that moment: died utterly, as hideous music dies when you switch off the wireless. Apparently it had all, even from the beginning, been a dark enchantment of the enemy's."
- Much of what H. P. Lovecraft wrote was motivated by his own nightmares and personal phobias. Among the ones less likely to evoke similar feelings in readers nowadays were his fears of non-white Anglo-Saxon people and miscegenation. And fish. He also had a lifelong fear of cold temperatures, encouraged by his frail constitution. This is partly why the oppressive atmosphere of At the Mountains of Madness is so effective.
- Stephen King is known for writing about things that scare him personally.
- In particular, Pet Sematary is full of Adult Fear and based on a real incident where King stopped his son from almost getting run over by a truck. He couldn't shake thoughts of what would have happened if he failed, and wrote a novel around it.
- Winston's fear of rats and its use against him in the Room 101 scene in 1984 was inspired by George Orwell's personal fear of rats.
Live Action Televion
- Stephen Colbert in The Colbert Report warns his viewers about how bears are godless killing machines. Inspired by a phobia he had as a child of bears attacking him in his room.
Music
- Frank Zappa hated country music. Though he embraced most other musical genres "cowboy music" (as he would call it) was one of the few genres he generally despised. He spoofed it once with his song "Lonesome Cowboy Burt".
Video Games
Webcomics
Weboriginal
Western Animation
- South Park: Trey Parker and Matt Stone share a deep hate of hippies and liberals (in the American sense of the word) in general. As Matt Stone once explained in an interview: "I hate Republicans, but I really fucking hate liberals." Thus explaining the countless attacks on left wing people and ideas in the show.
- Another frequent target on the show is religion, though this is more Matt Stone's personal dislike, since he is an atheist. Parker, on the other hand also considers most religions too absurd to believe in, but it also fascinates him. Still, he remains unclear about his own beliefs and could possibly be identified as agnostic.
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