redirected from Main.NightmareFuelUnleaded
alt title(s): Nightmare Fuel Unleaded; Unleaded Nightmare Fuel
"Listen, if a book is going to give me night terrors right out of a Freud textbook involving me running through a Stockholm red-light district being chased by ravenous toothed genitalia all wanting me to pay them for the privilege of devouring me alive, you have to fucking tell me."
There's
Nightmare Fuel. And there's
this... The high-octane variety,
for that extra "oomph". This is the stuff even the adults are frightened of. Unlike normal
Nightmare Fuel, which can be unintentionally scary, these scares are often deliberate.
Specific types of High Octane Nightmare Fuel include:
- Government Information Adverts which employed terrifying imagery in a misguided attempt to keep people on the straight and narrow.
- Surreal sequences, usually animated.
- Extreme violence and deaths which cross the line.
- Nightmare Dreams, dream sequences and hallucinations straight out of nightmare.
- Spawn of Uncanny Valley, anything that has crawled out of the valley.
- Paranoia Fuel, when things that should be harmless, or on your side, turn nasty.
- Primal Fears: possibly the most universally frightening of the mix; the dark, snakes, being buried alive with rats gnawing on your toes...the last part, being an aspect of cannibalism/being eaten alive, something in turn existing as potential addendum to extreme violence. Stuff your entire species gets the creeps from.
- Adult Fears. Those things children seldom worry about: economic failure, romantic failure, watching helplessly as your children die.
- Transformation Trauma, Transformation Sequences with plenty of Body Horror.
- Clowns.
- Corpses... DEAD ROTTING CORPSES. Remember kids, it's not the zombies that scare us, it's what they are.
Just like its cousins, High Octane Nightmare Fuel can be broken up into several categories. Only the brave dare go on...
Examples, by Medium
For unintentionally terrifying work targeted for children, see
Nightmare Fuel. If it is meant to scare but fails to deliver, and
becomes hilarious instead, it devolves into
Nightmare Retardant.
