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Subjective
Last Note Nightmare
So you're listening to a nice, pleasant song about bunnies and rainbows and running in the rain with your best girl by your side. Then the final note of the song falls and, instead of a nice soft, resolution, it's a heavily played stinger note in a scary minor chord. Then the music fades into a series of dissonant arpeggios with a creepy mechanical voice muttering some nonsensical gibberish that sounds like Satan reciting an Edgar Allan Poe story. It's surely not the ending you expected this particular song to have — and if you happen to be really unlucky, it'll burrow into your mind playing itself over and over like some self-regenerating Nightmare Fuel. Musicians most likely put these kinds of stingers at the ends of their songs to make them memorable, (although they'll more than likely just scare people from listening to the song again, or cause them to listen with a finger hovering over the "change track" button during the song's final stretch.)

(Music geeks might be interested to note that there is an opposite technique, the "Picardy third," in which when a song that has been in minor the whole time inexplicably goes into major on the very last chord.)

Examples

  • The Beatles were fond of this trope. "Strawberry Fields Forever" has a particularly disturbing last final seconds with quivering flutes and a slowed-down voice reciting either "cranberry sauce" or "I buried Paul," depending on where you stand on the "Paul Is Dead" debate.
    • The best (or worst?) example would have to be from their White Album song "Long Long Long." It really doesn't help that the song itself is played at a lethargic pace that makes it seem as though it's slightly disconnected from the real world in the first place...
    • There is also the laughter at the end of "Within You Without You." George Harrison insisted on its being there because he thought it would be a light touch after the heavy song. It isn't.
      • George Harrison in particular seemed to like this a lot. ("One more time...")
    • The final chord of "A Day in the Life" fades out so long you can almost (?) hear the air conditioner.
      • And then, seconds after the last vibrations of the chord have faded, there's the sudden discordant loop of distorted, randomly-spliced-together studio chatter. In the original British LP pressings, this was placed in the record's "run-out" groove so that listeners with manual turntables would hear it indefinitely until they lifted the needle. (If you're a dog, you'll experience your Last Note Nightmare a few seconds before this, as Lennon added a 15 kHz tone, inaudible to most humans, specifically to annoy you.)
    • The end of "I Am the Walrus," complete with buried King Lear. This one helped fuel the "Paul Is Dead" rumors...
    • "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a dark and heavy song in itself, but its ominous ending with the bass chords and static is still a Last Note Nightmare, even compared to that — especially since it cuts off in the middle of that last note.
      • "For The Benefit Of Mr Kite" (which was already rather eerie to begin with) suddenly cut into "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" on the LOVE album. The whole "song" became a Last Note Nightmare.
      • AND it has the creepy organ from Being For The Benefit Of, AAAAND Snippets of the vocals from Helter Skelter. And creepy laughing, which seems to be a theme in love. PLUS after the infamous cutoff, there are weird swirly wind sounds. Then it cuts to Help! and scares the piss out of you.
      • The Beatles: Rock Band actually visualizes the nightmare by blacking out your TV just as the song ends. It's especially jarring when all the other songs give you a nice round of applause before your scores...this one? Nothing at all.
    • A version of "Penny Lane" on the Anthology 2 album has a Strawberry Fields-like ending, which begins with a short trumpet fanfare, and segues into a strange guitar and piano coda, accompanied by someone breathing heavily into the mic. It's subverted at the end, with Paul cheerfully proclaiming "What a suitable ending, I think!".
    • And of course this is inverted with "A Hard Day's Night," which is the first song on the entire album and kicks off with an in-your-face, dissonant chord on the guitar.
      • At the same time as a piano chord courtesy of George Martin.
    • The Beatles used a Picardy third in "And I Love Her," which uses a D-MAJOR chord at the end of the song, which is in C# minor and D minor.
  • The Rolling Stones' She's A Rainbow has a good driving beat, Mick sings the praises of a girl who dresses up in colors, underlined with a cheerfully inane 'la la la' chorus, he alternates verses with a sprightly Baroque piano playing the tune...then it ends with strings in a shrill chittering discord with a low-end chord of doom under it bursting through everything else! Gives me chills to this day.
  • Most of They Might Be Giants' song, S-E-X-X-Y is played out like a 70's-era funkadelic groove song — until the ending stinger, which features creepily arpeggioing classical violins that totally kill the mood.
    • There's also "Fibber Island", a gentle folk-rock song from one of their kids albums, which after a false ending, jumps into an outro with some jarringly dissonant flutes, possibly as a nod to "Strawberry Fields".
    • And then there's "Employee of the Month", an upbeat song about making crumbs at (what else?) a crumb factory. In and out, fun nonsense, the end. But one instrument keeps going on in a haunting, almost droning whistle.
  • A famous one of these is the ending "Bunny" theme to Doom. Starts as a cute children's melody, quickly devolves into an aggressive heavy metal tune.
  • Not strictly a scary last note, but this interpretation of The Magic Roundabout theme by Bill Bailey seems like a parody of this sort of thing.
  • Jeremy by Pearl Jam takes a twist after the final chorus, with a series of slow, agonizing(and depressing) vocal phrases, made even scarier by the "spoken, spoken" background vocals, ending with an abrupt scream, after which the song winds down with a tired "uh huh" vocal section, finally fading to melancholy acoustic guitar. This is supposed to symbolize Jeremy's descent to insanity and death.
    • With Release, around the six-minute mark, the song segues into a reprise of the album's cacophonic intro.
  • Black Angels by George Crumb, while the whole piece is surreal, is something of an inversion. The first section, Night of the Electric Insects, features multiple screeching violins playing loudly then softly then loudly again. It's High Octane Nightmare Fuel that will keep you up at night. Not to be listened to while reading the Nothing Is Scarier section
  • The Ten Sweetest Boats song "Special Performance" ends with the robotic voice saying "or maybe...we are just making you fat...so we can eat you". Chilling.
  • "Wraith Pinned To The Mist (and other games)" by Of Montreal features a stinger note that sounds like muffled audio recorded from a construction site. (The song itself is pretty weird though, so it doesn't sound all that out of place.)
    • A much better example is "Id Engager," an otherwise uncomplicated dance song about a one-night stand — it cuts out mid-measure, all the instruments come in at once and all settle on a single legato note, except for a fiddle that loops two ominous notes. Both then rise in volume until the song (the last on the album) abruptly ends.
  • "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues ends with a series of ominous string and brass chords, followed by a loud gong. The album version also includes keyboardist Mike Pinder reading a short, somewhat eerie poem by drummer Graeme Edge near the end of the song.
  • Calibretto's "American Psycho" is a pretty energetic horror-punk song. Then the last organ note holds and turns into an ominous drone, and then one of Patrick Bateman's confessions is played over it. It then segues into the ominous bell that begins the next song. The result is far creepier than it has any right to be.
  • Mae's "We're So Far Away" is a slow song played on piano and keyboards, then the final note is accompanied by a loud electric guitar chord that quickly turns into a howling wall of feedback. On the album, this segues into the hard-rocking next song. (Anyone with prior exposure to Mae would have been wondering where the guitars were up until this point.)
  • Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" is a quiet, melancholy song that morphs into a strangely uplifting ballad...then looks like it's going to taper off quietly. Instead, the last line is accompanied by a crashing, detuned guitar. It fades out for over a minute, followed by an ominous wind/static sound (on the album version).
    • Similarly at the end of "Closer", the song seems to build up to a climax, then peters out with a muted and distorted guitar hook that then fades.
    • The Fragile taken as a whole. Granted, it's not the happiest album, but it's energetic and has tones of working towards something great. Then comes Ripe.
    • "A Warm Place" has a literal Last Note Nightmare if played on repeat. The piece begins with a brief burst of static noise — an intentional artifact from the previous song in the album — which is quickly forgotten about as the sounds develop into a soothing melody this troper can only describe as "womb-like". You're practically asleep by the time it ends... at which point you're suddenly startled awake by that damned burst of static.
  • "White Hammer" by Van Der Graaf Generator is a somewhat cheery-sounding song about The Power Of Love, until the last two minutes where it suddenly turns into a nightmarish fight between a saxophone and a church organ. The fact that the song is really about the Spanish Inquisition may explain this.
    • From the same album, the track "After The Flood", after veering from pastoral reflection to skronky jazz-rock, climaxes with Peter Hammill screaming 'Total Annihilatiiiiiiioooooooooon!' through a Dalek voice filter. Beyond nightmarish.
  • Bill Withers' "Better Off Dead," a mournful but relatively smooth R&B song, has not so much a Last Note Nightmare as a sound effect nightmare: the final iteration of the chorus — "she's better off without me/and I'm better off dead now that she's gone" — is interrupted after the titular phrase... by a gunshot. One of the great shock endings in pop music.
  • "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. I" by The Flaming Lips. It's an incredibly happy song about, yes, a girl named Yoshimi fighting a pink robotic menace, until the guitar is drowned out by what could be a demonic growling pink robot. With that said, the vocals of Part 2 consist entirely of a woman screaming.
  • Arguably, The Real Tuesday Weld's song "Return I Will To Old Brazil," as seen here. It's a relaxing, soothing song for most of its duraration and quite catchy. Then, right before it ends, you hear crabs scuttling around and a woman's voice screaming out.
  • Panic! At The Disco's song "When The Day Met The Night" is a lovely, happy song about the moon falling in love with the sun. However, the last few seconds are devoted to the barely audible sound of a woman screaming, "Let me out! Get back! Let me out!" as the music fades away. Being in part a tribute to the Beatles, this is hardly surprising.
  • There's a version of Pachelbel's Canon in D, buried deep within the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtracks, that is completely normal. Considering the popularity of the piece, your mind tunes it out as background music... until about five seconds before where it should end, there is a noise like a gunshot and all of the string instruments screech to a halt.
    • The track in question is track 3 on disc 2 of the "Evangelion Symphony" album.
    • The track "Honeymoon with Anxiety" (Fuan to no Mitsugetsu) from the End of Evangelion soundtrack is a cool bit of music that ends with an unsettling... violin... thing.
  • Two words: "Withnail's Theme." The melody itself is haunting and fitting for a sad clown but the flat note at the very end of the movie makes you wince every time.
  • The CD release of Patti Smith's Horses ends with a cover of "My Generation." It's loud, all right, but it appears to stop... only to end on a note a good twenty decibels louder than anything else on the album.
  • Pick up any jazz CD, and you're likely to find at least one track that ends with a long solo riff over sustained chord that's way more dissonant than the rest of the song.
  • Final Fantasy VI has the soundtrack version of Ghost Train theme. While the entire song is basically a funeral march, the song ends with a loud, piercing train whistle.
    • It also starts with that same whistle; the ending is the first few seconds of the song, slowly fading out.
  • "Death Sex" by The Distillers does this, ending with manic laughter and even more distortion than normal, of course this is pretty much par for course
  • Final Fantasy VIII's "Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec," from the orchestral arrangement album of the same name, has a beautiful, dramatic rendition of this iconic piece... and ends, about a minute before the final note, with a horrific, ear-piercing wail with unintelligible (and honestly quite infernal-sounding) lyrics. Even people who know to expect it are jolted by its sudden intrusion.
    • If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, the lyrics are actually an attempt at Latin, not done all that well. They're something about "lighting a torch in this darkest of hours."
  • Finch's "Ender" tapers off in to this kind of thing.
  • Our Lady Peace's album Spiritual Machines is a Concept Album that draws ideas from a similarly-named book, complete with tracks that are actually exerpts from the book read by the author. The final track includes the final song, followed by a few minutes of silence, and then a bizarre transhumanist dialog between the author and the fictional "Molly," a once-human who explains that she no longer has a physical form, and, when asked if she is a machine, says that it doesn't have the meaning it once did, and she doesn't properly know anymore. It's actually extremely interesting, but when you're listening at night, alone, in a dimly-lit house, it becomes pure Nightmare Fuel.
  • Lost's soundtrack is full of these. They can be rather jarring when you're listening to an emotional piano piece, only for it to end with some creepy twinkling followed by a loud brass note.
  • Spoon's "The Underdog" ends, right in the middle of a big brass fanfare, with what sounds like a piano being slammed shut.
  • Radiohead's "Karma Police". As the rather mellow melody of the song fades out at the end, some very dissonant feedback fades in... which is in turn followed by a nice closing piano chord. Then again, it is Radiohead; this sort of thing is to be expected.
    • And then it fades right into "Fitter Happier", a spooky monotone over a series of bizarre sound effects that are just darned spooky.
  • Iron Maiden's epic "Phantom of the Opera" comes to what seems to be a normal end...then after about 10 seconds of silence, the singer comes in shouting the final lyric of the song one more time. Startling, to say the least.
  • "Marching Bands of Manhattan" by Death Cab for Cutie is a milder example, which at the end interrupts the repeated chorus with a single note on the piano.
  • "Disturbance" by The Move switches from being a a fairly energenic pop-rock to a mix of ominous guitar and therimen playing, creepy backround chanting, and the singer snarling, grunting, and screaming unintelligibly. It doesn't help that the song seems to be about the singer questioning his own sanity at various points in his life.
  • Parodied by Weird Al Yankovic, with his single "You Don't Love Me Anymore". After the song ends, there are 10 minutes of silence followed by 6 seconds of backwards drumming, guitar feedback, and Al screaming at the top of his lungs, after which, the song ends. According to Al, this "most annoying 6 seconds of audio ever recorded" was meant to scare the listener if he or she forgets to turn the CD player off. (This snippet is called "Bite Me".) This was a parody of Endless, Nameless by Nirvana, which came on about 10 minutes of silence and was, essentially, 6 minutes of cacophony.
  • "I Ain't Got No Heart To Give Away", from Frank Zappa and the Mothers' Freak Out! is a Subversion. It cuts suddenly to a scream and a weird jumble of instruments, only to return with a triumphant horn blast.
  • The Pillows' "Sweet Baggy Days" ends with the same thing that starts the CD the song was featured on, "Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!": a loud jarring sound that sounds like somebody randomly hitting piano keys. It's a pretty mellow closing song up to that point.
  • "The Day After the Revolution", the final song of Pulp's album This is Hardcore, finishes with approximately ten minutes' worth of swirling ambient noise. And then Jarvis Cocker says "bye-bye" and makes you jump out of your skin.
  • "Nature Boy (reprise)" from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. The instruments are creepy enough as is, but the ending was edited to sound like the CD was scratched, for a very strange effect.
    • There's also the other version of Nature Boy on that soundtrack, in which David Bowie is singing along very nicely until the last word, which is about a million decibels louder than the last song, accompanied by an intensely creepy swell of music.
  • The blood-curling scream that interrupts the fade-out coda of The Cure's "Subway Song".
  • Simon & Garfunkel's "Richard Cory" features this with a stinger just before the final chorus, sure to startle (although, of course, you should already know it if you read the poem).
    He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch
    And they were grateful for his patronage, and they thanked him very much
    So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
    Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.
    • The lyric then continues with
      And I wish that I could be, yes I wish that I could be, Oh I wish that I could be Richard Cory.
  • Oddly enough, Muppet Babies features one of these in its ending credits theme: the very last part where Spider-Man jumps down onto the Marvel logo segues from the cheery instrumental theme to a dissonant, screechy horn. Add to that the fact that the metallic CG Spider-Man is Nightmare Fuel to many and...
  • The Puccini opera Madama Butterfly ends with a scary, unexpected major chord (in first inversion).
  • The Shins' early song "One By One All Day" is mostly calm...until the end, where there's a very loud, jarring chord to end the song.
  • Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" ends with a long instrumental section concluding with a haunting chorus, a dissonant horn, and some drumming. At least one station actually cuts it short.
  • While The Doors' epic "Not To Touch The Earth" is already fairly creepy on its own with a low, driving bass and some unsettling imagery ("Dead president's corpse in the driver's car"), the end features the low hum of an organ as Jim Morrison utters, "I am the lizard king. I can do anything." The immediate stinger is a quick bang on the organ.
  • The last minute or so of ''Kono Daremo Inai Heya De" by Gackt is something resembling a spectral chorus singing "Hey, Jude"; Nightmare Fuel in and of itself, but the fade-out is a harsh violin crescendo.
  • The track K.K. Lullabye in Animal Crossing does this, strangely enough.
    • A certain note from the normally calm and quiet song that plays at 11 PM in the original (Wild World for the DS and City Folk for the Wii use a different soundtrack) has a similar effect, as well as the unexpected (during the first time hearing it) and bizarre sneezing sound effect in K.K. Cruisin' (though the latter doesn't have this effect for everyone).
  • M1 A1 by Gorillaz is a strange reverse example. The song starts out with a brief clip of a heartbeat, followed by weird, dissonant tones and a creepy-sounding, crescendoing baseline while an echoing voice repeatedly (and increasingly desperately) shouts "Hello? Is anyone there?", sampled from Day of the Dead, but after the first minute and a half or so, the song transitions into something more conventional and upbeat in sound.
  • The last 3 bars of Mozart's "A Musical Joke" are in a polytonal jumble of five different keys.
  • The famous The Pink Panther Theme Tune ends suddenly loud with a jarring chord.
  • All of Nox Arcana's albums end on these if you leave them on after the last track goes quiet. Winter's Knight's example was intended to be uplifting, but may very well be Nightmare Fuel to some people.
  • Inverted by the Melvins' The Fool, the Meddling Idiot: An oppressively dark grunge song that near the end turns into upbeat electronic pop.
  • Haydn's Surprise Symphony has a nice peaceful melody, but is then rudely interrupted by loud, accented notes. Haydn did it to wake up slumbering members of the audience. He was known as a prankster, and this is one of the many jokes in his pieces.
  • Blue October's "Hate Me" ends with like 40 seconds of creepy-ass children chanting on what sounds like a gradually slowing recording (you know what I mean).
  • Vladislav Delay's album-length piece "Anima" starts with a conversation: "Danny, are you awake yet?" "No, are you"? before slipping into 60 minutes of ambience and random, sometimes scary synthesizer noises, which finally ends with a splash and the words "I may never go to sleep again, I might stay awake forever". Try listening to it in the dark.
  • The 30-minute piece "Bayreuth Return" from Klaus Schulze's Timewind album speeds up slightly for the final few minutes, then finally, an explosion abruptly ends the piece.
    • Similarly, halfway through "Wahnfried 1883", the tune slowly morphs into a cacophony of eerie distorted organ drones, building up to a final climax with the wind and space sound effects.
  • The last few measures of Father of a Son, represented in the video by a polar bear walking in and destroying the stage.
  • While it's got a little bit of a creepy undercurrent throughout, Mr. Bungle's "Pink Cigarette" is an uncharacteristically pretty, doo-wop influenced ballad... then, as it seems to be winding up to a climax, the beep of a heart monitor creeps into the mix, and the song gets abruptly cut off by said heart monitor flat-lining. Of course, the lyrics seem to be a husband's suicide note to his cheating wife, so...
  • The last minute and a half of Pink Floyd's Bike is made up entirely of discordant mechanical sounds and cartoonish laughter.
  • The old Cog song Just Visiting spools up into increasingly discordant machine noise at the end, culminating in a sound like the Hypnotoad squared. Thirty-odd seconds of silence later, the drummer screams FUCK! as if from the end of a long corridor. And then continues incoherently screaming curses of the "Fucking fuck! Who the fuck? What the fuck? Where the fuck?!" variety, sending the whole thing into possibly-intentional Narmsville. Good song though.
  • Queens Of The Stone Age's "I Think I Lost My Headache" probably fits the bill. It starts with a slow, kinda creepy riff, gets a little bit more upbeat in the verse and chorus and right at the end, goes back to the creepy riff. And then, the creepy riff is repeated by wind instruments while the song fades. For 3min. And one of them, the high-pitched one, slowly starts to go offbeat, improvising (or to put it more correctly, sounding like a goddamn screech). A Last Note Nightmare that goes on and on and on and on.
  • Sort of a weird example in Ali Project's lesser-known song, Akai Suiren no Gogo, for the first 2 1/2 minutes, is a soft, relaxing yet sort of odd melody. Then, towards the end, there are four rather startling fortissimos (if that's the proper term) before going back to normal, except for a chilling, deep "I love you" in English near the end. It should be noted that this is only true for the earlier Gensou Teien +1 version, not the Moonlight intoxication version.
  • IOSYS's (the fellows who brought you Marisa Stole The Precious Thing) "Blue Cirno" is an extremely jovial song that sounds like a mix of upbeat Latin music and happy Christmas music. That is, until it ends off with a Last Note Nightmare that makes people think their souls are being sucked out.
    • Speaking of Touhou, two particular remixes of "U.N. Owen Was Her?" included (1) gradually overlapping lines followed by a somewhat sudden cutoff of the voices, with the music slowing down to normal after the overlapping voices have been building to a more and more frenetic pace, and (2) putting in an increasingly less subtle creepy laugh. Then you remember that this is Flandre's theme...
    • Marisa Stole The Precious Thing also features a nasty bit near the end, where the song pauses for a moment so loud static can be played. It's all technopopping along and suddenly DRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
  • "Music of the Night," from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of The Phantom Of The Opera. The Phantom has lulled Christine almost to sleep, the song's soft, everything's pleasant, then DUN! DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN loud discordant organ. Especially seizure-inducing if you're listening to the song at night in bed and do not expect the ending.
  • For a Stupid Statement Dance Mix, "One-Winged Scout". The start is what you'd expect, the Scout "bonking" over Sephiroth's (in)famous theme, then after some time the Scout's Man On Fire soundbites start playing. Nightmare Fuel Unleaded, anyone?
  • The song "Slide" by the Dresden Dolls is mostly just a very quiet piano piece with a couple drum flourishes, then just before the end is an UNHOLY SCREAM. Granted, the entire song is full of creepy double entendres and it feels like it's building up to a bad ending, but nothing prepared me for "THE ORANGE MAN'S GOT YOOOOOOOOOOU."
    • Similarly, The Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner is obviously not a happy song, but it is fast paced and intense. The natural ending of the song is followed by crashing drums and a scream, after which there's a little "dun dun dun" on the keyboard.
  • The song Luca by Brand New is a slow, beautiful song that goes along with a steady, calming acoustic and great vocals on the track that eventually devolve into whispering of the lyrics, that get softer...and softer...and softer...accompanied by the guitar that gets softer...and softer...and softer...to the point of prompting one to turn up the volume to hear the song, until it EXPLODES IN YOUR EAR, with the singer SCREAMING AS LOUD AS HE POSSIBLY CAN. The rest of the song continues in the tempo, but nothing could recover the song from the sheer shock it deals you.
    • They did a less-extreme version on their first album with "Soco Amaretto Lime." It's a rather peaceful acoustic ballad to teenage love that cuts off rather abruptly halfway through a line as if someone pulled the needle off the phonograph. Not entirely scary, but incredibly unexpected and will make you jump.
  • The song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" on the Cabaret 1998 Broadway Cast Recording is already kind of creepy since it's intentionally made to sound low-quality and distorted. Then it stops and the MC harshly whispers the last two words. At least they give you a few seconds to brace yourself.
  • The Residents' song Elvis and His Boss begins to end with a slide guitar/kazoo solo, back up by what's either a trombone or a Minimoog. Then the instruments become uncontrollably pitched and distorted, up to the point that the entire song sounds more like TV snow.
  • Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni has lots of character songs that start out happy, then turn... disturbing. The best example of Last Note Nightmare is Keiichi's song, Cool ni Nare! ~Keep On Our Love~, which is a Hot Blooded appeal to go Beyond The Impossible and Screw Destiny, the final line being Keiichi aburptly saying "Oops, I screwed up" (and, since this is Higurashi, presumably dying).
    • Actually, the line before that is "Yes, Hinamizawa", which is a reference to another character song that featured Keiichi (and Mr. Delicious). So, it was probably more of an "Ah crap, wrong lyrics" thing.
  • Inverted in Todd Rundgren's "Saving Grace", in a similar manner to the Gorillaz example: It's an optimistic slightly jazzy soft-rock song that incongruously starts off with a low bass note and a short burst of slowed down unintelligible Black Speech.
  • Patrick Wolf's "Wolf Song" is a folk song performed with traditional acoustic instruments. The last chord, however (together with a wolf-like howl), is digitally mutilated to be a glitchy stutter. Someone who doesn't know Mr. Wolf's other work might think there's a playback error.
  • Portishead's "Silence" brings together Last Note Nightmare and Nothing Is Scarier: It cuts off abruptly in mid-note. No last note, no fade out, not even some weird sound. Just spontaneous silence. Yikes.
    • Inverted with a later track on the same album, We Carry On. Weird oscillating, then the conga-ish beat starts.
      • We've forgot the worst song of all on Third: the ending track, "Threads." The whole song is already a nightmare, but if the end of the world doesn't sound like the blasts of noise at the end of the song, I'm going to be disappointed.
    • Similar to it is the upbeat song "I'm Talking 'Bout Me" by Admiral Twin. The chorus is building up at the end and after the second to last word, cuts off abruptly.
  • The Mars Volta's song "Asilos Magdalena" begins with a loud, high pitched guitar and keyboard combo, then segues into a quiet, mournful acoustic ballad. Then in the song's final two minutes, the last verse is sung over and over again while the vocals become increasingly and disturbingly distorted until they're nearly incomprehensible. The general creepiness of the lyrics themselves don't help much, either.
    • There are a number of Mars Volta songs which could fall into this category, especially the first three tracks off of Frances the Mute: "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus," "The Widow," and "L'Via L'Viaquez." All of these tracks degenerate into creepy distortions at their end, degeneration which involves unnecessary slow-downs of the otherwise pleasant rhythms of the songs while throwing in a few distorted and incomprehensible voices (sometimes speaking in Spanish) for good measure. But the worst is at the end of "L'Via L'Viaquez" when there's nothing left but an electronic distortion where the strong rhythms once were and the demonically-distorted voice of the singer over top, repeating the chorus of the song. Granted, it's not like the Mars Volta normally sings about anything bright and happy or even that understandable.
    • TMV just loves this trope. "Goliath", "Illyena", "Ouroboros", and "Wax Simulacra" all end with noisy freakouts. (Though the last one is a bit more mild, it's just an unexpected sax solo)
  • Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead" tells the story of an abused wife waiting in ambush with a shotgun for her husband, who is freshly out on bail. The song seems to trail off normally, only to be punctuated by a shotgun blast, followed by the metallic ring of an ejected shell hitting the ground. Somehow the merry little "ting!" of the shell just makes it worse.
  • Opeth's "A Fair Judgement" isn't exactly the happiest song in the world, but it is calm and soft (even with the heavy electric guitars). Then the final two minutes end in a very gloomy rhythm and heavy riffing. It feels so dark it's surprising that Mikael doesn't start growling at that part. Well, he would if that ending had vocals.
  • A variant appears in Alice in Chains' "Rain When I Die". The song fades out...then it starts to progressively gets 2-3 times louder than the rest of the song and cuts off.
  • In the M*A*S*H episode "Dear Uncle Abdul", Father Mulcahy tries to compose a rousing, patriotic, "Over There"-style war song; eventually he comes up with something that has one of these downbeat endings, musically and lyrically.
  • The music of Sufjan Stevens sometimes falls under this trope. "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", for example, is a soft, sentimental song, but the last twenty seconds slip into an unsettling white-noise grind that grows louder, then abruptly stops.
    • Not to mention the song "Seven Swans" which has a slow, almost calming cadence thanks to its use of only a few banjo chords throughout most of its length, along with some pretty, but slightly odd, imagery with the lyrics. But, then the last minute or so of the song comes, and we get a crescendo involving a chorus of female voices (eliciting images of a angelic choir), but singing supremely creepy lines such as "He will take you; if you run / He will chase you, / 'cause He is the Lord." And at this point, you realize that the imagery earlier in the song isn't so pretty, is actually reminiscent of the Book of Revelation, and pretty creepy indeed.
  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. The "bad" ending that you see if you don't get all of the crystal shards is a nice, happy, appropriately victorious song... which happens to end on the creepiest five notes you will ever hear in a Kirby game, synced up with the fairy queen's Psychotic Smirk.
    • Also from Kirby 64 comes the OST version of the 100-Yard Hop theme. It's a rendition of the classic Gourmet Race tune, and it plays exactly as you'd expect it to... until the final seconds, where it ends abruptly with a loud crashing noise.
  • Another song with no "nice" parts is Elvis Costello and the Attractions' "Night Rally", from their 1978 album This Year's Model. Between its lyrical subject (the then-contemporary rise of the neo-fascist National Front in English politics) and tense arrangement, the song is ominous throughout — but at the end, Costello starts chanting the title over and over and some sort of weird, high-pitched warbling sound is added the mix. And then the song cuts off suddenly, just like The Beatles' aforementioned "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". For added nightmarishness, "Night Rally" was the last track on the original vinyl album's British pressing.
  • The Weezer song Undone (Sweater Song) eventually ends on an extremely unsettling clash of noises reminiscient of someone mashing the keys of a piano.
  • The song "The Theatre" from Coraline's soundtrack. Now, quite a few songs on the soundtrack are rather creepy (which fits, given the film's sizable Nightmare Fuel quotient), but this one stands out. It starts with vaguely cheerful tinkling, accompanied by a distant-sounding snippet of the earlier track Sirens of the Sea, progresses to some low-key ambient noises, and then suddenly explodes into... some kind of discordant noise.
    • Here's the song. Just so you can hear first hand how creepy it is. (Probably best not to turn the volume up too loud.)
  • "Bowl of Oranges" by Bright Eyes is very much a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming until you get to the sinister instrumentals at the end of the track.
  • Dream Theater, being prog rock, does this a lot. "Octavarium" has tons of these. Then there's "Misunderstood". The last 3 minutes of the song could qualify as this.
    • At the end of "Finally Free," the last track on the story album "Scenes from a Memory," Nicholas, the main character, arrives at his house, satisfied with the apparent end to the mystery of his past life. He plays some triumphant music when his hypnotherapist, the reincarnation of his past murderer, barges in and murders him... the song ends to the sound of the record player's static. The live rendition of the song-at least, the "Scenes from NY 2000" version-cuts this section out and, instead, plays a reprise of an earlier song's epic opening bridge, only to end it with a pair of nice, long Scare Chords. Similarly, "In the Presence of Enemies part 2" ends with a long sequence of Scare Chords. (It's also fun to listen to the latter song live, because the lead singer repeatedly yells "come on" as the sequence starts, lightly lessening its impact.)
  • Eleven Regrets by Manic Drive is a beautiful, if sad, song. But toward the end, there is a sudden refrain of slightly dissonant voices singing a haunting tune wordlessly in the background, that seems to get louder and more chaotic as it continues. It doesn't last very long, but it will give you nightmares.
  • "Brighter Day", the last tune on the Jellyfish album Spilt Milk, has a tuneful, circus-like atmosphere reminiscent of an oompah band, until it breaks down into a Parisian-sounding, carousel-like melody on flutes, followed by accordions and strings, followed by a raucous, dissonant, nightmarish jumble of ringing telephones, crashing drums and cymbals, orchestral cacaphony, and sound effects. It leads to an ominous high drone of arco strings (similar to that which begins the album) and outdoor noises, like birds twittering, cars passing by and dogs barking. It seems like you can verrrrry faintly hear near-inaudible female whispering, too. Sounds like waking up from a dream, which is appropriate as the first song is a lullabye.
  • "The Talking Drum" (or its pale copy "Dangerous Curves") by King Crimson — each builds up tension for about seven minutes and releases it in a startling, dissonant blast.
  • "Make It Wit Chu" by Queens Of The Stone Age ends with a series of strange and sinister notes. Very jarring because the song itself is something of a love song.
  • The opening theme for Star Trek First Contact is a warm, slow and dramatic one. Then as it fades into silence...WHAM.
  • Harry Chapin's "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" ends in an elongated scream.
  • Kind of a reversal into First Note Nightmare: Rammstein's "Reise, Reise" is a creepy song in and of itself, moreso if you speak German, but the first thirty seconds or so consist of a clip from the blackbox of Japan Airlines 123 immediately before it crashed.
  • Korn's "10 or a 2-Way"; the ending with the creepy voices and bagpipe riff is surreal and oddly frightening.
  • The last second of Slipknot's Disasterpiece. The song ends with the sound of a telephone receiver being hooked up...which implies that Corey Taylor had spent the last five minutes screaming the lyrics down the phone line. It's either oddly hilarious, rather creepy, or the crowning moment of Narm. Your Mileage May Vary.
  • The song 'Disgustipated', on Tool's Undertow Album has an extended version of this. After about 10 minutes of nothing but chirping crickets, a recorded message that may or may not be about a serial killer plays, cutting off just before the end. Said message was alleged to have been left on the band's answering machine by someone called 'Bill the Landlord'. Let the speculation commence.
    • Faaip de Oiad ('Voice of God', in Enochian) is the 'last note' of Tool's Lateralus album, and consists of mad, inspired drumming overlaid by a sample of a caller to Art Bell's talk-radio show. He's panicked, and describes things, hints and rumors, he's discovered while working at an Air Force base near Groom Lake, Nevada (Area 51). If you do your homework, you might find out that it's (most likely) a hoax, but before you do, or if you doubt the hoax story, the fear in the man's voice is genuinely terrifying.
    • Lost Keys (Blame Hoffmann) is an odd song, but not hideous. Then, on the way out, it takes a turn for the... suggestive.
    • The track "Intermission" from Aenima is a sort of peppy organ instrumental—which immediately transforms into the heavy, distorted guitar riff of the next track, "Jimmy".
  • Peter Gabriel's Moribund the Burgermeister tells the story of a mysterious and disastrous plague taking a medieval city by storm. The song is pretty creepy to begin with, but the last few seconds have Gabriel repeating "I WILL FIND OUT" in a deep, echoing voice over a very strange, minimal melody. As the song begins to fade out, he begins to address his mother, telling her "when I say I will, I will!" and "You'll be sorry. I'll make sure of it!" When you consider that plague can be interpreted to transform its victims into zombies...
    • Speaking of Peter Gabriel, listen to "Sledgehammer" sometime. Normally its a jazzy tune, but the last 15 seconds are some sort of drum bit that sounds like industrial machinery. And there is an abrupt last note.
  • "Furious Angels" by Rob Dougan (from The Matrix Reloaded) ends with unsettlingly loud and distorted violins. The fact that Rob sounds a lot like Tom Waites doesn't help.
  • The song "So Happy" from Into The Woods starts out nice and happy... until half way through when there's a crashing noise and the number takes a very dark, eerie turn. Then there's the blood-curdling scream that occurs after you've think the song has faded out. Something similar occurs with the bouncy, romantic "It Takes Two" abrupty switching to "Stay With Me" (which opens with a blood-curdling scream!) Stephen Sondheim loves this trope.
  • The outtro of Ultravox's Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.
  • In the secret "Revenge" ending of Silent Hill 3, the "Silent Hill Song" ends with the singers being shot to death with a machine gun.
  • Silent Hill 2: The end of the track Null Moon fades down to the chime chords, then the instrument shifts to an ominous tone in the last couple of phrases.
  • "The Bewlay Brothers by David Bowie, starting at 4:09.
  • The end credits piece from the Jurassic Park soundtrack. It starts out with the epic Island theme, then transitions into a soft, gentle version of the main theme. However, it ends on a pretty unsettling chord.
  • For most of its length, Alice Cooper's "Wind Up Toy" is remarkably perky and upbeat for a song following up on the earlier album "Welcome To My Nightmare" and about the attempts of the deranged Steven to understand his incarceration in a mental institution and the turn his life has taken through a distorted, childish lens... then comes the ending, where everything cuts out except the broken music box, while a strange, distorted, childish voice goes into a deranged rant, followed by a distant, quiet female voice calling out "Steven!"
  • The song "Three-Five-Zero-Zero" from the musical Hair is a Last/First VERSE Nightmare, combined with Lyrical Dissonance. It begins with a melancholy and gory description of war-wounds, switches to an upbeat tune about "beginning to kill", then reprises the first verse.
  • "Word Of Mouth" by John Reuben ends with about 15 seconds of the narrator asking, in a whiny voice, if the listener will please like him.
  • Inversion, aka First Note Nightmare: in Ray Crisis, the song "Vit-Symty" has a rather ominous intro, before changing into the usual techno-jazz style, then at its end, it becomes a Crowning Music Of Awesome epic trance tune.
    • Played straight with another Raycrisis tune: two thirds of the way through "Son Dessein", the music starts to fade out, but then a screeching Scare Chord cuts in, followed by a darker piano tune with said scarechord repeating periodically. It gets scarier when it changes again to a weird tribal beat and ominous strings.
  • Another first note nightmare: Michael Jackson's Another Part of Me begins with an Ominous Pipe Organ note, but becomes a normal MJ song after that.
    • The singles Dirty Diana and the much more well-known Smooth Criminal begin with similar noises. The video for the former ends with the same noise, which acts as a very effective soundtrack to the video's Downer Ending.
  • Starflyer 59's "First Heart Attack", the final track on the album Old, is an indie rock song with a space-prog guitar solo in the bridge; then the final chorus is followed by 15 seconds of a drum simulating a heartbeat, while an audio clip of a doctor operating plays over it. "How's the blood pressure?" "Not good... falling." (If you listen closely, you can hear one of the musicians say "Stop," just as the track ends.)
  • SHAKKAZOMBIE's "Recover The Sky Of Day" is a case of First Note Nightmare. Before the actual song, is about one second of what appears to be the members of the band screaming. Thank god they left that of the Cowboy Bebop recap episode.
  • In Halo 3, the last movement of "Black Tower" starts with a series of ascending Ethereal Choir notes, but then the choir switches to a tear-jerking dirge-style tune, which is the music heard during Cmdr. Keyes's death cutscene.
    • "Halo Reborn" starts with an ethereal choir remake of "Under Cover of Night", then becomes a dark drum & bass piece, then finally a rendition of the Psycho Strings piece "Shadows", before concluding with a Scare Chord.
    • Similarly, "Roll Call" begins with a triumphant remake of the Halo title theme, followed by a medley of "Farthest Outpost" and "Under Cover of Night", but the last movement is a sad piano and strings tune, similar to the Easter Egg music "Siege of Madrigal". Apparently to underscore Master Chief's absence from the "roll call", and his presumed death.
    • Then last, but not least, there's "Legend", the Legendary bonus cutscene music, which starts off the same as the opening theme, but abruptly ends with a Psycho Strings sting.
    • In Halo 2, the "Antediluvia" movement of the High Charity Suite starts off the same as "Wage" from Delta Halo Suite, but then is interrupted by a Scare Chord and dark ambient noises, as the Flood arrive on High Charity and infect the Prophet of Mercy.
  • "Somehow" by Drake Bell is ostensibly about a battered wife who eventually decides she's had enough, weighs her husband down and throws him into the lake, and is now pondering how to cover it all up. This is creepy enough, but the slow, dark, acoustic guitar-y song ends with a snippet off cheerful piano music, which suggested that the woman snapped entirely and is now in a state of cheerful, giggling insanity.
  • The first movement of Kraftwerk's "Kometenmelodie"(from the Autobahn album) is an airy ambient piece, then while the last chord is still playing, it abruptly cuts to the second movement with a high-pitched screech, it doesn't help that the main melody of the second part is also mostly harsh high-pitched instruments.
  • The Pete Seeger anti-nuclear song "Odds on Favorite" is creepy to start with, talking about how God designed a universe with built-in obsolence, then gets more cheerful—for a while.
    Thank God this great combustion day
    Is several billion years away
    So as philosophers all say
    Why fuss, why fume, why worry?
    A jillion moons will wane and wax
    Sit down, make out your income tax
    Enjoy your life, be calm, relax
    For God is in no hurry.

    Reassuring, right? Then it ends:

    But oh, my friends, I have a hunch,
    Mankind might beat God to the punch.

    And it abruptly ends.
  • The cacophonic ending of David Bowie's "Space Oddity".
  • "Beyond Belief" by Epica. The lyrics are all about how advances in science and technology will lead us to our demise, but the band's Epic Rocking style kind of obscures this. So, just to make sure you remembered the point, the final chorus ends on a cold wooshing noise, followed by a slowly fading heartbeat...
  • William Shatner yelling "Mister Tambourine MAAAAAAAAAAAN" at the end of his cover of that song.
  • "...A Psychopath" by Lisa Germano is an inversion. It's an incredibly creepy song about a Stalker With A Crush from the stalkee's point of view, with a real 911 call playing in the background. Until the last 30 seconds or so, with a cheerful-sounding instrumental that wouldn't sound out of place at a circus.
  • Twist from NIN ends with someone who may be Trent screaming.
  • Muse's "Take A Bow" is already a dark, chaotic song, but the last chord is more than enough to scare the living crap out of me. Guitar wailing, Matt Bellamy wailing, synths wailing, waaagh.
    • Same could be said of the last minutes of "Space Dementia" and (much, much more so) Megalomania on one of their earlier albums. Megalomania... The circus-style keyboard line could not possibly be any more sinister, and just when you think "Space" is over, it kicks back in with this monstrous, threatening coda. Still, Megalomania is the best closing song on any of their albums, by far. Even the first chorus transition is tremendously startling.
  • Unsurprisingly, the song "Source Music of Doom" from the Invader Zim soundtrack has this. Not at the end, only about 30 seconds in, but definitely worth mentioning. Starts out with a strange tune about tacos before going into light flute-ish tune that seems very happy and cheerful before an out-of-place chord blares in your ears and kids sing "Bloaty's Pizza Hog!" over and over in your ears.
  • Tsukiko Amano's 'ZERO no Chouritsu' from Fatal Frame 4 does this. It opens with a gorgeous piano solo, then it goes into awesome Amano rock. Then it makes out like it's going to end on a repeat of the piano solo...before playing a sudden crashing jumble of notes.
  • Metallica's "To Live Is to Die" is a quasi-example; though the song itself has no dissonant ending, the last minute of the song had to be excised to fit CD limitations at the time, so the fade-out has been removed as well. What this translates into, if you're listening to the whole album, is you'll be listening to the pleasant, lilting outro of "To Live Is to Die" when all of a sudden the very loud intro to "Dyer's Eve" will pop up with no warning whatsoever.
  • Manic Street Preachers' "This Is Yesterday" has this. It's a relatively laid back song for the band at that point in their career (though plenty of Lyrical Dissonance is going on) until the last crunchy chord, which is followed by a guitar playing a variation on the main rhythm with descending chords... until it gets more distorted and turns WAY minor. Subtle, but I think it effectively underscores the bleak lyrics.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The title demo sequence. It originally shows various scenes of Clock Town and its inhabitants, with a peaceful-sounding rendition of the Clock Town theme playing in the background. But at the last 30 seconds, the scene shifts toward the Skull Kid and the falling moon in the night sky, and at this point the Clock Town theme starts to blend into the ominous theme of the Skull Kid, before transforming into it completely. A definite change from the simplistic yet cheery demo of Ocarina of Time (the previous N64 Zelda title), reflecting this game's comparatively darker atmosphere.
  • The opening song of Honey And Clover is a pleasant, upbeat song, set against visuals of some rather strange artistic arrangements of food. All is well until the very end, when a bowl of shrimp suddenly "reaches up" like a hand, in true zombie-movie style. See others' reactions when a convention panelist played the opening video.
  • Motorpsycho's "The One Who Went Away" ends with muffled laughter and a deep voice which says; "and listen, we are here to help you". The way it's said makes it sound more like a threat than anything else.
  • Subverted-though no less scary-in Stupify by Disturbed. It's a heavy song all throughout, but the last chorus is good Nightmare Fuel if you don't expect it to happen.
    "Look in my face / Stare into my soul / I begin to stupify...
    RAAAH!!."
    • Enough follows a standard progression (opening verse, chorus, second verse, chorus, bridge ect.) and appears to fade out with the tune it'd been following: fast drum beat and bass/guitar riff ending in a power chord. Until at the last second after fully quieting down, the band threw the power chord in at full volume, then an abrupt end. Even when expected this one isn't easy to go unnerved to.
  • Ween's "Don't Laugh, I Love You" is a cute, light song until, after a little of what at first appears to be the setup for the fadeout, becomes over a minute of a sound very much like an audiotape audibly rewinding, overlaid with nonsense syllables. Not scary as much as irritating.
  • The album version of Lordi's "Blood Red Sandman" ends with the sound of a knife being sharpened.
  • Subverted in Lemon Demon's "Mold en Mono". The happy, bouncy song starts to fade into sinister static and backmasking at the four-minute mark, then slides into portentous violins and creepy moaning...then all of the nightmarish sounds go silent, and a squeaky voice says, "Can we have, like, 'dun dun dun dun dun dah', like an ending part? So, just like...'dun dun dun dun dun dah'?" The requested cheerful guitar riff is provided, and the voice chirps, "Great!" Considering Lemon Demon has written a song called "NightmareFuel", it's almost certainly an intentional subversion of the trope. And, yes, subversion or no, it's not fun to listen to late at night.
  • Would you believe "Wonderwall" by Oasis? After the vocals are done, the song segues into a beautiful lush strings-and-piano piece and ends with a few acoustic guitar chords with birds chirping in the background. But between these two pleasant interludes, the piano fades, leaving the violin and bass viol to hold one last note. And then even the bass stops, leaving a single violin note which gets less and less melodic until it finally climaxes with a hideous, almost voice-like "BLLLLLEEEEEAAAAAGGHHHH" sound. If you're not expecting it, it's a real Penultimate Note Nightmare.
  • "Warera Gatchaman", the closing theme of Gatchaman II. The song itself is a rousing anthem about how awesome the Gatchaman team is and how they're going to defeat Galactor and save the day... but then, out of nowhere, the song ends with a sudden and nasty Scare Chord.
  • From Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the ending of Everything you Ever goes from bold and triumphant to Tear Jerker. And then it ends.
  • Eversion's World X-8 theme is very creepy and filled with Psycho Strings, but there are no surprises and it's actally quite calm. Then the music slowly fades out... All of a sudden, there's this really loud, startling drum. It's hard to describe, but really creepy.
  • The Fall of Troy's song "Chapter V: The Walls Bled Lust" consists of Epic Rocking for approximately the first five minutes. Then the instruments start playing without any rhythm at all, then the music completely cuts out except for some guitar feedback, then you get a ridiculously exaggerated breakdown where every third note is so high it literally brings pain to your ears.
  • The end of "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees is pretty unnerving. At the end, the cheerful harmonies blur into a fuzzy, echoing, almost unrecognizable cacophony. Scary indeed, if you've never heard it before.
  • Victims of Science's The Device Has Been Modified is, like most things involving Portal, is both unnerving and hilarious all the way through. But after it fades out, wait a few seconds. Are you still there...?
    • Your Mileage May Vary, this troper doesn't see how a cute robot voice (putting aside the whole turret thing and all) is scary.
  • Concentrical by Sonny Moore inexplicably ends with some strange squealing and crackling noises.
  • The last chords of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". It was probably originally intended to trick listeners into thinking their record player had suddenly jumped from 33 rpm to 45 rpm of its own accord somehow.
    • Also, Children of the Grave ends with a quivering note that fades in and out that lasts for a good forty-five seconds and is accompanied by an echoing whisper.
  • The untitled 9th track of Sonic Youth's Washing Machine (sometimes called "Becuz Coda" since it picks up exactly where opening track "Becuz" fades out): After 2 minutes and 20 seconds of lulling instrumental jamming, it seems to come to a close... then after a few seconds of silence, a loud chord jumps out at you. Not a hugely ominous one, mind you, but just unexpected enough to potentially make you jump out of your seat a bit.
    • Also, "Mildred Pierce" from "Goo", for that matter. The song starts off as a steady, repetitive instrumental jam...which makes it that much more shocking when the WHOLE SONG breaks down into noise. Not to mention the distorted screaming.
  • Chiodos attempted to invoke this with their older song, Deserving an Explanation, but the attempt comes off as almost Narm. It winds down with your standard Ominous Music Box Tune, and a very low growl at the close. Unless you're listening to this in a dark room, with no one else in the house, it's very hard to be frightened.
  • The Black Bag Project's Electric Swine does this. The song itself is Nightmare Fuel enough, and then you get to the last minute or so, where it disintegrates into hollow-sounding echoing harmonics and faint laughing, with unsettling chords playing... Needless to say, it really isn't something to listen to at night.
  • The song "Dream" by Forest for the Trees is a fairly upbeat blend of psychedelic sitar-strumming and Irish folk melody that segues out at the end into a series of idyllic sounds reminiscent of a sunny morning in the suburbs: birds chirping, grass rustling, the rhythmic "sput-sput-sput" of a lawn sprinkler...and then the harsh BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP of an electronic alarm clock.
  • "Are You Experienced?" by Jimi Hendrix can easily classify as psychedelic Nightmare Fuel by itself. But eventually the shiver-inducing backmasked guitar, bass, and drums fade into silence with Jimi's meandering solo on top...and then a sharp, blaring guitar chord surges at you and fades out just as suddenly. And it really doesn't help that said chord never sounds the same twice, even though it's the same recording.
    • Also, "Wild Thing" on Jimi Plays Monterey. The song ends with Hendrix setting his guitar on fire and smashing it to pieces - cue howl of feedback as the bits o' Strat burn merrily. Eventually it fades out and goes quiet for a few seconds... and then just when you start relaxing there's a last, impossibly loud shriek as (presumably) someone unplugs what's left of the guitar.
  • Russian Roulette by Rihanna ends with the sound of a loud gunshot. Not creepy, though, just annoying as all heck.
  • "Eyes of a Stranger" by Queensryche. It ends with some chaotic, strange-sounding technological noise followed by a man saying "I remember now".
  • The Carpenters' version of "Superstar" has a morose and unsettling resolution.
  • "Pink Flag" by the late-70s punk group Wire actually has two Last Note Nightmares. After about three minutes of a song that's already a bit morose, the band erupts into a painful minute-long cacophony highlighted by repeated screams of "How many?" Then, just when you think it's over, there's one more stinger.
  • "Universal Soldier" by Buffy Sainte-Marie has a fairly pleasant melody most of the way through, although the antiwar message is obvious, but it's driven home when the last line ("This is not the way we put an end to war") drops into a minor key.
  • "Stepfather Factory" by El-P is a song which is highly unsettling and depressing in itself all about domestic abuse. It only gets worse when all you hear at the end is silence and a robotic, Creepy Monotone voice repeating over and over, "Why are you hurting me? I love you. Why are you hurting me? I love you."
  • "VITRIOL" by Eths. A few seconds after the song fades out, a woman starts screaming.
    • Happens again in "Samantha". And "Bulemiarexia" ends with the sound of someone being violently sick. Eths like this trope.
  • This can happen a LOT on your Last FM player. Depending on what bands you put on.
  • The 1981 album "Claro que si" by the band Yello featured a hypnotizing instrumental track "Take It All". At the end, while the song was slowly fading away, a strange noise was growing in the background, kind of a nonsensical robot rambling, really creepy as if a weird and unpredictable robot was closing on to the listener. This immediately segued into the next song, "The Evening's Young", with the robot voice still around. A few second into the song, the robot voice started coughing and shut up.
  • From Mother3, Tasmily Village's theme from Chapter 4.
  • The nightmarish strings at the end of Supertramp's "If Everyone Was Listening", from Crime Of The Century.
  • The weird ending to "when i was bed" from Christian Death.
  • The after the fade out of the relatively mellow And One track "Sometimes", suddenly a very loud noise that sounds like a UFO crashing or something explodes out of your speakers. It can definately make you jump.
  • Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed is 64 minutes of nothing but a Last Note Nightmare.
    • The track "The Bed" from album "Berlin" is a dream-like song with a final moment of pure nightmare.
  • This remix of a song from Doom's soundtrack basically keeps the same tone as the original song, which is more quiet and mysterious than anything else, but at the end the song begins to rather literally break down and some unidentifiable but hellish noise plays in the background.
  • Sentenced's No One There ends with about half a minute of ambience with bird calls.. and then the volume is turned way up with the birds doing their best impression of The Birds.
  • Megadeth's "Hangar 18" turns into a cacophony of abrasive guitar riffs and devil solos about halfway through.
  • How on earth is Delìrium Còrdia not on here? Seriously. Go look it up. Only musical thing to ever creep me out in any way.
  • The Who's "Tommy's Holiday Camp" is a fun, commercial-like jingle welcoming visitors to the cult of the Pinball Wizard himself, sung cheerfully by his sexual predator uncle, Ernie. At the end of the song, Ernie decides he'll exclaim "Welcome!", but, deviating from the happy tone of the rest of the song, does so in an scratchy and ominous voice.
  • The eerie whispering at the end of The Birthday Massacre's Play Dead is an example of this.
  • The Abney Park CD Lost Horizons ends with a "ghost track". Leave the album going after the last song ends, and you might notice the distant sound of seagulls and waves, but quite possibly you won't. You WILL notice the sudden, loud and profoundly unnerving sound that follows, something like metal scraping and shuddering. Creepy.
  • "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat and Tears is a fairly mellow jazz-rock fusion song, often used as an example of the genre. However, after the lyrics end comes a Last Note Nightmare that spans a quarter of the song. The music continues repetitively, but is interrupted - twice - by some frankly demented carnival music. On the third interruption, the carnival music mixes with the "normal" music and slowly overwhelms it before grinding to a halt (at which point the band members can be heard chuckling and admitting that "That wasn't too good.") Can also lead to Fridge Brilliance if one only then realizes that the 'spinning wheel' is a merry-go-round. Duh.
  • Maybe this doesn't count as a last note, but look on You Tube for video people have taken of the US analog TV switchoff. It's just creepy, as most of them went from everything as normal, to static. As if all of civilization had just suddenly collapsed.
  • Russia's version of Marukaite Chikyuu appropriately has the character singing the chorus cute as anything until his "Kolkolkol" chant comes out of nowhere, and then just goes right back into being cute again before you have the chance to process the horror of what you just heard. It also didn't help this was the first time the fans actually heard the chant.
  • Steely Dan's "Josie" has an oddly menacing fade-out.
  • The Protomen's "The Fall" is incredibly optimistic and inspiring, but in the last few moments everything plunges downwards. Literally.
  • Phish's "Maze" has an inversion of this: after a very fast, aggressive jam section, the song suddenly quiets down, seeming like it's going to come to a soft, eerie end with the protagonist lost in the "maze" forever. Making it a bit jarring when the last measure of the song is a happy polka riff.
  • Type O Negative's "Haunted" is already rather dark, and abruptly cuts off mid-note at the end.
  • A First Note Nightmare, which is most effective when you hear the radio version first: The album version of Blue October's "Hate Me" begins with a rambling phone message from the narrator's mother. Without that bit the song sounds like a girlfriend breakup, unhappy but standard fare; when you realize it's his mom, well, that's just heartbreaking.
  • This troper always found the last notes of the older Sesame Street ending themes to be creepy. Hear it for yourself.

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