When you see it, you'll shit bricks.
"Remember to believe in magic...Or I'll kill you..."
"Rapidly aging and melting away,
Buzzsaws for hands and the monsters of clay
When videotape logos emerged from the void
And the unearthly synthesizers they employed"
-Lemon Demon, "Nightmare Fuel"
A catch-all term describing stuff in popular culture that gave us nightmares, whether they meant to or not.
To
really be effective Nightmare Fuel, as our examples show, you'll need something that was meant to either amuse, entertain, or be only
slightly scary to the audience. In execution, they're so trauma-inducing that they may cause even adults to void themselves in terror. For young children, media can be a minefield of this kind of stuff, as unexpected or over-the-top scary moments can crop up
out of nowhere in everything from grade-school plays to beer ads.
The Usual Suspects of
Nightmare Fuel include:
- Puppet, animatronic, claymation, or CG characters who were meant to be cute, but who instead look like they crawled from the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley.
- Surreal animation which makes Naked Lunch look like a Care Bears movie.
- Over-the-top slapstick violence; such as a character getting run over by a steamroller and turning into a flat photograph. It may seem funny to you, but imagine looking at such an event through the eyes of a literal-minded 6-year old.
- Horrifying transformations. Knowing that the character will probably be changed back into his/her original form at the end of the show does nothing to allay the trauma of watching their painful, scary metamorphosis.
- Dream sequences that make the freak-out scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seem like an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood.
- Many, many Primal Fears like being eaten or worse, being alive after having been eaten, being physically or emotionally hurt, the sudden appearances of frightening creatures and sounds.
- Sudden change in medium between live-action, traditional animation, CGI, or Claymation especially if it comes without warning and changes back just as quickly.
- Seeing someone we like get beaten to within an inch of his life.
- Disturbingly portrayed talking food.
- Anything involving damage to eyes or creatures with too many or not enough eyes.
This trope is named after the phrase "Good Old-Fashioned Nightmare Fuel", used by Mike and the 'bots at least three times in
Mystery Science Theater 3000 to describe trauma-inducing sights and objects in films that appeared by design to be originally intended for children. (For the record, the films in question were the incredibly creepy
Santa Claus, Roger Corman's
The Undead, and a scene in the otherwise silly film
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?. And
this
was from the former.)
It should be noted that Nightmare Fuel doesn't always make sense. Thus, there will be no judgment taken towards any examples - just, for the love of Benji, let us know
why the work of fiction in question was so scary. (Editors will cut anything that merely says "Oh, 'Show X' was horrifying!") Not all Nightmare Fuel will be scary to all kids; after all, everyone is different and horror is just as subjective as comedy. Indeed, to some kids, these scenes can be the coolest part of the movie! Some people have fond memories of watching the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from
Fantasia and cackling with childlike glee.
Furthermore, some kids may get Nightmare Fuel from things that aren't even on this list; and what one kid takes in stride may scare the pants off of another kid. Complicating matters further is the curious fact that gaining courage with regards to pop culture is not always an upwardly linear process; a kid may be too young to understand a more subtle kind of horror the first time he watches a movie and then be terrified watching the same movie years later!
There is an excellent discussion about this phenomenon and its possible psychological origins in
this blog post at
The Onion A V Club. And check out the website
Kinder Trauma - if you dare. Plus, enjoy (or run away screaming from) the
"Top 11 Scariest Nostalgic Moments" by the Nostalgia Critic, a complilation of scary-as-hell T.V. and movie clips from the 90's. *shudder*
There is, curiously enough, often some crossover with
Tearjerkers and
Fetish Fuel (we'll
try not to think too hard about that). Contrast with
Nightmare Retardant and
Narm. If the offending material can make you sick however, you've got
Nausea Fuel.
Well, go make sure you've got a fresh bulb in your trusty night light. It's time for...
Examples, by Medium
Related Tropes:
