Nightmare Fetishist

What horrifies the one may entice the other.

Tai: I like the glow of Locust blood in this light.
Dom: ...You've got a sick mind, Tai.

— Gears of War 2

This character is happily intrigued by whatever is strange, dangerous, disturbing, and/or frightening. If this character is "part of The Team", their fellows may regard them oddly. Indeed, what's Nightmare Fuel or Squick to other characters could very well be a fetish or Squee to this character. For example, a Nightmare Fetishist may consider Halloween their favorite holiday, harbor an obscure or oddly specific kink, think that the monsters they're supposed to be fighting are cute, or simply be born with this trait as part of their species or family.

In wackier portrayals, a Nightmare Fetishist might also be repulsed and horrified by things most people would consider wholesome and tame. Possibly as a good version of Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad (though evil characters can be Nightmare Fetishists as well).

This kind of person is very difficult to coerce or break through the usual methods; as they can be Too Kinky to Torture or Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth. Note that this trope is a sliding scale that does not always include a literal, sexual fetish; Nightmare Fetishism can range from a harmless fondness for morbid stories to a literal sexual fascination with the life-threatening (either may, at times, apply to Trashy True Crime).

Gustave Flaubert said that "One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us." In this case, people who find a very strong aversion to someone or something will slowly become desensitized to it and may even eventually develop an interest in it.

See also Freaky Is Cool, Freakiness Shame, Fetishes Are Weird, Fluffy Tamer, Boys Like Creepy Critters, Admiring the Abomination, Entertainment Above Their Age, Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, Creepy Good, and Creepy Awesome. Someone like this may enjoy our Nightmare Fuel page.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Rin Baio's Elegant Classical Musician persona hides a passion and love for anything violent. A look of sharp-toothed joy comes over her face at the sight of anything she deems "molto violento". It's even in her name as Rin Baio, in Japanese surname-first order, is Baio Rin, which can be both "violin", the instrument she plays, and "violent". She gets along quite well with masochist Iku, and loves the music played by Dreadful Musician Uto because it's so horrendous it counts as violence to her. Suu's habit of thinking of numbers like people even helps Rin in math, as she imagines the numbers-as-people being mutilated or stitched together for various math problems. She's aware of how her Nightmare Fetishism would cause problems, so outside of Rentarou's Family she makes an effort to hide it.
• Ai Yori Aoshi: When Taeko was given the breaking-in task of the photography club (going out into the woods and photographing a ghost), she leaped at the chance, much to everyone else's confusion. What's worse, she apparently succeeds. Later on, in a haunted house, she is seen laughing at all the things and calling them cute. For effect, the other two girls are completely freaked out and clinging, in tears, to poor Kaoru.
• Assassination Classroom: In chapter 159, Kayano remarks that she fell in love with Nagisa when she saw him plotting (literal) murder and that she enjoyed kissing him during their battle. This is many signs that Kayano isn't playing with a full deck.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Mad Scientist Hange Zoe. Once a hateful Blood Knight, a single incident (angrily kicking a Titan's severed head and being shocked at how much lighter it was than it looked) caused Hange to abandon this way of thinking and become fascinated by the Titans, adopting a Fluffy Tamer approach to them instead.
  • Dot Pixis comments that he wouldn't mind being eaten by a Titan as long as it was a sexy female one.
• Baccano!:
  • The series has a lot of characters who are involved in Dirty Business and are willing to play jump rope with the Moral Event Horizon. Then you get Omnicidal Maniac Ladd who literally dances in blood and considers "I'm gonna kill you last" as an endearing term to use with his girlfriend. She is completely accepting of this.
  • On the darker side of this trope, you have the immortal Fermet and Huey who only see other people as human components For Science!. This leads to them doing some rather despicable things as a means of enjoyment. Fermet in particular had a grand old ball torturing and killing immortal child Czeslaw Meyer repeatedly for upwards of 200 years.
• Berserk:
  • Slan, an Apostle, and one of the members of the God Hand. As if her creepy lack of outfit wasn't clue enough, during the Eclipse, when Casca is being raped by Griffith, Slan watches on and cries tears of joy, calling the entire scene a beautiful display of human emotions.
  • A later, less sadistic, but still quite disturbing example would be Sonia, a little girl and member of Griffith's new Band of the Hawk who is, unlike the rest of the world's populace, unafraid of the Eldritch Abominations known as Apostles.
  • A much more sympathetic portrayal is Farnese, who grew up as the spoiled but unstable only child of an incredibly wealthy noble family and aside from tormenting her servants and Only Friend Serpico, her only human contact was the sound of the heretics being burned alive by her family. She became so fixated on the idea that she eventually developed an outright sexual fetish for human immolation and started taking part in the witch burnings herself as soon as she could, eventually becoming the commander of a unit of church knights where she uses her position to torture civilians and treat her soldiers like crap. There are even multiple scenes where she outright masturbates to the thought of people burning to death and screaming in agony. But she also comes with a heavy dose of Freakiness Shame and struggles with knowing deep down that the way she treats people is horrible. Once her introduction arc is over and the awfulness of her actions becomes too clear for her to justify, she joins Guts and learns to channel her sadism into fighting monsters instead of lashing out at people who don't deserve it.
• Black Butler:
  • Maylene goes into fangirl mode upon seeing a mummy in episode 4.
  • Grell gets really excited at the thought of both cutting Sebastian into pieces and having his babies.
  • Undertaker enjoys the feeling of having the water sucked out of his body while being buried neck-deep in salt.
• Bleach:
  • Mayuri Kurotsuchi goes as far as to watch his own lieutenant/daughter get the life sucked out of her by his enemy resurrecting himself, and then proceeds to tell his enemy how interesting that particular technique is.
  • Yhwach has a nightmare of Ichigo Kurosaki defeating him and cutting him in half. Yhwach promptly wakes up, grins, and declares that there is no better dream than a nightmare. This bit him in the end, as his being this blinded him to it not being a dream, but a vision, something he doesn't realize until it happens for real.
• Bloom Into You: In the "Regarding Sayaka Saeki" spinoff light novel, Chie Yuzuki, Sayaka's sempai and First Love, enjoys Hayashi Renma's work, just like Koyomi in the main series. Since the work in question tends to be rather disturbing, Sayaka's surprised to see this side of Chie, having expected Chie would enjoy more lighthearted work.
• Cardcaptor Sakura had the Meganekko Naoko Yanagisawa who, during a conversation about a haunted house, mentions that she "likes that sort of thing". The manga includes visual aids of "that sort of thing" (UFOs, ghosts, monsters, unusual temples, and shrines). Of course, this tends to creep the living hell out of poor Sakura.
• Case Closed: Conan (a.k.a. Shinichi), Heiji, and occasionally the Shounen Tantei often see bloody and violent crime scenes as exciting or interesting challenges. Right at the beginning of the series, when Ran is crying after seeing a man get messily decapitated on a roller coaster ride (with the resultant fountain of blood), Shinichi is cheerful and assures her that "this kind of thing happens all the time". Made creepier by how Shinichi's behaviour is apparently the direct result of his dad Yuusaku, who not only is one of these as well but constantly brought him along to crime scenes when he was a kid.
• Chrono Crusade: Upon discovering that Chrono is a bona fide demon, Joshua doesn't freak out so much as he jumps for joy and eagerly asks him if ghosts exist, too.
• Deadman Wonderland: Rei Takashima is not merely a sadist, but also actually aroused by human suffering and mutilation.
• Dear Brother: Mariko Shinobu seems to be this. She tells Nanako and Tomoko the story of two Star-Crossed Lovers who got into a Suicide Pact almost with glee, apparently thinking it's the most romantic love story ever.
• Death Note:
  • Light Yagami, to an extent. He thinks shinigami are cute, makes jokes about how being a shinigami might be interesting and his fascination with the Death Note is a little... eerie.
  • Not that Misa is much better. She tells Rem that a Shinigami dying in an Heroic Sacrifice is "a beautiful way to die." Though that's not to say she isn't right.
• Delicious in Dungeon: Laios is absolutely fascinated by monsters and had been deeply curious about what they taste like for quite a while before the events of the series finally gave him a chance to try. Still, he fully understands how dangerous they can be, and his repertoire of monster facts has helped the party out more than once. He also cheerfully admits to an attraction to orc women. Among monsters, chimera are commonly seen as fascinating by him. In addition to his enthusiasm toward Falin and Izutsumi's conditions, he notes that he used to believe a monster was best composed of as many creatures as possible before coming to appreciate how just two creatures in one heighten each other's charms.
• Denki-gai no Honya-san: Fu Girl is enamored with anything to do with zombies, to the point that she gathers supplies for a theoretical outbreak.
• Durarara!!: Shinra makes it known that he thinks Celty is beautiful without a head. He also spent most of grade school and high school fanboying Shizuo's crazy rage fits.
• In FLCL Progressive & Alternative, there's Hidomi, who, at the start of the second episode, has a dream where she's devoured by zombie versions of her classmates and wakes up blushing.
• Franken Fran has a smattering of these on occasion. First off is Fran herself, whose reaction to a giant humanoid sea monster is "It sure is cute. I want one." Then there's the "People of Unusual Taste" who wound themselves to get Fran to operate on them. The extras also give us a little boy who responds to a toothy spirit by sticking his head in her mouth.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has Barry the Chopper, even over and above what you'd expect from an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer. The guy wants to find out what it's like to kill his own body — which, to be fair, he's not using right now, but it's still pretty goddamn weird even so.
• Full Metal Panic!: Gauron harbors quite a few unusual kinks. Sadomasochism, pedophilia, necrophilia, hybristophilia, autassassinophilia, erotic asphyxiation... most of it aimed at Sousuke.
• Get Backers: Takuma Fudou seems to get turned on by some pretty messed-up things, like the idea of "slurping up" Ban's blood, as well as him "feeling incredible chills rising throughout his body" when he kept his maggot-infested arm with him to remind himself of Ban.
• Goth: Boku and Morino are a pair of nightmare fetishists who investigate murders in hopes of uncovering the evil that lurks within their society. Boku doesn't flinch when the remains of a murder victim is found, as he wants nothing more than to see someone die in such a fashion even if that person is Morino. Morino even went to the extent of wearing the clothes they found near a mutilated and decayed body, just to see what it feels like.
• Heaven's Design Team has Pluto, who has the tendency to design creatures that are disgustingly creepy or grotesque, but which she herself finds cute. This is lampshaded by another designer when she was in the process of creating the horsehair worm to fulfill the client's request for something "adorably uncute".
  Venus: [obviously freaked out] It's a revolutionary idea... but maybe... it should have a better balance of cute and creepy?
  Pluto: Hm? So I can't just make all its components cute.
• Hellsing has The Major, who loves war and looks on with almost sexual excitement when Alucard releases his army of souls upon the Millenium and the Vatican armies. Schrödinger and the Doctor are this too, but the latter to a less extent.
• Hell Teacher Nube: The eponymous character is absolutely fascinated with the occult, what with being called to exorcise objects, places, or people every now and then. He can hardly conceive of others not sharing his enthusiasm. His student Miki Hosokawa isn't just fascinated — she'll willingly go and poke it just to see what happens.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Romania is a little too gleeful when he explains to his friend Bulgaria the legends of his most famous leader... Vlad Tepes.
  • Finland and Hungary are described as being all too familiar with scary things.
  • Belarus seems to be fascinated with scary stories and apparently talks to ghosts.
  • England himself has delved into some odd fantasies. Black Magic, Imaginary Friends, and even characters from familiar books that often make some countries grow concerned about him (particularly America). Outside the series, it's actually quite true that the Real England did have some odd characters, for example, King Cholera, and some fans actually think England and Belarus seem suitable together (an underrated ship, however).
• Hunter × Hunter: Hisoka is deliberately shown being sexually excited on the mere thought of fighting strong enemies.
• Kaiju Girl Caramelise: Manatsu Tomosato has a crush on the Kaiju Harugon, praising the monster's frightening appearance and expressing a desire to be stomped flat by it and/or incinerated by its Breath Weapon. During the trip she goes on with Kuroe and Rairi to Kaiju Island, she's also rather cheery when reporting that local legends say the Kaiju that supposedly lived there ate all the islanders.
• Kamichama Karin: Kujyou Himeka thinks bugs are cute. All types of bugs. This includes cockroaches and termites.
• Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru: During their fight, Kevin gets excited at seeing Minoru's fearful eyes, grabs him by the throat, and squeezes hard enough so as to make him cough up blood. He then drinks the blood while saying "Mmm... Delicious flavor... LET ME DRINK MORE!"
• Karin: Emotionless Girl Anju habitually carries around Boogie-Kun, a doll possessed by a serial killer with a knife in its hand. Angu tells Karin Boogie-Kun's past history with a cheerful smile on her face and later mentions that she collects other creepy dolls that all have interesting histories.
• Killer Killer:
  • When the cast investigates a murder/Organ Theft case at a local hospital, multiple doctors admit to being part of an organ fetish club. Due to the nature the Danganronpa setting, it's possible that there's a much greater market for such... fascinations than one would expect.
  • The titular character, Serial-Killer Killer Takumi Hijirihara, is revealed to be this as well. He started his "career" after watching Mukuro Ikusaba slaughter his classmates and obsesses over what he views as "passionate" murders.
• Last Exile has Dio. "Aren't dead bodies fascinating?" The boy isn't entirely sane, but that's part of what makes him adorable.
• Little Witch Academia: Sucy is very much interested in dangerous potions, mushrooms, dark magic, and in general her interest is piqued by nearly anything sufficiently unpleasant to everyone else. In particular, she's downright giddy at the prospect of being eaten by and passing through the digestive tract of a ghost in the TV series.
• Made in Abyss: Lyza is the only character who seems completely unperturbed by the numerous deadly and/or horrific aspects of the Abyss. She gives monstrous beasts whimsical names like she's on a field trip to the zoo, and got excited about her first experience of bleeding profusely from the "Curse of the Abyss." This is partly because she's so incredibly skilled that the deadly contents of the pit aren't much of a threat to her, but she was like this even as a child, insisting that Ozen's nasty scars from curse-induced madness were "cool." Much of her reckless fearlessness passed down to her daughter Riko, often getting the latter into trouble.
• Magical Pokémon Journey: Hazel likes cute Pokémon, but her definition of "cute" extends to species that aren't generally considered such, including Gengar and Tangela. She's so friendly toward Pokémon that she'll help them with whatever their problems are, no matter what said Pokémon look like, even to the point of facilitating an Interspecies Romance between a Wigglytuff and an Arbok, which is entirely possible in-game.
• My Dress-Up Darling: Huge Schoolgirl Shinju Inui is a huge fan of horror stuff in general, to the point she becomes really excited when her older sister Sajuna (who in turn is terrified of it) gets invited to a coffin party.
• Naruto:
  • Hidan of the Akatsuki enjoys pain, be it his own or his enemy's.
  • Local snake-man Orochimaru is anything but pleasant with his obsession of possessing people's bodies.
• Nightmare Inspector: The Baku fit the name of this trope almost literally.
• One Piece:
  • Nico Robin finds three-headed zombie dogs "cute". When introducing herself to the Straw Hats after the Alabasta arc, she smiles while mentioning her specialization is in assassination. Throughout the whole series, Nico Robin is able to talk about disturbing topics like death, dying, blood, etc., as casually and cheerfully as most people talk about the weather.
  • From the same arc as the three-headed zombie dog is Elegant Gothic Lolita "Ghost Princess" Perona, who describes her ideal vacation as going to a "dark, dank, haunted, ancient castle, singing songs of curses and having a miserable old time." Kuma then sends her to one of these; she realizes that it really is miserable without servants tending to her every need.
• The Ones Within has a Subverted example. As the LPer who specializes in horror games, people expect Sarayashiki to be this, but she absolutely does not appreciate being in a real-life horror game, thank you very much.
• Ouran High School Host Club has Nekozawa and his friends from the Black Magic Club, who are obsessed with curses and all kinds of creepy things. They're quite a happy bunch, too. Most of the characters regard them as harmless geeks, not so much scared as bored with their ideas. Tamaki, however, is scared beyond belief of Nekozawa and his "powers," so from his perspective at least this trope is played straight.
• PandoraHearts:
  • Ada is into the occult and medieval torture devices. Who knew?
  • Leo once tried to touch some people who have suffered Body Horror more out of wonder than anything. An omake also shows him declaring interest in the mangaka's Author Avatar's insides with a smile on his face.
• Please Tell Me! Galko-chan: Okako likes anything associated with suspense and horror. In a series where everyone is Only Known by Their Nickname, her name comes from this, by combining "occult" with the "ko" suffix often used by girls.
• Pokémon: The Series: Misty considers Tentacool and Tentacruel to be cute... in fact, Misty considers all water Pokémon cute no matter what.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Komachi is the only one not particularly frightened by the haunted house they encounter in one episode, not even when they discover a painting of someone who looks exactly like Rin. In fact, she thinks it's exciting. This is part of an ongoing tendency of hers to get excited about things (like becoming a Runaway Bride) that nobody else would see as positive.
  • In Smile Pretty Cure!, the resident Shrinking Violet and Cowardly Lion Yayoi is the only one excited by ghosts and something related to them — her eyes actually sparkle at one point — in contrast to the usually tough Nao, who is very afraid of ghosts (and some other things).
• Princess Tutu:
  • Big Bad Drosselmeyer delights in tragic stories and gets excited whenever things begin to take a dark turn.
  • Autor, being a Drosselmeyer fanboy, is implied to be like this as well — he finds the powerful ability to manipulate people by writing stories to be "thrilling".
  • And then, in season 2, there's Mytho after his heart is tainted with Raven's blood. When another character is about to cut out his heart, he requests they "kiss it and dye your lips red with its blood".
• Ranma ½: Gosunkugi apparently harbors a fetish for voodoo dolls in the manga. In the anime, it's amped up to more of an obsession with magic in general, particularly the creepier side of things. In one episode, he falls in love with Cute Ghost Girl Kogane, not being even the slightest fazed when he discovers her undead nature. His ideas of dates also include showing off his collection of occult lore (which happens to fixate on curses) and a romantic rendezvous in a purportedly haunted graveyard.
• Sankarea: Furuya's nightmare fetish for zombies is what catapults the entire plot, since he decided (for his own ego's sake) to try to resurrect his pet cat Babu into a zombie, just to see if he could. He also has a fetish for zombie girls and describes his dream woman as having her arm falling off and her guts hanging out. It's something of a Running Gag that any wounds or injuries Rea suffers are censored with yellow warning tape, but actual nudity is left uncensored because it's the gore that Furuya finds erotic.
• Sgt. Frog: Aki Hinata finds slimy, squishy things adorable and squees at the thought of Keroro's race secretly being hideous pudding monsters or something. This is explained by her being the editor of a manga for boys. Yet there's a lot of scenes of her being molested by weird, slimy monsters for some reason... and enjoying it.
• Yor from Spy X Family is secretly an assassin, and has appropriately macabre tastes, as shown in "PREPARE FOR THE INTERVIEW" where she is fascinated by a painting of a guillotine at the art gallery, and by the knives at the restaurant.
• Tokyo Ghoul: Torso seems to get really excited to a sexual degree at the sight of women with scars, his preferred prey. Then there's the whole cuddling with headless, limbless corpses.
• Toradora!: Minori goes so far as to trick people into scaring her and gets a nosebleed (complete with spurting blood) from the possibility of her class setting up a haunted house for the school festival.
• The Wallflower: Sunako Nakahara is a lover of solitude, gore movies, banned gore movies, anatomical dolls, and objects that reflect "the ugly side of life", as she puts it. And she tends to be pretty creepy herself.
• Wasteful Days of High School Girls: From a young age, Hisui Kujyo has been fascinated by the gore and occult. Her In-Series Nickname, "Majo", which means "witch", comes from this trait.
• Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest: Ryuuko gets turned on by violence to the point where she masturbates on top of a school rooftop after a few students had been gunned down there.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Ryou Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh!, the manga, likes collecting weird and occult things. Jonouchi is terrified.
  • In the manga, Seto Kaiba's the first person Dark Yugi drags into a Shadow Game that actually enjoys all the creepiness going on around him.
  • Miho from Yu-Gi-Oh! (first anime series) thinks that mummies are cute.

Comic Books

• Ragdoll from Secret Six happily accepts the description "the bent little castrated horndog" and delights in his ability to make absolutely any word or phrase sound unsavory, from "to my batpole!" to "cheese-stuffed manicotti". Black Alice is the first person in-universe to find Ragdoll hot; even Ragdoll was squicked out by this.
• Many Batman villains, particularly the Joker — especially in the 2011 New 52 release of Detective Comics (issue #1) — and the Scarecrow, who operates off of creating fear and loves what he does.
• Blackest Night has Black Hand, who's obsessed with death physically and on a platonic level. Rather fitting, considering that he embodies Death and the Lanterns working for it.
• Willie Pete of Empowered lives this trope. His name may be another term for White Phosphorus, but the other implication is in full effect — he literally skullfucks his victims to death, usually through the eye socket, because only human bone lasts long enough to (ahem) finish the job.
• Fluttershy has a moment of this in issue three of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) when a chupacabra and a pack of vampiric jackalopes battle (presumably to the death) for the right to eat the Mane Six, and Fluttershy watches with captive awe at the "fascinating" creatures.
• Death Vigil offers Mia, an Eldritch Abomination in the form of an adorable girl who eats other abominations. See the cover of the third issue for her Establishing Character Moment.
• My Friend Dahmer discusses infamous Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer hitting puberty.
• In Crossed, the titular Hate Plague turns everyone infected with it into psychopathic Combat Sadomasochists who enjoy the pain and suffering of both themselves and others. They're only ever shown eating other humans or things like broken glass, and if there's no uninfected humans around, they're prone to going catatonic from boredom.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Uber-villain Thanos of Titan is literally in love with Death, represented/embodied by an abstract entity that usually manifests as female when it chooses to personify. Most of the mad Titan's schemes involve genocide on planetary or universal scales (or at least mass murder) to please her in hopes that she will return his love and that they can be together. Thus far, his unrequited crush has continued to spurn him, though she doesn't seem to mind leading him on to the extent that it inspires him to cull a nice harvest of slain mortals for her. She has, however, been known to smack him down personally when he goes too far and threatens all life. This is due to Death needing life to exist, as only the living can die and thus without life there can be no Death.
  • Deadpool also has a fling with the same Death as Thanos, and she actually reciprocates. Depending on the Author this is either Deadpool settling for anything that would let him in its pants (in comics where she's a Grim Reaper classic, skeletal form and all), or genuinely good fortune as she's completely attractive (see her appearance in the Deadpool video game). Since Death's actual appearance is a case of You Cannot Grasp the True Form and what each person sees is A Form You Are Comfortable With, it makes perfect sense for a Death Seeker like Deadpool to find her attractive. It also might explain why Death likes Deadpool better. Thanos, as a nihilist, puts her on a pedestal and sees her as a perfect ideal. Deadpool just wants her to have her way with him and leave him breathless . . . literally. Unfortunately, Deadpool is functionally immortal so they can only be together in between Pool being eviscerated hard enough for a near-death experience while he regenerates.
  • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: After finding out about Gah Lak Tus, Reed proudly claims that it's the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Sue Storm accuses him of enjoying the thought of something going around killing civilisations in the crib.
  • Kid Gladiator, the son of X-Men foe/ally Gladiator. His reaction being turned into a Brood? He thought it was awesome, and protested being transformed back to normal.
• Cindy of Cindy and Biscuit is fascinated by monsters, aliens, and supernatural entities, and if they are evil and deserve to be beaten to death with a big stick, then that's a bonus.
• Wonder Woman:
  • When Nero Maximus examines the trio of Holliday Girls his legionnaires captured he declares that Glamora Treat and "Bobby" Strong are so attractive that he just can't wait to watch his tigers and lions tear them apart, and has them bound up in his Colosseum to be eaten alive in front of him immediately.
  • Villain Doctor Psycho really loves to Mind Rape his victims. In one infamous incident, he used More than Mind Control to enslave multiple people and turned them on each other in a frenzy of cannibalism, which made him sexually aroused. He also broadcast his sexual pleasure from the act into the minds of all his victims, leaving the survivors even more horrifically traumatized.
• One of the stories in Star Wars Vader Dark Visions involves a nurse in an Imperial medbay who begins developing a crush on Darth freaking Vader. When she accidentally gets a glimpse of what he looks like under the armor, she just becomes even more attracted to him. It doesn't end well; her deluded belief that they're truly meant for each other gets so bad that she eventually sneaks into Vader's private quarters while he's out of his armor, causing a disgusted Vader to cut her down with his lightsaber.

Comic Strips

• To describe Liō as one of these would be a bit mild. He thinks a zombie eating someone's face is absolutely hilarious. (His father has been seen reading a book entitled Is My Kid a Psycho?)
• In Calvin and Hobbes, a lot of Calvin's creations and imaginary antics disturb his parents, like making a bunch of snow people terrified at their impending melting.
  • Perhaps the most chilling of all of Calvin's fantasies had his parents clucking over him delightedly as he played with his Tinkertoys ("He's creating whole worlds over there") - without knowing that their son was imagining that he was the god of his own private universe and enjoyed sending mortals to Hell.
  • Calvin once invented a game called "Gross Out" in which players score one point by coming up with the grossest thing they can imagine; nobody has ever played a full, 50-point game with him.
  • In an early strip, when Calvin refuses to eat his usual unappetizing green dinner, his dad tells him: "Good idea, Calvin. It's a plate of toxic waste that will turn you into a mutant if you eat it." Calvin thereupon devours it with ravenous glee. In another, he becomes suddenly very eager to sample his mom's foul-smelling cooking when she tells him she's "stewing monkey brains."
• A classic Charles Addams cartoon shows a movie audience all with somber, teary-eyed faces... except for Uncle Fester, who's grinning delightedly. Of course, the rest of the family shares his tastes.

Fan Works

• In the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfic Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), Alan Jonah still has an interest in studying and exploiting Ghidorah's remains (namely San's severed head and Monster X) even after the three-headed dragon almost altogether ended the very world Jonah claimed he wanted to save: this is not out-of-character, given the kind of person Jonah is. Jonah's fascination with Ghidorah only gets more and more creepy and intense as he suffers Sanity Slippage.
• Lyra Heartstrings gives evidence of this in Another Stroke of the Lyrish. Her rationale for wanting the job at Fazbear's Fright is that it would be fun to see what it would be like to almost get killed by giant robots, never mind her taking the night guard position at the original Fazbear's establishment in the first place.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has Socrates, who wishes a somewhat-creepy Haunted House would be better and later claps "like a deranged seal" when an In-Universe Jump Scare involving a Monster Clown pops up.
• Child of the Storm has Gravemoss, an insane necromancer who, among other things, croons over super-zombies.
• The executions of Danganronpa are some of the most cruel examples of Cruel and Unusual Death, being tailor-made to be ironic to their victims. It should come as no surprise when in Class 78th Watches the Future most of the class is horrified by them when they watch their future, but two members are fascinated by them: Genocide Jill finds the mechanisms of death incredibly creative, where Junko Enoshima finds them interesting in how they work to crush the hopes of the rest of the survivors.
• In An Eagle Among Lions, Mercedes' love of ghost stories is expanded to casually talking about general topics of death and the macabre, such as when she wonders how many students have died during previous Battles of the Eagle and Lion (and Deer), or when she thinks Edelgard may be infested with brain parasites when Edelgard's desk suddenly vanishes from existence and everyone else forgets she ever had one. It makes more sense in hindsight with the reveal of Alternate Mercedes as the Death Knight.
• Izuku in Cinnamon and Spaghetti has a quirk that basically makes the monster from John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). His girlfriend Katsumi finds it really hot, especially the tentacles.
• Izuku Midoriya in Ghost Rider Izuku, who, despite his Nice Guy nature, possesses a preference for skeletal aesthetics, even to the point of giving his "Quirk-Powered Bike" a skeletal design (which naturally creeps out a lot of people); this is done because he's meant to be an Expy of Ghost Rider.
• In Hope for the Heartless, which is set after the events of The Black Cauldron, the resurrected Horned King is revealed to have collected his slain soldiers for centuries (as he stated in the movie) in preparation of using the Black Cauldron to make them Cauldron-Born. This was long before he was even certain of the Cauldron's existence, and the Cauldron-Born were his wicked joy. It's revealed that he still values them to an extent: after removing the remainders of the Cauldron-Born from his lands to make Avalina feel more comfortable there, he stores them to his castle's dungeons where the girl never goes. He does this regardless of how he could have arranged for the skeletons to vanish into thin air, and he knows that they're of no use to him anymore.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
  • Chloe Cerise showcases a love for the macabre as the story progresses, which includes a fondness of writing morbid stories taking place in the Wild Wilderness and a tendency to throw lyrics from her favourite dark songs into casual conversation. She became disillusioned with sharing this interest with most people back home due to mockery from her classmates but quickly regains her passion for horror and readily indulging in it while traveling on the train. One of her traveling companions, Lexi, is fascinated by her darker leanings so much that he bases his human form off of one of her characters. Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus ramps up this trait of hers when she's shown to know way too much about the Ars Goetia.
  • Chloe's younger brother Parker also shares this trait. They regularly watched children's horror shows together, and she would also regale him with creepy bedtime stories upon request. It's later harshly deconstructed in Chapter 22 when Zeno decides to place Parker in one of Chloe's stories. At first, Parker is excited to actually see all of the characters Chloe made...then Zeno shows off the new and improved Revolver, Playmaker and Soulburner. He only enjoys scary things if they're happening to other people, be it imaginary characters in fiction or people he feels deserve it. As soon as he's living a situation that actually terrifies him, the fun abruptly stops.
  • Speaking of Seeker of Crocus, a former passenger named Alec Cerise was just as enthusiastic of monsters like Chloe Cerise (no relation) was with many adventures he went through mirroring hers in some way.
• Tonks in In the Mind of a Scientist thinks it's "wicked" to see her heart beating when Harry cuts her chest open. Harry himself has not only performed open-heart surgery on himself, but he's also cut open his throat and messed with his vocal cords (to get a deeper voice), and regularly cuts himself open to see how parts of the body work. Afterwards, he always sews himself up instead of magically healing it so he looks more like a Mad Scientist.
• In the comedic-yet insane MLP fanfic MLP: FML, Sweetie Belle fills this role to a T. Not only is she hellbent on usurping Celestia, but she gets Cthulhu's autograph in one chapter and apparently has Freddy Fazbear band-aids!
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, S.T.A.R. Labs is robbed by an unknown assailant, who proceeds to flee to Japan. While everyone is mulling over what exactly the thief intends to do with the stolen technology, H.R. Wells, one of the co-founders of S.T.A.R. Labs, asks if the thief is trying to make a Godzilla because that's exactly what he would do, earning him looks of disbelief from his own Alternate Selves, Harrison Wells and Harry Wells.
• In Mortality, Culverton Smith gleefully tortures Holmes to within an inch of his life and is totally fine with it. Watson, on the other hand, isn't and actually outright KILLS his friend's torturer and the guy he was interrogating, and seems to be TOTALLY remorseless. Man, for a sweet soul, he's pretty brutal (and scary) at times.
• In The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, there's Professor Max, of the Played for Laughs variety; he loves dark monsters and ghoulies and doesn't see why no one else does. After Fudge calls back the Dementors from Hogwarts in Second-Year, while everyone else is cheering, he begs Dumbledore to let them stay.
• In U.A. Unsolved, the rest of Class 1-A watch It with varying levels of horror, including refusing to even look at the screen. Izuku laughs his ass off while talking about how great the movie is.
• Saga and Luna in Under the Northern Lights. It seems to be the prescribed aesthetics in the Temple of Hrimfaxi, which looks like a "haunted stable on Nightmare Night" according to Twilight Sparkle.
• Vale's Underground has two examples on different ends of the spectrum:
  • Penny Polendina is an absolute sweetheart and genuinely cares about others. She takes her job as a police officer seriously. She also joined the force to witness some gruesome stuff firsthand. She has a surprising fascination with all things macabre and enjoys the horror genre for this reason. She even wanted to show Ruby and Blake pictures from a case where a man was caught trying to rape his daughter's corpse while trying to use blood as a lubricant. (Makes you wonder why she just has pictures of that to show to people at a moment's notice...) Ruby and Blake, understandably, don't want to see them.
  • The mob boss "Cinder" is the literal version of this trope. She genuinely gets sexually aroused by violence and fighting. She loves to torture people and even loves tasting blood. After beating the crap out of a man, she licks the blood off her fingers. When having sex with Mercury, him telling her the sort of gruesome things she can do to her rivals helps bring her to orgasm. And her favorite method of killing people is the reason she goes by the name "Cinder." She likes to burn people alive to send a message to others.
• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Shortly after Harumi Tsukuyomi joins the Kamikaze Pirates, Ranma Saotome notes that he seems to have a crush on fellow new recruit Miriam. When Ranma politely brings it up, he notes that most people wouldn't be attracted to a 3-meter-tall amazonian tiger shark-girl, complete with a tail and a gaping mouthful of bone-shredding teeth. Harumi's reply is that those traits are part of the reason he's attracted to her. They ultimately go on to become a couple several chapters later.
• Vow of Nudity: Fiora the forest witch has a habit of casually describing hers and Haara's (usually hypothetical) demises with a little too much detail. After a while Haara starts growing concerned about whether or not she even wants to get home before the demons find and eviscerate both of them.
• A Waterbending Quirk: Bloodbending is one of the most disturbing applications of waterbending, using the water inside a person's blood and body to control them against their will. When All For One is subjected to the technique, he is fascinated by it, calling it exciting when he's made to suffer it by Katara.
• When Reason Fails: Izuku is noted to have a great love for horror movies and characters. Then he accidentally discovers there's a Lovecraft-ian hidden world of magic among the normal people, and he meets Himiko Toga, a ghoul he finds surprisingly attractive.
• Downplayed with May Marigold in BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant, but as seen in Chapter 80, she really likes scary stories and is bugged by her teammates not enjoying them to the extent she does. It's even stated in the Author's Notes at the end of the chapter that she's a horror buff.
• Discord's New Business: Of all the beings who saw Granite Wasps, Discord was the only one who wasn't scared by it. If anything, he absolutely adored it.

Films — Animation

• Back to the Outback: Norine is fascinated by the protagonists (who are various deadly but friendly animals), and helps them escape the school bus, correctly guessing that they just want to get home.
  Norine: *gasps* Deadly.
• Winnie from The Boxtrolls is blatantly obsessed with the titular monsters and their supposed barbarism, and is genuinely upset when that turns out to be false.
  Winnie: (eagerly) Did they kill your family? Did they let you watch?
  Eggs: What?
  Winnie: Make you watch?
• Edith from Despicable Me. Her bedtime prayers include the request to not let bugs go into their ears and lay eggs in their skulls/brains, she finds it "cooool!" that she and her sisters are sleeping in old, inactive bombs after Gru adopts them, and she is extremely excited to see that her pancake is shaped like a "dead guy."
• Lilo of Lilo & Stitch practices voodoo, owns a handmade doll that she pretends has a bug-infested skull, and is generally considered a freak by her peers. While this is implied to be a coping mechanism to deal with her parents' deaths, she still ends up with her only true friends being from outer space, and Lilo & Stitch: The Series has her befriending dozens of weird alien experiments.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Everyone in Halloween Town. There's a moment when Jack roars at Lock, Shock, and Barrel to scare them into shutting up. Shock almost looks like she's going to faint... and not with fear.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Wolf that hunts down Puss throughout the movie is a somewhat downplayed example, but he grows excited when people become terrified in his presence, since in this case he is the nightmare in question.
  Wolf: I just love the smell of fear!
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School: Sybella, Winnie, Elsa, Phanty, and Tanis are all this, as is Miss Grimwood herself to an extent. Examples include enjoying rotten food (including fungus fudge, toadstool tea, swamp brownies chock full of mosquitoes, and poison ivy punch) and relishing the thought of swimming in quicksand.

Films — Live-Action

• Elvira, Mistress of the Dark plays her reputation for laughs:
  (asked if she worships Satan): I dated him once, but I wouldn't exactly call it worshipping....
  (her trademark goodbye): Unpleasant Dreams!
• H. R. Giger, who created the Xenomorph design for Alien, appears to be one, considering the sexual imagery common to his art and how it was literally inspired by his subconscious night terrors. He even has a portfolio collection entitled Xenoerotica, which is exactly what is sounds like.
• The Addams Family: The Addamses consider their macabre surroundings normal. Gomez and Morticia consider the idea of being buried side by side in matching coffins to be romantic, and both parents were explicitly into bondage. Along with S&M. "Leather straps, red hot pokers..." "Later, my darling." Morticia searches the impostor Fester's bag and remarks "Crowbar? Dynamite? Cyanide? Fester, as if we'd run out." Also the children are shown playing with weapons and even a working electric chair. Their parents give Wednesday bigger knives when they catch her with one.
• Addams Family Values: Even the concept of dying doesn't seem to frighten them and when Debbie attempts to kill them they act sympathetic.
• Almost an Establishing Character Moment with Cassie in Ant-Man. Her father's gift for her birthday is a horribly made bunny that looks mangled and devours souls instead of carrots. She loves it and proclaims her intent to show it to her friends with glee. She also seems to have kept the ant that Scott accidentally enlarged during his Final Battle against Darren Cross/Yellowjacket to the size of a large dog as a pet.
• The Jack Nicholson version of the Joker in Batman (1989) shows himself as this when he meets Vicki Vale at the museum, reacting with bored indifference to (if not actually being turned off by) Vicki's modeling photographs, but being visibly impressed with (if not actually aroused by) her gruesome war photos. Shortly before this, when the Joker and his goons go around gleefully defacing the museum's paintings, he decides to spare Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat because he likes the macabre style.
• Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice had no problem living in a Haunted House, though the eponymous character was a considerable nuisance. She even became his friend in the spinoff cartoon.
• The Coroner in Body Bags enjoys talking about every way a person can die, with the exception of natural causes.
  Coroner: Natural causes, natural causes. More natural causes. I hate natural causes! Give me a big old stab wound to poke around in, then I'm happy.
• Bunny Lake is Missing has a literal example. A retired nursery school teacher named Ada Ford still resides at her former school and makes tape recordings of children describing their nightmares. When questioned about it, she claims It's for a Book.
• That punk kid in The 'Burbs, who invites all his high-school buddies over to the neighborhood to witness the quirky, outlandish, and sometimes downright grotesque activities of his neighbors, which include everything from "spy missions" carried out by a deranged Vietnam vet to a family of subhumans who murder intruders and apparently eat them. At the end of the movie, amidst all the commotion, he gestures at everything around him and shouts: "God, I love this street!"
• Raven in Cecil B. Demented. Drinks goat urine, enjoys getting branded, and at one point says, "I haven't had this much fun since my last livestock mutilation!"
• Tommy Stubbins from Doctor Dolittle. He's excited to learn that they are going to be sailing into a terrible storm and cheerfully suggests that the Sea Star Island natives might kill them. Then, when they really are going to be executed, all he can do is anticipate how the natives are going to do it. The others find his enthusiasm a little disturbing.
  Emma: Whoever said children have beautiful minds has obviously never met you.
• The movie Eichmann about the eponymous Nazi war criminal (played by Thomas Kretschmann) has a bizarre scene where Eichmann has sex with a Hungarian noblewoman who is turned on by his boasts of the amount of Jews he's ordered to be gassed.
• Ghostbusters:
  • Ray Stantz, especially in the first animated series. He's the most sympathetic towards Team Pet Slimer, an ugly, mischievous little slime ghost, and is more than happy to receive fellatio from a siren in the first film.
  • An offhand mention from Venkman in the original film involves stopping Egon Spengler from attempting self-trepanation (drilling a hole through his skull), he's pleased that Louis Tully is willing to let him test his brain tissue, and is revealed to be an ex-coroner in the 2009 video game (Egon says it's "just a hobby" now).
• Harold from Harold and Maude loves faking his own suicide in front of his mother and the girls she sets him up with.
• Hellraiser:
  • Frank Cotton has a sadomasochistic love/hate relationship with the Cenobites and the Lemarchand Box. He also at times appears to get a bizarre kick out of occupying the attic as a skinless, flesh-consuming monster, which might suggest that there is a sadistic as well as masochistic side to his tastes.
  • The Cenobites themselves are Anthropomorphic Personifications of the trope.
    Pinhead: We have such sights to show you...
• There are two twin characters from The House of Yes, Marty and Jackie, who like to have sex while reenacting the JFK assassination.
• The Human Centipede:
  • In the second film, the original movie, about a Mad Doctor sewing people together mouth-to-anus (with all the horrifying implications you can picture), is a Show Within a Show. Martin, the Villain Protagonist, finds it erotic and is inspired to make his own "human centipede".
  • In the third film, when the evil warden Bill Boss decides to force his prisoners into a human centipede in order to stop them from rioting, he finds that one of them is a man who regularly eats his own feces and wants to be put into the centipede. Boss simply kills him, as the centipede was meant to be a punishment.
• Although it's somewhat justified because he defuses bombs for a living, Sargent William James of The Hurt Locker seems to enjoy playing with high explosives a bit more than can be considered strictly professional. And even the other bomb techs are a bit creeped out upon learning that he keeps souvenirs of every bomb he's ever handled in a box under his bed.
• In The Island (1980), Dr. Windsor is the pirate tribe's liaison with the modern world. Having stumbled upon them years ago, Windsor admired their primitive brutality and formed a partnership with them, sending vacationing boats towards the tribe, resulting in men and women being butchered and raped, and children kidnapped and brainwashed into joining the tribe. He describes the tribe as an "anthropologist's dream" and a Petri dish.
• Eleanor Bonneville from Jigsaw is a coroner working for the police department where a man with his head sliced in half comes in, kicking off the film and leading the detectives working the case to speculate that Jigsaw, although having been dead for ten years, is somehow back to putting people in traps. When the detectives start suspecting Eleanor of being a copycat killer, Logan, the other coroner working in the office, sticks up for her and goes with her to her secret loft, only to find it filled with recreations of old Jigsaw traps; she tells him that she's fascinated with his work, and that "A girl's gotta have a hobby." She does take offense, however, when Logan asks her if she "gets off on this shit."
• Nightbooks: Natacha enjoys scary stories a lot. She reacts negatively to any inaccuracies that take her out of the narrative. It is later revealed that that's because scary stories keep the original witch that she fears asleep.
• There seem to be a couple of these in Repo! The Genetic Opera. Most notable is Graverobber, who is absolutely giddy to be surrounded by a sea of rotting corpses and is implied to be a necrophile. Then there's Pavi, a rapist who steals the faces of women. And wears them. Over his own face. The Largo family in general seems quite...odd, to say the least.
• In The Return of the Living Dead, we have Trash, who thinks a picnic in a cemetery is a fantastic way to spend an evening, and who becomes visibly aroused when talking about her idea of her worst way to die, to the point that she tears all her clothes off and dances naked in said cemetery.
• Harlen "The Reporter" Maguire in Road to Perdition. Not only is he a news photographer who specializes in crime scenes, but he also moonlights as an assassin and takes a certain professional pride in his work, to the extent that he considers a murder victim being Only Mostly Dead to be an unfortunate obstacle to a good photograph.
• Director Krennic in Rogue One. After witnessing the Death Star's handiwork on Jedha, all he can say is "it's beautiful."
• In Snuff Movie, Boris is assisted in creating his Snuff Film by a trio of teenage murder groupies known as X, Teeth and Youth.
• Mary Jane in the Spider-Man Trilogy, oddly enough. In an early scene in the first movie, she expresses that she loves creepy, disgusting spiders.
• India from Stoker is infatuated with her Uncle Charlie, even though he's a stalker and a murderer. In fact, she doesn't really warm up to him until after she discovers this fact, and is implied to be aroused by him beating up her classmate after he tries to rape her. Later, she becomes a near-literal example of this trope when she remembers Charlie murdering said classmate, and masturbates to it.
• Jinya Yanase from Teito Monogatari Gaiden is a young hospital worker who's obsessed with the stories about Taira no Masakado and his Dragon, the Evil Sorcerer Yasunori Kato. He also happens to work in a mental hospital located near the grave of Taira no Masakado himself, which fuels his imagination. Little did the guy know that he would end up as Kato's Soul Jar, though.
• The antagonist of Tetsuo: The Iron Man is called "The Metal Fetishist". When he was alive, he enjoyed shoving bits of metal into his body.
• Tragedy Girls: Sadie and McKayla both exhibit an uncomfortable fascination with death, befitting their pastime. Sadie would much rather examine pictures of violent crime scenes (and gush about how "amazing" the blood splatter is) than make out with Jordan, and McKayla passionately kisses Toby while he bleeds to death. Their rather emotionally-charged relationship also has undertones of In Love with Your Carnage.
• Bella Swan from Twilight is absolutely ecstatic about her crush being a vampire and leaps at the opportunity to become one as well.
• Mike Teevee in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is the only one of the group that enjoys the scary tunnel. Grandpa Joe and Charlie initially enjoy it too but get freaked out when they see Slugworth.

Literature

• The Marquis de Sade, full stop. It would be much easier to list all the things he wrote that didn't use torture and carnage in a pornographic way. Some of it was solely to offend and challenge the sensibilities of his time, but there's good evidence that suggests he actually got his rocks off that way for reals. He also fully supported allowing everyone to indulge in nightmare fetishism without any fear of punishment by the law whatsoever, even writing one entire work to promote the concept.
• In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, a sociopathic serial killer mentions that he masturbates to a scene from the thriller film Body Double where a woman is drilled to death with a power drill. (Over the course of the book, he also tortures a woman with a power drill and does things that are even worse.)
• Visser Three of Animorphs. When the heroes get a look in his private quarters, they discover he has various alien and human torture devices hung like art, including an iron maiden.
• Tommy in Bloodsucking Fiends. His first words after learning his girlfriend was a vampire? "That is the most awesome thing I've ever heard. Let's have sex with our socks off." The sequel gives us Abby Normal, a Perky Goth who didn't jump at the call to be a vampire's minion but hunted it down and demanded the job.
• Johannes, the Nazi Protagonist of Caging Skies, recounts growing up in Nazi Germany.
  We learned, too, how Jews were unable to love beauty. They preferred ugliness. We were shown paintings they had created and admired — ugly works where a person's eye was not in the right place but in front of his face, paintings where hands looked like the bloated udder of a cow, where hips joined directly with breasts, where subjects had no neck, no waist. One seemed to be shouting with all his might but had no mouth, like a scarecrow yelling silence at the crow-infested cornfields. I admit that this knowledge kindled in me a morbid fascination with the Jews, but before that could have led to any misplaced ruminations, the time for the pursuit of learning ran out.
• Beth from the old Phyllis Reynolds Naylor books "Boys vs. Girls" was constantly reading horror books, but it made her a nervous wreck, while her drama queen little sister Caroline loved everything bloody and disgusting as long as it was dramatic.
• Willy Wonka of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is unperturbed and even amused by the various bizarre, frightening fates that befall those who don't listen to him. In the 1971 film he gleefully remarks "The suspense is terrible! I hope it will last..." as Augustus Gloop is stuck in a pipe, screaming for help. And only this or a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant would plan and build that creepy-as-hell boat tunnel to the Inventing Room for no reason at all. In the 2013 stage musical, he happily joins in on some of the Oompa-Loompas' songs that serve as send-offs for the bratty kids (and Death by Adaptation applies to some of them here). And while he doesn't have a scary boat tunnel, the lonely cellars his Cool Boat plies the waters of contain stores of sometimes creepy failed inventions — life-sized and crying jelly babies in cribs, anyone?
  • In the original book, The Oompa-Loompas also qualify. In their fits of being The Hyena they gleefully sing about everything horrible that happens and just keep on going.
• Vaughn, Ballard, Helen, and Gabrielle from J.G. Ballard's Crash. More so in the movie than the book, the whole plot seems to revolve around sexual fetishism involving grievous injury and automobile accidents.
• This is how the protagonist of Crooked Little Vein views most of the people he comes into contact with, including (but not limited to) an underground Godzilla masturbatory ring, a group of elderly ostrich lovers, gay men who inject saline solution into their genitals, and even his own ex's current lover, who makes strap-ons in the shape of dolphin penises.
• Dyke Mellis in Eat Them Alive, who, despite being castrated and consequently unable to become aroused, is said to be deeply enticed by the sight of his giant praying mantises eating people, to the point of seeing the experience as making up for his lost manhood.
• In Emily the Strange: The Lost Days Emily/Earwig loves her nightmares. It gives her an adrenaline high.
• The title character of Franny K. Stein is a little girl who happens to be a Mad Scientist. Her interests include guts, bats, spiders, and making monsters.
• Gangsta Granny: The main character Ben likes the gory parts of history.
• Ghost Girl (2021): Zee loves telling ghost stories, regularly visits the cemetery, and is excited by a flooding thunderstorm.
• The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization portrays Ren Serizawa as this, as he very much has a fetish for the most violent and dangerous Titans such as Ghidorah and the Skullcrawlers. Ironic since he's allied with a Muggle Power Nebulous Evil Organization, but fitting with the themes of hubris and arrogance surrounding Ren and the rest of Apex, especially since it's hinted that Ren's Nightmare Fetishism for Ghidorah's surviving skull made him easy for the remnant consciousness to manipulate into giving it a new body.
• Harry Potter:
  • Hagrid has a clear preference for dangerous beasts, including a Cerberus Captain Ersatz and possible descendant (Fluffy), a Norwegian ridgeback dragon (Norbert who's really a Norberta), a hippogriff (Buckbeak), and a giant fracking spider (Aragog). He eventually gets a job as Hogwarts's Care of Magical Creatures teacher, which he loves.
  • When Harry is fitted for his wand, Ollivander remarks with what seems to be almost pleasure that Harry has been selected by a wand which was made using the same materials as those used to fashion Voldemort's. Harry is understandably a little weirded out by this, and by Ollivander's next comment that he expects Harry to do great things because so did Voldemort. "Terrible, yes - but great."
• Heart of Steel features Alistair Mechanus, a Mad Scientist, Mad Doctor, and brilliant roboticist who hasn't had much in the way of human company in ten years. He takes utter delight in things like making beastmen and other chimeras and is initially confused when his guest Julia doesn't share his taste in romantic gifts.
• Most of the characters, in Andrew Boland’s novel Hell's Children, are definitely Nightmare Fetishists. Going on the author’s biography, it would seem that he is one of these too, which would explain a lot.
• The H. P. Lovecraft story "The Hound" stars two Asexual Life Partners who spend their days collecting whatever ghastly things they can find, from Tomes of Eldritch Lore to corpses.
• I Am Not a Serial Killer: One of the first things we find out about John Cleaver is that he's fascinated with serial killers. And that he eagerly helps out with the family business — undertaking.
• The Impairment's Allie Parker, the fraud therapist/serial killer at Mildwood University. She relishes her job because she "gets off" to her patients recounting horrific events which happen to them, which she's responsible for.
• In Island in the Sea of Time Dr. Alice Hong counts. She's apparently literally incapable of orgasm unless she is inflicting, or receiving, pain. Not a run-of-the-mill BDSM fetishist, Hong enjoys vivisection sans anesthetic, ritual human sacrifice via various gruesome tortures, and so forth.
• In the horror novel Jago, Allison Conway is the girl that even the bullies are frightened of. When she meets an undead revenant still bearing the scars of his firey death, she doesn't run away screaming, she invites him to be her boyfriend.
• In Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs the Duchess Josiana is one. Josiana is the illegitimate daughter of the previous King and jealous of her sister, Queen Anne. She isn't happy with her arranged marriage, preferring to sleep with someone poor and hot. And whom does she find hot? Gwynplaine, a man whose face has been permanently mutilated to always have a Slasher Smile. One of the first signs something is off about Josiana is the location her fiance takes her on their date: a fight match where people beat the holy hell out of each other with bare knuckles. She really has a thing for the disfigured.
• The Novel of the Iron Maid from Arthur Machen revolves around a Mr. Mathias who secretly has a great love of obscure and intricate medieval torture devices, and has spent his fortune secretly amassing a great collection of them. He isn't a sadist or even a masochist and doesn't want to kill or torture anyone. He just thinks torture devices are cool and keeps his grim hobby a secret because he knows other people will be freaked out by it. No points for guessing how he dies.
  • Arguably many of Machen's protagonists count as this to some degree or another, as they rarely have any personal stake in whatever supernatural unpleasantness is going on and are investigating it purely out of idle curiosity, while knowing full well that the mere sight of what they're looking for has left others permanently traumatized by the experience. Probably counts as Author Appeal as well, since Machen based most of these same protagonists on himself.
• Tyler from Pact is a Starving Artist who, upon discovering that the supernatural is real, immediately becomes excited at the idea of monsters being real, and is swiftly impressed by Isadora, a Riddling Sphinx who eats people, and Green Eyes, a carnivorous mermaid.
• Kiera Graves from Mindy Mackay's Peacebreakers fits this trope for her erotic fascination with scar tissue.
• Perdido Street Station:
  • Mister Motley, a crime lord who spends a lot of time in the shadows. In the city of New Crobuzon, those who commit petty crimes are often turned into Remade by bio-thaumaturges, given animal or mechanical features that fit their crime. Motley has undergone this process voluntarily, hundreds of times, and now not only looks like a rolling mass of disjointed features but has hired the main character's girlfriend to create a sculpture to his "glory."
  • The main character himself, Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin. The aforementioned girlfriend is a shapely woman with a giant beetle for a head, he's extremely intrigued by Body Horror, a bird-person turning up on his doorstep asking for a new set of wings all but causes him to squee, and he is cheerfully enchanted with one particularly weird grub netted by his black-market attempts to find flight specimens. Until that grub grows up. You know when Isaac is freaked out, shit got real. He can hold a conversation, an intelligible and productive conversation, with The Weaver.
  • One of Isaac's friends is eventually revealed to frequent a brothel where people have sex with the Remade. This is illegal; the city's repressive government is blackmailing him into serving as a spy using the evidence.
• Ratburger has Miss Midge, a Stern Teacher who likes the goriest parts of history, and Sheila, who seems to like the idea of rats being pulverized.
• In Caitlin Kiernan's The Red Tree, the protagonist's late girlfriend, a photographer who specialized in digital manipulation, took art commissions from such people.
  "Mainly, I have clients, private collectors who are into what I do, and I take requests. They ask for some specific image, and I create it. Images you can't get with just a camera, but that they carry around in their heads. They bring me their sick shit, and I make it visible."
• Sheila Rae, the Brave: Sheila Rae pretends her cherries are bears' eyes, and eats five. Also, she and Louise both have fun attacking the trees, pretending they're evil creatures.
• Discussed Trope in A Song of Ice and Fire. The Mad King, Aerys Targaryen, had a fetish for burning people to death. His guard Jaime Lannister noted that it was only after doing so that he would visit his wife's chambers. And to add to it, he was so violent in bed with her that Jaime wondered if he was obligated to intervene. King's guard makes a vow to protect the king and royal family. But there's nothing in those vows about protecting the queen from the king... In short, it is so horrible it becomes the first step of Jamie's journey from one of the youngest idealistic knights ever knighted and accepted into the King's guard to becoming a Knight in Sour Armor.
• The Southern Vampire Mysteries make frequent mention of the vampire-obsessed "fang bangers" who get off on having their blood drained, having sex with vampires, or just being around them.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe has the Yuuzhan Vong, a species of genetic engineers who fetishize Body Horror, both on themselves and on others.

Live-Action TV

• The Addams Family: The Addamses use a dungeon full of torture implements as a playroom. They cure headaches with a headvice, backaches with a bed of nails or the rack, and claim that an iron maiden is "relaxing". They even regularly wield medieval weaponry or, in Uncle Fester's case, a blunderbuss.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In "The Patriot", Simmons puts on a Torture Technician act, displaying a severed head to a former HYDRA agent to get him to spill his guts (the head in question was actually from the android Aida, but he didn't know that). Fitz finds this surprisingly sexy.
  Fitz: Is it weird that I found that attractive?
  Simmons: [smiling] Yes.
• One episode of Being Human introduces "Seven", a human who voluntarily acts as a self-replenishing blood source for a vampire couple. Seven (and his six predecessors) are apparently all too happy to be fed on repeatedly and, when his "owners" intend to have another vampire drain him completely (ie, kill him), Seven is ECSTATIC.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Rosa Diaz and Adrian Pimento, their relationship is built on it. Pimento's sexy letter to Rosa and his threatening letter to his Arch-Enemy are word for word identical. In one episode, Terry arranged a field trip for students from a school he wanted to get his daughters into, he got upset when the detectives exposed the kids to the more gruesome aspects of police work.
  Rosa: When I was twelve I would've killed to see a bag of hands.
• Buffy and Angel:
  • Darla, Angelus, Drusilla, and Spike spent centuries perfecting their torture and murder, specifically traveling to various wars and genocides so they could be as savage as they wanted with no one noticing. Angelus in particular treats Mind Rape like a fine art.
  • Giles' academic interest sometimes seems a bit too enthusiastic to others.
    Giles: Grave robbing. That's new...interesting!
    Buffy: I know you meant to say "gross and disturbing".
    Giles: Yes, yes, of course. Terrible thing; must, must put a stop to it. ...ermh, dammit!
  • Dawn apparently loved to listen to Spike's stories of the horrific crimes he committed before he got chipped/ensouled. Buffy was rather freaked when she found out about this.
  • Vampire Xander happily watches Wishverse Willow torture Wishverse Angel with a fond look on his face.
• The protagonist of Dexter is a serial killer who works for the police and gets fascinated with gruesome murders, especially in the first season.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor has a tendency at times to happily wander into situations that horrify and disgust those around them and then, much to their confusion and bewilderment, cheerfully start pointing out things they find particularly interesting or even beautiful. This has always been a trait of the character right from the beginning and applies to all incarnations, although some are more obvious about it than others.
    • This was a trait of the First Doctor right from his very second serial, "The Daleks" — while everyone else in his crew wants to get off the petrified planet, he fakes a serious engine malfunction so he can go and explore the foreboding city in the distance. When he discovers it's actually full of nasty Daleks, which his crew is terrified of, he just finds them very interesting. In the next serial, "The Edge of Destruction", when the crew realise that their Negative Space Wedgie has taken them right back to the beginning of the universe, he gets a rapturous soliloquy in which he talks about the infinite power and potential in the nebula and how it could easily kill them all, and how brilliant it is.
    • The Fourth Doctor, while not so keen on trampling over other people to satisfy his Nightmare Fetish, was just as bad if not worse. In "Robot", his first serial, he gets himself clobbered over the head by a rather clunky giant robot because he just can't resist stopping to admire how beautiful it is. In "The Ark in Space", there's a part where he takes off part of the Wirrn's eye and decides to use it to see the last memories of the dying hideous parasitic space wasp by attaching it to his head with electric clamps. He tells the doctor helping him that it is extremely dangerous, extremely painful, extremely unpleasant, hands her a gun to kill him in case anything goes wrong, but is clearly grinning with excitement at the thought of how dangerous it is and attaches the electric clamps to his head with some obvious sadomasochistic pleasure. In "The Creature From the Pit" he tells a massive, veiny green blob monster that it has "beautiful skin", strokes it, and cuddles up to its side. In "City of Death" he's highly impressed by a murderous hitman — "what a wonderful butler, he's so violent." In "The Leisure Hive", his discovery of powerful temporal energies that rip people to pieces is heralded by an extreme closeup of him licking his lips and saying "fascinating".
    • In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio Caerdroia, Eight develops a Literal Split Personality. His cloudcuckoolander side inexplicably thinks death by stampeding cows, the threat of which is worrying most of the other characters, is pretty funny. "They get together, they run you over..."
    • The Tenth Doctor constantly ruins his own life due to the size of his Nightmare Fetish. When the Doctor encounters a werewolf and it begins to break out of its cage, the look on his face is of obscene curiosity, even when everyone else is running in terror. (To be fair, it was a hypnotic werewolf.) Rose and the Doctor grin and hug over the novelty of being attacked by a werewolf when they get a moment to breathe in the midst of being chased by said werewolf. Queen Victoria berates the Doctor and Rose for their light-hearted attitude to horrifying situations, and decides to found Torchwood, the organisation eventually responsible for their separation, to specifically avoid that sort of thing in the future. In "Midnight", his merry interest in the entity makes everyone else terrified of him, nearly resulting in his death.
    • The Eleventh Doctor does this a lot in "The Beast Below", whooping in glee over falling down a nightmarish bottomless pit and then again over being regurgitated by a giant Space Whale while Amy screams in terror or revulsion. In "The Eleventh Hour", he also ogled the horrific giant eyeball behind the crack in seven-year-old Amelia's wall in fascination, which made her less scared, which might suggest that he intentionally does this to alleviate his companions' fears when things aren't immediately dangerous.
    • The Twelfth Doctor's obsession with a "perfectly hidden" monster he has conjectured exists in "Listen". He was so desperate to see it that he nearly let himself get sucked out of an airlock at a point just before the death of the universe. He gives a rousing speech to a little boy about how wonderful and brilliant fear is and clearly gets an enormous kick out of his terror of the monster. Clara even lampshades this in "Mummy on the Orient Express", asking if constantly going on life-threatening adventures is an addiction for him. In "Under the Lake", he expresses unbridled glee at the prospect of meeting "a proper ghost".
  • Some companions also have this affliction as well:
    • Carol Ann Ford, who played the First Doctor's companion Susan, said in an interview on Radio 4 that the Eleventh Doctor's constant running up to aliens and telling them how beautiful they are is her favourite thing about his character. In fact, even in the 1960s, she thought that Susan should have been a Nightmare Fetishist by sheer logical extent of how weird she is and how she'd get desensitised to the monsters quite soon — but, unfortunately, she was constantly written as the Screaming Woman.
    • Vicki, the First Doctor companion, has a major case of this, which is used as Commonality Connection between her and the Doctor. For instance, she seems just as excited as he is to meet historical tyrants, praises the Doctor for being unintentionally responsible for the burning of Rome, and manages to go too far even for him after announcing that she finds ant-aliens the Zarbi to be cute, something even he can't see (she even takes one as a pet and names it "Zombo"). She also kept a sand beast named Sandy as a pet while on the planet Dido, a creature so terrifying that Barbara murders it on sight, much to her disgust. She even, seeing a Dalek shell in a museum, coos over it and tells the others that she expected a Dalek would look fearsome, but that "this one looks quite friendly".
    • Clara's relationship to the companion lifestyle is explicitly portrayed as a bizarre sadomasochistic addiction in Series 8 — she lies about it to her friends and to the Doctor, ending up hurting everyone she cares about, entirely to cheat more death and face more horrible monsters.
• Similar to the Doctor mentioned above, Firefly's River Tam is... well, curious about a lot of things. Like taking a nap on top of a coffin containing a corpse that wasn't really a corpse. Or watching her brother and the ship's mechanic have sex in the engine room.
• Fringe has Dr. Walter Bishop, who doesn't bat an eye at events that disgust his teammates, and often displays genuine fascination and excitement when dealing with downright grotesque situations.
  "How wonderful!"
• Game of Thrones:
  • Myranda takes pleasure in watching another woman getting ripped to shreds by hounds, and gets off by choking Ramsay in the bedroom.
  • Joffrey loves weaponry, has great knowledge of the Targaryens' bloody legacy, and his room is decorated with animal skins and skulls. He also appears enthralled at the sight of hundreds of men burning alive in the wildfire explosion, bringing to mind a previous king...
  • From his strange obsession towards black clothing and bloodlust to admiring undead Gregor Clegane, Euron seems to have a thing for everything that is even remotely creepy.
• Chloe in Harper's Island has a very enthusiastic interest in serial killers, especially John Wakefield. In one episode she chose to go search through a forest to find a murderer's gravestone over partying at an open bar.
• One episode of Homicide: Life on the Street featured a collector of serial killer memorabilia who the detectives suspect of being the Serial Killer they were pursuing. Despite being quite creepy, he turns out to be innocent.
• The title character of House often entertains horrifying cases, and his response to a particularly disturbing symptom is often "Cool!" Partly justified in that, even though House's fascination with his bizarre job comes from just finding this stuff cool, extreme, terrifying symptoms also make his cases easier to diagnose, explaining that "Common has hundreds of explanations. Bizarre has hardly any." Averted on one occasion when a clinic patient had attempted to circumcise himself. Even House was too horrified to look at it for long.
• iCarly: The "Neck Infection" video elicits a Two Girls, One Cup reaction from Carly, Freddie and two other kids Sam shows it to, but she genuinely seems to get a kick out of it.
• Kamen Rider Gotchard: In a trip to Kyoto, Rinne happily claps at being in a haunted house while her companions — Hotaro and Ryo, the latter being into the supernatural — scream like girls while fleeing for their lives. She later takes Ryo, Sabimaru, and Renge into the same haunted house while having a blast. Episodes later, when it comes to a youkai incident in a village, she's shown laughing in glee at how fun this is going to be.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In the Season 6 premiere, the doer turns out to be the daughter of a famous criminal profiler. During her confession, she talks to Goren about how her father normalized violence for her.
  Goren: And when you brought boys home?
  Jo: I'd play them his tapes of women being tortured. If they didn't run, we'd make out in his office.
• The Munsters are much the same as the Addams family, though they were actual monsters rather than morbid people. They even pitied their extremely attractive relative for being "ugly".
• Gonzo of The Muppets. One episode of The Muppet Show (the one with Alice Cooper) had him trying to make a Deal with the Devil - not for the power, but just because he thought it was a neat idea.
  Kermit: I'm as right as I can be after being nearly hit by a train and falling into a ditch and slogged through a swamp and run for two miles.
  Gonzo: You forgot about the dogs.
  Kermit: Uh, yes, yes, we were also chased by angry dogs.
  Gonzo: You always leave out the best parts.
• NCIS:
  • Abby, given that she's a forensic analyst, this makes sense.
  • Jimmy Palmer sometimes shows inappropriate enthusiasm for gory details. One example includes him cheerfully saying "At first we thought it was a serial killer!", another referring to the shapeliness of cut-off human legs. It's more disturbing in him than it is in Abby - in fact, in McGee's book the character "Pimmy Jalmer" was a necrophiliac.
• The Nevers: The actress Hugo's been banging backstage throughout the opera performance in the pilot episode notes that his penis is still hard after crossing paths with Maladie and her gang.
• Oddities is about a shop in New York City that specializes in items befitting this trope, anything from antique medical devices to disarticulated human skulls. The folks who run the shop come off as pretty normal but some of their customers...
• Psych:
  • Woody the coroner often eats lunch over corpses and once even shocked himself by DRAWING on a body.
  • Shawn can be this way around the deceased.
  • Lassiter can be this way around women:
    [After Lassiter flirts, painfully, with a woman suspected of murdering previous lovers]
    Juliet: You disturb me. And your theory on this murder disturbs me. And you disturb me.
    Lassiter: You said that twice.
    Juliet: Yes.
• In a recent music video on Saturday Night Live, some of the female cast sing about their love of murder documentaries.
• Count von Count from Sesame Street. Also, Oscar the Grouch, and the other Grouches by extension, in a different sense from the Count's.
• In Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll Gigi (also played by Elizabeth Gillies) wants to open the casket of a former backup singer of her dad's band to see her ashes.
• Sherlock:
  • Sherlock himself is sometimes portrayed this way. A self-proclaimed "high-functioning sociopath", he is genuinely fascinated and excited by morbid or disturbing cases, causing John to be occasionally horrified by his callousness. Of course, it's also Played for Laughs.
    Sherlock: BRILLIANT! Yes! Ah, four serial suicides and now a note! Oh, it's Christmas!
  • Despite John's status as Sherlock's Morality Chain of a sort, he's a Blood Knight who misses the violence and excitement of the Afghan war, which he was forced out of due to an injury.
  • Mary, too, in a way. Despite not wanting to be In Harm's Way, she's not remotely creeped out by the kind of stuff Sherlock and John are used to. Helps that she was an assassin for the CIA.
  • Archie, the ringbearer at John and Mary's wedding in "The Sign of Three", has a thing for gore. Sherlock is able to ensure the kid stays well-behaved during the ceremony by offering to show photos from some of his more gruesome cases.
• Star Trek: Picard:
  • In "Broken Pieces", Narissa speaks with utter reverence of how her aunt's deranged insanity brought upon by surviving the Admonition was powerful enough to cripple a Borg Cube.
  • In the same episode, based on Narissa's exchange with a Centurion, the more efficient the killing method, the more it delights her.
    Narissa: We need to get rid of every Borg still held in stasis immediately. Can they be gassed? Electrocuted?
    Centurion: We can blow the seals and jettison them directly into space.
    Narissa: (smiles) Ooh, I like that. See to it.
• Succession: Roman Roy gets aroused off feigned necrophilia and being verbally humiliated.
• Supernatural: Sam and Dean Winchester treat creepy, unnatural murders and monsters as ordinary occurrences. Dean in particular is shown as being very excited when they get to hunt a werewolf, and at one point Sam gets him to come on a personal mission by promising that there will be zombies (there aren't). Every once in a while, one of them will Lampshade how weird their attitude and their lives are. Justified in three words "The Family Business", as they were raised knowing what was out there and how to fight it.
• That's Just Me has many examples, including the main character. She's a sadist who's into BDSM and other weird fetishes, including the one that inspired most episodes, her vomit fetish. However, she claims that she's harmless because she's into animated cartoons of this stuff and doesn't intend to do it to anybody in real life. She also wants to be abducted by aliens, have an out-of-body experience, talk with ghosts, stay in a haunted house, and do all kinds of other paranormal things.
• Victorious: Jade West likes gross things like blood, fat blobs, zombies, and hot tubs (she pretends that witches make her human soup) but she's scared of dolphins.

Music

• The troubadour Bertrand de Born: "My heart is filled with gladness when I see Strong castles besieged, stockades broken and overwhelmed, Many vassals struck down, Horses of the dead and wounded roving at random. And when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms, For it is better to die than be vanquished and live.… I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout “On! On!” from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds, And groans of “Help me! Help me!” And when I see both great and small Fall in the ditches and on the grass And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts! Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities, But never give up war!"
• The song "Only Happy When It Rains" by Garbage is a combination of this and a parody of Alternative Rock Wangst.
• Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad" (AKA "Sing Rickety-Tickety-Tin"). Many of Leher's output qualifies, including a song about spending a pleasant spring day "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," a song about an implied STD outbreak that crosses more lines than a version of The Aristocrats ("I Got It From Agnes"), an upbeat song about nuclear holocaust ("We Will All Go Together When We Go", also "So Long Mom, a Song From World War III"), and even a happy ditty celebrating the town drug dealer ("The Old Dope Peddler"). Lehrer plays all of this for Black Comedy
• Emilie Autumn is probably one of these, considering the subjects of most of her songs and the stories she creates in her concerts, songs, and now a book about a Victorian Bedlam House for little girls.
• Gore-related lyrics in Death Metal and related genres. Most of us would find the idea of knives being repeatedly inserted into human vaginas and used as sexual aids deeply distressing; Cannibal Corpse apparently find it amusing, given their song "Fucked with a Knife".
• The Gothic Archies' "Walking My Gargoyle" is about an eccentric man's love for his pet gargoyle.
• Many of The Misfits' songs fit into this category, especially "Last Caress" (about killing babies and raping mothers) and "Bullet" (about JFK's assassination and treating his widow as a sex object).
• A good number of Rasputina's songs treat dark subject matter, but most aren't treated in this fashion. However, the glee that is expressed at the idea of pumping holy water into the anus of a possessed man in "Christian Soldiers" and at the idea of cannibalism among the Donner Party and colonial Pilgrims in "The Donner Party" does delve into this territory.
• Evanescence: Opinions differ but they put some sexy riffs behind songs about death and horrific circumstances. Just check out Tourniquet and The Other Side. Confirmed by Word of Amy Lee in an interview; she has a fascination with death.
• Buckethead is one himself. Much of his music also sounds like a horror movie soundtrack.
• Black Francis of the The Pixies gleefully sings about molestation, Eye Scream, and violent Old Testament stories, among other things, though he toned it down on later albums.
• "These Ghoulish Things" by Mitch Benn is sung from the perspective of one, who doesn't realise that the object of his affections doesn't share his viewpoint, and won't appreciate being compared to mushroom clouds, blood, or dead animals.
• Seanan McGuire's songs often focus on morbid subjects, with cheery, bouncy numbers about horrible diseases, zombies, poisons, etc.
• Tom Cardy: Red Flags is about a man going on a date with a woman who reveals herself to be a massive fan of The Human Centipede, describing it as a "masterpiece of art" and outright stating that the costume design was a highlight of the film, much to the man's discomfort. By the end of the song he decides that he likes her enough to overlook her strange taste in film and they start planning their Human Centipede-themed wedding.
• Hozier's songs often have elements of this, but it's at its most prominent in "NFWB" (Nothing Fucks With My Baby), which he helpfully explains. The "baby" in question is turned on by feeling the dead move in the earth below her - she's also some kind of force of nature that frightens the beast slouching towards Bethlehem, and is or would be completely unfazed by the apocalypse, too powerful to be hurt. The singer is into that.
  "'You can't be harmed. It's nothing to do with me.' This person is just genuinely terrifying....and you love them for it."
• Many songs from Lemon Demon's Spirit Phone involve these, but in particular No-Eyed Girl (about a man who falls in love with an Eldritch Abomination) come to mind.

Pinball

• Invoked in The Addams Family when Gomez lovingly describes the swamp.
  Gomez: "Quicksand, fumes, toxic waste... it's all ours!"

Podcasts

• Walter from the Cool Kids Table game Creepy Town scares Will by threatening to impale his head on a meat hook, revving a chainsaw at him, and eagerly splattering fake blood all over one of the haunted house rooms. All because Will thought a claymore didn't fit in the hillbilly torture shack.
  • Die also qualifies, gleefully cutting open a fake corpse to make it look more realistic and getting excited when Olivia starts painting a satanic mural in fake blood. Then she installs a flamethrower.
• Janel of Fat, French and Fabulous, professionally as a psychology student, personally as a True Crime podcaster, and romantically as a connoisseur of underweight social rejects in trench coats.
  Janel: "I am exclusively attracted to people on government watch lists."
• Tiffany from Less is Morgue is immediately attracted to terrifying and disgusting Humanoid Abomination Florida Man. They even end up hooking up and going to chillis.
• Sick Sad World:
  • A couple kissed over the corpse of a girl they murdered for supposedly flirting with one of them.
  • Host Dev serves as a much less scary example. They've been interested in horror from a young age.
• Antigone from Wooden Overcoats is a mortician, and while she's not into corpses like that, she does take great pride in her work and regards death as being oddly beautiful. She sometimes forgets not everyone shares this view, and accidentally traumatizes Lady Templar by taking her on a tour of her mortuary.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted players have a joke. Everyone Is Bi, to the point that considering a homosexual relation to a god made of goo is commonplace if he's hot enough. The Appearance stat isn't modified by any factors based on, for example, one of them being a giant insect with beautiful wings, meaning that everyone's default reaction to being hit on by an agata is "damn, that's a sexy wasp".
• GURPS has 'xenophilia' as a Disadvantage, which is described as being anything from offering to buy drinks to enemy soldiers in a bar to shaking tentacles with things man was not meant to know. It's even more fun when the character also has Weirdness Magnet which makes said things man was not meant to know much easier to find.
• Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000:
  • Slaanesh followers are Sense Freaks that delight in any and every sensation, stretching the limits of their senses until they're burned out and only the most extreme of things will stimulate them at all. Ciaphas Cain is rightly Squicked when a Slaaneshi cultist appears to orgasm from being bisected.
  • Dark Eldar are almost as bad as Slaaneshi cultists, revolving their entire society (if it can be called that) around inflicting extensive and painful tortures on anyone they can capture. While they're essentially forced to do this, otherwise they have their souls eaten by Slaanesh, they make no illusions as to how much they enjoy it. A perfect example of this took place after the Adeptus Mechanicus realized they couldn't fix the ever-failing Golden Throne whereupon the rotten, carcass of the Emperor of Mankind sits perpetually in an "almost dying" state. So the High Lords of Terra brought the Dark Eldar to see if they could fix it. The Space Elves were almost moved to tears upon witnessing the contraption, saying their race could only dream of building such perfect, exquisite torture device and that the pure agony and suffering endured by the Emperor of Mankind is a such a magnificent sight to behold that one of them even said he could probably die happy, knowing that he will never again witness such perfect pain.
  • The Eldar Race as a whole underwent this and proceeded to Squick Slaanesh into existence (this is not hyperbole in the slightest) and cause their own fall. To have an idea of how depraved and nightmarish their fetishes got, the Dark Eldar are considered to be toned-down versions. Though occasionally a Dark Eldar wises up and leaves the insane sadistic hedonism behind and joins a Craftworld.
  • Trazyn the Infinite is always looking for things to add to his collection; currently, he has a stuffed Enslaver parasite and a few stasis locked Imperial Guard regiments (they were a "gift"), and he possibly has a living Space Marine Primarch locked away in one of his vaults.
  • The Iron Warriors Traitor Astartes know that War Is Hell, and they relish every minute of it. Given they are entirely motivated by expressing their hatred and bottomless contempt for life.
• The Tzimisce from Vampire: The Masquerade.
• The Ashwood Abbey in Hunter: The Vigil. Especially the Libertines.
• In Genius: The Transgression, the Staunen breed of Mad Scientist tend towards this. In fact, a former page quote comes from the Staunen section of the rulebook.
• This is a frequent character trait of the Hollow Ones from Mage: The Ascension.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Yawgmoth's goal is to turn the multiverse into Phyrexia, his idea of paradise. This would be fine, except that Yawgmoth has a very warped idea of paradise.
  • With Yawgmoth and Phyrexia destroyed once and for all, the Glistening Oil left in Karn has taken over his beloved Mirrodin. And his mind. With the five suns of Mirrodin, the previously Monoblack (and Artifact) Phyrexia split into the five colours. White Phyrexia's stated goal is to bring the glory of New Phyrexia to the rest of the Multiverse. They have a severe dermatophobia^note a fear of skin disease, emphasized by taking the new recruits, flaying their skin, and stitching them together. White Phyrexia is also known for wearing cracked porcelain masks and carapaces, said to be stronger than steel. These bits of porcelain◊ are made from dead Mirran that didn't make the cut.
  • One of the many signs indicating Urza's sanity was slipping was his increasing admiration for Phyrexian works. It culminates in a brief Face–Heel Turn when he actually visits Phyrexia and bows down to Yawgmoth, unwilling to destroy a place that embodied everything he ever wanted.
  • When Liliana Vess was granted a vision of the Damnation spell that destroyed the civilization of the beings whose spirits inhabited the Chain Veil, she claimed to be impressed by it and mentioned that she wouldn't mind learning the spell herself. The spirits were not amused.
  • Vivien Reid likes nature. Particularly the red-in-tooth-and-claw kind of nature. The flavour text to Sudden Spinnerets, a card about a creature spontaneously mutating in front of her, is to say that it "delights" her, and in the story, she gets a little upset that she couldn't charter a ship to go and find the giant demon kraken that eats trade ships.
  • Ashiok is an almost literal nightmare fetishist who enjoys witnessing and creating nightmares. After taking a peek at Elspeth's nightmares of her life as a slave of the Phyrexians, they became fascinated by them and has decided to pay New Phyrexia a visit.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • More than one Prestige Class tends to attract these types. Complete Arcane has the blood magus, who really enjoyed the sound of his blood flowing when he came back to life, and can do things like store spells in his scars and blood or teleport between two living creatures through their blood. It also includes the alienist, who's made contact with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. The fleshwarper from Lords of Madness does the alienist one better, deliberately altering himself with Mad Artist glee, and eventually turning into an aberration. Sea witches from Stormwrack delight in the power of the storm. The best part? All of those classes are open to good characters.
  • Bad Powers, Bad People examples include the walker in the waste from Sandstorm, who loves the clean beauty of the desert and works to share it with the world. The Book of Vile Darkness, unsurprisingly, has several: the cancer mage with his tumor familiar, the vermin lord with his armor made of living bugs, and various flavors of demon- and devil-worshippers.

Theatre

• In Love Never Dies, this is what makes Phantom realise that Gustav is probably his son. They both share an obsession with "Beauty Underneath" - things that are "dangerous and wild" and would seem scary to the rest of the world.
• Katisha from The Mikado (and Ko-Ko, depending on how "There Is Beauty In The Bellow of the Blast" is played).
• Senta from The Flying Dutchman. She has a massive crush on a man whom she hasn't met (the titular Van Der Decken aka the Dutchman) after looking at his portrait, cheerfully tells other girls about his tragic story and swear that she will redeem him if she ever meets him, and is thrilled at the prospect of being taken away by him.

Video Games

• Revenant from Apex Legends might as well embody this trope. Very few things interest this character apart from death and the causes of it. Maybe he should've found a better hobby when he was alive?
  • Caustic as well is also guilty of this. But unlike Revenant, he has standards and is only interested in death, from a scientific standpoint.
• In one snippet of Mook Chatter from Batman: Arkham Knight, some thugs voice their disgust with what a fellow-thug named Leroy did ... namely, having found one of Professor Pyg's mutilated and crucified victims, he started taking selfies with it.
• Bloodborne: Micolash, Host of the Nightmare is one, not only he's obsessed with the Great Ones, he hosts a literal Nightmare Sequence along with the School of Mensis for the sake of gaining insight from the dreams and the Great Ones.
• FL4K from Borderlands 3 makes puzzles and trophies from the bones and organs of their enemies, thinks blood would go great with a makeover, imagines scenery drenched in blood when idle, thinks an Eldritch Location made of bones and meat with eyeballs watching their every move is "awesome", and is enthralled by nightmarish sounds like banshee screams.
  FL4K: Terrifying. I must hear it again... it's not a fetish.
• In Cyberpunk 2077 there are braindances, which are a Memory Jar that allows the viewer to relive the recorded memories of someone else with all the senses they experienced at the time, including emotions. In the underworld, there are illegal subgenres that allow the user to experience someone's murder in the first person and at times it seems like that's the only thing people ever use them for (aside from pornography), to the point that a death row inmate wanting to use himself in a real Passion Play has the whole thing bankrolled by a production studio expecting to make millions off of his good intentions.
• The "Masochist" Affliction from Darkest Dungeon sometimes manifests this way. Some characters wanna see what new abominations the current dungeon crawl will show them.
• In Dead Rising, Kent the photographer has an edge of this plus Mad Artist - the first time he runs into Frank and shows off his photography, he sounds absolutely riveted while showing off his "most violent shot!". The next time Frank encounters him, depending on his arrival's timing, he'll be keen on either photographing a human transforming into a zombie or stripping Frank down to his briefs, slapping a spiked collar and chain on him, and watching him get torn limb from limb by the undead and seem really excited about it. The game rates both Kent and Frank's zombie photographs for "eroticism" and Frank will lecherously cheer if you manage to get a Panty Shot of a dead woman.
• Diablo II:
  • The Necromancer goes squee over the Alien Geometries of the Arcane Sanctuary:
    Necromancer: This is fantastic! I wish I had time to study this bizarre dimension.
  • Alkor the Alchemist hates being bothered by just about anybody, unless the player character is a Necromancer, in which case he gets outright friendly and asks to compare notes on their respective magics. He also keeps a library of heretical tomes.
• In Diablo III:
  • The Witch Doctor Character Class is a major case of this trope, being perfectly at home visiting caves filled with giant man-eating spiders.
  • The Templar, of all people, turns the tables and gets a moment to weird out the Witch Doctor, of all people:
    Kormac: I must thank you.
    Witch Doctor: Why?
    Kormac: When I became a Templar, I dreamed of invading the Hells themselves. This is all I ever wanted.
    Witch Doctor: Sometimes, you worry me.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition,
  • Iron Bull claims that the Qunari both revere dragons and feel compelled to slay them. They admire the dragons' awesome power and abhor the wild chaos they embody as anathema to the Qun. In Iron Bull's case, this manifests in a love for fighting dragons. One of the ways to gain approval with Iron Bull is to bring him along for a dragon fight. Even if he is not brought along, killing at least one dragon to get a dragon's tooth is required to complete his Romance Sidequest. It descends into In Love with Your Carnage territory when he shouts "tarsidaath an-halsaam!" while fighting a dragon, which he later admits is Qunlat for "I will bring myself sexual pleasure later while thinking about this with great respect."
  • This is apparently the reason that Dorian decided to study Necromancy. His fascination with the dead started at an early age, and he is very disappointed when Cassandra tells him that Nevarra's Necropolises are much more boring than he was imagining, and he at one point describes ham that tastes like despair as fascinating.
• In Drakengard 3, Dito is, as Zero puts it, "pretty fucked up," a sadistic sociopath who delights in carnage and states he'll sleep soundly after smelling burning corpses. In fact, he can only find beauty in reprehensible things and finds conventional beauty disgusting — the only thing he admired about the physically gorgeous Five was her "filthy rotten core," which made him wish he could somehow turn Five inside-out. When the world goes to hell in Branch D, Dito is having the time of his life amongst the madness and bloodshed, and when Five comes back as an undead monstrosity, Dito is instantly smitten with her and defects back to her side.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • This is a trait of Namira, the Daedric Prince of the Ancient Darkness, associated with all things revolting, decay, disfiguring diseases, and cannibalism. Given the nature of most ES series deities, she could very well be considered the embodiment of the grotesque and revolting. In fact, she only allows those she considers truly revolting to summon her, and she hates attractive people. (Most Daedric Princes will accept worship and service from any mortals who offer it, with Namira toward attractive people being the only known exception.)
  • Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmares, is a literal case. In Online, she keeps her mortal champion in her Daedric realm of Quagmire, seeming not to care that simply being there can cause Mind Rape, or perhaps, actually seeing it as a show of affection. Quagmire itself is a realm of horrors, where reality shifts upon itself in seemingly impossible ways. Every few minutes, lightning flashes and the realm morphs into a terrifying scene, each one more frightening than the last.
  • The Daedric Prince of Domination himself, Molag Bal particularly in his Skyrim depiction. He speaks to you from his underground shrine in Markarth, but not until he has trapped you like a rat first. It's very clear his intentions aren't very hospitable, he even sends you to rescue then torture a Priest of Boethiah. Doing all this pleases him much, but if you value being a good person? I wouldn't consider Molag Bal anything more than morbid.
• Fallen London: The player character can marry a genetically-modified squid from outer space. Among other, far less socially acceptable, things.
  • Then there's the Mister Eaten questline, which dives straight into the heart of Nightmare Fuel territory with its themes of self-mutilation and straw nihilism. Players can and have destroyed their accounts pursuing this questline to its bitter, destructive end. The quest objectives include sentient vore, self-inflicted mental illnesses so thick even devils are disgusted, and self-decapitation.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake reimagines Aerith as one. She describes the giant construction robotic arms as 'cute', is playful and friendly to the ghosts that terrify Tifa and Cloud, and her battle chatter has her talk to the monsters she's fighting more like she's disciplining bratty pets. She instantly bonds with Red XIII, even seeing right through his persona (notably, in the original VII (PSX), she was afraid of him at first.) On top of that, there's also her taste in men — Cloud and Zack are both Humanoid Abominations with Occult Blue Eyes that (in the case of Cloud, at least) other people find unnerving, but Aerith finds pretty.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy:
    • Penelo declares that the Cloud of Darkness' snake attachments (who have no eyeballs and really sharp teeth) are "soooo CUTE!"
    • Selphie in Duodecim thinks the way the insane roaring four-armed demon monstrosity Feral Chaos runs around on all fours is "kinda cute", although she's always been shown to be weirder and crazier than Penelo.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Almost everything Henry says has him squealing in delight, to the point he drools when thinking about blood.
  • Cherche, albeit to a lesser degree. Apart from doting on her wyvern, Minerva, Cherche finds bugs and Entombeds to be adorable.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • One of the game's party members in Conquest and Revelation is a Wolfskin (Human with Wolf ears and a tail) named Keaton. Being the opposite of the cleanly and vain Kitsune Kaden, Keaton always wears dirty clothes and never grooms himself. Most notably he has a habit of collecting worthless items that sometimes have morbid qualities such as decaying remains. He views traditionally valuable things like gems and gold as being uninteresting giving him a completely flipped perspective from that of a human or even a Kitsune. He was never capable of figuring out why his allies were repulsed by his collection and he even starts a feud with Arthur, who made the mistake of calling his collection "trash."
• In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Kraden's reaction to seeing a werewolf near Garoh is pretty much pure Squee, and he demands that the (alarmed) player characters look for more, while insistently denying that he's excited to see werewolves. He's also fascinated by the dangerous Psynergy Vortexes in Dark Dawn.
  "All right, so I lied! I'm glad we found werewolves! Are you happy?"
• Wendy Cooke in Growing Up likes watching R-rated horror movies and aspires to do makeup and special effects for them because she's inspired by her wooden prosthetic, but her parents want her to take up engineering instead. She even makes a fake severed arm for a prank in high school if you encourage her to do so.
• A House of Many Doors includes opportunities to have supernatural sexual encounters with. An inversion occurs in the City of Knives, where an Eldritch Abomination seeks dating advice... to court the goddess of the city's river^note You never find out if the river pulling your odd friend in meant she was spurning them, smiting them, or smitten.
• Koume Shirasaka from THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is an introverted girl who is fascinated by horrific death, violent gore, and the grim supernatural, but is otherwise innocent.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Princess Agitha from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess who is absolutely obsessed with bugs.
  • Kilton from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is absolutely obsessed with monsters, to the point of running a traveling monster-themed shop called Fang and Bone and wearing makeup and clothes that make him look monstrous.
• Littlewood: Ash's dream pet is a Womper, a creature whose main gameplay role is to be an Invincible Minor Minion in the Dust Caverns. On top of that, if the Player Character marries neither him nor the woman in question, he starts dating the one with a periodically-manifesting Superpowered Evil Side that scares most other villagers.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect 2 repeatedly implies that Harbinger is preoccupied with trying to capture Shepard, in order to understand why they are able to repeatedly thwart the Reapers and how a single human can possibly be so dangerous! Most of its dialogue implies that instead of killing Shepard, it wants to keep them for study or make them into an indoctrinated figurehead like Saren.
  • Shepard themselves can show shades of this; conversing with Jacob and Miranda about the acquisition of a krogan in a cloning tank, they can be outright gleeful about how none of them know what this krogan is like. In the Mass Effect 3 DLC "Leviathan", they can decide to take the severed animated head of what is either a Husk or a Cerberus trooper back to the Normandy to be installed in their cabin, at the suggestion of James Vega, who loves that thing even after it bites him and even suggests going bowling with it!
  • Grunt, after leaving the tank and getting some experience of krogan life, can be found chuckling at an imprinted memory of a krogan pulling off a dead turian's face with a crowbar. As a Blood Knight, he's also prone to responding to large and dangerous enemies with outright glee that they found something so big and entertaining to fight.
• Metal Gear Solid brings us Volgin, Vamp and Ocelot, all of whom could probably orgasm purely through the act of hurting someone.
• To Neon Violet from Neon White, things like plushies and cupcakes are on the same level of "adorable" as bloodied weapons and splattered viscera. The aloof Neon White seems... rather disturbed by her enthusiasm.
• As a child, Kelda from Overlord II thinks the sinister Creepy Child Witch Boy is cute and interesting, and gleefully helps him hunt down and destroy the children who tormented and bullied him, then destroy the Winter's Eve festivities, despite not being particularly evil herself. Her attitudes don't change much once she grows up, even talking about how she hates her town for their treatment of her childhood friend, now an Evil Overlord and her lover.
  • Driving Queen Fay insane with dark magic will turn her from an All-Loving Hero to an Omnicidal Maniac thrilled at watching her new boyfriend kill everything in sight. Killing her will partially restore her sanity, but she'll still shack up with the overlord.
• General rule of thumb for Persona: the more traditionally feminine a girl from this series is, the more likely they're this trope, with some exceptions. Comparatively, more masculine women tend to end up being the opposite of this.
  • Persona:
    • Maki Sonomura is implied to be this, given her enjoyment of myths and stories about monsters, as well as the reveal in the manga that the demons didn't come from the Expanse, but rather the DEVA System, meaning Maki created them from her mind.
    • Eriko has an overt fascination with the Demons, Persona, and at one point in the manga is Taken for Granite, and is disappointed when she thaws out because she wanted to experience it a little longer. Similarly, during her time as a Guest-Star Party Member in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, she reacts with wonderment when the team find themselves frozen in time. She'll also very cheerfully converse with demons simply for the sake of doing so, as opposed to the other party members, who only do it out of necessity.
  • Jun Kurosu from Persona 2 is fascinated by mythology and horror, even when he was a child, as can be seen in the Monster Clown appearance of his alter ego, Joker.
  • Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4 absolutely adores ghost stories and other stuff that would normally freak people out. Which stands out in her relationship with her friend Chie Satonaka, who is normally the Tomboy to Yukiko's Girly Girl, as Chie is afraid of ghost stories.
  • Haru Okumura from Persona 5 has a love for horror movies, as seen when she asks Joker to see one with her. A Mementos conversation also shows that she finds the Shadows to be "cute".
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has an NPC in Hearthome City complaining about Amity Park, a park which allows only "cute" Pokémon, discriminating against his Steelix and Gyarados.
  • Ghost Type Trainers would definitely fit here. These characters appreciate the gloomy and unnerving nature that the Ghost Pokémon are renowned for.
  • Lusamine of Pokémon Sun and Moon is obsessed with the Ultra Beasts, who are that world's equivalent to Eldritch Abominations. For this reason, she plans to open a portal to their world, uncaring if they escape and destroy humanity in the process.
• In Potion Permit, Victor is a graveyard keeper who is interested in the macabre, earning ire from the other residents. He keeps taxidermied butterflies in his house and claims that he's best friends with Caenus and Amadeus, who are all but stated to be ghosts. His first Friendship Event has him asking you to help him resurrect Caenus through a ritual.
• Silent Hill 3:
  • Vincent, one of the supporting characters, eagerly describes the rusted, blood-splattered nightmare world around him as "fascinating", and briefly claims to be confused that the grotesque creatures the protagonist has been fighting throughout the game "look like monsters" to her. But then again, we never quite know if he and the heroine/player are seeing the same thing.
  • Claudia explicitly refers to the aforementioned rust-and-blood-stained nightmare as a "paradise" and endeavours to have it spread over the entire planet.
  • Heather voices an interest in things that deeply horrify normal people. Then again, she is Alessa Gillespie, so a bit of an interest in the dark and disturbing is pretty much mandatory.
• Knowledge Aspiration sims in The Sims 2 often want to be abducted by aliens, have near-death experiences, become vampires, or go through other paranormal experiences other sims dread.
• Tira from the Soul Series is literally a Nightmare Fetishist. She is absolutely devoted to Big Bad Nightmare, the monstrous embodiment of Soul Edge itself, whom she sees as a kindred spirit. In the fourth game, she doesn't really mind that Nightmare will likely eventually consume her soul; she is that loyal to him. In her ending, she is distraught when she realizes that Nightmare's body can no longer withstand his own power and clings to him while desperately begging him not to leave her alone. Further cemented by V, where she shows up again and is still at it. This time, however, she's annoyed that Soul Edge has shifted from a One-Man Army mass murderer to a manipulator who starts wars rather than doing it himself. Tira's entire story arc is her trying to get a Nightmare who is back to slaughtering enemies himself.
• Star Control: Admiral ZEX is attracted to "vile, wretched" creatures... especially humans, whom his species considers nauseating.
• Star Fox: Leon Powalski has a rather distinct fascination with very specific aspects of Star Wolf, given the Smash Taunt in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Panther Caroso practically calls out on him. The voiceover gives far more impact than plain text...
  Leon: Star Wolf is really giving it his all out there... I'm more than a bit envious of him. Those razor-sharp claws. Those keen fangs. He moves wildly and fights with the spirit of a warrior possessed. Any prey he sets his eye on is doomed to be shredded to pieces.
  Panther: Umm... Leon? Are you feeling alright?
  Leon: Yes, of course! Fine! Just fine. Haa ha haaaa ha haaahaaa...
  Panther: ...Set me straight here, Leon. Are you envious of the shred-DER or the shred-DEE?
• Downplayed in START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue. The sweet Housemaiden shows a surprising amount of interest in a collection of stories featuring young men dealing with monsters. She enjoys horror for the catharsis factor, rooting for the protagonists to survive... though she also admits that she's fond of the ones where they end up marrying the monsters. The Researcher also expresses interest in the same topic, asking to be loaned the tome in question once she's finished reading it.
• Played for Laughs in one save-skit in Second Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. Irm and Tasuku discuss how much the group has garnered a lot of pretty women, but much to Tasuku's shock, the one that interested Irm is Umbra, who, mind you, despite female, sounds like male Satan, part of the despair-eating Ruina, and looks like this◊.
• Tales of Destiny 2: Harold Berselius is obsessed with both human dissection and human vivisection and wants to perform vivisections on the rest of the party members. She also finds the idea of killing a goddess worth squeeing over and suggests roboticizing Loni and removing his brain would make him more appealing to women. And she likes insects.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • Medic is far more eager than is healthy about things like extracting and stealing the skeletons of living patients, trading body part collections with other people (or with talking books), demonstrations of the power to warp the human body in a strange or terrifying way, randomly implanting animal organs into humans, transforming his own head into that of his beloved pigeon or stitching half a dead face onto his own, or even finding his own blood being drained to be a "curious feeling." He's also much too happy at the revelation of strange tumors in bread after being put through the teleporter, especially when the tumor-bread comes to life and starts trying to kill him after he antagonizes it. If he wasn't properly coming across as a Mad Doctor before, he sure is now.
  • Yet another example occurs with the 2015 Halloween event, which adds the taunt "Burstchester" in homage to the Alien franchise. Each character reacts differently, though most with shock or horror. Medic attempts to examine the creature that just erupted from his sternum, and Pyro pats it affectionately. Though Pyro is a completely different type of whackjob.
  • Contrary to popular belief, the comics show that Pyro is in fact relatively aware of their surroundings and views anything that isn't on fire or otherwise being subjected to violence and mayhem as being dreadfully dull, boring, and colorless. It's only once they start burning things, or see things being burnt, that any joy or happiness can be perceived. In "A Cold Day in Hell" when Pyro hallucinates a bear as a Smokey the Bear expy who says fire is nobody's friend, they snap and brutally kill the bear.
• Theresia: Dear Emile: Leanne was raised by a Torture Technician who kept her isolated from other people. Consequently, she loves the smell of blood and the sound of screaming as reminders of her only parental figure. Unusually for this trope, she's neither comical nor monstrous but psychologically damaged to the point of being borderline The Woobie.
• In Thief, Garrett only ever really shows any sort of romantic attraction to one person who can only really be described as horrifying even when naked. A wood nymph named Viktoria who ripped his eye out in the first game.
• Touhou Project:
  • In Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream a scientist from another universe travels to Gensokyo to capture one of the magical denizens to prove the existence of magic to her peers back home. As a player character, her victory quotes are often delighted by the supernatural entities she's encountered.
    Yumemi: Oh, a real evil spirit/ghost/witch/shrine maiden? How marvellous!
  • Also from PoDD is the Cloud Cuckoo Lander princess Kotohime, whose character title is "The Princess Who Dreams of Beauty in Danmaku". Her victory quote to Mima borders on In Love with Your Carnage: "Oh, you beautiful barrage!"
  • The main character of Forbidden Scrollery, Kosuzu Motoori, collects and is delighted by her massive collection of youma books, books written by and/or containing youkai, and is not only not worried about unleashing a dangerous one but seems delighted by the prospect. The manga also features Remilia's pet chupacabra, which she (and her maid Sakuya) calls cute.
• In Welcome to the Game, the protagonist is assumed to be this. Why else would they be on the Deep Web in search of a Red Room? Also, this trope is openly discussed on the "Forgive Me" site. One of the secret endings makes this literal, as not only is it confirmed that the protagonist is looking for it to get off, but they're actually Lydia, a Depraved Bisexual from Rides With Strangers.

Visual Novels

• Corpse Party: Blood Covered has a particularly creepy example in Sakutaro Morishige, who seems completely normal before The Reveal. Said reveal comes about when you discover him blushing and gushing over the smeared remains of his best friend's corpse, filming it on his cell phone. Of course, he doesn't know it's her at the time and does not take it well when he finds out. Ayumi Shinozaki is a subversion. She loves telling scary stories. Being in a scary story? Not so much.
  • On the antagonist side, there is the Big Bad. Yoshikazu starts off by kidnapping four elementary school kids and killing them with scissors, and he has devoted an entire dimension to torturing innocent schoolchildren and killing them in creatively gruesome ways. The real example, however, is Sachiko, who was the real culprit with Yoshikazu Forced to Watch. There’s also Yuuya Kizami, who has expressed fascination with the moment when someone is about to die.
• Danganronpa:
  • Both Series Mascot Monokuma and by extension the Big Bad piloting him, Junko Enoshima, love some good despair. When Junko loses the final trial, she willingly submits herself to a marathon of every execution in the game, and not only survives them all except the final one, but loves every second of it, only expressing mild annoyance when the giant crusher originally intended for Makoto briefly gets stuck before squashing her flat and killing her.
  • Princess Sonia Nevermind from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: At first glance, she appears to be a typical prim-and-proper princess, but she is also fascinated with the occult, serial killers, and seems to have a thing for Evil Overlord-wannabe Gundam Tanaka. However, she is still a good and kind person who cares about her friends, her time as an Ultimate Despair member notwithstanding.
  • Mikan Tsumiki in Goodbye Despair has cripplingly low self-esteem and enjoys having power over those weaker than her, which is part of the reason she became a nurse in the first place. She mentions she enjoys horror movies because of how helpless the victims are, and in the "Dangan Island" mode she contemplates crippling Hajime to keep him dependent on her. Not to mention that as Ultimate Despair, she was in a relationship of sorts with Satanic Archetype Junko Enoshima.
  • A particularly vicious example occurs in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony in the form of an elaborate Take That, Audience!. It's revealed that the characters are in fact participants on a Danganronpa-themed Sadistic Game Show, which is being broadcast to the entire world, and is in fact on its fifty-third season; the show is immensely popular, with people around the world trying to guess who will be murdered and who the mastermind is, and all the students enthusiastically volunteered to have false memories implanted in order to participate. The game goes to great lengths to call out people who constantly demand more Danganronpa games (or else create their own stories) for the same reasons as the audience in the game: to find out what happens each time.
• In fangame Super Danganronpa Another 2, this is revealed to be the case with Kanade Otonokoji, who's every bit as evil as Junko herself to the point that even the masterminds are put off by her. She's a sadistic yandere for her twin sister and spent their entire lives trying to groom her into an Empty Shell by killing their loved ones as she fetishized her despair. Even Killer Game Master Monocrow is shocked at how she manages to Die Laughing at the duo's own horrific execution.
• You can be this in Hatoful Boyfriend by pursuing a romance with Dr. Iwamine Shuu all the way to the bitter end. He even lampshades how you have consistently tried to romance a very clearly murderous character, despite the many signs that this is a bad idea.
  • Shuu himself also applies if you complete the route. He ends up killing you, then falling in love with your disembodied head that he always keeps with him even as he runs from the authorities.
• Higurashi: When They Cry:
  • Rena spends her afternoons in the local scrap yard collecting whatever she finds cute, including her trademark cleaver and a statue of Colonel Sanders.
  • Droopy nurse Takano Miyo, who is a Fangirl for the dark legends about Hinamizawa's dark past and the sadistic Big Bad of the story.
• Yuri in Doki Doki Literature Club!, whose elegant yet Shrinking Violet nature is juxtaposed by her love of horror novels, knife collection, and how her preferred style of poetry makes you choose more complex, darker words like "massacre" and "entropy". When Act 2 rolls around, her Sanity Slippage greatly exaggerates certain parts of Yuri's personality, including this one, until she becomes an obsessive Yandere who cuts herself for sexual gratification (something that might've already been happening before but only implied) and who eventually, after creepily confessing her love to the player character, stabs herself to death in front of him with a wide-eyed, ecstatic grin on her face, whether her confession is accepted or not.
• Kaoru from Spirit Hunter: NG really enjoys the occult, and is more enthusiastic about confronting murderous spirits than scared of them. It's to the point that, when she jokes about prioritizing ghosts over the well-being of her or others, she has to clarify that she's kidding.
• Love Plus: Nene Anegasaki has as one of her hobbies watching horror movies.
• A Little Lily Princess: During the museum visit, Lavinia wants to spend a little extra time looking at a dinosaur skeleton that terrifies all the other girls. She also calls the skeleton "marvellous".

Web Animation

• In Confinement this is Played for Laughs when Connor is meeting with his psychologist, Dr. Powers. When she expresses doubt about his claims about being mind-controlled into wanting to escape, he points out to her that there's a giant slug-monster in containment downstairs that turns into someone's greatest sexual desire. Powers is confused because she didn't know it transforms.
• Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures: Implied with Kuromi when she's complaining about My Melody's decorations for her fun house.
  Kuromi: This is a nightmare, and not the good kind.
• BleakOne from Kirby Guardian tends to have an interest in creepy and disturbing things. When he sees a cloud that looks like a chainsaw, he images Adeleine walking toward him and the other Kirbies with one. and image that disturbs the other Kirbies.
• DSBT InsaniT: If this Freudian Slip at the beginning of 'Carneelval' is any indication, Alex is one of these.
  Alex: Wow! Going to a ghetto carnival in the middle of the night, just like I always fantasized!...I mean FEARED!

Webcomics

• Cheryl from Awful Hospital is described as having visited the most nightmarish locations throughout the Perception Range with almost spiteful disregard for her sanity. She has also been shown stealing and enjoying alien porn. The prototype character she was based on from before Awful Hospital is shown flirting with monsters and using them to torment her son.
• Shuinji Watanabe from Sexy Losers. In the beginning, he was "just" a necrophile, but he was flanderized into being a fan of zombies, amputees, and flesh wounds. Other characters of the webcomic apply too.
• Bugbears in Skin Deep basically exist to find people wherever they are and scare them. A character even describes that some of the real-life examples here are bugbears in-universe.
• Yuki from MegaTokyo. She has her very own pet zombie Godzilla (Zom Zom-chan) which she tries her very best to make as kawaii as possible.
• Tsukiko from The Order of the Stick. The first time she met the lich Xykon, she hit on him. (Later, she's seen carrying around a Xykon doll.) She also acted like a mother to a group of wights she had raised, stating that "a pulse is not a prerequisite for being loved".
• In Drowtales, Mel creeps out even other drow with her love for spiders.
• Homestuck:
  • Rose Lalonde studies the zoologically dubious in her spare time, preferably in her trusty grimoire. In one flashback, we see Rose making snow eldritch abominations.
  • Dave Strider used to keep dead things in jars.
  • Feferi really doesn't understand why Jade (along with most of the readers) was so freaked out by the Gods of the Furthest Ring. Although this is justified, seeing as her guardian lusus (parental figure) was their emissary, so she's quite used to seeing the mind-warpingly bizarre by this point.
  • Aradia, after her ascension to God Tier. She honestly doesn't see why others are creeped out by her eagerness to throw a "corpse party" (read: funeral) and sees death as something worth celebrating.
• Girl Genius:
  • Sparks have a disturbing tendency to get fired up when discussing any kind of experiments. The more gruesome, twisted, dangerous, or unusual the experiment, the better!
    "Not a bad idea, but d'Omas' taste in women was... well... let's just say it was lucky for him he could build his own. There'll be no d'Omas heirs showing up... except in glass jars."
  • Bangladesh DuPree falls in love with Vole after he makes a big speech about the chaos he wants to cause in Europa. Later, when he turns into a giant monster, she finds him even more attractive.
• Penny Arcade: Tycho paints us a graphic picture of the type of being he'd like to mate with, which Gabe clearly considers Too Much Information. Amusingly, the third panel didn't originally have dialogue. In the original, it was silent — they mentioned in a podcast that they had to add it because, without the dialogue, it pushes it past "funny" and into scary.
• Sandra K. Fuhr (creator of Boy Meets Boy, Friendly Hostility, and Other People's Business) could be seen as one of these herself, as evidenced in her comic 5ideways and in some of her one-shot drawings. Many of her characters throughout any and all of her various works display this trope to varying degrees.
• Chainsawsuit has Mr. Wuvcraft. Yay!
• Elmsly from Beyond the Canopy. He's excited about visiting a swamp full of poisonous wildlife, and after Glenn defeats a group of dangerous spider crabs, Elmsly wishes he could have studied one of them up close.
• Lovely Lovecraft: Noyes admires the shoggoth imprisoned at Miskatonic. This is of course fitting, given his real identity as the Crawling Chaos.
• Dr. Virginia Lee in Skin Horse is Officially Not A Mad Scientist. She's just a scientist who likes taking creations of mad science and making them even more horrifying than they were to start with, especially if it involves removing someone's brain. She's responsible for creating Unity, and waxed poetic about the "beauty" of seeing her creation completely destroy her workplace and colleagues, and her reaction to the zombie city had Sweetheart saying "Do that thing where you convince us you're not mad."
• Beans Mulroney of Nobody Scores! has a moment:
  "What? I've dreamed about death by vampire ever since I was fourteen — excuse me if I get into it!"
• As in both of the source materials, Lydia fits this to a T in Cobweb and Stripes.
• The Pokémon example listed above is parodied in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, where Jared says the same thing. The attendant points out that it's because his Gyarados is eating the other Pokémon.
• The robot Dvorak in Freefall is considered a Mad Scientist because he finds every idea, discovery, and invention fascinating, no matter how potentially disastrous it could be. If the planet Jean should one day explode, the likely culprit is going to be Dvorak, having gotten a bit carried away while working on a project that would have made any reasonably sensible human run away screaming at the thought of it.
  Dvorak: The chief asked if I could help. His normal tech didn't feel comfortable around a suicidal robot full of cyberweapons.
  Florence: He didn't want to stay and learn?
  Dvorak: He went home to his personal EMP bunker. He didn't want Clippy to be activated. He wanted Clippy burned to atomic ash, the ash sealed in yttrium barium copper oxide, and then dropped into a liquid nitrogen sea. Oh, this is going to be exciting! Shall we start?
• Wren from Pebble and Wren enjoys scary movies even though she's only about eight.
• In Court of Roses, Morana, priestess of the death goddess Sabal (and former jester), is lively and upbeat despite her grim surroundings, and loves making corny death jokes. It is indicated that most clergy of Sabal are actually fairly grim, so Morana is a bit atypical in this. The main cast's reaction is mostly disturbed by her flippant regard for the macabre.
• Punderworld: Implied in Persephone's case in "first date". Since lush meadows and waterfalls are already her domain, she is less than impressed when Hades tries to show her Elysium, instead finding interest in the more lava-cave areas of the underworld.
• The Super Mario Bros. fan comic I'd like you to meet'' portrays Daisy as a fan of horror movies. Luigi tries his best to endure watching one with her during their date, but unlike her, he gets progressively more and more terrified as it goes.
• MoringMark depict Masha this way in a pre-"Thanks to Them" comic, with them admitting that they're into the fact that Vee is a "demonic, magic-sucking slug monster" after the two start dating.
• Downplayed in Scarlet Lady's chapter "Horrificator", where Juleka keeps regarding the Akuma (which resembles a movie monster) as "cool".

Web Original

• A common character type in the works of Alexandra Erin.
  • In Tales of MU, Amaranth casually discusses bestiality and the Power Perversion Potential of Good Thing You Can Heal on a semi-regular basis, and Steff gets horny at the thought of most Nightmare Fuel.
  • Meanwhile, Void Dogs Galatea is aroused by everything. Including spending the rest of her life having her life energy slowly and painfully extracted to power a faster-than-light drive.
• The unnamed human protagonist from Alien Abduction Role Play is strongly implied to be a vorarephile, which is why they stop being frightened by Acktreal's threats to eat them rather quickly.
• Channel Awesome:
  • Ask That Guy is a Depraved Extreme Omnisexual to ridiculous extremes, works for the devil, apparently keeps souls under his robe, and has a habit of crossing lines no man was ever meant to cross.
  • Bennett the Sage of Masterpiece Fanfic Theater reads fanfics that tend to reach Nightmare Fuel levels of Squick. Sure enough, he appeared alongside Ask That Guy... and proceed to horrify him.
  • Ralph, the Inner Serial killer dwelling within Luke Mochrie's mind.
    Ralph: When I know there's going to be violence involved, I always, always make sure I have a bottle of lubricant and some paper towel on hand.
  • The Nostalgia Critic squees over the possibility of a relatively warm-hearted Christmas movie ending with it being a Dying Dream of characters frozen in the snow.
  • The Nostalgia Chick is an expert on all kinds of disasters and glees over Disney being "a veritable treasure trove of gruesome ways to die".
• Survival of the Fittest:
  • Anna Chase of v4 seems particularly fond of psychological horror and slasher movies and can be described as a bit obsessed over them at times. It has been shown that on a couple of occasions if something reminds her of a horror movie she could easily have a "Cool!" type reaction, though not always. Occasionally, this, combined with her normal personality, sides into Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant tendencies.
  • The Big Bad, Danya, although he has an agenda to his actions, seems to genuinely enjoy watching teenagers killing each other, for the most part. A good portion of the time he is cackling over how so-and-so died that day whenever announcements come up, often poking fun at the victims. He also reads SOTF fanwork for fun. Speaking of which, the program in-universe does have people who watch the show, even if a Guilty Pleasure interest in it, including a number of characters that appear on the island.
• Carmilla of the Whateley Universe. Hawthorne dorm residents were horrified when she went down to the dorm's deepest level into a room you aren't supposed to enter and faced the unnameable horrors inside. She treated it like a big party. But then, she is an Eldritch Abomination herself.
• CSupernova's Modern Thief, as seen here tenderly hugging a skeleton.
• Mizue Atta from Mitadake Saga is shown to be extremely interested in the dead body in the school. She even mentions how silly she thinks morals are. She's utterly adorable despite this.
• XIX is a more ... literal example but writes amazing serial killer POVs.
• Ed from Nullmetal Alchemist, referring to his revived mother's horrifying figure (noting that she's mostly organs) as beautiful and has a long discussion with a serial killer about how fascinated he is with the grotesque. Al comments on how he doesn't want to discuss Ed's "nightmare fetish". After hearing Al's justification for staying a suit of armor (to be attractive to Winry) he says "That's fucked up. [Beat] I like it."
• Ultra Fast Pony's Sweetie Belle is fascinated by scenes of death and violence. When she and her new friends form a club, all her suggestions for club names sound like death metal album titles.
  Apple Bloom: How about the Cutie Mark Crusaders?
  Sweetie Belle: The Crusades were the most violent, depraved, torturous, and brutal times of all history. I frickin' love it.
• Let's face it, this trope is the reason This Very Wiki has so many Nightmare Fuel pages and examples. Tropers sure love describing creepy things!
• BuzzFeed Unsolved: Both hosts, naturally. It goes with the territory when your job is investigating horrifying murders and stories of demons and ghosts. When a fan sent them true crime baseball cards, Ryan described it as feeling "so wrong and yet so right at the same time".
  Ryan: I gotta say, of all the serial killer cases I've read about — and I've read a lot—
  Shane: Because you're a sicko.
  Ryan: I am not a sicko!
  [later in the same episode]
  Shane: Tell you what. I love when serial killers have a fun little thing.
• This is the norm in Mortasheen. Consider that this is considered the city's "Handsomest Theoretically Male Organism" and that's not as much of an Overly Narrow Superlative as you might think.
• Normally, information specialist Meerkatnip only aids TANIS host Nic Silver because he pays her. However, she's expressed interest in a few of the things that come up in Nic's investigation of the Tanis myth, such as a film said to drive insane anyone who views it. When Nic has to go to an old asylum to conduct an interview in the third season, M.K. insists on tagging along to see the asylum for herself, wonders along the way if they have an electric chair, and once they arrive, sneaks off to explore by herself.
• Patrick Gill, while explaining how Bloodborne is just like The Muppets, at one point comments that Big Bird's soft, downy feathers make him a big, huggable friend, while the Blood-Starved Beast's matted fur and wet flaps of hanging skin...make him a big, huggable friend.
• TB Skyen has a particular affection for interestingly ugly character designs, to the point of making a video lamenting League of Legends moving away from "ugly" champion designs and towards "badass" ones. Of note, when he encountered the Demon of Song in Dark Souls II, a hideous shit-brown toad monster with a zombie-like face and arms poking out of the end, he spent half the boss fight geeking out about it.
  Skyen: (gleefully) Look at this thing, it's so creepy!
• YouTube reactor VKunia, during her first viewing of Fight Club, seemed very interested in the initial form of said club, mentioning that she wanted to join it and that it "looks fun." Downplayed heavily otherwise, since she's immensely bothered by the violence and other squicky elements of the film.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • Marceline's idea of what constitutes fun and excitement is rather skewed by her being both half-demon and a vampire. This makes it hilariously bad when she tries to Play Cyrano for Finn and Princess Bubblegum in "Go With Me".
    Marceline: The only thing women love more than fun is excitement. She needs to feel her blood pump, man! She needs to...BE CHASED BY WOLVES!
    Finn: Like...metaphorically?
  • Peppermint Butler is deeply involved in all sorts of weird occult stuff. In "The Suitor", Pep-But's response to Braco being turned into a hideous monster after "paying the price for love" is to tell him "I wanna have your babies," and he's disappointed when Princess Bubblegum instead sets Braco up with a robot duplicate of her.
  Peppermint Butler: You should have given him to me! (Dope Slaps Princess Bubblegum)
• American Dragon: Jake Long: Brad may be a literal example of this. His reaction when the girl at the kissing booth undergoes a transformation into a Krylock demon (gaining a Xenomorph-like second mouth, amongst other things)? An enthusiastic "Jackpot!"
• Archer:
  • Cheryl the secretary:
    Cheryl: You seriously don't think that's hot?
    Pam: I seriously think you're scary.
    Cheryl: No, nononono. Like, a big sweaty fireman carries you out of a burning building, lays you on the sidewalk and you think "OK, he's gonna give me mouth to mouth," but instead, he just starts choking the shit out of you, and the last sensation you feel before you die is that he's squeezing your throat so hard that a big glob of drool slips right off his teeth and — blurp — lands right on your popped out eyeball.
    (beat)
    Pam: Jesus Christ!
    Cheryl: I know, right?
    Lana: What the hell?!
    Cheryl: I'm wet just thinking about it.
  • Krieger as well.
    Archer: Wait, are you still taping bum fights to get off?
    Krieger: No, now I'm into something much... Darker.
  • Cheryl and Krieger dated for a while until she left him because he was too weak to strangle her and the "robot choke arm" just wasn't the same.
    Cheryl: I'm sorry, but your hands are just too tiny and weak. It's like being strangled by a child, which I thought would be hot, but it wasn't!
• Arthur: Fern Walters often reads and tells scary stories with absolute glee.
• As Told by Ginger: Carl is an unusual boy who loves bizarre things. His prized possession is a petrified eyeball.
• Beetlejuice: As mentioned in Film, Lydia not only became best friends with the gentler (but still revolting) Beej, she's been shown to own spiders and worms; and everything she does from starting a band ("The Brides of Funkenstein") to designing Shakespearean costumes (which got Ol' Will's thumbs up of approval) has strong Gothic undertones. She also spends a lot of time in the Neitherworld, where she has several other ghostly pals in addition to the B-guy.
• Bob's Burgers: Louise Belcher is the hilariously twisted youngest daughter. She's conniving, manipulative who finds amusement in anything remotely abhorrent. Luckily since she's cute, so she can get away with it, most of the time that is. Also her nerdy sister Tina is shown to have a fetish for zombies.
• Darkwing Duck: Negaduck has a fascination with anything morbid, like in this exchange:
  Darkwing Duck: (through the intercom and imitating a woman's voice) Flowers for Negaduck!
  Negaduck: (through the intercom) I hate flowers!
  Darkwing Duck: Did I say flowers? I meant, er— SKULLS!
  Negaduck: (Negaduck is turned on and licks his lips.)
  Darkwing Duck: Skulls for Negaduck!
  Negaduck: I'll be right there.
• Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist: The more scary and disgusting the alien insect of the week is, the more Dex will happily go on about how gorgeous it is.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed is a little too obsessed with horror movies and comic books. One episode has him smile merrily when it seems he may have summoned an monster. A few episodes have even had him grinning as the Kankers close on him and the other Eds.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Dipper Pines tries to convince his sister Mabel Pines that her new boyfriend is a zombie. She's mostly just excited by the idea that he might be a vampire instead. They're both wrong — he's five gnomes in a costume.
  • And then there's Ford, the author of the journals, who is obsessed with supernatural weirdness, even more so than Dipper.
  • Bill Cipher is the definition of this trope. He gleefully tortures the bodies of those he possesses, like Dipper (declaring that "pain is hilarious"); finds teeth pulled from a live deer and a severed, always-screaming head as suitable 'gifts' for those who summoned him; and the complete destruction of the universe is similar to a college party to him. But then we have to remember that he is an Eldritch Abomination from a Nightmare World whose morals are essentially Blue and Orange.]]
• Growing Up Creepie: Creepie Chreecher falls in love with a boy working at a carnival who she believes is half-tarantula, but loses interest when she finds out it was just a costume. In a later episode, her interest in him returns once she finds out his adoptive mother is a giant spider.
• Harley Quinn: "Gotham's Hottest Hotties" depicts Damian Wayne expressing interest in seeing a dead body. He is disappointed when he has to miss out on it to visit his father in Blackgate and later says "Cool" in response to seeing what's left of Professor Pyg after Harley bashed his head in.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: Heloise actually becomes depressed when there's destruction and she's not the one causing it. Then in "Bend It Like Wreckem"; after Jimmy and Beezy accidentally knocked the pro soccer player Wreckem out, she takes his brain out and takes care of it, then hugs it while baby-talking it!
• Kaeloo: Both Stumpy and Mr. Cat, especially the latter, are into gory and scary stuff. In one episode, Mr. Cat shows Stumpy and Kaeloo a book full of gory images. While Kaeloo is horrified by its contents, Stumpy admires the pictures.
• The Legend of Korra: Jinora tells Korra an old Fire Nation legend about a heroine who couldn't be with her beloved because he was the son of her enemy and had an Arranged Marriage besides, so she rode a mighty dragon into battle and murdered everything in the country before committing suicide by jumping into a volcano. Jinora then describes this story as the most romantic thing she's ever heard, to Korra's visible bafflement/horror.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Lilo did make friends with a girl who is into some bizarre things, as she believes that "weird is normal". Later on, Lilo gave her a bat-like experiment that ate mucus to help her with her sinus problems. Really.
• The Loud House: Lucy Loud is obsessed with all things dark and macabre. She even claims to be in love with a fictional Nosferatu-esque vampire.
• The Magic School Bus: Very, very little fazes Ms. Frizzle if it can be used as a teaching moment. Moments like getting ensnared by a giant spider, getting eaten by a student, and falling into a volcano.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Adorabat fantasises about her peaceful town being attacked by monsters, develops into a Blood Knight at the first opportunity she gets to do so and has a cave where she stores her bone collection.
  Badgerclops: This is not healthy.
• Mina and The Count: The short "Frankenfrog" has Mina's bully Nick demonstrate a disturbing eagerness in cutting open the dead frog that has to be dissected.
• Molly of Denali: Vera loves creepy things. During her Slumber Party with Molly and Jake, she brought over a scary board game to play.
• Moral Orel: Dr. Potterswheel is sexually aroused by lacerations, scars, and disfiguration. He accidentally killed his wife by loading her full of painkillers after an accident rather than actually treating her wounds.
• The Mr. Men Show: Little Miss Scary loves anything that has fear written all over it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Princess Luna arrives on a spiked chariot pulled by bat-winged pegasi, heralded by lightning and swirling clouds, and wearing a cape made of living bats, and sees nothing unusual about this. Ultimately it ends up working in her favour, as she fits in great at Nightmare Night (pony Halloween).
  • "Castle Mane-ia" reveals that the Princesses had their old home, the Everfree Castle, filled with trap doors, spinning walls, scary statues, and an Ominous Pipe Organ controlling it all. They did so for the fun of it. Not to mention the hall of disembodied hooves. Though it seems that it was Celestia who had this installed, as Luna was apparently afraid of it. Whether they were real or fake is never actually explained either.
  • Played for Laughs in "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", which reveals that one of Rainbow Dash's favorite dreams is beating the horseapples out of Changeling after Changeling in a rocky location at dusk — Princess Luna initially mistakes it as a nightmare caused by the Tantabus, as the dreams of the other five of the Mane Six were more peaceful and calm^note Rarity — a parade of beautiful dresses; Pinkie Pie — revisiting past locations plus lots of cake and sharing ice cream; Fluttershy — being groomed by a giant, gentle Angel Bunny; Applejack — caring for her bump crop of apples; Twilight Sparkle — reading books in the library. Her actual nightmare once the Tantabus does its job is a bright pink setting with colorful singing flowers, one of which plays the flute.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: Zeb the zebra from Bright Lights is implied to be one. He's an accomplice to a shadow-and-strength-stealing spirit, and he walks like a human (a Primal Fear for zebras in Real Life).
• The Owl House:
  • Luz Noceda has more than a passing interest in everything macabre and mythological. She's absolutely thrilled when she arrives in The Boiling Isles.
  • Skara is also shown to be this in "Enchanting Grom Fright", as she Squees with delight when a boy gives her a promposal that involves a fake medical emergancy and an actual beating heart. This gets taken even further later in the episode when Luz has to fight against a shapeshifting moster to keep it from subjecting everyone in the Boiling Isles to their worst fears while she and her date are shown enthusiastically cheering for the monster.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: Rico finds things that would freak out the other penguins a little too interesting.
• Phineas and Ferb: Phineas is highly enthusiastic about almost everything, including things that would scare your average person (this side of him was definitely on display when he and Ferb built the haunted house). In "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror" he intended to end his scary story with him and his friends getting ripped to shreds by the evil platypuses but revises it after they complain for a happier ending. And he delivers lines like this in his usual gleeful tone:
  "In case we capsize, your seat cushions can function as a headstone!"
• The Simpsons: Bart Simpson loves all things gross and gory, is tickled by the hyper-violent Itchy & Scratchy Show, was once misdiagnosed as a sociopath after he found the journal of a 19th century mental patient fitting the description and eagerly shared it with his classmates to their perturbation, and reacted to being eaten alive and crapped out by the personification of his own guilt with an eager "Again! Again!" His fondness for horror was the impetus and framing device for the very first Treehouse of Horror installment. He has a few lines, namely being genuinely shaken by the odd horror film and, as a younger child, deciding to Never Sleep Again after his father built him an unintentionally nightmarish clown bed.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Janna likes all things that are "witchy" and her very first line was "I want it to be my boyfriend!" regarding Marco's monster arm in the episode of the same name. In "Interdimensional Field Trip", her idea of a fun field trip is going to a morgue, and she briefly dates a skeleton vampire. In "Cornonation", she tells Eclipsa that she "gets it" upon meeting Globgor (a monster with whom Eclipsa is in love with).
• Steven Universe: Played for Drama when Lapis Lazuli admits that she actually enjoyed being fused with Jasper and trapped at the bottom of the ocean for months, despite it being a horrifying experience that pushed her sanity to the brink. As she explains, as terrible as it was, it made her feel strong again and allowed her to vent all the anger and pain she felt from years of trauma. Even more disturbingly, Jasper also liked it, taking perverse joy in the sensation of being at someone else’s mercy after being the strongest person in the room her whole life. She literally begs for Lapis to fuse with and imprison her again, much to Lapis' horror.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In the episode "Absolute Power", Jax-Ur admires the nearby black hole into which he plans to hurl Superman. To him, it is the embodiment of absolute power. Fittingly, he and Mala meet their ends in the black hole.
• A Tale Dark And Grimm: Despite being a good raven and also a Cloudcuckoolander, Dotty loves blood, gore and thickness, and often tries to encourage William to focus more on it.
• Teen Titans: Raven displays some morbid inclinations, has been described as "way creepy" and... should the world get turned into gothic ruins and blood-red sky? "Cool." Of course, in this case, it's hard for her to help it since she is the daughter of a demon after all.
• In the Where's Waldo? cartoon, actually called Where's Wally?, the title character will constantly and cheerfully remark on their current plight; for example, falling hundreds of feet "to certain doom!" He also smiles constantly while watching others get pummeled or is in danger of a pummeling himself (said eagerly: "Who's the menacing fellow who looks as if he'd like to twist me into a knot and throw me off a cliff?"), is excited to be standing in front of an angry stampede, be attacked by monsters, be tied up in chains, be taken prisoner ("Wow, Woof, didjya hear that? We're official prisoners!"), hop into a dangerous pit of doom (shaking bag and smiling: "Well, Woof, apparently I didn't bring my parachute."), and is nothing short of thrilled to be in a cave-in. ("Wow, Woof! It's a real cave-in! And we've only been here just a few minutes! (elated sigh) How lucky can you get?") Seriously, how did Woof survive being around this guy?
• In the Winnie-the-Pooh Halloween special Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh, Tigger gets really excited by all the scary stuff he wants to experience on Halloween. He even has a really awesome Disney Acid Sequence song about it called "I Wanna Scare Myself".

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