Nightmare Face / Anime & Manga

Just when you thought Rei couldn't get any creepier...

• Assassination Classroom:
  • Do NOT make Koro-sensei angry. Just don't.
  • A Running Gag with Hazama is that she's very good at scaring the crap out of people, including her fellow students and Koro-sensei, and loves doing it.
  • As a general rule, the manga also loves to give certain characters metaphorical nightmare faces when their evil intentions come up front, like Chairman Asano or Nagisa's mother. The results are suitably terrifying.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Many Titans are characterized by this trope. Even when critically injured, their face is stuck into a perpetual expression that depending on the Titan can be really creepy or really hilarious. Here is an example.◊
  • Also, quite a lot of them seem to have their facial skin streched, often bearing epic Slasher Smiles. Here are two lovely◊ examples.◊
  • Of course, the worst offender among mindless/Pure Titans has got to be the Smiling Titan, Dina Yeager (née Fritz), the Titan that killed and devoured Carla Yeager, Eren's mother. She never drops her Slasher Smile, not even when she's Eaten Alive by other Titans after Eren uses the Coordinate for ths first time.
  • Among the Titan Shifters, Annie, the Female Titan shows an example of this after her fight with Eren's Titan form. As soon as she defeats him, she violently splits open her mouth to bite the Attack Titan's nape and swallow Eren whole, thus capturing him. Just look at her.◊ The manga version managed to take this up to eleven and beyond◊
  • Human characters are not exempt from these either. Both Armin and Annie manage to pull off some really creepy evil grins. Here is an example.◊
  • Eren himself managed to wear a disturbing expression when he reacted against Reiner lapsing into his "soldier" persona.
  • Of course, nothing above can even come close to Eren in Chapter 123, as in the final panel◊ of the chapter has Eren declare his war on humanity using the Wall Titans.
• Akame ga Kill!: Every single villain has one.
• Bakemonogatari: Kanbaru makes a few during her fight with Koyomi.
• Barefoot Gen has *lots* of this, what with people's eyes melting out of their sockets, faces burned off, etc.
• The Behelit in Berserk is an Artifact of Doom, a blue or red amulet covered in a mixed-up jumble of eyes, nose, and mouth like a creepy Mr. Potato Head. Ironically— and very much in keeping with the themes of the series— it's not until the parts rearrange themselves to more closely resemble a human face that the REAL horror begins.
  • Void of the Godhand looks like the aliens from Mars Attacks!, but with a Frozen Face that has stitched eyes and a flayed mouth.
• Of all people, Beck in The Big O manga gets one of these in his final appearance, when he's left in the bizarre Eldritch Location below Paradigm City. His last appearance is him making a horrifying face.
• Initially just played with in Bleach; instead of horrifically deformed faces, it's instead had a number of horrifying expressions mainly given out by Hollow Ichigo/Zangetsu and Mayuri Kurotsuchi, so those never really counted as much as the other examples... until this happened.
  • Retsu Unohana manages to have one of the most unsettling looks upon her face in the entire manga after her past self as Yachiru Unohana, the first Kenpachi was revealed.
  • Äs Nödt might have just won the prize for scariest face after the release of his Vollständig, Tatar Foras.
• Every episode of Casshern Sins Cold Opens with random scenes of Casshern killing Luna. Oftentimes it'll settle on Casshern making this face.◊
• Claymore: Given the amount of Gorn, Body Horror, Facial Horror and Lovecraftian Superpowers that come into play, this trope is pretty widely spread. The reigning queen, however, is Roxanne, who manages to have some of the scariest expressions in the series without any kind of mutation or disfigurement whatsoever, and spends half her panels being a straight-up stunner. Then she smiles. Her one on-screen fight as a human pits her against a giant centipede-like monster made of oversized women's body parts, that was once Cassandra, her generation's Number 1. Even though it hands her her ass (at first), Roxanne's still scarier than the thing she's fighting.
  • Her serene face while taunting Cassandra about her best friend's fate at the hands of an Awakened Being, that Roxanne passively allowed to eat and ''rape'' her is also disturbing◊.
  • One of her worse expressions has got to be when she pummeled Cassandra with her sword handle, right before many terrified Claymores hacked Cassandra into many pieces.
• Maine from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners shows an absolutely horrifying one◊ when he fights against Trauma Team. The fact he does this after his cyberpsychosis causes him to accidentally kill Dorio shows how far he's gone prior to his death.
• D.Gray-Man is very, very good at this. Half the Akuma qualify, and even they have nothing on the Millennium Earl. As he would probably say: <3
  • And Tyki Gives him a serious run for his money.◊
• Digimon Ghost Game: Of all Digimon, it was one of the protagonist's Digimon, Gammamon who does this. In Episode 42, when he's being struck down repeatedly by a red Oboromon's prehensile scarf, his face becomes freakier and freakier until this happens, accompanied with a rather unpleasant Jump Scare. Then he turns into GulusGammamon to kill the red Oboromon and brutalize the rest. GulusGammamon himself is actually way less scarier than what brought him here.
• Dissolving Classroom features Chizumi Azawa, the grotesque younger sister of main character Yuuma, who has some of Junji Ito's trademark deformities: bulging, starey eyes; a too-large grin; and an enormous tongue.
• Gyokko has this in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba following his transformation into a Demon. More specifically, Gyokko's mouth contains an eye, another can be found on his forehead, and mouths appear where a human's eyes would be.
• In Dragon Ball Z, it is very uncommon to see Nightmare Faces. However, several insane expressions and facial deformities that makes Super Buu/Kid Buu are quite disturbing, which makes him the most frightening villain in the series.
• Renton from Eureka Seven when he sees a hallucination while mercilessly ripping apart an LFO in Episode 20.
• Fragments of Horror: The story "Magami Nanakuse", in typical Junji Ito fashion, gives us a particularity horrifying one◊
• K from From the New World has an absolutely terrifying one. He has his eyes rolled back, his face pale, and sports a Slasher Smile if there ever is one when he slaughtered 1,000 villagers. On the first day of his rampage alone.
  • Before Saki and Kiroumaru manage to defeat Yakumaru's Akki, she unleashes an ear-piercing scream that blasts a hole through Kiroumaru, coupled with a disturbing face of pure rage◊.
• If Fuan no Tane is compared to a car, Nightmare Face is the Nightmare Fuel that powers it. The stories are subtly written, almost never exaggerated but includes ridiculous amounts of people/demons/poltergeists having faces that should not exist in any case. These range from three black holes for eyes and mouth, diluted sclera and contracted pupils at the same time, faces made of shadow, completely agape mouths with unhinged jaws, face with only skin, and faces completely distorted like that of Rorschach from Watchmen. Special mention goes to the baby who was so ugly, they put a bag on its face, leaving a hole for it to breathe. Too bad its permanent smile covers two-thirds of its face while it consistently begs for someone to talk to.
  • Pumped into full gear with Kouishou Raijo.
• Fullmetal Alchemist also likes this. Besides a certain failed attempt at human transmutation,◊ Envy's One-Winged Angel form is covered in screaming, melting faces begging for release from their torture. Oh, and there's the Cyclops army, whose stunning good looks have led the fandom to conclude that they're the illicit love children of Mass-Production EVAs and zombies.
  • Lust also lets loose a face of pure rage◊ before using her Ultimate Spear in an attempt to kill Roy Mustang and prevent him from killing her. This is from the Brotherhood anime.
• Getter Robo, Batshit Ryouma is already insane with his Slasher Smile. The final episode has him absorbed a large amount of Getter Ray turning parts of his face and his eyes green. and then he starts his hot blooded and insane yelling. Scary...
• Gouda from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig was badly disfigured in an accident, but chose not to undergo reconstructive surgery because his new look was more memorable.
• Hellsing has a lot of characters with these. Like Alucard's face on the first series box.◊
  • "COME ON HURRY!!!"
• Very often in Higurashi: When They Cry. Some of the Ax-Crazy expressions get really weird. Here's a good example.◊
  • Umineko: When They Cry also makes use of this; a couple of times, the first twilight murders have all had their faces plowed in.
• In-universe example: according to... Well, just about everyone at school in Hokenshitsu no Shinigami, Hades-Sensei has this. They even call him "Shinigami"!
• Hunter × Hunter is very fond of breaking these out now and then (they're usually found on Hisoka.)
  • Zoldyck family members do break some disturbing expressions occasionally (especially Killua and Alluka when possesed by Nanika), but the one that takes the cake is actually Miike, the Zoldycks' gigantic guard dog. He wears a cold, machine-like glare as his default expression, that managed to mortify even Gon.
  • Shaiapouf makes one◊ at Knuckle when he senses that Meruem has been wounded.
  • Netero also breaks multiple ones during different stages of his fight with Meruem. These◊ two◊ are by far the most disturbing.
  • Palm Siberia is a rare example that is Played for Laughs. During her more unstable moods, she starts to resemble Sayako from the Ring.
  • Another example not played for laughs is Hisoka's face during the fifth round of his fight with Chrollo. Hisoka is in general a master at breaking creepy faces, but this◊ is downright terrifying, not helped by the obscene level of detail put into it. In fact, this has to be one of the most frightening faces in the history of manga.
  • Machi breaks into rage and gives a rather hateful look towards a resurrected Hisoka when he resolves to slaughter the Troupe, all while screaming◊.
• Jagaaaaaan not only are the "Fractured Humans" incredibly warped to look at as their faces mirrors their emotions when transforming, every single ordinary human are creepy as well thanks to the art-style as well.
• King Crimson in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has a nightmarish plain white face with unnatural, lidless fish-like eyes and a perpetual grimacing mouth. A smaller version of that face is embedded into its forehead. Both faces are almost always making contorted expressions of rage and fear, and it gets worse in the anime adaptation◊.
• These happen quite often in Kakegurui, usually during a Motive Rant or before someone makes a big play, and (in the Animated Adaptation) almost always accompanied by Glowing Eyes.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple gives us Lugh, a blind martial artist. Under normal circumstances, he's just a pale pretty boy. But when he gets serious about breaking his opponent, particularly when he opens his eyes, the results can be... remarkably distressing.
• Manami from Life (2002) often puts on a Nightmare Face when she isn't trying to be cute.
• Magic Knight Rayearth: Vigor's face looks especially creepy when he first starts turning back into his monster form (he's a monster Ascot sent out to trick the Magic Knights, since Vigor can take on a cuter form that endeared itself to Hikaru), with the way his head is tilting slowly, his eyes are huge and glowing red, and his fur looks very wild too.
• From the first chapter of Magical Girl Apocalypse, the final panel of the little girl in the Lolita costume after blowing up a school staff member's head using an indescribable weapon.
  "Magical..."
• Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro BREATHES this trope. Every villain has one, Neuro has multiple and even the good or neutral characters delve into really disturbing spheres, be it thanks to a Slasher Smile, a deranged animation for shock or similar. That most characters with such faces are humans isn't making it less scary, it rather adds to the horror, seeing that a lot of the faces don't even resemble humans AT ALL.
• Maria no Danzai: Played for Laughs with the birth of Kiritaka. When Taiichiro Nagare saw how exhausted Mari was he tried to tell his son he should sleep now (which of course is impossible to tell to a newborn), Kiritaka continues to cry even more when he saw the scary face of his father.
• Mitsudomoe: Hitoha's face when she's mad, or whenever she feels like doing it.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Tomura makes one in chapter 69. But Tomura's face is creepy in general, due to the overabundance of detail lines used to draw it, making him look 50 years older than he really is.
  • Kirishima, in chapter #134, when he turns his Quirk up to eleven. The facial crenelations that usually come with activation of his Quirk intensify and extend onto his eyeballs, his irises become polygonal, his hands are transformed into talons, and his mouth becomes a distended, lipless maw.
  • For someone who is usually friendly and harmless, Izuku Midoriya is quite capable of sporting terrifying expressions, to the point he starts looking like a character from Berserk Especially during the Paranormal Liberation War arc.
• Despite being a Romantic Comedy, My Monster Secret has a fair share of these. More often than not they're played for the humor of the characters overreacting to things, but later on a few real dramatic ones show up, such as Youko getting a case of Horror Hunger or Future Nagisa threatening to kill her past self.
• Gaara in Naruto has many of these. Some examples can be found here.
  • Sasuke in chapter 480 makes a famous scary face as he’s killing Danzo. Overlaps with Evil Makes You Ugly.
  • The Byakugan is an effective tool to help a Death Glare become one of these, thanks to a combination of a pale iris and the veins around the user's temple bulging when it's active. It's effectiveness ranges depending on the user, though the cake is definitely taken by Kaguya.
• Nejimaki Kagyu: The manga seems to specialize in stuff like this. Case in point.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The follow-up movie The End of Evangelion has several:
  • As mentioned above, the MP-EVAs, which are basically creepy Humongous Mecha grinning like madmen.
  • If some of Asuka and Shinji's Freak Out faces count, then the (thankfully brief) shot of Asuka as an eerily detailed, decayed, maggot-filled corpse in a particularly Mind Screw-y sequence definitely does. It is not for the faint of heart.
  • Lilith (AKA Giant Naked Rei.) Her expression borders Psychotic Smirk and Dissonant Serenity throughout the whole film, save for the scene where her eyes turn black and red, and the other scene where she develops an Third Eye. She's even smiling after being decapitated—and the result is the image seen above.
• Night Warriors: Darkstalker's Revenge:
  • The first episode gives us Demitri's smile as he remarks on his pleasure of the humans suffering. It is full of dozens of sharp teeth, sharper than what had been previously shown. To make manners worse, all of those teeth are slightly rotten. As if that weren't enough, he appears in his demonic form a couple of times, which has a beast-like appearance, animalistic eyes, an extremely long jaw, and even sharper, crooked fangs. It can best be described as the appearance of a mutated bat.
  • Also included in one of Pyron's first scenes in the second episode is his terrifying face that he makes during his winpose in the games, but now instead of just being a simple energy beam, his face is shown covering an entire planet.
• Of all series, One Piece gives us Caribou◊ and Big Mom.
  • Katakuri. Just... Katakuri.
  • Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island is the darkest of the One Piece films, a genuine horror flick. As such, there are a few examples of this trope, but perhaps the best one is of Muchigoro. Here◊ is what he looks like normally. Here is what he looks like when his life force starts running out. And here◊ is what it looks like when it's completely run out.
  • 6 of the Straw Hats have faces like this just before they layeth the smackdown on Oars during the Thriller Bark arc. Take a look at them... oh, except for Robin. Whatever you do, don't look at her...
  • The Straw Hats do this again, this time during the Punk Hazard arc. Because they are out in the freezing cold, Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, and Robin need warm clothes, so they decide to steal them off of their attackers' backs! The scene can be seen here. Why are the Straw Hats so scary?!
  • In the Dressrosa arc, after being thoroughly trashed by Sugar's bodyguard, she decides to feed Usopp his own weapon, which she thought was poison but was actually an incredibly spicy grape. The face Usopp makes upon being force fed it and passing out is so utterly terrifying it scares her unconscious too! Which cancels her Devil Fruit powers, which was the intended goal of his going after her anyway, Pyrrhic Victory much? For extra hilarity points, that face later became the basis for a projectile Usopp used to scare the crap out of Sugar again to save Luffy and Law, a statue the citizens of Dressrosa built in gratitude, and even the figurehead of Leo's new pirate ship.
• In Parasyte, many of the mutants suffer from this trope. This is primarily due to the fact that the titular Parasytes are shapeshifting creatures that take over a host body by invading, absorbing, and replacing the head, then change the head into whatever form is necessary for combat and/or consuming its victims.
• Penguindrum Episode 11: Drugged up!Tabuki. Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit...
• Tokyo Ghoul, understandably. Any Ghoul can fit this trope with their black and red eyes, but a special mention goes to Jason, the second Owl and even Kaneki himself.
• Perfect Blue: Mima sports one of these as she kills a guy while disguised as a pizza delivery guy, Rumi's eyes are too widely spaced, which gives her an eerie look, but it's towards the end of the movie where she really gets into this trope. And Me-Mania pretty much has this as his default facial expression.
• Pokémon: The Series: What could possibly be worse than an Ursaring? An Ursaring seen through the eyes of someone hit by the terror-inducing Secret Power. SWEET DREAMS.
• Drosselmeyer from Princess Tutu has a permanent manic grin and unblinking owl-like red eyes etched to his face.
• Prism Ark is normally a happy-go-lucky Harem Genre, but then there's FBC manga adaption, where this it turns Karin Mibu into a sadistic teacher, who's ready to give a Nightmare Face anytime she's fighting or getting upset. And then there's a devil Hyaweh, who's much worse than Karin.
• Normally, Kyubey of Puella Magi Madoka Magica freaks viewers out with his perpetual cutesy smile. Not so in the manga◊.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Saionji's face whenever he gets pissed. As well as the blank face or Scary Shiny Glasses that Anthy sometimes has. Also, in episode 38 when Akio tries to make Utena his princess Anthy responds with another scary blank face and her eyes roll back in her head as she disappears.
• Sailor Moon: Usagi has a nightmare where her face is melting, and another one where Mamoru's face is melting too. And people say it is a lighthearted show.
• Serial Experiments Lain: The girl from episode 1 and 2, the one that's supposedly hit by a train. One word: HOLES. And Evil Lain's grin.
• Anyone going crazy in Soul Eater. It's a combination of Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises, a Slasher Smile, and extreme violence in large quantities. In fact, Soul Eater likes to do this A LOT, both in its manga and subsequent anime adaptation, though here they are trying to be covered up by a Slasher Smile.
  • Also, Asura's smile. Seriously, just... just look at it◊.
  • Crona becomes a master of this as the series goes on and he/she succumbs to the Black Blood more◊ and more.
• SPY×FAMILY: Yor Forger is very proficient at making these◊, especially when she goes Mama Bear mode to protect Anya.
• Toriko villains love this trope, and the worse their nature is, the more over-the-top disgusting their facial expressions during emotionally charged moments are.
  • Even Toriko himself has done this◊.
  • Zebra is often cited as having a scary face, which is understandable considering half of his mouth is ripped open.
• Shows up a few times in Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest. Haguro and Ryuuko in particular are very good at making these kinds of faces.
• Yowamushi Pedal's Midousuji can fall into this a LOT. Gross.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yami Bakura and Yami Marik have the tendency to make these kinds of faces in the anime. Especially Yami Marik since he is prone to having veins randomly pop up on his face, usually while his eyes are out of proportion and his tongue sticking out. Even the Off-Model shots of their faces are nightmarish.
  • Lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
  Noah: (Displaying Off-Model face) Huhuhuh! Poor Seto! He has no idea what's about to happen!
  Kaiba: Oh my god! What's wrong with his face? Guys are you seeing this? What the hell's wrong with his face?!
  Joey: (Also Off-Model) I fail to see the problem!
  Kaiba: What the hell is wrong with everybody's face?!
  • In the anime, Jonouchi (and on occasion Honda) is infamous for making a bizarre as hell creepy smile.
  • Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is practically the successor of the two above when it comes to this, especially near the end of his/her duel with Judai, and quite possibly even surpasses the above two villains. The fact that she looks like both Yami Marik and Yami Bakura doesn't make it any better.
  • Aporia in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds dishes these out during his duel with Jack, Rua and Ruka, despite ironically claiming to have become a machine at the time.
  • Vector in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL is fond of these as well, an impressive example despite not having a mouth. When he revealed himself to Yuma as "Rei Shingetsu", we get a dramatic close-up of his face contorted in a nightmarish fashion.
  • Yuri of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V is also quite capable of making these faces, especially as he grows madder and madder. Likewise his original progenitor Zarc dishes these out with the added advantage of draconian features.
  • Specter is the primary distributor of these in Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, but Windy and Lightning manage to pull this off despite like Vector, having no mouth.Especially when Windy resurrects himself using Flame's data with a twisted form.
• Despite being a Shoujo, the horror anthology manga series Zekkyou Gakkyuu has many instances of horror faces to accompany each macabre story, including a seemingly kind grandmother who keeps a feudal Japanese diorama of dolls filled with the bloody remains and faces of her victims, the vengeful spirit of a kitten left to suffer and die after being run over by a car belonging to the chapter's soon-to-be Victim of the Week, an insane house-wife masquerading as a gift-giving online Pen-Pal named Mama, the ghost of a girl burned in the school incinerator by her jealous rival, a classroom of students who take up the appearances of any student who becomes popular in the school, the ghost of a one-armed girl who will respond to the victim's refusal to find her lost umbrella by tearing off their arms and killing them, a freeze tag demon, a money tree that tempts victims to greed by blooming money from its branches leached from the bodies of its victims underground, and even a lonely statue (huge emphasis on the LONELY).

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