Nightmare Fuel / Arcane

Don't do drugs, kids.

Episode 1 - Welcome to the Playground

• The opening sequence itself is unnerving. The surroundings are smothered in a blood-red haze, and we can barely see anything until a sudden explosion happens and someone gets blown back. Followed by a Piltovan Enforcer emerging from the smoke and giving them a Coup de Grâce with their rifle. Said Enforcer looks absolutely hellish, with headwear not unlike the Wolf Brigade with the helmet, visor, and mask that covers their whole face, with said visor seemingly glowing menacingly as they cock their rifle in slow-motion. We then see corpses, debris, and fires burning all around from the first-person perspective, all contributing to an absolutely nightmarish scene. And all the while there's Creepy Children Singing amid the muffled sounds of the conflict, which turns out to be a younger Powder singing a nursery rhyme while being led along by a younger Vi, who is clearly disturbed by everything she's seeing but still trying to keep it together for Powder's sake, until she eventually breaks down in tears when finding the bodies of their parents.
• The street brawl between Vi's crew and Deckard's thugs. What you think is going to be a simple cartoony fight scene turns out to be a shockingly realistic and brutal clash between both gangs. The way the characters fight is completely no-holds-barred, with liberal punches to the face and stomach, getting stomped on and sent through a box, slammed in the head with a plank, kicked in the gut when they're down, and more. Even the way the characters get hurt is disturbingly well-animated and with minute detail, with punches to the face resulting in trails of spit and then blood flying out of the victim's mouth, everyone getting more and more bruised and battered as the fight goes on, eyes rolling into their sockets when knocked unconscious, and at one point Vi even has to stop and cough/throw up some spit after taking a violent blow to her stomach. Fortiche held absolutely nothing back when animating this melee, and it truly sets the tone about how gritty the series will be.
  • And what makes it worse is that while Deckard's group are seemingly young men in their 20s, Vi and her crew are only teenagers. Kids. Powder, The Baby of the Bunch, can't be more than 12 years old and is probably younger, and Vi should only be 16 or 17. For them to be violently attacked by Deckard and his lackeys, and moreover know how to fight back with equal viciousness, shows just how troubled Vi and Powder's lives are as Zaunites and how much they have to struggle to survive. This is pronounced even further when you see a young Caitlyn in the following episode, and she is a cheerful and happy young lady due to being not just a Piltovan, but a noble, and as such has few worries compared to Vi and Powder.
  • And on the topic of Powder, the poor girl is completely overwhelmed by all the violence around her, slumping down in fear against the wall with the group's loot, taking in the brawl around her in slow-motion. And then one of Deckard's thugs takes notice of her, and she has to flee in terror as he gives chase. No child should ever have to go through that.
• Silco is introduced obscured in the shadows of his hideout, and then nonchalantly injecting something into his eye socket. He then turns around, and you can see his left eye glowing a menacing orange. And when he emerges from the shadows, we're given a healthy dose of Body Horror as the left side of his face is revealed to be blackened and scarred, and his left eye being completely black save for a deformed orange "iris".
• Singed and Silco's experiment with Shimmer is creepy as hell. Singed puts a menacing hairless cat inside a cage with a terrified little mouse, and then taps on the glass to make the mouse drink from a feeding tube filled with Shimmer. As it quickly ingests the drug, there are cuts to the mouse's nerves mutating it doubles over in pain and begins to transform. As it's Hulking Out, it gains purple Tainted Veins and Glowing Eyes of Doom as it grows in size, as the cat goes from unnerved to genuinely terrified. From the mutated mouse's perspective, it then rushes the cat as it lets out a panicked shriek, and the last that's seen of it is its blood splattering on the cage's now-cracked glass walls as Silco and Singed recoil from the impact.

Episode 2 - Some Mysteries Are Better Left Unsolved

• Jayce's lifelong pursuit of harnessing the power of magic stemmed from an incident in his childhood, where he and his mother were trapped in a raging snowstorm and only survived due to a mage passing by and teleporting them out. While it did end on a positive note, with both of them being alive and well in the present, there's a great deal of worries involved in the young Jayce's situation. His mother collapses in the snow and is on the verge of death, with her fingers now blackened from frostbite, and Jayce is desperately trying to shake her awake and begging for someone to come and save them.
• Deckard being persuaded to use Shimmer. He initially refuses to take the drug, well aware that it would kill him. However, Silco manipulates him with promises of power, and with great hesitance, he decides to pop the lid off and down the vial's contents in one go. And not unlike the mouse from the previous episode, he immediately falls to his knees and clutches his head in pain as he begins to groan. He gains purple Tainted Veins, and his eyes glow a piercing blue as he shakes and screams, and the camera cuts away to the entrance to Silco's hideout as Deckard's screams echo throughout the building.
  • What is arguably creepier is Singed and Silco's reactions. Singed merely gives the young man an eerie smile and nods, urging him to take it, and when Deckard does, Silco is completely expressionless, caring nothing for Deckard's well-being and only seeing a new tool to use in front of him.
• While nothing comes out of it and it's not as dark as most of the other examples, the scene where the Enforcer is scanning the room for Vi's crew qualifies. The Enforcer feels more like a beast than a human, with his visor covering his eyes, his mask causing constant Vader Breath, and angrily growling as his search continues to bear no fruit. Adding to the tenseness of the scene is everyone hiding up in the rafters just out of view, with Powder being forced to cling precariously to a pipe and progressively slipping more and more as Vi gets increasingly worried, and finally falling just moments after the Enforcer gives up and leaves.
• Jayce's suicide attempt. Yes, you heard that right. After having his life's work on magic taken away from him, expelled from Piltover's Science Academy, his own mother telling him to give up his dream, cut off from the Kirammans' patronage and being forbidden from seeing his friend Caitlyn again, and knowing that there was no way for him to move on, Jayce decides to end his life at his destroyed apartment, leaving behind a suicide note and his treasured bracelet. The scariest part about all this is about how realistic it all is. Jayce had truly hit rock bottom, and unable to pursue his lifelong dream, life wasn't worth living to him anymore. He's even shown trying to steady his breathing as he inches closer to the ledge, mentally preparing himself to jump. If Viktor hadn't showed up when he did and convinced him to live by becoming his research partner, Jayce would have gone through with it.

Episode 3 - The Base Violence Necessary For Change

• Silco's monologue on how it feels to drown at the start of the episode is unbearably creepy. It starts calmly, showing a young, uninjured Silco serenely floating in an endless expanse of clear water as Silco discusses drowning's "story of opposites", that the water is peaceful and whispers for you to simply let go. But then he states that there's something raging in your head to fight and survive, and the tranquil image from before begins suddenly jump-cutting to to Silco with a bleeding left eye, thrashing desperately for breath in murky waters as someone holds him under. Once again, Fortiche delivers unnervingly realistic depictions of Silco punching, clawing, and kicking violently against his assailant, and eventually his eyes rolling into his head and his movements becoming sluggish as he loses more and more oxygen. The last shot of the scene is the silhouette of his attacker looming over him, their image distorted by the bloody water, and Silco thanks his "old friend" for making him face the choice of whether he's had enough, changing him forever.
  • Not helped that the silhouette is Vander's.
• As Vi desperately tries to leave the basement she's locked in to stop Vander from being arrested, she starts hearing shouts and yells, and begins to wonder what's happening outside, confused. As she peeks out from the window, she sees a panicking Grayson ordering someone to stop - and then some thing lunges at her, causing her blood to splatter over window in an instant, making Vi gasp in shock. The view cuts to the street outside, giving us a look at Grayson's blood everywhere, and a Scare Chord sounds as it expands to show Grayson's hand, and once more to show the dead Grayson's face on the ground, staring lifelessly at the camera with a bloodstained face. We then see Benzo, Marcus, and the cuffed Vander surrounded by the corpses of other Enforcers, horrified by what's happening. And from the green smoke rolling over the street, Silco walks out. Benzo, enraged, curses him out and tries to charge him as Vander desperately tells him to stay back, but it's too late, and the thing strikes him from the side and kills him as Vander shouts in despair. And the thing in question is Deckard, mutated into a hulking, animalistic beast with purple Tainted Veins and glowing blue eyes. After tossing a mortified Marcus his payment, Silco then orders Deckard to subdue Vander with a brutal punch and take him away, with Vi unable to do anything but scream helplessly.
• At Silco's hideout, we learn the story behind Silco's damaged eye as he explains his motives to Vander. The person who had brutally tried to drown a young Silco was none other than Vander himself, the very same man who is a loving father to four adopted children and wants to keep the peace between Piltover and Zaun. Silco had only gotten away by the skin of his teeth, just barely managing to take Vander's knife and slash his arm before escaping. While Vander had been established as a violent man in the past, for him to try and drown someone so murderously, with said someone being like a brother to him, makes it genuinely horrifying. And because of the pollution and toxins in the river he nearly died in, the nerves around Silco's wounded eye became infected and damaged, resulting in their present day state.
• Powder's hexcore bomb goes off. Everything that ensues isn't pretty.
  • Sevika shoves Silco out of the way of the blast. While it's thankfully just a silhouette, her left arm seemingly completely disintegrates. When Silco and his gang find Powder in the aftermath, an unconscious Sevika is being held by one of them, and while her arm didn't really get vaporized, it's reduced to a charred and blackened lump of useless flesh, which she had to replace with a prosthetic by the present.
  • Mylo and Claggor are killed. And in horrifically brutal fashion to boot. A piece of shrapnel gets blasted from the ceiling and strikes Claggor right in the head, instantly killing him and knocking off his goggles, now cracked and bloodstained. And Mylo has it worse, with a pipe being launched from the explosion and impaling him through the chest. But unlike Claggor, Mylo doesn't die immediately. Shocked and dying, he weakly tries to pull it out as he looks at his brother's corpse in horror, before looking up and seeing the rubble from above collapse on top of them, crushing him and Claggor and ensuring the two are dead.
  • The general state of the cannery after the explosion. Everything is destroyed, the surroundings are in flames, and the flickering lights and rubble all around invoke an absolutely hellish image.
  • When the bomb goes off, Powder is blown back by the force of the blast. As she falls, it's not fear or shock on her face as she beholds her explosion. It's awe and wonderment, marveling at her bomb's sheer destructive power and being filled with pride at having finally built one that worked. And the Soundtrack Dissonance during this only plays it up, especially when it's cutting to all the other carnage the bomb is causing.
• Vander resorts to using Shimmer himself to save Vi, and he comes out looking even more monstrous than Deckard, being bigger, stronger, and every bit as violent, brutally killing him with a one-handed Neck Snap. If it weren't for Vander's Heroic Willpower keeping himself together enough to rescue Vi from the exploding Cannery, Vi could have died, or worse still, been killed by Vander himself while under the drug's influence.
• While understandable, seeing that her disobedience and recklessness got their entire family killed, the whole scene with Vi hitting Powder so hard that she gets a nosebleed, calling her a "jinx", and walking away as she sobs and begs her to come back is absolutely agonizing to watch, after she spent the past few episodes being a loving, Cool Big Sis. It doesn't feel like a random nightmare fuel moment from an adult comedy like Family Guy, it feels like something out of Moral Orel or Bojack Horseman- pure, intense, and unpleasant character drama built up over the course of single or multiple episodes.
  • This scene (particularly the part where Vi hits Powder) has elicited shock from viewers, particularly from this video from Saberspark (Though he doesn't explicitly mention the scene):
    Saberspark: There was a scene, and it rarely happens to me... There was a scene in the third episode, where a character, hits another character and I audibly shouted out "oh my god!" Then I stopped, and I laughed, and I'm like, "Wow, I'm invested, bro."
  • Rewatching this gets harder when you remember what Vi said when she confided in Caitlyn regarding her past with Powder in episode 8.
    Vi: I'd say... "No monster's gonna get you when I'm here." Then a real monster showed up. And I just ran away.
• When Vi calms down and turns back, she sees Silco standing over Powder. As she panics and starts to run towards her, she is subdued and knocked out by Marcus, leaving her sister alone with the murderous madman.
• When Silco approaches Powder, he is carrying a bloodied dagger and hides it behind his back while asking her where her sister is. If she just remained silent, he might have killed her just to spite Vi.

Episode 4 - Happy Progress Day!

• Jinx's re-introduction to the viewers after the Time Skip. The Firelights mount a successful and efficiently-timed raid on Silco's forces, immobilizing all the visible goons above-deck and thoroughly in control of the situation. But the minute their leader sends two of their number below deck to search for more Shimmer barrels, everything goes to hell. One of them activates a tripwire that seals the hatch shut behind them, with Jinx's signature spray-painted monkey symbol drawn across it in neon-coloured paint which is brightly illuminated in the darkness of the hold, showing how the two of them are in her domain. The Firelights' visible panic about being sealed in takes them from the competent badasses who just mounted a daring attack and makes them mere people scared for their lives, especially when they realize that "She's here". The audible panic and despair present in their voice sells how screwed the Firelights know they are, contrasted against the darkness and silence of the hold Jinx is hiding in. And very much at odds with her usual boisterous and explosive personality seen in game, it's clear that Jinx is hunting the Firelights, and moreover, is enjoying toying with them, with the whole thing being framed like a horror film with Jinx darting through the darkness, just out of view. When the Firelights reluctantly investigate deeper into the hold to find their assailant, all they see is a still-moving children's swing sitting at odds with their surroundings, showing how Jinx is still trapped in her childhood — and they barely have time to register the word 'Boom' spray-painted across the bottom of the swing before Jinx sails past them on a transport crane, sticking each of them with 3 grenades each which clamp down tightly to the Firelights with bear trap jaws, leaving no hope of removal. The Firelights can only look at each other before they're blown to pieces, the smoke from the blast venting out through the hatch and creating an obscuring fog bank that the monster responsible for all that emerges from — looking just like an ordinary girl, even saying 'Hi' to the Firelights before abruptly biting the pins off two grenades and throwing them straight into two more members' heads, sending them falling over the side to messily explode off-screen. It's a chilling representation of how much Powder's character has both fallen and risen all at once.
• Silco's eye injection is really creepy. We get to see up close what he had to do at the end of Episode 1, and it involves jabbing a dose of Shimmer right into his pupil. You can see Silco's eye quivering very slightly before the needle goes in, and after he gets injected he immediately seizes up with pain, with his hands shaking, giving a pained grunt, and breathing heavily afterwards. And he's had to do this for at least several years, already having to do it before the timeskip itself.
• Jinx's Progress Day explosion. While having a normal evening, Caitlyn notices a fire and alerts her fellow Enforcers, and they rush to a burning building. While trying to control the blaze, the Enforcers hear the voice of a scared little girl trapped inside, and most of them head in to save her as she pleads for help. Once they're there, however, the little girl says that she set the building on fire, and the shocked Enforcers notice the voice came from a radio, which is surrounded by loads of Jinx's grenades. The voice then changes to Jinx's normal tone, and Caitlyn, who is outside, notices Jinx's burning graffiti in horror, desperately telling everyone to get out. But it's too late, and Jinx casually mentions all the dynamite and says goodbye before the building explodes, killing everyone besides Caitlyn, who can just barely notice Jinx fleeing the scene before losing consciousness. It's just another display of how deeply warped Powder became after joining Silco's gang, and worse still, it wasn't even on anyone's orders — she went and murdered half a dozen Enforcers on her own volition.

Episode 5 - Everybody Wants To Be My Enemy

• Viktor's failing health. While the previous episode already featured him much worse for wear after the Time Skip, looking more haggard, gaining a brace on his crippled leg, and upgrading his cane to a crutch, he is now at the point where he is coughing blood. And while experimenting on his new project, he coughs up blood and outright collapses, all from a first-person perspective, complete with his vision going red and blurry as he falls over. And that's to say nothing of his experiment absorbing his blood, an ominous sign that whatever comes out of it can't be good.
• When Vi has Sevika beaten and interrogates her about Powder, Sevika tells him she now works for Silco and shocks her enough to give an opening. She exploits said opening by brutally stabbing Vi with the Absurdly Sharp Claws on her mechanical arm, and Vi immediately goes down, forced to crawl away and visibly losing strength. By the next episode Vi is on death's door, and she would have died if Caitlyn hadn't found a potion to save her with.
• The corrupt Stillwater warden asks if Caitlyn wants him to have a "chat" with Vi to make her more cooperative, while holding out his baton. Caitlyn immediately says "no" and disgustedly asks him how many "chats" has he had with Vi. The warden nonchalantly replies he lost count. In other words, Vi has been repeatedly physically abused by a sadistic warden since she was a child.

Episode 6 - When These Walls Come Tumbling Down

• Perpetually distressed Marcus returns home, looking optimistic to see his daughter, only to find Silco and two of his thugs waiting for him in the same room as her. His daughter is completely oblivious to who they are, as Silco had befriended her enough to convince her they're simply her father's friends. As Silco questions Marcus about Vi, he makes subtle threats against his daughter's life that fly over her head but Marcus gets right away as he pleads for another chance. Throughout the entire scene, the otherwise unhappy but stoic Marcus is seen with a look of absolute terror as his eyes rapidly go back and forth between his daughter and Silco.
• The Shimmer junkies. People reduced to little more than feral animals living in the deepest pits of Zaun, fleeing from Caitlyn and Vi when they head down there. Huck, who had become an addict during the Time Skip, is covered in lumpy, purple growths from his abuse of the drug, and even though he has enough sanity to help Caitlyn save Vi's life, he is nonetheless too addicted to control himself around the drug, and sells out Vi's location when Silco comes looking for them.
  • Silco gives some of the addicts Shimmer in an attempt to kill Vi and Caitlyn, and they go from fearful and timid to raving, mad beasts as they rush at the pair, with their pre-existing deformations and hoods making them look far more unnatural than Deckard and Vander did.
• A blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but when Jinx is firing off the flare Vi gave her, and the camera pans around to show her lifelike delusions of Mylo and Claggor, they both bear the wounds that killed them - Mylo with a bloodstain over his heart, and Claggor with blood trickling down his forehead, which means Powder had to have seen them once their bodies were retrieved from the destroyed cannery.

Episode 7 - The Boy Savior

• A bleeding Jinx stumbles back to her hideout following her fight with the Firelights, and her mental stability is deteriorating massively due to her sudden reunion with Vi, which got cut short by Caitlyn's and then the Firelights' presence. She suffers crippling Hallucinations of Mylo mocking her over losing Vi as she staples the cut on her leg shut, and he then prods her over Caitlyn, who Jinx vehemently denies being threatened by - until she remembers her name, and continues to staple her leg as she goes Laughing Mad. When she finishes, she mimics shooting a Firelight bug, resolving to kill the innocent Enforcer just for becoming close with her sister.
• The scene at the bridge leading up to Jinx's fight with Ekko.
  • Starting things off is Mylo looming behind Jinx as she watches Vi run towards Caitlyn to try helping her, wordlessly convincing Jinx that her sister is about to abandon her again.
  • Jinx bombs the bridge with a swarm of miniature butterfly bombs, which is an effective carpet-bombing that slaughters every single Enforcer stationed there, with a complete lack of background music and the only sound being the bombs' rapid-fire explosions. When it ends, the floodlights are left flickering as ashes and dust float ominously around the scene, with the bridge littered with the corpses of the Enforcers.
  • Jinx walks onto the bridge through the smoke, nonchalantly humming the same Ironic Nursery Tune she was singing as a child years ago, with a complete lack of care for what she's just done. When she finds a badly injured Enforcer still clinging to life, she simply points her pistol at his head and fires, with her utter Lack of Empathy showing through her completely emotionless face and not even bothering to stop humming.
  • Marcus in particular suffers an undignified and brutal end, with a bomb going off right in his face. In the aftermath, his left arm has been blown off and the left side of his face is charred and bloodied. He isn't even able to finish telling the shocked and injured Caitlyn his last words, expiring halfway through.
  • When Vi rushes in to carry the weary and injured Caitlyn away, they come face to face with Jinx - who hallucinates poor, innocent Caitlyn with a grinning demon face and wickedly giggling.

Episode 8 - Oil and Water

• In a flashback to Mel's past in a nightmare, the brutal nature of Noxian society is made apparent when her mother, having just conquered more lands for the country, confronts a young Mel with a choice to either execute or spare a surviving member of the local nobility, a frightened girl her age. A concerned Mel understandably wants the girl to live and proposes she be exiled, but her mother thinks otherwise and lops her head off, with the life visibly leaving her eyes before her head rolls off her shoulders. Mel can only watch in horror at the blood on the ground, and she wakes up terrified from the nightmare, with the scene portrayed in a painting right behind her bed.
• As the morning comes at the bridge, an absolutely horrified Jayce stares at the carnage that had unfolded the previous night, with the Enforcers' corpses strewn across the blackened bridge and their blood pooling around their bodies. The sight is too much for him to bear, and he's forced to run to the ledge of the bridge and throw up.
• Singed's operation on the gravely wounded Jinx.
  • Before it even begins, Singed tries to warn Silco that she might be better off dead, and when he refuses to let her die, Singed agrees to help - starting by sedating Silco so he couldn't watch the procedure, stating from personal experience as a father himself that he wouldn't be able to mentally withstand seeing his daughter in such pain. It's an ominous sign that whatever happens won't be pretty.
  • Jinx wakes up halfway through the procedure, and immediately begins screaming and groaning in pain from the massive amounts of Shimmer being injected into her, giving her purple, glowing Tainted Veins as she convulses. She then begins suffering from horrific Hallucinations of a smiling Vi shooting herself as Powder in the head to replace her with an evilly grinning Caitlyn, and the Tainted Veins reach her face as her eyes go pink and she begins drooling and crying Shimmer as she continues to scream.
  • She then hallucinates Singed as a smiling Caitlyn and Vi preparing another needle of Shimmer, and at this point she's reduced to a sobbing, whimpering wreck begging for it to stop. "Caitlyn" then begins cutting out to the real Singed, who has a missing upper lip hidden by a bandage, which gives him and "Caitlyn" a Slasher Smile as he leans in to inject the screaming Jinx. And he injects the needle into her ear as she lets out an agonized Big "NO!" before the scene cuts.
    Singed/Caitlyn: I understand this must be painful. I'm afraid it will only get worse.
  • When Silco wakes up once it's over, he groggily sees the empty operating table and stumbles over to it, and gets a good look at Jinx's bloodstains splattered across it. He then grabs a scalpel and holds Singed at knifepoint in a rage, demanding what he had done to his daughter. The fear of not knowing what a madman has done to your child is nothing short of chilling.
• Caitlyn is having a Shower of Angst after Vi leaves her, seemingly for good. As she's drying off afterwards, she notices the steam on the bathroom mirror has Jinx's signature monkey face Calling Card drawn on it. As she stares at in horror, the steam dissipates... revealing Jinx herself, lurking against the wall with her now-signature pink eyes glowing menacingly, having been there the entire time.

Episode 9 - The Monster You Created

• Jinx post-Shimmer procedure just becomes far creepier and more menacing in that she's basically walking Nightmare Fuel. Every shot she's in emphasizes her newly-glowing eyes, which, alongside her more erratic movements, her skinnier frame, her paler complexion, and her vacant stare serve to make her look more like a bony wraith than an actual person.
• The Decapitation Presentation fake out, with Jinx carrying a heavy-looking plate covered with a silver dome and setting it in front of a tied-up and horrified Vi, saying she visited Vi's "girlfriend" and "made her a snack". It's clear that her choice of words make Vi assume that Jinx really is going to present Caitlyn's severed head to her, and when the cover is lifted, Vi shouts "No!" and looks away as her memories briefly flash to Caitlyn during their heart-to-heart moment in Caitlyn's room. While it's revealed to be just a cupcake on the dish, it's implied that Jinx wanted Vi to think it was Caitlyn's head, just to rub salt in the wound.
• Vi pleads with Jinx to think of their family- Vander, Claggor and Mylo- to come to her senses and she does. Too bad they appear like bloodstained ghosts in her visions, before becoming distorted by scribbles and her adoptive father and brothers morph into bizarre monsters that loom over her like they’re about to rip her to pieces as she curls up in a fetal position.
• In the closing montage, we get a few seconds lingering on Singed, in particular a very familiar body hanging from his ceiling in the foreground. Halfway transformed into a very familiar shape. Or, to put it simply: the implication that Vander is on his way to becoming Warwick.
• The very last frame of this episode, and season 1 as a whole, can be considered this. Jinx has fired a gem-powered missile at the Council's headquarters. The weapon hits the window in slow-motion... and then the window cracks, reflecting the scary red grin that was painted on the missile's head. Before we see the full impact of the missile, a final transition shows that same grin, now painted in various colors of neon. It's enough for the viewer to realise that this isn't just a sad ending. It's terrifying.