For a show about a serial murderer, there's a lot of nightmarish stuff on Dexter.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Books
- Brian nearly kills Deborah, on the grounds that she's not Dexter's biological sister. Even worse, Dexter temporarily agrees.
- Doctor Danco plays Hangman with his victims. He tapes them up, shows them a hangman setup, and tells them to guess letters. Every time they guess wrong, he removes a limb. Doakes has his tongue cut off so he can't even say any letters.
- Dexter's Squick when he finds out that Samantha Aldovar wasn't kidnapped; she ran away so that Alana could eat her. Even worse, her son Bobby convinced Samantha and her friend it would be a good idea. We get treated to a grisly scene where Alana cuts off flesh from Samantha's arm and cooks it on a grill, as Samantha is watching and fainting from blood loss.
TV Series
- Every time Dexter has a flashback to his mother's murder. To wit, the sight of a two year old child drenched in blood, with the alternating sound of his mother begging her killer not to do it in front of her son and her telling Dexter not to watch, which then segues into the sound of Dexter crying mixed with his mother's screaming as she is cut to pieces with a chainsaw. No wonder Dexter is so messed up.
- Any of the times Dexter talks to his about-to-be-dead victim has slight indications of this, but when Dexter finally finds the man who killed his mom, he is completely pissed and freaks the fuck out to the point he's seconds away from brutally beating his mother's killer and is about to kill him before Lila calls.
- His actual killing of the man later on is just as chilling. Instead of his previous rage, or even his usual taunting towards his victims, Dexter is completely emotionless when he proceeds to saw the guy into pieces.
- Doakes' Heroic BSoD after having to witness Dexter kill a known murderer and drug dealer. First Dexter brings him in unconscious and Doakes is begging him not to kill the guy and telling him there's another way and to turn him into the police. As Dexter sets up the kill room, Doakes continues begging for him to stop at the top of his lungs as he hears the buzzsaw and sees the blood at the edge of the plastic wrap that Dexter is using as the kill room and he freaks the fuck out and shuts down completely.
- The remains of Doakes after he's killed by the explosion that Lila sets off are not a pretty sight. His limbs are all blown off by the explosion, and his flesh is utterly charred, leaving his face burned and completely unrecognizable. The only way that Masuka can identify the remains as even potentially being those of Doakes (before his dental records confirm it) is that the torso is about the right size for him.
- The Trinity Killer: A batshit insane killer who "kills in threes":
- The first kill, as well as his very first appearance, consists of him physically overpowering a small woman in a manner that is very reminiscent of sexual assault (both of them being naked), and then sticking a razor blade between her legs in the tub. Then husband of the victim comes back to see his spouse murdered, then is tried and sentenced for killing her, and then accused of another homicide done in similar fashion. This was based off how Arthur Mitchell's sister died: slipping in the shower when she catches him peeping on her, which shattered the doors, which led to her cutting her femoral artery on the glass and bleeding out.
- The second kill is a death by falling made out to look like a suicide. The key here is that the said falling kill has him say that if his victim doesn't do it, he will go back to her (it's always a woman, mother of two) house and kill off her relatives one by one. There's his absolutely chilling forcing of a woman to jump to her death, with her begging him to push her because she's too scared.
- The third kill is incredibly brutal beating of a man to death with a hammer. He claims that "you made me do this" in a rather sad tone.
- It turns out his cycle actually has four murders, and the first one is unspeakably horrible. He buries unconscious ten year-old boys in concrete.
- Lithgow's ability to go from a cold authoritarian monster, to a psychotic man child crying over his own crimes to a God-respecting family man is perhaps more frightening than his crimes themselves.
- The Season 4 finale. Dexter kills Trinity, returns home - and finds Harrison crying on the floor in a puddle of Rita's blood. Trinity had killed her earlier that day.
- In season 5 episode 3, the Irish nanny picks up Harrison and holds him. Then Harrison's face is CGI'd to make him *smile*.
- The Barrel Girl Gang in season 5 made DVDs of them torturing and raping their victims. Mercifully, virtually nothing is shown but the screams definitely qualify as this. Lumen's is especially horrific.
- Episode 6x04 was particularly jarring. Imagine being the girl in the greenhouse, knowing the trap that's set up for her demise as the police walk right into it. Even worse, imagine being one of the cops who triggered the device.
- What Travis Marshall does to his own sister, not just killing her, but stripping her naked and posing her as the Whore of Babylon.
- In the Season 7 premiere when Mike was driving at night and saw a man in a nice suit standing by his broken down modest-income car, struggling to change the tire, and stopped to help him only to get shot and killed.
- The Paranoia Fuel of the implication that Louis hacked into his business partner's computer and planted child pornography on it so he'd go to prison. The petty reason he had for doing this certainly doesn't help.
- Season 8's "Scar Tissue". It's not the scene of Deb crashing the car she and Dexter are in into a lake to purposefully kill them both, only for her to be saved by a fisherman, and for her to swim back and save her brother, no, it's the sound of a muted harp glissando when they rise from the water in the final second that conjures dark images to mind. It's not the only example of the show's musical score frightening the crap out of its audience, but even headier scenes like Season 6's finale didn't have scores this commanding.
