Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

• Highlights include the heroine mouse being stalked by an enormous (to her) spider, which is then graphically crushed under the talons of an even more colossal owl; the same character being pursued by a large, silent rat with expressionless eyes, who is armed with an electrified pike; and my personal favorite, the genetic experimentation flashback sequence. There was a fair amount of blood too.
• And seeing the mice sucked down the airshafts to their heavily implied deaths, screaming all the way, wasn't all that pleasant. Rumour has it that this is one of the scenes that got the book nixed by Disney for adaptation ...
• What about the scene where their house is filling up with mud, but none of them can get out? Or the actual home of the rats of N.I.M.H.? This troper, at least, had nightmares of both, and suspects that her fear of cobwebs came from this very movie.
• This troper found the scene where Mrs. Frisby is in the cage, her trademark cape removed, and scratches herself on a sharp wire the most vividly violent part as a child. She had some vague awareness of the primal "naked = vulnerable", and for a Talking Animal that doesn't wear pants, having a cape removed is about as naked as it gets. The nightmares she had were about the aforementioned air shaft scene, though, so perhaps it's all relative, even in a child's mind.
• This troper attributes her dislike of cats to this film. If you've seen the first ten minutes, you should know why.

• The grotesque and terrifying Giant Mouse of Minsk, a mechanical monster that the mice sic on the cats at the end. Smack dab in the middle of the Uncanny Valley, because it was a real, and frighteningly detailed, model transferred to animation via rotoscope.
• Plus the relentless Parental Abandonment theme of the movie can be very upsetting for a little kid.
• Also, this troper could have sworn that during the storm sequence, all of the waves gain demonic faces.

  • Pariodied in Spongebob vs. the Big One. The title wave has a demonic face and eats a surf board. However it was more funny when they did it.

  • Strangely, what bothered this troper about the storm scene was the fish flopping down the stairs.
• The scene where Fievel explores the sewers and is stalked by giant roaches and some kind of pike-thing is incredibly disturbing.

• This troper got extremely terrified during Sharptooth's big scenes.
  • This troper is twenty years old and still gets freaked out by Sharptooth. There were apparently ten minutes' worth of footage featuring that bastard that were cut from the film, and then there was the junior novelization of the film that featured a full page close-up of Sharptooth, with drool everywhere. Damned Don Bluth.
  • This guy's brother was saddened and horrified when Sharptooth died, and insisted that he was just hiding. Weird.
• This troper's mother knew a woman whose daughter was addicted to the film, plugging the tape in several times a week — and then having Parental Abandonment nightmares. Nobody really understood the source, until my mother said, "maybe it's that damned movie." They put the tape away... and the nightmares ended.

• The most notorious bit of Nightmare Fuel here is a disturbingly vivid sequence that is mostly recalled for putting the fear of divine punishment and existential dread in its young audience. Our protagonist, Charlie, has returned from Heaven to the Earth but is warned by an eerie voice that he can never come back; when the watch that is ticking away his life stops, that's it. This leads to a scene where the watch stops and Charlie is sucked into Hell. Now he's trapped on a ship slowly sinking into a lake of lava while he's being tormented by demon rats and a gigantic devil thing. Charlie screams for help covered in demons as the end of the ship he's on slowly descends into the lava... and then he wakes up.
  • Also from All Dogs Go To Heaven, King Gator, the grotesquely animated crocodile has horrified children for years with his sexually ambiguous nature and innuendo (specifically, the song "Let's Make Music Together"). Not that scary.
    • I thought everyone, even in the film, agreed that that never happened.
  • The scene where Charlie falls in the water and frantically grabs for the watch while he sinks still gives this troper the shivers.

• The Grand Duke is one of the most frightening creations to come out of Don Bluth's imagination. Except for the part where he gets shrunk down to three inches in height and then cartoonishly chased away by his nephew right after his One Winged Angel act. Isn't it a rule that the villain gets a more dignified death?

• The historical figure of Rasputin is portrayed as being a lich-like sorcerer with bat-like minions, and with body parts decaying and falling off as the movie goes on. Strangely, he also has his Narm moments.
  • Hey, Rasputin was pretty damn scary in real life.
  • And this was probably based on the Russian folk tale of Koschei, another lich-like sorcerer with a Soul Jar. This was also considered fit for children to hear.
• The sequel Bartok The Magnificent in turn has some relentlessly surreal stuff going on in it.