Nightmare Fuel / Dream SMP: Season Four

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The Freefall Arc

• Tommy's first stream post-prison break shows that Dream has not been slacking when it comes to finding ways to torment him. After Tommy returns from Phil's house, he walks into his own home, only to immediately fall down a Pit Trap. At the bottom, there's a tiny room made of blackstone and red nether blocks^* located under the Dream shrine Eryn made under Tommy's house, a sign saying "watch your back :)", and a chest with a disc in it. When Tommy plays said disc ("11", already one of the creepiest Minecraft discs), he not only hears the heavy breathing and footsteps that are typically on that disc, but also Dream's voice, repeating the things he said to Tommy during their first confrontation since Dream's breakout. Either Tommy is so instantly triggered by the sounds of the disc that he started hallucinating Dream's voice, or Dream decided to record their conversation and overlay it on top of the disc to freak Tommy out more.
  • Tommy, in a panic, returns to Phil's house... only to find that Phil is gone, the wood of his house has been replaced with blackstone, and that there's a sign on the fence saying "I got him too :)". Phil turns out to be fine; he was just mining copper, but for a while there, Tommy had to live with the idea that Dream had kidnapped Phil just to mess with him.
  • The thumbnail for the VOD itself is pretty terrifying, featuring Dream's iconic smile (in green outline) behind Tommy.
• With the DreamXD statue's completion, Foolish and DreamXD begin talking over the former's reward for it. When Foolish starts asking about ruling the End… DreamXD goes up to him and makes it clear that only he rules the End and to avoid disrespecting him, thus forcing Foolish to quickly backpeddle in fear of getting smote.
• Dream's January 2022 lore video proves to be this, as it reveals that he had previously forced Vikkstar and Lazarbeam into a Resurrection/Death Loop (i.e. tortured them) and then killed them to keep the revive-book a secret. Not only does it make Dream's claim that he didn't know whether the book would work (back in the prison lockdown arc) a lie, but it means Vikk and Lazar had been through some extremely traumatic events in the time leading up to their canon deaths... and it also means they had been dead for about a year and no one blinked an eye. Guess Dream was right in that no one would notice or care if the two Boomerville residents disappeared from their homes one day and never returned...
  • This also includes a nasty dose of Paranoia Fuel, as Vikk and Lazar had deliberately gone out of their way to keep their heads down and live Out of Focus in Boomerville, away from the server's drama. As a result of this, Dream deliberately went after them to be used as human guinea pigs for testing the revive-book. It only proves that whether you live in the spotlight (like the L'Manburgians) or out of it (the two Boomerville residents), Dream can and will target you, and in other words, no one on the Dream SMP is safe as long as Dream is around.
  • Oh, and it also confirms that Ranboo blew up the prison, presumably while Enderwalking. Tommy isn't going to be very happy if/when he finds out...

The Counteraction Arc

• Sam's 29 January 2022 VOD initially features himself being stuck in the main cell of Pandora's Vault and trying to figure out a way to break out... then all of a sudden, Dream shows up.
  • The first thing that Dream does is to mock Sam about how the tables have turned. The second thing he does is to establish Pandora's Vault as his new base due to how fortified it was, and promising to fix up the holes in security that allowed Techno to break Dream out a while earlier. Let's just say that this only serves to make Dream even more dangerous and intimidating than he already was — he used to be a "homeless" Teletubby, but now his new "house", also known as the resident Alcatraz Hellhole Prison, is already fully kitted-out.
  • After this, Dream promises to visit Sam and keep him in prison for the next year for karmic reasons, to interrogate him about people around the server and where their most prized possessions were (meaning he still hasn't given up on the "attachments vault/blackmail" plan from the Disc War Finale a year ago), before killing him once a year was up. When Sam tries to refuse, Dream threatens to kill him.
  • Throughout this mocking, Dream also claims that there would be no one out there who would be interested in looking for Sam. Not only is this the same way he managed to kidnap, torture, and murder Vikk and Lazar a year earlier without anyone noticing, but considering Sam's own strained relationships with most of the people on the server, caused by him alienating others through his strict adherence to being the prison's Warden, you can't say Dream is entirely wrong about this assumption.
  • After goading Sam into confessing he allowed Dream to get tortured continuously in prison because he wanted Quackity to get the revive-book and just kill Dream already, Dream admits to showing him respect... while promising terrible things upon Quackity, calling it karma.
    Dream: (to Sam) [...] Y'know, Quackity better be on the lookout, I– I hope he has his guards up, because I'm gonna find him, I'm gonna torture him, I'm gonna kill him... And then I'm gonna bring him in here [to Pandora's Vault], and plop him next to you, so he's in here as well! (Beat) And then I'm gonna find everything he cares about and then I'm gonna destroy it, I'm gonna burn it [and] rid it from existence, and then I'm gonna kill everybody he cares about. And guess what you're [gonna be] doing? You're sitting in here and I'm gonna sit down like you're my little therapist and tell you all about it.
    • Considering Dream had already almost single-handedly ruined Tommy's life, there's no doubt that he can actually carry out what he promised... and also considering Quackity's own Trauma Conga Line prior to Season 4, and the fact that he considered Las Nevadas to be his legacy, one would wonder if this was what's needed for him to be pushed from recovering from his Despair Event Horizon into becoming Too Broken to Break.
    • Also bear in mind that two of the people that Quackity does care about are Sapnap (one of his betrotheds) and George (his friend), who used to be Dream's best friends. Knowing Dream, he'd probably have zero qualms murdering his own former best friends just to torment his enemy. (Oh, and Tommy is also on Quackity's "loved ones" list, and also happens to be #1 on Dream's shit-list already. How convenient.)
    • And you can't even say Quackity didn't have it coming for him (at least, not entirely)... torture isn't exactly a feat that most people can get away with.
• When hunting down Dream, Sapnap finds one of Dream's old bases... and discovers an item he was trying to keep hidden: the Book of Death, which seems to be the counterpart to the Revive Book.
  • It would be odd that Dream hadn't used it yet... until you learn the rules of the book, which are the true nightmare fuel. It cannot be replicated, and it will take a canon life from both the user and the target. If it fully kills the user, the book is permanently destroyed, and if the book fully kills either the user or the target, it performs a Ret-Gone — no ghost, no limbo, no chance of revival.
    Summon God by writing his name in this book. God will kill both of you and them. God will tell them before they die who it is courtesy of. This book cannot be replicated. If the owner of this book dies, the book completely vanishes. If the Target or owner of this book dies, they do not have a ghost, they do not go to limbo, They cease to exist
  • What makes it worse is what happens after Sapnap finds the Book of Death, on several levels: The first thing he does is to test the book using the name of someone who doesn't exist named "Johnathan Stewart". This test proved to be somewhat successful as DreamXD was summoned... who told Sapnap that in spite of "Johnathan Stewart" not existing, Sapnap will still die. Sapnap tries to fight this by writing the name of MICHAEL... as in Ranboo and Tubbo's child who had recently been rescued. Who was allegedly three years old.
  • Thankfully, DreamXD responds that the Book of Death only works on player-characters, but he would have to kill Sapnap twice because of this. Sapnap fights this again until DreamXD tells him that he won't kill Sapnap twice, as long as he puts in a real name. Sapnap then writes the name of Dream, his Evil Former Friend.
  • DreamXD laughs and explains that Dream cannot be killed using the Book of Death since he's the owner of the Revival Book, and apparently the two cancel out. Eventually, Sapnap and DreamXD come to a deal, however: DreamXD will tell Sapnap where Dream is... on the condition that Sapnap will cease to exist if he kills Dream. No matter how despicable and horrendous Dream is... is it really worth Sapnap's entire existence? Let us hope that the one delivering the killing blow to the Green Boy isn't his former best friend that swore to kill him if he broke out of jail...
• The lead-up to Dream's murder of Sam. Through Sam's entire week in prison, Dream had been slowly gaining a vulnerable Sam's trust, from giving his actual good food to eat (compared to Dream just getting raw potatoes) to gifting Sam a clock to even getting Sam to see "his side of things" during Dream's visit to Sam's cell. All of this culminated with a Sam that would willingly give Dream the key to Pandora's Vault (the server's biggest threat having full control over a maximum-security prison, mind you) and teach him how it operates. All under the belief that Dream would let Sam go from the prison and go their separate ways. Needless to say, Dream didn't make things so easy. Right before Sam could leave, Dream not only makes it clear that he hasn't forgotten what Sam did to him, but he also kills Sam with a pickaxe with the full intent being to echo how Quackity got his scar and to show the server living proof to not to mess with him. All the while going from being angry to gleefully chipper as he carries out the deed.
• In his 12 February 2022 lore stream, Eryn ends up going to L'Manberg's crater, listening to the distorted screams of past wars. Upon discovering a rebuilt L'Manberg in the crater itself, the distorted voice of Technoblade's infamous "do you want to be a hero" speech is heard once the flag is in full view.
• During Foolish's stream on March 8th 2022, he was in the middle of building something when he looked down... and spotted Crimson vines. This means despite the Eggpire's "defeat" in the Red Banquet, the Egg had only been dormant all these months, and now that The Bus Came Back... we should be very afraid indeed.

The Denouement Arc

• The "Las Nevadas" finale, like its prequels, has its fair share of dark moments.
  • First of all, Quackity's montage of building his Chekhov's Redshirt Army of slimes and training them, even if having the army ends up helping him out in the end. Not only does it ring of Mad Scientist vibes, but the wording used in the "training" montage sounds disturbingly totalitarian... and bear in mind that since they're all slimes, they have pretty much all of the capabilities that Charlie has, i.e. the capability to be actual characters, with their own minds and free will. Uh…
    "You are now a citizen to Las Nevadas, and you are loyal to one country and one country only. Your sole life purpose is to serve Las Nevadas."
    "4. You are born thanks to Las Nevadas. You will die for Las Nevadas. Your life belongs to Las Nevadas."
  • After this, The Reveal that Purpled kidnapped Charlie between this stream and the last with the plan to kill him... along with Punz convincing him to team up with Dream of all people to get revenge on Quackity. Oh, and Dream's evil plan for revenge is to brainwash/gaslight/whatever Charlie into thinking Quackity abandoned him and using Charlie to kill him, and lock him in Pandora's Vault while Purpled takes over Las Nevadas. It's quite a nasty plan indeed.
• The Eggpire finale — pretty much a bad ending personified. Following the Eggpire's collapse, Bad tries to host Puffy a birthday party, albeit about one month later. Still, she does agree to come, but before she can even get there, she finds her house covered in Blood Vines and finds that someone had been digging into her home through a secret passage. When she enters to investigate? She ends up getting shoved into a hole that leads straight down to the Egg!!
  • Her disappearance causes the party-goers to split up and look for her at both her house and near the Egg chamber... but in doing so, the separate search parties find planted evidence that implicates the other group in having a hand in Puffy being missing. Due to the seriousness of the situation, prior experience with the Egg, and just strained relationships, no one but CPK is willing to trust or reason with each other; all of this culminating into Team Bad (Bad, Ponk, and Eryn) willing to fight against Team Sam (Sam, CPK, Antfrost, and Hannah) in an attempt to get into the Egg chamber and save Puffy. The end result of such endeavors? An utter massacre:
    • Sam and Ponk ended up separating from both groups to fight each other. However, Ponk turns the tables by claiming he held Fran hostage. Thus, he makes Sam strip off his armor and returns his mistreatment in full by gravely wounding Sam with his axe. However, before he could kill Sam (and threatens to go through with ending Fran), Sam reveals his own ace up his sleeve. Their fight had taken them to the server bank — which he just so happened to rig with TNT!! Sam manages to teleport home, whilst Ponk dies in the explosion that destroys the bank. Unfortunately, he ends up bleeding out from his wounds just before he can check to see if Fran was okay...
    • In the Egg chambers, both sides see Puffy in a cage trapped on the Egg and think the other party did it. CPK tries to calm down both and open up the possibility of both being innocent, but ends up being stabbed to death by Antfrost (who refuses to see reason), who proceeds to fight against Bad whilst Hannah takes on Eryn. Ultimately, while never shown, Bad manages to get the leg up and kill his former friend.
    • As for Hannah and Eryn, initially both seem to willing to come to peace, only for Hannah to reveal she lied and begin hacking away at Eryn. She would have killed him to were if not for Bad jumping in and knocking her into lava, where she screams in agony as she burns to death.
    • After this, Bad ends up having to convince Eryn to not give into the Egg — that it can't get you what you truly want. Compared to the others, Eryn is genuinely willingly to listen to Bad and believes him that, afterwards, both would go looking for his parents... but he ends up getting shoved into lava by a now Egg-possessed Puffy.
• Unlike the other Egg-infected people on the server? There's left with no doubt that it's only the Egg in control of Puffy's body as it speaks in its usual foreboding, demonic, voice and gloats about how Bad could never have escaped its grasp. In addition, it also reveals who set this all in motion: Skeppy.
  • As it turns out, Skeppy willingly went back to the Egg even after being freed from its grasp upon death! He agreed to arrange the sacrifice of a number of the server members in exchange for a wish: for Bad to be spared. Unfortunately... the Egg doesn't live up to its end of the bargain and promptly cuts down Bad. So in short: seven members of the server died in one day, one of them effectively betrayed them for the Egg, and another is fully possessed by it. What could be even worse than that!? Well, as the stream fades to black, the audience hears the sound of something hatching, meaning that massacre was enough for the Egg to finally move into becoming something worse to terrorize the server for the next volume that will never be.
  • Another note on the mass sacrifice: the last massacre on the server took place in early Season 1, with four canon deaths occurring in the Final Control Room during the L'Manburg War for Independence. This time, seven canon lives were lost in one fell swoop, almost doubling the record altogether.

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