Nightmare Fuel / Halloween Unspectacular

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages. Proceed at your own risk

It's a Halloween-themed series, what did you expect?

General

• The Fiddley Thing. It can do quite literally anything, it's initially in the hands of a madman, and when the protagonists get it, even they can’t help but screw around with it.

Halloween Unspectacular 1

Ideas

• The outcome of Dr. Calamitous' plan: everyone who had involved themselves in any way with Ember's comeback tour (even if they just saw the promotional material for it) is turned into mindless robots.

After Action Report

• Ms. Doombringer’s plan, which involves turning unwilling people into quote-unquote "fish zombies". It's also mentioned at the end of the report that no additional zombies (besides Timmy and Sam) had been found, despite her claiming to have been operating for months.
  This leads to concern…where are they now?

With Great Power

• When going through the school, Jimmy and friends quickly find out what happened to the other students: Veronica was Taken for Granite, Tad, Chad, and their bodyguard were melted, Francis looks like he's been put through a blender, and Trixie has been turned to gold and gotten her face removed.
• The culprit? Timmy's inner darkness, made manifest thanks to a wish made using the Fairy-versary muffin.
• At the end, the shadow does something to the school, which causes most of the classrooms to either be turned into wax museums or replaced by brick walls and Timmy's class (as well as Wanda, who didn’t make it out in time) to just disappear, their final fates unknown.

Dead Gods

• The 'shot focuses on a military team investigating a Reaper ship. Needless to say, things quickly go downhill.
• AJ describes his team being turned into husks as a Fate Worse than Death, and intends to choose his own fate rather than turn out like them.

A Terrible Thing To Lose

• The Syndicate (except Vlad, who has standards) make a deal with the Reapers. Best summed up with this:
  The Syndicate, it turned out, were not doing a Deal with the Devil. On the contrary, a deal with the devil would have been much more moral.
• Sandy ends up going through indoctrination. It's just as horrifying as it sounds.

Masters of War

• So, did you want a full demonstration of the horrors of nuclear war? So did I!
• When civilians are still trying to get into a full-to-capacity bomb shelter, the soldiers, police, and agents guarding it are ordered to fire into the crowd.
• One of Jimmy's neighbours gets his skin burnt off and his eyes melted. The soldier that finds him performs a Mercy Kill.
• Once she realizes what’s happened to Amity Park, Dani keels over and vomits.

Demon’s Land

• What’s Lancer’s "special mission"? Taking a specific group of convicts and using them as human sacrifices.
• "You are completely safe. You are completely safe. You are completely safe."

Project ReGenesis

• We're introduced to ReGensis, a project to create a Physical God. Remember Mewtwo? Yeah…
• We don't get to see the entirety of ReGenesis' initial rampage; just brief flashes of what it does to the scientists and security guards, making it even creepier.

Desperate Times

• By the time we get back to the story, ReGenesis has destroyed Washington, D.C., as well as parts of Brazil and Australia. It moves on to the rest of the United States as the story progresses, and starts up several natural disasters and temporal anomalies as well, destroying the world within hours.

Conclusion

• At the start, Australia is the only place ReGenesis has yet to fully destroy.
• ReGenesis was apparently created with a combination of magic and...Reaper technology. And it was expected to be able to destroy everything. How did they not figure out this would go horribly right again?
• A bunch of ghosts and legendary Pokémon are gathered to fight ReGenesis. It wipes them all out in a single attack.
• Membrane experimented on his own son, knowing full well that it would turn him into a killing machine, all because he wasn't happy with how he originally was. Holy shit.
• When Spongebob tries to reason with him, ReGenesis smashes him against some rocks and then pounces on him like an animal. We only get the sound effects to tell us what happens next.

Do the Gasmask Shuffle

In The Beginning

• Even if it’s (sort of) Played for Laughs, E350 destroyed Sydney and didn't even realize it.

The Wax Museum

• The displays in the titular museum are all kinds of creepy.
  • First is the section on ghost history, where we learn about some of the less than savory experiments that the Nazis performed.
  • Then there’s the naval battle...with disturbingly realistic blood.
  • Next is the all-too accurate rendition of the Roman gladiator games.
  • Last is the "Pit of Monsters"–a wax shrine dedicated to history's greatest villains, including Stalin, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, and (of course) Hitler.
• All of this, of course, prompts Tucker and his friends to run like hell. They manage to get back to the entrance...only to find out that Sam's been turned into a living wax statue.

The Peddler

• Sam buys a black Venetian mask from the titular peddler and tries it on. Some time later, she’s screaming about how it's burning. And after attempts to pull it off fail, she turns into a demon.
• Dialogue and narration in the story imply that the peddler has been selling things at the train station for as long as anyone can remember. How many other people bought his most likely cursed wares?
  • Even worse, the watchman seems to know all about him, given that he reacts to Sam’s transformation, not with shock or horror, but with a bullet to her head and a line about how he hates that peddler. How many times has he had to deal with this, and why doesn't he just try and stop the peddler?

From Cairo to the Cape

• The gradual Sanity Slippage each member of the expedition (sans Krabs and Eliza) goes through can be disturbing to read. Especially Jimmy's last diary entry before his untimely death:
  "I can here them. Their inn my head talking and laughing and i cant shut them up i cant shut them up i cant shut them up I CANT SHUT THEM UP I CANT SHUT THEM UP I CANT SHUT THEM UP I CANT"
  
  "GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OU"

Bitter Memories

• Danny gets to watch a werewolf tear a guy to shreds. Fun times.

Murder by Moonlight

• It's A Nightmare on Elm Street (though it's left deliberately vague, due to the author's lack of knowledge on the source material) with cartoon characters. Needless to say, Freddy gets creative.
  • Dash gets bludgeoned to death after being accused of cheating in the final game of the series.
  • Trixie dies onstage, shredded by Freddy and his clones, with her internal organs being commented on like they were fashion accessories.
  • Bart is found riddled with bullet-less bullet holes, after his mafia don boss informed him that he had no need of him anymore.
  • Jimmy falls to his death in a burning airplane, after it was peppered with fire from other crafts and blew up.
  • Finally, the officer doing the cases is found in her bed, cut by knives.

The Hunters

• For relatively minor offences, Dib is sentenced to torture at the hands of the Hunters. How? They chop off his hand, mash his face into an unrecognizable pulp, and force him to inhale an unknown gas. By the end of it, he's unable to function properly physically or mentally.

The Hit List

• Someone wants the Fiddley Thing for nefarious purposes, and they’re willing to murder anyone to get it. And at the end of the story, they actually do get their hands on it, much to Linkara's horror.

The End Is Nigh

• Richtofen uses the Fiddley Thing as a weapon of mass murder, handily demonstrating its darker side.
• If the ending is any indication, the Fiddley Thing war is wiping the multiverse from existence.

The Fate of Everything

• Who’s the Big Bad Richtofen is working for? Dan Phantom. Who plans on using the Fiddley Thing to make himself a god.
• Roy gets his face shredded by a propellor.

Terror Australis Incognita

Collection

• The Collector kidnaps people he finds rare and valuable, turns them into paintings, statues, or pewter figures, and adds them to his collection. And it's implied that this collection is pretty large…

South Point

• Within thirty days, aliens landed on Earth, took down our resistance, vaporized billions of humans, and took the rest off-world, their ultimate fates a mystery^note Unless you read the alternate ending on E350's Deviantart page. And that’s how the 'shot begins.

Monsters in Disguise

• A city-scale Zombie Apocalypse has occurred by the time the story starts, causing the city to be quarantined.
• Unfortunately for the survivors, the infection that caused it (which stopped spreading after two weeks) and the zombies aren't the main problem. Rather, it’s the Faceless Goons dressed in black who indiscriminately kill both the infectees and the uninfected civilians trapped in the quarantined zone.

Magicians 101

• The Witchfinder-Generals. They actively tracked down and killed magic users, no matter how benign or benevolent they were. And if that’s not bad enough, they're still around.

The Oath of the Witchfinder-Generals

• The Witchfinder-Generals aren't just content going after suspected magic users; they'll go after anyone associated with them. And since Jazz is on their hit list…
• Their Oath is pretty disturbing, too. Especially this part:
  We will be present in every echelon of society. Our eyes will watch everyone and everything. Nothing will escape our notice.

Run!

• Mr. Stuart, Mr. Cromwell, and Mr. Preston are perfectly willing to kidnap or kill Timmy, Jimmy, and Dani due to their association with Jazz and Athena.

Kings

• Zombie King James I. Just as creepy as it sounds.

Judgement Day

• If the Witchfinder-Generals go through with their plan to wipe out all of Britain's magic, the island and all its inhabitants will be destroyed. And they most likely don't intend to stop with Britain…
• In-Universe, the Highlands warriors are this to James I's forces, especially since their guns have been rendered useless with magic.
• There's been a dungeon under Thames House for years and no one’s noticed, as lampshaded by the police. How many other people did the Witchfinder-Generals imprison down there?

Mess Effect

The Report

• Sirens as they’re portrayed here are pretty spooky, able to bend reality to their will within their area of operation and use this power to lure in prey.

The Governor

• The titular Governor is extremely creepy. We're introduced to him as he's performing some sort of sacrificial ritual, and we learn that he treats every prisoner in his Gaol horribly, no matter who they are. Even if they're children.

Mister Grim

• Ovard Grim is an information broker who deals with a little, ah, "taxidermy" of rare creatures on the side. Whether said creatures are willing or not…

Wolf

• Thanks to a case of Be Careful What You Wish For, Timmy's become a werewolf. Unfortunately for everyone, he’s the kind who (at least initially) can’t tell friend from foe.
• Werewolf!Timmy could have easily killed his friends. (Or, y'know, Vlad.)

The Calm Before the Storm

• The Governor's still alive, and he's even creepier than ever. How? His face is described as shriveled and rotten, with a bullet hole in his head.

The Secret of El Dorado

• Whatever the Governor saw in El Dorado was enough to drive him to suicide.
• The ending teases the return of all the previous big bads...including Dan Phantom and ReGenesis. Gulp.

The Final Push

The Muffin Man

• The Muffin Man is undeniably creepy. Investigated several times by the police, selling muffins made of inedible things, and killing both people and animals? Yeah.

The Other Side of the Mirror

• Hoo boy. The Empire of the Sky is made of this.
  • Let’s start with the fact that it's led by Aang. Yes, Aang, the pacifistic and dorky kid we all know and love, is the leader of a totalitarian empire. Yikes. And he still refuses to kill his prisoners, instead sending them to a Fate Worse than Death.
    • His marshals? All normally heroic characters (Danny, Timmy, Patrick, Brad, Arnold, Tommy and Jimmy), except here they're eagerly sentencing someone to hard labor (except Brad, who does so more reluctantly...which opens up its own can of worms).
  • The prisoner we see in the story is Azula, who comes with the implications that Zuko's already dead and that there's a resistance brewing.
  • The citizens present at the "trial" start cheering at the idea of Azula going to the Great Gaol and being tortured into forgetting her own name.
• The ending features the prime counterparts of our heroes about to go through an interdimensional portal linked to this world. What’s going to happen to them?

Missing Midnight

• The idea of being trapped within one hour of time forever.

The Sea of Switching

• While very much deserved, Gaz's fate is this — magically transformed into a member of the crew, with Dib (and presumably their father) no longer recognizing her, she's left at the mercy of the crew she's been tormenting for months.

When the Wolfsbane Blooms

• Danny and Sam find a ranger that was torn to shreds, most likely by Timmy.
• The black werewolf, Rivers, is happy to show Timmy the ropes of being a werewolf...by killing and eating his friends.

The Middleman

• It’s heavily hinted that, whatever Athena has planned for Jazz, it is not good.
• Dipper and Mabel’s parents are apparently working for Grim.

Remy’s Ring

• Remy Buxaplenty got his hands on a ring that can control anyone. And he still has a nasty grudge against Timmy…

The Infernal Machine

• Thanks to years of torment by bullies, Jimmy slowly starts going insane. And Timmy is the only one who realizes what's going on from the beginning.
• Vlad, suffering from his own Sanity Slippage, makes a deal with Bill Cipher. This goes about as well as one would expect. By the end of it, much of Amity Park and Oregon are destroyed, and several of Timmy's friends are heavily injured or dead, which convinces Jimmy to go on to the next phase of his experiment.
• The end result of Jimmy’s experimentation? Think Cybermen mixed with Jenny Wakeman, with more human features. Yeah.

Look Down

• ReGenesis isn't as powerful as he was in the past. He's still strong enough to take on a skilled mage.
• Over the course of the multi-parter, people have been disappearing. Here, we find out where they went: they’re being used as slave labor.

Conquestio De Re Fiddley

• The Fiddley Thing was used to trap some villains in the movie Alien at one point, and they were almost immediately attacked by a xenomorph.

Eureka

• Athena taking Jazz under her wing is subject to a serious Cerebus Retcon; she did it to groom Jazz for a destiny in which she either lets ReGenesis start a new dark age or dies.
• As we learn from newcomer Tammy Turner, if Jazz dies, the world is doomed anyways.

Dragons of Oregon

• Director Fenton was perfectly willing to kill her son to decode her husband's journal. She also has no problem with attacking Dipper.

It Always Rains

• Galahad’s plan? To collapse the multiverse into a single world. Yeah, no way this will go wrong…
• Everyone is horrified when they realize their friends are being used as slave labor, to the point that Danny blows their cover when he sees an overseer about to attack Sam.
• Galahad's plan goes south when the Fiddley Canon universe starts to become one of the casualties of the multiversal collapse.

Lair of the Hack Writer

The Calamiturian Candidate

• Dickerson's gradual deterioration into an Eldritch Abomination.

The Picture

• Pacifica's ancestor employed black magic to keep himself young. How? He trapped people in paintings, draining them of their vitality in the process.
  • The way he does it is pretty creepy, too: he can make it so that his victims don't even care that they're being turned into paintings. They’re still aware that they’re paintings after the spell is complete, but this (combined with a loss of memories) prevents an And I Must Scream scenario. Brr.

The Back of Beyond

• The photo that Ford finds: an older man, looking perfectly normal except for the solid black eyes, leaking some sort of black substance all over the man's face, and the words Get Out! scrawled on the bottom in what we hope is red ink. And then Ford gets jump scared by Bill Cipher.

Choose Your Own Ending

• Some of the endings are pretty disturbing.
  • One of them reveals that the US government is casually dumping vampires, zombies, and nuclear waste into the ocean...and Bikini Bottom is suffering for it.
  • Jimmy ends up marooned in another dimension.

A Living

• Vicky's idea of making it through the Great Depression? Turn dogs and homeless people into meat for her soup kitchen. Unsurprisingly, she gets the chair.

Person of Interest

• We finally get a solid idea on what PURITY is. It ain't pretty.

An Average Day

• Citizens of the "new" USA have to take pills that suppress all negative emotions.
• Rebellious Personality Disorder–AKA, immunity to the emotion-suppressing medicine. If someone is found with this, they end up (depending on the severity of the situation) forced to take more medicine, demoted, conscripted into the armed forces, dumped in the Badlands, euthanized, or just disappear entirely, their fates unknown.

The Dossier

• PURITY's past starts to come into the light. The first thing we learn? They're a Nazi remnant group.

The Back of Beyond: Chapter II

• Ford and Wirt come across an abandoned carnival. The first thing they see is a shooting booth in a state of decay, with a skeleton and a message on the wall in green slime, reading "RUN RABBIT RUN".
• Ford encounters a younger version of Stan, who calls him out like he did in "A Tale of Two Stans" before revealing that he has a Lamprey Mouth.

The Fable of the Two Castles

• Once again, E350 delivers the brutal reality of war with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Alien!

• The agents were perfectly willing to dissect Gaz alive.
• PURITY's master plan–the removal of all abnormal people from the US–is finally in operation.

Department Seventeen

• The origin story of PURITY and its commander, Rausseman, is revealed:
  • Rausseman was involved in both World Wars, and during the second one he was treated with a process similar to that which had created Captain America (which makes him a serious hypocrite in regards to the whole "wipe out all abnormals" plan).
  • PURITY itself started as a Nazi remnant; however, they were quickly usurped by Rausseman when they refused to listen to his advice.
• The origin story is intercut with scenes from the modern day, where PURITY's "Cleansing Tide" operation has gone into effect, with them kidnapping all "abnormals" and anyone related to them.

Of Presidents and Purity

• Abercrombie's plan involves bombing the PURITY base–regardless of the hostages there.
• Raussemen espouses the belief that he’s saving America by removing the abnormals.

The Chaotic Overture

• People within the US Government want PURITY revived. This does not bode well for next year...

Watchmeh

Guests of the Marblehead

• The titular hotel is pretty creepy:
  • It's implied that Wendy, the receptionist, is unable to age beyond 15.
  • The Pines twins and Pacifica checked in, and now they can't leave the property that the hotel is on. Oh, and only the staff and guests can interact with them.
  • Danny Fenton, his sister, and his friends booked a room for a night. The room they chose had some blank picture frames on the wall. The next morning, they don’t come out of their room. Wendy was sent up to check on them, and she didn't find them...however, the frames now had some nice paintings in them.
  • Tambry stayed with Wendy on the same night that the computer on the front desk was being upgraded. Next morning, the entire contraption been replaced by an ultra-sleek, ultra-modern, pink-and-purple PC with a Tambry Operating System.
  • The rest of the incidents: Timmy Turner only exists between two and three on Tuesdays, Sandy Cheeks asked too many questions and was "sent to the Sister Location" (whatever that means), Jimmy Neutron has been labeled an "urban legend", Soos is getting a job as a mechanic three weeks from now, and Lisa Simpson will leave when she wakes up about 41-42 years from now.
  • The Manager in general. We don’t even know their gender (he’s referred to as "he", "she", "they", and "it"), people only leave her office "once in a blue moon", and it wants to see the reader at the end of the story. E350's comments don’t help matters:
  I can neither confirm nor deny that the Manager eats people.

Legacies

• Apparently, before their reformation into PURITY, Department Seventeen got their hands on mind control gas. Whether they used it (and whether or not PURITY has plans to use it) is unknown for now.
• The infiltration of the US Government seen at the end of last year's collection? PURITY's been doing this since at least Nixon's time as President.

Coins

• Vlad awakens some sort of ancient alien abomination by accident. And that's how the 'shot ends.

Unidentified Problem

• The team sent to investigate the Roswell crash is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same two minutes of time over and over, seemingly forever. And another UFO like it just crashed in Alaska...is the same thing going to happen again?

Beginning of the End

• Whatever Vlad found out about PURITY was enough to make him abandon civilization for the Alaskan wilderness.

The Gift

• Preston apparently murdered his wife for cheating on him, and plans on beating up his daughter in front of his guests for her escape attempt and (what is implied to be) her relationship with Mabel.
• Pacifica grabs the "dice" that her father had in his possession. Seconds later, she’s surrounded by a glowing green energy field that murders everyone but Mabel, Preston, Jerry, and Arnold (the latter two manage to escape).
• When Preston makes a wrong move, his skin starts flaking off, his eyes fall out of his head, and his tongue rots, leaving only a skeleton behind.

Karma Punishment

• Gaz casually using a Mind-Control Device to make people her slaves, having them steal things for her. And worse, judging by the message Danny leaves for the authorities while he's being made to do so, they're fully aware and unable to fight back.
  • The Laser-Guided Karma that Gaz suffers for this is also pretty horrifying, as the device backfiring wipes her own mind, leaving her a drone for anyone to control.

The Reference Job

• Allsworthy inserted an order into a performance-enhancing brain chip that will let PURITY take control of the military. There are currently troops stationed all across America (including Xavier's mansion) in preparation of a PURITY attack. This...does not bode well.

The World Turned Upside Down

• PURITY's master plan goes into motion, and the results are devastating. Prominent heroes around the world are gunned down by the very troops they were working with to take out PURITY, the majority of the residents at Xavier's School are massacred, Baxter Building and Attilan are bombed, and Garnet is separated, with Steve Rogers only able to recover Sapphire. Essentially? PURITY won.

Written By The Victors

• PURITY has taken over the US (and Russia, from the sounds of it) and the remains of the Order of Thirteen believe that a Nazi-run Earth is a cosmic threat. So what do they do? Summon Galactus.

Blue Alert

The Horrible Headcase

• While it's played for laughs, there's the Headcase's whole MO, magically stealing people's heads and then selling them. And his client in this story? Preston Northwest, who hires him to steal all the heads in Gravity Falls so he can use them in a haunted house attraction. Because it's cheaper than animatronics.
  • Also, this tidbit from the Headcase's backstory: He was so desperate to get attention for his act that he pulled a decapitation illusion, except for real.

Come And See

• Gaz gets a watch from the Devil that grants her seven wishes and grants misfortune to the world with each wish. Let's just say she doesn't use it responsibly...
  • Her first wish (an infinitely refilling cooler and a gaming console with every game imaginable) changes the events of a presidential election (a thinly-veiled parody of the 2016 one) so that Vlad Masters wins instead of the favored candidate, later revealed to be Lisa Simpson. Shortly after, he attacks Iran.
  • Her second wish (unending torment on a man who closed an elevator before she could get in) essentially causes World War III. Older teens are forced to join the army, and the entire working-class population of Beach City is killed.
  • Her third wish (soundproof her room so that the sound of warplanes and missiles wouldn’t disrupt her sleep) causes Mount Saint Helens to erupt again, leading to crop failures and mass starvation.
  • Her fourth wish (for her to no longer have to go to school, which leads to her school being blown up by a rocket strike) causes a widespread Black Death plague.
  • With her fifth wish (for her favourite gaming shows to be put back on the air), the country is taken over by military insurgents.
  • Her sixth wish (for a soda, made specifically to piss off Dib, who’s figured out that she’s responsible for the world’s decay) gets heralded by air raid sirens.
  • We don't see what happens with her seventh wish (that she wouldn’t have to listen to an understandably exasperated and angry Dib’s “shrieking” anymore), because that's when the Devil comes to collect her soul.
• What happens afterwards? The apocalypse is undone (time is sent back to the presidential election, which Lisa wins instead), but Gaz has gone catatonic. The last time we see her, her eyes are blank, her mouth is in a crooked smile, and she only says one thing: "Come and see."

The People Vs. Frederick Showenhower

• Even if it's Played for Laughs, Freakshow (whose list of crimes include regicide, manslaughter, and terrorism) got away scot-free, and can commit those crimes again if he wishes. Heck, the A/N at the end adds that he celebrated his victory by stealing Hutz's wallet and car.

First They Came...

• We finally get to see what a PURITY-controlled America looks like, and it's horrifying:
  • All the heroes have been vilified. PURITY's first strikes against the Baxter Building and Attilan last year? False Flag Operations by the heroes. Their war with Wakanda, the main backer of the heroic resistance? Provocation by T'Challa. And worst of all, is it being pointed out how easily the general population is just going along with all of this.
  • Mutants and Inhumans are being rounded up "for their protection", in what Jameson calls out as clearly being concentration camps.
  • Judging by what we see here, any news outlet who criticizes the regime gets forcibly shut down, with the main critics being arrested and then "killed while trying to escape". And if not for Ford's Resistance group, this would have happened to Jameson.
  • Speaking of which, the fact that PURITY's regime is bad enough that even a longtime hero hater like J. Jonah Jameson is willing to not only publicly apologize to Spider-Man, but to take a stand against PURITY's control.

When The Going Gets Tough

• Turns out that Jameson was the lucky one out. Many other media critics of PURITY and President Fulton were rounded up and executed, including one who was shot on live TV.
• The US invaded and and occupied Canada as a "preventive measure". And the Prime Minister, who offered to mediate between Fulton and T'Challa, ends up disappearing shortly after.
• Just the fact that Wakanda and its various allies are slowly losing the war, since most of the nations who want to back them can only do so with the bare minimum without drawing too much attention to themselves.

The Dictator

• We're treated to an Oppressive States of America scenario possibly even worse than the main Story Arc's portrayal of PURITY-controlled America, one where America has fallen under the control of a tyrant known only as the Dictator and his "Freedom Brigades". Some highlights include:
  • Danny is kept locked in a dark room, left half-starved and only force-fed liquids. He finds himself wishing they'd just kill him already.
  • Wirt's hometown is purged, with everyone who can't flee (including Wirt himself) declared partisan rebels and placed against a wall to be shot.
  • Jimmy gets off relatively easily, except he lives in constant fear of outliving his usefulness.
  • Pearl has been enslaved, used to entertain the Dictator and his guests.
  • Timmy has been caught by the Freedom Brigade and is dragged off to prison.
  • Stevonnie is cornered by the Dictator's forces and shown making a Last Stand.

Iron Horses

• In this Western style story, Gaz is the daughter of a railway baron. When she wants a new mansion built on Indian land, she convinces General Custer to forcibly remove the peaceful tribe living there. One old man curses all those involved in this to suffer horrible fates, and the rest of the story is seeing how this plays out for Gaz. She fires some of the rail workers (for stopping work for a drink of water) and runs one over with her horse for complaining. After he dies, the others decide to rob her mansion in retaliation, only to accidentally start a fire, which due to the construction methods spreads too fast for Gaz to escape. Afterwards, all that's left of her is ash, and a hand still left where she was trying to break a window to escape.
  • And worse? It's implied Gaz's cursed soul (denied entry to both Heaven and Hell) becomes trapped inside a train engine. Which at the end of the story, is about to be dismantled.

House Call

• It turns out that the Phoenix Force isn't as heroic as we were led to believe beforehand. She's mind-controlling her hosts to carry out her will, including destroying the Washington Monument and White House to send a message to Fulton and PURITY, deliberately attacking when they're full of bystanders, since it apparently wouldn't be as effective otherwise.
  • And if that wasn't enough to show just how off the rails the Phoenix is, when Ford protests the above attacks, she sends Lapis to kill him and his group, despite them technically being on the same side.
• And as a cherry on top of how awful this all is, Fulton is so enraged by the attack, which he believes the heroes in Wakanda are responsible for, that he's preparing to nuke them.

The Eve of Battle

• Turns out, the Phoenix's rampage in DC was just the tip of the iceberg. According to the now free Lapis, she's planning on wiping out not only everyone who works for PURITY or Fulton directly, but anyone who ever aided them in any way, even if they just voted for Fulton in the first place.
• The heroes have only eight hours until Galactus arrives to defeat PURITY and change his mind, or he will destroy Earth.
• While Rausseman's master plan hasn't quite been unveiled yet, it's speculated that he's creating a plague to wipe out all nonhumans.

Götterdämmerung

• Ruby has been a prisoner of PURITY, who have apparently been experimenting on her, since her capture last year. Stop and think about that a minute.
• Rausseman's final Evil Plan — luring the Phoenix in, so he can capture her and use her power to hijack Galactus's power, and in turn use that to wipe out every nonhuman in the universe.
  • Rausseman's own fate isn't pretty either. His superpowered biology is breaking down, leaving him with a failing nervous system, cancer, and the overall appearance of someone whose body is falling apart. After he's defeated and Ford refuses to finish him off, it's mentioned that he's imprisoned and spends the next ten years clinging to life, completely paralyzed.

This is fine

The Deepest Mine in Ballarat

• Neither of Stan's potential fates are pretty — he was either Buried Alive, or he's still digging to this very day.

A Phantom Died Tonight

• It's an Alternate Universe where Superman is a warlord. That's nightmare fuel on its own.
  • The story opens with Danny fighting him and ultimately, with his head being ripped off at the end.
  • The entire story is being recorded by Valerie, who's now a prisoner with her fate unknown. Though mention is made of an "arena", implying she'll be made to fight to the death.

The Stranger

• The titular antagonist has, among other things, stolen a device that can erase things from existence. And he seems to be targeting all of E350's friends...

The Plague

• It's a viral Zombie Apocalypse, so naturally it's full of horrifying imagery.
  • One particularly terrifying aspect of this virus is that some of the infected show no signs of such until they suddenly snap. We see this happen to Vlad (as he's in the middle of a TV interview, attacking Kent Brockman), and find out that it happened to Ford, who deliberately destroys the CDC lab where he was working with others to find a cure, before logging into his family's group chat and yelling that they're all going to die.
  • The rate at which the virus spreads is pretty horrifying, too — by the time Sadie manages to get on the phone with Stevonnie, every human in Beach City has been infected to some degree.
• And the final twist — the virus was a Depopulation Bomb unleashed by aliens planning to colonize Earth, intending on herding the surviving humans into reservations or private zoos.

Brother Can You Spare A Soul?

• While it's played for laughs, it's rather disturbing how Mr. Krabs plans to enslave Sandy's ghost and force her to work for him forever.

The Statuary Car

• Tulip has been turned into a statue. Worse, it's shown that she's fully aware and desperate to escape.
• The being that did the deed? Spinel, driven insane (and apparently becoming corrupted) from having to wait for Rose Quartz all these centuries, deciding that, if she has to keep playing the game, she might as well have others join her.

Downfall

• The Velutarian Empire is shown to be conquering much of the galaxy. Worse, they're noted to be killing billions, performing genetic experiments on captives, running sadistic penal colonies, and even bombarding pre-industrial planets for fun.
• After curbstomping the Gems' military, the Velutarians lay siege to Homeworld, with their Emperor demanding the Diamonds surrender to his demands (which include the Gems surrendering their rights as sentient beings) or else he'll destroy the whole planet. They concede... and then he blows up the planet anyway, as a demonstration of his superweapon to others. He just wanted to humiliate the Diamonds first.

Evil

• The Stranger somehow managed to get his hands on a number of dangerous artifacts from previous collections — including Rausseman's gun, the remains of the Fiddley Thing Mk. II, and ReGenesis' body.
• There's now a Manchurian Agent among E350's friends, thanks to the Stranger and a soul-controlling sword. And we have no idea who it is. Talk about Paranoia Fuel...

Run On For A Long Time

• The Stranger proves that he's not playing around, as he lures all the villains to one place and then proceeds to blow them all up.

The News

• The Stranger clearly doesn't care whether or not innocent people are caught in their revenge plot, as evidenced when they attack DALV HQ.
  • They also kill off Arnie Pie, for no reason except to make a point.

Oh No, Zombies!

• As the Stranger points out, E350 sees no problem with letting a group of kids get devoured by zombies in order to give his readers a story. And this is a comedy story.

Iron Monger

• It turns out that the Stranger's attack on Melbourne was staged to cause no real damage. On their part, at least — they were counting on the heroes' attempts to stop him causing enough collateral damage to paint them as the real criminals. And judging by the police commissioner's line at the end and the author's notes, it's implied that the Stranger is planning to make E350 look like the mastermind behind the attack.
• And the absolutely worst part of all. The Stranger remotely uses the Iron Monger to lure in Danny and Jenny, then traps them in a force field and then blows them up.

error-titlecorrupted

• The Stranger's ultimate goal revealed — killing almost all of E350's friends, destroying his home, and then leaving him to live in misery. Oh, and Sandy is framed for the Stranger's own actions, being carted off to prison by the police, who also poof Amethyst and Peridot when they try to protest her innocence.
  • Worse, E350's friends aren't even dead. The Stranger has taken them prisoner, and seems to be brainwashing them.
• The sheer Cerebus Retcon of the Stranger's identity — he's the Bus Driver, that poor bastard from the first Myth Arc who kept losing his jobs because of the plots. Reality ensued, meaning he eventually couldn't get anymore work, his wife left him, and he lost his home.

Halloween Unspectacular X

Controlling the Superman

• Vlad is Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee to explain why a group of superheroes killed a bunch of Corrupt Corporate Executives, which apparently included Danny ripping out Justin Hammer's spine. And all the people killed and crippled in the course of events? Coldly written off as collateral damage.
  • And when the committee's chairman takes Vlad to task for this, Vlad responds by blowing up his head and threatening the rest of the committee.

A Letter Regarding Recent Events

• The letter is written by a version of Ford who works as a government agent investigating the occult in 1930s America, who is writing to an associate about a recent case. Some highlights from said case include:
  • Another agent finds a hidden chamber and enters alone. Later, his removed skin is found being used as a carpet.
  • Ford and another couple of agents follow a lead and find a farmhouse inhabited by a group of creatures devouring a group of police deputies. The creatures proceed to overwhelm and maul one of the agents before Ford and the third one kill them.
  • Another lead takes the agents to an abandoned mansion, where the creatures and/or the cult they serve had killed Amelia and torn her heart out. It turns out that said cult is this setting's version of the Apex, and beyond that, we know nothing about them or their motives.
  • Ford notes that the bulk of the cult is still out there somewhere...

Sea Dogs

• A 16th century English ship is found adrift at sea. The Royal Navy vessel that finds it decides to investigate and is attacked by werewolves that were locked in the hold, after having apparently infected and overwhelmed the adrift ship's crew. One poor marine is especially unfortunate, as he's dragged down into the hold and can be heard being torn apart.
• Another marine is bitten during the attack but survives. And then it's noted that there's a full moon that night.

A Perfectly Normal Summer's Day

• Something is immediately and obviously wrong, as every time Steven, Connie, or one of the Gems notice an inconsistency in something someone says, the scene resets to just before the incident in question and happens again without the problem. Then, when Steven tries to call his father, Greg starts ranting about how he hasn't been to Beach City in thirty years, not since "they" came. We get no explanation for who "they" are before the scene resets again.
• When the team starts to get suspicious, they decide to go to Little Homeworld... only to find that literally nothing exists outside the house. This quickly drives them all insane.
• It turns out that the team is trapped in some kind of virtual reality Lotus-Eater Machine. Again, no explanation is given.

The World in Black and White

• It turns out that there's actually a Black Diamond. And while White Diamond was bad enough, building up the Gem Empire just so that she could impose her Control Freak whims on the universe, Black was worse, as she saw literally everything not a Diamond — even other Gems — as inferior and only fit to be the Diamonds' playthings. And worst of all, while she's been gone a long time, the last scene shows that in response to Steven's reformations of Homeworld, she's about to come back with a vengeance.

A House in New Orleans

• The titular house is a gambling den that in general is pretty normal... until you get to the private second floor. There, people become so obsessed with the experience that even if they manage to win and leave, they're compelled to come back and play more, until finally they lose so much that they're forced to wager away their memories, their freedom, and their souls, eventually leaving them as mindless employees of the casino.
• Gaz came to challenge the casino's owner, the Man in the White Suit, for a rare game controller in his possession that he would only trade to someone who could beat him in a game. Gaz, in her overconfidence, ends up losing everything to him and becomes just another employee.
• Dib tracks Gaz down and tries to win her freedom. The Man will only accept one thing as collateral — Gaz's very existence. And after a scene change, Dib is heading home, no longer remembering why he was in New Orleans to begin with...
  • Worse, Dib then feels a compulsion to head back to the city, implying he's going to share the fate of all the others.

The Hole in the World

• In what appears to be a Victorian setting, a massive hole opens up in the ground with no explanation. While discussing what to do about it with a group of others, Preston Northwest accidentally falls in... and keeps falling, with no sound of ever hitting the bottom. The others lead a group of soldiers down to try and retrieve the body, and only some of the soldiers end up coming back, the rest having likewise disappeared into the depths.
  • And as noted above, we never get an explanation of any of this.

We Interrupt This Program

• Agent Parker makes it clear that if E350's group resists in any way, he's planning on executing them on the spot.
• The Bus Driver sends a message to E3 via the news, making it clear that he's intending to finish what he started last year, and destroy him with his own brainwashed friends.

Double the Agent, Double the Fun

• The Bus Driver infiltrates E350's cabin just as Agent Parker is preparing to assault it, and takes control of its security systems. Worse, Soos ends up locked in with him.

---