Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. There will be unmarked spoilers below.
"You have no idea what's on the way."
When you have a series whose most well-known villain has a literal skull for a face, you know the bar for terrifying is a little higher than average…
Season One
- Keldor's Havoc affliction is literally eating away at his body, leaving his left arm from the elbow down nothing more than bones. It's also apparently very painful.
- Then there's the fact that alleviating the symptoms requires him to steal the lifeforce of others, leaving them lifeless husks of stone.
- The Dark Masters' transformations are disturbing enough to come right out of a horror movie.
- It starts with Skeletor infusing his minions with Havoc by having the chains latch to everyone's weapon or their necks, holding their lives in his demented hands.
- Kronis tries to keep his mouth closed, but the invasive Havoc pries his mouth open and shoves itself down his throat. We then exit the hellish maw of spinning teeth as Trap Jaw shifts and roars in unnatural movements, like he's a puppet to his cybernetics, before he lunges forward to Eat the Camera.
- Evelyn embraces the Havoc with sadistic glee, the camera flickering repeatedly to her shrieking face as she transforms. Then Evil-Lyn coats herself and the land in a chaotic mix of black magic and rushes forward with the most horrific face yet.
- R'Qazz is eager at first but then starts clawing at his chest in pain before he petrifies. Beast Man suddenly bursts out of his far smaller body's chest, snarling and raving. Once he's out, he wastes no time in destroying his previous body, his remaining humanity, by charging forward.
Season Two
- The Sigil of Hsss is a pretty terrifying piece of work with the power to raise an army of zombie snakes. No other information is needed for the heroes to do their best to keep it away from Skeletor.
Season Three
- What's worse than an army of zombie snakes? How about an army of zombie snakes that endlessly revive and can come back in stronger forms?
- The Reveal that King Grayskull was the original Skeletor all along, having created Havoc to defeat the Snake People once and for all when the Power alone wasn't enough, paints a really dark picture for the setting. The once Greater-Scope Paragon became Eternia's greatest villain that threatened to destroy the entire world to satiate his newfound god complex. Even his voice, in spite of the fact it is the comically nasally tone of the original Skeletor himself, does nothing to downplay his sheer menace as he lets off his trademark Evil Laugh before Eldress wills herself to kill him.
- Beast Man's transformation into a Skele-Drone sounds terrifying even with the Gory Discretion Shot.
- When Rampage turns on the revived Skeletor in Episode 7, he grabs her and shoves her head into the Havoc fountain in Castle Greyskull, with her face starting to turn into a skull as he gleefully tortures her.
- Hordak's Slasher Smile is arguably more terrifying than anything listed above. He is the first of the Evil Horde, a force so terrible that even Skeletor fears what their coming will bring.
- The ironic, but more horrifying part? He is voiced by Kevin Conroy, the voice of BATMAN. He died a hero and lived long enough to see himself become the villain.
