Nightmare Fuel / Helluva Boss Season Two

Main Nightmare Fuel Index | Season One | Season Two

The Circus

• When we first see Stolas's father Paimon, he makes a lovely display of his shapeshifting powers, cycling through several different forms.
• In the photo Paimon shows Stolas of Stella, she's violently strangling a dog. Is it any wonder why Stolas starts bawling upon being told that he's marrying her? Not to mention, she raises a hand to him at the end of the episode very easily and Stolas managed to grab her wrist to stop her.
• Paimon casually offering to purchase a six-year-old Blitzo as a friend for his son, painting a very dark image of his code of ethics (or lack thereof). Blitzo's dad sells him off to Paimon for five dollars and a condom before gaslighting him into going along with the plan. It's no wonder why he has such a dim view of his father. There's also the uncomfortable tone of voice and body language Blitzo's dad uses when Blitzo says he's scared to take the job. "There are scarier things - aren't there?"
  • The scariest part of that line is that it's straight up never clarified exactly what Cash meant by that. Was it physical abuse, emotional abuse, or worse? We will never know.
    • However, there's a WMG that Blitzo's mother was Delicate and Sickly (hence why she doesn't appear onscreen, she'd be in bed); Cash guilts Blitzo by telling him stealing will help his mother. Maybe the "scarier thing" is his mother dying? Pretty damn scary!
• Paimon slapping Stolas on the back of his head for the crime of simply bowing to an imp.
• Blitzo and Stolas happily playing "treasure hunt" in which they throw as much of the Goetia Family's wealth out the window as possible - literally. It's cute until you begin to wonder how Paimon reacted when he found out about the little imp's "game" of throwing countless valuables into the wallet of an amoral circus manager.
• Crosses over with Tear Jerker: Stolas' arranged marriage with Stella is a very toxic one, having to suffer his wife's constant emotional and verbal abuse, character assassination and passive aggression, resorting to both antidepressants and borderline alcoholism just to keep himself mentally afloat. Worst of all, even after Stolas cheats on her, Stella still insists on living with him for no other reason but to continue emotionally-torturing him. There's also her disturbing comment about how Stolas was with her in bed, notably how he would just lay there staring at the ceiling while she did all the work. And, of course, this is the tidbit that Stella decides to share with her friends to which they all side with her on...
• During the episode's finale, Stella demonstrates just how much she doesn't love Stolas during their argument — not only does she admit with a smirk that she enjoys tormenting him, but when Stolas brings up his wish for a divorce, she gets enraged and tries to slap him. Stolas catches the intended palm, but given how quickly he caught it and how little he reacted, it makes one wonder just how many times she's done this to him?
• We also see how how depressed Stolas is with his marriage with Stella. It’s so bad that he takes anti depressant pills and at the “Not Divorced” party he eats a lot and drinks a whole bottle of alcohol. It actually shows that if Octavia was never born or Blitzo ran into him again, Stolas would have been an alcoholic. It's worth noting that the bottle he picks at both the party and the aftermath of OZZIE'S is absinthe, which was historically bottled at around 45%-72% alcohol-by-volume but in modern times can be as strong as 90% ABV. And he's mixing it with antidepressants, which is an unfortunately popular suicide method and equally common cause of accidental deaths. Either he's become actively suicidal, or he's already well into the alcoholism - or both. (Admittedly, being an extremely powerful archdemon might protect him, but still unnerving either way.)

Seeing Stars

• Blitzo calling Stolas about Octavia stealing the Grimoire and teleporting off to an unknown location with no way to get either of them back. As the imp sighs in relief thinking everything's fine, the prince busts down the door in full demon mode, yelling his name in anger.
• Blitzo's adoption of Loona is shown, and it's not pretty.
  • Loona was locked in what was essentially a kennel with other hellhounds (including non-sapient ones), and she shrinks into a Troubled Fetal Position when the site's owner nonchalantly mentions that Loona will be "out of our hair" when she ages out next month, implying that she's going to be thrown out on the streets. Little wonder that the very issue of adoption hits a Trauma Button for Blitzo.
  • Some really dark visual storytelling was done when we first see Loona. She's seen sharing a cell with a younger Hellhound male who had a bloody, nailed up bat with him. Even worse, before she growls at him and turns her legs away, he appears to be trying to STICK THE BAT IN HER VAGINA.
  • Given this is Hell and hellhounds are treated in much the same manner as dogs, aging out of the system could potentially mean euthanization. Loona may have been crying because she knew that she only had a month left to live.
  • Even if it doesn't mean euthanization, it's still Hell. We've seen four different rings of hell now in the show (Greed, Wrath, Lust, and Pride) and none of them are safe or even terribly friendly places for adult demons with paying jobs and stable living conditions. Even Stolas gets stalked, attacked, and publicly ridiculed throughout his time in the show. Imagine being an orphaned teenager who's spent most or all of her life in a confined living situation where your meals and shelter were provided for you by someone else, possibly determinant upon your behavior but largely regardless of anything you said or did, and now suddenly you're on the streets of Hell with no family, no friends, and no idea where to go or what to do next. Loona was staring at an early grave no matter what, and she knew it.
  • You'll notice that the demon running the facility is a hellhound herself. The implications of that are... horrifying. Particularly since this is effectively a kill shelter where the inmates are people who are adopted out (or potentially sold) like housepets. Hellhounds are even more marginalized than imps.
• Black Comedy aside, the fact that Blitzo, Stolas, Loona, and Octavia, literal demons from Hell itself, show more sympathetic qualities than any human in Los Angeles speaks volumes as to how messed up Earth is.
• The water in L.A consisting of 2% sewage runoff and 98% acid. We get to see the nasty effects of this when Stolas throws a bottle of water at the sitcom director.
• While on the set of the sitcom, Blitzo's rambling jokes drag on for so long that one audience member is driven insane, seemingly out of pure boredom. When the "applause" sign lights up for what can only be assumed to be the thousandth time, he starts Laughing Mad before fatally striking his head on the railing.
• As soon as the child actor accidentally reminds him of Loona's adoption, Blitzo becomes so irate with trauma that he goes completely feral, defending the poor pug at gunpoint. As soon as security steps into intervene, the shooting starts.
  "I'll NEVER get rid of her!"
• The plot as a whole is rather scary, as, if one takes away all the demons and magic, the story centers around a sheltered teenager getting lost in a strange place without anyone she knows. Stolas' worries the whole episode are completely justified.
  • Made worse when Stolas mentions that he hasn't taught Octavia any spells yet, making it clear that she was extremely vulnerable when venturing out into the human world. It's unlikely, unless Octavia has a true demon form, that she would have been able to fight off attackers if they targeted her.
  • Octavia's arrival in L.A has her nearly getting puked on, getting cursed out by an angry street performer who then shoves her into oncoming traffic, overwhelmed by protestors and people in costume, and stared at by horrified onlookers. The poor girl is so overwhelmed that she starts hyperventilating in an alleyway.
  • You see how Hell is described above? Octavia spent nearly 18 years of her life there with little issue (with her privileged status being offset by a broken home, so it counts.), but when she spends a measly 30 seconds on Earth, she's terrified.

Exes and Oohs

• The faces Millie makes when she's reminded of Chaz.
• The flashback to Moxxie's childhood: his mother is the only member of the family who shows him any form of affection while his father sees him only as an asset to the family business. It comes to a head when he is made to execute a crucified Imp, presented as if it was a carnival game. Moxxie is three seconds away from hesitantly pulling the trigger before his mother is fed up with Crimson's violent nature, pulling him away by the hand. Later, a terrified Moxxie is seen hiding under the bed, watching his parents argue until Crimson viciously slaps his mother. Watch the way Crimson interacts with his wife up to and including this argument. When she cuts Moxxie's steak for him, Crimson tries to go in for footsie - only to stomp a foot angrily when she pulls her leg away. And during the argument, watching the way they both move, it looks as though Crimson is forcibly pulling Moxxie's mother in before the slap, at which point she seems to break away and run from the room. The implications are... ugly.
• At the end of the flashback, we see Crimson forcing Moxxie to drown one of the family's rivals. After the poor, pleading victim is thrown overboard with a cinderblock tied to his tail, the camera pans over to the many, many pieces of clothing belonging to Crimson's past victims, floating on the surface. Including a shoe belonging to Moxxie's mother. The boat passenger deserves special mention, because he calls out Moxxie by name before Moxxie tearfully drops the weight and him with it.
• Take a look at their family portrait. Crimson is smiling, his wife is smiling, but the young Moxxie has a Thousand-Yard Stare that says everything.
• Chaz's betrayal, in which he makes off with a bag of stolen loot while leaving Moxxie, his partner-in-crime, trapped under a barred door. Moxxie is taken to prison while Chaz gets away without so much as a slap on the wrist.
  • When the flashback ends, Millie is furious with Chaz for abandoning Moxxie, and roars, while foaming at the mouth no less, that "she'll fucking KILL HIM". It takes both Moxxie and Blitzo to stop her from ending Chaz then and there.
• Place yourself in Moxxie's shoes: your father is a stone-cold mafia don that murdered your mother for standing up to him. Your father is so convinced that you're gay that he's installed retractable dildos in the walls to "celebrate," even though you're bisexual. And he wants you, a happily married man, to marry your estranged ex-boyfriend against your will just so he can be another asset to the family business. And just to add humiliation to horror, he duct-taped your mouth shut, drew a smile on it and forced you into a bridal gown. Is it really any wonder why Moxxie is such a Nervous Wreck?
• Millie's takedown of Crimson's goons is brutal, to the point where even Crimson himself is utterly terrified. Several of them have their skulls ripped out of their heads and her final kill has her dragging a demon behind Chaz's car while he's strangled and electrocuted to death by the hanging lights from Moxxie's wedding. Let this be a lesson for all of us: Do NOT fuck with Moxxie. Otherwise, bad things will happen. VERY bad things.
• Chaz's fate at the end. We don't see what happened to him, but we do see Moxxie's dad hanging his teeth up on the wall as a trophy.
• Crimson is an out and about psychopath and not someone you want to be alone in a room with for any stretch of time.
  • Him backhanding Moxxie so hard Moxxie is thrown off his feet is played dead serious. The only reason he hasn't killed his own son yet is he wants to, essentially, sell him off to some shark demon for money.
  • Crimson's threat to Moxxie as he slinks out of the room makes absolutely no attempt to hide just what Crimson is willing to do to get his way. Richard Horvitz's delivery of the line is straight up bone-chilling.
  Crimson: Oh, and Mox...If you ever talk back to me again, you and that pretty little thing you brought here are going home in boxes. Capiche?
  • The final scene makes it clear that I.M.P. just gained a new enemy.
  • Something else to consider: Moxxie did defy Crimson again after that threat, by refusing to willingly go along with the wedding and threatening Crimson to his face. Crimson only needs Moxxie alive long enough to marry Chaz and sign over his holdings in the family, maybe not even that long. If Millie and Blitzø hadn't intervened, who's to say Crimson wouldn't have sent his son to the same watery grave once the wedding was finished? After all, a little thing like a forged will wouldn't be beneath him...
• The entire episode reminds us, as established in Hazbin Hotel and previous episodes, that Hell is Hell, ruled almost entirely by organized criminals who maintain the grip on their territories through violence, intimidation, treachery and utter cruelty. There is no law and order save for an apathetic aristocracy and the influence of rival mafia dons. Even "milder" crimes like robbery and illegal dumping are done in broad daylight, turning the entire Greed ring into a rundown, polluted ghetto. As previously stated, VivziePop's vision of Hell may as well be Commorragh. And at the end of the day, Moxxie is very lucky to be married to a killing machine like Millie.

Western Energy

• A group of Wrath demons takes offense to Moxxie wearing the same kind of hat as one of them when they stop for gas. It doesn't end well for them, with one in particular being strangled by the gas hose, and when Moxxie drives off he gets decapacitated by said hose, with the gas station then blowing up for good measure.
• Anyone with trypanophobia can relate to Loona's paralyzing terror throughout the episode. Especially when the doctor brings out a needle almost the size of Loona herself.
• The condition Stolas is in near the end of the episode. He gets stabbed multiple times while his leg is broken and Striker nearly gouges his eyes out before he's interrupted.
• Even though Striker is no longer under contract to kill Stolas, he has escaped once again, and this time we don't know where he went. It's even more nightmarish now than the first time he escaped, especially now that the true depths of his depraved nature have come out. As Striker himself pointed out, Stella's orders are to keep Stolas alive, not necessarily whole, so we don't even have the comfort of expecting him to be less of a threat in future seasons.
• Millie's near-decapitation via flying axe. If the axe landed any differently, she would've been headless. And going by Striker's reaction, he was trying to behead her and just put too much spin into his throw.

Unhappy Campers

• The idea that someone can murder you and you have no idea who or why. The client in this episode admits that all he knows is that one of the counselors did the deed, simply because they're the only ones who knew he couldn't swim and would have been able to drill holes in his boat, but he's not even sure which one.
• In the end, the target is killed by a firework hitting them in the head. You can actually see them look at it in slow-motion right before it hits and Barbie, Blitzo, and Moxxie are all covered in their blood. By a strange coincidence, the episode was released just a few days after France was impacted by gigantic riots, provoked by the death of a teenager killed by police violence. During this events, rioters used an abondant amount of fireworks to attack the police officers. There was no policeman killed by the fireworks, but dozens of them were hurt (without counting bystanders and other rioters being themselves hurt by other means). The fictional target's death, even it was exaggerated, had brought some recent memories back to some French viewers who were unlucky enough to witness from first experience what damages can be caused by a firework directly aimed at a person.
• Like in "Seeing Stars", demons from Hell display more humanity than humans themselves. In fact, it may be even worse than the aforementioned episode because at least that one showed humans being moved by M&M's song, while there's none of that here. They're shown to draw the line at (what they think is) incest, but that's a low bar to clear. All this goes to show why Hell is overpopulated with damned souls and how high the cards are stacked against Charlie.
• The relentless bullying Moxxie faces as "Moxxine" is scary for the fact that this is an all-too-common occurrence in real life. What makes it even worse is the campers are supposed to be preteens.

Oops

• Granted, there were like nine of them, but the fact that Fizz's quieves can reduce a fish demon's corpse to just bones in seconds is rather chilling. Even actual hell dogs are on a whole different level compared to Earth's.
• As Fizz and Blitzo are having a fight, we cut over to hear that Striker is having a conversation with Crimson. That’s right, two of the most vile demons on this show have teamed up. Oh and Striker has not lost his edge at all since it takes him all of three seconds to capture Blitzo and Fizz.
• The first contract Crimson wanted Ozzie to sign would have allowed Crimson to have Fizz's head as a wall decoration. Thankfully, Stolas was present, otherwise Ozzie would have given Crimson the right to kill his lover.
• The infamous circus fire. It's been teased for a few episodes, but we finally get to see the damage that it did and it was brutal. Highlights include:
  • How quickly it spread. Almost as soon as Blitzo accidentally causes the blaze via knocking over a birthday cake meant for Fizzarolli, the tent is already completely up in flames.
  • Fizzarolli's horribly burnt and mangled body, made worse by the fact he was implied to be a young teen. This also comes with a shot of Fizz's flesh melting off his bones as his horns burn up. No wonder he needed robotic limbs in the modern day.
  • While not as bad, Blitzo's own injuries were not pretty either. Frankly, it's a miracle that he still has two working eyes.
  • The very heavy implications that Blitzo's mother died in the fire, meaning that it's implied Blitzo's first kill wasn’t only an accident, but his own mother.
• The horrifying implications of why Fizz and Blitzo thought the other never wanted to see them. Fizz asks him why he never came to visit and explain that it was an accident. Blitzo says he tried, but "they" told him Fizz didn't want to see him. Fizz is shocked by this, claiming he never told “them” that, and "they" never told him he came. It's not elaborated in this episode if this "they" was anyone in particular (likely Cash, who'd have every reason to keep Blitzo away after destroying everything, or Mammon, who would absolutely stand to benefit from cutting Fizz off from people who cared about him) or just the people helping Fizz in general. Either way, someone purposefully lied to both of them to keep them apart, causing their friendship to sour and not speak to each other for fifteen years.
• Striker's Sanity Slippage. By the end of the episode, the normally well groomed cowboy is sporting wild hair and a messed up mustache and makes it clear that he's sick of losing to Blitzo and IMP. When Blitzo sets him on fire he loses it even further and scurries off like a literal animal, feral and snarling. And now that he's working with Crimson, who knows what kind of firepower he's going to be packing in future encounters with Blitzo.

MAMMON’S MAGNIFICENT MUSICAL MID-SEASON SPECIAL (ft Fizzarolli)

• Mammon intends to make sex dolls of his contest winners, when at least some of the applicants are minors.
• ARICK. The sheer amount of Realism-Induced Horror he invokes as a Stalker with a Crush who feels a creepy sense of entitlement towards Fizzarolli, even going so far as to try and kill him, makes him one of the show's most disturbing villains thus far. The second time we see him he actually causes Fizz to have a panic attack. Making matters worse is how the people behind the show have dealt with a rather similar individual in the past.
  • During said second appearance, we see a few of his fantasies to what he thinks his life would be like if Fizz had listened to him and one of them shows Fizz chained to him wearing what looks like a gimp suit. Entitled to Have You doesn't even begin to describe this guy. This makes it very clear that Fizz saying yes to him when they met for the first time would be just as bad as rejecting him, if not worse. Luckily for him, this is probably one of the few times Murder Is the Best Solution.
• Mammon's no slouch either. His treatment of Fizzarolli as an abusive manager who exploits Fizz and treats him less as a person and more as a personal little moneymaker is another case of Realism-Induced Horror. Seeing Fizz finally quit is satisfying as hell.
  • To those with arachnophobia who thought the Hellaverse could never scare them with the lovable spider-hybrid that is Angel Dust, you're in for a fright. Mammon's true form is a clown with spider legs. (The only way he could be scarier is if he were riding a snake through a dentist's office.)
    • Speaking of Hazbin Hotel, many fans have expressed horror over the fact the portrayal of Mammon's abusive relationship towards Fizzarolli is merely just an appetizer to how much worse Valentino is going to be towards Angel...
  • On the one hand, Asmodeus openly admitting his feelings for Fizz breaks any hold that Mammon might have had over them via blackmail. On the other hand, while he Didn't See That Coming, Mammon makes it clear to Asmodeus that he'll find a way to exploit this revelation before disappearing with an Evil Laugh.
  • Said departure unleashes an explosion of hellfire that levels the tent and causes lots of collateral damage, making it clear that Mammon doesn't care about who gets caught in the crossfire of his antics.
    • Mammon earlier teleported without doing anything besides giving off green smoke. So either he lost control due to being so upset, or deliberately caused the damage.
• While talking to Ozzie backstage, Fizz removes his hat, revealing that all that's left of his horns are burnt stumps!
• Glitz and Glam getting abruptly crushed by a pillar. While that may not seem like much, considering how characters on this show have been shown repeatedly to be Made of Iron, we don't see them again after this, making one wonder how badly they were hurt. However, Word of God confirms that they're still alive.

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