Nightmare Fuel / Highlander

The Films

• The Kurgan himself, the Immortal who clawed his way to almost win the Game over a mountain of corpses, and unlike Connor, he sought out other Immortals just to take their heads. His Immortal victims alone likely number in the hundreds, and thats not even counting the countless atrocities he committed against mortals over the millenia. He was such a monster he remains The Dreaded even in the series, years after Connor finally managed to kill him and end his reign of terror. The Kurgan is essentially the absolute worst person to be given Immortality.
• The revelation that Heather MacLeod was raped by the Kurgan. The thought of a sweet, kindly housewife being so brutally assaulted by a deranged Immortal barbarian is enough to make one's skin crawl.
  • The way he actually bursts out of the tower rubble and grabs her neck.
  "Hello, my pretty..."
  • It was revealed during the Truce Zone when the Kurgan gloats about raping Ramirez' woman and lying that the latter died without dignity, begging for his life. He puts two and two together, realizing Heather was actually Connor's wife, proceeds to gloat more about it, and even has the audacity to suggest she enjoyed it more than any time she had with Connor.
    • He also mocks God (and by proxy, Jesus' sacrifice), taunts the head priest, and makes very lewd comments to nuns.
    • Speaking of the nuns, there is the comment he makes, "Nuns. No sense of humor," after the two nuns he harrasses walk past. Considering his very long life and all the atrocities he must have committed... he would know that fact first-hand, wouldn't he?
  • There's a subtly scary moment when Connor talks to Brenda in the park and during that moment, The Kurgan appears hidden in the shadows doing nothing aside from looking on and disappearing just as quickly. It leads to the moment where he tracks Brenda to her apartment and breaks down the door.
  • The Drives Like Crazy scene where he deliberately drives into incoming cars and trucks, causing collisions. And at one moment, he runs over two pedestrians on the sidewalk. Once that happens, Brenda goes from acting like your usual Screaming Woman to openly crying in terror.
  • When he's about to kill Connor, the Kurgan's eyes dilate, almost encompassing his eye giving him an inhuman animal like look.
  • The Kurgan was the one who drove James Horton to form The Hunters - Horton had been the Watcher assigned to observe the Kurgan, and being forced to watch all the horrific deeds the depraved madman committed in just a few years drove Horton insane, making him think that all Immortals were just as bad and had to be wiped out for the good of humanity. The Kurgan caused all this pain and death, and he didn't even know any of it happened! And he wouldn't have cared it he did, other than being angry that Horton cost him a few Immortal heads.
• In the last Quickening, absolute psychotic animation surround Connor, including incomprehensible beings and demonic looking ones. And unlike the rest of the series, what these entities exactly are, is never fully explained.

The Series

• Sometimes things were added in the Watcher Chronicles CD-Rom that created a bit of this in some characters. One example is Michael Moore from "Turnabout". His chronicle says he was taken from an orphanage in the 1830s by a foster family that was cruel and abusive, possibly even sexually abusive. It was so bad his first death was suicide. Imagine having trauma like that and not even being able to escape by dying. Is it any wonder the guy ended up developing a split personality that was a Serial Killer? It's sad he helped a lot of others as a psychiatrist, but couldn't escape his own demons.
• The revelation that Methos repeatedly killed Cassandra just to torture her back in the bronze age.
• Terence Kincaid, the immortal who got marooned on a Deserted Island and ended up starving to death over and over again. It's no wonder he was eager to get back at Duncan when he escaped. Mac hadn't wanted to kill him and never thought he'd end up stranded quite that long. And by extension, any other immortal who endured repeated deaths due to an inability to escape a situation. At least any one buried alive like Nefertiti or Michael Moore would stay dead until they got enough air to wake up again.
• John Garrick, the immortal who ended up psychically tormenting Duncan because unbeknownst to Duncan, he did not escape a Burn the Witch! situation and was burned alive. True that he wouldn't revive until he'd healed enough to facilitate it, but it's still painful to think about.
• There were at least two immortals who ended up trapped in mental hospitals so long that no one remembered who they were or why they were there. One of them tried to get revenge on Duncan by trapping him in an abandoned army base brig for the same amount of time, though he was rescued. That's a bit of a nightmare to imagine.
• The novel "Zealot" expands on Methos’ comment in “Til Death”, albeit in a scene cut for time, about “a senator, his wife and a slave boy.” It ended with Methos being crucified. It's indicated he died a couple times before he was rescued by Constantine. Considering what we know about this form of execution...eesh.
• Kenny appears to be a ten-year-old child but in reality is over 800 years old. He uses his youthful appearance to lure other Immortals in to behead them. As horrible as he is, one can't feel a little sorry for the realization this is a centuries-old figure forever trapped in a child's body, which may contribute to his mental state.
  • When Kenny gets the drop on an Immortal to behead him, the Quickening suddenly makes him look far older, his face seemingly twisting to hint his true age. It's a horrific sight but kudos to both the FX team and Myles Ferguson pulling it off.
• Kalas, the Big Bad of Season 3, oozes this trope. He kills two or three people each episode he appears in, and at one point abducts his Watcher, straps him to a chair, and electrically tortures him for information. In addition to his crimes, there's also his general demeanor. Most evil immortals tend to be theatrical or entertaining, like Kronos or the Kurgan. Not Kalas. He's icy and humorless, with a simmering rage and sadism hiding just beneath the surface. As if all that weren't enough, he's as skilled as Duncan is. No wonder Mac was so worried whenever Kalas showed up. He doesn't even care about The Game, all he wants is revenge on Duncan, to the point that by his final appearance, he's willing to reveal Immortals to the world, despite the fact that it'd almost certainly doom him too.
• Throughout the series, the question hangs of what might happen should an Immortal break the rule of taking a head on holy ground. In "Little Tin God," Dawson shares an old Watcher legend of the only known time two Immortals fought on holy ground:
  Joe: It was in Pompeii. 79 A.D.
  Duncan: The volcano...
  • And while the destruction of Pompeii was bad enough of a calamity, the very same episode shows that an Immortal can be buried alive forever and remain alive. If true, the two Immortals that fought in the legend were unlikely to have escaped the eruption and were simultaneously burned and buried alive by the ash cloud. From an Immortal's perspective, the legend is a warning; breaking this rule will result in a Fate Worse than Death. Best case scenario would be that the Immortals were freed at some point between 1799, when the city was rediscovered and the earliest excavations took place, and the mid-20th century, when most of the city was uncovered, meaning they'd have spent over 2000 years buried alive. Worst case? Since not all of Pompeii has been uncovered for various reasons, they might still be down there!