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This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Nightmare Fuel / hololive

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dullahanhaato_3.png
"cut off your head"
Surely, this idol group can't have anything scary about it, right?
Entries with their own pages:
  • AZKi's music videos usually veer into this territory, particularly those categorized as AZKi BLaCK.
    • "I Can't Control Myself" features the debut of her Evil Twin. Said twin undergoing a descent into madness and desire for blood that culminates into offing themselves with a revolver, the ending featuring her smiling with a fang growing out of her mouth.
    • "Shit Days" features a cult of rabbit-masked AZKi clones, two of the "gate-keeper" clones in particular having full rabbit mask that dip into Uncanny Valley. The video culminates in the cult perform what is implied to be crucification of AZKi Prime, all because she tried to comfort the imprisoned Evil Twin.
  • Suisei's psychopath moments can invoke this, as seen in her Project Winter moment when she kills four people. She kills Coco, declares to the other survivors that she will kill them all, then kills Fubuki and Kanata, and then she rips off Fubuki's skin, wears it and shoots Matsuri while she's begging for her life, changing her voice to mimic Fubuki while doing so. This moment scared Matsuri and the others so much that in the next game she and the others immediately suspect Suisei, even though she's innocent.
  • Amelia Watson's "Watson Concoction" segments on both her debut as well as an entire Halloween stream dedicated to it have her using her visual and audio filters to great effect in order to create some truly nightmarish and demonic imagery. It was so effective that her viewers were legitimately horrified at some of the things she pulled off, especially during the Halloween stream.
  • In stark contrast to the rest of Polka's short videos, "・－－・　－－－　・－・・" ("POL" in Morse code) is just her muttering "POL" over and over in different tones with a Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises expression, backed by ominous ambience and a black background. The video ends with Polka disappearing abruptly, leaving the audience with only the black background and ambience for several seconds.
  • Since January 2021, Kanata has uploaded a number of short 3D videos that many viewers find disturbing:
  • Rushia's "こんにちは" video starts off with her saying via text-to-speech that her throat hurts and she can't talk but she still wants to see her fans. She then begins to obsessively say things like "I like you", the audio becoming increasingly lower-pitched as she continues to do so, eventually descending into Madness Mantra with a Yandere expression. In the end, the video fades into an incomprehensible Wall of Text with a black background. The fact that this video was uploaded in the same day as Haato's #BYEBYEHAACHAMA stream (which itself is filled with Psychological Horror, and is one of Haato's most cryptic stream yet at the time of upload) is also alarming to say the least.
  • Omegaα. What looks like to be Hololive's first real villain. The video "Advent of Omega" is cryptic to say the least and the last terrifying shot of their glowing eyes certainly doesn't help much, and considering the nature of Vtubers to interact with their audience...
  • Watame's Everlasting Soul, while a song that which shows her defiance and hope, is quite bleak in scenery, appearing to be After the End, with the sheep wandering around the ruins of a city filled "with the stench of gunpowder and death". The birds shown throughout the video, an apparent metaphor for bomber planes, are heavily implied to be the cause of the destruction and keeping a watch over their handiwork, with a shot of people running as they come under fire from one; they apparently even seem unfinished with a tower crumbling apart during the second chorus.
  • She's kicked the habit, but Calliope used to drink a lot of energy drinks. During a Minecraft collab with Gura, Calli cheerfully goes off for a second can of it while Gura checks just how much caffeine is in it. Answer: 300 mg. The recommended maximum daily caffeine for an average adult is only 400 mg. Gura tells Calli this little tidbit, and the reaper fortunately decides against a second can, sounding deeply shaken. Caffeine overdose is real, it is a horrifying experience, and Calli came dangerously close to it.
  • On November 11, 2021, Kronii did a sponsored stream of Blue Archive that put the "EN Curse/Law" into a whole new light. Microsoft's Cortana somehow gets into an infinite loop of activating itself, despite Kronii alleging that she's playing on an iPad, eventually resulting in crashing the stream outright as the computer is forced to reset. Furthermore, this happened right as in-game AI helper Arona was being introduced, leading to claims in chat of Cortana being a Yandere and lots of "Just Cortana".
    • When Kronii returns from the reset, she notes that she's sure that she turned Cortana off, but is also worried that it's ineffectual. It doesn't take long for her fears to be realised...
      Kronii: [selecting a plot-relevant choice] Yeah, go ahead. I-
      Cortana: Hi! I'm Cortana! [with various echoes thereof]
      Kronii: NO! We're not doing this again! [Mutes Cortana, then unmutes Cortana to the sound of what can be best described as Voice of the Legion and can only laugh in horror] [...] I'm so scared right now...
    • 13 days later, she returned.
  • Kanata managed to Squick out her chat by revealing that after getting injured "normally" one time at school, she fell so in love with the pain relief patches at the school infirmary that she engaged in Self-Harm for the express purpose of getting more. Furthermore, her first such attempt was considered an insufficient injury to warrant one, so she had to do serious damage to herself.
  • In Lui’s second Doki Doki Literature Club! stream she gets the infamous OBS jumpscare during the “Just Monika” scene, which makes Lui think that Monika is actually trying to communicate with the Luitomo. Then someone with a Monika-themed account sends her a red superchat while in-character, and Lui promptly freaks out thinking that Monika is actually hacking her computer.
    Monika
    $100.00
    ”Because of your manager, I found love. Thank you, Manager-chan. Lui-kun, don’t listen to chat. Monika FOREVER. JUST MONIKA.”
  • Kronii's Minecraft stream with Ina started out okay, but things quickly took a turn when Kronii died and lost several high-powered items, including multiple diamonds. Kronii suddenly started laughing in Mirthless Laughter, frequently coughing and saying she was sorry, while her laughing slowly devolved into a combination of crying in rage and broken laughter. At one point, she even said "I think I'm gonna die!" while Ina sounds legitimately scared for Kronii's safety. While Kronii did eventually calm down, her behavior turned suicidal in-game, going up to Endermen and creepers to "sign autographs" and "give hugs" to them, frequently dying as a result. Kronii even suggested killing the entire Council, because "in order to make peace, there must be war". It's a real-time Sanity Slippage, and it's quite disturbing to watch.
  • Gura's playthrough of the VR game Last Labyrinth gets off to a harrowing start when she ends up failing the first puzzle and must watch helplessly as her cute support character Katia is killed via decapitation, with Gura suffering the same fate shortly after. Gura's screams as the guillotines fall on Katia and herself are some of her loudest and most terrified yet. During the second attempt even she hesitates to start the contraption up again out of fear of having to witness it again.
  • For Valentines Day 2022, Calli streamed a surreal video called "Just Mori". Mimicking the final scene of Doki Doki Literature Club!, Calli places herself in a classroom, contained inside the void of space, which occasionally glitches out or is overlayed with static. Calli sits there with her hands crossed, saying that her deadbeats belong to her, and any attempt to make her mad will be met with death. After about ninety minutes in, Calli glitches out, comes back, and says nothing. The only noise is an ominous humming from the void. The horror comes into play from chat's responses of confusion and terror at how unnerving the silence was, wondering if someone was deliberately trying to sabotage Calli. The only way Calli can communicate is basic on-screen text, in which she typed out how nervous she was and how scared she'd be to spend all of eternity in a void. The chat went between over-the-top reactions to genuine worry for Calli, with several deadbeats saying that they were genuinely scared.
  • Mumei's portrait of a Nightmare Face. Practically a reflection of how downright psychopathic she can be underneath the surface sometimes.
    Korone: What the... fuck?
  • The story told in the MV of Suisei's "TEMPLATE" is pretty bleak, all things considered. Two Hoshiyomis meet; one a reclusive boy who admires Suisei so much that he turns to crossdressing as her to project his own ideal of Suiseinote ; the other a woman stuck in a Soul-Crushing Desk Job who finds solace in Suisei's songs, who is incensed by the boy's actions and is willing to use violence to stop what she perceives as defamation. In a way, both Hoshiyomis have fallen into the trap of forcing their own "template" onto Suisei, when in reality, only Suisei herself can determine her own image. The fact that Suisei keeps singing on as these two squabble and fight on the street is an allegory as to how, no matter what drama happens between the fans, the idol will likely never be aware of it or even care, as well as a stark warning against forming parasocial relationships and blurring the boundary between admiration and obsession. The song ends with the Hoshiyomis being apprehended by law enforcement, both of them now so deep in their delusions that they see the officers holding them back as copies of Suisei singing in their ears. And what does the screen projection of Suisei do while the fight unfolds? Why, don the crown splashed in blue paint (evoking the imagery of a blood-splattered one) and smile!
  • Kureiji Ollie, as adorable and excitable as she is, has a surprisingly dark backstory, though not dwelled on for too long. Ollie died when she was just seventeen, rising from the grave and finding out that her home was bought out in place of a ramen shop. To make matters worse, we see in an alternate dimension just how happy and sane Ollie could have been had she never died in the form of Olivia, making her zombified transformation that much more disturbing...
  • Though starting out absolutely hilarious, the April Fools' Day special where Calvin Morrison takes over Calliope's channel gets a bit more tense when it's revealed that he has Calli Bound and Gagged in the background, with the faint sound of her screams heard as he sets up a poll, the winner of which gets to keep the channel. And Calvin nearly wins.
  • After seeing Ollie crying over the death of Charles in The Henry Stickmin Collection, we slowly see Ollie begin to snap, and then...
    Ollie: We're getting payback... WE'RE GETTING PAYBACK! WE'RE GETTING PAYBACK FOR OUR FRIEND. Hahahahahahahaha... Hahahahahahahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
  • While Chloe was doing a singing stream, a woman's voice can be heard while Chloe's talking. Enough that Chloe didn't want to check the video again due to being scared.
  • The original music video of Mumei's "Dan Dan" cover, released for her birthday, which plays her Comedic Sociopathy for all its worth. While Mumei sings a cute and peppy song, the MV depicts her, in her chibi doll version, unleash the Black Plague with Bae's assistance and watch other historical tragedies unfold such as the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg crash, and the Challenger explosion. If that wasn't enough, there's also the ending, where she watches is a Hooman watching one of her streams, holding a knife right outside their window with a depraved smile. Not even her fans are safe. The first version had to be taken down for about a couple months due to a couple scenes being deemed a bit too recent for comfort; what is now available for viewing swaps them for sillier in-joke disasters like the sinking of Atlantis.
  • While Lui's song "Overd" is catchy as all hell, it also goes out of its way to remind the viewer that HoloX are still supervillains out to take over the world. It does this by giving Lui some downright unhinged facial expressions and Slasher Smiles as she sings about her own insecurities and how they will one day rule everything. There's also a lyric at the end that makes for some serious Paranoia Fuel:
    Overthrow the world, yeah yeah yeah
    Until the day we see it no more
    Flowing forth, forth, forth, this world's raison d'être, yo yo yo
    Now we're concealed, so, so, so, we're inside your cities
    Giving shape to our grand X
  • Magni Dezmond may be just as into his alleged role as alchemist as whatever the hell his real job is in the backroom, but he isn't afraid to show how exceptionally ruthless and amoral he is as a character regardless:
  • The faces of Council's BeegSmol VRChat models. While they're undeniably cute, there is something creepy about the large black scribbly eyes that all of them have. Not helping is that in order for them to switch to special facial expressions on the fly, those expressions are layered underneath their default face, so if the camera gets too close to the face, viewers will see another face inside their head! This is best exemplified during hololive EN's Halloween 2022 collab when Mumei moves her face really close to Calli, giving the reaper and her audience a front-row view of Boomei and her infamous Nightmare Face inside her head. Mumei dropping her voice and giving Calli a threat for accidentally peeking inside only added to the creepiness.
    Mumei: Don't tell anyone what you saw.
  • For Halloween 2022, Hololive English released three horror shorts written by Fauna, and to say that they're easily some of the darkest material under the hololive umbrella would be an understatement.
    • Episode 1: Origin concerns a mysterious website that claims to be able to "save" anyone who enters their name into it. All of Amelia's friends bar Gura and Fauna have mysteriously disappeared, having entered their names into the website, and Amelia is trying to find out just what this website is about. Out of morbid curiosity she enters Gura's name into the website, and sure enough, Gura disappears the next day, with Fauna becoming so grief-stricken about her friends that she begins considering that they put their own names in so they can be together again. Once Amelia goes back home, she enters her own name, and with scarily quick timing, Gura comes into Amelia's room, wielding a syringe and informing Amelia that Fauna entered her name. She then gives a thorough verbal beatdown to Amelia before pinning her down and killing her with the syringe, all with the implication that Gura is a pawn to who or whatever the hell is behind this site to begin with...
    • Episode 2: Ocellus concerns Bae, as an up-and-coming idol alongside Calli, Kiara, and IRyS. For some reason, Bae constantly feels as if she's constantly being watched, even when no one is around. Her friends try to explain it away, but none of it seems to work for Bae, until she tries to dismiss it as just her mind playing tricks on her. It then cuts to Bae in the bathroom, asking... whatever the hell is watching her why it keeps on doing so, before Calli calls out to her about a coming concert. After some more fruitless discussion about her feeling watched, Bae goes out onto the stage, but then is paralyzed with fear as she seemingly hallucinates a massive eye glaring down at her from above. Bae passes out after this and wakes up in Calli's room, asking what happened. Calli, being oddly calm about everything, states that Bae no longer has to worry about being watched. After all, she took care of everyone, so that nobody would be watching her again... and it's revealed that Calli has gouged out her eyes, "assuring" her that she won't have to worry about being watched anymore before she collapses on top of Bae. The short ends with Bae blankly staring at the ceiling, her bed littered with eyeballs (presumably those of Calli, Kiara and IRyS) and that same massive eye overlaying the frame, her once again questioning why it's watching her... The scariest part is that we never find out if something's really watching Bae or if it's all in her head. And both outcomes have some terrifying implications - if what Bae saw was real, then she's basically the victim of some sort of unknowable being stalking her. And if it's all in her head...then Calli just committed a triple murder-suicide for nothing.
    • The third and final episode, "Ophanim", may end on a Surprisingly Happy Ending, but it was quite a ride to get there.
      • It turns out that the mastermind behind the "saving" website killings and Calli's eye mutilation spree was in fact Ina, who has been conducting experiments to test how the world can change depending on how its observed. Her latest "test subject" is Mumei, who she injects with the same syringe Gura used on Ame...but this time, something goes horribly wrong. Kronii, a reporter in this world, comes across the ruins of Ina's lab and finds Ina badly wounded. She explains that Mumei was her "best experiment yet", but managed to escape confinement. As Ina explains everything that happened throughout the series, Mumei can be heard singing, with her singing getting louder and louder until she bursts into the room, revealing that the syringe turned her into a harpylike monster.
      • Even the way the series manages to end happily is creepy. Kronii notices a leftover syringe and thinks that she can use it to cure Mumei, but Mumei suddenly tackles her, takes the syringe, and injects her with it. After a brief pause, crystals begin bursting from Kronii's skin as Mumei begs her to fix things. The implication is that this is how Kronii gains her powers over time, which she uses to undo the murders and return everything to normal.
      • And then there's the matter of the reveal of the power behind all of this: the force which allowed Ina to perform these experiments, and is implied to have been responsible for Bae's feeling of being watched. As Ina explains, the observer effect allows for particles and waves to be altered simply by the act of conscious observation... and through acts of sufficent cruelty, she was able to draw the attention of something to her victims, causing them to change as well. At first it seems like we're not going to find out exactly what this entity was...until the very end, when Ina turns directly toward the camera and says, "You'll still watch, won't you?" The thing that Bae felt observing her, and that observed the changes to Mumei and Kronii, wasn't some Lovecraftian entity; it was us, the viewers.
  • The lore behind Machina X Flayon:
    • While the lore video is mostly just him boasting, there's a disturbing undercurrent through the second half. It's shown that he doesn't care for human lives despite ostensibly being a good guy, being more than willing to sic the R-TRUS on anyone who annoys him. It culminates in a scene near the end showing Flayon wiping blood off his cheek in a darkly-lit room, with his dialog heavily implying that he just murdered someone, before flashing a Slasher Smile right as the scene cuts.
    • "X" cranks up his status as The Unfettered even further, revealing him to be a Fake Ultimate Hero who stole all of his talents and ideas from someone using a Deal with the Devil for attention. He admits there's a twinge of regret to all of this, but clearly not enough since it's quite obvious he enjoys throwing this person's life out with the trash so that he can get whatever he wants. Furthermore, if he did not work for TEMPUS, he would undoubtedly be an antagonist for doing this.
    • Another lore video, titled "Church of Rune", paints another facet to his character, and hints at a connection to the Corruption. It takes place After the End, and he is now in holy clothes as Father Machina. As the preacher, he condemns his old friends, having killed them all except for Shinri prior to the events of the video, and preaches spreading the Corruption during his sermon, and he states that he is not above Human Sacrifice.
    • What started as a simple new outfit reveal for Flayon alongside an appreciation day for the Machiroons gets sidetracked when he finds an old photo of himself. After the screen transition, Flayon, now covered in Corruption, was yelling with self-doubts and hatred and the chat window is obscured by glitches. Occasionally polls are posted in the chat, but some questions have responses that were so disturbing that some of the Machiroons vowed to abstain from voting out of genuine concern for their oshi. After most of the Corruption clears to reveal his new outfit, one could finally hear him screaming.
      Flayon (pre-screen transition): I'M FLAYON I'M FLAYON I'M FLAYON I'M FLAYON
  • While Banzoin Hakka's second original song "Shattered Wings" is undeniably epic, the accompanying MV paints a pretty harrowing image. In particular, part of the video shows Hakka standing in front of what appears to be the crumbled remains of the TEMPUS hall with several dark hands appearing in the background and no sign of the other guild members anywhere. Just what the hell happened here? Did The Corruption Hakka is battling get the better of him and he wrecked the hall while being possessed by his curse? Or did a particularly vengeful spirit destroy everything because Hakka failed to pacify it? For that matter, did such an event actually happen? Or was this a vision of a Bad Future presented to Hakka showing what would happen should he falter in his mission? Suffice to say, this single image presents a lot more questions than answers.
  • To welcome Bettel back from a short break, Flayon played a rather creepy prank on the poor jester that basically consisted of him going full Yandere, lovingly talking about how much he adores and misses Bettel in an eerie whisper, occasionally breaking into manic screams and fits of giggling, all in prelude to a raidnote . Bettel himself wound up tuning into Flayon's stream while this was happening, and was clearly rattled by the whole event.
  • Bettel held a nearly 6 hour-long marathon stream for August 19th. While it's largely just typical Bettel shenanigans and is ultimately a set up for a "crummy t-shirt" joke, the whole thing is still framed in a very unsettling way. Two moments in particular are incredibly creepy: the first is a call from Flayon where he angrily rants at Bettel for "replacing" him before suddenly being pursued and attacked by...something, and the second is a set of calls from Altare; the first has him nervously ask Bettel if there are any safe places to hide in the Guild Hall, and the second has him, having seemingly dispatched his pursuers, asking Bettel if he can help him dispose of some bodies (with Bettel's response implying that this isn't the first time something like this has happened) before hanging up. They both show up completely fine near the end of the stream, making one wonder just what happened to them.
  • Nerissa Ravencroft's backstory is surprisingly very dark. She is a demoness with a powerful, magical voice. But when she sang her songs in the company of humans, her voice drove the entire world completely insane, causing the gods to punish her by sealing her away in a prison forever. This is made even worse by the fact that Nerissa wasn't trying to be malicious, and only wanted to share her gift.
  • Fuwamoco Morning are normally sweet and comfy bite-sized streams featuring FUWAMOCO. The Fuwamoco Morning stream from Friday, October 13, 2023 was, of course, no exception... unless you count various factors and occurrences such as the constantly distorted music playing in the background, Fuwawa's somewhat monotone voice as she presents the various segments, constant audio and visual disturbances (especially before and after the main Fuwamoco Morning itself), and the fact that something happened to a now-transparent Mococo that made her meekly cry out for help and question why she's even here. Totally nothing that would disturb and unnerve those who are so used to what a Fuwamoco Morning is normally like. Yep... business as usual.
  • Octavio's debut is mostly as humorous as the other members of ARMIS and shows off his cute side well, but halfway through he decides to "experiment" on the viewer by attaching his strings to their body and attempting to control them via his powers. The viewer ends up fleeing from him down a dark, suddenly 3D-rendered hallway while Octavio tries to reassume control behind you...and upon failing to, he vanishes. Octavio then reappears right in front of the viewer's face while a loud Scare Chord plays, menacingly whispering that you're his as long as you've signed his contract. It turns out to be a trailer for his cover of "Hollow Hunger", but it's rather jarring considering the tone of the rest of the debut. Octavio making a point to act like nothing happened doesn't help matters either.
  • Nerissa Ravencroft's stream from March 10, 2024 started off... oddly. The demoness gave an unhinged Kubrick Stare to the camera while threateningly gripping a Jailbird by its head, panting hysterically. She did this for a solid minute before the end screen kicked in, signifying the apparent end of the stream, only for her to reappear, acting completely normal as if the past minute had not occurred in the first place. There continued to be no mention of this throughout the stream leading many viewers to wonder if the occurrence had even happened.

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