Nightmare Fuel / My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree

Sweet Celestia...

• Twilight's Nightmare Sequence in the film's intro. It starts mundane enough, with Twilight believing she overslept and is about to miss the bus; luckily, her friends are there to help her pack and get ready. She prepares to change her clothes... And Midnight Sparkle suddenly appears in her mirror. Twilight's friends get vaporized by Midnight (letting out some bloodcurdling screams of pain), and the room's walls and floor collapse into a purple void. Midnight then tells Twilight that she'll never be truly defeated since she's part of Twilight. The nightmare ends when Midnight Sparkle stabs Twilight with her horn right through her forehead, and starts fusing with her as Twilight pleads for Midnight to stop. Sunset Shimmer has every right to look concerned after Twilight catapults herself awake in the bus.
  Midnight Sparkle: Midnight Sparkle's a part of you! I'll always be there, waiting in the darkest shadows of your mind! I'll be back, Twilight! And this time, I won't stop until I have all the magic!
  • Special mention to how Midnight strips away the room until there's nothing left but a stormy purple void and one GIANT Midnight Sparkle staring down terrified Twilight.
    • Another special mention goes to Twilight's appearance after Midnight forcibly fuses with her. Midnight's wings, mask, and horn appear on the poor girl's body while Twilight screams for Midnight to stop.
  • Yet another special mention, this time for the novelization's reinterpretation of the scene: rather than Midnight Sparkle suddenly appearing in her mirror and then her room, Twilight instead slowly transforms into Midnight: she notes how "something dark and frightening" appeared in her eyes, as her hair grew wilder, her glasses are replaced by the mask, and both wings and horn grow. The girls' reaction? To scream — as the novelization states — in fright of her. Oh, and then the other Midnight Sparkle pops from the mirror by shattering it, and the nightmare ends more or less like in the movie.
  • Twilight's Power Incontinence is Nightmare Fuel, even for herself, as she fears to ever turn back into Midnight Sparkle.
    • To top if all off: during the song, "The Midnight in Me", Twilight sees Midnight Sparkle overlaid over her own reflection. Doubles as a tearjerker.
• Twilight's second Nightmare Sequence has Twilight alone at a campfire, hearing Midnight Sparkle somewhere. Twilight tries to find where she is, only for Midnight Sparkle to leap from the campfire, and jump/fly directly towards her.
• Gaea Everfree. As seen in Timber Spruce's campfire tale, she's this massive, vaguely humanoid, snakelike thing made of dirt, branches and leaves, with sharp crystals jagging out of her head and wild mane of leaves. She opposses humans trying to live off her land, and tries to drive them out with strange events — when it fails, she just straight up rises from the ground in the shadows, only her two glowing golden eyes visibles. It's only a little better when she steps into the light, but her rather humanlike face featuring black sclera with only two golden dots inside, along with her jagged rock Scary Teeth (that look a bit like dulled fangs) paired against her otherwise inhuman body make for a rather unnerving sight. She also absolutely towers Timber's greatgrandparents, and while she doesn't hurt anyone and eventually lets the couple stay, she threatens them that she'll eventually "reclaim what's hers". And it seems like she picks the CHS school trip just for that...
  • It turns out Timber Spruce told the story and was pulling something of an "Scooby-Doo" Hoax to cover for Gloriosa's reckless use of magic. How reckless? More than once, it almost ended with someone injured (the boat crashing at top speed against the dock, in particular) — and worse yet, there's the implication that her distressed state caused by being on the verge of losing the camp coupled with using magic has caused her to have a rather nasty Sanity Slippage, topping off with her leaving Sunset & Twilight trapped in a cave in a rock quarry (perhaps left them to die there) and transforming into a monster. One again, the dangers of magic in the humans' world are made abundantly clear.
• At one point, Sunset accidentally uses her Touch Telepathy on Gloriosa Daisy, but she just hears a burst of furious/desperate screaming. It shows just how close she is about to go off the deep-end.
• With the group afraid of their powers and not sure how to control them, Rainbow Dash tiptoes around to avoid going into Super-Speed and Applejack is hammering very lightly to avoid triggering her Super-Strength. And then when she remarks she's out of nails, Pinkie, whose power is making things explode when she throws them, throws a box of nails towards them. The girls very understandably scream and duck for cover. Fortunately for everyone, Pinkie's explosive powers turn out to only work on food items, but they didn't know that at the time...
• Gloriosa Daisy's transformation into Gaea Everfree. She descends very quickly into pure insanity, trapping every camper inside a wall of plants all the while proclaiming that she's only doing this for their own good. She provides the page picture: her transformed facial features consist of black eyes (via Black Eyes of Crazy and Black Eyes of Evil combined) with two little emerald beads, and nigh-constant, maniacal smile plastered from within/on her face, complete with a tiny bit of Uncanny Valley Makeup and navy-blue/black mascara. It really doesn't help when she starts doing these weird, erratically Ax-Crazy movements, such as holding her head (as if in pain) or contorting awkwardly. Then, Rarity says the wrong thing, and she starts to Freak Out — and attacks the Humane Five with full-blown hostility.
• Gaea's song "We Will Stand For Everfree". A haunting Villain Song that features Gaea's descent into madness as she forces all the campers to be trapped under her so-called "protection". The campers are clearly terrified and nothing that anybody tries – not Timber chopping at the vines or Celestia trying to protect the kids – so much as slows Gaea down.
  • The way Gaea, in (what appears to be) the peak of her insanity, starts making this... bramble vine-esque cocoon around herself. It's really disturbing; she's sealing herself forever at Camp Everfree, along with a bunch of innocent kids, who cannot do anything about it or anything to prevent it, in general. Had Twilight and Sunset not intervened...
  • There's also something really disturbing about how she basically entombs Timber Spruce, her little brother. The students get trapped in vine-cages, but Timber gets grabbed by Gaea's vines — which slowly tighten around him for a moment before leaving him completely immobilized, an image that by itself would qualify for this. But then she covers him in vines, as in, pressed down tightly against him. Given enough time, he would've likely suffocated.
  • "Trust in me, this is for your own good", she sings, having already trapped the principals, and preparing to do the same to the students.
  • A relatively smaller one, all things considered, but after Twilight ponies up and goes to stop her, Gloriosa lets out a scream of agony when Twilight removes the geodes from her neck. It's not helped by the geodes letting out a bunch of sparks and electricity-like lightning. Misused magic is rather consistently shown to hurt in the Equestria Girls world, and it's disturbing.
• Twilight begins transforming into Midnight Sparkle again but this time, it's not as instant a transformation as the girl is trying to hold Midnight back. Big, black-tainted wings sprout from her back, her glasses disappear and get replaced by Midnight's mask, and a horn pops out of her forehead. If Twilight's friends weren't there to encourage her, Twilight would have lost against Midnight Sparkle.
  • While in the movie, it happens in her mindscape (and it's rather vague if it does happen or not in reality), the novelization changed the scene and makes it even worse, if only because everything — from her partial transformation to the girls' encouragement — happen in the real world in real time, meaning that, at least in the books, Twilight's fears of turning back into Midnight Sparkle were very much real, instead of the comparatively harmless emotional trauma presented in the film version.