As if the Pokémon franchise didn't already have its share of Nightmare Fuel, even the trading card game manages to be unnerving at times.
- The character "Imakuni?" (question mark included) in the Pokémon Trading Card Game for GameBoy is a pretty unnerving character who has scared quite a few kids, mostly because of his theme song, coupled with the lack of context: he's actually a cameo of a Japanese singer, his realistic-looking card not meshing well with the GameBoy style and he is labeled as "Strange Lifeform Imakuni?" which indicates he is a some kind of space alien. He's even worse in the sequel, where there's two of them. One has a red outfit and his portraits look like he's screaming.
- Some of the Pokémon card images from the early sets were rather disturbing. Particularly Gastly
from the Base Set. - There was always something unnerving about the Porygon◊ and Clefairy Doll◊ cards as well. Also, there's Impostor Professor Oak◊ and his revenge◊ from one of the later sets.
- A lot of Dark Pokemon are depicted as unusually violent and malevolent, such as an emaciated, feral Dark Persian◊ and Dark Hypno◊ using hypnosis on the viewer.
- Dark Omastar◊ will eat your face.
- Some of the sketchier art, such as the Diglett◊ in the Rocket set, looks unnerving in its simplicity. Fitting, as the same set includes Dark Dugtrio◊ (Diglett's evolution), which it depicts as aggressively digging its way into an empty room while causing no shortage of damage.
- Dark Magneton.◊ The non-holofoil version◊ depicts it character flying with a silhouetted Rocket grunt in the background sporting a very creepy Slasher Smile, alongside the description that "the number of incidents of hackers using Magneton note to damage computer systems is steadily increasing."
- Dark Omastar
- Many of the character descriptions on the Japanese cards manage to be quite creepy, which is likely why they have been bowdlerized for English releases:
- The Japanese base set Haunter card states that "If you get the feeling of being watched in darkness when nobody is around, Haunter is there."
