Nightmare Fuel in Power Rangers in Space.
- Large Ham traits aside, there are moments after she's brainwashed that Astronema does come across as somewhat unnerving.
- Her reveal, after she is recaptured by Ecliptor, in particular. We're used to seeing Astronema with a fairly rosy complexion and roughly a half-pound of glittery, shiny makeup, and she's very emotional, whether she's being sincere or hamming it up as a villain. When the chair spins around to reveal brainwashed Astronema, her face is ash-white, free of makeup, her voice entirely monotone, and her eyes completely devoid of any sort of humanity whatsoever.
- And on the subject of the brainwashing, there's the event itself. All the audience gets is the now-brainwashed Ecliptor approaching her, saying the same thing that happened to him is going to happen to her, we hear Karone scream, her communication earpiece is knocked to the floor, and then the signal cuts out. Nothing Is Scarier at its finest.
- On Andros' side of things: You're enjoying a simple day of playing ball with your little sister when she accidentally throws the ball too far. You run off to get it and when you get back, your sister is nowhere to be found. It's only later that you learn she was kidnapped...and you spend years thinking God knows what has happened to her and that it's all your fault.
- Almost anything with Darkonda counts: his debut episode, where he infected Carlos and Cassie (the black and pink rangers respectively) with Barillian Bugs, caused them to turn into giant human-sized versions of the bugs. In Flashes of Darkonda, when he proves himself to be The Starscream, Ecliptor decides he needs to be removed and proceeds to poison his new Super Serum, turning it into a Psycho Serum. When Darkonda takes it, he beats up on the Rangers for a while, and then starts screaming in agony and terror, trembling, with streams of yellowish liquid oozing and spraying from his pores: he eventually mutates into a truly hideous form, and a giant chunk of his flesh falls away, turning him into a new monster. Oh, and he has nine lives.
- In his second appearance, he forcibly merges himself with Ecliptor, turning into Darkliptor.
- Speaking of Darkonda, there's the fact of the matter that He kidnapped Astronema back when she was still a little girl named Karone. The first time we see the event we don't see him but we do see Karone freeze up and scream as he kidnaps her, which may seem like a Too Dumb to Live move to a first time watcher but quickly becomes understandable when we learn what Darkonda looks like.
Wouldn't you react like that if you were a little kid getting chased by that?
- In "Dark Specter's Revenge", the feud between Ecliptor and Darkonda comes to a head when Darkonda has Ecliptor captured and forcibly brainwashed in the middle of the night. To elaborate: one night, a bunch of Quantrons sneak into Ecliptor's quarters and drag him away, kicking and screaming, and strap him to a metal slab, where Darkonda comes out, dressed in full Torture Technician regalia, and cackles, "You need a little attitude adjustment! Say AH!" The last thing we see before it cuts to credits is a menacing-looking spinning drill/claw/thing steadily moving towards the camera, about the slice into Ecliptor's face. Somehow, having it happen to a villain makes it even worse: this isn't like when the Rangers get captured by the bad guys, and The Cavalry always comes to bail them out by the end. Ecliptor, one of the most sympathetic villains on the show, is tortured and brainwashed until he doesn't remember ever having loved Astronema. Even for a villain, that's pretty damn harsh.
- And then, shortly before his own demise, he witnesses Andros accidentally kill Astronema/Karone and briefly laments how he "loved her like a daughter" indicating that the brainwashing either didn't completely eradicate his soul or has worn off by that point. Alas, Poor Villain indeed.
- Also from the above episode, we get to see Dark Specter's idea of a plan to kill the Rangers directly. Is it send a monster? Oh no. It's chuck a freaking planet killer asteroid at the Earth. And this is played dead seriously as humanity is made aware of it and reacts about how you'd expect them to to that news. If Zhane hadn't shown up with his new mech, Dark Specter would've won. Orcus on His Throne he may be, but when Dark Specter gets off his butt, he doesn't mess around...
- The Psycho Rangers were unbelievably awesome, but everything awesome about them was scary as well. Psycho Pink she gets grazed in the eye by a lightning blast from Psycho Yellow, and they later exploit this to weaken her, revealing a freaky eye underneath that helmet before she turns into a massive plant-tentacle monster; then Psycho Blue pretty much almost kills the Blue Ranger, and after they trick him into driving his teammates away, he goes into a flurry of Unstoppable Rage slashing on all the Rangers. Then there's the Paranoia Fuel of them being able to trace the sound of the Rangers morphing and even their voices, popping up when they least expect it, and Red's unbridled ambition to kill the Red Ranger, resulting in another shot to the eye, with a laser. The Psychos also start off as the Evil Twin group of the good Rangers, but by their end the Psychos all have the ability to transform into hideous monsters. Having also appeared as actual teens at some point implies You Cannot Grasp the True Form. Towards the end of the arc, Red became obsessed with killing Andros, and even attacked his team mates over it. Finally, when they return in the Lost Galaxy team-up, Psycho Pink actually succeeds in killing one of the Rangers, albeit temporarily.
- Bonus points for Blue really putting the Psycho in Psycho Ranger with his Joker-sequel cackle and general level of unhinged-sounding-ness.
- Their fighting style is not the pretty acrobatic karate fights that are the series' norm. They deal in brutal No Holds Barred Beatdowns and agonizing Electric Torture.
- The Psycho Rangers hunting the Rangers by their voice. Cassie is left alone with the Psychos hunting her and knowing that if she speaks she might well be finished. If it weren't for Zhane tricking them, she might not have survived.
- The final battle has Zordon dying, before he releases a wave of goodness that destroys evil. Sounds good until after destroying a few groups of monsters we see it heading towards Rita and Zedd, the amusing and lovable, though always effective, villains we've spent the entire series growing fond of are now faced with an inescapable wave of flaming death rapidly approaching them as Rita screams in terror for her husband to not let it get her. Thankfully everything ended up all right for her.
- Retcons actually make the purification of Rita and Zedd quite horrifying. Operation Overdrive shows that, while evil, they had a son, only a year or two prior to their purification. A son that wasn't purified with them, who continued to be a villain, and who seems to treat them as having died in the purification: a kid whose parents, one day when he was two, just left to go to work, and came back as unrecognizable, completely different people.
- Ecliptor was turned to ash by Zordon's wave, despite him being a Noble Demon instead of a Card-Carrying Villain. How many others who weren't so bad might have suffered the same fate as well?
- Dark Specter's death: he's struck In the Back by Darkonda with a planet buster missile, slowly disappears as he's destroyed by numerous explosions... And then, when Darkonda fires a second missile at his own base to kill Astronema and Ecliptor, Dark Specter reappears, takes it in the head, and eats Darkonda and his ship whole before exploding for good.
- This is also when we find out why Zordon would have created Serpentera: to fight him.
