Nightmare Fuel / Rebuild of Evangelion

And you thought Giant Rei was scary in the original.

It wouldn't be Eva without an appropriate amount of this. Frankly, this time it gets really horrifying and especially when the Angels are involved.

Note that ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED to prevent a wall of white. Consider yourself warned.

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Examples

You Are (Not) Alone

• First and foremost, Lilith. She is scarier than the original. It’s worse when you realize the little things protruding from Lilith's lower area look like human legs. They even shake around a bit. Oh, and those red lights in the holes of her mask aren't eyes, they're giant bolts the SEELE ordered to drill into her skull.
• This◊ version of the deformed Rei in Rebuild. It does not help matters that it brings back memories of End of Evangelion.
• The Evangelion Simulator isn’t just Unit-01 hooked up to some wires, this time it’s practically a trashed EVA-prototype with only a spine and head, with the barely visible red teeth from the corner of their jaw hanging above a visible and moving throat with eyes frantically shifting directions. The very thing is a monstrosity.
• The first quarter of the movie copies the first few episodes of the original series nearly scene-for-scene, and it's all very familiar... until the Sixth Angel, Ramiel, shows up. Like before, it tries to melt EVA Unit-01's face off with its laser. However, we see that while the officers are discussing a change of tactics, Shinji is continuously screaming in pain because Ramiel's laser is still boiling him alive. And the fact that he begs Gendou to rescue him while said 'father' continues giving orders coldly, completely ignores him and is actually the one responsible for this — almost as if he were torturing him to death.
• Ramiel in this movie is redesigned, and now it's this morphing, singing monstrosity that screams inhumanly whenever it’s about to fire its Wave-Motion Gun. And when it gets hit by Positron Cannon? Screams as loud as it possibly can as it shifts into a star-burst pattern, and lets hundreds of gallons of blood. Then it reveals that it is not dead yet, charges up another shot, and melt through a mountain.

You Can (Not) Advance

GIVE HER BACK!!!

• The poster for the Korean dub of 2.0.◊... which is also on the inside flap of the American release of 2.22 (and also, bizarrely enough, serves as the cover for the digital download of the gentle and heartwarming theme, Beautiful World). If the blood-curdling sketch of an aware Eva Unit-01 doesn't scare you, nothing (except The End of Evangelion, perhaps?) will. The Korean poster's tagline translates to "The fate of destruction is also the joy of rebirth!" Ring any bells?
• As if redesigning Ramiel into an Eldritch Abomination isn’t enough, look at Sahaquiel. It first appears as a huge sphere coming from outer space...then it opens, revealing what that can be best described as a huge spider with four wings as legs, and the wings is covered in human-looking appendages that seem to dance. Just... look◊.
• Everything about The Dummy System and Bardiel and Unit-03 is just as, and in some ways even more horrifying than the original.
  • The Dummy Plug System in general is already horrifying for the pilot (hell, imagine the mecha you are piloting suddenly moves and gains a will on its own), but its activation now resembles an Angel, rising from behind to just bend over and stare directly into the Pilot's face... There's also the sounds when it activates. Play it backwards, and you'll hear words. English words. "Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species." This is a quote from Colossus: The Forbin Project. For extra horror, Rei goes for a look (since the Dummy System is based off her) and she is shocked and appalled. Even Rei is squicked.
  • Unlike the original where the Dummy System’s unnecessary brutal mauling is foreshadowed with NERV staff stating they can’t fully monitor the emotional elements of the plug, here, there’s no such implication that anything’s wrong in the slightest, only stating they don’t have much activation time left in Japanese, and flat out saying "No abnormalities detected" in the dub.
  • Unit 03's destruction. The original scene was already fairly gory and many kinds of disturbing, but Rebuild makes it far more terrifying. The build-up to the scene, where we see Toji acting suspicious, similar to in the original series, and watchers of the old series think that the scene is going to repeat itself with Toji being the pilot of Unit 3. Then, when Asuka is named the pilot, it lures the old fans into a sense of "oh, they aren't going to copy the original series" and then the entry plug slowly turns blood red...indicating Bardiel’s infection.
    • What makes it worse is how Shinji effectively gets blinded and immobilized when the Dummy System is active. He can't see anything, and he can't pull his arms free. He's essentially forced to feel Unit 01 cannibalize and disembowel Unit 03, and he can't stop it no matter what.
  • The Angel Bardiel. It hasn’t been redesigned from the original series, but that’s because it doesn’t need to. Well, first of all, it isn’t a Kaiju. It’s a parasite. One that happens to infect your EVA, take control of it, and infect it with a horrifying mold-like mutation. Heck, unlike the original, Unit-03 keeps the red eyes it briefly had when Bardiel first activated through the entirety of its attack, and its mutation even manage to grow an extra pair of arms to strangle Unit-01.
  • Unit-01, controlled by Dummy Plug, eviscerating Unit-03, in all its gorny detail. And—rather than being crushed—the entry plug (i.e. cockpit) is bitten in half, and we hear Asuka's agonized scream (it comes a fraction of a second before Shinji's Big "NO!" and is too high-pitched to be him). It certainly doesn't help that this song is playing through the whole scene. It helps even less when Asuka just realized that how she has been treating others and herself is wrong. She goes through positive Character Development and THIS happens to her afterward? No Good Deed Goes Unpunished indeed!
  • Shinji's rage over the Dummy Plug incident feels a lot more threatening in the Rebuild version, where he's standing right on top of NERV Headquarters with Unit-01 trying to smash his way in. If Gendo hadn't wrenched control of Unit 01 back from him, Shinji would have very easily been able to destroy NERV HQ just by stomping it flat. It highlights how, for all the badassery that the children and the Evas are capable of, they're still very easy to piss off and make them turn against others.
• In a nutshell, everything involving the Angel Zeruel.
  • When it appears, we see people fleeing into the Geofront Shelter. Not too bad, but for a brief second you hear a child crying. A small but brilliantly effective moment. Then when Shinji's racing back to headquarters, you can see burned corpses scattered amongst the wreckage.
  • Then we see Mari, a totally new character suddenly piloting Unit-02. She is a pure Blood Knight and full of terrifying Slasher Smiles, and goes against Zeruel full force. But, this particular Angel is so powerful, it practically owns Unit-02. So, what does Mari do? Enter Unit 02's berserker state. The Humongous Mecha turn into something that resembles Carnage from Spider-Man (complete with gaping mouth, needle-thin teeth, and lolling tongue). And even this beast failed to defeat it.
  • Unit-00 and Rei then appears to help her. She shoves a nuke too Zeruel’s AT Field. Result? Zeruel is unscratched while Unit-00 is trashed. It then proceeds to do something the original Zeruel didn’t do—morph its head and EAT Unit-00 alive. To top it off, the Angel then morphs into something resembling an EVA-sized, naked Rei but with Zeruel’s head...seriously, if it weren't for the subsequent Moment of Awesome and Heartwarming Moments, the audience would've most likely been driven mad at this point.
• Shinji himself becomes a worthy source of this. Ladies and gentlemen, we present you Shinji’s Glowing Eyes of Doom as this page folder's image on top. They're blood red, and it is truly, unconditionally terrifying.
• The level of power Eva Unit 01 displays in its Awakened Form is chilling, easily eclipsing anything shown in the original series, instead of regenerating its arm it creates one made of pure energy as a halo-shaped tear in the fabric of reality appears over its head, and its AT Field becomes so powerful Zeruel's eye beams, which were previously shown capable of leveling the Geofront's 24 armor layers with ease, cannot even scratch it. Its own eye beams cut straight through the Angel's multiple AT Fields, keep going and blow up the entire horizon behind it. The Evangelion has become a god-like entity capable of rendering all life extinct and its being piloted by a fully conscious, incredibly pissed off Shinji, willing, ready and able to doom all of creation just to save the one he loves.
• When Shinji goes to rescue Rei from the core of Zeruel, the Angel gunk inside it is basically burning him alive to the point that his skin peels off. Then our view closes up on the core, focusing on tiny little cells, that look like tiny Rei-heads. And they start talking to Shinji with Voice of the Legion!
• Okay. So the awakened Unit 01 at the end of movie might have been the single most epic thing to have ever come out of this franchise, but at the same time, it was also creepy beyond all comprehension. Summing up all of that in two words? THIRD IMPACT happened at the end. Although it is stopped mid-way thanks to Kaworu, it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.
• The very fact that after the above, everything is still going according to Gendo's plan.
• Kaworu's words at the end. Think they sound nice? Look at the expression on his face. It’s unnerving.
• Mari in general. Her sheer enthusiasm for her job outshines even Asuka's, to the point that even when she's in horrible pain from her Eva getting maimed she can't help but comment on how much fun she's having, and her fighting style is full aggro and incredibly feral. Just what could've made her that way?

You Can (Not) Redo

• 3.33 DVD starts off with... a Studio Ghibli production?! And it's live-action?! And before your mind can fully comprehend the weirdness, you get a narration from someone who sounds suspiciously like Megumi Hayashibara about life in Tokyo until a humanoid giant suddenly appears over Tokyo. The people don't even scream at first as the giant lands and begins to walk around curiously, before opening its many-toothed mouth and shooting laser blasts that level Tokyo to the ground in seconds. Supposedly this is a Kyoshinhei from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (which was animated by none other than Hideaki Anno), but the design, the gangly arms, the slouching walk, the shape of the head, the teeth, the eyes, the wings, and the spears, it looks horrifyingly like an Angel. And just when you start to think that the giant might be Adam, more of these things fall from the sky and annihilate the planet, as the narrator talks about how God created the world in seven days, and how it might just be ended in that amount of time, and if there is another world where she might have escaped the apocalypse. Was this what happened during the third impact? Did we just see an Alternate Universe where the Angels were terrifyingly efficient? Was this completely unrelated to the Evangelion franchise? Or did Hideaki Anno once again troll the fans with a 'Live Action' Evangelion adaptation?

• There are two separate incidents where an Eva pilot's synchro rate goes too high, followed by Ritsuko proclaiming that they need to remove the pilot immediately, because if they remain in that state, they “won't be human anymore”. Well, we get to see just what it means in this movie...they will get stuck in 14-year old bodies. It's an unnatural, physical, irreversible consequence of them tampering with Gods, they're never gonna find partners, and then there's the factor of what this means for their mental states and developement.
• Shinji's situation in the third movie. Imagine waking up to find that everyone in the world, including the closest thing you had to a parent, appears to hate you. It gets WORSE.
• When Shinji looks at the new world, we can see a vast fissure that's lined with enormous red human teeth, going on for miles. No, it's not just a case of a certain infamous male fear, it's the fact that this fissure is apparently large enough to be visible from space. That's right, Third Impact gave Earth a fucking mouth. And it's implied that this is just the beginning. Just what will the planet look like when it's finished? Do we even want to know?
  • There's a very good hint in the previous film. Pay attention to Unit 01's mouth when it Awakens at the end of 2.22. Do those teeth look familiar?
• The mere possibility of Fourth Impact.
• The scene where Shinji and Fuyutsuki are playing Shogi in a pitch black room. From a psychological standpoint, the multiple revelations Fuyutsuki gives Shinji, including a brief shot of an angelic-looking Yui with tubes coming out of her, is bad enough. Then he turns the lights in the room on. What do we see? Dozens of severed Rei heads lined up on the wall behind him.
• Shinji's mental breakdown about two-thirds into 3.0 is terrifying. One dreads to think of what it was like seeing it in a theater - the background is rendered in an Uncanny Valley-inducing, realistic way. The background starts to sway and spin dizzily as Shinji sways uneasily in time with it, his pupils vanishing. The scene then Jump Cuts to Shinji alone in his room. The reason for his breakdown?
  • He finds out that most of humanity died due to Shinji's actions at the end of 2.0.
  • The Rei that Shinji came to know and care about, the one he saved? She isn't in the movie. As far as Shinji can tell, she doesn't exist anymore. He accidentally destroyed the world, and the person he did it to save doesn't even exist. And walking around, wearing her face but having none of her identity or personality, is her clone. It's harder to say if Shinji or the audience found this more horrifying.
  • He also learns that the EVAs came to be because Yui tested the first Entry Plug system on herself.
• When Shinji and Kaworu descend to Terminal Dogma, we see that countless gaping skulls cover the floor now. And let's not even get into Lilith's decayed husk..
• Asuka and Kaworu begging Shinji not to release the spears and him doing it anyway. It’s what triggers the Fourth Impact, by the way.
• Unit-13's transformation into the instigator of Fourth Impact. Which has the Twelfth Angel be a giant creepy Rei head before turning completely into a core that Unit-13 devours. It doesn’t help that he giant core is lined with small pulsating Rei heads.
• The giant, decaying Rei's head in the NERV headquarters and the further Body Horror it goes through as the Fourth Impact starts.
• The so-called failed moments/aspects (depending on translation) of infinity. Yes, they're giant, and they look like EVA, but they're indistinct. Mass-Produced EVA? A strong possibility, but there are thousands, if not millions of them, forming spires and city-blanketing masses. NERV and SEELE never had those resources, especially not post-third-impact. You know what there were millions of? People. Who aren't around any more. Then, FOURTH Impact starts, and the shapes begin getting blown around in the wind/wonky gravity, and they're noticeably less like EVA...
• Kaworu unfortunately has to sacrifice himself to stop Fourth Impact. How does he die? He explodes. Right in front of Shinji, and bits of him and blood are plastered on the walls of the double entry plug. Try to imagine yourself as Shinji, unable to act, watching as your friend just blows up in front of you.
  • Seconds before Kaworu's collar explodes, you can briefly see his skin ripple.
  • Even worse when you remember that this gruesome death was actually meant for Shinji, a precaution by WILLE after he caused Third Impact.
• At the climax of Fourth Impact we are treated to an unimpeded view of the tear in the fabric of reality that is the Door of Guf. Floating in the black void beyond, there is what looks like a glowing black hole speared by six long tesseracts slowly being pulled towards the Door of Guf. We see the object looming ever closer as the portal closes. What the hell was that thing? Even scarier, what would have happened if it had reached Earth?
• The landscape after the Fourth Impact’s been stopped. Look at the red parts very closely. There's a pattern swirling around beneath the surface. The same one associated with cores, as a matter of fact. Everything has been turned into core material! Unit-13 starts turning Unit-08's arms into core as well.
• If you thought Shinji's situation was already horrible by the end of this movie, then what awaits for him in the next. Not only did he lose his very last friend in a rather gruesome way, he's already tormented by the guilt of killing the whole world and nearly repeating the deed and most of the people that remain are shown to have a strong hatred or grudge at him.
• Oh, and most importantly, the possibility of Fifth Impact; a.k.a. FINAL IMPACT.
• This trailer for 3.0. Including of Let's Get Dangerous! look from Kaworu and some horrifying destructive shots of Unit-02.
• In a recent interview, Anno revealed that humanity's population after Third Impact was around ten million. Shinji's actions in 3.33 reduced that to mere thousands and destroyed what was left of the biosphere, meaning that humanity is now at serious risk of going extinct. All because Shinji decided to screw inaction in direct defiance of his characterization in the original series. He just can't catch a break, can he?
• Even after the sheer devastation engulfing the entire Earth, Gendo stays mostly the same as he was or perhaps even colder...
  • Worse still, we don't see his eyes anymore. He now wears a visor instead of shades. He has become Keel Lorenz.
  • NERV, now a shell of its former self, is still capable of producing an EVA that can easily toss EVA-00 and EVA-02 around. Think about that.
• The "Curse of the EVAs". While we have no clue about the specifics, we can safely assume that a combination of being EVA pilots and the Third Impact has really screwed over Asuka, Mari, and Shinji(?). They're permanently stuck as young teenagers. They'll never finish maturing physically or mentally and it's possible they're functionally immortal. And the real kicker is how Asuka refers to humans as the Lilim, implying that they're no longer human, or at least that she no longer views themselves as such..

Thrice Upon A Time

• Due to not bathing in LCL in a while, Rei Q undergoes Clone Degeneration and explodes into a puddle of the stuff, in a manner that will probably bring back flashbacks to End of Evangelion.
• Remember the Key of Nebuchadnezzar from 2.0? Gendo fuses it with himself à la Adam from End of Evangelion only the Body Horror is way worse this time. To start with, he looks fine on the outside... then he pulls off his visor, revealing a visor-shaped hole in place of his eyes and he is literally just a hollow Gendo-shaped shell filled with glowing light which he describes as him rejecting his humanity.
  • Furthermore, when Ritsuko shoots Gendo in the head, not only does this not faze him in the slightest. He is even able to grab pieces of his own brain from the floor to put back into the gaping hole in his head. Then continues talking as if nothing happened.
• During WILLE's assault on NERV HQ, Asuka comes to the (seemingly) docile Unit-13, only to be met with a powerful AT-field. She quickly surmises that the AT-field is coming from her own Unit-02, seeing as Unit-13 can't project an AT-field without having two souls in the cockpit. Unit-02 sees Unit-13 as a serious threat and projects an AT-field to project both itself and Asuka, so what does Asuka do? She rejects her humanity by yanking off her eyepatch, revealing a miniature Angel-Sealing Hex Pillar (implanted in her between 2.0 and 3.0 to seal the remnants of the Ninth Angel in her body), which she painfully pulls from her eyeball so that she can transform herself into an Angel.
• The Evangelion Imaginary which at first takes the form of a black Lilith as perceived by Shinji. After absorbing both Spears of Longinus and Cassius, it emerges from the Minus Space in a form similar to End of Evangelion's Lilith-Rei. This time, it's Lilith-Rei form is portrayed in a photorealistic art style, making it stand out compared to everything else in the film.
• Seeing Instrumentality play out from Gendo Ikari's perspective can be unnerving. Whether it's the rough, sketchy nature of the flashbacks as he recounts his past, or how he comes to the brink of insanity as he tries in vain to find Yui.

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