Nightmare Fuel / Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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Series

"Ew! That's Nightmare Fuel, man!"

Season 1

Episode 1: Mystic Mayhem

• The Pizza Delivery guy's transformation into a mutant is nothing if not both funny and disturbing at the same time. All with very interesting graphics of bones reforming and eyes bulging out, all while the poor dude is screaming in pain. In fact, any transformation scene throughout the series is just full of very painful looking graphics.

Episode 2A: Origami Tsunami

• As Mikey says, the Salami Foot soldier isn't really a nice sight.
  Mikey: Ew! That's Nightmare Fuel, man!

Episode 3B: War & Pizza

• The whole concept of Alberto. He already has a somewhat eerie design, but after he becomes sentient, it takes his terrifying levels up another level. Not only is half his face gone, revealing the metal exoskeleton inside, but the suit on his hands are gone, leaving only the sharp mechanical claws. His mechanical body allows him to twist his body and head around in inhuman ways and shoot out cables from his mouth to bring more robots alive. He also seems to be based on another terrifying animatronic bear at a pizza place.
• When Albearto gets sentience, he gets a brief flashback experience of bizarre imagery, one of which is a pretty dark image of little Timmy (the kid hosting the birthday).
• When Donnie fries Mrs. Cheri the tomato, she looks horribly disfigured and melts before blowing herself up. Donnie laments the fact that he'll never be able to eat tomato ketchup again.

Episode 5: Newsworthy

• Leo accidentally cutting Warren in half. More Squick than Nightmare Fuel, it's still a disturbing sight to see a character get cut in half, complete with a bone sticking out his other half. Leo himself looks absolutely horrified about what he's done. Warren's fine though, comically enough.

Episode 7: Bug Busters

• The whole atmosphere when the turtles meet Big Mama. Not outright scary, but an unsettling creepiness. As Big Mama kindly takes them around her hotels, you'll have to agree with Leo that something is just not right. What adds to the mood is a special OST that sounds like a haunting music box.
• Gus's introduction. A grotesque silhouette with glowing green eyes, sharp teeth and saliva. It was subverted when it was revealed that Gus has a puppydog look to him, but don't mess with him when he gets serious.

Episode 9B: Mrs. Cuddles

• Raph was right, Mrs. Cuddles has an uncanny terrifying design. The way she moves and reacts to situations as a doll-like figure is just extremely unsettling as it is weird.
• How does Mrs. Cuddles get more power? People's screams.
  • It's probably the reason why Mrs. Cuddles is used as a puppet for Children's Programs in the first place. The laughing of kids is the only way to keep Mrs. Cuddles completely in check. How did such a terrifying creature even get there in the first place?

Episode 10B: Al Be Back

• As expected as the second in the saga of Albearto, this episode is chock full of disturbing imagery. In particular, when Albearto reaches the tower and manages to bring sentience to all the Albeartos in Albeartoland, the animatronics make one of the most disturbing faces ever made on the show.

Episode 16: Shadow of Evil

• Splinter's Flashback. Not only was did it first showcase how terrifying Shredder actually, taking the form of some sort of deranged demon, there is some disturbing imagery of villages exploding and burning, even with what looked like people getting scorched alive. For a light-hearted show, the change in tone in the flashbacks foreshadows the eventual dark undertones...
• The exact last moment of the episode. The camera slowly pans into the empty armor of Shredder before suddenly his laughing maniacal face flashes for a brief nanosecond, accompanied by a terrifying laugh and cutting straight to black.

Episode 21: '''Man Vs Sewer”

• While it’s Played for Laughs for the most part, Raph’s fear of being by himself is mildly concerning, especially since his brothers seem so used to it. Even worse is that there’s no real information on why he freaks out so much about it, or why he reacts the way he does.
• The Sando Brothers are funny, but their description of what exactly they want to do to Raph when they catch him is deeply disturbing, given that one says they would like to crack open his shell, pop his eyes, and eat him from his head to his toes.
• Arguably, Savage Raph is even scarier, given that he quickly deteriorated into a cold blooded predatory cannibal that can’t distinguish his siblings from actual threats, that becomes an even bigger threat than the Sando Brothers were.
  • He outright tries to cook the Sando Brothers alive. Hilariously, he puts some lemon juice on one of them, but it’s still disturbing when the Sando Brother screams in pain.
  • He also mistakes his siblings for sewer monsters, and comes way too close to accidentally killing them a few times, like narrowly missing Mikey’s head with his spear, and tossing Donnie across the room. Even when they wash the muck off of them, he still doesn’t recognize them.
  • While it’s mild, Raph’s speech slowly devolves into shorter, less complex sentences, and his occasional moments of talking in the third person are slowly decaying into caveman like speech patterns over the course of the episode. It’s a minor detail, but unsettling given the context.
• Leo is the main turtle concerned with getting back to Raph, but Donnie and Mikey are fairly unbothered. Heck, even Leo, while concerned, is fairly mellow up until they find Raph. It’s possible that Raph has been dealing with his separation anxiety for so long that his brothers aren’t even dazed by it.

Episode 24: Jupiter Jim Ahoy!

• This is mostly a goofy filler episode about the turtles meeting their favorite hero. But then there's the reveal that Marcus Moncrief is so enamored with his Jupiter Jim character that he thinks the turtles are reptilian aliens. And that he actually kidnaps costumed fans to keep them as paralyzed trophies in his study. Some of them might have even been stuck like that for weeks before the turtles freed them.
  Red Fox trophy: Help...Meee...
• Goofy tones aside, there's a big layer of terror in this episode when you consider that the plot is that a grown man uses his celebrity status to convince a group of 13-15 year olds who have only just met him to come back to his apartment without anyone knowing where they are going, lets them play around with things that could kill them if improperly handled, and then convinces to of them to come into a private room with him where he paralyzes them, and that he had gotten away with this many, many times before. When you take out all the sci-fi and fantasy details the plot of this episode sounds like a true crime case.

Episode 25: Insane on the Mama Train

• The last moments of the episode have outright disturbing imagery as the turtles and April find the dark armor. As they celebrate their victory, the turtles suddenly experience a horrid premonition. They slowly turn around to see Baron Draxum's tentacles creeping from the darkness before grabbing a terrified April and dragging her away. The boys all seem genuinely frightened as Draxum wastes no time defeating and capturing them.

Episode 26: End Game

• When Splinter consults his scrolls and the ancestors of the Hamato Clan about what to do about the armor piece and his sons, the Hamato Clan tells him that he should isolate himself and the armor piece forevermore, showing some absolutely devastating shot of Splinter holding the skull-like armor piece as he sits alone in his chair. The Hamato Clan then tells Splinter that his sons would be made martyrs and that their sacrifice would never be forgotten.
• The last piece of the armor's tendrils shoot out and drag itself in it's face in an absolutely disturbing fashion.
• When the turtles and April manage to dislodge the Jupiter Jim action figure from the Dark Armor, Baron turns into this absolutely disgustingly terrifying mess of flesh and armor before Baron is essentially ripped free, now basically a shriveled up corpse, barely alive, frighteningly looking up to the true Shredder.
• Oh boy, the Shredder is back. And he gifts the audience one more manic jump scare at the end of the episode. Even worse, the credits afterwards are dead silent.
• The realization that the turtles probably freed the real Shredder because of their actions. Shredder wasn't able to properly absorb Baron's power because of the Jupiter Jim action figure that was lodged in the last piece. When they removed it, the Shredder finally was able to reassemble and complete himself, allowing him to take his true form.

Season 2

Episode 1: Many Unhappy Returns

• A staff member posted a small preview of the episode and... oh god... the way he runs... IT'S BLOODCURDLING.
• While Shredder doesn't quite seem to be himself, Shredder is shown to be able to tank Raph's most powerful magical punch and an entire container ship being thrown at him. He completely tears through it and barely flinches at Raph's punch. If this is how he's like when he's a feral uncontrolled mess, what happens when he becomes calculated?
  • During the fight against Shredder, Donnie attempts to use all his tech to hold him off, but Shredder practically destroys them all. Donnie is a very intelligent person whose technology is on par with ancient magical weapons, but Shredder, well, shreds them as if they were nothing.
    • After his tech is destroyed, a frightened Donnie tries to scramble away, but Shredder grabs him before he can fly away and tears into his shell, completely ripping it apart. You don't realize the extent of the damage until the end of the episode, where we see huge pink scars on Donnie's battle armor shell◊. Good thing the turtles reverted back to being themselves, which got Donnie to use that armor again, because imagine if he hadn't.
  • The level of raw physical might Shredder carries is nightmarish. The container ship that Mikey hurls at Shredder? Shredder takes all of ten seconds to cut his way through it. Raph's giant form? One hit and it falls. Donnie's tech? Practically useless. Getting hit by a crane? A distraction. Other Shredders dream of being this strong. In fact, the Turtles have almost never fought something like this in any continuity. In other shows, Shredder could always be planned for, be tricked, be fought as a team. Here? Shredder isn't an enemy. He's a natural disaster.
• Splinter’s backstory with Big Mama. They were a couple back when Splinter was human and he eventually proposed to her. What then followed was Big Mama revealing her yokai form to him and forcing him into her Battle Nexus tournament. Imagine the internal damage he suffered from after this woman destroyed his life.
• Big Mama's character just upped a level of scary. Despite her already scary spider yokai form, her face at the end of the episode after 'disposing' Shredder is probably even scarier than that.

Episode 2B: Goyles, Goyles, Goyles

• After the rat that hid in Lou's jacket bites him on the thumb, Lou is doused in ooze. Cue one of his arms and legs becoming similar to that of a rat.

Episode 5A: Air Turtle

• The New York Daves under the influence of the Arch of Aquinonn move in a way that's just incredibly off, more akin to mannequins than flesh-and-blood people. And that's before they completely turn into demons.

Episode 5B: Pizza Puffs

• The effects of the poisoned pizza puffs are not pretty despite most of them being played for comedy. Donnie's stomach ends up growing a face and Mikey's neck stretches out more and more over the course of the episode like limp dough. Meat Sweats ends up getting it the worst, his body going through a transformation reminiscent of Tetsuo or William Birkin.
• The very end of the episode has Meat Sweats get suddenly and abruptly taken by what appears to be a Living Shadow, a pretty jarring last note for an otherwise comedic episode to end on.

Episode 7A: Always Be Brownies

• The Shadowy Force returns, this time it kidnaps the Foot Recruit, right out of her bedroom.

Episode 11: Battle Nexus: New York

• The Shadow Fiend proves to be a terrifying juggernaut as it destroys entire buildings with just swipes of its claws. Heck, he sent Draxum flying all the to the top of Big Mama's hotel like it was nothing, with a hit that didn't even connect. Then we find out that its true identity is The Shredder.
  • Shredder wipes out our heroes in less than three seconds. He mercilessly tries to crush Raph under his foot, Raph using his body to shield Donnie, Mikey is hiding in his shell, while Leo screams for Splinter. It's a painful and raw reminder that we never really saw in the previous incarnations: the boys are terrified, and they want their dad to save them.
  • The mere fact Foot Recruit was able to regain Shredder is extremely terrifying. The Foot Clan reclaim their leader and can possibly fix him, turning him from a feral beast to a horrific leader he was meant to be... brr.
  Foot Recruit to Big Mama: The Turtles are of no concern to us. (getting angry) But you enslaved my master! Now you will lose everything! (suddenly in an uncharacteristically calm tone) I'd run if I were you.

Episode 12A: E-Turtle Sunshine of the Spotless MindOnce the seal in the Twilight Realm was broken, his sapience instantly returns, causing him to move on his own free will, and destroyed the mystic collar he was wearing. This indicates 100% that the Shredder has finally returned.

Shredder: I AM FREE!!! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

The Movie

Comics

• If you thought Albearto looks scary enough in the show, you better not look at what happened to him in one of the comic issues◊. He caught on fire which burned and melted away most of what's left of the soft exterior, revealing a disturbingly horrifying exoskeleton, complete with glowing red eyes.