Nightmare Fuel / Spice and Wolf

• If you go bankrupt, you'll get your head shaved, your teeth plucked out, and then you'll be sold into slavery for the rest of your life. When you finally die, you'll be buried in an unmarked grave. Said "rest of your life" will be 2-3 years at most, unless you're really lucky or unlucky. Economics is Serious Business, indeed.
  • Lawrence envisioned himself ending up in slavery if he failed to address his debt to Lemerio Trading quickly. In chains, and severely emaciated.
• Speaking of horrific and violently disproportionate punishments... in episode 12, Lawrence mentions the punishment Nora would most likely receive for the crime of smuggling, remarking that her "tiny body would not be able to withstand it". Not only does this heavily imply that rape is a punishment regularly handed out in this land, but that in Nora's case, she'd be raped to death. Wow...
• Literally nightmare fuel in the manga, where Lawrence's imagining of what would happen if Holo were to be turned over to the church shows her crying out in agony as she is burned at the stake.
• Giant animal deities in general. They are called gods because they are literally beyond man's ability to comprehend or fight back against. Holo herself in true form is akin to a towering fluffy Gentle Giant, but anger her and she's the wrath of God incarnate. When Yarei from Pasloe threatens to hand her over to the Corrupt Church and murder Lawrence, she transforms. None of the thugs from Medio Trading can move or even breathe, frozen in place with pure terror at her roaring form complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom. Several of the men urinate themselves in fear as she tears through and devours them.
• Holo is pretty terrifying when she's upset. In the last episode of the first season Lawrence doesn't need to listen her to understand that she intends to tear apart every single member of Lemerio trading company, along with any associates they may have, no matter how little they had to do with the betrayal that brought out her rage, just to protect him. That's a giant wolf deity who is not kidding around, and could level the entire city if she wanted to.
• Equally terrifying is her Freak Out when learning that Yoitsu may no longer exist, on top of learning that Lawrence tried to keep it a secret from her, her own realization that she may be falling for him despite their difference in life expectancy is enough to nearly break her. In her on coming hysteria, she cries that she doesn't want to be alone so Lawrence has to impregnate her. It's to the point that even Lawrence is scared and the "Psycho" Strings playing in the background do not help.
• The Church is ruthless in destroying anything that contradicts or threatens its ideology, burning history books and Pagan tales of the animal gods of ancient times. Some priests however such as Father Franz immediately saw through this thinly-veiled attempt in consolidating their power as a disastrous move to rewrite history. Desiring to learn from the texts in their quest to find God, were sought to preserve as much of the heretic scriptures as possible. They spoke of Holo, how the Moon Hunting Bear wanted to slay her, but she had already journeyed to the south to find and be with people. In his rage he destroys Yoitsu, slaying any deity in his path before coming to a final battle with the great sea serpent Teuperovan. What makes it chilling, isn't what the Light Novel says happens next. It's that all tales everyone's saved from the Book Burning, all come to an abrupt grinding halt. They all just stop. The battle was very much an apocalyptic event of Biblical Behemoth vs. Biblical Leviathan and both fought to the death.