Nightmare Fuel / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• The Shredder himself is made of Nightmare Fuel.
  • His intro scene alone can send chills up your spine.
    • His theme, "Shredder's Suite", is a mix of epicness and scariness.
  • The first time we get even a glimpse of him, even before he's fully introduced, he's just sitting in the dark, watching a wall of T.V.'s. He throws a knife at one, which hits the image of April square in the face. It's a very effective build-up.
  Shredder: Find her. Silence her.
• The scene where the boys find out Splinter has been abducted. They're only 15 and their parent that has been there for them for their whole lives has been ripped away from them. What's worse is that they don't know who did it.
  • The clincher of this scene is Raph breaking out into a Skyward Scream of rage and grief. The camera slowly spins around him, then it spins faster and faster as he starts to yell, finally zooming into an unnerving close-up of his screaming face. The dark lighting and ominous music don't make things any better.
  • His scream is loud enough to travel out of the sewers, scaring a passing pedestrian (who then thought it was nothing).
  • More subtle, but no less heartbreaking is Donatello's reaction. He had tried to have a real conversation with Mikey about this exact possibility, Splinter being gone, to have Mikey blow him off. He comes home to this nightmare scenario and sinks to his knees in grief.
• Raph being ambushed and cornered by the Foot Clan. They deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to him, rendering him comatose. The only reason why he survives is because they weren't aiming to kill him.
  • His comatose body getting thrown through the skylight. As far as his brothers and April knew, he was just out cooling off. Now his body's been returned to them, and they have a moment of panic finding out whether he's alive or not.
  April: Is he...?
  Leo: No. He's alive - barely.
• The climax of the Apartment Fight. A Foot Ninja tries to behead Donatello with an axe, which the turtle manages to duck in time. But the axe strikes a power main, electrifying the Foot Ninja and setting the apartment ablaze. Basically, all hell has broken loose.
  • This is when you see the movie bring the characters back to their Mirage roots. The Foot in this scene are a dangerous opponent, Casey Jones is whacking away at enemies with hard wooden bats, and the remaining Turtles are fighting savagely for survival. The fiery, hellish lighting really does not help.
    • Consider what this scene was like for those kids who were introduced to the very watered-down Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987). This movie is the first time they've seen their heroes use mild language, the first time they've seen violence with serious consequences, and sure as hell is the first time they are seeing their heroes get beaten up badly with no option but to retreat.
• The majority of the Foot is revealed to be young, misguided teens who have run away from home, manipulated by Shredder to join the "family" of the Foot Clan.
• And on that note, Tatsu beating up a young Foot Ninja qualifies as one of the scariest scenes. What's worse is that while it's implied that the kid is still alive, it's just a vague implication. The kid coughs a few times, then is silent for the rest of the scene. In the original script, the boy actually died, but it was changed at the last minute due to how unsettling it was. However, it's not impossible that he died slowly of injuries sustained by the beating.
• The Final Battle with Shredder, where the turtles are beat up again and Shredder almost impales Leo. What saves Leo is the arrival of Splinter at literally the last second.
• Also, imagine yourself as Splinter. For a week, you're alone and imprisoned, crucified against a wall. You are interrogated regularly for answers by your captors, and once you are no longer useful, they will kill you.
  Shredder: Then hang there until you die!

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