Nightmare Fuel / The Breakfast Club

• In a rare instance of Body Horror in a John Hughes film, the cigar burn that Bender shows is downright Cronenbergian.
  • Just before this scene, Bender stands up and re-enacts a typical day of his life at home with his abusive father. It's arguably the most unsettling scene in the movie due to how realistically it's done.
    • The way Bender just explodes after that — shoving heavy books to the ground, jumping on top of furniture, and scaling the staircase, all while howling with rage — is rather unsettling, too.
• The scene where Vernon threatens Bender. It's so over the line that even Bender is stunned, and the idea that a principal can abuse their power as much as Vernon makes it absolutely clear he can, because no one will take Bender's word over his, is just terrifying.
  • Everything about Bender's body language indicates that he was telling the truth about being abused at home. While Vernon is shouting and threatening him, Bender isn't rolling his eyes or muttering sarcastic retorts; he's cowering, like a beaten animal. Vernon no doubt notices this, but he keeps going.
  • Immediately before that, when Vernon puts a hand on Bender's shoulder to take him out of the library, Bender immediately throws him off and barks, "Keep your fucking hands off me!" He tries to recover by sarcastically adding, "I expect better manners from you, Dick", but his fear is still evident.
• Brian's mother has only a few lines, but it is utterly disturbing to see her rabidly talk down to him as she's dropping him off. Mercedes Hall's borderline-psychotic countenance does not help.
• In the opening, Andy's father says he "screwed around" in the past and that "there's nothing wrong with that", chewing Andy out not for bullying a nerdy student, but for getting caught in the act. Andy later says that his father is always boasting about "all the wild things he used to do". Looking into it further, this implies that not only was Andy's dad a troublemaker, but he's quite possibly a Retired Monster and Karma Houdini.
  • Given that Andy's dad probably went to high school in the 1960s, and that Andy specifically carried out his prank (pulling down a nerd's pants and taping his buttcheeks together) because it seems like something his "old man" would have done, you really have to wonder just how far his dad's "wild" antics went...
• Allison's parents nearly run down Bender when they arrive to drop her off at detention. Not only do they neglect their own daughter, but they don't give a DAMN about any other kid's life.
• All the main characters have Abusive Parents and hideously dysfunctional home lives, making it abundantly clear that Social Services Does Not Exist and There Are No Therapists that may help them — all topped off with Allison's grim realization that they may very well turn out just like their horrible, miserable parents with no way to stop it.
  • As mentioned before, Bender's father routinely verbally abuses and even beats him, and his mother joins in on the verbal abuse whenever she's not getting smacked around herself. Honestly, it's a wonder that Bender didn't turn out more messed up.
  • Brian's mother is an Education Mama of the highest order, having effectively destroyed her son's life by forcing him to expend all of his time and energy on academics. From what we see of her, she has a nasty Hair-Trigger Temper and keeps her child in line through sheer intimidation. Poor Brian has been left so obsessed with his grades that he was Driven to Suicide after failing a class... not that Mrs. Johnson cared at all.
  • Andy's father is an overgrown schoolyard bully who never matured past high school age, reveling in the memories of his bad behavior and forcibly imposing a "winner-take-all", "accept-no-weakness" philosophy in his son. While Andy is wracked with guilt after pulling a painful and humiliating prank on another student, Mr. Clark's only concern is that Andy got caught.
  • Underneath all the glitz and glamour, Claire is a deeply insecure and miserable person who feels that her life is empty, because it's obvious that her rich, snobby parents don't really love her at all; they just use her to make themselves look good (as evidenced by how Mr. Standish makes a show of taking Claire to detention and handing her her lunch; he's doing it not because he's supposed to as a parent, but because he's a man of some importance and has a reputation to uphold.) Aside from that, they see her as nothing more than a weapon with which to get back at one another in their constant arguments.
  • Finally, Allison's parents just seem to plainly ignore her existence.