Nightmare Fuel / The Stupendium

Most animators on the last night before the deadline

• The "Soon enough, you'll come round" bit of "Find the Keys" is filled with imagery of dead classic cartoon characters, culminating in a crazy-eyed Bendy beheading Winnie the Pooh with a guillotine and the head flying across the next frame to illustrate that "everything moves in arcs." It's extremely jarring to anyone with pleasant memories of these characters.
  • The song's remaster cranks it up a bit further with the scene that follows. A shot of Bendy rising from the floor, dragging the camera closer and then knocking it to the ground, before getting into a lunging pose and jumping at the camera, is modified to have Bendy roar at the camera as he grabs it and drops it, making the music temporarily go quiet.
• Even to someone jaded by Bendy and the Ink Machine imagery, in "Art of Darkness" the effects to render Bertram Piedmont's disembodied head in his ride (off frame rate and makeup) give it an uncanny quality.
  • Not to mention one eye slightly bigger that the other.
• "Back Together" is mostly a Lighter and Softer song about Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted with a few verses by the villain Glitchtrap. At the end of the video, Stupendium stops playing the game and has some pizza. Then they look at the camera and their eyes glow violet, implying Glitchtrap successfully possessed them. What sells it is how well Stupendium underplays The Reveal.
  • A lesser example is Circus Baby's final line, where she leans toward the camera, her faceplates start to open, and she sings "You won't ever be saved," followed by creepy giggling.
• In the Beat Saber music video "Impossible Geometry" they give themself a simple but effective Nightmare Face that's also a Flying Face just by putting glowing rings in their irises while singing about how addicted they are to the game. It's enhanced by having their face slowly drift closer to the viewer.
• When the Joy Doctor's particularly sinister bars in It's a Joy cause the scene to briefly become darker and desaturated while his normally rose-tinted glasses turn into Scary Shiny Glasses.
• The refrain of "Slide into the Void", where Dr. Casper Darling and Director Trench are shown suspended in midair, lit by the ominous red lighting of The Hiss while they mouth the words sung by a choir of a single female voice. They sing what seems to be gibberish (which is, in fact, largely taken from the Hiss' in-game lines), but seems to also be a Motive Rant for The Hiss.
  "You want to listen, You want to dream, You want to smile, You want to hurt, You don't want to be."
• Throughout Crazy Redd's rap, Rogue's Gallery, the fox merchant has been an Affably Evil albeit shady businessman. At his worst, he just seems to get pushy for his customer to buy his wares. However, near the end, we see what happens to those who truly manage to draw his ire. Redd has them all cut up and displayed in a manner similar to The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
  Crazy Redd: Say I'm a fake and it hurts.
  Say I'm just after a way to your purse;
  Say that to my face? You'll save on the hearse.
  You don't need a wake for a Damien Hirst!
  • Not to mention Redd's cubist face.
• Faith vs. Order begins with the Priest delivering a soothing, peaceful message about hope and unity, while the Captain's speech contrasts that with promise of iron discipline and forsaking human rights. Come the second verse, the Priest's agenda quickly escalates to skinning sinners, burning penitent innocents and launching crusades, and the Captain seems slightly more mild and reasonable. It doesn't last long, as both the Priest's and the Captain's final verses have them end as ruthless dictators... and both of them use some of the exact same lyrics. The visuals reflect this, as both stained glass and propaganda posters change from depicting hopeful crowds to glorifying executions and oppression.
• The Fine Print takes great pain to describe the horrors of The Outer Worlds. The spokesman's absolute lack of care for the lives of the employees is horrifying, and what's worse is that the employees seem completely broken, willing to just work and work until they die with no other purpose than making money for the company. Gets doubly horrifying with Reality Subtext: The entire song is based on a logical extreme of capitalism, and many employers would treat their employees like this if they could simply to earn an extra nickel.
• Despite the tongue-in-cheek premise of the game it's based on, Vault Number 76 is not Played for Laughs. Its lyrics paint the tragic tale of a Vault Dweller progressively losing themselves to the barbaric horrors of life in the Wasteland. The lyrics (and many of the visuals) get darker to reflect their Sanity Slippage, going from the desperation of scrounging for supplies to glorifying their murder of other named characters in increasingly brutal ways. Now an absolutely ragged and black-eyed mess, the Dweller's last stanza is about how the horrors of war "are awesome" and stave off their boredom. Another overachiever becomes a monstrous killer in a world that encourages it. Even the back-up singers weren't safe; the lead singer has brutally murdered the rest of their band and their Slasher Smile ends the song.
• "An Impostor Calls" ends on a Nothing Is Scarier note that INVOKES Fridge Horror: After the imposter (Stupendium) is ejected, they say "Who's to say I was the only one aboard?", and the text, which at first reads "0 Imposters remain.", changes to "0 Imposters remain?", implying that just because they were eliminated doesn't mean the danger is over.
  • The version on Dan Bull's upload is worse. As the viewer is themselves a crewmate, you watch Blue get ejected, and Orange proceeds to ominously announce the task they're about to perform, then completely fails to do it. It's then that you see "Blue was not the Imposter" and realize that the Imposter is now all alone with you.
• The original "Why did I say Okie Doki?" has a scene where Monika takes over the Stupendium's computer, which would be bad enough without the lips (though it could wrap around to being hilarious).
• Stupendium's supervillain in "Fiend Like Me" brainwashing captured agents, executing a minion for failure and massacring world leaders at a peace summit.
• All of "Tune Into The Madness", with it being set in a decrepit basement with Stupendium and Dan Bull portraying various creepy roles and seemingly getting more unhinged as the song progresses.
• In contrast to the dubstep theme, "The Data Stream"'s lyrics revolve around the personal information that people freely hand over to corporations, as the Arasaka representative gleefully details all the information they have taken from you and intend to use for their own purposes. After all of that, the final line becomes particularily chilling:
  Arasaka would like to know your location
• "Don't Let the Bellhops Bite" follows a hotel with murderous monkey bellhops, complete with animation. The chorus segment is a point of few of someone running through the hallways of the hotel, turning corners and running into the crazed monkeys running at them with manic grins. And in the final chorus, they find themselves surrounded by monkeys on all sides.
• "Ad Infinitum", befitting a song about the totally unhinged Spamton, consists of insane and mad babbling as he tries to make a sale with the viewer. It’s so bad that most of the time the lyrics don’t even rhyme.
  • At one point Spamton imitates a predictive algorithm, rattling off a long chain of products which start off being related to the viewer's hypothetical search for cat pics and end up including a choke chain, Adderall pills and a pipe bomb — which is a healthy dose of Realism-Induced Horror considering how algorithms on the internet in Real Life have unwittingly steered users towards dangerous/illegal content.
  • During the second iteration of the chorus, the Addisons singing it start distorting as Spamton's eyes glow in the background. During the third they start glitching out and looking distressed one by one as they're overwritten and become Spamton.
  • One verse features Spamton ratting off a blisteringly fast set of bars that take stabs at the lightning speed fads appear and disappear at such speed that it make a mundane societal criticism sound like a vocal panic attack.
    Spamton: But the fact is everybody’s gotta have it, gotta have it
    Those who have it really have it, if you haven’t, well, you’ve had it
    Couldn’t hack it, now the haven'ts haven't had it and the haves
    Are very glad it's just the haven'ts that're lacking what they’re having
    Now the ads have got the traffic and we’ve grabbed your demographic
    So you’re packing up your basket 'cause your dad has gotta have it
    He’ll be sad if you don’t wrap it with a tag, it’ll be tragic
    So you’re manically grabbing at the shelves amid the panic
    Seems that everybody has it, man, you really gotta have it
    So you get it, you’re ecstatic but a crackle in the static
    and the it is out of fashion, just a fad, a piece of plastic
    So you trash it then you get back into your car 'cause you don’t have it
    And the fact is everybody’s gotta have it, gotta have it
    Those who have it really have it if you haven’t, well, you’ve had it
    Couldn’t hack it, now the haven'ts haven't had it and the hads
    Are very glad it's- [[Hochi Mama]], what a mouthful!
• "The Toybox" stars the Stupendium as a frighteningly realistic doll, able to dismember themself and twist and turn creepily, with other toys seen growing hostile (with Huggy Wuggy himself showing up a few times). They are implied to be a former employee "Stuart Pendium".
• "No One's Home" is frightening because of how grounded in reality it is. Government intrusion on privacy is a fear even residents of "free" countries like America and England have to deal with, and in countries that outright didn't or don't give a damn about human rights like the USSR and North Korea, which the setting of Beholder 3 takes influence from, the fear is magnified. Everything you say and do is regulated by officials who do not have your best interests in mind, and any deviation, which they will catch, will send a task force after you.
  Landlord: Assume that your neighbours are moving away
  When the black van comes in the night
  And you're numb to the sight
  Of another one fumbling for somewhere to hide
  As their wife just runs for their life
  'Fore the ones with the guns can arrive
  And they're gone 'fore the sun can arise
  To a government provided bunker
  For some realignment
  It's just fine
  You can trust it's a wonderful time
  • The Reveal at the very end is worth mentioning. After a whole song of The Landlord spying on the inhabitants of his complex, the camera zooms out...to another government spy writing down his own actions in a report. Even the intruders aren't safe from being intruded upon.
• "Wool Over Our Eyes" has the Stupendium do a frighteningly intense and convincing performance as the Lamb when they go full throttle into being an amoral cult leader serving an Eldritch Abomination with a Human Sacrifice (well, Funny Animal Sacrifice) every once in a while, sporting a horrific Nightmare Face. The worst part is that even though their leader is clearly deranged and will ritually kill them, the cultists still serve the Lamb and The One Who Waits with smiles on their faces.
  The Lamb: Sowing seeds precedes a reaping,
  Start a line now who's the first?
  You all decided to convert, so tell me why are you so nervous?!
  For your fervour has been fated now to satiate the beast.
  In chains he waits beneath, and how he craves to be released!
  We celebrate in blessed flame, so pray and take a seat,
  And pledge unto their name, lest you be plated at the feast!
  Let your faith remain unshaken in our monastery’s beliefs,
  You’ve no claim to consecration when there’s coffers to be greased!
  Stay praiseful to your deity, their prophecy and priest,
  For the sheep may be the shepherd, but the flock is being fleeced.
• "A Pizza the Action" is an entire pizzeria's worth of cheesy, but the plot of the video focuses on Gregory seemingly failing to survive despite the intervention of Glamrock Cosmo's anthem, with Cosmo going haywire and getting Shattered, Freddy being torn apart by his bandmates only to be reactivated under the thrall of the newly-released Burntrap as if the man were a necromancer, and Gregory very quickly running out of options and hope.
• "The End Of The Line" is about Choo-Choo Charles, who is a monstrous living train with spider legs sporting More Teeth than the Osmond Family, so of course he would up the fear factor. However, the song focuses less on him and more on two train workers who are actually deranged and cowardly cultists who kidnap innocent people to be fed to Charles in the hopes that he won't eat them. In a way, they're scarier than Charles himself, as they look completely harmless and they showcase the absolute lows humans can stoop to to save their own skins. The song ends with The Stupendium's character waking up after having dozed off, indicating the whole thing was All Just a Dream, meaning their monstrous evil and the actual monster never happened... until they hear a train coming and walk away from a tied-up man next to a sign saying "FOR CHARLES".
  Dan Bull's character: "Poor guy..."
  Stupendium's character: "Don't get too sentimental. We’ve still got to serve breakfast for the morning service."
  • The "Engine, engine, number 9" scene looks like something out of an actual horror movie, with flashing lights and the two conductors' disturbing masks flashing on-and-off over their real faces.
• Given the psychological horror aspects of Alan Wake II, it's only fitting that "The Ribbon" turns out to be just as mysterious and unsettling. Slowly, from the first verse of Alan describing his imprisonment like writer's block, to the second verse depicting Saga attempting to understand the sinister narrative weaving around her, to the third verse where Mr. Scratch interrogates Wake, claiming to be the true Alan as if he is a character complaining to his own writer. All within the framing device of "Night Springs", the Alan Wake universe's equivalent of The Twilight Zone.
• "DEAD AHEAD", a song based off of a game about eldritch fishing and seafaring, understandably goes into this territory. The song simulates the slow descent common to such horror into madness quite well, starting with a jolly verse about the Fisher enjoying their job. But as the song goes on, the video gets figuratively and literally darker, with the second verse introducing unease about something...off, on the horizon. And by the final verse and bridge, the Fisher is caught in a horrible storm and constantly under attack by creatures of the deep. It even ends with them seemingly being enraptured by a Night Angler, a massive anglerfish.
  What’s to find, harrowed craft
  ‘Cross the lines, shadows cast?
  Hoist your nets, raise your pots
  All is death, plague and rot
  Hard to port, hard astern
  Matters nought, where you turn
  Compass spins, stars have fled
  We are all, Dead Ahead!
  • Special mention to the monstrous fish seen as the song goes on, both the CGI ones seen during the bridge and the disgusting multi-eyed physical props. That breathe. And blink.
  • Throughout the video, the Fisher keeps reeling in strange artifacts in his nets. These start extremely valuable, including antiques and a bar of gold, but gradually become increasingly worthless, until by the end they're just dejectedly throwing them right back. As one commenter pointed out, this is most likely because the first artifacts were bait, and the remainder were just there to keep stringing them along, until they finally passed the point of no return and it let them know that they were on a line all along.

---