Nightmare Fuel / Tomorrow's Joe

• The characters' faces after being hit sometimes look disturbingly messed up and devoid of life. And of course, any time they bleed from the mouth.
• The beating Joe receives when he's sent to pre-emptive jail to wait for his trial.
• To anyone who knows the beasts, the charging pigs. There's a reason the other inmates and the guards ran-and they were all in awe when Rikiishi stopped the charge.
• Rikiishi's first two shows of strength. First, as said above, he stops the charge of the pigs-and he does it by using his boxing footwork to dodge them while he hits them hard enough to inflict One-Hit KOs. Then Joe is stupid enough to pick a fight with him and he not only knocks Joe out hard enough to cause him a concussion, according to the medic Joe suffered a complete collapse physical and mental.
• The Japanese Boxing Commission's refusal to reinstate Danpei's licence gives way to a few such moments:
  • Danpei's reaction when he found out was to get drunk... And then go on a rampage. And if the idea of a boxer going on a drunken rampage isn't enough, the anime actually showed it.
  • Joe Laughing Mad upon learning from Danpei.
• At the boxing licence exam, the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown Joe inflicts on Inagaki. It's so bad that Joe himself is appalled when he realizes what he has just done, and, in the anime, expects to fail the test (as he does).
• The Doya Kids were caught trying to spy on Wolf's special training. What did Wolf do to them? He beats them up until they faint, then he puts them in his car's trunk and brings them to the Tange Boxing Club.
• The match between Joe and Wolf. The Triple Cross Counter is the single most devastating punch in the series up to the appearance of Mendoza's Corkscrew Punch, and the aftermath is properly terrifying: when he falls down, Wolf has his face caved in, and is bleeding enough that the referee stops the count and calls for a stretcher, because there's no way Wolf can come back from that and could well die. The fact Joe had all but sworn to do him just this after he beat up the kids doesn't make it better.
• Rikiishi's diet, and the delirium it caused. Gets even worse when it's directly identified as the reason Rikiishi died too fast before any aid could be given: a boxer who died of the exact same cause lied in coma for days before passing over, but Rikiishi's diet-ravaged body could only resist a few minutes. Even without that, without the diet Rikiishi wouldn't have fallen on the rope and got the brain hemorrage that killed him.
• Rikiishi's death. One moment he's standing after winning the match and about to take the hand offered by Joe, and the next he falls down, and a few minutes later it's announced he just died-of a punch at the temple and the following fall with the head on the lower ring rope that he had taken about half an hour earlier, and the only warning was that he had shaken his head after standing up again immediately after.
• Joe's matches after coming back on the ring pretty much all consist of him repeatedly punching his victims in the belly for one or two rounds until they just keel over, often vomiting blood. It was so terrifying in-universe that the JBC club presidents, already cross at Joe for unretiring after killing Rikiishi, decide to force him to retire, as he was demolishing all their boxers and nobody wanted to face him anymore.
• In the manga, Joe's reaction to the referee giving Nango a long count: beating the stuff out of Nango.
• In the anime, the neighbourhood kids running from home to visit Joe at Oarai, without anyone having any idea where they are as they stole Joe's letter to Danpei that had told them where he was.
• Yoko as a promoter. When she had started she was cross with the JBC club presidents for forcing Joe to retire, so she had Carlos Rivera put in the hospital the boxers that took part in their plot. Later, she fears Joe has lost his wild spirit and cannot face Mendoza, so she gets Harimau to Japan (see below). Every boxer, trainer, and fan in the country trembled in horror when they saw the monster she had brought them.
• Carlos at his second fight with Joe. This time he's not holding back... And he shows exactly why it's said that those above him in the rankings are too scared to fight him.
• Jose Mendoza. At first he doesn't seem much, as many believed he wasn't fighting Carlos for fear of losing to him... Then came in the news that his long awaited title match with Carlos had ended with the champion's victory in one minute and thirty-three seconds, and we later learn he had to retire from the brain damage that left him demented. And Harry Robert saying that Carlos had not been at his best due the beating he took at Joe's hands made him gun for Joe.
  • We later see the match, and it's just as terrifying, with Carlos being utterly dominated... And when he comes back for more, Mendoza strikes him down with his Corkscrew Punch once, and Carlos just stops moving. And it gets even worse when Carlos is finally visited by a doctor and it becomes clear that while he did go in the fight with early symptoms of punch drunkness, the vast majority of the brain damage came from Mendoza's one Corkscrew Punch.
• Kim Yongbi, the Bantamweight Campion of the Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation. He's one of the few boxers Danpei actively tries to keep Joe from fighting, to the point of telling him he's scared of his challenge and, in the anime, keeping from Joe the fact Kim privately issued a challenge right after Joe fought Carlos, and with good reasons-including, in the anime, that he has already killed two opponents.
• Yongbi reveals to Joe that he killed his father by accident in the Korean War by smashing his head with a rock.
• And of course, Kim's Signature Move (or most likely Finishing Move considering its No-Holds-Barred Beatdown reputation), the Chom-Chom, happens like this: push the victim on the ropes and hit them until they start fall, then uppercut them back up and continue until the referee realizes he's witnessing an attempted murder and stops him. Everyone who suffered it before Joe went out in a stretcher, and in the anime two guys died.
• The final match. There's a reason Yoko at one point ran, and had to talk herself into coming back: Joe and Mendoza were pretty much killing each other with their bare hands. Mendoza may have won by points, but his face shows that he was literally one second away from being knocked down three times in a round and losing and his hair is quickly going white from the effort and the terror of fighting Joe.

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