"You watched me die? I'll watch you DIE!"
TRON, one of the only universes where the first-person shooter is Lighter and Softer than the animated series. The series used the unique way Programs show injury and de-rez as a way to depict a massive amount of violence, death, and Nightmare Fuel in a Disney franchise.- Tron, of all people, takes a turn for the terrifying in the "Scars" two-parter. Boxleitner's chilling delivery sells it.Tron: (to Dyson) You watched me die? I'll watch you die!
- His facial scars expanding to their horrific full extent in response to his hatred helps quite a bit in this regard. Not to mention the fact how easily he attacks Beck, his supposed friend and successor.
- Tron stunning Beck with a painful electrical attack in the same episode, despite Beck's pleas to reconsider the revenge mission. If you weren't convinced before that the sweet Dork Knight from the 1982 film and Kingdom Hearts II had long left the building...Tron: I didn't ask your permission.
- Dyson's own scars
◊ from when he was mutilated during the ISO riots were also quite horrific since most of his head and one of his eyes was torn off from the attack.
- Dyson's own scars
- The torture scene in Tron's backstory. It's mostly shown on screen, with Tron strapped to a table and Dyson just cutting away at him with a buzz-saw. When the camera changes to a shot of the guards right outside the lab, there are bright flashes of light visible through the door every time the buzz-saw revs up and cuts into Tron. Then he does it to Tron's face. Jeez...
- The Coliseum Games in general. Prisoners and lawbreakers are thrown in the Coliseum to die in various ways to entertain the cheering sadistic masses, such as harmless prisoners thrown against skilled fights in death match disc wars or being torn apart by light cycles. Citizens in Argon City all live in terror of being sent to the Coliseum, even the ones cheering when others are killed there. The worst part is you can get sent to the Coliseum for as something trivial as breaking curfew by losing track of the time, as Rilo found out...
- Pavel's "test run" of his restored upgrade disc in "Rendezvous". He gleefully provokes and murders a group of prisoners. His smile just before is incredibly off-putting. To say nothing of his manic laughter and psychotic expression whilst he does it.
- Pavel torturing Moog and Rasket is especially horrific in that he leads them to a torture chamber with the floor lined with the scattered remains of previously killed programs. He actually crushes the dead body of a program after joyfully confirming the program screamed before it died and proceeds to torture his new victims so they can meet the same fate. All for fun!
- Gorn at the end of the same episode. Pavel had her face paralyzed by messing with her code so she couldn't reveal his involvement in framing Paige. Faces are not supposed to do that.◊
- Code worms (again from "Rendezvous"). Dear Users, code worms. They're essentially the Grid equivalent of Ceti Eels (except they enter through a Program's eye sockets (sort of)), they can be used to implant false memories within a Program's code or disc or to delete real ones, and they can cause hideous physical damage to a Program when mishandled (a mishap with a code worm is implied to be responsible for the hole that obliterated one of Gorn's eyes and goes all the way through her head). And going by Paige's flinching and screaming, they hurt.
- Some of the deaths in this show look like stuff out of a horror movie. For instance: A soldier bisected by the waist, dragging himself across the floor, while bleeding pixels all over the place, all while begging for help.
- In Dyson's flashback in "Scars, Part 1" at the gathering of Tron, Dyson, Clu and Flynn, Clu's Evil Twin tendencies are shown in a rather jarring way. He stands behind Flynn, emulating his movements, but unlike Flynn who smiles in a friendly and almost fatherly way, Clu's expression is a wicked Psychotic Smirk.
- The faces a reprogrammed Cutler makes as he dies.
- Oh my god, Cyrus! His debut episode and the Not Quite Dead at the end were appropriately creepy. Especially since he's a clearly insane and murderous Hero's Evil Predecessor of Beck as Tron's first apprentice and how he can easily outmatch Beck and even Tron in combat because of his past experience.
- Cyrus' Leitmotif, "Compressed Space". It invokes the claustrophobic feeling of what is to be trapped in a damp, cold, dark cell and Go Mad from the Isolation, just like Cyrus did.
- Cyrus also displays unsettling interactions with female programs that border on molestation as seen when he confronts a program couple disguised as the Renegade and brutally kills the male before pouncing on the female to threaten her into spreading word of his deeds. He also makes disturbing flirtations about Mara in front of Beck.
- The scene where Tesler recruits Paige. Not only is is creepy because Tesler is lying through his virtual teeth, but that the scene behind him is a hospital that's covered in patches of bright color - the remains of Paige's patients and co-workers that he just slaughtered. And even after all this virtual bloodbath, his voice is perfectly calm.
- One of Tesler's most intimidating moments precedes this scene directly, where he learns of an ISO's presence in the hospital and orders every program that came in contact with the ISO massacred... which includes the two programs who relayed the information in the first place. The usage of Tesler's ominous, ringing leitmotif as Tesler walks away from his minions butchering the programs on the spot amid cries of "but we helped you!" is one of the most chilling shots in the show.
- The Fridge Horror revelation that since the show ended on cliffhanger, the arrival of Clu's forces in Argon City, and the events of the sequel film Tron: Legacy, all of which points to the canonical outcome that Clu will end up killing Beck along with any of his other allies leading a resistance, capture Tron again to Mind Rape him into becoming Rinzler, and essentially obtain complete control over the Grid with Kevin Flynn still in exile.
