Paranoia Fuel / Fan Works

aka: Fanfic

• Barney has always been a little creepy, but after reading this Dark Fic, you'll never think of him the same way ever again.
• The wrestling fic Mind Tricks...where it's revealed that everything that's happened was just pure randomness. There was no reason for all the pain and torture that the characters have all been through but that Rey Mysterio's name popped up from a random number generator created by the government from the census and other methods of data collection, because a scientist was a little too devoted to the idea of the scientific method. And he's only one of thousands of people with the same fate. And the story regularly makes you realize that no, it's really not as absurd as it sounds, because it's pointed out regularly that there are real-life, moderately famous cases of the government screwing with people in ways just as terrible. And not only all of that, but you might not be able to be sure if any lost loved ones of yours might not be dead, but rather somewhere being tortured horribly in the name of national security. Good luck ever feeling safe again.
• The main character of "The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain" gets some dandy Paranoia Fuel as a result of the first arc. Suppose you've just learned that an Invisible Streaker has been following you around your new home, watching you even at moments when you supposed yourself alone — in bed, in the bath, getting dressed? And as a result of all this watching, he's developed some unhealthy interest in you, so when the crazy guy who thinks he's your illegitimate half-brother wants to use your virtue to pay off a few old debts, he requests permission to go first. Assuming you even survive the whole situation, good luck sleeping at night.
• The Odd Scout. All three chapters. Now, just remember that he's BEHIND YOU RIGHT NOW.
• Luminosity. Chelsea's power was scary enough on its own, what with the cutting/enhancing relationships. Then, in the Villager chapter of Radiance, it happens to the first-person narrator. Oh, and by the way? No, it doesn't feel like she's doing anything but smiling and making small talk.
  Chelsea doesn't affect moods directly.\\She doesn't have to.
• Strung Up, a Space Channel 5 dark fic in which Purge is trapped in a nightmare and is made into a living puppet as strings are stabbed into his body and he's forced to move to see his friends/robots destroyed. The scariest part of this fic? Entity could haunt you in your nightmares, and force you to go through those things at anytime he wanted. Enjoy sleeping tonight.
• From Imperfect Metamorphosis, Yuuka Kazami, a Eldritch Abomination inspires a great deal of this after this exchange in Chapter 31:
  "Or to be specific, I may converse with you, the you that's watching behind your eyes."
  With that, she smiles, looks you directly in the eye, and smiles at you.
  Yes.
  You.
  "Hello dears," Yuuka says sweetly. "Enjoying the story?"
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series:
  • In-Universe in "The Time Pauser": Calvin is extremely defensive about his new invention, going to great lengths to protect himself from those supposedly watching. Possibly justified, as said invention could possibly be devastating.
  • Another In-Universe instance in "The Case of the Rogue Water Balloon": Hobbes is extremely unnerved by Socrates' security camera in his room. (He ends up trashing it.)
• Hivefled: the Torture Porn prequel, Reprise, involves a slow and careful build-up before the actual Rape as Drama appears. One reviewer described it thus; "I was reading and thinking 'Well, this isn't so bad, a little creepy maybe, but I think even I wouldn't do too badly in an environment like... uh... oh... oh dear God.'" Then it becomes clear that the Big Bad couple have groomed, captured, tortured, and killed nearly two and a half thousand teenagers over the millennia, the youngest of whom who survived long enough to have his soul bound (implying younger ones were also tested) is the equivalent of a human twelve-year-old, nobody is aware this is going on, and it's likely a significant proportion of troll society would applaud it if they did know.
• Misunderstandings: In-universe. A human being is transported to Equestria, where an unfortunate encounter with a vicious sideshow owner scares Peter away from ponies. Princess Luna (reluctantly) manipulates his dreams to see if he would be willing to eat a pony. He doesn't. When the human meets Luna, he is furious and scared that a being like Luna can walk into his mind and mess with his subconscious, and spends some time fearing that his feelings for a griffin he befriended are not his own. Confronting this fear with Luna in the Astral Plane helps him get over it.
• Parting Words addresses that due to Princess Celestia constantly throwing Tests at Twilight made her student extremely paranoid at all times of whether-or-not Celestia might be testing her at any given moment. It's gotten so bad that it is part of the reason why Twilight often finds herself constantly reading and re-reading books or immediately falling to pieces whenever a plan doesn't go the way she imagined. It's gotten so bad for her that more often than not Twilight kept double and triple-guessing her own judgements whenever she is in the middle of a life-or-death situation. It took Twilight after being told by Celestia to go save the Crystal Empire that Twilight finally snapped and berated Celestia for all that she did to her: Sending her student out half-cocked with missing details that Twilight is somehow supposed to fill in the blanks with, insisting that Twilight should do everything by herself instead of a team-effort or giving her royal guards as backup, and making another potential life-or-death situation where the lives and safety of an entire civilization is on the line into nothing more than another one of Celestias' little tests.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku is an alien on a world that hates aliens. Everyone around him, from his neighbors to his classmates to young children he's never met before would like thing more than than to beat him into a bloody pulp if the ever found out he is an alien. His Super-Hearing ensures that he hears this everywhere he goes and he's constantly surrounded by textbooks, merchandise, movies, and other forms of pop culture that actively encourage violence against aliens. His only saving grace is that he looks human enough to pass for one, but he has to do everything in his power to keep his origins a secret, lest his parents get kidnapped by shady government agents and turned into Unpersons as he'll likely be strapped to a dissection table. He has to worry about this every single day of his life.
  • Then he learns that there are people who are able to dig up his backstory and willingly hang it over his head to taunt and blackmail him like Alexis Luthor. Even the teachers at U.A. are prejudiced against him for what he is rather than who he is.
• In In the Kingdom's Service, Jaune learns that Ozpin had to know his transcripts were fake yet accepted him into Beacon anyway, making him (And the Vale Secret Service) wonder what Ozpin's game is. After learning of Ozpin's immortality, Jaune fears that Ozpin's plan had been to train him up and prep him to function as Ozpin's next host.
  • The VSS can have someone disappeared even from Beacon or the middle of Vale with ease, never to be seen again. While Oobleck is fairly benevolent about it, Alpha will have it done to anyone who is even mildly inconvenient or might become a threat eventually. Velvet is killed in such a way despite having been a loyal agent, simply because she had been loyal to the recently deceased Oobleck.
• In Enough Rope, Wanda's powers aren't fully under her control and it's eventually proven she's been influencing people by accident. While they initially claim otherwise, Scott and Clint aren't certain she never influenced them.
• Some fanfics of Laverne & Shirley of all shows:
  • In Bloody Kisses, vampires exist, and Carmine's girlfriend is one... who turns Shirley into one... who tries to attack Laverne! Keep in mind that Laverne is Shirley's best friend.
  • In Tainted Beer, the brewery owner makes beer that is, well, tainted, with an ingredient meant to brainwash people. Luckily, Laverne and Shirley saved the day, but still.
  • In Somebody to Lean On, Laverne gets Date Rape'd. Even worse, it's by a man she'd been dating for a while and had come to trust.
• The Very Secret Diary revolves around Tom Riddle and Ginny Weasley's correspondence that took place offscreen during Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. You've probably never worried that your diary would turn out to be sentient and evil, or that you might one day be possessed and forced to murder people with a Basilisk. But thanks to the internet, plenty of people (hell, most people) in this day and age have befriended someone they've never met in person, genuinely caring about them and growing to trust them and confide in them, just as you would with your real life friends. You might have even grown to trust them a little more than your real life friends. But there's always the possibility they're not the person they say they are, and that they do not have your best interests at heart — but how would you know until it's nearly too late? Thanks to the diary, Ginny learns this the hard way. And if you happen to have a child or younger sibling who spends a lot of time talking to people they met online... sleep tight.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fanfic You are Receding, Bashir slowly loses his mind with no forewarning. His earlier symptoms were also dismissed as silly everyday mistakes.
• Sporadic Phantoms: The nature of the story means that you never know who is and isn't a Controller. Any time the Phantoms make any progress it's up in the air as to whether the people helping them are genuine or feeding them false information. In episode 7 it's revealed that one of the three are already a Controller, which throws everything into question as to who's been helping the investigation and who hasn't.
• This is In-Universe the case with the criminal organization Anyone. The members are ordinary civilians who are using the setting's equivalent to Discord to exchange favors using their Quirks (which is illegal). Out of them, the small team of core members are a collection of villains and vigilantes. The Hero Public Safety Commision is completely terrified because they have absolutely no idea who to arrest, as the striking majority look like ordinary civilians, and they have the power of numbers, anonymity, and instant communication on their side, as well as being willing to break the law, call extremely dangerous backup, and have good reason to hate the current status quo (many members are in marginalized communities).