Why Did It Have To Be Snakes / Comics

Snakes (ophidiophobia), Reptiles (herpetophobia)

• During the Knightfall saga of Batman, the mayor of Gotham is revealed to have this fear (as revealed by Scarecrow's fear toxin.) Joker, who is partnered up with Scarecrow, naturally exploits this for all it's worth by terrifying the mayor with a baby rattle (to remind him of rattlesnakes.)
• Susanita from Mafalda is terrified of turtles. Unfortunately, her best friend Mafalda is unaware of her phobia and invites Susanita to her house just to show her the family's new pet turtle, Burocracia. Cue Susanita cowering in a corner.
• Linus van Pelt of Peanuts is afraid of snakes. Or, more particularly, of queen snakes.
• In an unpublished The Powerpuff Girls story, "Mojo's Day Off," Mojo Jojo proclaims he hates snakes. It freaks him out how they can move without legs.
• In her third graphic novel, Sisters, Raina Telgemeier is revealed to be afraid of snakes. She wouldn't be afraid of them, had she paid attention to where she was stepping in that berry-infested forest! (She actually stepped on a snake, to be honest.)

Insects (entomophobia) and Spiders (arachnophobia)

• Atomic Robo's fear of bugs is not irrational. Oh no. Fearing icky, evil things that can crawl into your body and die and get their sticky bug guts all over your insides and make you gross forever is completely logical!
• As seen in this Peanuts strip, Linus also has arachnophobia, fear of spiders. This gag was recycled for the full-length movie Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.
• In early Garfield strips, Garfield was terrified of spiders. After years of Character Development, however, he simply hates them, and only squashes them to be mean.
• Both Doctor Octopus and Titania have developed temporary arachnophobia after very painful encounters with Spider-Man. In some versions, Aunt May has a fear of spiders, leading to her disliking Spider-Man while loving her nephew Peter Parker.
• In the first issue of Avengers: The Initiative, cocky newcomer Armory is revealed to be deathly afraid of spiders, to the point of accidentally killing one of her fellow trainees after Trauma involuntarily transforms into a giant spider.

Bats (chiroptophobia)

• In the Batman comics, the Scarecrow has developed chiroptophobia following years of defeats at the hands of Batman.
  • In the comics, at least for a while, Batman becomes the only thing he's afraid of.

Birds (ornithophobia)

• Scarecrow, the Master of Fear and Lord of Despair, is sometimes depicted as having a crippling fear of birds, explained by some writer's description of creative abuse on his great-grandmother's part. Makes sense — who wouldn't want their alter ego to be the thing that scares the thing that scares them?
• Spider-Man in multiple comics makes it clear that he despises pigeons, and finds their beady eyes creepy to the amusement of his fellow crime fighters. While it’s typical for most New Yorkers to dislike them, it’s fitting Spidey should fear pigeons given birds eat spiders.
  • Averted in other media e.g Spider-Man (PS4) where there’s a collecting pigeons side-quest, Spidey gets along fine with the birds.
• A Deadpool comic involving him trying to join the X-Men includes him continuously pestering Domino to find out what's her greatest fear; turns out it's chickens. While this seems to be a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment for most of the arc, at the end where Domino and Wolverine are tracking Deadpool down they have to go through an air vent occupied by a chicken. Domino will probably never live down that a chicken took her out of action in a fight.

Flying (aviophobia) or Heights (acrophobia)

• Cutter, chieftain of the Wolfriders and main character of the storyline, in ElfQuest. The revelation of this phobia is a significant plot point, midway through book one in the series: Cutter is required to 'fess up (from his subconscious, even) his worst fear specifically so he can be compelled to face and defeat it. Oh yeah, and there's also his rival Rayek and his fear of losing, but eh, who cares about him.
• Bigby Wolf from Fables really doesn't like heights (since his ancestors weren't apes, he says).
• Wolf in Marvel's Team America, but at least he can be kept conscious for a flight, although his powerful terrified death grip is hard on the seats.

Water (aquaphobia/hydrophobia)

• Smudge (actual name: Cascão, changed to Smith in the English dub of Monica Teen) in Monica's Gang has a fear of taking baths.
• Difference Engine, a minor character introduced during Joss Whedon's run on Runaways was afraid of water, presumably due to his being a walking electrical appliance with primitive insulation.
• Catwoman of course dislikes water and in the solo series she explains she fears drowning. She has no problem with showers however.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Deimos can make manifest a realization of a person's phobias, which in Julia's case turns out to be a fear of drowning and large bodies of water as he floods the spot she's in. This is due to her nearly dying in an inland sea during a storm that left her floating alone and helpless on scrap as a child.

Fire (pyrophobia)

• J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter of JLA fame. Depending on who's writing him, his "vulnerability" to fire has sometimes been portrayed as a psychological issue, rather than a full-blown Kryptonite Factor. (In Justice League, they simply ignored it.)
  • The Batman chalked it up as a psychological fear, as he would stop fighting the moment a flamethrower appeared in range. Once Batman disabled the flamethrower, J'onn was back to normal.
    • In DC: The New Frontier, Batman observes this and tells J'onn: "Make no mistake. I have a $70,000 sliver of a radioactive meteor to stop the one from Metropolis. All I need for you is a penny for a book of matches."

Clowns (coulrophobia)

• Deadpool. He considers them the greatest threat to Earth, after Galactus. Amusingly, his solo mission in Marvel Ultimate Alliance had him fighting an army of clowns in a circus.

Ghosts (phasmophobia)

• Popeye has an admitted fear of ghosts. (Or, "Evil spiriks" as he calls them.)
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Lillie and Millie Heyday are terrified of ghosts, so of course the challenge/hazing they have to endure to join the Holliday Girls is a haunted house.

Tight Spaces (claustrophobia)

• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Tangle the Lemur is afraid of tight spaces and suffocation. She panicked immediately after the villain Mimic locks her in a safe in the second issue of the Tangle and Whisper mini-series. This phobia has caused her to even pass out in the past. She later expressed discomfort over wearing a mask, not wanting her face constricted.
  Tangle: (Don't. Can't pass out again. Can't use up the air. It's dark. Just... forget you're enclosed and... Um...)
• X-Men: Storm is severely claustrophobic, the result of having been trapped under rubble after a botched aircraft attack that killed her parents.
• Cloud Nine of the Initiative doesn't like tight spaces. Naturally, during Fear Itself, she was stuck under a pile of rubble, and proceeded to freak out.
• Supergirl: Post-Crisis Kara spent three decades trapped inside a space pod in suspended animation. She gets frightened or mad when she's stuck inside a tight, dark space. In Girl Power she explains this to Raven.
  Supergirl: You shouldn't have done that. Don't ever put me in the dark. Closed in. It's like I told Superboy. I can't handle it.
• The 99: Toro is claustrophobic. Luckily, his Noor stone allows him to teleport.
• Iron Man ally James "Rhodey" Rhodes, War Machine, developed this following his Back from the Dead moment post-Civil War II. Having been killed by Thanos wearing the armor, he describes it as being stuck in a coffin. He opts to ride in a Humongous Mecha instead.

Various Phobias

• Batman
  • Earth-2 Batman suffered an attack from the Scarecrow which caused him to hallucinate his greatest fear. It was fear of being alone, and he hallucinated his friends vanishing before his eyes.
  • Scarecrow did this to Batman in another story, but much more subtly. Batman didn't even realize he was affected, but found himself longing for a normal relationship to avoid spending his whole life alone. As Bruce Wayne he begins dating, and almost marries, a woman who turns out to be a Black Widow.
• In his Brazilian Comic book stories, Jose Carioca is so lazy that he's often depicted as having an outright phobia of work. That would maybe be "tripaliophobia".
• In Empowered, the villain Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash is scared off by a fabric store. Apparently it brings up bad childhood memories.
• In Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, Superboy and Beast Boy have a phobia of doctors, due to both of them being experimented on as kids. Beast Boy in particular has a special hatred for needles.
• In a Batman/Judge Dredd crossover graphic novel, Judge Death was subjected to Scarecrow's fear-inducing gas, and hallucinated being mobbed by (shudder) cuddly stuffed animals and cartoon ponies.
• Lucy from Peanuts, in her role as a nickel psychiatrist, once diagnosed Charlie Brown as having pantophobia, "the fear of everything". He fervently agreed. This gag was repeated in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
• Zatanna: The titular hero has a crippling phobia regarding puppets. Not voodoo dolls or wax effigies, those she can handle with no problems, but with actual puppets with their hanging strings and painted-on eyes. Her fears extend back to her childhood and a traumatic incident she experienced with her father. When she tried to invoke "Sesame Street" Cred by guest-starring on an episode of Sesame Street, reasoning that helping educate and entertain children was worth any sort of personal discomfort, backfires horribly and ends with her throwing up in Oscar the Grouch's garbage can. Zatanna (2010) has a story arc dealing with that and revealing there is a very good reason for this phobia — when she was a kid, her father Zatara turned Oscar Hampel, a children's entertainer, into a puppet for threatening Zatanna with a knife, then erased Zatanna's memory of the incident.
• Superboy: Superboy-Prime, despite being over-the-top, is deathly afraid of Bart Allen ever since the latter trapped him in the Speed Force during Infinite Crisis. Whilst he's not fond of speedsters in general following the incident, the moment he sees the Back from the Dead Bart in Final Crisis Legion of 3 Worlds, Superboy-Prime goes from to cocky to looking (Appropriately enough) like he'd seen a ghost. He's also terrified of the dark, because he doesn't like being cut off from sunlight and losing his powers.
• Supergirl Adventures Girl Of Steel features a Supergirl which suffers from cryophobia -fear of the cold- because her whole civilization was killed by an endless ice age. Even after being rescued and taken to Earth, where she is completely invulnerable to cold, she fears and refuses to go near the arctic Fortress of Solitude until she is facing a life-or-death situation.
• The Flash: Villain Heatwave has cryophobia, fear of the cold.
• Spider-Man:
  • Villain Titania had a fear of Spidey, following her defeat in Secret Wars (1984). It wasn't so much that he scared her as she felt powerless and humiliated, causing her phobia which lasted about a year (real time).
  • Doctor Octopus also developed a fear of the web-head after he beat him within an inch of his life for nearly killing the Black Cat. It took Spidey taking a dive to stop him from making a nuclear reactor go critical for him to be cured.
• Klara Prast of the Runaways has a fear of corpses, presumably stemming from the time she was trapped in a sweatshop fire that killed most of the other workers. It's so severe that she once freaked out after Molly fainted during a battle, because she didn't know that that was part of Molly's powers and thought that she'd been killed. Needless to say, she does not react well when she gets stuck under Old Lace's corpse during an explosion...
• New Avengers (2015): A henchman named Terry is forced to encounter both of his greatest fears when he and his boss encounter the just-reformed New Avengers, which is his case is squirrels and betrayal (his boss tries abandoning him to the superheroes).
• Bloom County; Opus is afraid of walruses, because he thinks they prey on penguins. (Obviously, they do not, but he clearly doesn't know that.)
• Kitty Pryde, despite being an established fan of Star Wars and other science fiction films and having a life-long fascination with space, developed a severe phobia of space and the stars after being trapped in a phased missile flying blindly through space toward the end of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. One of the main reasons she fell in love with Peter "Starlord" Quill of the Guardians of the Galaxy is that he helped her overcome this fear.
• The titular character in Big Nate has ailurophobia (fear of cats). This gets mocked by his peers whenever it's brought up.
• Mafalda has a hatred of soup, comparing it to communism.

---