History Main / PlayedForHorror

* "WesternAnimation/TheRealAdventuresOfJonnyQuest": In one episode, being SquashedFlat is portrayed realistically. Two scientists end up trapped in a room with the ceiling closing in on them, and by the time Race opens the door to that room, it's too late to save them.

* ''Film/TheTerminator'', the first film in the ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' series, does this for is premise that the sequels that would follow, depicting the premise as a SlasherMovie than a typical blockbuster action flick the franchise would be known for.

* ''WebAnimation/DontWalkHomeAloneAfterDark'': An AmbiguousCriminalHistory is played for unnerving effect in "The Worm". It's never fully detailed what Sparrow did to get her landed in a mental hospital, but it's implied to have been pretty serious, with the narrator stating that when he met Sparrow he'd been half expecting an “uncontrollable monster” and that it was hard to reconcile the small, quiet teenager in front of him with what she had done. A newspaper in one shot states she was taken into custody over her suspected involvement in the murder-suicide of her friends and an older man, but it's unclear what exactly went down. In the comment section on the video, Andy Coyle simply said that Sparrow did [[IDidWhatIHadToDo "What she had to…"]]

** There is an entire ''sub-genre'' of these stories, detailed in MagicalGirlGenreDeconstruction. Other examples include ''Literature/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'' and ''Manga/MagicalGirlSite'', where the whole thing is presented as a DeadlyGame, as well as ''Anime/YukiYunaIsAHero'', where the ChildSoldier aspect is brought up as the girls fight what seems like a HopelessWar against an evil god.

* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' uses FlatCharacter to make its villain the Lich even more horrifying. His backstory is vague, he doesn't speak much, and his entire character revolves around [[VileVillainSaccharineShow destroying the normally whimsical land of Ooo]]. The Lich is [[OmnicidalManiac an absolute force of destruction]], and at the end of the day [[CardCarryingVillain that's all he wants to be]].

* ''Website/CollegeHumor'' did this with their [[RealTrailerFakeMovie fake trailer]] for a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMXME2pm83c film adaptation]] of ''VideoGame/TheSims'', which does this with VideoGameCrueltyPotential by showing how horrifying it would be to live under the whims of a CruelPlayerCharacterGod.

* ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'' uses BreakingTheFourthWall to dark effect, by revealing that [[spoiler:the various fourth wall breaks of Monokuma are actually because the series have been turned into a reality TV show. When the characters discover this, they are utterly shocked as they realize all of their memories and emotions were fiction. This reveal psychologically devastates the surviving members, until Shuichi comes to the realization that even if everything is fictional, their experiences and pain are real. The final battle is against the embodiment of the TV audience itself.]]

* ''WebAnimation/DontWalkHomeAloneAfterDark'': An AmbiguousCriminalHistory is PlayedForHorror in "The Worm". It's never fully detailed what Sparrow did to get her landed in a mental hospital, but it's implied to have been pretty serious, with the narrator stating that when he met Sparrow he'd been half expecting an “uncontrollable monster” and that it was hard to reconcile the small, quiet teenager in front of him with what she had done. A newspaper in one shot states she was taken into custody over her suspected involvement in the murder-suicide of her friends and an older man, but it's unclear what exactly went down. In the comment section on the video, Andy Coyle simply said that Sparrow did [[IDidWhatIHadToDo "What she had to…"]]

* ''WebVideo/DreamSMP'': AndThereWasMuchRejoicing is PlayedForDrama and Horror in the aftermath of [[spoiler:Tommy's death]], as the Eggpire throw a party in the victim's house -- and after getting kicked out, rent a room in the victim's hotel to continue their revelries. Do bear in mind that the leader of the Eggpire, [=BadBoyHalo=], confirmed by WordOfGod that his character would be horrified and in mourning if he weren't BrainwashedAndCrazy.
* ''WebVideo/PiratesSMP'':
** BigEater becomes Horrific during the "Captain Golden Beard" quest subplot, where the curse on the treasure inflicts Shep and Owen with insatiable hunger to the point their full in-game Hunger bars can drop to zero in mere ''seconds''. Owen's case is alleviated with the use of an automatic feeding upgrade on her backpack with sufficient food stocks to withstand the curse, while Shep's ''isn't'' and while he treats it with a MajorInjuryUnderreaction, he nearly depletes his entire food supply over the course of the curse's effects.
** BrokenPedestal goes Horrific (but equally [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Awesome]]) in Kuervo's backstory, as he went from idolizing [[spoiler:the commanders of Naya]] and aspiring to become one of them to learning [[spoiler:BigBrotherIsEmployingYou and they had sent his older brother to a preventable death by UnfriendlyFire and did not care for their soldiers at all]], and proceeded to [[spoiler:commit mass {{Tyrannicide}} and [[DefectorFromDecadence be sent on the run]] after being [[EyeScream violently]] caught in the act]] -- complete with audio gore in the animatic. Mind you, he was sixteen when this all happened.
** SurprisinglyNormalBackstory is implicitly Played for Horror in that a late event implies [[spoiler:Guqqie]] GotVolunteered and was targeted as a HumanSacrifice by the main antagonists ''because'' of their relatively normal upbringing.
** WellDoneSonGuy is also implicitly Played for Horror with Shep in his backstory, who tried so relentlessly to earn the approval of the man he saw as a ParentalSubstitute (but was more of an EvilMentor) that he committed murder in the past for him, [[TeensAreMonsters while no older than the age of 21]] (his age in the canon era).

** MoralityChainBeyondTheGrave as well. Maria, about to [[HeKnowsTooMuch silence Iijima by killing him]], sees [[ISeeDeadPeople an apparition of Kiritaka]] who reminds her that Iijima is not one of her targets. Shocked at what she was about to do, Maria relents and [[EveryoneHasStandards agrees that Iijima doesn't need to die]], and decides to silence him by other means after killing Shikimi. What makes this horrifying, though, is that Kiritaka's "ghost" has a hole where his face should be, ''[[BodyHorror leaving his brain and blood-stained tongue to spill]]''. Clearly Maria is still traumatized from cradling his mangled remains.

* The mini-adaptation of ''Literature/TheMysteriousStranger'' included in ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfMarkTwain'' does this for the source material: While the dark elements were also present in the book, there was also a major MoodDissonance in the way in which the story was told, making it closer to a whimsical fairy tale than a CosmicHorrorStory. Satan himself was often described as attractive and charming, but in the animated film he is given a creepy, sinister appearance, and the adapted passage (Which is actually one of the most ''light-hearted moments'' from the original book) is given an eerie, nightmarish atmosphere which sharply contrasts with the rest of the movie.

** BullyHunter with Mari Nagare. She was once a happily married housewife and mother with a great relationship with her husband and son, until the latter was killed by bullies. [[KnightTemplarParent makes it her mission to hunt down the ones responsible and send them to Hell with her own hands]]. Mari threw away her life, divorced her husband, changed her name to Maria Akeboshi, had plastic surgery, and two years later became the nurse at the bullies' school to exact revenge. Mari is not interested in just killing the bullies; she wants to make them suffer, give them judgment, completely destroy their lives, and break them before killing them. While it's horrifying to see the lengths Mari is willing to go to destroy her son's bullies (even if they are {{Asshole Victim}}s), the true horror is how a good mother is transformed by her bully-hunting obsession into a shell of her former self who finds no joy even when she does succeed.

** BullyHunter is played for horror. Mari Nagare was once a happily married housewife and mother with a great relationship with her husband and son. Unknown to her and her husband, her son was being inhumanly tortured by a group of satanic bullies and thugs. One day, Mari's son died from a prank gone wrong by his bullies and witnessed his death. A police investigation told her and her husband he died of suicide because of abusive parents. Heartbroken, she read her son's personal journal and discovered the truth that he was being bullied, and the bullies at his school caused his death. Mari, realizing her son's death was caused by BullyBrutality, snapped, [[KnightTemplarParent makes it her mission to hunt down the ones responsible and send them to Hell with her own hands]]. Mari threw away her life, divorced her husband, changed her name to Maria Akeboshi, had plastic surgery, and two years later became the nurse at the bullies' school to exact revenge. Mari is not interested in just killing the bullies; she wants to make them suffer, give them judgment, completely destroy their lives, and break them before killing them. While it's horrifying to see the lengths Mari is willing to go to destroy her son's bullies; they show themselves to be 100% complete scumbags that destroyed her son's life and the lives of others and deserve whatever fate she has in store for them. The truly horrifying thing about this is that Mari was generally a good woman and mother who was destroyed by her son's death, and she's a shell of her former self. Whenever she kills and destroys the bullies, she gets no joy from their destroyed lives and death, and even if she succeeds in getting her revenge on all the bullies, it will cost Mari her sanity and life.
** MoralityChainBeyondTheGrave is played for horror in this story. Maria [[BestServedCold has spent the last two years]] preparing to [[KnightTemplarParent avenge her son Kiritaka by murdering the bullies responsible for his death]], and is prepared to do whatever it takes to kill them all. However, after [[AlphaBitch Shikimi]] sends Iijima to beat up Maria [[DisproportionateRetribution for taunting her at school]], Maria quickly realizes that, once she kills Shikimi, Iijima could be used by the police or even by [[BigBad Okaya's]] gang to draw a connection between the two, potentially outing her as Shikimi's murderer. Maria prepares to [[HeKnowsTooMuch silence Iijima by killing him]] when the two go to a love hotel, but then [[ISeeDeadPeople an apparition of Kiritaka]] reminds her that Iijima is not one of her targets. Shocked at what she was about to do, Maria relents and [[EveryoneHasStandards agrees that Iijima doesn't need to die]], and decides to silence him by other means after killing Shikimi. What makes this horrifying, though, is that Kiritaka's "ghost" has a hole where his face should be, ''[[BodyHorror leaving his brain and blood-stained tongue to spill]]''. Clearly Maria is still traumatized from cradling his mangled remains.

* MoralityChainBeyondTheGrave is played for horror in ''Manga/MariaNoDanzai'': Maria [[BestServedCold has spent the last two years]] preparing to [[KnightTemplarParent avenge her son Kiritaka by murdering the bullies responsible for his death]], and is prepared to do whatever it takes to kill them all. However, after [[AlphaBitch Shikimi]] sends Iijima to beat up Maria [[DisproportionateRetribution for taunting her at school]], Maria quickly realizes that, once she kills Shikimi, Iijima could be used by the police or even by [[BigBad Okaya's]] gang to draw a connection between the two, potentially outing her as Shikimi's murderer. Maria prepares to [[HeKnowsTooMuch silence Iijima by killing him]] when the two go to a love hotel, but then [[ISeeDeadPeople an apparition of Kiritaka]] reminds her that Iijima is not one of her targets. Shocked at what she was about to do, Maria relents and [[EveryoneHasStandards agrees that Iijima doesn't need to die]], and decides to silence him by other means after killing Shikimi. What makes this horrifying, though, is that Kiritaka's "ghost" has a hole where his face should be, ''[[BodyHorror leaving his brain and blood-stained tongue to spill]]''. Clearly Maria is still traumatized from cradling his mangled remains.

* ''WebOriginal/ImATherapistAndMyPatientIsGoingToBeTheNextSchoolShooter'':
** The Influencer Files story line uses InstantHumiliationJustAddYouTube to gruesome effect. The Chicken live-streams himself torturing someone in the most painful and humiliating way possible.
** AssholeVictim is used for horror. Someone with a history of making bigoted and otherwise offensive comments online is kidnapped and tortured in internet videos. While some of the comments hope the victim will be saved, others believe her past awful behavior means she deserves it. Some people outright express pleasure that she's suffering, one calling it the best stream of the year and another asking if [[NightmareFetishist anyone else was getting a boner]].

* ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' does this to the {{Kaiju}} movie and, by extension, the DisasterMovie. A giant monster's rampage through New York is shown from the perspective of the PunyHumans on the ground fighting to survive with little idea of what's going on, and while the MonumentalDamage it causes is visually impressive, it's portrayed as less cool and awesome and more terrifying. The monster itself, instead of looking like a [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever giant version]] of a lizard, a dragon, a PrehistoricMonster, or some other recognizable creature, bears little resemblance to real-life Earth animals or even mythological figures and comes across more like an EldritchAbomination, especially when paired with the classic kaiju movie trope of the military and conventional weapons being largely ineffectual against it [[spoiler:and TheStinger implying that not even ''nuclear weapons'' can fully put it down]].

** TheCatCameBack is played for horror in [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E16TheHitchHiker "The Hitch Hiker"]]. Protagonist Nan finds the hitchhiker creepy from the start, but her panic builds as she notices him every time she stops, even when she's driven long distances.
** The episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E150StopoverInAQuietTown Stopover in a Quiet Town]]" features one of the most disturbing uses of TheDreadedPretendTeaParty trope. A couple who were [[DrunkDriver drunk driving]] wake up to discover themselves alone in a town they can't seem to escape from. The PlotTwist is that they're in an alien child's dollhouse and surrounding toy town, and the child is just playing. After they ran off the road, the child's parents took them home to the child as playthings. Whether the child and parents are giant or there was a ShrinkRay involved is never explored. But the fear of the couple is genuine in this case given the owner of the dollhouse is at least 6 times their size.

** BigEater becomes horrific during the "Captain Golden Beard" quest subplot, where the curse on the treasure inflicts Shep and Owen with insatiable hunger to the point their full in-game Hunger bars can drop to zero in mere ''seconds''. Owen's case is alleviated with the use of an automatic feeding upgrade on her backpack with sufficient food stocks to withstand the curse, while Shep's ''isn't'' and while he treats it with a MajorInjuryUnderreaction, he nearly depletes his entire food supply over the course of the curse's effects.

** BigEater becomes horrific during the "Captain Golden Beard" quest subplot, where the curse on the treasure inflicts Shep and Owen with insatiable hunger to the point their full in-game Hunger bars can drop to zero in mere ''seconds''. Owen's case is alleviated with the use of an automatic feeding upgrade on her backpack with sufficient food stocks to withstand the curse, while Shep's ''isn't'' and while he treats it with a MajorInjuryUnderreaction, almost all of his food supplies are depleted over the course of the curse's effects.

** BrokenPedestal goes Horrific (but equally [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Awesome]]) in Kuervo's backstory, as he went from idolizing [[spoiler:the commanders of Naya and aspiring to become one of them]] to learning [[spoiler:BigBrotherIsEmployingYou and they had sent his older brother to a preventable death by UnfriendlyFire and did not care for their soldiers at all]], and proceeded to [[spoiler:commit mass {{Tyrannicide}} and be sent on the run after being [[EyeScream violently]] caught in the act]]. Mind you, he was sixteen when this all happened.

* ''[[Website/{{Reddit}} r/nosleep]]''
** The {{Creepypasta}} "[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/drpsa3/my_neighbor_wont_stop_singing_christmas_carols/ My Neighbor won't stop singing Christmas carols]]" does this to the "annoying ChristmasCarolers" trope. The titular neighbors- the wife and daughter specifically- sing carols for days on end, never stopping, and [[AndIMustScream will not respond to anything, even as they are peeing and crying]], making it clear that something is ''wrong''. [[spoiler:They are being forced to sing by a race of goblins resembling pine trees, and anyone caught in a specific radius from one is magically compelled to join in the caroling forever- eventually, nearly the entire town joins in, with hordes of people forced to sing against their will before being devoured by the pine goblins.]]
** TimeDissonance is played for horror in "[[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/cokl1l/if_youre_armed_and_at_the_glenmont_metro_please/ If you're armed and at the Glenmont Metro, please shoot me]]". The narrator participates in a clinical trial for a drug that accelerates his brain functions, causing him to perceive time more slowly. At first, the downsides are only annoying and boring, with minutes feeling like hours and his 30-minute ride home feeling like days. As time goes on and the effects of the drug keep intensifying, to the point that turning the pages of a book takes longer than reading it and he can see the individual frames on TV, boredom gets the better of him he eventually decides to take an Ambien to try and sleep the effects off. [[spoiler:The sleeping pill interacts with the drug and begins ''severely'' magnifying its effects, hitting him right as he was running down the stairs at the metro station, causing him to lose his footing from the sudden change and get locked into a fall down the steps that, from his perspective, takes days. The impact dislocates his shoulder and he discovers, while his senses are slowed down, the pain never subsides because his body is still working in real-time, and he decides it's too much and tries to throw himself onto the tracks. His perception of time eventually slows to the point that simply ''blinking'' plunges him into darkness for centuries. After enduring what feels like thousands of years of pain and boredom over the course of a few minutes, he posts online, begging for someone to put him out of his misery. A shot to the temple should only take a few decades.]]

* ''WebOriginal/ImATherapistAndMyPatientIsGoingToBeTheNextSchoolShooter''

** BrokenPedestal goes Horrific (but equally [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Awesome]]) in Kuervo's backstory, as he went from idolizing [[spoiler:the commanders of Naya and aspiring to become one of them]] to learning [[spoiler:BigBrotherIsEmployingYou and they had sent his older brother to a preventable death by UnfriendlyFire and did not care for their soldiers at all]], and proceeded to [[spoiler:commit mass {{Tyrannicide}} and be sent on the run after being [[EyeScream violently]] caught in the act]].