History NightmareFuel / JackReacher

* In ''The Killing Floor'', Reacher tells a brief story of a soldier went AWOL and was imprisoned. [[spoiler: Then, in the first night in prison, the guy was literally '''raped to death''' and when autopsied, a ''fucking pint'' of semen was found in his stomach.]]
** The [[spoiler: [[AssholeVictim corrupt sheriff's]] death: he and his wife were both sliced up with surgical knives, the sheriff was nailed to the wall and his testicles were cut off and shoved down the wife's throat, the wife had her ''breasts'' cut off, and they both got their throats slit.]] Worse, the family of the guy Reacher went to prison with was given this same threat [[WouldHurtAChild and the villains threatened to do things to his kids]] after they killed him and his wife.
* ''Worth Dying For'' is a veritable fountain of it. [[spoiler:The farmhouse full of eight-year-olds' bones is perhaps the most chilling part of the entire novel, but the end of the novel could be a source of FridgeHorror since while most of the onscreen villains are taken care of, there is still an entire network of human traffickers that hasn't been dealt with. Which is almost certainly intentional.]]
** [[spoiler:An additional source of fridge horror is in the story's intro. Eldridge Tyler is driving his eight-year-old granddaughter home from a shopping trip when he receives a call for help from his associates. By the end of the story, we learn that he and his associates are pedophiles who have been raping, torturing and killing young girls for years. And Eldridge has been spending who knows how much time alone with his granddaughter. One can only hope he knew to show some restraint.]] (thankfully, that seems to be the case; Eldridge's thoughts divulge that he just believes her to be a little bit slow.)

* ''The Hard Way'' has several horrifying cases. One is the story of a man whose buddies left him behind in Burkina Faso. Once it was established that he wasn't an important political prisoner and that nobody would pay for his release, he was kept in terrible conditions, and every year on his birthday, his captors would cut off one of his limbs. The second is the relationship between one of the major characters, a man whose wife and child have gone missing, and the child herself- [[spoiler: the man is a control freak who went nuts at the idea of his wife leaving him. At one point, he threatened to rape her daughter with a potato peeler, and at one stage in the book he gathers the materials to do just that.]] Reacher, being Reacher, does not allow that to happen.
* ''Nothing To Lose'' has an entire town owned by one guy, who is making his workers [[spoiler: recycle uranium without any protective gear. Quite a few of his goons are too sick from radiation poisoning to be of much use, and at least one guy dies from it. And Child does not stint on the descriptions.]]

** Later in the story, Reacher and company discover [[spoiler: the decomposing, fly-ridden remains of Tony Swan's pet dog. Swan left the house three weeks prior, intending to come back, but he never did. His dog died of thirst. Reacher is left very upset — not by the disturbing sight of the dog's corpse, but by the thought of a dog dying so slowly and painfully.]]
* ''Running Blind'' features a [[spoiler: corrupt FBI profiler]] who murders no less than five women just to disguise the motive for one murder. This DiabolicalMastermind, left absolutely no physical evidence in all those murders, since [[spoiler:she hypnotized all her victims to swallow their own tongues, hence suffocating themselves. Reacher has got to catch her in the act because nobody will believe him otherwise.]]
** It gets worse in the ending. [[spoiler:Reacher does catch her in the act- and the response from her coworkers and the other government agents who asked him to help in the first place? Try to pin the crimes on him so they won't have to admit the truth and spoil the Bureau's rep. The FBI are willing to say she committed suicide, if Reacher will work for them. If he hadn't talked his way out of it, the book could have ended with Reacher in jail or the FBI's lapdog.]]

** Also, the fate of [[spoiler: the two police officers who stumble upon the BigBad's operation.]] None of it is shown onscreen. Probably for the best.

** [[spoiler:An additional source of fridge horror is in the story's intro. Eldridge Tyler is driving his eight-year-old granddaughter home from a shopping trip when he receives a call for help from his associates. By the end of the story, we learn that he and his associates are pedophiles who have been raping, torturing and killing young girls for years. And Eldridge has been spending who knows how much time alone with his granddaughter. One can only hope he knew to show some restraint. [[/spoiler]] (thankfully, that seems to be the case; Eldridge's thoughts divulge that he just believes her to be a little bit slow.)

** The [[spoiler: [[AssholeVictim corrupt sheriff's]] death: he and his wife were both sliced up with surgical knives, the sheriff was nailed to the wall and his testicles were cut off and shoved down the wife's throat, the wife had her ''breasts'' cut off, and they both got their throats slit.]] Worse, the family of the guy Reacher went to prison with was given this same threat [[WouldHurtAChild and the villains threatened to do things to his kids]] after they killed him and his wife

** [[spoiler:An additional source of fridge horror is in the story's intro. Eldridge Tyler is driving his eight-year-old granddaughter home from a shopping trip when he receives a call for help from his associates. By the end of the story, we learn that he and his associates are pedophiles who have been raping, torturing and killing young girls for years. And Eldridge has been spending who knows how much time alone with his granddaughter. One can only hope he knew to show some restraint. [[/spoiler]] (thankfully, that seems to be the case; Eldridge's thoughts divulge that he believes her to be a little bit slow.)

* The implied fate of Susan's son in ''Gone Tomorrow''. She's DrivenToSuicide when she fails to deliver the novel's {=MacGuffin=} to the Afghan terrorists who kidnapped him. Reacher notes that during the Soviet-Afghan war, the mujahideen would turn captured soldiers over to their women, and the only hint to their fates their comrades got were the agonizing screams that would echo throughout the night.

** [[spoiler:An additional source of fridge horror is in the story's intro. Eldridge Tyler is driving his eight-year-old granddaughter home from a shopping trip when he receives a call for help from his associates. By the end of the story, we learn that he and his associates are pedophiles who have been raping, torturing and killing young girls for years. And Eldridge has been spending who knows how much time alone with his granddaughter. One can only hope he knew to show some restraint.]]

* Creator/WernerHerzog as the Zec manages to be completely terrifying despite not really doing anything but talk for the whole film. All he has to do is be himself, the CrazyAwesome director who seriously considered an offer to kill his lead actor, made a film on an active volcano, and ate one of his shoes.