Knight Terrors is a 2023 DC Comics Event, over the course of July and August.
The body of an old Justice League villain at the Hall of Justice leads our heroes and villains into a realm of nightmares and the only one who can save the world is Deadman!
Tropes:
- A God Am I: Insomnia believes himself to be a god. Deadman, having reviewed his memories and saw he was just another victim of the Lazarus Rain, tells him he's just a guy.
- Antagonist in Mourning: Joker in his tie-in after Batman is accidentally killed (and not by Joker's own hand). He doesn't take the loss of his arch-nemesis well. At all.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The Good People of Gotham are a trio of people that summon eldritch beings from the Fifth Dimension to grant their wishes for something to help them aid Gotham.
- A woman wishes for wealth and coughs up diamonds endlessly, choking on them as they tear up her insides.
- A man that idolized Gordon in his time as Batman wishes for power and becomes an organic version of Powered Armor, growing more powerful over time as he becomes more unhinged and rationalizing people to kill.
- A woman who wished for knowledge is made as fragile as glass, as from the Pentapriests' perspective, the fragility of life is the greatest truth any mortal being like her will know. Gordon also gets this, which is foreshadowing a connection to this woman.
- Bittersweet Ending: Insomnia is stopped, and sent to a hell where nightmare versions of his family torment him, but his plan to make the world fear superheroes succeeded. Amanda Waller confers with The Light that Insomnia's actions shifted public opinion in their favor, and they managed to acquire the Nightmare Stone along with the Helmet of Hate to give to a mysterious agent for their cause, creating Doctor Hate.
- Black Comedy: Naturally, Joker's tie-in runs off this, especially after he decides to go corporate and begins working for Wayne Enterprises as an office drone.
- Crisis Crossover: DC's Summer 2023 event. This is also their second major event of 2023 (following on from Lazarus Planet).
- Depending on the Writer: Most of the books work on the assumption "nightmare" and "thing you fear" are synonymous, and the heroes win (short term) by overcoming this fear. The Batman tie-in has Batman saying he confronts his fears all the time, only for Insomnia to gloat that nightmares aren't the same thing as fears; his nightmare is a surreal monster only conceptually related to things he actually fears. The Wonder Woman tie-in has Diana explain to Justice League Dark that you don't defeat your fears by fighting them but by accepting them as part of you.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Detective Comics tie-in has a group calling themselves The Good People of Gotham summon three beings called Pentapriests from the Fifth Dimension, who are most definitely not imps. They look like flesh draped and sewn over a doll head on top of a grotesque mockery of a body. They only heed the summons because they're bored from immortality and seek amusement, and if the proposition from the summoners doesn't interest them they may stick around anyway to alter anything else until they become entertained.
- The End... Or Is It?: The Detective Comics tie-in ends with everyone waking up from the nightmare, but the clock that was used to summon the Pentapriests is shown being bought from a pawn shop.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Insomnia was once a normal citizen of Gotham who had complete faith in the Justice League, but tragically lost his entire family in their conflict with the Dark Knights. Driven mad by only having nightmares of that moment everytime he slept, he want to destroy the Justice League with their own nightmares, further using the Nightmare Stone to bring their nightmares to life and make everyone see them as harbingers of horror like he does.
- Forced Sleep: Insomnia put the entire world to sleep. Only a handful of certain people managed to stay awake, some because they don't sleep or, like Zatanna, they quickly kept themselves awake.
- Foreshadowing:
- All the nightmares made by Insomnia are themed around dreamers being confronted with their worst fears about themselves, which usually involves the heroes being turned into monsters. This is because Insomnia wants monster versions of heroes to let loose on the world and show them that heroes only bring horror.
- Gordon gets swept up in the wish granting of the Pentapriests and becomes as fragile as glass. This is because he has a personal connection with the person whose wish caused this, Barbara Gordon.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Literally, Insomnia was once a normal man who couldn't sleep due to horrific nightmares that had something to do with the Justice League. After losing his sanity from this and his subsequent hatred, the Lazarus Rains empowered him to put the world to sleep, trap everyone in nightmares, and seek the power to destroy them once and for all while "revealing" to everyone how he sees them.
- Ironic Hell: In the Poison Ivy tie-in, this is the big twist. Pam's worst nightmare is ironically Harley's happiest dream life.
- Macguffin: Dr. Destiny discovered the Nightmare Stone, which even he feared to use and hid it within the dreams of a superhero. Insomnia has put everyone in the world to sleep and is tormenting the dreams of heroes to find it.
- Make Way for the New Villains: Doctor Destiny is killed at the beginning of the event in his dreams by the new villian Insomnia.
- Mugging the Monster: Hal, the infamously fearless Green Lantern, laughs in the face of his nightmares, including a recreation of Parallax, and sends them running in terror.
- No-Sell: The people of Atlantis are the only ones immune to the wave that's put everyone else on Earth to sleep. Mera and Arthur find out that this is due to their physiology having natural inner ear insulation. They manage to discover and replicate this at Supercorp to wake up Superman and plan to distribute to everyone else.
- Paradox Person: Flash's tie-in involves him losing his mind trying to save Wally from being terminally injured by Gorilla Grodd and being thwarted by a monster in the Speed Force. After being made monstrous himself by the turbulence in the Force this monster causes, he learns that it's actually all his temporal duplicates from his repeat trips melded into a mass of bodies driven insane to keep running forever to finally save Wally.
- Post-Victory Collapse: After the battle ends, Batman passes out into a coma. They presume it's exhaustion from the exertion Deadman put his body through. They don't know when he'll wake up.
- Power High: The Good Citizen of Gotham that wished for power enough to save it is turned into a grotesque organic version of Gordon's Batman armor. His power increases over time, and he revels in it as he kills indiscriminately rationalizing that his targets must have done something bad.
- Pun: The title is a pun on "Night Terrors" while Insomnia has minions known as the Sleepless Knights.
- Psychological Projection: Zatanna ends up having to work with Robotman, which she is uncomfortable with because she saw Mento shortly before her father died and the crazed look in his eyes disturbed her. Robotman telling her that the Doom Patrol is his family that he's trying to look out for causes her to realize that her feelings toward him aren't fair.
- Race Against the Clock: Along all the chaos of everyone in the world suddenly falling asleep, and the risk of starvation if they stay asleep indefinitely, the long everyone remains asleep the further their minds are separated from their bodies until they can never be awoken again.
- Stuffed in the Fridge: Spoofed in Harley's tie-in. In her dream, Brainiac mind controls Ivy to get to her. While she's off fighting him, he has two policemen take care of her. When Harley returns to their home, she finds a bowl of salad in the fridge with Ivy's ID tag on it.
- Summoning Artifact: The Good People of Gotham use a clock infused with energies from the Fifth Dimension to summon beings from the same. Said beings don't have to heed the summons, but they're bored enough to answer.
- Take That!: The Arsenal back-up in Batman #2 features Roy Harper being attacked by monstrous versions of himself all wearing variants of the outfits he wore in Red Hood and the Outlaws, including the trucker cap loathed by the fandom. Roy can be heard muttering how much he hates that costume.
- Tragic Villain: Insomnia is ultimately a man gone insane from grief.
- Undignified Death: In the Joker tie-in, Batman slips on top of a building, leading to them sliding off the building to their death.
- Unwitting Pawn: Deadman learned from Insomnia's memories about the Nightmare Stone and how to use it to stop him. This was intended by him so that Boston would bring the Nightmare Stone directly to him and he could seize control of it through the sacrifice of his suicide.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: The event heavily involves exploring the nightmares of the characters of each tie-in issue, exploring what they fear the most.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: After Insomnia is forced into the afterlife, it seems like he got reunited with his family in heaven. It's quickly shown that he is now in hell to be tormented by monstrous mockeries of his family for eternity.
