
When things that should be harmless, or on the viewer's side, turn nasty, stripping away all sense of safety.
How can a viewer sleep easy in their bed, when they've seen how toys can come alive when all is dark and wreak unspeakable vengeance? What trust can they have that anyone will protect them, when they've just seen some cheerful kid's program where a kid just like them was bloodily slaughtered by his own possessed mother as she sang a sweet lullaby?
This is perhaps the main reason why the Monster Clown, and especially Bad Santa, are Tropes unto themselves. He sees you when you're sleeping...
Paranoia, by definition, requires a level of suspicion and distrust. A monster chasing after you in broad daylight is probably not Paranoia Fuel, but a shape-shifting murderer targeting you who may be hiding among your friends or family or the clothes in your closet most likely is. A good rule of thumb is if a show or commercial makes you double check the people or objects around you (or triple check, or quadruple check, or...), then it fits here.
One of the most psychologically devastating forms of Nightmare Fuel, because of its mental persistence and perception of inescapable omnipresence. He knows where you live...
Other paranoia-inducing concepts include:
- The Chessmaster: Things happening in your life or around you, whether big or small, could be a result of someone manipulating the events, whether using you, someone you know, or never even met as an Unwitting Pawn.
- Invasion of privacy (from Big Brother Is Watching to literal Telepathy): One of the most pervasive forms of Paranoia Fuel, since we basically know they can use our secrets against us (Black Mail, Room 101, etc).
- Hypochondria Fuel: playing on fear of diseases, parasites, medical Body Horror and the fragility of human biology in general. Do you know how easy it is to infect you on the microscopic level without you yourself noticing? Or how easy it is for one genetic disorder that can make you go And I Must Scream to suddenly go horribly wrong inside you?
- Slipping a Mickey/Tampering with Food and Drink: Do you know how easy it is to poison you? Goes hand in hand with Hypochondria Fuel above.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever/Everything Trying to Kill You/May Contain Evil: betrayal by everyday items.
- Malevolent Toys: a subtrope of the above, specifically for toys.
- Chest Monster: That chest could contain (or even be) a malevolent creature ready to kill you.
- Artifact of Death: That beautiful ring you just found? Has a part of a radioactive source as its stone. That big metal thing your shovel hit while digging up your backyard? Is a World War II-era land mine or other explosive device.
- Gaslighting is when someone tries to deliberately provoke a feeling of this upon you by altering your everyday environment without your knowledge, often with the intent of sending you crazy.
- Fate Worse than Death or And I Must Scream: You can suffer one of them anytime, anywhere.
- Good Luck Sleeping: things that attack specifically while you're sleeping.
- They Could Be Anyone: Anybody could be out to get you, even your friends and/or family.
- Grand Theft Me: Your enemy could've swapped bodies with someone you know, and are now pretending to be the person to dig up dirt on you!
- Master of Disguise/Voluntary Shapeshifting: Your enemy could be disguised as someone you know (and may have killed the real person), and is taking their place to be able to hurt you.
- Invisible Jerkass: They're everywhere, and could come at you without you realizing it.
- Sinister Conspiracy: There is a... well, sinister conspiracy at work in the world, and they have it in for you. Sometimes goes hand-in-hand with "They Could Be Anyone" above: Anyone, even someone you trust, could conceivably be part of this conspiracy.
- Mind Control: Especially if they control your loved ones, or worse, controlled you, made you do humiliating things, and then subjected you to Laser-Guided Amnesia.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Sure that sound could have just been the neighbor's cat, but then again...
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The very nature of the story is that you can't be entirely sure of what the truth is...
- Justified Paranoia: Then again, once you've had absolute proof that something's out to get you, you have every valid reason to seek security.
- Static on a television, and its heir, the Blue Screen of Death.
- Television Is Trying to Kill Us
- Scarily Specific Story: When someone tries to make another person paranoid by making the characters and/or setting of a Ghost Story similar to the listeners or what's happening now.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When fiction starts threatening the audience.
- Death of a Child: When you're a parent, any time something terrible happens to a child, no matter how rare the odds or specific the circumstances, you immediately picture such a fate befalling your own children.
Fear of the dark is related, but falls under Primal Fears.
Not directly related to the game Paranoia. Or, at least, that's what they want you to think. See also The Paranoiac, for whom everything is Paranoia Fuel (and whose paranoia tends to be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy by virtue of making them evil jerks who anybody with any sense will want to slaughter ASAP lest the paranoiac slaughter them), and Improperly Paranoid, which is when paranoia drives a person to do something stupid and/or reprehensible without necessarily being a recurring occurrence.
Example subpages:
- Advertising
- Anime & Manga
- Film
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Other Examples:
- Astro City: Andrew Eisenstein is a petty crook who, by pure accident, manages to uncover superhero Jack-In-The-Box's Secret Identity. He immediately gloats about how he's going to blackmail the super, or sell the name to one of the big crime bosses and become rich... but then he starts thinking. How is he going to blackmail someone who hunts people like him for a living? Heroes don't normally kill, but they are comfortable with very extreme levels of violence and who knows what lengths they might go to when desperate? And what guarantees does he have that someone like the Deacon is going to pay him and won't just off him? In the end, Eisenstein has recurring nightmares about being hunted by a demonic Jack-In-The-Box, and chooses to leave Astro City and take his chances somewhere else without even mentioning the name to anyone else.
- The DCU:
- Batman:
- Batgirl: One of Barbara Gordon's enemies, a guy called Fugue, is seeping with this. Imagine: your old friend from when you were younger rides into town, and you let him crash at your place for a bit. Except he's not your friend at all—he's a complete stranger who wants to make your life miserable for something you did to him in the past, and his method of doing so is to tamper with your memories to convince you he's your friend so he can get close to you and gaslight you into believing you can't control your own life anymore. Oh, and in the process of toying with your mind, you gave up all of your secrets to him, and he's explained his endgame to you multiple times, and forced you to forget.
- Death of the Family: Picture this... a Monster Clown has returned from a year-long, retrieved his own face, and wears it like a mask. He has always been unpredictable, but he's sticking to the shadows and leaving you to wonder when and where he's going to strike. Then he reveals that he knows your secrets, including your identity. Now you wonder if he's lying or if he's telling the truth. You know what he is capable of doing, and may have been on the receiving end of it yourself. He'll go after you, or he'll go after the people you care about most. If none of this makes you paranoid, then nothing will!
- Night of the Owls: You will never look at owls the same way again. "Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadow perch, behind granite and lime."
- O.M.A.C.: The O.M.A.C. Project in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis. The shadowy spy organization Checkmate has cameras everywhere on Earth. Anyone on the street could be one of their deadly O.M.A.C. cyborgs. Their leader, a psychic, can make you do anything he wants from any distance. And Brother Eye is always watching.
- The Sandman:
- Your bad dreams are living entities that can kill you if they so choose. The only thing keeping them under control is a vindictive, spiteful, and petty godlike entity who can easily condemn you to hell, or fates worse still with ease.
- Your adorable cat, stretching her claws in her sleep? Yeah, she's dreaming about a world where giant cats hunt and eat humans. If enough of them dream it, it may even become real...
- This is used as a punishment in Hell for Edwin Paine, one of the "young" Dead Boy Detectives — he's murdered and awakes in an endless corridor. He begins walking down it; soon, he becomes aware of a very menacing presence following behind him and that if he confronts it at all — looking over his shoulder, breaking into a run — he will be destroyed utterly. Cue walking down a hallway in absolute, unacknowledged terror for a few dozen decades.
- Superman:
- If Superman knows you well enough, he can identify your heartbeat from across the city. Sometimes, he can hear it from the moon. It's not as bad as it could be, seeing as it's... well... Superman, but still... and keep in mind the little fact that this flying indestructible superfast juggernaut with the laserbeam eyes has low resistance to the legions of mind-controlling psychopaths that infest your world.
- Superman is very self-controlled, but his cousin Supergirl is just as powerful... and more short-tempered and reckless. Short-tempered enough to draw a Red Lantern Ring and become a mindless, living extinction-level threat.
- Batman:
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the ten-parts story "Threat From the Infinite", the villains are weird beings that wield incredibly advanced technology and are looking for something in the Arctic, messing with the ecosystem there in the process, and once foiled there they just resume doing it somewhere else. It takes time before even their name, the Tz'oook, is revealed, and while they're confirmed to be aliens what they're looking for and why remains unexplained for over half the story... And when it's revealed it's even scarier: they're the ancient inhabitants of Earth before the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, which they caused, and they're looking for their ancient cities to wreck human civilization and retake the planet. The finale, that reveals they're actually from a parallel universe and they crossed into ours by accident, restores the paranoia, because if the Tz'oook didn't cause the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, then who did it?
- Fungus the Bogeyman: Downplayed: the story ends with "fear not the Bogeymen by day, but at night, watch out!", however Fungus and his family seem pretty harmless.
- The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil: Everyone in here is always paranoid about the idea of There. There eventually breaks through to Here in a way nobody would have suspected — through a man's facial hair. Rapid Hair Growth has never been so existentially terrifying.
- Hack/Slash. All those unkillable fiends you see on the big screen? They're REAL. And they will kill you just because they can.
- The Invisibles: Gods and angels exist, and they are not your friends. Demons are watching you through closed-circuit television systems, and God is being dissected in an underground lab.
- Marvel Universe:
- Galacta: Daughter of Galactus: The series is ripe Paranoia Fuel if you think about it too much. That cute girl with the glasses you always see ordering lunch at the local cafe? She's a Physical God that is always hungry and is constantly suppressing the urge to eat you. You and everybody else. And she thinks of everything as food.
- Marvel Zombies: If you're unlucky enough to live in Earth-2149, then... well, congratulations! Hiding is useless since Zombie Daredevil is gonna find you with a Quinjet, in order to trick you into thinking he's there to rescue you! Good thing he just proposed such an idea... not that it makes the horror any more bearable, that is.
- Ms. Marvel (2016): In-universe. During her first confrontation with Doc.X, a sapient virus, Kamala finds it particularly intimidating due to its ability to enter and look through any electronic or online network. In the information age, nothing is truly private — there's always a wifi-capable object on your person, a security camera on a wall, or at least a passerby with a cellphone, and someone with enough tech savvy can theoretically spy on every second of your life from halfway around the globe. As a result of this combination of effective omnipresence and unlimited access to private information, Kamala considers Doc.X to be the most intimidating foe that she has ever faced.
- Runaways:
- If you're a teenager who gets along reasonably well with your parents (Like Karolina), the whole first series is this. No matter how nice your parents seem, they could be evil... and how would you ever know?
- In the Runaways/Young Avengers Civil War crossover, there's this gem. Imagine you're a teenage superhero. You decide to help another team. This leads to you being kidnapped and forced to watch as the boy you love gets sliced open and operated on, while you can hear and see everything, and can't do anything about it. This leaves you brokenly wishing that the man doing this will die, and you can escape this nightmare. All because you wanted to help...
- Secret Invasion (2008): Earth is invaded by shape-changing, reptilian aliens called Skrulls — and some of the invaders have supplanted certain people on Earth. Even worse, there is so far no way to distinguish the impostors from the people they're impersonating. To make matters still worse, the Skrull impostors have gained access to Earth's most advanced technologies — and sabotaged a lot of them. Furthermore, it's been suggested in places that some of the people they have replaced are sleeper agents who don't know that they're Skrulls until they've been "activated" — you could be one... the "Skrulls'" official website for the Embrace Change campaign
, which portrays them as a benevolent but Dying Race that have come to help us, really isn't helping the Paranoia Fuel any. It's just making it worse.
- Rom: Spaceknight: The entire premise of the book has ROM searching down Dire Wraiths, who wielded black magic, could shapeshift, and furthermore had a disgustingly long tongue/drill-thing that could pierce skulls and suck out both the memories/personality and lifeforce of human victims, leaving behind nothing but a pile of dust and allowing the Dire Wraith to impersonate their victim flawlessly. All this for a child's action figure robot comic-book tie-in.
- Tex Willer:
- Mefisto, being a formidable warlock, can see you from anywhere, and if he wants he can show up with an Astral Projection and summon hallucination so terrifying they have driven people to madness in less than a minute. Then there's the fact he's a Master of Disguise (in one occasion Tex and his pards even helped him with his capsized wagon, and didn't know it had been him until much later, when he decided to taunt them) and knows how to brew and make people consume poisons...
- Yama, Mefisto's son, has his own ways. He's not as good at disguising himself, and his Astral Projection can only appear relatively close to him unless there's an Amplifier Artifact near the apparition zone... But his Astral Projection can interact with the physical world by grabbing things. Including weapons.
- Sumalkan, the Black Tiger, is already terrifying in normal conditions, to the point one of his minions decided to betray him and talked about it to Madison, another minion. Madison then leaves the room to take something that should make the other think about what he's proposing... And then the Black Tiger comes in, very far away from his lair, and knows everything, because Madison was him in disguise. He's so good with disguises, and smart at using them, you could be talking with him while he's planning to murder you and not know unless he decides to drop the disguise.
- At the end of a story Sumalkan fell off a cliff. A few days later the body received an autopsy... And revealed a Chinese man inside the costume, while Sumalkan is from an unspecified Bornean ethnicity (likely a Dayak): in the few hours between the fall and the body being recovered one of Sumalkan's men came to the rescue, saw he was still alive, killed one of his own men with the same corporature, and left him there in the Black Tiger's costume while he brought the real one to safety, leaving Tex and his pards with the knowledge one of their smartest opponent had escaped once again and they have no idea where he is.
- 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:
Yes.You.
- 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 raped. Even worse, it's by a man she'd been dating for a while and had come to trust.
- In Bloody Kisses
- 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).
- A common thread across EikaPrime's Splatoon fanfics, including Snapshots, the Agent 4 Series, and T Is For Neo, is the utter paranoia induced by the mere knowledge of the Hypnoshades. The idea that your perceptions could be being altered by a hostile actor and you would have absolutely no way to know is bad enough; people who have escaped despite them often spend a significant amount of time doubting the reality of everything around them.
- Pinkie Pie is coming. She wants to make you some cupcakes. And The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Ghost Nappa: "You are now thinking about what Zarbon did to you while you were unconscious. Have fun with that."
- Dekugate: Izuku Midoriya discovers that there is an entire online community who have built their lives and identities around hating him and his mother for interfering with their Real-Person Fic Fan-Preferred Couple. Any random person he walks by in the street could be a member of this cult (at least three apparently normal people on Nabu Island (where he makes this discovery) are confirmed Dekugatists), they have no qualms about wishing for his death, and some have graduated from wishes to actual murder attempts. And since they hate him not for anything he has done but simply for being the product of his parents' marriage, there is nothing he can do to appease their hatred other than die.
- The girl in "Somebody's Eyes" by Karla Bonoff is paranoid that the ex-girlfriend is watching her and the boy she broke up with.
- "Subway Song" by The Cure. Especially if you are a woman and you have to walk anywhere by yourself at night. Turn around.
- Not helping is the loud scream closing the song.
- "Intruder" by Peter Gabriel has the narrator give a near-whisper delivery about the means of breaking into homes. The song even gets bookended by glass cutter sounds.
- The Genesis song "The Day The Light Went Out
", a song about The End of the World as We Know It, in which something arrives here and puts out the light... and then, it prepares to feed...
When they went to bed that night no one would have believed
That in the morning, light would not be there
The dark hung heavy on the air like the grip of a jealous man
No place was there known to have been spared
Then panic took control of minds and fear hit everyone
The day the light went out of the daytime sky. - The Geto Boys' classic song My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me is a very disturbing song of paranoia and Schizophrenia.
- Thriller by Michael Jackson. Just watch the ending of the music video with the close up on his demonic face, combined with his "this is not an occult video" message at the beginning.
- "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell has this trope as its general theme.
- Which led to its use in a 2008-09 series of GEICO commercials (the version used in the commercials is a remix by Mysto and Pizzi), where your money is watching you. With a big bug-eyed stare.
- Tin Hat's cover of "Daisy Bell" turns a charming turn-of-the-century love song into a softly-voiced stalker's fantasy.
- The track "Faaip di Oiad" on the tool album Lateralus. It sounds like a desperate, last-ditch final broadcast by someone who has discovered a number of terrifying things: Aliens are here. They've been here for a while. They've infiltrated many areas of the government and military. They have plans for this planet. And they're coming to get me because I know the truth.
- The name itself means something like "Voices of your God" in Enochian ("Angelic"). Eep.
- The pAper chAse's version-less Ministry and more Penderecki-2 versions, respectively titled It's Out There and it's Gonna Get You (which introduces We Know Where You Sleep) and We Will Make One of Us (one of their most upbeat tracks, leading into the track The House is Alive & The House Is Hungry.)
- Even more chilling is that the lyrics are a recording
of a former Area 51 employee calling Coast to Coast AM, a radio show hosted at the time by Art Bell. It could be fake, the guy could be a great actor pretending to have vital information so horrific it causes him to break down and sob, and it could have been a satellite error that caused the radio station to go off the air. But we'll never know, will we?
- Another tool song, Lost Keys, seems to fit perfectly with Faaip de Oiad. The instrumentals don't clash, and the lyrics of Lost Keys start just after Faaip de Oiad's cut off.
- Tom Waits' "What's He Building In There?"
from Mule Variations defines this trope, musically; it's never made entirely clear whether the narrator of the song is just an over-paranoid and unstable person fixating on some innocent and harmless (if slightly reclusive and unconventional) neighbour, or whether the neighbour actually is up to something very sinister indeed...
- "Every Breath You Take" by The Police on the surface appears to be a sweet, soft rock song - until one listens to the lyrics closely. "I'll be watching you..."
- Queensrÿche's Gonna get close to you. It's the 80's prog-metal version of Every Breath You Take — only not nearly so subtle.
- Second Lives by Vitalic. Or rather, the video, where a camera is observing the users of a bathroom stall and at the end Vitalic comes in and picks up his camera.
- Judging from the lyrics, the song "Lost Northern Star" on Tarja's solo album after her falling-out with Nightwish is probably supposed to be about a guardian angel. But when you actually hear it, it comes across more like it's about Slender Man.
- "The Wilderness Downtown
", AKA the music video for "We Used To Wait", might make you slightly worried about your house being under surveillance. This is because it shows you surveillance photos of your house. Seriously.
- Mitigated somewhat by it only being Google Earth, but this doesn't make it any less of a Tear Jerker.
- "Papercut" by Linkin Park:
It's like I'm paranoid, looking over my backIt's like a whirlwind inside of my headIt's like I can't stop what I'm hearing withinIt's like the face inside is right beneath my skin
- "Where Your Eyes Don't Go
" by They Might Be Giants.
- And for that matter, "The Bells are Ringing" and "The Statue Got Me High"
- The band generally loves this trope. There's at least one example in every album that isn't specifically made for kids - see the band's page for the ever-growing list.
- Does the song in PS2's The Thing called After Me by Saliva qualify?
- Planetary (Go) by My Chemical Romance begins with 'There might be something outside your window, but you'll just never know'. Actually, the whole album and much of the promotional material are based around this trope.
- "Eye In The Sky" by The Alan Parsons Project:
I am the eye in the sky, looking at you,I can read your mind.I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools,I can cheat you blind.And I don't need to see any more to know thatI can read your mind (looking at you)I can read your mind (looking at you)I can read your mind (looking at you)I can read your mind.
- Man, listen to the lyrics of "I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab for Cutie (or, for that matter, just the title).
There are days when outside your windowI see my reflection as I slowly pass,and I long for this mirrored perspectivewhen we'll be lovers, lovers at last.
- Then, later:
You reject my advances and desperate pleas
I won't let you let me down so easily
- Then, later:
- Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage".
- The Lunatic is in my head
There's someone in my head, but it's not me...
- The ironically titled "Nothing to Fear"
by Oingo Boingo: "Hey, baby, let me give you some advice / The Russians are gonna pulverize us in our sleep tonight." And if they don't get you, then Arab terrorists will. And if they don't get you, a lonely old man in a brand-new car will give you candy or ice cream before getting you wired on cocaine and then raping you. And if he doesn't get you, then one of countless other things - Christianity, television, etc. - will just sap your will and warp your mind. Now go to sleep...
- Judas Priest's "Night Crawler." A giant carnivorous worm from Hell can slither into your house, and it will see you in the dark.
- Electric Eye. You are being closely monitored and documented by a satellite. Always. You cannot see your surveyor watching or even know that it's watching but it's there, and if you do even one thing out of line it will not only see it but it will document it.
- Ben Folds' song "From Above" provides the lovely little notion that you have only one true soul mate and you can pass by her/him every day without ever thinking about it. And you'll never truly be happy without him/her.
- "Muthufukka" by Beck: "Everyone's out to get you, motherfucker!"
- Rammstein's 'Stein um Stein' (which translates to 'stone by stone') starts off relatively unassuming, with the narrator informing someone he's going to build them a house... a house without windows or doors, where 'no light gets in'. Yep, he's going to wall them up and leave them to die. Sweet dreams.
- Iron Maiden's "Fear of the Dark" is all about what could be hidden in the darkness...
Have you ever been alone at nightThought you heard footsteps behind?And turned around and no one's thereAnd as you quicken up your paceYou find it hard to look again
- Turn Around, Look at Me
by The Vogues gives you this feeling. It was featured in Final Destination 3, played for this trope in particular.
There is someone
Walking behind you
Turn around
Look at me... - Viktor Tsoi's "Sledi za Soboy" invokes this trope: it's a song about all the myriad ways death can suddenly strike, and it encourages the listener to be Properly Paranoid with the refrain of "Do watch yourself, be wary and cautious..."
- Eiffel 65's debut album Europop includes a track entitled "Too Much of Heaven." The song's chorus repeatedly says that Heaven can always turn around, and closes with the line, "the killer makes no sound." Who - or more disturbingly, what - is "the killer?" Because you're sure there's someone there.
- The Songdrops song "Tarantulas" is about tarantulas and how they could be anywhere, even on your head and how they "don't bite unless [they sense fear], so just stay calm until it's gone in a year." Slightly nullified if you know tarantulas can't hurt humans, but there's still the "if there's just fuzz where your hamster was, it's probably because of tarantulas" line.
- King Crimson's Sleepless: it's about fear, paranoia and nightmares, so it naturally counts as this, but the crazed bassline, creepy guitar sounds, droning synths and Adrian Belew's vocals just adds up to it. Don't listen to it with the lights out.
- Grimes' song "Oblivion" is about being followed and assaulted late at night, though you might not notice how dark it is on first listen. But the lyrics speak for themselves:
I never walk about after dark, it's my point of view
If someone could break your neck
Coming up behind you, always coming, and you'd never have a clue
- The paranoia fuel is part of what makes the concept of Hell so potent, by playing on the fear of what comes after death. You are condemned into eternal punishment just because you transgressed this one small rule.
- There's also the idea that God can see everything you do, including your own thoughts.
- There's also the notion that since it seems since God is all knowing, he can actually see the future, including if you are going to Hell or Heaven. Meaning all those stuff about how you have to choose your own destiny is all lies.
- Which increases the paranoia and Tear Jerker. You can be the nicest, sweetest person in your town. Construct and run no-kill shelters for abandoned pets, adopt disabled orphans, fund foster homes, donate to the poor and needy, etc, but you'll go to Hell anyway because God has seen to it before you were born.
- It should be noted that, in most of the Christianity-based religions at least, that God does not determine where you are going in the afterlife from birth. He merely knows what's going to happen, as one's own actions determine their place after death. Though in Calvinism—also known as double predestination, as in God predestines those to be saved and those not to be saved—and several traditions do state he does so, based on several biblical quotes that imply that.
- There's also the fact that even if you do everything right, follow every rule, go to church every Sunday, save puppies from fires on the weekends- there's still a huge chance that your beliefs are the wrong religion, or even the wrong sect, and you're going to hell anyway.
- According to Classical Mythology, the world is ruled by a pantheon of Jerkass Gods who will utterly screw over mortals for the most petty of reasons, or no reason at all. Yes, yes, if you managed to piss off the gods knowinglynote or unknowingly, get ready for a very hard life, if not worse. Being Properly Paranoid won't even help: there's a reason why cruel Irony is a major theme in Greek drama. Oh, and by the way, destiny rules everything and you have no control over your life.
- It is also possible to get a command from a god that, if you follow it, would anger another god, but if you don't follow it would anger the god that gave the command.
- Gnosticism makes it even more horrifying. Your entire existence is pretty much to be food for an evil god and his archons, unless you adhere to exceedingly ascetic rituals and ways of life that may or may not allow you to escape from physical reality. And sometimes, the god and his archons a do not feel like waiting for you to die.
- And anyone who acts like The Fundamentalist might be under Archon control. Just how many people do you know who act that way? Along with anyone who acts like a Hollywood Atheist, too. The bugger's playing both sides.
- There's the Maori legend where the woman got banished to the moon just for insulting it (in the same vein as saying, "Stupid phone!" when it glitches out).
- Welcome to Night Vale:
- "It is statistically likely that there is a spider on you at all times. Research has yet to indicate what kind of spider, but it's probably one of the really ugly ones."
- Later, there is a report that a new kind of spider has been discovered, which is poisonous and almost too small to see.
- Also in your house right now is a Faceless Old Woman just outside your vision, who sometimes moves things around, cleans up and hides rotting meat in the bathroom. The authorities want to detain her, and closing in on you as you listen, with authorisation to use lethal force. It is already too late to flee.
- The Amazing Digital Circus practically runs on this trope. The main six members of the cast are permanently trapped inside of a digital world, subject to the endless, erratic whims of a decidedly less than sane AI, who keeps them 'entertained' with adventures that inevitably end up torturing them, either physically or psychologically. Not only do they have no idea what to expect next, but they are constantly under threat of 'Abstraction', which turns them into glitched monsters if they ever lose their sanity. And with each adventure continually pushing their limits, it's seeming less like a question of if, and more a matter of when it will happen.
- Helluva Boss: Their Laughably Evil/Punch-Clock Villain nature and funny shenanigans aside, the entire concept of the Immediate Murder Professionals is Paranoia Fuel. Just the idea that people in hell can put a hit on unsuspecting living people while they're going through their everyday lives is horrifying.
- The Lazer Collection. Doctor Octagonapus can be anywhere, even inside you! And lazers can fire out of ANYTHING—people's mouths, car trunks, showerheads...
- From Brawl in the Family : Peppy is
EVERYWHERE.
- This
strip puts a whole new spin on the Mushroom Kingdom.
- This
- For the 2007 Crossover Wars event, a fake comic was created as the birthplace of Villain Henchman Max Catnap, a cat furry with a disturbing hatred of his own kind. The fake comic's progression from crayon-drawn, innocently well-intended furry fare to brutal murder is enhanced by Max's erasing of himself from the archives, revealing the full story only in flashbacks.
- In El Goonish Shive, Pandora tells
Sarah that due to who Sarah's friend's are Sarah has the interest of Immortals other than herself. Since Immortals are invisible by default, Sarah realizes
they could be all around her, observing her at any time and she wouldn't be able to tell. This freaks her out and prevents her from sleeping that night
.
- The recent Freefall arc in which Florence's short-term memory is impaired as part of an effort to check on her mind, since she's technically an artificial intelligence.
- Not to mention that despite being a walking, talking, biological entity, she has a remote control that can turn her off, her brain can be "adjusted" to change her attitudes without her knowing, and every time she interacts with the company that created her, she gives herself a personality test afterward to make sure that she hasn't been "rewritten." If that wasn't enough, when a security guard finds out about it, he yells at one of the developers about it, pointing out that "This stuff could be adapted for humans," and asking whether he should be worried. The developer says of course not: the security personnel are unionized, so the company would test it on independent contractors first.
- Girl Genius:
- Between stealth-Revenants and Lucrezia's liberal use of mind-downloads, you never quite know who you're talking to at first. Speaking of the Other, the revelation that she can time-travel only makes it worse.
- It is left unclear what else outside of The Beast may have escaped from the Corbettite's vault full of horrors when most of the doors to the cells were opened or broken.
- This is what you get when everyone you've ever respected or cared about has conspired to hide your true identity from you your entire life. Strange things happen at Gunnerkrigg Court all the time, but Annie didn't see that coming.
- In Homestuck, John and Rose (and possibly Dave) all have Rooms Full Of Crazy without them realising it for most of the plot so far. Apparently, the explanation is that they unconsciously scribble on their walls and then their mind just filters out so they never notice it. Now look around the room that you're sitting in and think about what your subconscious mind has written...
- Jade has them too, but she's a subversion; she's consciously aware of them due to writing them in an attempt to motivate John and wake up his sleeping dream self.
- Draconic Dignitary is watching you.
- "Sollux couldn't know that the virus is essentially a formality. The demon is already here."
- The narration starts to get a little bit too self-aware in act 5.
You suddenly wonder where Jadesprite went. You wonder that because I said you did. I know where she went.
- Are you next?
- Karkat: Highlight
Don't turn your back on the body.
- Later the tension builds when Tezeri returns to where Karkat was
. One of the bodies has gone, the other has bite marks on it.
This is EXACTLY why you should never turn your back on a body, not even for a second. - S u c k e r s .
- The Alpha universe. They Live!.
- Lord English is behind the Fourth Wall. No one is safe. He is inevitable by his own existence, in many forms. Is the idea of him enough to make him real? We can't outrun him, he's already here with us, inside us.
- The Squiddles. They start out as a Sickeningly Sweet cartoon abut cute, silly cephalopods who are running from an evil fisherman and try to fight him with The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love. And then it turns out that this is just what humans see when they look at them. In reality, they're seeing giant Eldritch Abominations. Now imagine your favorite childhood cartoon for a second. Now imagine that it's actually the human perception of an Eldritch Abomination.
- Lord English has been inside Lil' Cal for the entire comic. He is already here. And it's not just a metaphor.
- Natalie Geln knows where you live...
- In an episode of The Parking Lot is Full
◊, you are informed that you are one of only 23 real people in the world and everyone else is a fake, designed to keep you from the others. Taken to logical conclusions, this becomes even more terrifying. Everyone in your life, everyone you love, hate, talk to, work for, even all the tropers here are designed by some malignant force to keep you from making a genuine connection with one of the few other 'real people'.
- The Petri Dish:
- Nicole got symbiotically joined to the monster Kang while she was just looking for a snack in the fridge.
- Thaddeus got the flu, despite being hyper-vigilant about protecting himself.
- One plot is about Gordon, and later, Thaddeus, drinking "soda" that turns out to actually be gene-altering chemicals.
- This
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic sums up this trope very well.
- As is befitting of the psychobear named Petey in Schlock Mercenary, his war against the Tausennigan Ob'enn involves a fair amount of paranoia fuel, such as the assertion that after a great many losses caused by following him into a trap
, it's time to start dialing back the traps a little bit to really stick the knife in. (Plus, he needs those resources anyway.)
- The majority of Stand Still, Stay Silent is this. Each and every chapter has a little something to give you the urge to check your back
- Prologue: Fast-spreading, harmless flu? NOPE
- Chapter 1: Keuruu's population list is a quiet eye-opener. 650~ military to 162 civilians. Whatever is out there would have to be one hell of a threat for that many soldiers.
- Chapter 2: We know there's some kind of superbug, but the decontamination procedures remind us that it is a major threat. The question is, what is it, and how do we kill it? It's real easy to get twitchy when you realize there's at least two things trying to kill everybody- and while it's quiet, whatever they did worked.
- Chapter 3: It all starts coming home to roost here. Opening with a blood-covered Trainsaw, and then later showing you exactly what left that blood there, as well as what all those soldiers were needed for at Keuruu. Bonus point for the mage knowing exactly how it was going to happen
- Chapter 4: Main battle tanks that could easily fit in a Warhammer 40,000 game are shown- while knowing that the army that used them was beaten back dozens of times. To think our heroes are going into the exact same place, in a glorified RV.
- Seeing the way home fall apart after they cross it
- That dead troll. Did we mention that those things are very common where our Ragtag Band of Misfits is going?
- The Dead Have Names memorial.
- Chapter 5: The... thing in the underbrush that Emil sees. Sure kid, it's only looking at you a little.
- The dead scientist. Looks like he got killed in a gunfight, but with what?
- Chapter 6: Running out of food, and then finding a untrained, vulnerable kid in the next food crate. Double points for getting The Load and a side case of Adult Fear at the same time.
- Chapter 7: The dog's transformation into some spider like-thing after it's injured and also there is something looking for Hotakainen family, and that something has just become active again. This causes Onni to tell Lalli to avoid leaving his dreamspace safe area.
- Chapter 8: Lalli misses one troll pod in a tunnel full of them. Its contents start following the team... oh, and the info page informs us that in rare cases, mages can basically die from overusing their power. Guess what Lalli just did as we get that information.
- Chapter 9: The "weird spirits" turn out to be not-so-harmless.
- Chapter 10:
- Even the more light-hearted beginning includes everyone leaving a Deep Sleep ridden Lalli alone in the tank, Tuuri and Reynir doing so basically out of boredom.
- Good news, turns out there is someone in the party who can pick up on the magic-related slack while Lalli rests. Bad news, nobody will listen to that person because he's the untrained, vulnerable kid mentioned in the Chapter 6 entry, and a threat only they can see coming is approching.
- A child decides to give Onni a haircut while he's in a magical trance, and ends up cutting his ear in the process. Why is it chilling? Onni just got an extremely similar injury while giving the crew a hand with the ghosts via mage-space.
- Chapter 11: There are many ghosts following the crew.
- Chapter 12: The reaveal about the cure is quite chilling: it works on the Rash, but ends up killing the patients for unknown reasons. It was sent out anyway because they thought it was better than risking turning into what would later be called trolls. Even that assumption was wrong, it turned them into the type of murderous ghost that is threatening the crew and nobody noticed. The issue revealed to exist in Chapter 11 catches up with the crew at the end, and it seems to have gotten even worse, to the point of making Lalli worried about it.
- xkcd has this, in strip 525.
- Akinator is good at guessing what character you're thinking of. Suspiciously good. Especially the way sometimes a worrying number of his questions will pertain to that character.
- Paranoia Fuel is most often what puts the "creepy" in Creepypasta. For example:
"It has been reported that some victims of rape, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren't being raped. The only way that they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and PLEASE WAKE UP."
- The Darth Wiki Intercourse with You page. Any of your favorite songs could really be about sex without you knowing!
- Disconcerting Tales run on this. Your appliances? They'll prank call you and lure you outside to beat you to death. Your hair? If you cut it badly enough, you could cause a Hate Plague. Can't get anything to grow properly in your garden? There's an Angelic Abomination buried there giving off radiation.
- LIS_DEAD thrives on this. He is after you. Agents are everywhere. You may even have been the parent of one of them, and will never know.
- Believe it or not, even LOLCats can make you paranoid, especially with phrases like "Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate" and "I see what you did there."
- Much of the scare factor in many SCP Foundation entries runs on Paranoia Fuel, and there are more than a handful of SCPs that will kill you in the most horrifying ways if you ever do so much as, say, look at them or simply be aware of their existence. Here are some particular examples:
- The old SCP-532
was a stream of sentient, telepathic, serial killing raw sewage that the SCP Foundation couldn't contain at all. Once you've been selected as its next target, it follows you everywhere, injecting itself into every plumbing system you'll ever use. It will poison you to death and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it, because it telepathically disguises itself as ordinary water. You could be drinking it, bathing in it, brushing your teeth with it, washing your dishes and clothes in it, eating food at a restaurant whose staff have washed their hands in it, etc., and you'd never know. No matter how sick you get, your doctor will never be able to figure out the cause.
- SCP-157
can pretend to be your dinner... which then eats you, from the inside out.
- Speaking of SCP paranoia, take SCP-288
. When your 'beloved' significant other gets down on one knee, and proposes marriage, think twice before putting that ring on your finger.
- SCP-280
. Any time you're in darkness, it could be there, waiting for you. Any shadow you just spot out of the corner of your eye, could be it. Turn on the lights and its not there? Doesn't prove anything, it's just retreated, and it will come back if you turn them off again. Oh, and it needs to be kept in total darkness to keep it from escaping.
- SCP-966
, horrifying invisible creatures that prey upon humans. They stalk you and deprive you of sleep, and once you're weakened enough, they eat you. All the while you never notice that one of them is behind you. Not good to read about if you have insomnia. And it turns out that they're found wild all over the world.
- Especially in two blacked-out locations, one of which have 5 blanks followed by 7. Very comforting for readers in N-o-r-t-h A-m-e-r-i-c-a. Or S-o-u-t-h A-m-e-r-i-c-a. Or... Oh, Crap!.
- S Andrew Swann's proposal for SCP-001
. The Foundation has found its authors. And they're considering putting memetic kill agents into the database to stop them. And this might cause the destruction of observable reality. Get the hint?
- SCP-096
, if you ever see its face, even as a few pixels on a blurry photograph, will come hunting for you and tear you apart. It can not be stopped nor killed while doing so.
- SCP-1471
is a downloadable app for your phone that promises an 'exciting interactive experience' to 'cure you of your social anxiety'. Said interactive experience is a series of text messages that show pictures of a terrifying humanoid creature covered in black fur with a dog-like skull for a head. At first it seems just plain creepy, but it gets worse as over time it starts sending pictures from locations you're familiar with...to places you've just recently visited...to where ever you are right now.
- SCP-6362
is a group of ghostly Malevolent Masked Men that will choose a target at random and teleport in to attack them whenever they're at their most vulnerable with nobody around. Cupboards, bathrooms, car backseats, your blind spots; nothing is off-limits and if you're unlucky enough to survive the onslaught any trace of their presence vanishes into thin air to have you Mistaken for Insane and Wrongfully Committed, upon which they'll just do it again now that you have nowhere to run. "Killing" them only delays the inevitable, and the Foundation is powerless to help anyone since they have no way of locating a victim until it's already too late.
- Staff members in charge of SCP-231
are allowed to take an amnestic when leaving the project, due to the extremely distressful nature of containing SCP-231-7, and then have false memories implanted. As the O5 council member writing the quip on the amnestic option says, there are those in the Foundation who have been assigned to those horrific SCP-231 duties in the past, but they don't remember it.
- Forget all the SCPs. Forget the Sleep Killers, forget the sewage, forget the Eyes in the Dark, forget the botfly toothpicks and the statue that sneaks up behind you and snaps your neck. Now remember, anything can be a potential SCP. Even ideas can be lethal. Sleep tight.
- Even better? The Foundation itself is this, as they are seemingly omnipresent throughout modern human affairs, ready to strike to contain an SCP. If that doesn't sound bad enough, think about just how involved the Foundation is in trying to cover up information that could help or hinder humanity to preserve normalcy. A limitless organization is a great use of this trope.
- The old SCP-532
- Ever wonder why you're scared of clowns?
◊
- The wording on the Alien Species Wiki's entry for Xenomorph
: Habitat - ANYWHERE. Have you looked behind you lately?
- Without getting too NSFW, Transformation fics can be creepily paranoia inducing; a person could be metamorphosed, sometimes permanently into anything, either as a punishment for the slightest offense or just out of absolutely nowhere. And in some cases, they either lose the ability to speak or lose their humanity/identity altogether. And this is often viewed as a GOOD thing.
- An online-originated urban legend surrounding the Japanese poem "Tomino's Hell" plays on this. You're told, whatever you do, to never read it aloud for risk of cursing yourself or bringing great misfortune to your life. Regardless of whether the curse is real, the notion is effective- any coincidental misfortune that occurs to someone after speaking it will then seem like the poem's fault, and many posts of people claiming they've read it to no ill effect are never followed up with further updates that would show that they continued to be unharmed.
- The Entity of Atop the Fourth Wall. The Entity will abduct you if you are alone. Being in a house with someone in the next room counts as alone. Being in a room with someone around the corner counts as alone. At one point, being in the room with someone looking the opposite direction counted as alone. Sweet dreams.
- No she's not an Eldritch Abomination, but The Nostalgia Chick's behavior towards Todd creates a more realistic fear. A crazed stalker who will do everything in her power to get what she wants, including kidnapping, government fraud, blackmail and plenty of sexual harassment.
- Everyman HYBRID. How well do you really know your friends? Your family? Yourself?
- Jack Vale Films does this in-universe with the "Paranoid" series, where he freaks people out by describing them into a phone or walkie-talkie.
- Marble Hornets: Try watching Entry #14 (Slendy comes into Alex's bedroom while he's asleep) and #19 (The masked man does the same thing to Jay, who then disappears for three hours with no memory of what happened) and see if you can sleep easily after that. For that matter, the slightest glimpse of Slendy should be enough to freak you out, especially when you realise that he's in every video and you can't always see him... which means he could be anywhere. He could be watching you right now.
- This happens less frequently in later entries, but it that doesn't diminish the fuel stocks, instead replacing it with things such as Laser-Guided Amnesia, Sanity Slippage, and friends attempting to kill you.
- This is the entire point of The Slender Man Mythos.
- I'M COMING FOR YOU. AND YOU WILL LEAD ME TO THE ARK.
- FOUND YOU FOREVER
- What is the Terrible Secret of Space
? What could be so bad that the Space Robots need to push the humans down the stairs for their own protection? What does bread have to do with it? Is the Shover robot malfunctioning like the Pusher robot says? Is it the other way around? Are they both malfunctioning? Are they lying about the Terrible Secret? Are they the Terrible Secret?!
- Speaking of Mr. Tall, Dark and Faceless, how about Tribe Twelve? The entire premise of the series is a young man being slowly stripped of his security and sanity, bit by bit.
- Don't bother asking your friends or family for help with your Slendy problems; chances are, they're working for him. And they have been all along.
- That guy you see in class every day who helps you with your homework? He's the one sending you threatening messages and sneaking into your room at night. He belongs to a cadre of Slenderminions—and he's helping to orchestrate your forced induction into their circle.
- In "Mary Asher Phone Call", Noah learns that the Collective has had its eye on him since birth, and has been monitoring his every move throughout his entire life. Oh... and they're in his house watching him at that very moment. Try getting a good night's sleep after that.
- When the Observer took over Noah's Formspring account, he revealed
that he actually sees through the Collective symbol. Any time you're looking at one of those symbols, he could be looking at you.
... Sleep tight.
