Nightmare Fuel / Arc Corp

In a world filled with anomalous items and entities (and those willing to use them for their own ends), there are bound to be a number of them that cause nothing but dread and nightmares for anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in them.

• Blake's first encounter with anomalies is The Welcoming House, a living house that uses illusions to draw people inside. And once they're in, it begins to digest them alive, with no way of getting out. She had the misfortune to find one deceased victim's remains in a washing machine, and there was actual blood coming out of the walls. If she and Jaune didn't find a way to escape by burning the place down, they both would have ended up as its victims.
• The Blank Slate is a small briefcase that allows whoever uses it to hide themselves from anyone, effectively becoming invisible by erasing their presence from everyone around them. The person who used it in Beacon could do basically whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted, and no one would be able to tell. But the true horror comes from its side effects: prolonged usage truly erases them from existence. When Jaune and Blake finally catch the perpetrator, they are so far gone that they can't discern anything about their identity, not even their gender; not even the person truly knows who they were anymore, only that they exist. At that point, it might be more of a mercy to simply use the anomaly to wipe the last of the person away, rather than keep them imprisoned.
• In canon, the Schnee Dust Company was amoral under Jacques' control, but it wasn't actively villainous, only motivated by greed. The SDC in this universe, however, are a different breed. Originating as a branch of ARC Corp, the director and Nicholas Schnee ended up betraying the company to steal as many anomalies as they could and go on to sell them to others at auctions for profits. This has extended into the present day, with Willow and Winter being the most active in the family business, and completely uncaring about what horrors they unleash.
  • Winter herself is shown to be completely ruthless and uncaring about the consequences of her actions, as she set loose an anomaly named The Rusted Queen, which is basically sentient rust that can turn any metallic structure around it into rust that it can control. This anomaly was released on a cargo ship headed to Vale, and if it had made landfall it could have become a Reality Class anomaly that would've destroyed all of Vale at the very least; it was only thanks to Saphron's own Slaved Anomaly that the managed to kill it. And the reason why Winter unleashed this anomaly? To be used as a distraction while she entered Vale to host an anomaly auction.
    • And then there's the fact that the reason Winter even takes part in these auctions: to put it simply, it is all for her own amusement. She simply loves to see the chaos that selling anomalies to others brings about. Case in point, her first on-screen auction had her sell a magic-8 ball that could answer any question asked to it...but she neglected to mention that it could only answer questions that the user already knows, even if they forgot about it. This resulted in a gang war with many being willing to kill to try and get it. And again, she does this because she loves to see this kind of chaos be unleashed.
  • The worst of how bad the SDC has become in this universe is revealed when ARC Corp decides it is time to bring them down for good. As it was established in earlier chapters, the first anomaly that the SDC made a Reality Class to profit off of is All Becomes Dust, the source of Dust in this universe. It is only when Blake and Jaune arrive at the anomaly and witness what it does to Coral that they learn the horrible truth: All Becomes Dust turns both humans and faunus into Dust. This means that the SDC has willingly, for years, been feeding people to the anomaly to turn them into an energy source for profits. This revelation makes it clear that many in the Schnee family have crossed the Moral Event Horizon long ago. And what makes it worse is that once they get a hold of it, ARC Corp have no choice but to keep using it to supply the world with Dust until they can find another viable energy source (though this is mitigated by how they're using criminals, especially death row inmates, to feed to the anomaly).
• And if you thought anomalies on their own could already be scary and nightmare-inducing, then there's the later reveal that people can be turned into anomalies themselves. If a person has been forced to cross the Despair Event Horizon, they can be forcibly turned into living anomalies that are usually consumed by whatever it was that forced them to turn.
  • Jaune himself is revealed to be the earliest case of a person that underwent an anomalous transformation. During one of his earliest missions, he underwent a partial transformation that caused his arms to catch on fire, and to this day they are still burning (which is why he wears jackets and gloves to hide his arms and hands). And he can still feel the burning sensation; he's just felt it for so long that he's become used to it.
    • It gets worse with the fact that most of his family have a strict policy of destroying anomalies instead of containing them like Jaune does. When his transformation happened, many wanted to kill him (partially motivated by the fact that Jaune's transformation is tied to the event that killed their mother, Juniper). The only reason he is still alive is the fact that he is still able to hold onto his humanity, and as such hasn't fully become an anomaly. But the fact remains that his family is constantly watching him, waiting to see if he'll completely transform...and if he does, they will put him down without mercy.
  • The first case of this that ARC Corp learned of had a former teacher become an anomaly after he was let go from his profession because of issues caused by him and his belief that his students were too stupid. He ended up becoming a humanoid textbook that took control of a publishing house and created textbooks that students used, and each textbook ended up trapping anyone who opened and used them in a trance. They would remain in that trance until they answered every question, and if they couldn't, they would be stuck in there until they died; Blake and Jaune stumbled across this case when one young girl committed suicide to escape the trance, and discovered the man-turned-anomaly had spread these books across the city at the very least. If Saphron hadn't been called in to vaporize him and the publishing house, countless more people would've died and he would've become a Reality Class anomaly.
• The Twilight City, a.k.a. the anomaly that was born from Mount Glenn. It is treated as one of the worst ones to date. Several years ago, the settlement became caught in a perpetual time loop, with anyone who died once the loop started becoming a part of the anomaly upon death. And once the loop begins anew, those who died end up coming back to life, trapped within the anomaly. And as time goes on, and the continuous deaths and revivals eroded the sanity of everyone inside, to the point that the vast majority of them become sadistic killers that have lost any and all sense of morality because they no longer fear death or consequences. They treat killing and death as if it was no big deal, with many becoming either cannibals or serial killers; even this grants them no satisfaction after awhile, because all their potential victims in the city are too used to being killed. And if they kill anyone new, even outside of The Twilight City, they'll become part of the anomaly as well. It is because of this that ARC Corp has no choice but to keep the whole thing contained and work to make sure no one inside can get out...only for a few White Fang grunts to accidentally blow open a hold that allows the people of Mount Glen to begin escaping into Vale. When ARC Corp finds out, they treat this as a potential end-of-the-world scenario... because if they fail to stop it for good this time, it really will be the end of the world.
  • Upon reaching the very heart of The Twilight City (after losing most of their forces along the way, along with a few members of the Arc family), the members of ARC Corp that are still alive discover that the anomaly was once a human being. A wealthy and pregnant woman, she was expected to give birth any day, but the doctors said her baby was already malformed in her womb and there was a high chance the baby could die during birth. And despite her best efforts in getting the best medical professionals to ensure the baby's safe birth, it ended up dying anyway. Driven mad with grief, she became a human-turned-anomaly, giving birth to The Twilight City and trapping everyone within in a time loop, trying again and again to save her baby's life, but to no avail. One woman nearly caused the potential apocalypse because she refused to accept that her baby couldn't be saved.
• The Lady of the Lake. It starts as a story about a little girl who goes into the woods looking for a woman who grants wishes. Then the lady addresses Blake directly. When Blake asks for the power to defeat Winter, she casually lists off several Intangible Prices; Blake agrees to being made emotionless for two weeks. She can barely muster the motivation to use the power she bargained for, and spends those next two weeks lazing about her apartment. The anomaly also prevents her from talking about it, and forces her to claim it as her Slaved Anomaly.
• The Containment Office gets called in to another Haunted House. Shadowy figures watching from an upstairs window, lights turning off on their own, the cameras getting knocked over... And then, several hours into the investigation, Blake sees two people entering the house, and realizes that those two are them and they're in a time loop. Jaune panics at the news and insists they leave immediately, but the front door leads to a chaotic whirlwind of black and purple light.
  • Jaune explains that temporal anomalies can Ret-Gone people, and the only reason ARC Corp knows it happens is because of people who were trapped in the same anomalies together and survived when others didn't.
  • Inside the house, Jaune and Blake are invisible and intangible to their past selves, who are invisible and intangible to them. After they cause all of the hauntings that they experienced, older!Jaune & Blake escape the house and find themselves Glamoured to look like the people who hired them, forcing them to go back to the office and send their past selves into the loop.