Nightmare Fuel / BIONICLE

Well, the line is for Ages 6-16...

Events:

• The demise of the Bohrok-Kal when the Toa-Nuva tricked them into absorbing the powers of the Nuva symbols.
  • Pahrak-Kal's plasma powers runs amok to the point that he starts to melt the ground beneath him, and given the working of the Great Spirit robot, goodness knows where he ended up.
  • Lehvak-Kal's vacuum powers backfires and shots him through the roof of the cave and into the air. In the comic accompanied by the creepy side-note claiming "and still he flies..."
  • Nuhvok-Kal's gravity powers inverts upon him, crushing him into a miniature black hole.
  • Kohrak-Kal's sonic blasts becomes so concentrated that his structural integrity is compromised, making him crumble into metallic dust (novel)/fall to pieces (comic).
  • Tahnok-Kal's electrical powers goes haywire and ends up causing every joint in his body to seize up. With The captions claiming that he will remain so until he runs out of energy.
  • Gahlok-Kal's magnetic surge ends up attracting every piece of Exo-Toa debris in the room... at an extremely high velocity!. Noteworthy for being the only of the six whose death wasn't shown directly as booth the comic and novel cuts away right before the impact.
    • The fact that the Bohrok were once Av-Matoran makes it even more disturbing.
• Mask of Light
  • The Rahkshi opening their head-plates. Averted in the toys themselves (due to the limitations of toy design), but it is used in full force here to unleash pure Nightmare Fuel on other characters (and the viewers, naturally).
  • Makuta's giant red eyes leering at Takua in the darkness of the caves at the Onu-Koro Highway, especially the final shot revealing them on the ceiling, watching the entire conversation between Takua and Jaller.
• Legends of Metru Nui, darker than the first film
  • Some of Vakama's visions can be quite freaky, particularly the one with the Matoran Spheres.
  • Makuta absorbing Nivawk, Nidhiki, and Krekka in the climax.
• Web of Shadows, the darkest film in the series
  • The basic plot. The Toa Metru get back to the ruined city, only to find that the Rahi have all escaped and are running rampant (and yeah, this includes Rahkshi), and there are webs everywhere and green fog that looks creepy as hell. Even leaving out the extra horrors in Web of the Visorak, the true terror happens when the Toa get captured; the Visorak slowly appear out of the fog, ''screeching'' a noise so terrifying that you'll want a night-light (as with the Rahkshi from the first film), and then surrounding the downed Toa as they begin to drool their venom...
  • Vakama's Jump Scare at the beginning.
  • The Toa transformation scene to Hordika also counts while most likely being the Signature Scene at the same time.
  • Roodaka asking for the Toa’s bodies is just as creepy, if not even more.
  • The Toa Hordika in general. They are described as bestial, half-Toa half-Rahi creatures retaining their higher mental processes but plagued with animalistic impulses. The latter is exemplified with the roars they make, such as Vakama.
  • Following his Face–Heel Turn, Vakama can scare the crap out of you again in the scene where he suddenly attacks Norik. Really, poor both of them.
  • Sidorak's death by Keetongu. While not actually a scary scene (as you see nothing but Keetongu make the kill), just imagine being in his place. What actually makes this creepy comes from a Q&A where Greg Farshtey said that the damage sustained to his cranial capacity was so severe, to the point of nearly destroying his head, that he was unable to be revived on the Red Star.
  • Following his accidental release by the Toa Hordika, there’s Makuta's shadow hand emerging and engulfing Roodaka. But thankfully (for her) instead of absorbing her like Nidhiki & Krekka, she gets teleported to safety.
  • If you have the guts, watch Web of Shadows 'til the very end of the credits. If you don't want to watch it, basically before the Miramax and Creative Capers logos there is a Jump Scare featuring the close up of a Visorak, complete with its screeching and buzzsaw mouth. But really, this film is rich in this.
• The "Maze of Shadows" from the eponymous novel and video game. The whole place is literally littered with dead or dying mutant animals, all waiting for the end to come. Even the fact that it's a dark, creepy, unwelcoming (what else would you expect from the halls of the Makuta?) place where you can get lost in the first place is scary.
  • Matau being fused to a wall, following an attack from a Red Serpent.
• The island of Xia, home of the Vortixx, is tied with Karzahni as being the most terrifying island in the Matoran Universe. The biggest mountain there is alive, and when climbing the mountain practically everything is trying to kill you. Vines pop out of the cliff face, rocks fall away, and not only that, the mountain eventually eats you. Climbing this mountain is also a Rite of Passage for all Vortixx. And it's another Makuta creation.
  • Worst thing is, it wasn't put there deliberately. Mutran just forgot it there and didn't bother to retrieve it.
• Zaktan's interrogation of a Toa of Plasma. Only some shreds of the Toa's armor remained and a puddle of a substance one wouldn't want to identify. Sure, we never got to see just what had happened (Zaktan could've let the Toa free to set up a fake death scene), but to have nightmares, your imagination is enough.
• The whole land of Karzahni before it got demolished in a flood. Zombie-like people wandering around aimlessly with deep, empty eyes; the ground turning you into rock if you dare to sit down; in turn, the ground itself coming alive to scream at every step you take; and to make matters worse, tiny, almost microscopic insects keep bugging you all the time.
• The web serials in general, which peak in the series' dark and violent tone, offer a great number and variety of Nightmare Fuel.
  • One seldom mentioned example is the army of shadow Takanuvas. Now, Takanuva is originally a heroic character of light (the one and only Toa of Light, none the less). A mean Makuta named Tridax got the idea of creating an army of him. So he used a Mask of Dimensional gates and gathered a bunch of alternate-Takanuvas from different dimensions. He placed them into tubes, turned most of their light into shadow, and got killed by a sadistic good guy whose comrades subsequently destroyed the fortress, killing several evil Takanuvas in the process. The image of all those heroes-turned-villains, some totally evil, some only half-shadow, emerging from those tubes, leaving behind their dead alternate-selves in the ruins of the Makuta fortress is horrifying. Thankfully it's only a pictureless web-serial. But then you're still left with the following thought: all those alternate realities have been robbed of their Takanuvas, who was a desperately needed hero, a character who brought light into the darkness, and also responsible for reviving Jaller, his friend who died in battle. Tridax, you screwed all those realities, you deserved being dissolved by a virus and burning into nothing.
  • Alternate Tuyet's death in Dark Mirror. She is ripped in half by a portal, screaming in pain with body fluids spewing everywhere.
  • The way Makuta Teridax ended the Matoran civil war, AKA the Archives Massacre. He led most of the participants into the Archives, trapped them inside, and unleashed the "exhibits" (read: all kinds of nasty, freaky beasts). It took a while to clean up...
  • Botar's death. Crushed to death inside his armor by Makuta Icarax's magnetic power. In one sentence.
  • Carapar being shattered into crystal fragments by a third eye that suddenly appeared on Tren Krom; which is already an insanity-inducing, formless jelly mass. He's a Shout-Out to Cthulhu, after all.
  • Lewa switched bodies with Tren Krom, and Tren Krom is now running merrily about, Lewa is an island, and no one's the wiser. The being stuck in one place as an Eldritch Abomination and none of your friends knowing where you are because they think you're right there, if acting a little off... it's really terrifying. Tren Krom may technically be on the side of 'Good', but he's got a funny way of showing it...
• The "Forest of Blades". Ancient warriors, half-consumed by vegetation, with parts of their anatomy (and their weapons, of course) sticking out of the trees. Worse, you can't tell whether they're still alive or not, and if you enter the forest, you're confronted with the possibilities of being sliced to shreds by those blades or the trees devouring you as well.
  • Actually, you only get absorbed into the trees, which, when you think about it, is extremely horrifying.
• Since The Shadowed One attempted to execute him, Zaktan doesn't have autonomous physical control over his own body, as evidenced by this quote from Inferno. Imagine how horrifying that would be, particularly in a high-stakes battle.
  Horror is waking each day to see every part of your body moving on its own, a shifting mass of Protodites where once was solid metal and living tissue.
  • The scariest part? Not even The Shadowed One knows how it happened.
• Hakann's armor melting at the end of Legends #4 - because it's his own power being redirected against himself, showing that the 777 Stairs are full of their own horrors and safeguards to prevent anyone from reaching the Mask of Life.
• "Empire of the Skrall", one of the three original comics made for the Legends of Bara Magna graphic novel, is probably the closest BIONICLE has come to feeling like outright horror. The Skrall, as villainous as they may be, are hunted down and killed by the Baterra, mechanical lifeforms capable of shapeshifting into their surroundings and just as quickly disappearing. The comic ends with Tuma ordering the Skrall to set their fortress ablaze when it gets overrun by Baterra and with the Skrall fleeing to the deserts of Bara Magna. The kicker to all of this? "All Our Sins Remembered", another comic from that same graphic novel, reveals that the Baterra are creations of the Great Beings, made with the purpose of ending the Core War by killing every armed combatant. After the Core War ended however, the Great Beings realized to their horror that the Baterra were refusing their shutdown command and have continued slaughtering anyone bearing arms for tens of thousands of years.

Characters:

• When the Toa Nuva were unveiled, no one knew if they would be good or bad guys. Considering the weapon upgrades though (axes, chainsaws, claws,dual katanas...) imagine if they had been evil. The Mask Of Light movie offers such an idea, when Tahu is turned berserk by a combination of Lerahk's poison and Kurahk's anger amplifying powers and starts attacking Gali. Sure, he gets cured, but imagine if it was permanent.

  Tahu: Fire has no brothers... Fire consumes ALL!

• The third Karzahni (the land and its ruler being the first two), the plant-creature is also worth a mention. It gets burned from the inside, loudly shrieking and wildly writhing in pain. It's husk is then suspended by its own roots and wines on the wall. True, it was "just" vegetation, but it had a soul, intelligence, and a personality.
• If you're afraid of spiders, stay away from the the Visorak saga. This goes to those too who don't like creepy mutated beasts in general.
• The Dark Hunters. They're the Matoran Universe's largest criminal organization with more than enough deadly, unique and downright bizarre operatives that can share plenty of Nightmare Fuel.
  • There's Conjurer, who plots taking over the Dark Hunters. He has a Rhotuka Spinner that can temporarily steal his opponents powers. He tried using it on a Makuta, who have 42 powers, 43 if you count Shadow. The sheer latitude of these powers sent him into a coma. But what happens if he wakes up?
  • Eliminator. If a Dark Hunter fails in his mission, Shadowed One sends Eliminator to hunt down and kill the operative, and then finish the mission himself. Creepiest bit about him is that he can harness the energies of his Kanoka discs to launch lightning that destroys the artificial intelligence of biomechanical beings, meaning that they can't be revived by the Red Star. He actually did this to most of the Toa Mangai (Lhikan’s team) as well as Po-Matoran Chronicler and Akilini creator Kodan, and it doesn’t help at all that Eliminator never paid the price for his actions.
  • Firedracax, while not exactly a scary character, has an uncomfortable piece of trivia in his backstory. When the Visorak invaded his homeland, he and his friends escaped but fell into a pool of energized protodermis. His friends died while he was transformed from a Ta-Matoran into an armored warrior. However, given that one of EP's functions is fusing beings together... who's to say that the pool didn't turn his friends into his armor or tools without his knowledge? His weird appearance◊ doesn't help, either.
  • Ravager is a psychopath that wants nothing else but destruction and death of everything, and is considered incredibly strong, as he levelled one third of Odina on his own after being brought there against god knows how many Dark Hunters before being stopped. The Shadowed One wants to find out his origins and hire more of his race.
  • Sentrakh. He's the undead primary lieutenant of the Shadowed One, completely loyal and obedient to him and him only. According to his bio he was used by Shadowed One in an experiment to create completely subservient Dark Hunters. He succeeded spectacularly. Only reason preventing him from doing it to everybody was because the process wiped Sentrakh's memory, so he had to be retaught everything. And he still has access to several very powerful abilities despite being undead.
    • Sentrakh's very existence means that Shadowed One knows how to turn people into husks of their former selves. Imagine if he had the time and patience to apply the same process to all of his operatives. And given that the Vahi was last seen in Voporak's hands...
• The Barraki. Carapar is a brutish, almost unstoppable crab whose only weakness is electricity or energy beams, Kalmah is a cold-hearted evil octopus with Combat Tentacles, Ehlek is a Psycho Electric Eel who wants to kill all the Matoran, Mantax is a mysterious loner, and Takadox has a face resembling the Acklay and glows in the dark. Pridak, the leader, is the worst of the bunch; for starters, he's a Threatening Shark. Then, there's the fact that he looks like his face, fins and weapons are smeared in blood. And then there's the nightmarish deeds that he commits on a daily basis if he decided that it would benefit him, like removing one of Kalmah's eyes and Nocturn's arm. Good Thing You Can Heal was also averted; the arm grew back without the tentacle and the eye never worked again. For those who received them in toy form, however, they are pretty awesome toys.
• The Makuta race:
  • Their shadow hand ability. It pulls beings and objects into the user, who then absorbs it's mass provided it's small enough. And it's implied that once someone gets absorbed, there's nothing they can do aside from trying to keep some semblance of self in the Makuta's head. This is how Nidhiki and Krekka are killed, and Teridax tried to do it to Vakama, too.
  • In Time Trap, it somehow gets freakier. When The Shadowed One shows up and thinks Vakama killed Nidhiki and Krekka, the Toa points out that Makuta's body parts are made from their own. He literally broke apart, shattered them, and rearranged their body parts to create his own, like something out of The Thing. And his entire race can do this. And entire race of being able to absorb, break and rearrange body parts into their own.
  • Makuta Teridax's original description: A whirling, screaming monster that corrupts anything and everything and has even struck down the world's god. Depending on your interpretation of that, the Makuta are either demons (With Teridax as Satan) or outright Eldritch Abominations.
  • The ways that Teridax crosses the Moral Event Horizon. What is worse, being turned into a painting, Trapped in a fairytale dream, or becoming the adviser toy of your worst enemy?
  • Icarax being turned back from Antidermis form into a biomechanical creature again; when his armor had long since been padded with so much steel that it couldn't properly fit his organs. Then, when his teleporting power got disrupted (by his own sister, no less), his body literally spread across the whole universe... in pieces (admittedly, they were molecules, but that's still not a nice way to go).
  • Krika. The artists knew this; his first appearance has him climbing out of the swamp and dripping with mud and plants. He's been so badly mutated that he needs to feed off energy and heat to survive or he'll become a ghost. And his mask power can repel nature itself. Ironically, his death was more of a Tear Jerker.
  • The Makuta's chambers. With all the freakish laboratory devices and experiments you can imagine. These range from hundreds of kidnapped heroes trapped inside tubes with their inner good being drained out to grotesque mutated mish-mashes of random animals (even people). All in past tense now, but while their fortress stood, the Makuta had a real place of horrors in their hands. With traps.
  • The Rahkshi. Their heads split open to reveal a slithering kraata inside. What's worse, even the kraata have "splittable" heads and long tongues. They're basically The Juggernaut for most of Mask of Light, and the Toa can only stop them with all six fighting at once.^note These were the strongest of Rahkshi; later ones tended to be weaker.
• Even before The Reveal that Teridax had hijacked the Mata Nui robot, the mere awakening of the series native God-like figure is a horror all of its own. Imagine sitting around on an island in the middle of the ocean. You then hear and feel rumbles vibrating across the entire island as trees crash and mountains rumble something fierce before the island itself is lifted into the sky and breaks into pieces that all slide off the face of...something huge and into the churning waters below as the colossal sized entity gets to its feet for the first time in a millennium. Good thing the native residents of the island of Mata Nui had long since returned to their original home of Metru Nui inside the Mata Nui robot's brain dome!
  • The video revealing the Great Spirit Robot standing up is initially presented as triumphant, the end result of the theme's seven year buildup to the reawakening of Mata Nui. Only for the robot's gleaming green eyes to shift to a familiar red as Teridax takes control of the robot and launches the Mask of Life into space. With the story this takes place in being called "The Final Battle" and the animation simply ending with the logo fading in after the mask vanishes from sight, one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a full on Downer Ending where Makuta wins. A similar scene is used for the opening of The Legend Reborn, but it now shows the reactions of the Matoran inside the Great Spirit Robot.
• Tren Krom. An Eldritch Abomination in a state of And I Must Scream by being fused to an island, and reads minds. And when he reads your mind, you see a bit of his, which will drive you insane. He also is a gelatinous skull with holes were eyes should be, stuck to rock, and has tentacles covered in hooks. And he is the one of the last hopes in the Matoran rebellion.
• Mata Nui himself has a place at the table. Karzahni used his mask to show Teridax a vision of an alternate future where Mata Nui woke up and punished the Makuta for their betrayal. It isn't explained what he saw, but it caused him to scream in terror. What could possibly make Teridax scream?
• Velika is revealed to be a Great Being, taking the form of a Matoran and then rebuilt by Karzahni. Velika did not forget this, and when the inhabitants of Mata Nui evacuated onto Spherus Magna, he took his chance to murder Karzahni. Little Velika was capable of this the entire time, and now he deems both his peers and his creations to be unworthy of the new, fixed world. It's unknown what his ultimate plan was, as the storyline ended without concluding his arc, but given both his status and whatever he did to kill Karzahni (who is basically a demigod within the Matoran Universe), it can't be pleasant.
• Toa Varian a Toa of Psionics is hunted down by the Dark Hunters and separated from her partner Norik in the canonized fan story No One Gets Left Behind by Shadow-Nui. It is then revealed that The Shadowed One wanted a Toa of Psionics to display in stasis and singled her out as his prize. The short story ends ominously as Varian is forced into a stasis tube with the narrator saying:
  Varian's screams were the last sound she ever made.
• Annona, another Eldritch Abomination but this time found on Spherus Magna/Bara Magna. She's an entity that feeds off of the dreams of her victims and sends them insane as a result, which led to Sahmad's entire tribe being wiped out before the Core War. Annona was only defeated by the Golden Being, whose Reality Warper powers resulted in Annona being sent to another dimension full of beings like her that would all feed off of each others' dreams, with the population eventually dying out within a year.

Masks:

• The Kanohi Komau. It controls minds, as long as the order sent by the user doesn't go against the victim's morals. But when the victim has no morals, what then?
• The Kanohi Suletu. Its design makes Kongu look like a zombie, though this is averted with Krakua, who wears the mask as well but his is shaped like a Kanohi Hau.
• The Kanohi Tryna. It reanimates the dead regardless of the damage their bodies have received. Matoro used it to resurrect a decoy Tuyet when she was reduced to nothing but a pile of armor on the ocean floor.
• The Kanohi Jutlin. It destroys inorganic materials by causing them to decompose and rust rapidly. Bear in mind that vast majority of the Matoran Universe are biomechanical beings with a lot of metallic parts and armor. Its bat-like appearance doesn't help.
• The Kanohi Avsa. It looks like a vampire face, and its bearer is a silent, bat-like hunter.
• The Mask of Undeath turns you into a literal zombie. It absorbs your life-force when you wear it, and then uses it to resurrect you if you die so that you can complete the last task you wanted to finish. Its design◊ also looks cold as fuck, but thank God there hasn’t been a prominent bearer in the storyline, most likely due to being Ascended Fanon.
• The Olisi, Mask of Alternate Futures. The already nightmarish Karzahni uses is to Mind Rape his enemies by showing them horrible alternate futures, as he did with Jaller for example. The Olisi's appearance itself is also scary.
  • The future he shows Jaller is itself pretty terrifying - What If? he hadn't pulled his Heroic Sacrifice in Mask Of Light? Well, for starters, Takua is killed by the Turahk, and without a Toa Of Light, Teridax continues tormenting the Matoran of Mata Nui uninhibited. He creates more and more powerful Rahkshi, sending them in waves until the Toa Nuva are overwhelmed and killed one after another, leaving Teridax free to enslave the entire island. The Turaga are imprisoned and attempt a ill-fated breakout - Jaller is Forced to Watch what happens next. Finally, he and Hahli are both reduced to Teridax's personal servants, now too far beyond the Despair Event Horizon to even try and resist anymore.
  • The vision Karzahni showed to Teridax during their fight. He showed him what would happen if the Makuta's plan failed and Mata Nui awoke of his slumber, enraged by his brother's betrayal. It's unknown what he exactly saw, but it was enough to make Teridax scream in horror.
• Any Inika masks in general could work as Nightmare Fuel. They were organic. That's one reason enough to fear them. Then they were said to have some sort of sentience (activating when they sensed their wearer needed the power contained in them), and they were said to shift on the Inika's faces and react to touch. Good thing the Inika's faces are made of metal, or they'd be clawing them off like they were Alien Facehuggers. Add to the creepy masks the fact that the Inika's real faces are also obscured by the light beaming off of them (as a result of their transformation by lightning), and you've got a couple of creepy dudes.
• The unnamed Mask of Fusion, which allows its users to fuse with other beings. Of particular note is that unlike Toa Kaita, the fusees don't have to consent. Again, no important character wears it, as with the aforementioned Mask of Undeath.
• The Mask of Mutation worn by Miserix, which is basically Roodaka's Rhotuka turned into a Kanohi.
• The Mask of Charisma. The name implies it simply convinces people. It doesn't. It subtly changes their view on the world to the point they agree with the user and are willing to serve him. In other words, it brainwashes people. And it's worn by one of the good guys.

Other:

• The Game Boy Advance game Maze of Shadows, a interquel between Legends of Metru Nui and Web of Shadows, isn't as dark as either movie, but still has some elements of Nightmare Fuel thrown in.
  • The Rahi Nui - a hideous amalgamation of various Rahi species that was able to easily defeat the Toa Metru and even fatally poison Nokama, setting up the plot of the Toa Metru being forced to go get Energized Protodermis for the Karzahni (the plant, not the demigod) in exchange for the cure. It's also worth noting that we never see the full creature, just its stinger as it strikes poor Nokama down.
  • The music used for the first area of the game, where the Toa Metru are trapped on the uninhabited island of Mata Nui. It sounds like what would happen if you crossed the themes for The X-Files and The Twilight Zone with GBA static and a weird, droning melody.
  • And at the other end of the game, the theme for Makuta's lair. Ominous and mysterious, the track has been compared by some commenters to the Dark Citadel from the PlayStation version of Doom, giving the same sense of "You're close to your goal, but you may not like what you find there".