Nightmare Fuel / born of hell('s kitchen)

• THE defining incident for the story is Kilgrave first capturing Jessica while she was heavily pregnant, deciding it won't do and dragging her to the hospital for a caesarean, then making her waive her parental rights off and taking her away, without even letting hold her baby or know their gender. Just because he wanted her all to himself.
  • And Jessica can't help but feel grateful Kilgrave "only" made her discard her baby, as she saw him systematically abuse kids for kicks and giggles. A kid is afraid of the dark? Lock them into a closet. Or maybe they're scared of water? Send them to swim. And if Kilgrave wanted a more "mundane" punishment, he forced kids to eat cinnamon or slam their own fingers into the oven door.
  • In-Universe, imagining exactly why Jessica didn't have her baby with her in spite of visibly not being pregnant anymore was a recurrent element in Malcolm's night terrors.
  • No need for mind control elements, some men actually force their girlfriends or wives to dump their children. Or the woman will relinquish her baby because she's pants-brown-scared of WHAT the guy would do to the poor little one.
  • Kilgrave's satisfaction when Jessica confesses her baby's father isn't around is chilling. Murder the Hypotenuse wasn't beyond him, and he probably wouldn't have hesitated to force Jessica to kill Matthew if he had been present in this period of her life.
  • And even after Jessica got control of herself and Kilgrave was out of her life, she would have nightmares about getting Peter back only to break his arm because she's squeezing him too hard... and that's just where she let her mind stop.
• Peter barely had two years to come to terms with his adoptive parent's untimely demise, only for Aunt May to fall terminally ill and die. No wonder he got abandonment issues from this.
• Hiding something from your parents because you're genuinely afraid they will kick you out for it. It's already hard when you're a teenager, but for seven-year-old Peter being terrified to let Matt and Jess learn he's a superpowered freak? Double as Tear Jerker.
• Dorothy's panic when Trish drops from the radar, last seen investigating a Serial Killer. And when she comes to Jessica and begs for help, even offering to pay for Trish's rescue, Jessica coldly dismisses her.
  • On Jessica's side, her wariness regarding Dorothy isn't totally unjustified, since Dorothy was a hardcore Stage Mom who horrendously abused her biological daughter. And Jessica really doesn't want to see this kind of person near her too-sweet, too-vulnerable little boy.
• When hunting enhanced people, Salinger systematically preys on their more vulnerable families to make them lose control and rationality. Courtesy of Trish utterly flubbing her superheroic career, Salinger decides to target her. Now, Jessica is still Trish's sister, and even if she can protect herself, her preteen son can't. Needless to say, she's completely horrified to learn this, along with being apoplectically furious against Trish for endangering Peter.
  • Matt's reaction to this info isn't much better. He actually considers letting the Punisher come back to Hell's Kitchen, that's how much he's terrified.
  • To hunt, you needs a target. As Jessica quickly understands, by sheer virtue of being Hell's Kitchen's most publicized hero, Daredevil would have been probably picked by Salinger as a victim. Matt barely escaped this because he firmly put his vigilantism on the back-burner to focus on Peter, letting Daredevil drop from the radar.
  • Salinger finally gets into the action and abducts Peter in plain daylight, right after schoolhours. In front of Karen.
• Peter's nightmare in which Jessica shows herself hostile towards Daredevil — whom Peter idolizes for having enhancements just like the boy.
• The Winter Soldier shooting Frank Castle's tires in order to cause a car crash and trying to abduct Peter. Even worse, the author said that Bucky would rather be "tased in the eye" than let Alexander Pierce do whatever he plans to inflict to Peter.
  • HYDRA isn't merely aware of Peter's hidden potential, they also know about Matt being enhanced in spite of his paranoid insistence on having a Secret Identity. Is there anything they don't know?!
  • They not only know about Jessica and Matt's abilities, but it's made clear that the only reason they haven't tried to 'acquire' either to make them new assets is that the two are considered psychologically unsuitable; Jessica's strength and anti-authoritarian streak means that any potential handlers would be at risk the moment her conditioning slipped, and in Matt's case his morality is so powerful they estimate that he'd try and kill himself the moment his conditioning lapsed enough for him to regain control of himself.
  • And then the Avengers speculate that the Winter Soldier's masters intend to brainwash Matt, Jess and Peter so that Peter would be his own parents' handler, thus getting around the issue of potential rebellion by giving them a handler they would instinctively trust and want to protect (and that's before factoring in the possibility that they'd become Breeding Slaves to create maybe a dozen or so more like Peter to be raised as assassins from birth...).