Don't look under the bed...
In addition to horror movie clips, the series has plenty of examples of these that are original.- Season 1, Episode 1, Amphibian, discusses the association of toads with witches. It starts with a beautiful princess kissing a toad (like in the fairy tale of The Frog Prince), but after she does that she turns into an ugly, cackling witch.
- Season 1, Episode 2, Bird, contains a mildly creepy sequence of a swan in its natural habitat surrounded by images of dancing ballerinas from Swan Lake, accompanied by eerie, solemn music. During it, the narrator talks about pure white birds traditionally being considered omens of death and the mournful cry of the swan giving rise to the belief that a swan only sings as it dies.
- Season 1, Episode 4, Dinosaur, has a particularly frightening Jump Scare moment where the spiked tail of a Stegosaurus punctures through a metal sheet towards the camera. The lighting, sound design and camera angle make it play out like a scene from a horror movie.
- Season 1, Episode 5, Dog, shows the transformation of a man into a werewolf and a very detailed dog skeleton that literally falls apart.
- Season 1, Episode 11, Reptile, shows a python stalking a lizard, and it looks like the snake ate it, but only its tail. The lizard managed to escape.
- Season 1, Episode 13, Skeleton, is full of accidental nightmare fuel. The episode focuses on the CGI skeleton "hero", first unhooking himself from his perch in a study, shakily walking around and staring directly into the camera on several occasions.
- In Season 3, Episode 3, Human Machine, the mime is freaked out by possibly the same skeleton.
- Season 2, Episode 1, Ape, isn't really that scary except when it talks about the myths about monster primates. For example, there's the Batutut of Borneo, a long-legged ape who cuts off people's heads while they rest. Then there's the Pongo of Zaire, capable of taking down an elephant with a single blow. And of course, there's Yeti of Nepal.
- Another scary moment is when it talks about the Yara-ma-yha-who and how the tarsier may have been the inspiration for it.
- Season 2, Episode 2, Arctic and Antarctic, isn't traditionally scary, but has very haunting music playing over its shots of melting icicles and the bare polar wastes, really driving home just how harsh, desolate and otherworldly the polar regions are for young viewers.
- Season 2, Episode 7, Prehistoric Life, has a jump scare when it describes Hallucigenia, a worm thought to have had stilt-like legs and tentacles on its back only for scientists to later find out they were looking at it upside-down. The stilts were actually a spiky back and the tentacles were legs. The narrator says, "Fossils don't come marked this way up." and an Up sign appears out of nowhere with a loud slam.
- The scenes involving the cockroaches if you're afraid of those disgusting creepy-crawlies.
- Season 3, Episode 3, Bear's Cold Opening features lullaby music playing as the camera zooms into a toy-box with toys around it. As it zooms into a teddy-bear, however, the music seems to go disorderly, and a shadow appears above the toys on the ground. The camera zooms up to the top of the box to reveal a real-life Brown Bear on top of the toy box. Even when the bear is on-screen, the lullaby music seems to continue.
- Season 3, Episode 4, Human Machine features the respected hero of the episode, a realistic looking human robotic mime. This thing serves as the source of nightmare fuel for most of the episode, especially at the end. After the narrator says that despite our differences we are all human, the robotic figure begins to laugh manically. It then proceeds to happily prance around the museum as the episode comes to a close.
- Season 3, Episode 6, Monster, has perhaps the most nightmare fuel, as its title implies.
- When it discusses monsters from Greek mythology, it shows Medusa as one of them. At first her eyes are closed but then she opens them, turning an unfortunate woman into stone.
- Later, a hyena chases a bearded dragon into a crack in the wall, after which darkness surrounds the hyena and its eyes glow.
- When the episode explains that dinosaurs inspired dragons, a Tyrannosaurus rex breathes fire, causing that same bearded dragon to run away.
- Perhaps the scariest scene in the episode is when it talks about how a researcher who studied children's fear of monsters found that in virtually every culture, girls are afraid there's a beast under the bed, but boys are convinced the monster is at the window. The difference may be an evolutionary hangover; the theory suggests that primitive females roosted in trees to avoid dangers from below while males forced to sleep on the ground worried about sneak attacks from the side. But that's not the scary part. During the narration, a hideous lizard-like creature with glowing yellow eyes appears with green fog under a little girl’s bed! Then lightning flashes and the boy sleeping in the bed next to his sister’s sees the same green fog and the clawed hand of the monster appear outside the window! Both kids hide under the covers.
- The ending itself. The central room of the museum crawls with frightening and creepy animals such as snakes, lizards, crocodiles, octopuses, spiders, scorpions, and a hyena. The narrator explains that while the evolutionary arms race would produce creatures that certainly need to have things we would consider frightening, there will also be a stream of new fanciful monsters created by the human mind. Zoom into a model of a human head, where a terrifying darkened Black Bug Room caricature of the same chamber is shown. A lightbulb, possibly representing the imagination, sways ominously, followed by a colorful trail, before it is unceremoniously switched off by a clawed hand. Truly the home of the Ultimate Monster.
- Season 3, Episode 8, Natural Disasters, comes close to rivaling the Monster episode.
- There's a brief scene of some Ancient Greek boys being crushed to death in an earthquake.
- To help the audience visualize the amount of ash emitted during the 1815 Tambora eruption, they show ash piling on New York City, burying all the skyscrapers.
- Season 3, Episode 10, Planets, shows a werewolf and a witch since they are both associated with the moon.
