As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
Frankenweenie may be a Lighter and Softer project when compared to Tim Burton's other works, but don't let that info let your guard down, since this is a Burton movie after all.
- The Disney logo itself can be scary if you weren't expecting the Logo Joke to happen.
- Some of the character designs invoke this uncanny look to them.
- Weird Girl. It's in terms of her character design, with her eyes that make up almost 90% of her head, and her unusual behaviour.
- Edgar could also count, but not for the same reason as Weird Girl. Edgar has a constant crazed expression on his face, and his hunchback appearance does nothing to dampen the horror.
- Nassor bears a very close resemblance to a human Frankenstein, and his gloomy attitude enhances his dark personality.
- Toshiaki is easily the most unsettling of Victor's classmates. How? It's not so much in looks but more in terms of how he acts. He presents himself as the friendlier and more rational contrast to Jerkass Nassor, when in actuality, being very cold, analytical, and manipulative in an almost predatory way all to achieve what he wants. The bottle-rocket experiment with Bob, and his disregard for his welfare by recording it with his camera, shows his true nature.
- There's also Mr. Whisker's uncanny ability to use his own feces to predict some big future. If he has a dream about you, the first letter in your first name would be sculpted in his fecal matter, and you'd be shown to it. Bob fell into a manhole, Toshiaki pitched a perfect game, and Nassor got knocked unconscious after getting hit with a baseball. And for Victor...
- Victor had to watch his beloved dog die right in front of him, powerless to prevent the accident.
- It's not hard to imagine what Sparky looked like at the scene of the car accident. We don't see it, but it's best we probably don't know.
- Grave digging is already creepy, now imagine that happening with children doing it. Although in Victor, Nassor and Toshiaki's case, it was their own pet, but still...
- Then there's Mr. Whiskers' transformation, as we get to experience every part of it; from his limbs and neck unnaturally extending, to wings graphically breaking out of his back, and all through it the sounds of his bones cracking and his yowls of pain. No way that isn't a kiddie version of The Fly, with a little bit of An American Werewolf in London thrown in.
- Adding in the moment where Mr. Whiskers pulls a Not Quite Dead moment and drags Sparky back into the burning windmill, make that TWICE.
- Though most of them are assholes to Mr. Rzykruski in getting him fired, imagine being one of the people in town square when the children's monsters attack. You have no idea what the hell you're looking at, and in the midst of these gremlin-like sea monkeys there's a kaiju turtle roaming the place. Who wouldn't be freaked out?
- The WereRat's introduction in the form of a goddamn Jump Scare. Honestly, who saw that coming?
- Hilariously subverted with the resurrection of Colossus. Dark music plays and Nassor calls to his beloved pet to rise from his tomb. Then we see that Colossus is a normal hamster and it becomes a deliberate example of Nightmare Retardant.
