Nightmare Fuel / Gotham Season One

Season 1

1x 01 Pilot

• The POV shot of the killer pointing his gun at Bruce's face after killing his parents.
  • The entire scene really. It's one of the most brutal depictions of the Waynes' murder. And it isn't just Bruce who's traumatized, Selina visibly recoils in the shadows as each of the gunshots go off.
  • Foregone Conclusion though it may be that Bruce survives, the gunman was clearly considering whether or not to put a couple in Bruce's head. To reiterate: He was about to shoot a little boy and there wasn't a soul around who could do anything to stop him. (Selina was up on the fire escape and, agile as she is, she probably can't outrun a bullet, so she likely would not have been much help.) It's scenes like this that show just what kind of place Gotham really is.
• The scene where Oswald kills a fisherman by slashing his throat and eating his sandwich. Brings back some memories of Danny DeVito's portrayal.

1x 02 Selina Kyle

• Selina Kyle advises a young boy to "go for the eyes" if he gets into a fight. When she gets her claws into someone's eyes, there are none left.
• Oswald brutally kills one Jerkass college-age preppy and kidnaps the other one to raise a $10,000 ransom. Only the kidnapped preppy's mother refuses to believe the kidnapping is real and won't even listen to Oswald negotiate down. That terrified look on the victim's beaten face when Oswald affably chides him for "being a scamp..."
• The kidnappers. They seem like decent, overly nice people and they never really drop that demeanor. It's just incredibly unsettling especially since a number of real life serial killers act just like that when luring their victims.
• The man Gordon throws down the Bottomless Pit. His screams don't stop, they just...fade out.

1x 03 The Balloonman

• The way each Asshole Victim is killed off: by being strapped to a helium balloon and carried into the sky while screaming and flailing. Assuming they weren't hit by airplanes first or dropped if the rope loosened enough, the lack of air and increasing cold eventually freezes them to death. Oh, and the balloon pops and sends the bodies plummeting back downwards (in one case, onto an old woman who was just taking her dog out for a walk).
• The worker at the restaurant who was killed by Cobblepot, simply for having the same shoe size.

1x 04 Arkham

• Penguin just gets even scarier in this episode in the final scene when he hires a group of robbers to rob money from his restaurant, only to kill them by feeding them poisoned cannoli and taking it back. Yeah, "Don't fuck with Penguin" is putting it lightly. Penguin's boyish smirks as he watches them eat is even more disturbing.
• The signature go-to move for assassin Gladwell is to stab his victims through their eyes with a custom-made pop-up blade.
• Fish's "final audition" for her new singer/secret weapon is really disturbing. She can't decide between the two candidates, so she takes the girls to an alley and forces them to fight each other, giving the job to the last one standing. All while she watches with cold satisfaction, like a Roman Emperor watching a bloodsport.
  • Also, in retrospect, a creepy bit of foreshadowing for "Masks".

1x 05 Viper

• The titular drug is an early form of Venom, ie the stuff that will create Bane. This version gives super strength by pulling the calcium out of people's bones, so that after a few hours they crumble into bags of flesh.
  • Which makes the scene where the inventor spreads the drug free of charge to everyone he sees on a busy street with the implication of hundreds having taken the drug even more horrifying as there is no cure.
  • What we do see happening to the woman who literally falls to pieces in front of Gordon and Bullock... /shudder
  • The horrifying part is how they die; Dissolving your bones won't kill you but it will make it hard for your organs to function without something supporting them, like your heart and lungs. The victims don't die because they no longer have bones; they die because they suffocate to death.
• In the episode, Bruce talks with a woman who's self-described as 'middle management' in Wayne Enterprises, and lets her know that he's found 'irregularities' in the company's accounts in relation to Arkham. At the end of the episode, the woman is seen spying on Gordon and Bullock, and it's heavily implied that she is complicit in not just the Viper scandal, but whatever's going on with Arkham and the murder of Bruce's parents. The lady has no problems covering up WellZyn's dealings in pharmaceutical weaponry. Who knows what will happen to Bruce if he asks too many questions?

1x 06 Spirit of the Goat

• Nygma. If you look closely you can see he gives Bullock a Death Glare when he tells him to stop it with the riddles. Then there's his behavior around Miss Kringle, it comes off as obsessive stalking. What's worse Nygma doesn't understand he's doing anything wrong, he thinks it's normal flirting. He has all the makings of someone who's just gonna snap. It's only a matter of time.
  • As of "Under the Knife", time has run out, and Nygma's fugue-state stabbing of Miss Kringle's abusive boyfriend makes even the Penguin's Psycho Knife Nut moments look rational. At least Cobblepot knows when to stop.
• While Bruce is asleep on the couch, Selina Kyle walks right in, has a look around, grabs something and then leaves without anybody being the wiser. Sure, Selina isn't all that bad, but just imagine somebody breaking into your house like that, while your children are asleep, without you ever knowing?
  • Especially since this Episode was about A Serial Killer going after the kids of Gotham's richest, I.E. Bruce.
• The hypnotherapist has been hypnotizing her patients into becoming killers modeled after a Gotham City urban legend because she thought that the city's rich needed to be scared into submission by having their children murdered.
• The killings themselves. The abductions and the sight of the strung-up bodies are very creepy.
• Anytime Oswald and his mother are on screen together is ridiculously creepy, especially the bathtub scene. It doesn't help that Word of God said they were deliberately going for a Norma and Norman Bates vibe with them.

1x 07 Penguin's Umbrella

• Victor Zsasz being able to just walk into a police station filled with cops, call out to Gordon like if he were an old friend and order everyone to leave as to show how far the mob's power stretches and how fearsome his reputation is.

1x 08 Masks

• The fact that Sionis' employees see nothing wrong with watching potential colleagues fight to the death on a live feed, or that they're all walking around with various bruises and broken bones (and in one man's case, a missing thumb) like it's a normal thing.

1x 09 Harvey Dent

• Harvey Dent's confrontation with billionaire Dick Lovecraft. One comment from Lovecraft, and Harvey pretty much snaps, grabbing Lovecraft and warning him not to threaten him or he'll 'rip him open.'
  • Even in his non-violent moments, Harvey comes across as a little...off. He's overzealous, fanatical and his obsession with charging Dick Lovecraft is reminiscent of Captain Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick.

1x 10 Lovecraft

• He only shows up for the one scene, but Selina's fence, Clyde, is one creepy guy. Plus, he's willing to sell out Selina just to make a buck.
• Ivy's reintroduction, in which the Creepy Child factor is substantially elevated, to the point where Selina - who's older, has been on the streets longer, and mouths off to both cops and criminals - is disturbed by her.
• The circumstances surrounding Lovecraft's murder. In the previous episode, he's introduced as someone who could very well be at the heart of the conspiracy surrounding the Waynes' murder. Here, he's very clearly a pawn and he knows it, scared out of his mind and aware that he's going to die for whatever he knows. It makes you wonder just how far and how deep the corruption in Gotham goes that a man like Lovecraft - described as one of the richest men in town who owns half of the city - is just a pawn and loose end to be dealt with.
  • There are several possibilities to who really runs Gotham, if Lovecraft isn't working for Falcone or Maroni - The League of Assassins, Black Glove, or the Court of Owls. Whichever one, the assassins sent to kill him seem to enjoy their work despite their professionalism.
• The leader of the Assassins claims to not want to kill Bruce because he wasn't on the contract. But the gardener she killed wasn't on the contract either. There had to be an easier way to get into the manor, or even an easier way to fake a car accident. Either that gardener did something to earn a contract, or they need Bruce for something in the future. Turns out to be the latter as the Court of Owls has plans for Bruce.

1x 11 Rogue's Gallery

• Inmate Jack Gruber, or The Electrocutioner. His appearance alone during the interrogation is unsettling enough with his Dissonant Serenity. While his rap sheet alone^note rape and murder is enough to unnerve most, his reveal as the Villain of the Week turns him into a full-on threat.
  • And his method for experimenting with the inmates at Arkham? Electroshock therapy. And how he does it? By jamming needles into the frontal lobes of the inmate and shocking them to the point where they can't even speak. And with each inmate, his methods improve.
  • And he manages to escape Arkham due to his most successful experiment. And he manages to gloat about his victory in the form of a letter directed specifically to Gordon.
• Dorothy Duncan. At the age of sixteen, she poisoned five kids with poison candy claiming it was for homework. And we don't even know that she was an inmate of Arkham Asylum until the last ten minutes of the show. Once Arkham re-opened, she posed as a member of Arkham's staff. She was thought to be the Villain of the Week until it was revealed that she was also given electroshock therapy by Gruber.

1x 12 What the Little Bird Told Him

• Falcone's Tranquil Fury upon learning the truth about Liza, before slowly choking the life out of her. He gets so many Affably Evil moments that it comes as quite a shock.
  • At one point during her strangulation, you can actually hear the bones in her neck crack...

1x 13 Welcome Back, Jim Gordon

• Fish being tortured by having a plastic bag put over her head.

1x 15 The Scarecrow

• The episode begins with Gerald and Johnathan Crane attacking an innocent man in his own home. The moment the man enters the room, you can see Gerald's shadow in the background, waiting for the kill.
  • We later find out that they not only killed him, they sliced open his side and took out his adrenal glands. There's also a rather graphic scene showing Gerald squeezing the juice out of the glands and mixing it into his fear drug.
  • Afterwards, he injects himself with a dose of the drug and hallucinates seeing his (dead) wife coming down the stairs while a path of flames forms behind her.
  • Gerald injects his son with the drug twice in order to help him control his fear. After the second dosage, Johnathan looks up to see his own scarecrow peering down at him with a glowing, almost-demonic face◊. Gordon eventually saves him and he's sent to the hospital immediately, but the drug had left him in a state of constant fear, and at the end of the episode, he imagines seeing a monstrous (and very familiar-looking) scarecrow rising from his bed and lunging at him.

1x 16 The Blind Fortune Teller

• Jerome is incredibly unsettling once his true nature is revealed. Considering who he might end up becoming, it's only appropriate.
  • He's "merely" unsettling before the reveal. The way he talks matter-of-factly to Gordon about his own mother sleeping around was a huge red flag.
  • The moment his tears turn to laughter is so smooth, yet so sudden... The mask just drops.
  • Just the mere fact that he does a near spot-on impression of Jack Nicholson's Joker is creepy enough. With Heath Ledger's laugh as inspiration for his own.
• Fish Mooney calling the captors' bluff by convincing her fellow hostages to deny the captors the next victim for body parts... by killing the victim before the captors could take him away for harvesting.
• As if Zsasz needed to be any more horrifying than he already was, it turns out Butch is still alive, except that he's... changed. Unless it's some kind of ruse, it seems Victor has tortured and broke him into complete subservience and willingness to follow even the most humiliating orders.

1x 17 Red Hood

• The incredibly disturbing scene where Fish Mooney pulls her eye out with a spoon and stomps on it with her foot. It's one of the most gruesome scenes in the show, to date!
• The implication that a simple red hood can give anyone in Gotham the impulse to commit crimes... and that we might not have met its true owner yet.
• Alfred getting stabbed by his old friend Reggie, although more heartbreaking than nightmarish. It's still scary that in Gotham's world, your friends can turn on you like that.
  • Then we find out that Reggie is on the payroll of the Board of Wayne Enterprises. He was sent to see how much Bruce dug up, and stab Alfred. It's clear they aren't taking any chances: they want Bruce - a twelve-year old boy - out of the picture.
• Oswald - and the audience - seeing the full effect of Zsasz' brainwashing when he wants to make a toast with Butch to Fish Mooney, only for Butch to turn around and dismissively say that Fish 'got what she deserved.' It's frightening to see and hear such a thing from someone who was so loyal to Fish Mooney that he killed his childhood friend because he got in her way.

1x 18 Everyone Has a Cobblepot

• The scene where Dr. Dulmacher (A.K.A. the Dollmaker) shows Fish an example of his twisted experiments. He surgically removed every part of his manager's body and and stitched on replacement parts, which previously belonged to OTHER VICTIMS. As a result, he turned into a disturbing, Frankenstein-like monstrosity. That scene was made worse since the manager was played by Jeffrey Combs, who played Dr. Vannacutt in House on Haunted Hill (1999), as well as Herbert West in Re-Animator. Very unsettling to see him on the other side of the operating table.
• The revelation about what happened to Loeb's wife. Their daughter murdered her because she thought it was her turn to sing and not her mother's. The way it was revealed, with the necklace of dead birds, was spooky.
• When Penguin offers a single train ticket to Arizona to the elderly couple working for Loeb, the wife beats and strangles her husband to death. Penguin then reveals that he lied about having a ticket and just wanted to save a shotgun shell before shooting her.

1x 19 Beasts of Prey

• The serial killer in this episode (nicknamed 'The Ogre' among the GCPD), who abducts women for weeks or months at a time, keeps them hostage in his loft until they do something he doesn't approve of, and then he slaughters them and dumps their bodies. His last victim was murdered because she overcooked his lamb dinner.
  • What makes the Ogre so terrifying is that if he gets even a hint that a GCPD officer is investigating him, he targets their loved ones in the same way. As a result, only a handful of senior detectives know of his existence, the press and the rest of Gotham kept ignorant. That's right: in a city overrun with violence and mob bosses and corruption, it's this guy that nobody in law enforcement will go after.
    • Then there's the fact that Commissioner Loeb made sure that Gordon would get the cold case, knowing he would go after the Ogre with his usual gung-ho attitude and probably get Lee killed as a result. Loeb is willing to let an innocent woman be abducted, tortured and killed just to teach Gordon a lesson.
• Selina killing Reggie when he threatens to tell his employers that Bruce is on to them.
  • Hell, the fact that Bruce himself was this close to doing it himself, only stopping at the last moment.

1x 20 Under the Knife

• The Ogre's interactions with Barbara. He contacts her so he can kill her, but once he realizes that she's no longer with Gordon and sees just how bitter and lost she is, he begins to...beguile her into his way of thinking. He shows her his dungeon at the end of the episode, and the last shot is of them turning to each other and smiling.
• Edward killing Miss Kringle's abusive boyfriend. He was already on his way to a breakdown, and as he stares at the body, he alternates between muttering 'Oh dear' in horror at what he's done and giggling.
  • The fact he does so beneath some elevated train tracks, as a passing train throws down sparks that illuminate the scene like lightning-flashes, make it all the more surreal. It's like we're looking into Nygma's own reeling brain, neurons short-circuiting erratically from what he's just done and is still doing.
• After comforting his terrified mother after Maroni snaps at her and revealed her son's true nature to her, Penguin receives a glass bouquet of roses from Maroni meant for his mother. He tells the deliveryman to give Maroni his graphic death threat before dropping the bouquet onto the floor and shattering it. Penguin slams the door, but decides to tell Maroni himself, opens it, snatches up a glass shard from the broken bouquet and stabs the deliveryman in the neck.

1x 21 The Anvil or the Hammer

• Oswald deciding to jump-start a gang war by having his goons kill Maroni....except he sabotaged the weapons they hid the bar where the hit was suppose to take place. And to top it all off, they were Falcone's goons. What follows it some of the bloodiest carnage ever seen in Gotham.
• Edward finally developing his dark side. He chops up Officer Dougherty's body limb by limb, and successfully disposes of it without anyone knowing the wiser. He even gets a hold of his skull (through the eye sockets no less!) and taunts it, right before stuffing it into a bag and smashing it to pieces with a hammer.
• The Ogre killing Barbara's parents with a knife. Also counts as a Tearjerker.
• After Barbara's parents are killed, she appears to have completely mentally snapped.
  • Either that, or she's drugged out of her mind after drinking what the Ogre claimed was water, and she will snap when it wears off and she realizes her own doped-up suggestion got her parents killed.

1x 22 All Happy Families Are Alike

• The Alone with the Psycho scene between Barbara and Leslie. The scene is creepy even before Barbara goes Ax-Crazy!
  • After she goes crazy, Leslie rushes to the restroom to hide, and Barbara manages to break a patch through the door with a fireplace poker. During her following struggle with Leslie, Barbara even manages to smack her around a few times, nearly killing her before Leslie gets the upper hand and knocks her out.
  • The Reveal that Barbara killed her own parents and not the Ogre as originally believed. She had bought into the Ogre's mindset well before Gordon and Bullock showed up to rescue her.
• Edward's Villainous Breakdown after Kringle grows suspicious of Dougherty's disappearance. He madly begins talking to himself while the voices of those who badmouthed or disrespected him begin booming in his head. At the end, he shoots an insane, twisted gaze right at the camera.
• Kringle seems a lot more interested in Edward when she thought that he was involved in Dougherty's disappearance.
• Penguin's breakdown is just as terrifying, if not more. He's spent a great portion of the finale cowering in fear and begging for forgiveness, and after Fish kills Maroni, he disappears before showing back with a machine gun, mowing down Fish's soldiers before headshotting the last one surviving with a dropped pistol he found right after. He's finally snapped and ready to kill Fish once and all.
  Penguin: FIIIIISSSSHHHHH!!!