Nightmare Fuel / Hilda

Uhm... hi there!

The life of an adventurer... is pretty traumatic.

Contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned!

• Hilda and the Mountain King

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Season One

• While he is ultimately friendly, Jorgen is pretty off-putting at first. He stares forebodingly to Hilda's house, something even she admits is creepy when she finally manages to talk with him.
• The Rat King, a multitude of rats speaking with multiple voices in an off-putting whisper. It's no wonder David had nightmares involving it.
• The Marras. They are a group of teenage girls with the power to make others have nightmares and their mere presence can be quite creepy.
  • The scene where Hilda finds them has the scene going completely silent while the Marras turn to stare at her creepily and with their eyes glowing.
  • The way the Marra enters David's room: sneaking into his house as a shadow moving in an uncanny manner and with green glowing eyes.
  • Their behavior, in general, is rather jarring compared to other supernatural beings in the series. Most of the other creatures Hilda encounters aren't actively mean, or if they are, have a very good reason for lashing out. Not The Marra though. They joyfully dish out nightmares and isolate kids from their friends seemingly for the mean-spirited joy of it.
• The Tide Mice: The Reveal that the spell would steal the souls who were under the spell and give it to the caster is disturbing especially when we see Hilda's mum and David going through what one could only describe as a seizure.
  • As it turns out, the ritual to send them away was performed incorrectly and they return in season 2, and when a vending machine delivery man feeds them, they latch onto him and rapidly multiply to the point where they take over an entire snack company.

Season Two

• "The Troll Circle"
  • Hilda and the Safety Patrol being attacked by Trolls.

• "The Draugen"
  • The Draugen nearly drowning Hilda, Wood Man and Twig. Even worse is that Hilda didn't know that the Wood Man planned to rob the Draugen.
    • What is worse that the fact Johanna likely wouldn't know what happened to her daughter (or Twig) if she didn't come home on that day.

• "The Witch"
  • The Void of No Return and... whatever it is that lives inside of it.

• "The Eternal Warriors"
  • David is decapitated in battle and dies. Luckily, Sigurd revives him, and the death wasn't all that graphic, but it's still very unnerving to think about. Additionally, the fact that the effects of the medallion explicitly last until death - so if Hilda and Frida wanted to go about fixing its effects on David, they would have had to kill him. Dark stuff, there.

• "The Windmill"
  • Victoria van Gale's Nisse. It never speaks, can sneak up on people, crawl on walls, and can enter and exit windows. Even worse, there are hints that it has sapience, with the way it droops as Hilda talks to Tontu.
  • Tontu reveals the Nisse doesn't belong to the windmill, and that Victoria didn't make it per se. She summoned it with black magic. Cue a flashback where the Nisse is summoned, with Victoria chanting.
  • David spends most of the episode suspicious of Victoria, remembering how she nearly got Hilda killed. Then his suspicions are confirmed when he reads the file of papers he stole from her, realizing the windmill is not a sanctuary but a hub for a strange machine.
  • The scene where Victoria ambushes Frida and ties her up. Frida was about to leave with the book she was going to borrow, and says she'll be on her way. Cue a cut where Victoria ties her up, apologizing for the inconvenience.
  • Victoria is quite serious when she says she's turned over a new leaf. It's just the wrong kind of tree; her belief is that the Nowhere Space can solve the housing crisis, and hang the consequences of black magic. Frida quite aptly says You're Insane!.
  • Tontu says if they don't stop the machine, the Nowhere Space will swallow up all of Trolberg. Hilda and David go Oh, Crap! at the thought.
  • David starts untying Frida, who criticizes his technique. The Conjured Nisse then attacks him, as Frida struggles to free the ropes. David pulls off its face, revealing a skull underneath. He screams and freezes in fear.
  • Hilda tries in vain to convince Victoria to return to the real world. Instead, Victoria lets the second breach swallow her, and it looks like she's merged into it. Hilda goes Alas, Poor Villain and escapes with Tontu. Later, we see that Vicotria is on a beach with the Nisse skull, pondering something.
• "The Fifty Year Night"
  • Hilda saw her past and future self being consumed and presumably killed by the Time Worm, and at this point, despite Tildy claiming that everything is fine after destroying the enchanted object, no one knows if that actually affects the present Hilda.
  • Hilda also saw her neighbors whom she did and risked everything for get killed.
• "The Deerfox"
  • A young Hilda nearly falling to her death in front of her mother. Luckily Twig was there to save her.
  • Twig wakes up to find a petrified troll mere inches from where he'd been sleeping, one arm stretched out towards him. The music and shot composition make the scene highly unsettling.
  • The Wolf that chases Twig, and later on Hilda.
• "The Stone Forest"
  • Hilda and Baba switching places via some sort of magic. What makes it so unsettling is that it practically comes right out of nowhere with the Troll Mother acting like such a helpful ally beforehand (although there are moments where they just stare at Hilda so that could be taken as Foreshadowing), ends the episode on a chilling cliffhanger, and ends with the two not only physically switching places but seemingly swapping species as well! Any parent watching could instantly recognize this as one of their greatest nightmares!
  • Before the credits roll, when the screen cuts to black after a first look of Hilda as a troll, you can hear the echoes of a troll roaring in the background. Traumatic indeed.

Season Three

• "The Fairy Mound"
  • Hilda and her friends getting pulled into the Fairy Mound. It all starts with Hilda pulling out one of Astrid’s protective charms. Then suddenly David disappears. Next thing they know, the land is covered in fog and there’s no sight of the town. All three kids are wandering this eerie realm that seems to be patrolled by these eerie, jellyfish, mushroom creatures. If it weren’t for Johanna and Astrid saving them, they would’ve all been caught by the faeries for sure.
• "The Forgotten Lake"
  • The Spider-Frog. It has the webs and legs of a spider and adhesive tongue of a frog; a mixture of animals that makes it seem like a Nuclear Mutant even by the standards of the world of Hilda, and it's a terrifying Super-Persistent Predator that came closer to killing Hilda and Johanna than any other creature before or after it.
    • While the series had no shortage of creatures willing to eat and/or kill Hilda in general, they at least were either outwitted by her so she could escape, or reasonable enough for her to befriend or otherwise be calmed. Not this thing. Not only did Hilda and Johanna ultimately run out of options and were at its mercy, the sudden friendship that caused it to not eat them was on its terms, not Hilda's. Had it not found the taste of humans horrible, Hilda and Johanna, who have faced down the likes of Trolls and the Faeries, would've died.

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