Spoilers Off applies to all Nightmare Fuel pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
- Although the story doesn't exactly portray it as a scary thing, but the premise itself qualifies. Imagine it yourself: for your entire life, you consider yourself to be a normal, mentally healthy person, and then one day, out of the blue, you suddenly begin hearing five voices, each with their own personality, claiming that they all can see you and have some control over what you do.
- Chapter 11, Dangers of an Open Mind:
- Riley's imagined version of the Memory Dump. It's less like a landfill like the actual dump and more like a black hole.
- It is revealed that Riley took the revelation of the existence of her emotion people rather well because she is pretty level-headed and was eased into it by believing herself to be dreaming (she still had a minor freakout, but for a slightly different reason). Many people however would not be as calm and collected and would likely Go Mad from the Revelation. The emotions of one of the kids in Riley's class even mention that "Mind manuals say it's happened before"...
- Chapter 13, Hidden Depths:
- When Riley finds out she was driving over the Memory Dump the entire time, her mental distress is so great that the train of thought begins plummeting down towards the orbs at the bottom, scaring the emotions to death that they'll all die when they hit the ground. It's absolutely terrifying to think that had Riley not snapped out of it, all 5 emotions would have been stuck at the bottom, and this time without a magic wagon to escape on.
- One reviewer summed it up nicely:
gamby004: And Riley sees the memory dump. For her, it's equal to Mind World Hell. - Chapter 14, Pure Imagination
- Riley goes to Imagination Land, where it turns out anything that pops into her head becomes reality. Including her idea of a black hole memory dump mentioned above, which nearly sucks everyone in until she gets it under control.
- Chapter 15, Memory Lanes:
- Riley begins to learn about the huge catastrophe that took place during the move to San Francisco, and she is horrified by what she hears.
- She also discovers that thousands of memory orbs fell down into the Memory Dump when the Islands of Personality collapsed. She points out how some of those memories could've been very important to her, and the worst part is the Forgetters didn't even try to get those memories back because "nothing ever comes back from the dump".
- Riley begins to learn about the huge catastrophe that took place during the move to San Francisco, and she is horrified by what she hears.
- Chapter 19, A Talk With Mom and Dad:
- Just imagine what Riley's Parents are going through at this moment. It's only been a little over a year since you moved and your child almost ran away from home, and now all of a sudden one of her friends says that she might have some kind of mental illness. Then when you try to calm her down about the idea, she pushes you away, just like before.
- Chapter 20, Mixed Emotions:
- Riley's emotional situation during lockout day. When she hears Sadness tell her that by doing this too long she could lose her ability to feel a strong emotion, she gets scared enough to want to give control back...but she can't. That already adds a layer of unease, but then we see Riley slowly losing her emotive capacity over the day, putting in less enthusiasm to her words despite having the same tools. Almost like we're watching Sadness's warning come true right in front of us, and like Riley, having NOTHING to fix it until later.
- Chapter 21, Color Turns to Grey combines this with tearjerker:
- Riley worries that she really does have schizophrenia, the console and memories begins to turn grey, and to make matters worse, Anger impulsively blames her for everything that happened. This is so catastrophic that a new core memory is created that doesn't have a hint of joy in it, and it will eventually lead to the birth of a new Personality Island. The only question now is what the new island will mean for Riley and her already fragile mind.
- The frantic behavior of the emotions also is scary. Just seeing them run around, trying to keep Riley from going Depressed brings to mind the panic from last year, only much different, and in some ways, out of their hands just as much as Sadness being gone was.
- Chapter 22, Fragile Mind is probably the darkest chapter so far:
- Joy, faced with a Sadistic Choice, chooses to get sucked away from HQ AGAIN in order to save the lost core memories and get rid of Isolation Island's, risking leaving Riley in the care of the other emotions and too distressed to feel any sort of happiness. And she's unable to hold onto any of the core memories she goes after! As if things couldn't get any worse.
- This chapter reveals the intercom can never be fixed with their current "technology", and damaging it further—which could happen on its own—could cause Riley to hear voices that aren't her emotions AKA TRUE Schizophrenia. Eeyup, things just got worse.
- Riley contemplates taking drugs to experiment with finding ways to stop hearing her emotions if only temporarily. And getting around needing a prescription by using money through her friends. Clearly, getting the same reaction from Fear as Disgust gave Anger when he broke Honesty Island will only bode well for this part of Riley's planning.
- Riley's outburst over her teacher discussing schizophrenia creates a new core memory, and Isolation Island, much darker colored than the others and with a statue of a despondent Riley about to be swept away by a wave of negative emotions. And then it starts pulling the color from the others.
- Chapter 23, Rage and Betrayal, like the chapters before it, is both this and a Tear Jerker:
- Riley's mental state continues to deteriorate as she blows up at Ann, still biting back at her for what happened at Hockey, and refusing to think of herself as sick...which causes Friendship Island to lose even more parts.
- Then at night, Riley confronts her parents about looking at her drawings and going into her room without permission. This lead her to yell at her parents to get out of her room, and scream in fear and anger into her pillow. And worse, declare she hates her family, which leads Family Island to begin falling!
- Finally, Riley ends the chapter by saying she wants to go to the Mind World—but not before she renews her resolve to take medication without a prescription.
- Making things worse is that Mrs. Andersen brings up that the drawings of the Mind World seem like an idealized place to retreat to... which is what Riley has been using it as.
- Chapter 24, What Could Have Been, shows that the story would've been even darker than the final product:
- Several scenes that were planned before the author had actually seen the movie included a Nightmare Sequence where Riley sees a future version of herself, driven completely mad by her emotions. Dream-Riley also would have been the main antagonist of the story, and the author likened her to the Joker from Batman.
- Chapter 25, Layers of Truth:
- Riley's fallout from her day lead to some... problems with Imagination land, turning it into something closer to a ghost town with broken signs, burnt french fries, foggy cloud houses, fallen card houses, and creepy storybooks.
- Combined with tearjerker, the chapter also reveals Riley's Plan B: to never wake up and stay in the Mind World forever. If you think about it hard enough, this brings up some seriously dark overtones...
