As an anime inspired by the Rwandan genocide, the Nightmare Fuel comes from the all-too-real narratives of war: Child Soldiers, torture, widespread thirst, one of the most vile and evil villains in anime, child rape camps, animal cruelty, mass murder, etc.
- The realistically-drawn dead cat in Hamdo's room, complete with twisted neck and empty eyes, signaling the start of the show's slide into the abyss.
- Even before that, we hear the cat meowing over an intercom, then yowling as Hamdo breaks its neck.
- The primary antagonistic force in the series is Hellywood, a giant flying battleship led by the psychopathic King Hamdo. It travels the wasteland searching for villages. When it finds one, Hellywood soldiers raid the place and steal whatever supplies they can find, kidnap the children to be trained as soldiers and the women to be used as breeding slaves to produce more soldiers, and then burn down whatever's left after they're done.
- When Shu is first taken away to be tortured, we don't actually see it; we just hear some horrible screams from the bunkhouse.
- Hamdo's English voice. He unnervingly emphasizes the "child" in Psychopathic Manchild. And his Dirty Old Man actions around Lala-ru certainly do not help.
- Anime is no stranger to rape, but Sara's near-violation at the beginning of Episode 6 is near-unwatchable. Her facial expressions resembling an angry Asuka Langley as she beats her assailant to death are the icing on the cake.
- Episode 6. The scenes of the soldiers kidnapping children of a village, rendered in black-and-white stills, with the sound of stomping boots drawing closer.
- The Sarlacc-like creature in Episode 8. Especially how it grabs Shu right while the Tear Jerker violin music is playing. It's a moment where you might expect a Jump Scare, but unlike similar One-Scene Wonder creatures, this one just...keeps...coming...back. And this is what counts as a Breather Episode in the show!
- Fans mostly think the scene of Sara's suicide attempt was beautifully poignant, but seem to forget that she was planning to drown herself in Zari Bars' main source of water. Not to mention trying to induce abortion by smashing a rock against her stomach.
- Elamba's slow descent into terrorist brutality is horrific. This man is essentially the closest Zari-Bars has to a leader fighting to stop Hellywood, and now he's willing to risk his people's lives solely to kill Hamdo, even shooting two of them for opposing his ideas. By the time that happens he's beyond reasoning and is just as much a threat as Hellywood.
- And his past is just as terrible, shaping him into the War Hawk he is today. His entire village was burned to the ground by Hellywood soldiers, and his sister was taken away to be a Breeding Slave, then abandoned in the desert and left to die when her illness proved to be inconvenient. He found her remains being eaten by animals.
