You thought QC was just a cute slice-of-life with adorable sci-fi elements? Well, these are everyday people with serious everyday problems, and occasionally the comic veers into the darker realms of speculative fiction. It's not always pleasant.
- Tapirs...but Hanners is onto them.I want to taste your fluids
- For the love of God stay off of Pintsize's Twitter.
- Number 1437. Just... Number 1437. Rainbows are scary in the right context.
- "MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!!!!"
- Pintsize liked it
- Mieville. Oh dear God. Played for laughs in the comic directly after that.
- Hannelore's Imagine Spot about having a clone, and the circumstances under which they might meet. It's still funny, mind you, but it's also creepy—and not that far-fetched, by her standards...
- The guest strip for July 19 '10. Gah. Done by the author of Dead Winter, of all people.I want to taste your nightmares!
- Hanners of all people gets one now assuming she isn't kidding.
- Dora the Eldritch Abomination.
- Fifth panel here. Dammit Jeph...
- Blatantly invoked by Marten's barber's art project. Thankfully it combines this trope and Nightmare Retardant in the last panel.
- The Spider Zone. It's not even so much the spiders still crawling all over Sam that makes it viscerally terrifying, it's the Thousand-Yard Stare on Sam and Faye.
- Pintsize makes a Kickstarter video.
- There's something slightly eerie about seeing Pintsize completely powered down. Doubles as a TearJerker and a sign of just how bad things have gotten.
- A rather philosophical bit of Nightmare Fuel: Faye and Bubbles speculate on the possibility of an omniscient AI, and the idea that our world is a simulation being run by one. Bubbles notes that such a being is physically impossible, since a thing of arbitrary intelligence would require arbitrary amounts of energy, but that could be overcome if such an intelligence weren't conscious- that is, if it weren't aware of the world outside itself. Such a being would be incapable of understanding or sympathizing with the creatures it simulates, which would explain the apparent amorality of the universe.
- When introduced, Corpse Witch seems like a Death Bringer The Adorable counterpart to Bubbles, with a cutesy pink chassis and a simple line-and-two-dots face. Bubbles' retelling of going to CW for help with her memories shows how unintentionally horrifying that "cutesy" chassis and mostly featureless face actually are, with CW obscured by shadow and sporting Glowing Eyes of Doom in one strip, and the next strip shows CW and the encryption key to Bubbles' memories, with her face just far enough in frame to show a single eye and the edge of a predatory smile.
- Spookybot, a being apparently foreshadowed by the aforementioned discussion, is seemingly benign, but the fact remains that they're a super-powerful and dubiously-moral AI that even Station doesn't know about, and during their confrontation with Corpse Witch, there is something very subtly wrong with their face. Maybe it's the slit eyes, maybe their mouth is too wide, or it could just be the context that they're torturing Corpse Witch, but they just seem...off.
- Hanners has a very similar expression when she finally tells off her mother. Just Jeph’s drawing style, or a telling foreshadow of some later revelation regarding Grandpa AI’s experiments?
- Roko Basilisk discovering an extra feature of the new body she's already having huge issues accepting as her own, and now learns is hardcoded to deny her the bodily autonomy to even express frustration.Jeph: well THAT got dystopian fast