Never has a musical made you feel scared when the singing starts.
- When Paul arrived at the office in the morning after “La Dee Da Da Day”, and gets confirmation from Charlotte that Sam, while in the shower and not near the crowd, was singing that same song. This is the first instance showing how wide spread whatever this was is in Hatchetfield.
- While "What Do You Want, Paul?" is hilarious, it's also a disturbing showcase of just how once the Hive gets you, it's free to every inner part of your mind. This is clearly a very embarrassing and personal desire Davidson had, yet he's forced to happily air all his dirty secrets publicly to Paul's face. You can see why Paul is freaked out as he runs to Beanie's and screams for a cup of black coffee.
- If you ignore the humour of the moment, the scene is even more horrifying for Paul - his boss calls him into a private meeting, demands to know personal details of Paul's life, and then begins describing his sexual fantasies. Granted, Davidson isn't fantasizing about Paul, but that doesn't make it much better, given that he also outright says that he specifically wants Paul to stay and listen to the entire sexual phone call he has with his wife. And if he doesn't cooperate, he's fired. Not helped by Paul being visibly terrified the entire time. It isn't surprising that Paul breaks and runs away anyways right after Davidson says he wants to keep his hands on Paul. That also explains why he's so rattled when he gets to Beanie's - not only is there a bizarre musical plague going around, from his perspective his boss just tried to sexually assault him, and he's probably just lost his job for not letting it happen.
- The near-immediate Dark Reprise of "Cup of Roasted Coffee":
- Four words: "You can't quit, Emma." This makes Emma pause as she's tossing away her Beanie's uniform. Zoey and Nora start to speak in unison while revealing they put blue shit in the coffee turning all the customers into musical zombies like them. It’s genuinely unnerving.
- "Show Me Your Hands" has Sam and his two fellow cops intimidating the survivors they found, thanks to Charlotte stupidly calling her husband for help. Paul tries to pull Charlotte away from them, only for the cops to yank him away, smack him, and knock him to the ground. Emma, Ted, and Bill take advantage of Talking Is a Free Action to try and scoot away, but the brainwashed cops see them fleeing and hold them at gunpoint.
- The all-too-real fear of Sam pulling out his gun and chasing Charlotte around, while she's screaming in terror. What's worse is that in real life, a few police officers were suspected of domestic abuse after hurting or even killing their partners.
- Sam gets his head bashed in, leaving it open and his blue brain exposed. He later creepily seduces Charlotte into releasing him, only to tear out her guts.
- Charlotte (with blue intestines dangling out of her stomach) and Sam singing, “Join Us (And Die)”. They manage to pin down Ted and would have killed him if Hidgens didn't intervene.
- Professor Hidgens reveals that the "blue shit" confirmed that everyone singing is no longer alive. They're zombies that the Hive brought back to sing and dance for eternity. All those people cheerily singing "Laa Dee Dah Dah" and "Cup Of Coffee"? They're dead.
- When Paul helps Bill attempt to rescue his daughter, Bill nearly hits his breaking point multiple times, and Paul repeatedly talks him down from it. Every attempt to soothe Bill is shot down by his infected daughter, who torments Bill with his failures solely out of spite and malice.
- After "Not Your Seed", Bill is convinced that he's responsible for Alice's infection. His reaction? He puts the barrel of his shotgun to his chin. Paul wrestles the gun from his hands before he can go through with it.
- At this point in the musical, it's pretty obvious that the zombies are capable of tearing their victims apart with their bare hands, as we saw with Charlotte (and later, Professor Hidgens). The fact that infected-Alice waits until Bill drops his gun before grabbing it and blowing her father's brains out is absolutely horrifying. The hivemind is sentient enough to use weaponry, and sadistic enough to drag out the suffering and death of their stubborn victims.
- The zombies speaking in unison after killing Bill is actually pretty terrifying (even if the moment is somewhat ruined by their disagreement on what to say).
- Professor Hidgens becoming even more unhinged and willing to join the Hive Mind in infecting all of humanity. He knocks out Emma and Ted, ties them up, and turns off all the security at his hideout. When he is found by the zombies, they also tear his guts out.
- Paul and Emma manage to make it to the helicopter and are convinced they're now safe. And then the pilot opens her mouth...Zoe: Hey, Mr. Businesss. How do you do?...
- After the helicopter crashes, Emma is revealed to have a pole impaled through her thigh. She makes Paul leave her to blow up the meteor.
- When Paul finds the meteor, he slowly starts to succumb to the effects of the musical virus and dances unwillingly. We see his last moments alive as a result, as a brainwashed Professor Hidgens tells him "Your apotheosis is beginning".
- Jon Matteson's acting during this song really sells the Nightmare Fuel. In addition to his creepy Jekyll and Hyde-esque switching while he struggles against the Hive Mind, being assimilated while still alive is a highly unpleasant experience, if his facial expressions and gasps of pain are any indication.
- This animatic makes it worse
; you can see Paul's eyes glowing blue as he starts to succumb. He alternates between a Slasher Smile while singing and covering his mouth with an Oh, Crap!.
- The Cruel Twist Ending where Emma finds out Paul is alive... only for him to keep singing and for other musical zombies to show up and drag her away. All the while, she suddenly becomes aware of the audience, begging and screaming for them to help her.Paul: Emma, I'm sorry... you lost...
- Emma at first has a Delayed Reaction. So does the audience, given they start laughing only to go dead quiet. She says, "Paul you're scaring me." Then Paul starts waltzing with her, telling her that if he had made it, she wouldn't have believed him because people don't come back to life after blowing themselves up. Not helping is he's very gentle and smiling as if they've been dating forever. All Emma can do is scream and try to run futilely, limping because of her leg injury.
- The nurse jumpscares Emma by reaching out to her before dancing placidly. Cue the rest of Emma's new friends from joining Paul's motley crew showing up for the finale.
- At one point (when the aliens form a kickline, singing "Show-Stopping Number"), Emma turns around and screams in sheer terror. The fact that she's looking away from the aliens while she does it may imply that there were a lot more of them that the audience couldn't see.
- The whole song continues the same horror from "Let it Out"—that Paul, who hates all musicals and singing so much, is now a mindless, smiling puppet doing the very thing he hates. It's unclear if it's a case of And I Must Scream or if Paul is truly dead and it's now just his corpse being controlled, but either way, it's horrifying.
- The scripted ending had it revealed that General Schaeffer did save Emma and had given her the deed to the pot farm for real. There was a chance of preventing the apocalypse! One rehearsal video showed her attempting to fire on a brainwashed Paul to save Emma, only for the nurse treating Emma to bite her neck.
- The way that a person gets taken over is horrible to think about, ignoring the scenes where the Hive Mind kill victims, it's shown that it merely entering your body means instant death and possession and you can't fight it off. In the coffee shop people who have consumed the coffee through their jokes can only cough and fall to the ground before succumbing to the Hive Mind's control and with Ted he's shown trying to fight off a infected-MacNamara but it's too late and he's assimilated as well. This also leads to the horrifying implication that the aliens can easily infect people just by poisoning the water or coffee, but choose to kill when they can.
