Nightmare Fuel / The Righteous Gemstones

"Do you think they saw you?"

As the creators have dabbled in the horror genre before, it's unsurprising that tense, shocking violence plays into the family's web of secrets and lies.

Unmarked spoilers ahead.

Season 1

• The pilot ends with the three siblings brutally running down Scotty and Lucy.
• Scotty's Devil routine quickly borders into near parody, but his first message to Jesse has some legitimate weight beyond it. As the series goes on and he becomes more and more unhinged, with his hair trigger temper and fits of absolutely deranged rage, it's hard not to be afraid for Gideon.

Season 2

• The Gemstone siblings discovering the corpse of Block and three (one of who was burned to death) when they go to Block's rental cabin.
• The casually monstrous way that Lyle turns on everyone around him that doesn't do what he wants. From abusing his father, murdering his own friends to cover up Thaniel Block's Accidental Suicide and ordering a hit on Eli, he's willing to do anything for his own goal.
• Eli's graphic thumb-breaking finishing move.
• The final scene of the Season 2 finale reveals that, after attempting to run from the Gemstones' own gang of Cycle Ninjas (led by Martin,) Lyle Lissons froze to death in the Alaskan wilderness. A pack of hungry wolves finds him, and it cuts to black right as they lunge at his frozen corpse. Over the credits, we can still hear the sounds of the wolves tearing him to shreds.
  • The way his frozen corpse is posed implies he died praying.

Season 3

• Season 3 opens with a chase straight out of a slasher movie as Eli's sister May-May stalks after Aimee-Leigh, who runs through the fairgrounds shouting that she's being attacked before May-May is hit by a car with bloody results.
• The feds raid Peter Montgomery's compound and Karl and Chuck react in horror as they see a man shot in front of them.
• Peter slices off part of a man's ear in order to scare his sons into telling him who called the feds on him, unable to believe they don't know.
• Stephen goes from seeming like a normal, loser-ish Henpecked Husband to a full-on stalker, from dick pics to slashing BJ's pickleball partner's tires and hitting an innocent man in the face for no reason, doubling down on threats to murder Kristy all the while.
• Not only are the Gemstones' cousins revealed to still be doing Peter's bidding, they also give him a little gift from the Gemstone compound: a stolen truck full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. 5,000 pounds of heavy explosives are now in the hands of a maniac who wants to kick off the end of days.
• "Interlude III" shows Peter's botched bank robbery from a distant vantage point, however he stumbles into view long enough to see part of his face get shot off. The episode ends with him bleeding on the pavement, echoing his wife in the season 3 premiere Cold Open.
• After BJ finds out about his wife's affair, he turns angry and cold toward her, and with Jesse's help channels his rage against Stephen. While a lot of it is still Played for Laughs, Tim Baltz sells BJ's dark side, particularly when he returns home a bloodied mess and in a growl asks Judy if she likes him now. It's unnerving to see such a normally good-natured, timid man turn nearly feral.
• The episode opens with a montage of the kids being abducted by masked militiamen. Their reactions are Played for Laughs but seeing Judy dragged out of her car and Jesse drugged by his own cousin is still nightmarish especially when paired with the spooky tactical masks the abductors are wearing.
• Peter is walking around a grocery store when all of a sudden there's a huge explosion. He rushes out to see a leveled parking lot and no sign of his son, who is his only family left as far as he's concerned.
• The locusts in the Season 3 finale, apparently sent by God Himself. Someone gets crushed under a falling sign and everyone is running in confused terror.