Hilarity aside, the world of Tripping The Rift is notably dark considering the main antagonists are a militarized race of Monster Clown that have essentially conquered and enslaved half the galaxy while on the other side you have a Federation run by a series of MegaCorp that has reduced its population to commercialized wage slaves. Not to mention sentient robots are universally seen as second class citizens. Some individual examples of Nightmare Fuel include:
- The leader of the Dark Clown Empire, Darph Bobo, proves to be a creepy example of Beware the Silly Ones. Despite his hapless demeanor as a Henpecked Husband to his wife Bernice and constant failure in defeating Chode, he's still a genocidal madman who runs an intergalactic empire of Monster Clown mooks. He has a macabre but amusing sense of humor and has always been known to use murder and mass death as a first means of getting rid of his problems. When he says he wants someone dead, he'll always make sure to make it happen and this extends to his own minions. Not to mention he's the setting's equivalent of a Sith Lord with his own customary lightsaber and telekinetic abilities (which is odd since he flat out stated that telekinesis is only a temporary power that Dark Clowns get during puberty while he can use them as an adult).
- When he's pissed off, his full power manifests as seen during ''Chode and Bobo's High School Reunion''; Bobo's eyes take on a murderous shade of red, his telekinesis becomes lethally accurate, and he gains the ability to generate pyrokinetic flames. The whole scene was a Shout-Out to the famed murderous rampage in Carrie (1976) and it's shown as equally terrifying for those involved.
- Bobo makes himself evident as a lethal villain in the pilot episode where he used telekinesis to contort a minion's head into a balloon animal before making it explode into a bloody mess. All because the minion said something that annoyed him.
- Bobo's family is shown to be just as deadly as he is, as seen in ''Miss Galaxy 5000'' when his daughter near killed all of her fellow contestants in a beauty pageant using a variety of deadly but amusing murder weapons. Darph Bobo even spurred her on and expressed pride in his daughter becoming as crazy as he is.
- The entire premise of ''Mutilation Ball'' is this. It's basically shows the worst aspects of professional sports note up to eleven where athletes brutally murder each other using chainsaws and other weapons while trying to take a ball from each other to score points in a manner identical to basketball.
- Gus describes how the players are being maimed for life (if they're lucky) just to sell merchandise like gum and toilet paper to mindless spectators and fans, all the while the owner of the sports confederation only cares about the money he can rake in rather than the players.
- Emphasized in how the owner hires the main characters to kidnap a star player who already retired two years prior for a new game. Even worse, fans sometimes take the body parts of their favorite player as souvenirs.
- The fact that God and the Devil exist in the setting is not a pleasant thought especially when it's revealed God and Satan Are Both Jerks is in full effect. The Devil even tries to actively hunt after Chode and when it proves unsatisfying God and the Devil decide neither want anything to do with Chode after he dies. Who knows where he'll end up when he dies?
- In ''Power to the Peephole'', Six gets brainwashed by George Goodfellow. After she falls under his control, he states that she will love him till the day she dies. This is immediately followed up by Goodfellow's day dream where he puts Six's decapitated head on a wall... followed up by the camera panning out to reveal that the whole wall is covered with his previous ''conquests'', implying that he is a Serial Killer.
