Nightmare Retardant / Web Original

• Up and sleepless at 3 AM because you watched Marble Hornets? No worries.
  • In the similar Marble Bumblebee, Slendy comes off as clumsy, petty, or an attention whore.
  • No wifin in da club, Gimme 20 dollas...
  • When you've seen a few other Alternate Reality Games have the wind taken out of them by people making jokes (such as Slendy just wanting to get buff) or saying "this is all fak y u guys takng so srsly", it becomes clear that this is why MH disabled comments on their videos.
  • Also, on the Marble Hornets DVD; watch the entries with the DVD commentary on. It's hard to take entry #1 seriously ever again while Troy Wagner (i.e. Jay) explains how Joseph DeLage (i.e. Alex) made a promise to go streaking if the video ever reached a million hits on Youtube. And they absolutely RUIN the Totheark videoes in terms of scariness. The boys realize they're too short for proper commentary, so they just put stupid jokes over the top of them. More or less the commentary removes all the scary and replaces it with pure, unadulterated funny.
  • Also, if you're unfamiliar with The Slender Man Mythos, you might mistake Slendy for Jack Skellington. In fact, in Seeking Truth, Zeke even refers to the drawings made by the first victim as "...what looked like Jack Skellington with about six extra arms and no eye holes, or any facial features, for that matter."
  • In the radio interview with the two creators, they mention how any attempt to make the Operator's head snap towards the camera in Entry 6 resulted in a A Night at the Roxbury head bop on the Operator. Cue Haddaway!
  • The whole mood is also a bit lost when you realize that, with Slendy spending most of his times watching hidden in the background, most entries on the mythos can be seen as Where's Waldo?'s spooky cousin...
  • For the realization of a similar concept, see this video, courtesy of Retsupurae.
  • There's also "Trenderman", a character created on Tumblr after someone noted that the faceless, featureless clothing store mannequins resemble Slenderman. He generally shows up just to give fashion advice.
  • Any of the shorts on troyhasacamera, and the simple knowledge that these are the same people behind Marble Hornets, is enough to put one's mind at ease just a bit.
  • There's also the fact that the first appearance of Slender Man online was on Something Awful, during one of their regular Photoshop competitions.
• The Arise Flash Series, especially if the viewer is viewing Retsupurae's Retsuflash of the games.
  • With special mention to the infamous "John McCain Face".
  • "Horror! ...No, that's really the game's name."
• Suicide Mouse is a purported lost animation by Walt Disney that supposedly causes insanity and suicide to whoever watches it. That's why kitty0706 was kind enough to provide you with The GMod Suicide Mouse Survival Guide!
• Encyclopedia Dramatica has a page on creepypasta. However, they also have that page for "Retarded Creepypasta", which were either attempts at creepypastas that fell flat, or silly parodies of creepypastas. (Some of the most infamous being "THEN A SKELETON POPPED OUT" and "THEN WHO WAS PHONE?")
  • Speaking of creepypastas, give Soviet Creepypastas a try if American ones freak you out.
  • "TEH DAY OF ALL THE BLOD" was created by Bogleech as an intentionally So Bad, It's Good creepypasta in all caps about a man who starts bleeding everywhere until everyone gets sick of it and sends him to outer space. And the final twist is that he was YOU (or he was a lady if you are a lady) and you forgot this ever happened.
  • It's been pointed out that the fact that Jeff the Killer burnt off his eyelids makes him a crappy villain; if he comes for you, even if he's able to see you despite never being able to blink or sleep, just put your fingers in his eyes and pull out his eyeballs. Also, did you notice that he looks like◊ a bastard child of The Joker and Barney the Dinosaur?
  • In general, for every good creepypasta there are at least 10 written by people who have no idea what they are doing. You can often recognize them before even reading them. They tend to be of the "haunted video game" variety and usually involve lots of "hyper-realistic blood".
  • A lot of characters who may have once been terrifying have been turned to jokes due to overexposure and a fandom developing around them. The aforementioned Jeff the Killer was a mediocre story in the first place, but good luck ever taking him seriously again after finding out there's a Jane the Killer, and countless others, each one more OP than the last.
  • For those unfamiliar with the origin of the name (or even some who are)^note  It's derived from the term Copy Pasta, a bastardization of Copy Paste. the name "creepypasta" is a nightmare retardant itself. If you were trying to explain it to someone not versed in internet culture, there would probably be a moment they would think you are terrified of Italian cooking. It's kind of like if we called horror movies spookysalads.
• VooDooWop pokes fun at paranormal investigating shows in their skit called Haunted Homes.
• Joke SCPs are a deliberate use of this trope.
  • As for accidental examples, SCPs tend to be much less terrifying if you recognize the decidedly non-anomalous source of the page image. For example, there's one of a large, strange mass of random aircraft parts which is instantly recognizable to anyone who's visited (or even walked past) the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, on account of being a perfectly ordinary sculpture on permanent display, smack dab in the middle of the main courtyard out front. The mundane images are meant to be placeholders of things that are merely similar or put you in mind of the actual object. The real photos are too high clearance for you to see.
  • Invoked in-universe with SCP-2006, a shapeshifter that wishes to instill pure fear in people. Thankfully, the SCP Foundation has managed to convince it that terrible B Movies are the pinnacle of horror. Also subverted. The Foundation has to remind employees that 2006 is an extremely powerful entity with no known limits and that a single slip-up is all that it would take to have it wreak untold havoc on the world. A short story by the author of SCP-2006 also implies that it's actually perfectly aware of the Foundation's very real fears.
    SCP-2006: FEAR ME MORTAL. I AM THE MIGHTY RO-MAN! COWER IN FEAAAAAAAR!
    Dr. Louef: Please mighty Ro-Man! Don't h-hurt me!
  • The community has a trend to use most horrific SCPs to crack up jokes and/or make humorous explanations in the forums\chat. An example lampshading the trope right in the post title is "THE DAY 110 MONTAUK STOPPED BEING SCARY TO ANYBODY EVER."
• Exmortis 3 - the third installment of a series of flash games - is considerably less scary than the previous two. Things become a lot less scary when your character becomes a superhuman that has telekinesis and can cause people / evil beings to explode. With his mind. This is especially pronounced when you come to a horror-filled room with a cannibalistic survivor that wants to eat you. Until you immediately pwn him and hold him up in the air with your mind. He practically pisses himself in fear, and the horrific feeling kind of...goes away.
• This is a natural hazard for horror-themed Play By Post Games, given that they usually have a very crude art style in order to update in a timely manner. Even the better ones only become scary once you've been reading long enough to get sucked in—it's difficult to adequately convey the scariness of a particular section to someone who hasn't been read previous sections.
• H(a)unting is a blog about three people and their encounters with Slender Man, who is one of the most genuinely creepy mythos creatures out there, particularly considering his origin - with the Rake and a second Slender-creature known as //IT// showing up later - and the Rake is essentially the main character's dog, Slenderman gives her candy for winning a Pokemon tournament and brings her a flashlight during a storm, and can not only be beaten up by her but by her pet chicken too. Oh, and she's conveniently immune to Slendy and the Rake's powers and is special in almost every way. In any case, you simply cannot be afraid of a Slenderman who is afraid of a silkie chicken, brings frightened girls flashlights, and gives people Reeses candy for winning a video game tournament.
• In Hyperbole and a Half, the main character tried to give her younger sister nightmares with a ghost story about blood, closets, killers, blood, ghosts, and more blood. It didn't work.
• Anytime Slenderman appears in the works from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. He is usually calling out "Hey Guys!" in a friendly tone (with demonic distortion), almost always has a smile on his face compared to his usual faceless appearances, and seems like he actually wants to be part of whatever Marik and Bakura are doing at the time, whether it be filming a movie or making appearances in their Let's Plays.
• The Vaguely Recalling JoJo series turns the horrifying moments of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure into unintentional moments of hilarity.
  • The scene where Steely Dan mostly kills Enya with Dio's buds is ruined by the Biohazard parody.
  • The nightmarish Page is replaced with the gonk Pesci
  • The scene where Telence shows off his doll collection is ruined by the cameos within that collection.
  • Scary Monsters, or to put it in Jurassic Park terms:
    Holy fucking shit, It's a Dinosaur! Jesus Christ- What the fuck?! Oh my fucking God, Fucking Dinosaurs! Holy shit- what the fuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkk!
• Invoked with the Screamer Prank at the beginning of 20 Haunting Halloween Facts by Matt Santoro. This is immediately lampshaded afterwards.
  Matt: Did I get you? No? Alright.
• If a Creepypasta fails in scaring Mutahar of SomeOrdinaryGamers, he will not be afraid of chewing it out, often adding hilarious images to it. Then there's the "Shit-Pastas" series, where even his reading becomes more half-assed and often broken up by laughter.
• Chilling Tales For Dark Nights' reading of the r/nosleep story "I'm at Your Bedroom Window" would have been much more terrifying had Alicia Pavlis's voice for the thing in the story not sounded like Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls.
• The Thrilling Adventure Hour does this in-universe in the "Beyond Belief" segments. Frank and Sadie are generally too jaded and/or drunk to be appropriately frightened by whatever supernatural evil is menacing them. Most evident with Nightmares the Clown because although Frank was initially frightened, Sadie finds all clowns hilarious, and it's very hard to generate the fear he feeds upon when someone is constantly giggling and asking him to do clown routines and honking his nose.
  Frank: Sadie please, do not taunt the nightmare clown monster.
  Sadie: Oh, or what, he’ll get in small car with all his other clown friends and drive away? Oh, they can use the high-occupancy vehicle lane!
• At the end of Volume 4 of RWBY, Team RNJR deal with the monstrous Grimm known as the Nuckelavee, which ravaged Ren and Nora's hometown and killed Ren's parents. Despite its monstrous appearance of being a demonic creature riding a demonic horse, it's main attack is to strike with its long stretchable arms. While frightening, some fans found it hilarious, comparing it to one of those inflatable men used to attract customers. It gets worse when it gets compared to a◊ Family Guy Cutaway Gag.
• YouTuber easportsbig899 collates examples of Public Service Announcements, which in British culture are rather revered for the sheer unbridled Nightmare Fuel they consist of and which this account is necessarily loaded with. easportsbig counteracts this by adding his own personal opinions on the PIFs to both the video titles and the descriptions. One, which he describes as the most terrifying he's ever seen, is named "I Just Shit Me Pants". Another extremely creepy one is given the following gem of a description:
  I'm sure that, if I were the person looking through this warehouse, then I would shit my pants until my head exploded - and I'm not even sure if that's possible.
• Let's Player Super Great Friend discussed this at the end of his playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club!. He felt the first half was genuinely good Creepypasta horror, praising it for managing to be subtle, taking its time to build things up, and being a creative deconstruction of typical gamey scenarios where the player character is able to solve the problems of everyone around them. However, the second half went too far into over the top, stereotypical scares that he found more funny than anything.
• During OneyPlays run of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Ding Dong Julien takes a jab at the various video game Creepypastas like Ben Drowned with his own "scary" story:
  I have a scary story to tell about Crash Bandicoot! One time I tried to turn the game off, but it didn't turn off!!! Instead I shocked my finger on it kind of. And I went 'Yikes! Wowie zowie, my finger kablowey!' Mother and Father did not believe me. They squeezed my orange juice really badly that day to punish me for it...
• YouTuber Tom Scott tried to build a "lie detector" based on an apparently-never-actually-built 1920's patent. The device is: a dark room, a skeleton with glowing red eyes, and a spooky amplified voice. As a device for obtaining confessions, it fails miserably. One of the test subjects admits that the suspense of being in a dark room with an unknown interrogation device almost have convinced them to spill the beans, but as soon as they saw the skeleton, they just felt silly.
• What Was the COTN Incident? was an Analog Horror short about an odd creature that appeared during a signal endurance test. However, said creature, "Simon", is more Ugly Cute than scary. The fact that the only thing he does in the video is take a bite out of a burger doesn't help, either.

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