The Dreaded / Web Original

• Achievement Hunter as a group, makes a lot of people nervous in the Rooster Teeth offices due to their size, tendencies for destructive chaos that spreads outside of their office, and the disturbing number of projectiles and weapons in their possession. Individually, their members are fairly harmless in non-AH projects, but as a collective, makes people nervous. Case in point? Michael Jones offered Chad James a taco as a snack, but Chad had politely declined due to other lunch plans. In retaliation, Achievement Hunter stole and hid Chad's desk. Some time after that incident, Achievement Hunter dragged Chad around with them to offer tacos to the rest of the Rooster Teeth offices. Some were skeptical and nervous of the offerings, but took the tacos after Chad begged them to, with one fellow employee ending her phone call with, "I gotta go, Achievement Hunter's here."
• The Red Robes from The Adventure Zone: Balance are the mages responsible for creating the Grand Relics. They're originally believed to be dead, but then one shows up. The Director makes it very clear to the party that they are not going to win in a fight against one of these things if they show up, and instructs them to run away as fast as they can should one appear. Subverted in that the Red Robes are actually good people, and the one who shows up wants to help the party, because they're all Red Robes too, and so is the Director.
• Atop the Fourth Wall: Lord Vyce. Interestingly, virtually no one except Vyce himself has heard of the far more dangerous Entity he was battling. Presumably because he's the only one to ever survive an encounter with it.
• Channel Awesome:
  • Linkara, at least according to The Nostalgia Critic.
    "Keep your voice down, Sci-Fi Guy! He can smell geek!"
  • Hyper Fangirl has made Critic drop to the floor in fear of her several times. Her responses to this are usually anger or excitement.
• Most Memetic Badass-type sites use this trope, the most famous being Chuck Norris Facts. When God said "let there be light", Chuck Norris said "Say please."
• In Citadel there is a man called Monster. He got the name by slaughtering a bunch of random people and then forcing the lone survivor to record an answer to a simple question. Despite not having any obvious powers, though there's lots of theories, he's so feared that even the Citadel's most famous operative shudders at the thought of facing him again.
• Discussed by CJ DaChamp. According to CJ, Black Air Force Energy is when someone shows no respect for their opponents or engages in a Curb-Stomp Battle against people who stand in their way. As such, CJ likes it when characters strike fear into the hearts of ordinary people, and it's a definite Author Appeal for CJ to watch someone showing disrespect to an opponent.
• Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Adaptational Badassery has turned him into an abomination stronger than any other character in the whole show, and everyone knows it. And those who don't know quickly get taught via a quick lesson in his "pecking order" that usually involves getting thrown off the miles-high Lookout at the very least.
  • Not as much, but the Ginyu Force, Freeza and even Goku qualify!
• Dream is this for the hunters (his friends George, Sapnap, & Bad) in his Minecraft Manhunt series (and yes, it's Dream who's this trope and not the hunters), and for good reason. Whenever they corner Dream he almost always has a plan in place to counter them, and they die in increasingly elaborate ways. In the early days of Manhunt the hunters were only worried about Dream when he got enhanced gear like full iron armor and/or a diamond sword. Nowadays, him simply getting wood is enough cause for mass panic. The hunters have gone from being able to handle Dream solo to instantly giving up hope whenever Dream so much as gets one of them alone, to the point that in one episode, Dream gets Sapnap alone and George immediately declares Sapnap as good as dead, refusing to even consider fighting Dream as well.
• Fire Emblem on Forums: A good many examples exist in the countless roleplays under the FEF umbrella, but there are some stand-out ones:
  • Chains of Horai: The Empress, and not for no reason. The Cursed literally cannot fight her, as she possesses the power to force them to follow her commands due to being the God to their Zodiac animals, the Imperial Seal in her possession allows her to negate the use of Gnosis against her, and for everyone else, she is a Master Swordsman capable of curbstomping anyone in her way. Not for no reason is the first reaction to seeing her take the battlefield is Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  • Whereabouts of Drink and Coin: The Wharf Street Warriors, being the third strongest adventuring guild in the entire city, is this to just about anyone who realises they're fighting them. The Boss, their leader, is even more dreaded.
• Hazbin Hotel: Alastor the Radio Demon was a common-or-garden serial killer from the 1920s; then he died, went to Hell, and somehow gained enough power to wipe out all the major players in Hell's constant turf wars, broadcasting every single killing spree over the radio. As a result, everyone in Hell's terrified of him: one tie-in comic shows him walking down the street while crowds part to get out of his way. Luckily, he's on Charlie's side, albeit for his own amusement.
• In Team Four Star's Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, Hellsing's in-house reaction to learning that the Paladin Alexander Anderson has been dispatched is boiled down to:
  Walter: Alexander Anderson.
  Sir Integra: ...oh, fuck all kinds of duck.
• In a manner of speaking, Shishiro Botan is this within hololive whenever there's a gaming competition on and she's present. This is because she is perhaps the most dangerous and competitive gamer in their ranks. It doesn't matter what genre and it doesn't matter if she's just goofing off, whichever team she's on is likely to win and she is likely to carry them to victory.
  • Hoshimachi Suisei is also known for being dangerous and competitive, but also combines it with a healthy dose of Comedic Sociopathy.
  • Inugami Korone has this reputation in the Holo no Graffiti shorts: whenever she is angered, someone is bound to get hurt.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device reminds us just how utterly terrifying primarchs are to the non-humans of the universe. The Masque of Slaanesh is a powerful daemonette who is gleeful at the prospect of fighting the prestigious Catachan Jungle Fighters, and only mildly annoyed at the appearance of the venerated Space Marines. When Corvus Corax arrives on the scene as well, all she can do is briefly stammer in terror before fleeing the battle entirely.
  "Y-you're a child of the Anathema...!"
• Life SMP:
  • In general:
    • In every season, the Red Names. While they're not the only ones on the server with the capability to kill, they are the only ones allowed to initiate PVP,^note excluding Season 4, where Yellow Lives are allowed to do so under limited conditions, and have killing everyone else as their explicit goal.
    • In Seasons 2 and 4, the Boogeyman also fills this role. At least one player is assigned this role each session, and they have until the end of the day to kill another non-Red player, or suffer from a grave penalty relating to their lives.^note In Season 2, they have all but one of their lives taken away, leaving them on Red; in Season 4, they lose up to a third of their original life-time. It's basically the concept of the Reds but with an extra layer of Paranoia Fuel, as the Boogeyman can be literally anyone, and you won't know who until they cave someone's head in.
  • In terms of individual players:
    • In Season 2, Etho is this to Grian and Joel. They are terrified of him, and target him relentlessly to take him out of the game as soon as possible. This is before all the jokes about him being "washed up" start coming in two seasons later.
    • In Season 4, Pearl attempts this on Day 4 by prematurely switching to her Scarlet Pearl skin to incite some fear in her server-mates, riding off of her reputation of Sanity Slippage from the previous season. However, by this point, the server has long given in to chaos, with people dying in droves even before the Boogeyman gets picked for the session, so the impact from her appearance is lost in the series.
      Pearl: I was just trying to mess up some minds a little bit, but everyone's already lost 'em!
• In Mahu's "Second Chance", the galaxy holds a lot of species and empires which are dreaded by their neighbours. The Biluan Mind, a Hive Mind whose only objective seems to be to devour all life in the galaxy, is just one example.
• Mario Brothers has King Koopa, who is portrayed as a terrifying, nigh-unstoppable villain.
• In the Noob webseries and comic, Dark Avenger is heavily implied to have been the most feared Player Killer of the game before he got in his Mistaken for Badass situation with Sparadrap. The Game Master seen in the comic shows his "Wanted!" Poster alongside two other ones, which are for Tenshirock and Ash.
• The Meta from Red vs. Blue. Given its utterly ruthless demeanour in battle, the massive gun it carries, and the the variety of additional abilities it can avail of from the AI Fragments that it captured, it's understandable why the first instinct that many of the main characters who come across it is to run for the hills. It even manages to go toe-to-toe with Tex, who's renowned in the series as being a badass One Woman Army.
• Near the end of Ruby Quest, one of the most dangerous and insane mutants is found crying in a corner because Ace is coming.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-173 is a living sculpture that kills its victims when they break eye contact with it. What puts it firmly in this category, however, is that 682, the regenerating lizard that just doesn't die and hates all life on earth, only yelped in what appeared to be terror and stared at it for hours when put in the same room, growing new eyes when they were shot out so 173 could do its thing. When you scare the crap out of this thing, you know you're feared.
  • From Dr. Clef's 001 Proposal, this is a creature so powerful that Able refuses to go anywhere near it.
  • SCP-557 isn't an artifact but a location, an ancient prison somewhere in the desert that used to hold something horrible and only referred to as "bastard son of Apep" (see the Mythology folder). Used to.
• The Slender Man is a walking Brown Note, a living Meaningful Background Event and the single most terrifying Invincible Villain of all time. He also looks creepy as hell. Understandably, no one goes near him willingly. Maybe.
• Technoblade was widely reputed to be one of the best PVPers in the Minecraft community; it's no surprise many opponents were terrified to face against him in structured PVP fights.
  • This carried across to his persona on the Dream SMP as well, where his joining the server was met with a collective Oh, Crap! from everyone who wasn't aware he'd be joining, and his combat prowess during Minecraft Mondays prior to the events of the SMP reportedly left Quackity's persona on the SMP, who was one of the victims of Techno's rampages during Minecraft Mondays, permanently traumatized.
• Less eldritch-y, but Todd in the Shadows visibly sinks lower every time The Nostalgia Chick tries to get him to spend time with her. Considering some of the things she's done, his fear is very justified.
• Whateley Universe: The Dragonslayers, a terrifyingly effective group of military or paramilitary soldiers who are reputed to be ruthless Cape Busters and mutant hunters. While the truth about the EQUALIZER force is a good deal more complex, their ability to take down superpowered threats using mostly baseline technology (and powers with only limited combat value , in the case of Highjacker, Heckel, and Jekyll) fully justified that fear.
  • Demons and Mythos Beings in general, especially given that the more powerful they are, the more likely their very presence is to serve as a Brown Note. When even a small part of major demon BKCRMWDJVG is let onto Earth, it causes insanity and terror just by revealing its true appearance.
• Endbringers and Class S supervillains in Worm have this status: Nilbog and the members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Of the latter, Jack Slash's superpower (being able to extend the cutting edges of his knives to a near-unlimited range) is not nearly as frightening as his ability to pull together a team of the most murderous sociopaths in the world and terrorize entire cities with them.
  • Among the Slaughterhouse Nine, there is one who inspires more dread than any other, even within their ranks: Gray Boy. He doesn't kill his victims, but for a few thousand years they'll wish he had. When Jack decided to have all the past members cloned by a factor of nine each, Gray Boy was the sole exception. Bonesaw guesses that one Gray Boy is all Jack could hope to control.
  • When he was running the Nine, King held this position.
  • Skitter is also starting to be added to the list by some circles, due to her creative use of her power and propensity for winning fights that are way out of her league.
  • Lung was strong enough to fight off entire cape teams on his own and was the main reason the ABB gained significant power in Brockton Bay. Nobody really wants to fight a guy who can go toe to toe with Leviathan and walk away.
  • Contessa, also known as "the bogeyman" of the cape world. Every single person who has ever gone up against her, no matter how powerful, has lost badly without doing any damage to her, and she's feared as a parahuman assassin that nobody can evade or defeat.
    Skitter: Her classification?
    Prefab: Thinker. Don't worry about the number; just run.
  • The most feared of all is the Sleeper. When he portals to another world and "subsumes" it, everyone simply writes it off as a lost cause. Khepri, having gathered every cape she can find in every universe and the Endbringers to her service, sees him sitting peacefully on a lawn chair and decides to leave him alone.

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