Why Did It Have To Be Snakes / Fan Works

Various phobias

• In Motherly Scootaloo, a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Tumblr comic, while Scootaloo's guardian Sandy gets along fine with unicorns, she has a self-admitted phobia of their magic.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fanfic Progress, Princess Luna ends up mortified of baseballs after getting hit in the face by every last foul ball in a baseball game due to a spell gone hilariously wrong. Some time later, she watched Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles)^note An infamous Dark Fic about Pinkie Pie brutally torturing, murdering and baking Rainbow Dash on tv, and becomes terrified of all things pink as well. Though she manages to get over that one in time to hang with Pinkie Pie later.
• Similar to the above, Delilah from The Legend of Spyro: A New Dawn is deathly afraid of cupcakes after the "Cupcakes Incident", which apparently involved a run in with the Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles) version of Pinkie Pie (Delilah is a Dimensional Traveller). Though it doesn't come up in that fanfic, since cupcakes don't exist in the universe it takes place in, a letter she gets from Pinkie Pie (the real one, who she's best friends with) tells her to call ahead before she visits so her friends won't have them at a surprise party due to her phobia.
• Rarity's character arc in the Pony POV Series involves getting over the phobia of gems she'd gotten from Discord's Mind Rape of her. Many other ponies throughout Equestria got similar phobias as a result of their own Mind Rapes, including Prince Blueblood being terrified of the sun, Big Macintosh is terrified of the family dog, Sweetie Belle is scared of her dolls, etc.
  • The One and Only Trixie is revealed to have a crippling fear of Ursas after the Ursa Minor incident in Ponyville. This, rather embarrassingly, rears its head when they encounter two cute, teddybear-sized ones who'd be "fixed" by Princess Gaia's Reality Warping. It scares her so badly that it takes Pinkie Pie singing her a rendition of "Giggle At The Ghosties" to calm her down. Understandably, the others don't laugh or mock her about it, as they know and understand why it scares her so badly.
• In general, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction has Trixie be terrified of Ursas.
• In Renegade, Shepard has a specific fear of the alien Scrin, and for good reason: she's the sole survivor of the Scrin assault on Akuze, and got an up-close and personal encounter with Buzzers that left her horribly scarred. When the Scrin attack the GDI Embassy on the Citadel, her reaction to close-quarters combat is to go from her normally controlled and unflappable demeanor to shouting and screaming at them.
• There's a whole assortment of fears in Never Fear the Shadows. Harry's dad was afraid of water, his mother of clowns, Remus of moths and Sirius of being locked up, while Harry himself is afraid of loud noises, with good reason.
• In Mass Effect: Human Revolution, Adam's afraid of fire, and it slows him down in chapter 38. He intellectually knows his Powered Armor is flameproof but he can't control the instinctual reaction.
• It's speculated by some that whoever's running The Infinite Loops deliberately invoke this trope for some reason. In universe, it's probably to help treat Anchors so they aren't as metaphysically unstable. Out of universe, it's just hilarious.
  • The RWBY Loops have the loopers of Remnant mildly terrified of bunnies, though how much is actual fear and how much is pretending to be afraid for fun is somewhat debatable. Notably, Blake takes the time to list off all the rabbits and hares in the multiverse that could be considered dangerous, justifying their reactions.
• In Mega Man Reawakened, Tron Bonne is terrified of dogs until she meets Rush.
• In Boys und Sensha-dō!, as a result of his father's death in a landing accident, Akio starts hyperventilating when he even gets on a plane, which essentially makes it impossible for him to do Sentoki-do, the dogfighting sport the rest of his family does.
• In Takamachi Nanoha of 2814, Nanoha is utterly terrified of Evangeline (then again, everybody from the Magic Side is terrified of her) and Godzilla (since Japanese pop culture ingrained into her the fact that Godzilla cannot be defeated).
• In Drakonophobia, events at Helgen and the Western Watchtower make Petra deathly afraid of Dragons. She's the Dragonborn by the way. The story deals with her Character Development and all the other crap that happens to her.
• The main character of The Twilight Child is unnerved by Timberwolves after a childhood friend of hers was nearly killed by a pack of them during a camping trip gone wrong. She's also incredibly twitchy around deserts, due to nearly dying from dehydration in one twice, to the extent that she gets nervous when a few miles away from one, or even being outside when it's incredibly warm.
  • In a Played for Laughs version, Rarity is deathly afraid of cheese. She refuses to explain why, but it's implied she was tormented with it by a rival. Somehow.
• In Amber Night and the Curse of the Diabolical Pastry Thief, Moodbeam is described as being "downright penntransitphobic". Unfortunately, Amber Night was apparently fresh out of Pennsylvanias to force Moodbeam to travel through.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance, Frederick the Deino has a fear of ghosts.
• A Voice Among the Strangers has Jessica develop a phobia of unicorns and their magic, after being captured and caged like an animal by the Flim Flam brothers for a week. However, she manages to largely get over it by the end of the second chapter, thanks to the friendship of Dinky and Twilight.
• On top of her pediophobia from canon, Asuka has pharmacophobia in Advice and Trust due to her step-mother drugging her with emotional suppressants when she was young. She almost had a panic attack when she discovered that Rei had been placed on similar drugs.
• Wraiths, for Paul, in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, thanks to being nearly sucked dry by a couple in With Strings Attached.
• In both Shadow of the Dragon and Be Careful What You Wish For, Lord Archive is noted to elevate Sakura's Phantasmophobia into Thanatophobia. She hates death so much, especially its abruptness, she's willing to fight fate; something CLAMP has mentioned to be a bad idea.
• In Dodging Prison & Stealing Witches due to over a decade in Azkaban in the previous timeline, Harry is terrified of being locked up. Any time he's "trapped", he starts immediately panicking and at one point destroys an entire classroom during a meltdown. This is especially problematic as Harry doesn't always think things through and ends up in ambushes where he needs to think clearly but can't.
• Risk It All: After being nearly shot dead by Black Mask and seeing Alice get shot to death by an assassin aiming for him, Ren has an understandable fear of guns. The mere sight of one makes him freeze up and meekly fork over cash to a mugger despite having superpowers, and it's only his frustration at being helpless before one that gets him over this fear. Even then, his fear isn't completely gone, he's just not completely paralyzed by the sight of them anymore.
  Ren: I just… really, really, really wish that it was harder for people to get their hands on guns.
• In This Bites!: Eneru's Electric Torture has left Cross with a case of astraphobia, making him flinch whenever he sees as much as a flash of lightning. Chapter 37 reveals that Chopper's therapy has almost completely eroded it.
• In The Lover's Left Broken, Sara, badass assassin Sara, is terrified of... pregnancy. When she learns Laurel is pregnant, she tries to read up on it to help, but becomes steadily more grossed-out/horrified by it, to Laurel's amusement.
  Sara: There's a real living thing growing inside of her basically stealing nutrients from her body and making her sick and tired and - I'm sorry, did you know that a woman's organs literally shift during pregnancy? Laurel has a parasite inside of her body that is moving her insides around. (shudders) Ugh.
  Laurel & Quentin: ...
  Sara: Pregnancy freaks me out, okay?
• A couple examples come up in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
  • In the main story, Misty is afraid of bugs just like in canon, but she also develops a phobia of Vileplume when she ends up covered in the spores of one, almost dying as a result. Oddly enough, she's not afraid of Gyarados, although it's unclear if she already conquered that fear or never had it in the first place.
  • A sidestory focused on Gardenia runs on the interpretation that she really doesn't like ghosts and Ghost-type Pokémon, but when her friend Cheryl gets lost inside the Old Chateau, she braves her fears to find her.
• In Syngenesophobia, Lincoln Loud develops a crippling fear of his sisters ^note Lily is the only Loud sister Lincoln isn't afraid of. after they gang up on him during Brawl in the Family.
  • In What is a Person Worth?, Lynn develops her own crippling fear of Lincoln after he viciously attacks her in Chapter 4.
  • In Shrinkin' Lincoln, Lana is afraid of squirrels.
  • In Irrational Fear, Lisa and Lily are afraid of thunderstorms and Lori is afraid of puppets.
• In this humorous Jojos Bizarre Adventure fic, Kars is afraid of frogs.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Jo hates rodents of all types, to an almost comical degree, apparently the result of a plague-level Noodle Incident.
• Hunters of Justice:
  • While tied by the Lasso of Truth, Yang admitted being terrified of cuttlefish and other tentacled creatures after a traumatic childhood experience. Wonder Woman hopes she never encounters Starro.
  • Blake's fear of dogs is a bit of a problem when she meets Krypto the Superdog and Ace the Bathound, who seem to like her.
• The Bolt Chronicles: Played with in "The Car." Mittens jokingly references this quote when she is jolted awake in the back seat during Penny's first driving attempt. She goes crashing around the back seat area with each mistake the girl makes behind the wheel.
  Mittens: [groaning] Ugh — why did it have to be teenage drivers? If I had claws, I could hold onto the back seat and simply ride it out. I’ll pretend this is a rodeo and I’m on a Brahma bull or bucking bronco.
• Ebony Evening, an adolescent unicorn in Manehattan's Lone Guardian, is pediophobic. When she first meets Leviathan she mistakes her for a mannequin, panicking and fleeing. Even after learning the truth, she doesn't want anything to do with her due to this fear.
• In Gregory Malfoy Lucius is afraid of clowns, to the point where he got rid of Draco's favorite toy.
• Beyond the Wall: All the villagers are terrified of "forest monsters" that lurk outside the walls. In fact, they believe everything outside the village walls is a forest monster, no matter what it looks like.
• Second Bite of the Cherry: Downplayed with Wei Ying's cynophobia. She still is uneasy around dogs, but spending months instead of years in the streets prevented her from being as traumatized as her canon counterpart.

Spiders (arachnophobia)

• In Harry Asked, Dumbledore Answered Voldemort is afraid of spiders.
• Hunters Of Justice: Pyrrha's so horrified by spiders that seeing the spider-headed Fang was enough to cause her to faint.
• In Loki's Family Odin is afraid of spiders due to a prank played by Freya.

Flying (aviophobia) or Heights (acrophobia)

• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Xvital really doesn't like flying. Not so much from fear, but because it makes her nauseous.
• Pokémon Fanfic Pokémpanions: Minun is nervous about using a scarf as a zipline in "Mon in the Moon" and when he and his friends have to climb a wall.
• Returning is a Harry Potter fanfic where one of the first-year characters is scared of flying. At Hogwarts. Where flying lessons are compulsory.

Fear of potentially unsafe places (agoraphobia)

• Traitor's Face: Katara has developed a fear of open spaces due to spending her childhood locked up in a small cage in an underground prison.

Falling (basophobia)

• In the Encanto fanfic "Walking the Tightrope", Camilo is shown to have developed a fear of free-falling since the climax of the movie.

The Trope Namer, aka Snakes (ophidiophobia)

• It's revealed in The Last Seidr that a vast majority of SHIELD agents (including Sitwell) have minor to severe ophidiophobia. This is revealed because Harry, a Parselmouth, summoned a snake (that Thor names Kevin) during a fight. Apparently, it's so bad that, the second the incident with the Chitauri is behind them, Fury makes a note to create a mandatory reptile-training course for all agents.
• Spider-Ninja: Many characters are revealed to have minor or major phobias (Michelangelo is Afraid of Needles, Raphael's claustrophobic, Donatello's aviophobic, Petra's afraid of guns, Agent Hill's afraid of rats, etc). Chapter 34 reveals that Casey Jones is terrified of snakes.
  Donatello: Ophidiophobe, huh?
  Casey: I don't know what that means. I just really don't like snakes.
• In the RWBY Fan Fic Various Vytal Ventures chapter Hide and Seek the characters experience something like this for their various nightmare sequences. Bonus points go to Pyrrha, however, for featuring actual snakes.

Vomit (emetophobia)

• In the second chapter of the Punch-Out!! fanfic Hold Me, King Hippo freaks out after seeing Narcis Prince vomit and doesn't go near him for the remainder of the chapter.
• Sierra, a recurring character in The Kedabory Verse, is canonically emetophobic, as demonstrated in Sanded Down, where the idea that someone may vomit instantly makes her turn away and cover her ears.

Water (hydrophobia)

• Forging a Better Future: Oliver and Sara's experiences on the Queen's Gambit and Amazo have not made them outright afraid of water, but has left them both uneasy on boats out on the ocean. They are decidedly uncomfortable on the trip to Atlantis, and when they see Aquaman summon a Megalodon to destroy an enemy ship (one much larger than theirs), they both go catatonic.
• In the PAW Patrol fanfiction Rekindled Anew, Marshall gets hydrophobia even worse than Rocky's due to nearly drowning in a river. It starts with him freaking out over Ryder and Katie giving him a bath, to then having a meltdown when he gets caught outside in the rain. It takes a swimming lesson with Zuma to help him overcome this.

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