Now with a sandbox!
It appears that many Nightmare Fuel pages have problems, including:
1. Listing non-scary things that made the viewer feel slightly uncomfortable at worst.
2. Having spoiler tags on them (which is against the page's guidelines).
3. Listing Fridge Horror and fan theories.
And much more!
On a few occasions, people from outside the site's community have pointed out our overly lax usage of Nightmare Fuel to make fun of us, meaning that it can legitimately harm our reputation to let this go unchecked.
The TRS thread
meant for redefining Nightmare Fuel started to become a place for cleaning up Nightmare Fuel pages in general, so we may as well move these discussions to Long Term Projects where they belong.
Here are the guidelines to determine whether something is Nightmare Fuel or not.
- This is a page whose name is intended to be taken more literally than most. It's not enough for material to be scary; to truly qualify, it has to be frightening enough to legitimately unnerve/disturb the viewer, with actually being nightmare-inducing as the ultimate endpoint.
- Good signs that something IS Nightmare Fuel include if:
- It left you feeling shaken even after the credits had rolled, you turned the last page, or are otherwise done with the work.
- You have a hard time falling asleep if you think about it at night, or have a literal nightmare about it.
- You dread that episode, scene, level, chapter, or song during re-watches, and consider skipping it.
- With that said, don't add something just because it happens to be your personal phobia. For example, spiders can be scary and many people have arachnophobia, but just because a spider happens to be in the work, it does not make a Nightmare Fuel entry. It needs to reasonably be scary to someone without the phobia.
- Don't confuse tension with fear. If the hero is in trouble, but you know he'll make it out okay at the end, it's probably not Nightmare Fuel unless the threat is especially disturbing.
- Good signs that something IS Nightmare Fuel include if:
- Explain WHY the entry scared you. Try to convey your sense of fear to your readers. Avoid putting up Zero-Context Examples.
- Remember that Weblinks Are Not Examples, and neither are quotes on their own. You should explain the horror in your own words, rather than rely on others to do so.
- Don't add things that might have scared someone. If it didn't scare you, and you don't personally know anyone else who was scared, you shouldn't be adding it to Nightmare Fuel.
- Nightmare Fuel should stick to you even after you're done with the work.
- If something is initially presented as scary but turns out to be harmless, it's most likely not Nightmare Fuel since The Reveal makes the scariness vanish.
- Jump Scares are a good source of Nightmare Fuel, but not all of them automatically qualify: being startled is not the same as being scared.
- Hypotheticals are not Nightmare Fuel:
- Remember that Trailers Always Lie: a scene that is presented as scary in the trailer could very well turn out to be inoffensive in the finished work. Only add examples from unreleased works if they were especially terrifying in the previews.
- Fan theories do not belong on the Nightmare Fuel page under any circumstance. No matter how much evidence they have to support them, don't add them until they've been officially confirmed. In the meanwhile, take them to Wild Mass Guessing.
- Fridge Horror goes on the Fridge page, not Nightmare Fuel. Don't add it unless it's Ascended Fridge Horror.
- Keep in mind the work's intended audience when considering whether or not something is Nightmare Fuel.
- If something is normal or expected in the genre, it does not automatically qualify. Violence in a Fighting Series or gore in a horror movie must be especially disturbing or gruesome by the work's standards to be Nightmare Fuel.
- Remember that Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films. If a work is rated PG-13 or higher but would only be scary to young children, it's not Nightmare Fuel.
- The standards on what qualifies as Nightmare Fuel are especially stringent on works aimed at children and pre-teens: kids have hyperactive imaginations, so even something benign can give them nightmares.
- Spoiler tags do not belong on Nightmare Fuel pages. Much of what scares us comes from inherently spoilery stuff such as death and the unknown, so finding spoilers on these pages should be expected.
- Nightmare Fuel is an Audience Reaction, so it needs to be scary for the audience. Describing how the characters react to something scary isn't needed. Just because something scares them, that doesn't mean it scares us as well.
- Nightmare Fuel is a No Real Life Examples, Please! page. Meta-examples involving the actors, production, or behind-the-scenes incidents are not allowed.
Guidelines when proposing cleanup of a page:
- Some rules are pretty objective. If you see a Zero-Context Example, Fridge Horror, Real Life example, speculation, In-Universe reaction that isn't scary to the viewers, examples that explicitly describe themselves as not being very scary (including "mildly creepy", "somewhat unnerving", and other synonymous phrases), or examples that are just scene summaries without going into detail about why it's so scary, you can (and should) remove them immediately without coming here to ask.
- You should also strip all spoiler tags from the page. Itty Bitty Wiki Tools has a tool for that, but it can cause problems, so if you use it be sure to preview the page and thoroughly look it over.
- Once you've fixed the objective issues with the page, bring it here so we can look at the more subjective problems, such as examples that may not be scary enough to qualify. If a consensus is reached that a certain entry does not qualify, it can be removed.
Edited by Zuxtron on Aug 1st 2020 at 9:40:30 AM
Purge it all, including the fourth one (Mundane Horror is a thing, but the trope speaks as if you have to think about it before it's scary, which puts it in Fridge Horror).
Recently, someone added this to YMMV.Dora The Explorer:
- Nightmare Fuel: Swiper the Fox, especially when he steals Dora’s items.
- "You're Too Late! You'll never find it now!" also counts that as well.
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I cannot believe someone found that scary, even the target audience. Torch the example.
I wish there was something we could do to further discourage these horrible examples. Maybe even an approval process, I don't know. This trope has become a ridiculous misuse magnet.
EDIT: Made my entry less rude, among other things
Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 27th 2021 at 5:27:06 AM
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
What section? Nobody has produced one to be added yet.
It was locked because people kept adding misuse and poorly written examples. When we cleaned the page up, the editors edit warred over those examples. Locking it was the only way we could ensure the page would stay in good condition.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallSorry to double post, but I also just discovered NightmareFuel.Inside Out, and it's a complete mess.
- When Joy and Sadness try to act as a dog in one of Riley's dreams, only for them to split up in the costume and be seen as an actual dog split in half on the monitor. This might be scary In-Universe, but I don't remember it actually being scary at all.
- Riley's first dream, while also funny, can count for some. Just silly, not scary.
Rat: Come live with me, Riley. *chokes and dies*Joy: I know I'm not supposed to do this, but...we are not going to end the day like this.
- The stairs to the basement of their old house may be the scariest shot of the movie. They're creepy, but I wouldn't call them straight-up Nightmare Fuel.
- "HI, RILEY! IT'S ME!!!" Explanation This might be startling to some people, but it isn't scary.
- Jangles the Clown is terrifying, with his enormous Slasher Smile, glowing green eyes, and enthusiasm that borders on complete insanity. No wonder he is Riley's biggest fear. Also, he's fifty feet tall in her mind. Keep, but merge with the first sub-bullet and cut the others.
Who's the birthday girl?!
- The fact that he keeps laughing in an extremely deranged manner for most of his screentime just makes him worse.
- That said, there's a bit of Nightmare Retardant during the credits, where we see a clown (implied to be the real Jangles) whose emotions are sick of their job and lament about how they spent years in drama school for this. Fridge Brilliance applies here; Jangles is terrifying in Riley's subconscious because he's likely a memory formed when she was an impressionable toddler — the Driven by Emotions Novelization explains that it was "at her cousin's birthday party" — and the fear of clowns derived from that moment has distorted the reality that he's actually just some schmuck in a costume.
- The quiet, frightened way Bing Bong says "He just wanted the candy" was strangely discomforting. Good thing Joy and Sadness came to help.
- There were a lot of candy wrappers there. Jangles must have made Bing Bong cry for a really long time.
- This is touched on Adult Fear in the main page, but imagine being Riley's parents (see below). They have their own problems with the move and realize their daughter is acting strangely. Perhaps there's a brief interlude before the final act where they decide or hope that Riley will or has gotten over whatever was wrong with her... And then they're presented with the possibility that she ran away. Needless to say no parent deserves a nasty shock like a run-away situation (or worse), and then you consider that this occurs more often than we'd like to admit in the real world. Fridge Horror.
- Joy stuck in the memory dump with Bing Bong, unable to escape. As Joy desperately tries to scramble back up, Bing Bong's hand starts to dissolve. Worse still, Bing Bong doesn't make it out. Pixar doesn't pull any form of Disney Death here; knowing they can't both escape, he jumps from the wagon rocket so Joy can make it out, then fades away completely just after giving his final goodbye. The worst part of it all is that there's no way to bring him back, he really is gone forever. This scene is sad, not scary.
- On that note, the memory dump itself is pretty scary. Especially seeing Bing Bong's reacting to them fading away and then trying to jump away himself.
- The control panel turns dark at one point and the emotions start panicking. Just tension, not Nightmare Fuel.
- The background during Riley's journey to the bus station becomes progressively darker and grimier the further she goes. You'd be concerned that a Jump Scare was coming at any moment. Not really scary.
- Riley's parents are in panic mode in the scene right before she thankfully returns to the house. They just found out she's missing, and that they should probably call a search for her by the police! Her mom even says, "Do you remember what clothes she wore!?" A missing runaway was almost in a Disney/Pixar movie! Again, more tension than anything else. The sub-bullet below can go as well.
- You think that's bad? They don't know she ran away. All they know is that their daughter left for school that morning and never made it there.
- If that's not bad enough, the chapter of the Driven by Emotions Novelization narrated by Fear brings up many of the unspoken possibilities Riley faces at this point. While some are humorously out there, some are horribly plausible, such as "ending up dead on the side of the road". This sounds dark by itself, but since the example mentions that some of the possibilities are "humorously out there", I'm not sure how seriously all of this is actually taken.
- Riley's parents are in panic mode in the scene right before she thankfully returns to the house. They just found out she's missing, and that they should probably call a search for her by the police! Her mom even says, "Do you remember what clothes she wore!?" A missing runaway was almost in a Disney/Pixar movie! Again, more tension than anything else. The sub-bullet below can go as well.
- Riley's depression is both this and tearjerking, especially how very grounded and serious it is when we see it from the outside. Riley isn't just unable to feel Joy, she's also unable to feel Sadness, and as a result all she is Angry, Disgusted and Afraid (Fear). By the end of it, her mind has been shut down and she can't even feel those. We get a good look at her expression by the end, and she just looks... dead. This might fit better under Realism-Induced Horror, if it isn't there already. Definitely nuke the first two sub-bullets either way, though the third could be merged with the main example.
- Fridge Horror: If depression amounted to the whole place shutting down and parts of it crumbling into nothing, it makes you wonder what other mental disorders and ailments would look like in her head, like Bipolar disorder, Schizophrenia, etc.
- More Fridge Horror: So Riley was this close to becoming rather troubled. And of course in real life for some people, some of those emotions never make it back to the "control room."
- In a way, the simple fact that her depression doesn't have an embodiment like everything else. There's no Big Bad force of evil... just the world slowly crumbling apart and falling into the pit and the remaining emotions losing any influence. The lack of a face to put all this with makes it all the more terrifying.
- Each of Riley's Personality Islands crumbling is shown quite violently and, once you realize what it's doing to Riley as a whole, is pretty harrowing. Meh.
- Here's a scary thought: what if Riley's family never moved to San Francisco, and her emotions were left unbalanced for longer? Potentially she would have been a Stepford Smiler for much more of her life, and the fallout when something even sadder than just moving house happened could have been emotionally catastrophic for her, since Joy wouldn't have wanted Sadness to deal with it. All of this is just a Natter-y Fridge Horror mess.
- It's not just Sadness. Joy is obsessed with making as many memories happy as possible, and all the core memories (which, remember, fuel the personality islands that make Riley Riley) are hers, to the point where it is dubious whether the others even really know how to make core memories at the start at all. Remember, Sadness' new core memory of missing Minnesota got a stunned "but it's blue..." from Disgust, and Joy was prepared to do anything to stop that core memory from connecting and creating a new personality island, which started the whole mess.
- Not necessarily the case, as there's no reason to assume something else wouldn't have occurred to make Riley feel sad for justifiable reasons, sooner or later. [The new girl whom her Minnesota friend told her about via Skype would have still arrived whether the Andersens left town or not, so Friendship Island could well have taken a hit when Riley's BFF got more interested in the newcomer than in Riley. Likewise, her father's business troubles would have stressed Family Island, regardless of where they lived. If nothing else, that Big Red Button for "PUBERTY" was going to be installed at age twelve no matter what happened when she was eleven, so Riley would've had to learn to cope with emotional turmoil within a year or so.
- People on the extreme of the personality-disorder continuum (psychopaths) have little or no emotional affect, aren't restrained by fear or concern for fairness, and lack empathy or remorse. Are such people in the Inside Out Verse born with defective control panels, such that their emotions can only watch helplessly as the person they were supposed to guide through life operates on pure pragmatic opportunism and indifference? Not sure if this is even Fridge Horror, but it should definitely go either way.
- It's also possible that they have some emotions missing, and that the emotions they DO have are just as twisted as they are!
- For a psychopath of the interpersonal/affective kind, Anger and Sadness would probably be absent, their roles filled by Disgust (i.e. calculating cynicism and demonstrative ignorance) and Fear (extreme self-protection, rationalization, defensiveness). They might be only locked away, showing up on particularly stressful occasions, but unable to take the controls in normal situations. Assuming that it's possible for them to have a Joy, they might be pushing their person to feel enjoyment from making others suffer, or have no qualms about benefiting themselves at the expense of others around them.
- The track "We Can Still Stop Her"
, which plays when Riley tries to run away from home. The music just adds to the sense of panic as Riley keeps going, and her islands of personality crumble. Dead link, so I can't really say anything about this.
- Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong's ordeal in the abstract thought chamber, where they become progressively more "abstract". It begins with them being turned into jagged, very low-poly versions of themselves, like a Picasso picture. The subsequent transformations are a bit disquieting too, with them becoming first flat, simplistic 2D images, and then turning into completely abstract one-colored shapes. Not scary.
- Just the very idea that we all have a bunch of different personalities in our heads controlling our every move would be enough to make anyone paranoid. True, they're more guides and guardians than direct controllers, but seeing as Word of God confirmed the emotions of the film are in fact separate from Riley in Another Dimension, it can be a bit of Paranoia Fuel. Fridge Horror, and the sub-bullets are even worse.
- One fanfic even has this as a steadily consistent worry for Riley, first starting as a humorous moment but seems to be slowly becoming more unnerving for her.
- People with certain mental illnesses actually believe in things like this. Some people with schizophrenia claim that they hear voices telling them what to do or that they're mind controlled. What is a cute children's film for most could be fueling their nightmares and paranoias for months.
- The way the eyes and nose of Bing Bong look in his dolphin form, especially since it's shown up close at first. Don't remember what this looks like, but I can't imagine it being that scary.
- This one could also be considered a Funny Moment, but Brain Freeze (which Riley gets from a slushie in the film) makes Headquarters and everyone inside literally freeze over, meaning that the emotions can't even move until the ice thaws. This is purely comedic.
Edited by jandn2014 on Mar 30th 2021 at 10:47:42 AM
I saw the Nickelodeon analysis, and let me say that the ad with the creepy claymation kids and soothing music is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBPDutxQKWU&t=271s
I actually find it more strange than scary, though.
That's correct. I do watch RWBY, but very little scares me note . I can objectively observe some scenes are likely to be legitimate entries for someone — and I agree that Volume 8 will have some excellent candidates — but I'm not going to suggest them. Indeed, the Nightmare Fuel page warns people to not write examples anticipating that someone, somewhere, will find them scary. It needs to be written by the people who feel affected by the scenes. That's rarely me.
I have been repeatedly having this discussion on the NightmareFuel.RWBY page. People keep demanding there that entries be added. I keep explaining over and over again what people need to do to get entries added (seriously, read the discussion page and see just how many times I've repeated the same information over and over again). They just won't do it.
If the RWBY fandom won't even listen to the instruction 'suggest an example on the Nightmare Fuel clean-up thread, here's some advice about making it an acceptable entry and avoiding common pitfalls, and here's the link to follow to suggest the entry', then what hope is there for the page to ever be unlocked? Getting the page unlocked requires the fandom to prove they can write proper entries and keep the page clean — if the fandom refuses to make the effort for themselves and won't engage with the process at all, then unlocking the page will never happen.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 1st 2021 at 1:18:31 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.I think that's probably a good idea. I'm definitely not the best person when it comes to making image choices and choosing the best image for a page. But I think looking at Volume 8 to see if there's a better candidate is a good idea.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I'm going to repost my review of NightmareFuel.Wanda Vision
Let's start with the General folder
Edited by Silverblade2 on Mar 27th 2021 at 4:48:26 PM