Nightmare Fuel cleanup and maintenance

What about the ones that are left? Say, the one from his Hercules video- those ones all have context, but I feel like they're shoehorns, as those moments really aren't all that scary.

I think anything without context can go. As for the stuff with context...

Hercules: It's for sure an irritating noise, but I don't really see how it's scary. Maybe keep, but probably not.

Goosebumps: Played for laughs. Cut.

Pokemon Bootleg: I guess the creepy atmosphere and music could be scary for some? Weak keep.

Food Fight: The line is loud, but I'd put it in the same category as the Hercules one: irritating but not really scary. Possible keep.

Sega mascot: Explicitly Fridge Horror. Cut.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: It's a joke. Cut.

Conker: Unsure, but it sounds pretty weak.

Winter's Tale: I'm not familiar with this one. Possible keep? The Example Indentation needs to be fixed though.

Barbie Games: They're all played for laughs. Maybe keep Ken calling Barbie, but I'm not sure about it.

StarCade: Eh. The last sentence needs to go, but maybe keep the rest. Not sure about this one either. Probably cut the second example.

I'll do better next time dad: I think this entry is combining the Food Games videos and the Disney Bootlegs video. Anyway... possible keep on the Lion King 5, The Great Bootleg, and maybe the Let It Go cover. I'm indifferent to the thumbnail. Everything else probably needs to go.

Christmas with the Kranks: I already said how I feel about the last entry, but I don't think any of them count, honestly. Maybe Jon slitting his wrists or Jacques dying, but they're pretty weak.

Cool as Ice: Not scary. Cut.

Flex Tape: I haven't watched this video, so I'm not sure, but they both sound pretty weak.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Alright, I'll get rid of the blatantly poor examples and wait for more consensus on the others.

Most recent RWBY episode:

Dead End

• Just the fact that Caroline is so obviously racist against Faunus summons some worries about how she could abuse her authority.
  • Speculation about 'what if' scenarios. Remove.
• Although brief, watching a kind-hearted person like Jaune get physically violent towards Oscar over what Ozpin had withheld gets in. Though rarely seen, his explosive temper has always been jarring to watch - and it gets even harder to watch when directed at Oscar, who'd been subject to that deceit as well.

  • Something that's jarring based on unusual behaviour isn't Nightmare Fuel. It needs to be removed as written. Is there a salvageable entry here?

  • Bear in mind that he is doing this in his sister's own house. Imagine having your brother come over after so long, only to be unaware of the fact that he's beating up a child inside your house, all while you yourself have a child.
    • Example Indentation issues, and Fridge. Remove.
• Maria mentions that she had tried to hide her silver-eye powers as a Huntress, but it didn't do her any good - and that her father noticed the dearth of silver-eyed warriors and realised that someone was eliminating them. Suddenly, Ozpin's immediate noticing of Ruby's silver eyes and accepting her into Beacon early takes on a much darker meaning; he likely wasn't accepting her because he thought he needed her for the war against Salem, but to keep an eye on her and make sure Salem's forces didn't find her.
  • WMG. Remove.
• The episode ends on a cliffhanger loaded with Adult Fear: Oscar has vanished. With Cinder and Neo (and potentially Adam) on the warpath, Oscar absconding like this is not a safe move to make.
  • Speculation and anticipation. Remove.

I feel like nothing in the episode is really Nightmare Fuel. Everything here is extreme exaggeration and/or theorizing.

Yes, that's pretty much how I feel.

Undertale lists every single mildly unsettling thing in the game

Edited by KingofNightmares on Dec 23rd 2018 at 6:57:30 AM

I looked at the examples under the Demo Specific folder:

• The manual changes throughout the game, depending on your choices. Some of the changes are... interesting, to say the least.
• When getting the No Mercy ending, there is a small bonus on the ending screen.
  That was fun. Let's finish the job.
  • After a No Mercy ending, this same image also replaces every page of the manual except for the first and last.
  • The music that begins to play during that screen doesn't appear to be in the game's files at all. In fact, it's actually the intro to the battle theme, 'Anticipation', slowed down by 400%. Still extremely creepy, though.
• If you do kill Toriel in the demo, the song "Empty House" plays. It's...unnerving as hell if you go back into Toriel's home to see it completely desolate. It was even included in the official game. If you do turn off the lamp in the guest room, it makes it more disturbing.
  No one will use this anymore...

The first example doesn't really explain why the manual changes are scary. However, I wonder if the next examples are supposed to illustrate that. Should we be reformatting it so that it's clear that the other examples are part of the first one.

There's a Nightmare Fuel page for M And Ms. It seems like a major stretch to say that anything involving M &M's can really be scary.

Edited by costanton11 on Dec 23rd 2018 at 8:04:17 AM

Most of the examples are things the commercials play for laughs. Other examples are Fridge Horror, like this one:

• Pretzel's fate is ultimately to be stuck in Orange. He may be resigned, but it's still quite unpleasant.

Some of those examples are creepy I guess, but nightmare enducing?

Does something Played for Laughs actually mean it is funny? Because, I'm not sure it does. There are many "traditionally" scary things one can Play For Laughs and some people are still going to find it scary even in a more light-hearted or comedic context.

But, if my thought is wrong then I guess this example from Jacksepticeye should be removed.

• His "rape face" that he does in his fourth Reading Your Comments video. Instead of being creepily amusing, it's surprisingly and utterly horrifying to look at.

The "instead of being creepily amusing" part implies it's Played for Laughs.

When something is Played for Laughs, the idea is that it's meant to be funny as opposed to scary. Nightmare Fuel is supposed to be about stuff that's intended to be scary or intense. While something that's Played for Laughs can be scary, because that's not the intention it isn't Nightmare Fuel. It should be counted as Accidental Nightmare Fuel in that case.

Accidental Nightmare Fuel is still Nightmare Fuel. Previously, the two were separate, but since trying to tell whether or not something was meant to be scary caused a mess of problem, it was decided to lump the two into one page.

In fact, the Accidental Nightmare Fuel page explicitly states that you shouldn't list examples, and that they should go on the regular Nightmare Fuel page instead.

Thing is, without knowing anything else about the "rape face" it's impossible for me to say if it fits or not. That said, I'm inclined to go with "not scary"— not because it's played for laughs, but because I'm skeptical about how terrifying something as simple as a facial expression can be, just as I can't find any of the M&M examples to be anything more than exaggerations.

The one example YMMV.Fantastic Four 2015 claims is Nightmare Fuel is also claimed as Narm Charm.

The Nightmare Fuel entry on YMMV.Seinfeld is pretty bad.

• Nightmare Fuel:
  • It's Played for Laughs, but Peterman's Colonel-Kurtz-inspired madness in "The Chicken Roaster" still comes off as a bit unsettling. Especially if you watch it before you've seen Apocalypse Now and don't realize it's a reference to anything.
  • "The Opera" is perhaps the most disturbing episode of the series, with a headshot of "Crazy Joe" Devola putting on white makeup while Vesti La Giubba is playing. In addition, before that, we see that not only does Joe have a Stalker Shrine dedicated to Elaine, he actually might have raped her (or at least kidnapped her) had she not sprayed him in the face with Binaca in time.
  • In "The Butter Shave," Newman slowly descends into madness as he contemplates becoming a cannibal because Kramer's new lifestyle of shaving himself with butter makes him smell like food. The most disturbing part is when Newman orders a roasted chicken at a restaurant and hallucinates that the bird has Kramer's still-alive head on it. This episode is not for those with weak stomachs.

One is "a bit unsettling" and partly requires someone not get the reference, the second is unsettling and speculative/Fridge, the third is just dark comedy.

Edited by maxwellsilver on Dec 24th 2018 at 2:26:17 PM

Okay, I've removed the RWBY "Dead End" examples and suggested that if anyone wants to revisit the episode they should visit this clean-up thread and make suggestions here.

If the first is a Played for Laughs scene (and the entry admits it is) it should be removed for not being the trope.

The other two examples... I can't comment on them. I don't know the work, so the way they're currently written does suggest there may be examples there if they were rewritten to fit the trope. However, if you think they're misrepresenting the scenes they're talking about, I'll defer to your judgement on the matter.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 24th 2018 at 1:02:21 PM

Yeah, remove the first one at least.

From YMMV.Dragon Quest Builders:

• Nightmare Fuel: On an intellectual level, the core premise of the game. After the Hero of Dragon Quest 1 accepted the Dragonlord's offer, the Dragonlord then covered the world in darkness... and also took away humanity's knowledge and power to create in the process. This doesn't sound scary until you find out what taking away that power actually means: it means not being able to read and write, not being able to make shelter, not being able to make food or tools, among many other things. People in-game don't understand how the Builder is making objects and tools, even while directly observing what the Builder is doing. The Dragonlord, in one stroke, turned every human in the world into an cave-dwelling animal that can't comprehend complex ideas and are accordingly incapable of ever rising up, while still being aware enough that they know that something is terribly wrong but can't even realize what they're missing.

Having played the game myself, they can process complex ideas, it's just the ability to build anything that's been taken away from them.

Does the narrative actually treat that as a scary thing? Otherwise, it sounds like Fridge Horror ("If you really think about it,the bad guy is even worse than he sounds!").

Edited by Zuxtron on Dec 25th 2018 at 9:02:43 AM

Yes, the way the entry says "That doesn't sound scary until..." is classic Fridge Horror language. It sounds like a Fridge example as written.

That's definitely Fridge as written.

Speaking of Fridge language...

This example from the RWBY Nightmare Fuel Page is from the episode 'Downfall' in Volume 5. It's been through the clean-up, so it's an example we've looked at before. The problem is... isn't this example, as worded, just Fridge? It's resting on the idea that, if you think about Cinder's injuries, they were done by a teenage girl by accident. That's Fridge logic, isn't it?

We passed the entry before, but the current write-up leaves me confused over what the 'fuel' actually is — is it the idea that beings as powerful as Salem or a Maiden cannot heal the injuries that Cinder suffered or is it the fact that a teenager can inflict such injuries by accident? If it's the latter, the example is Fridge Horror. If it's the former, then that needs to become the focus on the example (and probably any reference to Maiden powers being able to heal the damage should be removed given that Maiden power had always been depicted as Elemental Powers with no hint that healing magic was ever included, given that we've already seen what happened to the previous Fall Maiden by that point).

• While the previous episode established that Cinder had lost her left arm and replaced it with a Grimm appendage, this episode reveals the full extent of her injuries after Ruby used her silver eyes. Once Raven shatters Cinder's mask while blasting her into the abyss, her left eye is seen to be completely closed, with scarring running from the right side of her nose, across the left side of her face and eye, and all the way round to include a mangled ear. While it appears that Cinder was able to have a Grimm arm attached to the scarred remnants of her left arm, it appears that Salem has no power to remove the terrible scarring that has been done to Cinder, and Cinder's Maiden powers can't do anything about it either. This damage was done by a fifteen year old girl by accident.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 28th 2018 at 3:14:43 PM

Since the example opens with a description of Cinder's scars, I thought that the fuel was from the Facial Horror. I must have mentally skipped over the last few sentences, which are about a very different thing. The fact that Ruby was the one who inflicted these wounds isn't nightmare fuel (why would it be scary when we know that only Grimm and maidens can be affected by this power, and only when Ruby is trying to protect her friends?), and neither is the fact that Salem and Maiden powers can't heal them (has it even been implied that Salem has healing abilities beyond Grimm grafts?)