Nightmare Fuel cleanup and maintenance

Portal 1

• Portal almost completely takes place in a series of brightly lit rooms, which are all white and very clean. There are even opaque windows to observation rooms, but you soon realize that the entire facility seems to be completely deserted, except for you and a slightly malfunctioning AI. Of course, things get worse. Later on, you can climb into the machinery behind the movable walls. Okay, so?
  • To wit, despite spawning a very popular meme, the areas behind the platforms when you go off the rails and see the scribblings of former employee Doug Rattmann become unnerving, this guy has clearly slipped into insanity, and he even knows that at the end, you'll just be met with an agonizing death by burning, and to top it all off, you can see exits just out of reach, and nightmarish music plays in the background. Keep.
• The first time you encounter turrets is the first time you can duck out of the testing chamber into the maintenance areas and see scrawled gibberish on the walls, along with scattered food cans, which some creepy ambient music is played. This is the point, as you hear turrets trying to kill you ask plaintively "ARe yOU StiLL tHEre?", that you know that everything has gone catastrophically wrong and you cannot escape from it. Seriously? The turrets are cute!
  • The developer commentary states that the turrets were intended to lull you into a false sense of security. What?
  • Try using a turret as body armor against the other turrets. It SCREAMS. No, it doesn't.
  Turret: Hey! It's me! Stop shooting-Critical Error.
  • The turrets are also the first things that can spill your blood, and unlike in nearly every other video game ever made, the blood you lose doesn't disappear. It's still spattered viscerally on the walls, even when you come back from death. The blood is just there because of the engine. It was removed in Portal 2.
• GLaDOS's aggression core. The snarling. It IS Mike Patton voicing the thing. ZCE.
• Try carrying a turret through a technology emancipation field: there's one just before each lift at the end of a level. They scream. No, they don't.
• What's REALLY freaky was the last three levels of the game. The dim, occasionally flashy lighting, the occasional turrets, the writing on the walls... All fit very well with the games 'hilariously creepy' style. Keep.
• You know those emancipation grills you pass through after every portal? According to GLaDOS, they might emancipate your teeth. While you might think this is just her screwing with you, that theory flies out the window when the announcer mentions how the emancipation grills also might emancipate your inner ear. FH. This is just a joke, and nothing ever happens to you in the game.
• The ending theme, "Still Alive", manages to be both cutesy and very disturbing. "We do what we must - because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead..." Yeah... This never gave me nightmares as a kid. I liked it.
  • The cheerful description of "doing science for the people who are still alive" ("[making] a neat gun" for them) is bad enough, but then there's the line near the end where it becomes "[doing science] on the people who are still alive". Okay?
• Also from the soundtrack: the "Self Esteem Fund" and "Android Hell" are pretty creepy. But "No Cake For You" stands out as both the best and creepiest ambient music in the entire game. ZCE.
• The update for Portal. Nothing but cryptic messages and content added into the game, including incredibly creepy sounding noises in the data files (which are bad enough until you notice "GET ME OUT OF HERE!") which, when converted into images show some very ominous scenes... ZCE.
• A humorous and mildly creepy Black Comedy suddenly becomes mindbendingly creepy when it's revealed to be happening in the same continuity as Half-Life. This game becomes much more uncomfortable to laugh at when you realize that, in the context of its universe, it's dead serious — as amusing as GLaDOS is, imagine meeting her or someone like her in real life. Not quite so funny now, is it? Is it really?
• The glowing red fade-offs behind things such as fans, vents, pipes, and shafts. The sharp contrast of glowy red against dead, dark colors gives a feeling of being in the belly of the beast (which, you kind of are). The glowing red especially makes you feel like, even though you escaped the incinerator, it's still somewhere just around the corner. And maybe others have died there before you. Try looking at the first set of glowing red vents just past the incinerator and thinking about that. Red will make you lose sleep?
• "Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position..." The idea of thinking it's all over then being dragged back in.... ZCE.
• "Your entire life has been a mathematical error. A mathematical error I'm about to correct." This ZCE has been a mathematical error. A mathematical error I'm about to correct.
  • "You're curious about what happens after you die, right? Guess what? I know." ZCE.
    • Made downright chilling after playing Portal 2 when you realize Caroline's mind was forcefully put into the GLaDOS ... OS at the orders of her dying, poisioned, increasingly mentally-unstable boss. Voiced by J.K. Simmons. Yes, it's funny.
• GLaDOS is a supercomputer, one of the fastest and smartest minds around, who gained self-awareness milliseconds after coming online. With that realization, this particular dying statement of hers became absolutely terrifying.
  "Are you trying to escape?" *high pitched laughing sound* Things have changed since the last time you left the building. What's going on out there will make you wish you were back in here. I have an infinite capacity for knowledge, and even I'm not sure what's going on outside. All I know is I'm the only thing standing between us, and them. Well, I was. Creepy quote, but "absolutely terrifying"?
  • Especially creepy when you remember this is the Half-Life universe directly after the resonance cascade. The scary part is, at this point you really are better off in there, where the aliens and inter-dimensional baddies can't get you. Speculation.
  • Kill GLaDOS with the right timing of her dialogue, and the aforementioned laugh can get pitched down and slowed enough to become extremely menacing and ominous. How many people will have really heard or done this?
• The beginning of the boss fight with GLaDOS. She drops a spherical object from her body, claims ignorance on what it does, and you drop it in the incinerator. What happens afterward is really disturbing: Her voice becomes garbled, then you hear what sounds like quiet laughter. Then she speaks again, only now her voice, which had been previously very computerized and robotic, has become much more human-like and evilly seductive. And then she informs you of a rather interesting fact: This isn't scary. I loved this boss fight when I was like nine years old and I was never creeped out in the slightest.
  GLaDOS: Good news: I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin. So get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters...
  • Her whole boss fight could be said to be pretty creepy. The shrieking of the cores/GLaDOS as you throw bits of her into the incinerator, her beginning to malfunction, the fact that, as you slowly rip pieces off of her she gets more and more vicious and starts trying to convince you to just roll over and die. Any of her quotes! You don't "rip them off," you redirect missiles at her and they come off.
    [on neurotoxins] When I said "deadly neurotoxins", the deadly was in massive sarcasm quotes. I could take a bath in this stuff. Put in on cereal, rub it right into my eyes. Honestly, it's not deadly at all. To me.
    I let you survive this long, because I was curious about your behaviour. Well, you've managed to destroy that part of me.
    This isn't brave. It's murder.
    • Her emphasis on how you're murdering her. Oh, and then if you go over the time limit, the way that Chell just drops like a lead weight.
    • Oh yeah, and also, having to destroy the Curiosity Core.
    Curiosity Core: Where are we going? EWW, what's wrong with your legs? What's that thing? Ooh, that thing has numbers on it! Hey! You're the lady from the test! Hi! Are you coming back? Do you smell something burning?
  Blood-curdling shriek as the core is destroyed.
  • "I'd just like to point out that you were given every opportunity to succeed. There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. Shall not be mourned. " As silly as some of her lines are when she's trying to psyche you out, things like that can really strike a chord. Which is exactly what she wanted.
  • "RRRrrr. I HATE YOU!"
  • The first dialogue directly after incinerating the Morality Core. In under 10 seconds you get Mood Whiplash like you wouldn't believe once you realize you fell for the Shmuck Bait:
    "You are kidding me. Did you just throw that Aperture Science thing we-don't-know-what-it-does into an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator? That has got to be the dumbest thing I whoa- whoa- whoa..."
    • And then she laughs- a tiny, high-pitched, SCARY laugh that fades with a sort of rattle. And then she says this: Remove this natter/ZCE train.
    "Good news. I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did."
• GLaDOS apparently has a backup file of you that should you die she can resurrect you from, in the final battle she deletes it. Who's to say the Rattmann isn't just one of your earlier tries? And all those times you were crushed or fell into acid? Those actually happened, you just don't remember it. FH.
• The crunch when a metal moving part crushes you. You're seriously going to have nightmares from a crunching noise?
• Messing around with the portals a bit can show you Chell's face, which looks fairly disturbed by all that's happening. No, it doesn't.
• Portal 1 had several lines of dialogue in the regular test-chambers that become scary as hell when you replay the game. The first great example is during her explanation of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid, "which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel and teeth." Semi-rare cases. As in it's not unlikely that it'll happen to you! And just how many of those do you pass through through out the game? Enough to be pretty sure your teeth are gone by the end of the game. Remove the natter below, and again, this is FH.
  • "Cake, and grief-counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test."
  • "The Enrichment Center is required to inform you that in the end, you will be baked [garbled] cake." This is what the subtitles say, which would make this line more scary. The voice-file just outright spoils it by saying "In the end you will be baked, and then there will be cake."
  • An early version featured some hidden dialogue in Testchamber 05. Disabling one of the cameras and throwing it through the door to the small room with a glass-ceiling would cause GLaDOS to say: "You're not a good person. You know that, right?." In her psychotic late-game murderous-computer-voice. This has later been fixed, but hearing the voice who helps you say that during your first play-through was really unnerving!
    • Subverted in that the line still plays; but it's for the most deliberate act of trapping yourself one is able to perform in the game.
  • "To ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not destroy Testing Apparatus." The apparatus isn't really that important, since it's just a few surveillance cameras that nobody's looking at, but the first time you play the game, it makes you wonder if you really ought to destroy them or leave them in place.
  • "When the testing is over, you will be... missed."
  • In one of the last testchambers, GLaDOS' dialogue (or lack there off) when you reach the exit: [computerized, monotone voice] "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee-". If this doesn't just hint that something's horribly wrong, what does? The lights flickering like they're about to go out when that happens doesn't help at all. (I always thought that this was like a "wheeee" sound of excitement, because the test involves flinging yourself and building up momentum that certainly is fun.)
  • "[Worried voice]What are you doing? Stop. I... I... I... [Voice changes to a much more monotone, computer-like voice]Weeeeee are pleased that you made it through this final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you."

Portal 2

• The preview videos for Portal 2 look funny and cool, especially repulsion gel and propulsion gel. Wowee, can't wait to try those out! What does that tiny tiny text on the screen say? These were originally developed as diet pudding foodstuffs. And they didn't work because they stuck to the stomach lining, causing food to bounce out. What makes it worse is this wasn't an unintended side-effect of the products, that was how they were designed to function, in order to prevent the stomach from having time to take calories from the food. The fact that apparently no-one at Aperture thought about what effect this might have on the human body reflects how utterly crazy the place was. This is a joke, and it's just the implications that are scary.
• The entire testing section of the complex can be reshaped at any time at the will of a deranged AI. While you're inside it. But she never does.
• GLaDOS' warning to the co-op players. Implied.
  Don't disappoint me. Or I'll make you wish you could die.
• The entire first chapter has an oppressive, ominous feel to it. All those familiar old test chambers have been made much more eerie thanks to the ravages of time, there's the implication that, out of 10,000 test subjects at Aperture Science, you're the only one left alive, and of course, there's the other implication that an entire apocalypse has happened on the outside world. However, nothing seems quite as creepy as the moment where you meet GlaDOS again. Yeah, that scene seems harmless enough from what we saw in the trailers, right? We're all familiar with the humorous bit with Wheatley trying to hack the password, that ever-quotable "You Monster!" line, etc. Well, those trailers left a few little details out of that scene: the ominous music that plays as you re-enter the chamber, GLaDOS using a giant claw from the ceiling to pick you up and casually crush Wheatley, slowly lowering you towards that all-too-familiar incinerator... (okay, it doesn't work anymore, but you don't know that until she drops you in) This shouldn't make you lose sleep.
• After the opening, you're shoved right back into testing under GlaDOS again. This time, it's a lot more awkward. She may not be showing it, as much as she could at least as a computer, but you can tell: She is mad at you killing her, and she has every intention of making you suffer for it.
  • "Oh, it's you. It's been a long time, how have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know, after you murdered me?" While the line isn't frightening in and of itself, Ellen McLain's delivery takes it from the typical acerbic sarcasm GLaDOS is known for right into nightmare fuel territory, thanks to the sheer raw amount of hatred oozing from her voice. Sarcasm Mode Sink Hole.
• In Chapter 3, Testchamber 17 you can discover a hidden chamber: "Fear the turret for it is knell, that summons to heaven or to hell." There's a picture of Chell sleeping there, but she looks dead. Then once you leave the hidden chamber, the opening closes, and so does the door to the office looking over your test chamber. It's almost like someone watching you. Additionally with some careful shooting, when you get the Hard Light Bridge to lead you to the observation room, you can get a portal into the hallway. Go in and there is no one there. There's also a door that leads to the Rattman den and you can't get it to open from either side. And when you're in the den, you can still hear his voice (the soundtrack calls the "Ghost of Rattman", giving the whole area a bit of a haunted vibe. Keep.
• Most of the songs in Portal 2 Soundtrack [Songs to Test By] are fairly great, both in action and ambiance but "Overgrowth" in particular stands out for being very low and eerie and just produces a sense of dark dread. The rest of the early chamber tracks sound relatively upbeat in comparison. Keep.
• The official tie-in Potato Science Kit includes information about the fateful Bring Your Daughter To Work Day and about the young Chell. The revelation that her father was an Aperture Employee does not seem horrifying at first ... until you recall how GLaDOS flooded the Enrichment Center with deadly neurotoxin. In essence, GLaDOS might have killed Chell's parents. GLaDOS constantly making fun of the fact that Chell has no parents comes off as downright sadistic in this case. Implied.
• The core transfer scene. Hearing GLaDOS scream in pain as her face gets ripped off is horrifying, and then Wheatley slowly succumbing to the chassis's power... The imagery of the transfer device pit as a portal into hell with fifty little claws and devices reaching up at her didn't help, especially as the sound file for GLaDOS' scream is called "sp_a2_core_drag_to_hell01.wav". This scream is actually kinda funny to me. It sounds like she's singing!
  • It's overlooked easily, but Wheatley screams too. And it's completely human. GLaDOS, at least, can resist. But Wheatley? You have no idea what happened to him when he was under the floor. ZCE.
• Wheatley's Face–Heel Turn Wham Line. He starts out fairly innocent, simply geeking out over everything his new body can do... and then he starts talking about how small you are compared to him, and seems a little too forgetful about the plan to escape... Not scary, more tense.
  Wheatley: This body's amazing, seriously! I can't get over how small you are! But I'm huge! Hehehehehe! Hahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! Hehe... actually... why do we have to leave right now?
• Cave Johnson's decision to basically upload Caroline's mind, his former right hand/lover into Aperture's systems, regardless of whether she wants to or not, after his death. Dummied out lines make it worse by showing her pleading with Cave and insisting that she didn't want this, with Ellen McLain's voice acting delivering it in a very disturbing manner. Source?
• The cube-turret hybrid Wheatley pumps out in The Itch: These are Ugly Cute to me.
  • Two turrets mashed together inside a cube? Not so bad. Realizing their original purpose was to stand in one place and shoot, and now they can't shoot and are forced to walk for the first time? Frightening. All of that coupled with that miserable chirping sound they make, as if they're begging for the incinerator? Horrifying.
  • When you pick one of these things up, they withdraw into their cubes a bit and tremble. Their eyes blink on and off, too. And while normally talkative, they cannot even scream out in pain now.
  • When you first see them, PotatOS attempts to paradox Wheatley; while Wheatley is too dumb to fall for GLaDOS's paradox, you can see the Frankenturrets spark a little. That's right; those things are smarter than Wheatley. How is this scary? This is funny!
• Although some interpreted it as a Mercy Kill, some players found it creepy when GLaDOS coldly deletes Caroline right after admitting that she's the voice of her conscience. Not helped by the fact that a flatline can almost be heard after the deed is done. Wait, really? If this is true, keep.
• "And now I'm onto all your little tricks. So there's nothing to stop us from testing for the rest of your life. After that, who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, for instance." ZCE.
• ALL of the Rattmann Dens in the second game are really creepy. The broken lighting, the discomforting music, the pictures, all of it. But the scariest has to be in the den where you complete the Final Transmission achievement... At this point, I think it's easier to point out the stuff worth keeping. Merge this one.
• The extremely giddy tone GLaDOS gets as you near the second "surprise". Evil A.I.s shouldn't be allowed to sound that giddy about murdering someone.
  "I've got another surprise waiting for you after this test. And not a tragic surprise like last time. A reeeeal surprise. With tragic consequences. And real confetti this time, the good stuff."
• As much as a moron as Wheatley is, him screaming, "What?! ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?" is scary as all get-out. The idiotic, silly Wheatley now furious he couldn't kill you is pretty freaky.
  Now we're all gonna pay the price. Because now we're ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE!
• The scene where Wheatley's trying to kill you with the crusher. His "STAY STILL, PLEASE"; his voice is so full of rage and you can just hear him snarling it through gritted teeth.
• Almost all of Chapter 6, but especially the first part (before you make your way into the sealed chambers, and thus have Cave Johnson's deranged ramblings to keep you company). You're miles below the surface, absolutely no idea where to go, and most of all: GLaDOS gets carried off, and for once you go without her constant attempts to "assist" and "encourage" you. You're completely alone, more than you've ever been, in a decaying structure that could collapse on you at any time.
• In his recordings Cave Johnson casually mentions that one of the test groups volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, only to end up having to fight "mantis men" when the first batch of tests went horribly wrong. During an interview, Erik Wolpaw hinted that some of the Mantis Men may still be alive and well—and living in the bowels of Aperture. Have fun thinking about that.
• The menu music in chapter 6. So you spend several hours in Aperture's massive creepy parts, then you decide to take a break and quit the game and you're hit with that eerie, creepy magnificence. There's a reason why that piece of music is called "PotatOS Lament" on the soundtrack. Keep.
• When GLaDOS hums For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, it's enough to make your skin crawl.
• The four turrets you meet right after GLaDOS sends you off can give you a jump if you aren't expecting them.
• The Turret Disposal Area just before the neurotoxin tank, where all the rejected turrets get sent to be ground up by giant crusher wheels... except, because of what you and Wheatley did, the rejected turrets are now actually the good turrets. The obvious terror in their otherwise-cute voices is horrifying enough. Then Wheatley tells you in the most offhanded manner possible that they can feel pain.
• The fake test that GlaDOS builds when you try to escape. If you go in, the Companion Cube that is pressing the button gets fizzled, and the (presumably fake) door to outside is locked, and she fills the chamber with neurotoxin.
• Wheatley's fate at the end of the game, being stranded in space forever and ever is very unsettling. Worse, he seems to show genuine remorse for what he's put the player through. Since he can't die, he has nothing to think about but his transgressions.
• If you play with commentary on, there's at least one commentary node in at least one Rattman Den. If you activate it, it's a startlingly loud SSTV signal. Merge, keep.
  • It decodes into a non-scary infograph on the ARG.
• One of the first things GLaDOS tells you upon being woken up is that she has a feature she never knew about until you killed her: A black box. For however long you've been away- a conservative estimate is 200 years- she has been forced to relive the last two minutes of her runtime, over and over again. That is, you killing her. Over and over again. You were the last thing she saw as she was violently ripped apart, and you were the first thing she saw after the endlessly repeating fifteen minute experience of it ended. The only real consolation is that GLaDOS is a pathological liar, so she may have made it up.
  "You know, if you'd done that to somebody else, they might devote their existence to exacting revenge. Luckily I'm a bigger person than that. I'm happy to put this all behind us and get back to work. After all, we've got a lot to do, and only sixty more years to do it." 
• During the testing sequence with GLaDOS, before Wheatley manages to make contact, you can catch at least two glimpses of Wheatley watching you before wallpanels hurried to obscure the sight. It's a little creepy without knowing what the heck he's doing.
• One of Rattman's murals shows a woman, screaming with the most horrifically drawn face, as several scientists die around her. The woman is implied to be Caroline. To make it worse, you can also see in the lower right corner of the mural what seems to be Rattmann begging for mercy or hiding behind a companion cube... *shudder* *shudder* Keep, remove the shudders.
• In Portal 2, GLaDOS tells us exactly what it's like to be plugged into the mainframe body with other cores; it's like hearing voices incessantly babbling in your head, all at once.
• From Aperture Science: A History:
  "The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture’s first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day. In many ways, the initial test goes well: Within one picosecond of being switched on, GLaDOS becomes self-aware. The "going well" phase lasts for two more picoseconds, at which point GLaDOS takes control of the facility, locks everyone inside, and begins a permanent cycle of testing. Her goal: beat the hated Black Mesa in the race to develop a functioning portal technology. Days later, that race is lost when Black Mesa successfully deploys an interdimensional gate through which an alien race emerges and effectively ends the outside world."
  • If the fact that Caroline was forced into being GLaDOS is to be believed, then it would seem that she did all of this out of spite and revenge against the people who imprisoned her. Certainly is jarring to think you heard this girl say stuff like "Goodbye, Caroline" a mere few levels ago.
• Cave Johnson dying of moon rock poisoning.
  • So, how much of the surfaces that you can portal to are because of this deadly poison? Fine, you're not ingesting it — maybe; this stuff does gush out in places after you turn it on — but who knows whether you have to ingest it to be poisoned by it?
• Most of Cave Johnson's quotes are pretty horrifying, even if they're funny in-context:
  • "Now, maybe you don't have any tumors. Well, don't worry. If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren't wearing lead underpants we took care of that for you."
  • "The average human male is about 60% water. Far as we're concerned, that's a bit extravagant. So if you feel a bit dehydrated in this next test, that's normal. We're gonna hit you with some jet engines and see if we can't get you down to 20 or 30%."
  • "Alright, we're working on a little teleportation experiment. Now, this doesn't work with all skin types, so try to remember which skin is yours and if it doesn't teleport along with you we'll do what we can to sew you right back into it."
  • "Great job, astronaut, war hero, and/or olympian! With your help, we're gonna (distorted, sped up) CHANGE THE WORLD!"
• During the Courtesy Call sequence, you are banged into several other containers, identical to the one you're in. Wheatley ends up knocking a good few of them into the chasm below. You then see that all of the containers are identical to yours. With beds. Wheatley himself makes no attempt at hiding the fact that the entire warehouse is now filled with corpses. The horror part, however, comes in after you read the Lab Rat comic, learning that when Chell killed GLaDOS in the first game, she inadvertently shut off all power to the facility, leaving only the essential systems on backup power. The only way she survived was because Rattmann was able to plug her room into the backup system. Oops.
• Cave Johnson gave his test subjects coffee laced with a chemical that actually solidifies the brain. Visualizing it while under stress triggers it.
• The scene where Wheatley receives some, erm, "discouragement" from helping you solve his tests. It sounds like he's being electrocuted - he at least feels enough pain to cause an AI incapable of breathing to emit the sound of pained panting. Sure, the part where GLaDOS tricks him into getting shocked again is actually pretty funny - unless you happen to be watching him on one of his screens when this is happening to him. It looks like his body is being forcibly pulled apart.
• This line was Dummied Out when testers thought that it would be too much:
  GLaDOS: Why do I hate you so much? Did you ever stop to wonder that? I'm brilliant. I'm not bragging. It's an objective fact. I'm the most massive collection of wisdom the world has known. And I HATE you. It can't be for no reason.
• The condemned Aperture Labs can scare anyone with a fear of heights just by existing. The place is full of catwalks that just end or with missing railings over bottomless pits. And they certainly don't look very sturdy. The possibility that at any moment the metal grid you're walking on could break away underneath you will put you on pins and needles.
• The alternate Aperture realities. One of them, Cave died in the mantis-man breakout. Another, everyone is a giant mantis and the experiment was to create Man-mantises. Yet in another, Cave and Greg are watching you, always. Incidentally, the mantis-Cave's voice is horrifying.
  • The way the sentient cloud kills people - he leeches your skin off.
  • "I seeeee you. I seeee your little feet. I'm gonna cut off your hair and put it on your feet and eat your little hair and feet." Holy shit, Cave.
• Those thousands of test subjects GLaDOS finds at the end of the co-op campaign? She kills them all in one week.
• Early in the game's development, Wheatley (back when he was called Pendleton) would tell Chell that "...a man with a brief-case was just here to see you!" (a reference to G-Man) This raises a lot of questions about what's been going on in Aperture and why exactly G-Man wanted to visit Chell.
• Wheatley's line during the climax, when you're getting ready to fight him and he tells you, "Let the games begin!" It's creepy in delivery, and moreso because we've heard the line before. When you reach the neurotoxin generator with him, Wheatley cheerfully says "let the games begin!" before attempting to "hack" the computer by pretending to be a neurotoxin inspector. The effect is light-hearted, silly and endearing, as Wheatley can often be. However, the second time he says it, it's issued in a deeper and more ominous tone of voice than you'd believe silly little Wheatley was capable of.
• The things Wheatley says during the final boss battle are a mixture of Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel, but if you let him talk long enough before breaking the Conversion Gel tube, he says this:
  "Am I being too vague here? I despise you! I loathe you! You bossy, smugly quiet, MONSTER of a woman! This place would have been a TRIUMPH if it weren't for you!"
  • Not only does it show that Wheatley has completely gone off the deep end, the use of the word 'monster' and the phrase 'this would have been a triumph' sounds extremely similar to how GLaDOS talked.
• For the final battle, Wheatley was originally going to look like a freakish amalgamation of turrets.
• "Are you still there?" and "I don't hate you..." are creepy enough when said in the turrets' robotic-yet-childlike voices...but the line "There you are." is spoken in such a way that it doesn't sound quite like the turrets. It sounds more like GLaDOS.
• Remember the boss battle where Wheatley tells you that six other test subjects died trying to get the portal gun? Commentary reveals that he's telling the truth.
• The sheer number of dangerous experiments and equipment that existed in early Aperture. Dozens that could give you tumors (including folding chairs in the lobby), an invisible laser that turns your blood into gasoline without your knowledge, some sort of experiment that causes you to excrete coal, another transforming experiment that changes your blood into peanut water and can trigger allergic reactions, a cranial microchip implant that can hit 500 degrees under certain circumstances, fluorescent calcium to track neurological activity which vitrifies the frontal lobe when under stress if you visualize it, a teleporter that fails to properly teleport certain skin types, and a test that could result in the whole of time being wiped out.
• The concept of an intelligence dampening sphere is pretty disturbing when you think about it. Imagine something literally designed to excrete bad idea after bad idea clinging to your brain like a cancerous growth, forcefully integrating these ideas into your mind to lower your intelligence. It's also Truth in Television, considering intrusive thoughts.

Not scary. It's a jumpscare, but I found the brownies thing far scarier.

• The episode "Flanders Ladder" is creepy within itself. The fact the episode is a parody of the movie "Sixth Sense" makes this episode more intense. The scene at the end of the episode when Bart tells Lisa when they are going to die is really morbid, especially when Flanders has a wall of pictures of his dead wives Maude and Edna. Creepy stuff.

How is having pictures of your loved ones creepy? Lots of people still have pictures of dead loved ones, especially if they lose kids. The other part is simply Bart telling Lisa they are going to die. I can't imagine many adults losing sleep over that.

• In the episode The Nightmare after Krustmas, Maggie has terrifying visions of the toy gnome that Marge gave her for Christmas. It gets scary at 3:43

Not scary.

• The episode "Homer's Odyssey" is filled with dull, aching Adult Fear. Homer loses his job to circumstances that aren't entirely his fault, fails to find a new job, slips into a deep depression, and tries to kill himself. Marge finds his suicide note, and she and the family show up just in time to talk him out of it. What’s worse is that an old couple LAUGHS at Homer.

Adult Fear isn't NF. And the fact Homer swings back kinda kills any fear this may have caused. Cut.

• Though your mileage may vary, Krusty having a heart attack (in front of an audience consisting of several children) in "Krusty Gets Busted" was pretty jarring. The fact that the audience of kids thought it was part of his act and laugh/cheer arguably makes it worse. What's worse is that incidences of performers having heart attacks on stage have actually happened; e.g. the ukuleleist Tiny Tim.

Fridge Horror.

• Near the end of the flashback in "The Way We Was," it's heavily implied that Marge was almost sexually assaulted by her prom date Artie Ziff. He tries to grope her, and ends up tearing her dress sleeve and bra strap. 20 years later and he’s still a scumbag.

Scumbag or not, this is Fridge Horror.

• In the season 2 episode in which Santa's Little Helper goes to obedience school, the instructor demonstrates how to use a choke collar on the poor dog until he passes out. Even worse, there are dog owners like this in real life. Let’s be glad it wasn’t a SHOCK collar...

Unless you really like animals, this is more animal cruelty and I can't see many adults losing sleep over this, especially since Homer has arguably done WORSE things to SLH.

• All Singing, All Dancing: Snake repeatedly holding the family hostage which creates an unsettling tone for a musical-based clip show. To make matters worse, Snake even fires said gun during the closing credits.

This is Played for Laughs big time, and it's more a case of "This man can kill you, tread carefully." rather than NF.

• Bart Gets Famous: Lisa fantasizes about being incredibly successful and then impaling Bart on a trophy and when Bart tries to snap her back to reality, she doesn't want to because she's so happy.

Fridge Horror. Plus for a Simpsons "death" it's surprisingly free of gore. I'd say cut.

• Bart of Darkness: The bit where the axe-wielding not murderer Ned Flanders slowly walks up to the attic where Lisa is, humming, "Mary Had A Little Lamb".

Knowing he's not an actual murderer lessens the shock value this has, and it's more unsettling than NF.

• "Bart Sells His Soul", where Bart sells his soul to Milhouse, in one of the darkest episodes of the series as noted by many. Bart becomes a Creepy Child pretty soon throughout the episode, eventually culminating in him threatening Ralph Wiggum.
  Bart: "I need a soul, Ralph. Any soul. YOURS!"
  • The scene when Chief Wiggum flashed the flashlight on Bart, and Bart hissed like a vampire was a bit unsettling. creepy Bart◊
  • Bart's own nightmare, where his soul can be seen working for Milhouse and he's left alone rowing in circles, unable to reach the magic castle on the island is kinda disturbing, too.

Creepy but not scary. I can't imagine any adults losing THAT much sleep over this. Maybe kids, but not adults. Also unsettling is not NF.

• Bart the Murderer: The nightmare sequence from "Bart the Murderer", where the "dead" Skinner says, "YOU KILLED ME, BART!" Hell, even HOMER turned against his own son.

Keep but fix as I don't think Homer turning against his son is scary.

• Bart Vs. Thanksgiving: Bart's nightmarish Imagine Spot where he thinks his family, appearing borderline demonic◊, won't forgive him for what happened with Lisa's centerpiece.

Keep.

• Black Widower: During Selma and Sideshow Bob's wedding, Bart imagines Sideshow Bob as The Grim Reaper saying "I do".
  • More generally, it's heavily implied throughout the episode that Bob wants to kill Bart for exposing his original crimes. The licence plates he makes in prison include words like "IH8Bart" and "BartDOA". Bob also says during dinner that if he wanted to kill Bart, he'd have choked the boy as soon as he walked in the Simpsons' front door in a Did I Just Say That Out Loud? moment. When the family is horrified, Bob quickly covers it up with a "Just Joking" Justification. In Cape Feare (see below) Bob actually follows through on trying to murder Bart.

First bit's not scary and the last bit is FH.

• The Blunder Years: Homer was hypnotized to age twelve. In the flashback when he pokes the stick into the drain to figure out where the water went and the decomposing (maggots and everything) corpse washes out and lands on top of him: it was Waylon Smithers Sr.
  • While it wasn't seen, Smithers Sr's death wasn't pretty.
  Mr Burns: Look at your heroic daddy in there. Making funny faces, falling to the floor, shedding his hair and... lying perfectly still.

Jump Scare and would scare a lot of kids, but adults? Errr... probably not.

• In the episode The Man Who Came to Be Dinner there was a scene with aliens giving birth over and over again, that could qualify as nausea fuel also.

Gross, but I can't imagine people losing sleep over it.

• The Bob Next Door: Combine that with Squick: After Sideshow Bob has drugged his cellmate, Walt Warren, unconscious, he carries him to a prison hospital, where he makes a surgical face and hair transplant. And no, it's not a comical one, but a rather sickly one: Bob uses a scalpel to cut a line around Walt's face and hair, then tears it off, revealing some blood and muscle. And even worse, when Bob has to do his own face and hair removal, surgically, on himself, he tries easing the pain with some alcohol, before piercing his own face on the dotted line, screaming and wincing in pain! And in a close-up, too! Worse still, they didn't use a Shadow Discretion Shot or something, but they actually managed to show the whole procedure on camera! On a PG-rated show, no less! The way the transplant was done, the show's team could have easily bumped up the rating to TV-14 (at least Bob accidentally puts on Walt's face upside-down, in a funny sort of relief), but still, why they didn't bump up the rating at all is far beyond us.

Sweet merciful crap. Keep!

• Boy Scoutz 'n the Hood: The end where Ernest Borgnine and the other Junior Campers get attacked by an unknown someone or something hiding in the woods (though the fact that they were at an "abandoned summer camp" coupled with some tell tale sound effects, can allow a reasonable guess to the assailant's identity).

Fridge Horror.

• Brother From The Same Planet: During a Nightmare Sequence earlier in the episode, Homer realizes he forgot Bart and dreams that he drove up to where Bart was supposed to be waiting and all there is left is a (spiky-headed) skeleton.
  • Following that, when Homer actually does pick up Bart, Bart is left speechless in anger as Homer attempts to pass off a very shoddy apology about how "they were both wrong". Bart slowly turns to Homer and imagines his eyes and the flesh on his face melting off like wax, until Homer asks "NOW HOW 'BOUT A HUG" in a horrifying voice. While some consider this a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, in context this scene conveys just how angry Bart feels from his own point of view. He loathes Homer so much at that point that he sees him as a disfigured monster. The image was so frightening that it was the page image on this page for some time!

First bit's not scary and the last bit is keep but expand and rewrite. That was legit frightening even to an adult.

• Made worse by the fact that the aforementioned image is associated with the "Dead Bart" Creepypasta (even though it’s Homer).
• The “Big Brother” is implied to be a pedophile.

Implications are not fact nor are they NF and the Dead Bart is natter.

• Cape Feare: Bob's prison tattoo of Bart's severed, bloody head on a skateboard saying, "Ouch, man!"

A little jarring but not scary.

• Homer twice scaring Bart (who's already fearing for his life because of Sideshow Bob) before bed. Particularly, the silhouette of Homer's head◊ as he's holding the knife, with glowing yellow eyes.

I can imagine the knife wielding Homer scaring people.

• The episode's whole plot is disturbing. While we see Bob suffer as a Butt-Monkey, the fact remains that he's trying to stalk and murder a ten-year old child for exposing his original crimes. It was foreshadowed in Black Widower (see above), but the scene when Bob surprises Bart in his bedroom, holding a large knife, is chilling.

This would be scary in a G rated show, however this is a PG show, when PG meant not for kids. Cut.

• Children of a Lesser Clod: Ralph getting trapped in Homer's scabbing knee injury.
  Homer: It knows you're afraid.

This almost made me lose my lunch. I'd say keep because it's that gross and freaky.

• Eight Misbehavin: after meeting the mascot of Shøp, the following exchange occurs.
  Alan Wrench: "You put it together yourself! All you need is me, Alan Wrench!"
  Homer: "He's named after what he is!"
  Bart: "Hey, cool costume!"
  Alan Wrench: [Robotic voice] "It's not a costume. They found me inside a meteor."
  Marge: Excuse me, where do you keep your hamper lids?
  Alan Wrench: [Normal voice] "Hamper lids? Uh, third floor." [Robotic, to Bart] "Help! I need tungsten to live! Tungsten!"

FH.

• Fraudcast News: When Mr. Burns tries to get Lisa to sell her newspaper, he offers her some cute little ponies in exchange. When she refuses, they hiss at her, revealing sets of pointy teeth and lizard tongues◊.

Jump Scare but not scary.

• Funeral for a Fiend: During Sideshow Bob's trial in this clip, when his parents reveal that their son has a congenial heart defect, and they put the blame on Bart, the boy tries responding that Bob is a Manipulative Bastard. It goes From Bad to Worse at the 56-second mark, when he angrily pulls a nitroglycerin vial (for his heart defect) out of his pocket with a "I didn't want to use this, but you've left me no choice!" Chief Wiggum sees that the nitroglycerin is a "bomb" and the crowd panics, but Bart snatches the vial and tosses it out of the window. Bob becomes horrified when he has lost the medicine and cries out, with a pained look on his face, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAAAAND! I- I-" And then his body goes out of control as he wobbles around, still clutching his chest in a dizzying manner, before his body collapses and falls onto the floor in a lifeless pose. (Oh, and the unsettling music doesn't help matters either.) Sure, the nitroglycerin-as-medicine thing is all a ploy, and he gets better thanks to the "fake death" IV anesthesia his father, Dr. Robert Terwilliger Sr., had administered to him prior to the trial so that he can later wake up in an effort to incinerate his Arch-Enemy in his coffin, but still, watching Bob in a pretense of agony as he falls into a temporary deathlike state like that is very unsettling, especially for kids.

Tough call. A second opinion would be nice.

Future-Drama: Professor Frink's skeleton is shown hanging in his lab in the future, implying that he committed suicide and that no-one either noticed or cared enough to bother to look into his disappearance.

• One of the other future scenarios was "Flander's Revenge", where we get to see Homer being impaled by Ned Flanders sporting a psychotic smile. It gets worse when you think about the current relationship between the two.

How sweet they even mention it's FH... Isn't that cute? BUT IT'S WROOOOONG! but I'd say that's more of a Jump Scare than anything.

• Gone Maggie Gone: Marge staring at the solar eclipse and burning her retinas. Unlike some disfigurements in the show, this one is not treated as a joke: Marge screams in pain as her retinas give a sickening crackle noise. Even worse, she spends the entire episode blind. Adult Fear indeed.

Leaning keep.

• The Great Louse Detective: Near the beginning of the episode, Homer has an Asian masseuse walking on his back, when she suddenly starts SINKING into it like it's quicksand, trying to pull herself free as she cries for help. The scariest part about that whole scene is Homer's completely nonchalant tune as he tells her not to struggle or she'll sink faster. Then it cuts to the next scene and is never talked about again. Has that happened to other people before? What happened to the lady?
  • Also scary is the thought of the old enemy getting revenge on Homer because of what he did. It's scary because this actually can happen in real life. Imagine you think your enemy is gone for good but several years later realize that the old enemy of yours has come back for revenge or worse the friend or family member of your enemy comes back for revenge it's the unnerving thought to think about.

Natter, add Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, and add a pinch of FH and *smooch* You have yourself a bad example!

• "Homer Alone" Two scenes of Marge getting angry: First after Marge stops the car at school she turns to them with an angry look on her face and says in a demonic voice "Get Out" Which Bart and Lisa do so very quickly. Another moment is where Marge goes berserk after Maggie spills milk on her by mistake causing her to swerve the car in front of the bus on the bridge the bus driver asks what's wrong with her but Marge roars at him like a lion causing the bus driver to get back on the bus.

Expand and keep.

• Halloween of Horror: The only canonical Halloween episode, it has a home invasion played completely straight. Three men, who got fired because Homer revealed they were stealing, decide to take revenge while Homer and Lisa are home, forcing the two of them to hide in the attic.
  • A lot of what happens at the Krustyland Halloween Horror Night. Lisa bumps into a zombie in costume, which then TEARS ITS OWN FACE OFF right in front of her, freaking her out. As Homer walks with Lisa through a zombie horde, Lisa is terrified to see she's holding a zombie's hand. Then when Lisa tries telling a random woman she's lost, she gets threatened with a chainsaw from the child with her. A face bursting out of the chest of the guard Lisa tries talking to right after that. Can't really blame Lisa for huddling on the ground, utterly terrified and surrounded by zombies.

Keep.

• Homer and Lisa Exchange Crosswords: "No... I'm not mad."

ZCE and unsettling is not NF.

• "The mark of evil upon Cain's face in "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass".

ZCE.

• Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment: What better way is there to instill the fear of eternal damnation into the viewer than with a vision of your family, blissfully ignorant of their surroundings, suddenly watching their stolen cable TV within the bowels of hell?
  Devil: C'mon, Lisa. Watch a little cable with us. It won't cost you a thing. EXCEPT YOUR SOUL!

Keep.

• Homer's Enemy: Frank Grimes' complete mental breakdown and slow descent into insanity throughout the episode.
  Frank Grimes: Extremely High Voltage? Well, I don't need safety gloves, because I'm Homer-

Unsettling and dark but not NF. More sad than scary.

• Homer Goes to Prep School: The Gainax Ending where a meteor is shown heading for Springfield and it's covered with zombies.

Keep.

• Homer Loves Flanders: Homer randomly emerges through Flanders' hedge accompanied by creepy music.

Link to the music in question?

• Homer the Heretic: God help you if you're pyrophobic during the end of this episode. Homer skips church for the second time in a fortnight and falls asleep with a lit cigar in his mouth, igniting some magazines on the floor. By the time he's woken up, the whole house is engulfed in flames. Just think about that. Homer is asleep, in a house fire. Only when the fire ignites his two hairs does he wake up. Luckily for Homer, Ned returns from church and is able to save him before the fire department arrives.
  • This is made all the worse because it's Truth in Television. Smoking while lying down and not putting out the cigar/cigarette properly (in this case, at all) is one of the leading causes of smoking-related fatalities because of how easily they can start fires.
    • And, it wouldn't have even happened if Homer had gone to church like Marge wanted him to!

This is terrifying, yes. Keep.

• Homer the Moe: The jukebox in Moe's bar gets stuck, leading Homer to imitate Fonzie by smashing it. Of course, he cuts his hand and bleeds out in spectacular fashion (it was a "Reality Ensues" take on what Fonzie does on Happy Days). Now you know why that scene was cut on BBC Two in the UK.

Squick and I'd say it's disturbing enough to be NF. It sure scared me.

• Homer the Smithers: After a montage of getting berated by Mr. Burns, Homer actually punches Burns, hard enough that it seems like he killed him, leaving Homer muttering in fear before running away. From the punch to the panic, the scene is silent until "Psycho" Strings start to play. It's extremely frightening because up until this point, we were amused at Homer struggling to keep up as an assistant.
  • It's followed up by Burns extremely shaken and terrified from Homer's punch, even when Homer tries to apologize, and being alone with Smithers far away on vacation. Even an attempt to call for help fails by accidentally ringing Moe who presumes it to be another prank and threatens Burns.

FH.

• The Homer They Fall: Homer is in the ring with Heavyweight Boxing Champion Drederick Tatum. Up to this point, Homer has withstood blows from other boxers and even three thugs with weapons without even a wince. But one blow from Tatum is enough to daze him and send him reeling. His wife Marge understandably freaks, screaming for someone to stop the fight, and even Grampa, whose relationship with his son is tenuous at best, exclaims in horror that his son will die on his feet. The whole sequence is very reminiscent of the tragic scene in "Rocky IV".

I'd say keep.

• Hurricane Neddy: Ned Flanders exploding with decades of pent up anger after he witnesses the half-assed attempt the town made to rebuid his house after a hurricane:
  Ned: Now calm down, Ned-dily-diddly-diddly-diddly... they did their best, shoddily-iddly-iddly-diddly... gotta be ''nice'', hostily-iddly-diddly-iddly...Ah HELL DIDDLY-DING-DONG-CRAP! CAN'T YOU MORONS DO ANYTHING RIGHT!?

This gets me every time. Keep.

• I Am Furious (Yellow): Homer Hulking Out. Becomes Nightmare Retardant when Bart says, "Thank God his pants stayed on."

Why thank you! You even pointed out the NR for me.