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
(she/her)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Are you talking about the ones hidden on the folder in NF's description? If so, they were moved there. I assume to cut down on length and its for editors anyway
Trope pages are not supposed to hold notices for editors. They are for readers, not editors.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NightmareFuel.The Transformers The Movie has a lot of ALL CAPS SCREAMING.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Admittedly, the movie is nightmarish in some ways, especially if you're young when you watch it. However, the ALL CAPS needs to go
Looking through Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. For the most part CT's is pretty OK, surprisingly, so I'm only going to focus on the ones I do think need some cleanup.
- That noise that Lavos makes. It's like the audible equivalent of the spelling of "Cthulhu" - if it were real, it would be a Sound That Man Was Not Meant To Hear, and you should be glad this is the best your TV/Nintendo DS speakers can do to replicate it.
- If you take the time gate to 1999 A.D., you don't hear the normal time gate ambient track. Instead, you get a heartbeat that starts slow and gets quicker every few seconds.
- The version in the prototype is even creepier: it throws in the same laughing/crying noise from Strains of Insanity.
- The version in the prototype
- If you go for the Programmer's Ending in a New Game + (using the right telepad immediately when seeing Lucca's device), the inner section of Lavos not only features the heartbeat but an even more disturbing scream that just gets louder and louder until everything else is muffled by it.
- If you take the time gate to 1999 A.D., you don't hear the normal time gate ambient track. Instead, you get a heartbeat that starts slow and gets quicker every few seconds.
- The Geno Dome has a conveyor belt where a person enters a machine, screams, and what implies to be a Tab emerges from the other end. Even worse in the Japanese version, where it's called the Genocidome, an obvious portmanteau of Genocide and Dome, implying that the machine was specifically built for that purpose.
- Magus's Lair in 600 AD.
- Let's start with the background music, called "Strains of Insanity" — a creepy chord that never lets up, with a sound that could be laughter, crying, or screaming repeating every couple of seconds. Note that this is a step up from the first phase, where you wander around a castle filled with Obviously Evil children, random civilians who just giggle or say nothing, and people you know Queen Leene, Crono's mother, and Lucca/King Guardia/Lucca's father who slowly walk up to you, in complete silence.
- Add some people you know, whom you know shouldn't be there. They say some relatively innocuous things the first time you see them... then again later after you encounter Ozzie, they add a sinister second phrase before revealing their true forms. Instead of the normal battle music, "Strains of Insanity" continues to play while you fight them.
- Those skeleton Mooks you've fought at various points in this era? At one point in Magus's castle a group of them attacks you while begging you to kill them to free them from the spell controlling them. Worse still, in that castle you meet a bunch of kids and teenagers who also turn into skeletons. Magus wasn't above using child corpses. (And, yes, Stains of Insanity is still playing. Getting to the bosses is worth it just to hear a different song)
- Let's start with the background music
- The Day of Lavos. Chrono Trigger was originally released in 1995. Back then, a video game showing the End of the World as We Know It happening in 1999 was a very scary thing (even if it did inspire more than a few Prince jokes). And seeing it in action is nightmare fuel itself in the "bad ending". You see the earth slowly get destroyed from the perspective of its inhabitants at the Day of Lavos, then, followed by that hideous Lavos sound: "But... The future refused to change..."
- 2300 AD can be pretty scary. A ruined and broken world with no hope, monsters everywhere, and robots set out to scrape the jar's sides, in terms of humans who haven't died already to Lavos or the weather. It's even creepier when the Black Omen starts floating around. Bit on the Nightmare Pornographic side. Rewrite/combine with the following.
- A new player exiting Bangor Dome onto the 2300 AD world map for the first time is in for a shock in general. A barren wasteland, ruins and craters everywhere... but the cherry on top is the freaking world map music. It socks you in the gut immediately with a low piano note, and while the winds are playing a hopeless melody, the percussion lags behind the song's tempo considerably, sounding like broken chimes or the pulley of a lonely flagpole beating against the metal. Or the pendulum of a clock winding down to the last few hours before even what little non-Lavos life remaining on the planet goes extinct.
- And if you wait long enough, many a player has stated that the lightning flash, followed by a low rumbling sound, was a rather unnerving surprise.
- A new player exiting Bangor Dome onto the 2300 AD world map for the first time is in for a shock in general. A barren wasteland, ruins and craters everywhere... but the cherry on top is the freaking world map music
- How about the events at the end of the Ocean Palace where Lavos disintegrates Crono! Sure, you can save him later, but still. It comes off as completely unexpected and even with Crono's and Schala's Heroic Sacrifice, Zeal still is destroyed by Lavos, and not only that but it also causes the Black Omen to be created, on top of flooding most of the planet. Latter half is Fridge Horror. Trim.
- The end of the sidequest for Fiona's forest. Lucca gets the chance to relive or alter the point in her past in which her mother's legs become crippled. She wakes up as the rest of the party sleeps, and the ambient soundtrack of the gate/time warp plays in the background. She wanders into a clearing to find a red time gate. Reliving the worst moment of her life can be disturbing enough, but if you fail to free her from Taban's machine, Lucca's mother cries out for one last time before the screen goes black. Two seconds later, you hear Lucca's mother scream. The rest of the sidequest (failure or success) is in complete silence, aside from sound effects. The scream is disturbing, but clean up what comes before it.
- In your trip into the Manolia Cathedral in 600 A.D, there's one room that you can enter where a naga is off-duty and can be talked to. She only has one line... belching loudly, and then remarking on how the human prisoners also in the room look very tasty. This implies she, and all the other members of the Fiends, have been eating humans, both in the past and quite recently. No wonder most humans hate Fiends! Fridge Horror. Delete.
- Lavos as a whole. A Planetary Parasite that's slept under the surface for literal millions of years after crashing into the planet, wiping out the Reptites for proving inferior to humans, and then cultivated more intelligent humans with magic power to feed on them. The Enlightened Ones in Antiquity learn about Lavos and draw power from it, which has severe negative effects on Queen Zeal's mental state. A reveal in the future (which has been devastated by Lavos, by the way), also reveals that it's not the only one of its kind. It spawns others of its species to be cast off into space to start the whole thing over on other planets. It also looks like a giant, spiky tick, but that's just its shell. Inside are a more humanoid body, along with two pods. One of these pods, not the humanoid body, is the real Lavos. Not to mention the aforementioned sound it makes and its killing of Crono. Mostly Fridge Horror. Keep the physical descriptions but cut the rest.
- One of the alternate endings has some serious Mood Whiplash as it starts off with Robo enjoying a happy new future before cutting back to the Middle Ages and showcasing Tata being recognized as the Legendary Hero. He proceeds to venture into Magus's castle only to find it's been taken over by Crono with Lucca and Marle as his bodyguards. How exactly did that happen?! Fridge Horror. Delete.
- The game itself starts on literal In-Universe nightmare fuel: Serge finds himself stabbing some girl he never met—and then he runs into her for real and can't seem to not add her to the party. Then they go to the dungeon that matches his vision... Admits to being in-universe. Delete.
- FATE, the Omniscient Database is pretty damn creepy - not only the fact that it's an all-knowing supercomputer, but its appearance as well. Keep.
- SunOfAGun's face, pictured above. ZCE so rewrite, but otherwise keep.
- Guile's first tech, Wanda In, which teleports his magic wand inside his enemy's innards and pulls it back out. Not as bad as it sounds. Delete.
- Orcha's third tech, DinnerGuest, with the grinders mowing down the enemy and the screen turning black. Not as bad as it sounds. Delete.
- Skelly's a Skeleton Clown. He's pretty icky, but ZCE. Delete.
- Cupoids are eerie; they look like tortured and angry and possibly undead child-angels. Keep.
- During the scene with the burning orphanage, you can hear the children screaming in fear and pain. In fact, the entire level is this. Keep.
- In-game: Throughout the game, Serge has flashbacks of the demon panther that attacked him as a child.
- Lynx can be a pretty intimidating villain. When he first appears in the game, he mentions that you "saved [him] the trouble of finding you"; that means he's been looking for you, and you have no idea why. This is probably even more terrifying for Serge, since Lynx is literally a walking nightmare to him. Then there's the scene in Fort Dragonia where Serge and Lynx switch bodies; they both end up crying in pain because of this. Even after this event, Lynx in Serge's body is able to drag Serge's name through the mud almost instantly. And that's not even going into when Lynx transforms into FATE...And even though the revelation that Lynx is Serge's dad comes really late into the game, it still delivers a lot of Fridge Horror in the end. Admits to being Fridge Horror. Delete.
- Also, when Lynx as Serge first talks. The fact that Serge never really said anything up to this point makes it creepy. Then his profile image◊ turns to this.◊ Nobody's safe. Fridge Horror. Delete.
- Also, when Lynx as Serge first talks. The fact that Serge never really said anything up to this point makes it creepy. Then his profile image
- The FMV where the dragons become the "Time Devourer" has the Green Dragon suddenly making this face◊ and biting the Sky Dragon. Weak IMO, but questionable keep.
- The preceding scene, where the Dragon Gods reveal their true intentions. Just text. Delete.
Water Dragon: FATE has fallen...FATE has died...Fire Dragon: Finally, the time has come...Green Dragon: Indeed...The long, endless night shall finally come to an end.Earth Dragon: Now...For mankind...Black Dragon: I shall make you bleed!!!Sky Dragon: Feel a million years of this planet's pain and suffering! - There's also this image◊ of Dark Serge, shown for less than a second in the intro. Too ZCE. Delete.
- The game's intro is probably one of the most unsettling of any JRPG out there. Imagine getting mysteriously teleported to a different version of your world where you died, and because of that everyone you know is not the same anymore. Nobody believes you are who you say you are, so you might as well be a stranger to everyone you ever knew. Some of the differences are pretty disturbing, like the man who became a fisherman in your world; in the one where you died, his paranoia turned him into a worshipper of a bizarre cat cult. He never leaves his house or interacts with his family, to the point where his daughter thinks her father doesn't love her anymore. Fridge Horror. Delete.
- Bunyip. At first, it appears to be a large eyeless frog...thingy. OK, kinda creepy, but not too bad, right? After enough damage is dealt, it goes One-Winged Angel, opens its mouth, and an enormous black blob with a giant eye comes out, serving as the second part of the boss fight while its original body serves as the new "base". See here. Not as creepy as the entry suggests and it doesn't seem to be that common of an opinion that it is either. Delete.
NightmareFuel.Minecraft needs some serious help.
Highlights:
"* Have you ever come across a giant spider? In Minecraft they are everywhere. With their leg span, they are twice as wide as a human and they all want to kill younote ."
" Carefully exploring a new branch of this massive cave... around a corner... TWANG! Skeleton shoots you from behind. Worse if you're carefully trying to move past a lava pool and get knocked into the pool."
" The End also now has its own music. During the boss fight, it's just a weird, strangely calming loop... However, when you go to the main continent, it's fleshed out - It starts out sounding like the song "Minecraft" but heavily distorted, before becoming overwhelmed by a glitchy effect that sounds like your computer crashing. After this, the song turns into ambient tones with occasional bits of the game's soundtrack drifting by, before eventually culminating in a powerful Dark Reprise of the music track "Sweden"."
" Think you're safe now that the Far Lands are removed? Think again; The Far Lands have seen a return in certain versions of Bedrock Edition. Now not even The End is safe!"
" Resource Packs have sound and model support, meaning you can masochistically make any part of the game you didn't think scared you enough even more terrifying."
" Some kindly contributors at deviantART have been kind enough to provide us with approximations of what each mob would look like in a realistic setting. We have zombies, creepers,skeletons and spiders, endermen, zombie pigmen, and the ever adorable ghasts."
" 2b2t can be one of the most dangerous servers to ever step foot in. The community is ever-so toxic, the spawn is an absolute mess, and they can cause some things you wouldn't even think were possible in Minecraft. Some of the threats in the server include book bans which kicks you from the game every time you join, people using speed hacks to kill you when you least expect it, and so much more."
Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 26th 2020 at 4:43:01 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
There's been a few attempts at cleaning up Minecraft's page, but they end up stalling.
I strongly agree with cutting all of these examples.
Stumbled across NightmareFuel.The King In Yellow, which is a bunch of ZCEs. Seems like an easy cut.
Edited by Zuxtron on Feb 26th 2020 at 10:58:43 AM
No-lifer
That 2b2t example looks like a real life example, and doesn't sound scary at allnote , it's gotta go.
Zapped those examples!
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Short-Term Projects herald
Agreed.
This example on Super Mario Bros. keeps making me laugh XD; I feel like it should be cut or at the very least rewritten. I feel like in terms of character design Bowser is way scarier than Wart.
"* When you get past the door to confront Wart — and the music changes to this creepy, disturbing horror/techno mix that just messes with your concentration while you have to catch vegetables in midair and throw them into Wart's open mouth (as opposed to the other bosses where you just had to hit them with weapons). Even Wart himself is creepy due to his Non-Standard Character Design for the Mario series. His booming voice in the GBA remake certainly doesn't help."
Here's the music and here's Wart in Advance (incidentally voiced by Charles Martinet).
Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 28th 2020 at 8:52:12 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Redmess
I agree, he is not particularly scary, and his design is not all that different from the rest of the game. He looks kinda Ugly Cute more than anything else.
Optimism is a duty.
He's a cartoony frog. That's not scary at all, unless you're literally five, and though the target audience is all-ages, they usually don't mean that young.
Redmess
I think he's meant to be an alligator, but yeah, he is pretty cartoony and harmless.
It's yet another attempt at trying to make a work look darker and edgier to justify adults consuming it. Cut.
Optimism is a duty.
Wart's a toad. Cutting the example!
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Redmess
He sure has a lot of teeth and claws for a toad, then. 
The Lego Maharajah
Let's talk about LEGO Island. Yes, I'm not kidding. LEGO Island actually has examples. I can't really imagine any grown man being afraid of Lego Island. I don't play the games but they seem to be Slice of Life style of a game so I can't really imagine anything scary. Regardless, here's my analysis.
- Nightmare Fuel
- In the first game, there's a hidden, haunted cave on the side of the mountain that's actually pretty creepy for a game about a building toy, especially if you're within the game's target audience. The ghostly meowing of the cat spectre in the chest is especially unnerving. Can someone help me on this one? I can't find a clip of this moment online. Otherwise, I'm itching towards Zero-Context Example.
- The racetrack from the first game. Especially the bigass skeleton whose swinging legs can knock you off the bridge he's floating above. Maybe? I can imagine a young kid either being terrified or just very confused. A 10-year old would find this rather cool. Not sure. Here's a video if you guys want to judge.
- The sequel has OGEL Island, a poorly-constructed replica of LEGO Island IN SPACE! Zero-Context Example. The only thing creepy about this level is the sound effects but even then, they could be considered eerie rather than scary.
- In respects to the music, the end credits show the houses with irregularly proportioned shadows. For some reason, the general look of houses and not being able to access any of them except for maybe two or three really gives off a North Korea flavor. What game is this from? Regardless, I checked the endings of both games and none of them are scary. This seems very overexaggerated and seems to trend under Real Life examples. I'm going to cut this.
- If you lost the first game, you got to see the Brickster victorious over LEGO Island along with music that expresses just how horribly you have failed. See it here. Weblinks Are Not Examples. The scene is more cheesy than creepy to me, the only disturbing part is the crying. The animation is slightly deranged I guess. The linked video has people saying that this ending creeped them out so I'm keeping this.
- Unlike the first two games, Xtreme Stunts gives Pepper black, beady eyes rather than white cartoon eyes. Though more accurate to most Minifigures, it still looks unnerving. Nah, it's not. I'm deleting this too.
I remember being scared of that skeleton as a kid, but not much else.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
I remember being afraid of the "bad" ending and the skeleton as a kid (if only for the overly dramatic music) but I reckon both should go.
There was one thing besides those that startled me as a kid, namely the songs speeding up as the mini games had very little time left in LI2. But that's kinda like the Palace of Shadow music in TTYD just because it spooked you, doesn't mean it spooked others.
NightmareFuel.Banjo Kazooie also has a page and I don't think any of the examples are worth keeping. They seem frightening to really small kids but these games are made for all ages.
Edited by Klavice on Feb 29th 2020 at 2:27:11 AM
Redmess
Also, I don't think just startling counts. Jump scares are not necessarily nightmare fuel.
Optimism is a duty.
@Klavice
For the Banjo-Kazooie page, I've seen people saying they were scared of Clanker, Snacker, the game over scene of the first game and zombie Jingaling. Some of these comments even say that Snacker and zombie Jingaling gave them nightmares, and Clanker I've seen on multiple "scary moments in non-horror games" lists, so I'd say they're keepable
Edited by KingofNightmares on Feb 29th 2020 at 5:15:19 AM
—signature not found—
I helped with the cleanup of that page, and everything that's left is things I definitely remember seeing a lot of others consider creepy. Snacker is one of the more notorious young age scares and even people who play the game as adults will admit to being at least a little scared of him. And many including me still consider the death in Gobi's Maze to be shockingly brutal for an all-audiences game.
Edited by AlleyOop on Feb 29th 2020 at 12:07:56 PM
I notice there's been a request made on the Edit Locked Pages thread by two different tropers to unlock the NightmareFuel.RWBY page.
Is that a discussion that should come through this thread or that one? I'm assuming this one.
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.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Found and cut this particularly bad example on YMMV.Soul Hunter:
- Although played for comedy, the talking sword can feel pain. Think about it.
Notice the 'Although played for comedy' and 'Think about it'.
Edited by MasterN on Feb 29th 2020 at 11:10:35 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]")
What rules are you referring to?
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness