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
Sorry, not trying to start an edit war, it's just something I felt should be on the nightmare fuel page.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Care to elaborate?
NightmareFuel.Sonic The Hedgehog IDW was updated again.
"*Issue 26
- Pure Adult Fear. Gmerl is tasked with taking on Zeena and tries to tell Cream to stay back. She jumps into the portal despite his wishes and instantly puts herself in danger not only due to being around a mob of zombots controlled by one of the Zeti. But Zeena taking control of Gemerld to attack her." I feel like this one could be kept but needs a rewrite if it's gonna stay.
Any input on the attempted cleanup post?
Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 4th 2020 at 9:11:41 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Regarding the RWBY debate: it's worth pointing out that the rules of the clean-up thread are defined by the trope description itself. The rules were not created by the clean-up thread, they were created by a Trope Repair Shop effort to fix the trope description to try and stem widespread misuse. They've been on the Nightmare Fuel page since 2017.
The clean-up thread began in response to that repair and copied the rules from the trope description page over here as a pinned first post so we didn't have to keep going back to the Nightmare Fuel page to read them.
If RWBY tropers don't know what the rules are, it's because they're not reading the trope description. It's lack of engagement with the actual trope description that's why we're still seeing the same misuse crop up even after the page has been locked.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 5th 2020 at 11:09:23 AM
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.
Maybe the statement about reading the main Nightmare Fuel page needs to be uncommented and placed in the same paragraph that talks about going to the cleanup thread, so as to guarantee that everyone is on the same page when it comes to that.
Hey, i have some things to say about an entry in the advertising section.
- Itsudemo soko ni... McDonald Translation These are a series of Japanese McDonalds commercials in which Ronald McDonald opens a locked door from the outside, calls a girl from a dark alley, hides under a girl's bed (similar to the character of Martin Lawrence from College Road Trip (2008) while sneaking into some girl's dorm of the college in the middle of the night), and escapes from an unseen thing. The ads end with a creepy distorted voice saying the above slogan.
- Taken as a whole, the four commercials in that video seem to tell a complete story. A stalker dressed up as Ronald McDonald attempts to break into a woman's apartment, harasses her at work, and finally hides under her bed (while being completely visible to us and the woman) and presumably murders her. Why else would he be running after all? Still, as weird as Japanese commercials tend to be, it's hard to imagine the marketing department at McDonald's signing off on an ad campaign that makes their mascot look like a murdering psychopath. This has to be a student film.
I feel like this wasn't an actual advertisement that aired on television or anything. Even the entry itself doubts it saying "This has to be a student film."
Looking for more information on it, it seems to be a parody made by Kakafukaka with the earliest upload being from 2007.
Japanese sources say it's not offical.
This just doesn't seem like something any company would make to advertise their product either.
I feel like it would have a chance being moved to one of the other NF subpages if it were rewritten. What do you guys think?
It was made on the internet, right? Probably should be moved to Web Original and be rewritten so that it works there
Yeah, and some of the other entries would have to be fixed too.
Here's a rough entry i tried to make. Feel free to make any corrections. I feel like i have issues with my grammar but i don't know how to fix it.
- Itsudemo soko ni... McDonald Translation is a series of shorts made by Kakafukaka depicting Ronald McDonald as a crazed man who attempts to break into a young woman's home, harasses said woman over the phone, and hides under her bed. With the last short being nothing but Ronald running off in a dark street, presumably having done something horrible to this young woman.
I'd rewrite the last sentence as "The last short is nothing but Ronald running off in a dark street", but aside from that your entry sounds fine.
I'll repeat myself as many times as needed: speculation on what a character might have seen in a future-reading device is not Nightmare Fuel.
Veteran Editor IV
That Osiris scene was at least ominous, but ominous != NF and I didn't see it as scary, so it may not be a good example.
Something that was long overdue, there was an example of the minigame "Don't Wake Wiggler" on NightmareFuel.Mario Party that was removed at first, but I've made a case for it here and most people in later posts have agreed that since people (including that video guy and comments) admit to being scared by it (as in not just find it tense, but actually wouldn't want to play the minigame, and Nightmare Fuel mentions that "Good signs that something IS Nightmare Fuel include if: You dread that episode, scene, level, chapter, or song during re-watches, and consider skipping it"), it works as an example. Anyway, here's a proposed rewrite:
- Don't Wake Wiggler from Super Mario Party. The minigame itself has a very calm atmosphere, with a quiet forest and dreamlike music. The objective of this minigame is to pet the Wiggler without waking him up, with several fakeouts beforehand. If you wake him up, he suddenly becomes red and angry with a loud noise playing and a frantic zoom on his face. Since it's fairly luck-based, it's impossible to tell when this actually happens.
Edited by Piterpicher on Mar 7th 2020 at 11:27:00 AM
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)
I think it sounds pretty good.
He/Him
Going over NightmareFuel.The Dragon Prince, it definitely needs some help. A general examples section up top that simply serves to duplicate entries below, examples with nattery sub-bullets, and fridge horror examples are amongst its problems. I can't say it all the examples that aren't fridge horror have enough context though (because I'm tired and my brain isn't working at 100%) and I'm about to go to bed, so if someone beats me to the cleanup, so be it
My troper wall
Copy-pasted from the RWBY Nightmare Fuel discussion, for volume 7.
A Night Off
- Tyrian gleefully massacring the trapped citizens at the rally after Watts cuts the lights, while the Huntsmen are unable to intervene due to the darkness and the panicked civilians blocking them. When the Happy Huntresses try to rally, he sneaks up on Fiona and cuts right through her Aura, nearly gutting her and only sparing Robyn because he needs her alive to frame Penny. Then the lights come back on, revealing a pile of corpses littered across the floor. (NOT TO BE INCLUDED IN ACTUAL ENTRY: This one gave me genuine nightmares, so it's got a "strongly recommended" stamp on it)
Gravity
- Ironwood gets his arm trapped in a Hard Light barrier by Watts, and when he tries to pull it out, the skin sizzles and burns clean off. Ironwood won't let it stop him though, and pulls the entire arm through, flaying the skin off his entire arm just to get at Watts. And while most of the actual flaying occurs offscreen, the result is shown in full.
- The Seer Grimm bursting out of Watts' bag, curling in on itself, and dying, with the Grimm smoke swirling out into an image of Salem. She coolly explains that all the chaos in Mantle has been merely setting the stage, and that she is coming to Atlas personally to crush all that's left. When Ruby tries to stand up to her, Salem takes her happy memory of her mother smiling at her and distorts it into a painful one of her mother sadly slipping away (with a horrible screeching sound being used to indicate the manipulation), causing Ruby to lose control of her eyes and then collapse in tears.
- After Salem's message concludes, Ironwood gets disturbingly calm, then announces his plan to have Winter claim the Maiden power by force and use the Staff to launch Atlas into the upper atmosphere. When Blake protests that he's leaving the thousands of people still trapped in Mantle to die, he calmly answers that yes, he is, with absolutely no remorse. And the Ace Ops all go along with it, with only Marrow showing any conflict.
With Friends Like These
- Clover's death, impaled through the chest with Harbinger and left to die in a pool of blood. It's easily the goriest death in the series thus far.
The Enemy Of Trust
- The last time we saw Cinder's Grimm arm, it ended at the middle of her left bicep. Now, it's grown all the way up to her shoulder and eaten the skin, exposing muscle. When Winter cuts it off, Cinder wails in shock....then starts screaming and flailing like a woman possessed while a new arm painfully emerges from the stump, all on its own.
- Salem arriving amidst a storm she conjured with a fleet of flying Beringels and a flying whale Grimm the size of Atlas itself. Qrow was not kidding when he said that Salem would not be worried about the Atlesians' "little ships"....they have no chance against her Grimm, and never did.
The things I foresee people having trouble with is the many scenes demonstrating the Police State of Atlas, as quite a lot of fans did have a reaction in line with the requirements (it sticks with you after you're done, dreading rewatches, having a hard time after the fact), because while it may not involve jumpscares or dripping blood, the fear is just as intense even if it's more subtle. The main problems are one, that it is going to resonate more with some people than others, depending on their experiences with arrest, kidnapping, propaganda, riots, police brutality, and all the attendant horrors of living in such a place, but I don't feel like "fear of a police state" counts as a phobia, and two, the horror is subtle by nature so it would be easy to mistake for Fridge Horror, even when the creators show the results of such a state onscreen. So I think we better get this settled and out of the way now before volume 8 arrives, because everything indicates that Atlas is going to decide even further into totalitarianism.
Edited by Doodler on Mar 8th 2020 at 3:08:05 AM
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
All of these are still scene summaries, just describing what happens rather than the fear the viewer might feel. I do agree that they could be made into legit examples IF written properly.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
The best written one there seems to be Clover's death, but it's also the skimpiest on the details; it's not a scene summary persay, but it's not much more than a ZCE, either.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Short summary of my post: most of those could be keepers, but they will all need rewrites because they're not the trope as written. I'm dubious that two of the suggestions are legitimate options, but I think it's worth rewriting them to fit the trope to see if they can be.
A Night Off
- Since it gave you genuine nightmares, write from that perspective. This is an audience reaction trope, so explain what it was about the scene that stayed with you after you stopped watching it — that's the point of the trope. It'll be a keeper then.
Gravity
- This was a genuinely gnarly scene, but it's just a scene summary as written. It again needs to explain that the audience found it so gnarly that the memory of it lingers. It'll be a keeper with a rewrite.
- This is a scene summary and character reaction. It'll need a rewrite from the audience perspective, but it could be a keeper.
- This is a scene summary. I'm not convinced this one's going to be eligible even if it gets rewritten from an audience perspective, but a rewrite might surprise me.
With Friends Like These
- This is a very skimpy entry, but it's got the skeleton of the trope to it, so it's half-way there. This will be a keeper with a rewrite.
The Enemy of Trust
- This seems like two skimpy examples rolled into one. If the Nightmare Fuel is how agonising regrowing the arm was, the exposed muscle is irrelevant. If the point is the exposed muscle, the regrowth agony is irrelevant. I don't think there's any point in having the reference to the exposed muscle as the real example is the agonising regrowth. Either way, this needs rewriting to explain how the audience is left feeling about the scene.
- This is just a Cliffhanger summary and the point of the entry (as currently written) is speculation (that they never stood a chance). It also doesn't explain the relationship of Qrow's comment to this scene (given that Qrow's comment occurred far away in Volume 3 and this scene is the cliffhanger ending to Volume 7). For this one to be a keeper, it needs to be rewritten to explain why its so impactful for the audience in way that isn't speculative about things we don't yet know the fate of. I'm not entirely convinced by this suggestion but, again, a rewrite might surprise me.
A Police State example could be a legitimate entry, it depends on how it's written. I personally think it's worth giving it a go. However, I would point out that examples shouldn't be added to Nightmare Fuel on the basis that someone, somewhere, might have a bad reaction to something. Entries should ideally be written by someone who has reacted in line with the trope and wants to create an entry about that reaction — which makes you the perfect person to write the A Night Off entry (for example).
Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 8th 2020 at 2:20:41 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Hey so not to be off topic, but how exactly are things approved, does someone call in a mod, is there a specific mod or way to contact them? Sorry if this is silly, but I'm a little confused about how approval works in the current system as I've never encountered something like this anywhere else on TV Tropes.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
If we "approve" your example, you just need to go back to Locked Pages and let the mods know we gave the okay.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
Also, you don't NEED approval to add examples to most pages. RWBY and GEN:Lock are the only exceptions that I can think of (the former due to being so frequently brought up in this thread, the latter due to having considerable fanbase overlap with the former and seemingly having many of same issues).
Though we do like seeing your examples first so we can tell you if there's any way to improve it.
Oddity is full of Speculative troping, mere summaries and overal bad writting. Permission to cut?
- All we can tell from the Mother 4 teaser is that the game takes place in a fantastical, whimsical Eagleland... But if the ominous, cacophonous music and title screen is any indication... Something in this world is very, VERY wrong.
- "Whoa, this game looks awesome! I can't wait to see how... w-wait...why is...why is the music getting weird? ...Is that...was that a baby?!"
- The music that accompanied said teaser didn't help matters, either. It starts calm and with people laughing in the background and slowly gets louder and more ominous and the people in the background keep laughing, with the laughter turning into screaming laughs in the manner of a maniac, then ending off with a music tone that is creepy and foreboding.
- So far, we've had Earth targeted by an alien invasion, nearly be corrupted by an insane Eldritch Abomination, and conquered by a tyrannical Psychopathic Manchild. While it's not confirmed yet, it's implied that Earth will be subjected to environmental damage in Mother 4, symbolized by a tear leaking from the Earth in the Mother 4 logo and foreshadowed by the appearance of mechanical spires seen in the Attract Mode trailer. Another clue to this would be "The Green Run", a song from the Mother 4 soundtrack, and also the name of a secret US government project where radiated products were released as a test. The presence of the Modern Mind and the Modern Men seem to imply that there is an underlying sinister Government Conspiracy that is being committed right on home soil...
- Once the game was fully-rebranded, the logo got a full makeover as well, to the point that the "O" part of Oddity is where the planetoid is now. Instead of the Earth, it's the moon itself that's leaking what seems to be green slime.
- The Modern Mind. A cool-looking Sharp-Dressed Man with an amazing starry/cosmic motif. Also a powerful Humanoid Abomination with a giant energy ball for a head, and no facial features to speak of. In the Mother 4 gameplay trailer, he gave Travis and his friends quite a bit of trouble and severely depleted their HP/PP, with Floyd close to dying, and it only took a miracle (Travis hitting the Modern Mind's own comet back at him) to save the party from total wipeout. It gives only a small window into how terrifying the Modern Mind might be in-game
- When the Mother 4 OST was released after the announcement that Shane Mesa's work would be removed for reasons we won't discuss here, certain songs provide hints to what certain events and locales in the game will be like... including Battle Against a Far Superior Foe. What kind of horrible abomination deserves THIS kind of music?
This is on The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
- The animation in this show. Growing up in the early 2000s back when most cartoons used 2d animation, the style seemed creepy and off-putting to some children. Especially the Jimmy-Timmy Power Hours, where characters who had always lived in a 2d world suddenly became computer-generated big-headed kids.
TBF, I have seen some people who think the FOP characters are creepy in 3D. I personally don't really see it, but then again, I wasn't particularly bothered by Superman's mustache-be-gone, so I may not be the best judge of that.
Its more Uncanny Valley than NF imo
Also about Oddity, I thought that game hasn't released so I thought that wasn't allowed?
Edited by ravioliluigi on Mar 9th 2020 at 8:39:37 AM
Paging ~Cor Leonis:
* My original query in this thread:
The cutscene in question is here:
Like I said, the reworded entry still doesn't look like Nightmare Fuel to me because it only hinges on what Osiris has apparently witnessed in the simulations and prompted him to angrily storm Rasputin's bunker to question the latter's allegiance.
And please, do not rebuff the query to someone familiar with the work, because I am one, and the cutscene does not strike me as a scary, just slightly ominous for things to come. Ominous does not equal Nightmare Fuel, and trying to speculate what Osiris saw is not part of it either. If I were to add something, CorLeonis has slightly stepped into Edit War territory with that entry.
Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Mar 3rd 2020 at 2:28:14 PM
"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain