The Killing Joke/Nightmare Fuel


 * The Killing Joke, particularly the iconic image of the Joker going insane for the first time (see the image for the work's page). Gave me the worst nightmares of my life for weeks; I avoided reading it for years afterward until I'd worked through my obsessive tendencies.
 * on that subject in the special collectors edition hard cover, there is a second story about a man who's talking to a camera about how he plans to kill batman, the mood of it is just chilling he talks about batman, he talks about how he's a normal ordinary guy as casually as how he intends to just walk up behind batman after he's stopped a bad guy and just shoot him, just out and out shoot batman, and yeah any actual worries can be dispelled completely since it's a oneshot story, but still it never shows him getting stopped or anything it just ends with him going out to act out his plan.
 * Also on the subject of Batman...Scarecrow, anyone?
 * Speaking of Scarecrow, his great-grandmother was one scary old lady. If you were wondering why her great-grandson turned out the way he did, well ... some very creative child abuse was involved.
 * Speaking of the Joker, Brian Azzarello's Joker is full of nightmare inducing sequences including skinning a man alive, rape, torture, the Joker crying on a hooker-like Harley Quinn, and much, much more..
 * Post-Crisis Joker in general has made this tropper afraid of clowns, yeah that's right of all of the reasons to be afriad of them he was the number one reason!
 * And right afterThe Killing Joke was published, we had A Death In The Family, where the Joker showed everybody that The Silver Age of Comic Books was over the hard way by brutally beating Jason Todd, the second Robin, with a crowbar in front of his mother. As if that weren't enough, he then leaves them both in a warehouse that blows up just as Jason manages to untie his mother, killing both. The fact that it was drawn with the bright colors of the Golden/Silver ages, but added just enough shading to look realistic, only made it worse. (You've never seen blood this scarlet.) And he does it all with that smile on his face.
 * Don't forget the way Robin's mother reacted: turning away with an uncomfortable mixture of disgust and denial, and lighting up a cig. Post-Crisis Jason was never a nice kid, but this is the kind of thing that screws anyone up.