Berserk/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Dinnertime for the LEGIONS OF HELL ITSELF!!


Here be the page for all the nightmare fuel to be found in Berserk. The whole series runs on - nay, is - high octane nightmare fuel, what with all the Gorn and rape and torture and eye screams and horrible, horrible demonic creatures...heck, this thing should be renamed High Octane Nightmare Fuel Unleaded, The series.

  • In general, the series' artist and writer, Kentaro Miura draws some of the most terrifying (and disgusting) demons and monsters ever in a manga.
    • Furthermore, 98% of the villains are complete monsters. By the time you get far enough, assuming that the villains commit atrocious acts of murder, rape, and torture is the norm. The true dread comes in seeing the incredibly fucked up thing they do that makes them different from the other villains.
    • As a last note, it is pretty much established in the second chapter that children are not safe from the horrors of the Berserk universe.
      • The second chapter? Try the very first chapter, which counted a baby among the victims of the Baron's evil rampage toward the chapter's end before the throwdown with Guts. And let's not forget the women and children who were being carted off in the wagon bound for Koka Castle, presumably to be eaten by the Baron, that Guts passed when he first entered the village.
  • No page on Berserk's Nightmare Fuel can begin without mention of the way that Apostles are made. It starts when somebody that possesses a Behelit hits a moment of absolute despair, where he would do absolutely anything to escape his situation. When this happens, the Behelit, a creepy little egglike thing that has human facial features scattered randomly all over its surface, rearranges those features into a human face. Which then proceeds to bleed from the eyes and start screaming. Then the angles in whichever area this happened start changing and the Godhand, the Big Bads of the series, show up to make the Apostle-to-be an offer. The offer involves sacrificing whoever the Apostle-to-be loves most in order to be reborn as a demon, which is a way of having the Apostle open himself or herself up to evil. Since Behelits invariably activate at the Apostle-to-be's lowest point, that means that this offer sounds very much attractive, particularly if the friend or loved one to be sacrificed was the cause of the Despair Event Horizon in the first place. If the Apostle-to-be accepts the offer, the Godhand mark the person with the Brand of Sacrifice and what happens next is often a truly horrific death as the other Apostles eat him or her alive. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also mentioned that anyone sacrificed in the creation of an Apostle, in addition to suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death, also has their soul condemned to Hell for all eternity, making this a true crossing of the Moral Event Horizon.
    • And things only get worse when it comes time for a new Godhand to be born, which happens once every 216 years during what is known as the Great Eclipse. A very special Behelit makes its way into the hands of a very special individual. This individual, a charismatic leader of men, achieves great things during his lifetime, but then things start going straight to hell for him, culminating on the day of the Eclipse when he loses all hope and activates his Behelit. When a Behelit of the Godhand activates, the bearer and everyone currently present with him is transported to the Nexus, a nightmarishly surreal place that to mortal eyes is a scene right out of hell itself. Instead of just one or two victims like is the case with Apostles, the Godhand demand that everyone the Godhand-to-be has led be marked for sacrifice in order to become one of their own—and instead of just a good number of monsters, every Apostle in the entire Berserk universe has gathered for the feast, and comes out of the woodwork to eat everyone alive once everyone is marked for sacrifice.
    • During the second eclipse, when Griffith is reborn, it is potentially worse. We see Guts get up after the tower has crumbled into a hand-shaped edifice. He is alone. He looks down. His facial expression changes to awe and terror. On the next page, the refugee camps are shown. With a HUGE Sacrifice symbol made up from all the campfires running across them. I get the chills just by thinking about it.
  • And now, it's time to experience the Eclipse firsthand (volumes 12-13 and episodes 23-25 respectively), in which the entire event is pretty much Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker worthy.
    • When the Eclipse goes down in the series proper, it marks a crucial turning point, where things turn from grim and gritty medieval fantasy into straight up horror as Griffith does a truly malignant Face Heel Turn, accepts the offer to become a Godhand, and marks everyone he's led, including Guts and Casca, with the infamous Brand of Sacrifice. Things go from bad to worse for them and the rest of the Hawks very, very quickly. Many people we had come to like get killed very horrifically, many of them being eaten alive until only Guts and Casca are left. When Casca's sword breaks at the very worst possible time, she learns that the demons have even worse in mind for her than being eaten. Guts in the meantime has made a very badass showing against a whole mess of demons, but when he sees Casca naked and in the hands of the demons, Guts tries to save her, only for a demon by the name of Borkoff to clamp his massive jaws around Guts's left arm before he can reach her. And then Griffith, reborn as the fifth member of the Godhand, Femto, flies down right in front of him, brings Casca down to him, and then starts having his way with her -- which is made even worse due to the fact that, because the Brand causes serious pain when its bearer is in the presence of a demon, and she's as close as anyone can possibly get to a member of the Godhand, she is in complete and utter agony all the while that Femto is doing this to her. Guts tries to kill Borkoff with his shortsword but breaks it on his impenetrable hide and is forced to chisel off the arm with what's left of the sword in order to get free. But when he finally gets free and goes after Femto? He is dogpiled by a whole mess of demons that claw out his right eye and is Forced to Watch as Griffith, who used to be his best friend, brutally rapes the woman he loves to insanity, right in front of him and purely out of spite, and staring straight into Guts's eyes the entire time he's doing this to her, without Guts being able to do a fucking thing about it.
    • Casca's ordeal alone crosses SO MANY LINES. As if being raped and being in excruciating pain because of her brand is bad enough, but it's the way that Femto is raping her that deems the act as so heinously vile. Femto does some truly horrific things to Casca that can only be described as pure sexual sadism... things that you don't even want to describe just out of respect for this woman. Casca is being violated sexually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not to mention that that Hope Spot stunt that Femto pulled was really nasty as he allowed Guts to get just close enough to he and Casca after he chiseled off his arm only to get him dog-piled mere feet away. It's as if Femto did it just so Guts could get front row seats to see exactly what vulgar things he did to Casca.
    • This is the point where the anime ends, and in the manga, that's only the beginning. Because it turns out later that Casca was pregnant with Guts's child when she got raped by Femto, and as a result of this, the child was horribly tainted by Femto's evil, and is born premature and deformed. Despite being tainted by evil, the child still cared for its mother a great deal, to the point of summoning ghosts to protect her from Bishop Mozgus's Cold-Blooded Torture. It's then used as the vessel for the rebirth of Griffith back into the mortal world when it's devoured by the Behelit-Apostle, basically a giant Behelit with tentacles, dying along with him.
    • For lack of a better word, volume 13 is powerful: it makes you want to throw up, cry, throw up again, guzzle down five gallons of Brain Bleach, and eat an adorable puppy for good measure just to get over it because you will feel as if you're getting raped yourself. It is truly a nightmare in itself to have to read volume 13. We understand if you don't want to - and we aren't forcing ya.
  • For a good deal of the series early on, before Guts found his new True Companions, became The Big Guy for the Five-Man Band and was simply a ferocious warrior with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance, one of the more unnerving aspects of the series was how easily Guts could be seen as an even more horrifying creature than the Apostles he killed. Some of the Apostles are shown to be veritable Macbeths as far as their motivations and origins go. Examples follow below.
    • The Count returned from a mini-crusade to find his wife in the midst of a pagan-orgy, was driven mad with the pain of the betrayal, and used the Behelit to take away the emotions that hurt him so much. Even then, he still showed sorrow (as an Apostle, mind you) over the way that his daughter treated him differently, even though he had gone to great lengths to keep the cause of her mother's death a secret. In the end, he allows himself to be sucked into hell by many of the people he'd killed rather than sacrifice his daughter. Guts, inversely, not only killed an elderly priest to use as a decoy against the Count, but even used the Count's innocent daughter Theresia as a human shield to halt his attack...before proceeding to blast him with his Arm Cannon, brutally decapitate him, and then torture him further because the Count is still alive after all of this...all right in front of Theresia. He actually dragged the Count over to her so she'd have a front row seat.
    • Rosine was in an abusive household, and discovered to her despair that the stories of fairies in the distant forest were nothing but myth. Then, as her father is beating her mother on the very ground that her dreams and innocence were shattered, the Behelit takes away them both and turns her into a "fairy," and grants her the ability to turn other children into "fairies." When Guts finds her, not only does he leave a trail of mutilated and burnt child-corpses in his wake (the converted children turn back into humans when killed), he gleefully burns the fairies-in-progress, and outright terrifies Rosine.
    • When fighting Mozgus, while Mozgus is established as a monster, after becoming infected and becoming a real monster, he has the appearance of an angel, as do his interrogators. While he does intend to sacrifice Casca to placate the demon tides, he's also the only one protecting the refugees from said demonic flood. Guts, of course, tells the refugees to shove it and die like men, and then kills their angelic guardians, cementing his status as the demonic black swordsman. Even in death, fire consumes Mozgus' body, which actually holds back the flood as a handful of remaining refugees kneel around him in prayer.

"Mommy, the angel fell!"

    • What happens next? Bam. That.
  • How Captain Zondark received his powers from the Count.
  • The Egg of the Perfect World collecting human bodies as part of his garden.
  • The reveal of Griffith's tortured, mutilated and emaciated body inside Wyndham Tower when Guts and the Hawks come to rescue him a year after his capture by the King of Midland is nothing short of horrific.
    • That's horrible, but when you see Guts take off his mask, gasp in horror, and put it back on? Nothing is scarier indeed.
    • And that's not the only incident of torture by far. We have Vargas from the third major manga story, who was horrifically disfigured as a result of torture by the Count—and this was after he was made to watch his wife and son tortured and then eaten alive right before his eyes.
      • Did we mention that Vargas is as mutated as he is because he was partially eaten himself by the Count?
    • And then there's Inquisitor Mozgus. who is just as horrible as you'd expect a fanatical religious nutjob with too much power and not a shred of objectivity can get. While it's pretty obvious from the start that he's Bad News, his vilest act we see makes him a Complete Monster of the first order: when a band of starving refugees attempts to steal some of the ample foodstuffs sent to Mozgus and his retinue, he spots among them a woman with a starving infant. When she begs him to feed her child, he gently takes her along to his residence, lauding her courage and dedication. He sends away the child to be fed and cared for, then escorts her to a room while extolling the fact that while her intentions were good, she still has to expiate her sins... And then he opens the door, where we see the other refugees being horribly tortured, and the poor woman is dragged, stripped, and tied to another torture device over her increasingly frantic pleas... Then the door closes. It's as nightmarish as it sounds, if not more so. The horror starts here
      • Somehow the fact that he quite obviously truly believes he is doing the right thing makes it even worse. An unrepentant Card-Carrying Villain like Wyald is certainly horrific, but the idea that someone can commit even worse atrocities and still consider themselves a good person is even more terrifying, especially when history has proven time and again that humans are fully capable of this without being demons.
  • How about Ganishka's method of drawing new soldiers for his demon army? He throws pregnant women into vats made up of stitched together Apostles, their children become monsters and rip their ways out of their mother's wombs, and the remains are given to the newborn for food.
  • Trolls from the Qlippoth, whose primary method of reproduction involves forcibly impregnating captured women from villages, with the births of new trolls being every bit as horrific and lethal to the poor women involved as that of Ganishka's demon soldiers.
    • Just to add that with the troll example A couple chapters before hand, we see a woman who's husband and brother were killed by those creatures while she was raped and captured. Later we see that very same woman pleading, desperately pleading for help before those critters rip their way out of here.
      • Actually caused a bit of Real Life nightmare fuel for this troper - a few weeks after reading those chapters, she came home to find a little statue that looked EXACTLY like the trolls.
  • The Apostles are some pieces of work themselves. Most Apostles shown in the Eclipse look like deformed genitals with gaping maws, Vagina Dentata and unbelievably hideous faces. As for the Godhand themelves, Void has his lips peeled back to show off his teeth and gums and his eyelids are sewn shut. Let's not forget his exposed brain...
    • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant Slan pulled a textbook example of Fan Disservice when she manifested herself in a mound of entrails from the trolls that Guts has just slaughtered in the Qlippoth to confront Guts and injure him. The most - physically - attractive of the Godhands turns into pure Squick.
  • Griffith had already been established as a vicious Manipulative Bastard, but his one and only trip into Magnificent Bastard territory comes after he just singlehandedly won the Hundred Year War. A group of disgruntled nobles led by the queen are planning to poison Griffith, then blame it on a rival kingdom that Griffith has just defeated. Griffith seemingly falls for it, but later, the conspirators realize that the castle they are in is burning. The queen rushes to a balcony to see what is going on, only to find Griffith, alive and well, standing outside the castle. Griffith calmly explains to the queen and her fellow conspirators that they are the losers, and death on the battlefield does not distinguish between nobility and commoners before the last of his enemies burn alive. Foss, a minister who had taken part in the conspiracy and had acted as Griffith's mole after Griffith kidnapped his daughter, finds himself shaking after the fact. Not because he's worried that he will be executed if anyone ever finds out, but because Griffith is just that scary. Also, doubles as Griffith's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • How about just how completely fucked-up some of the relationships in the series are or how they start out as perfectly wholesome relationships before they end up going to hell?
    • First, we have Princess Charlotte and her old father, the King of Midland. She looks identical to her mother, the Queen, which... caused some problems. Canonically, he ends up trying to rape her, after his rage that Griffith slept with her. The idea of this is very disturbing, and definitely requires a ton of Brain Bleach. This alienates her from her father to the point of disowning him and refusing to see him when he's on his deathbed, his health having seriously deteriorated because of the guilt of what he had done.
    • Then there's Guts and his adoptive father Gambino. Guts was adopted by Sys, Gambino's lover, after she miscarried, despite superstition that states that you shouldn't pick up a child from a dead body. Several years after Guts was taken in, Sys died of a plague, which was tragic enough because it left Guts without a significant mother figure in the years to come, but it also hardened the heart of Gambino against Guts, whom he felt should have died instead. Despite Guts looking up to him and doing everything in his power to make the mercenary leader proud, including bringing him his part of the pay for every battle, Gambino hated Guts so much that at one point, he sold the poor kid to one of his men, a creepy pederast by the name of Donovan, for three silver coins, which leads to Guts being raped despite his best efforts to fight the big man off. Things between Guts and Gambino come to a head when Gambino, after losing his leg to a cannonball, gets drunk one night, comes into Guts's tent, and tries to murder him, forcing Guts to kill him in self defense.
    • And then there's the relationships between the three central characters themselves. After meeting and being defeated by Griffith, Guts moves up in the ranks of Griffith's mercenary band, eventually becoming a commander of raiders, and the two of them form a bond that is very much like brotherhood (or if you're that way inclined, more than that). Meanwhile, Casca has been Griffith's trusted Number Two ever since Griffith saved her from being raped as a little girl. Griffith gradually becomes obsessed with Guts, such that when Guts decides to leave the Hawks after deciding that he's not going to be a part of Griffith's dream, Griffith's thoughts during the resultant duel, about how he would not let him go, are very Yandere-ish. And after being defeated, he goes to see Princess Charlotte and proceeds to bang her, which he mainly did as a rebound, which gets him thrown into the Tower of Rebirth to be put to the torture. By the time Guts and Casca have rescued Griffith (and fallen in love), Griffith has come to hate him, and the focus of his obsession gradually moves to Casca. But when he finds out that Guts and Casca are in a relationship and are thinking about leaving him behind...oh boy, does he lose it. And to make things even worse, this is the point where Griffith finds his Behelit again, triggering the events of the Eclipse, which are better covered elsewhere on this page. No one, especially not Guts and Casca, walks out of the horror that follows unscathed.
  • Rosine's little Crap Saccharine World is fairly disturbing, specially due to the fact that her "elves," who rape and kill each other, are basically still children playing. When we see the cocoons in which they are transformed, things reach a really disturbing" angle when we learn she plans to turn her childhood friend into one of the little bastards; thankfully we later see (courtesy of Guts destroying the cocoons) the deformed children inside then.
    • The absolute worst part of Rosine's "elven kingdom" is the "Adult attack", where they pin each other to the ground and rape each other with their stingers. Depressing, horrifying, and slightly narmful in a way that produces an entirely new feeling of awkwardness mixed with terror.
    • All those transformations - from little fairies into hornets and back, in all possible phases.
  • The Vrittanian dinner party, when the first tiger shows up. It's really quite disturbing to see Miura toy with classic horror tropes (not showing us the tiger initially, the lights going out, blood splattering on bewildered onlookers...) when most of the other monsters have been so in-your-face. It's almost less frightening when the rest of the pack burst in, just because they're immediately spotted.
  • All the Eye Scream that happens with disturbing regularity.
    • Special mention goes to Casca stabbing one of her would-be rapists in the eye with a stick and then the same guy gets his remaining eye gouged by one of Judeau's knives a moment later (only in the anime). Of course, the guy had it coming, but still. * shudder*
    • A more sentimental case - and therefore, a bit more horrifying - is what happened to Guts. After being dog-piled by a shitload of demons before he was mere feet away from saving Casca from Femto's rape, Guts is still desperately trying to get to Casca who, with her last sane thoughts, is now begging Guts to not look at her being humiliated, as Femto is pretty much forcing the two to look at each other at this point. Even with one arm missing and nothing but a bloody stump left, Guts tries to push himself up to try and get to her, which actually causes one of the demon's claws to drive itself into Guts' eye as it looks at its last sight of Casca's rape.
    • What's worse is that Guts remaining eye gets repeatedly threatened in the following arcs.
    • Chakrams can cut eyes in half...
    • One of Bishop Mozgus' disciples uses red-hot pliers to pull eyeballs out...
    • Not to mention that according to the manga, a good solid punch to the head will make your eyes pop right out. Every time.
    • Also, Miura seems to have a fondness of drawing people's heads getting cut in half, right at eye level. Graphically.
    • And getting stabbed or shot in the eye with an arrow takes the eyeball with it.
    • Also, in the very beginning when Guts is fighting the Baron of Koka Castle. First, the Baron loses his left eye when Guts blows his head in half, then he loses his right eye when Guts shoots it with his crossbow during wholly unnecessary but well-deserved torture.
    • Serpico stabs a kelpie through the head, and then next page we see its left eyeball dangling from the socket. Lovely.
  • The Idea Of Evil. That is all.
  • Following Griffith's year long torture there's also the utterly emotionless look in his eyes/face.
    • When Guts and the Hawks come to rescue Griffith at Wyndham Tower a year after his capture and torture by the King of Midland we see that he is physically crippled with the tendons in his wrists and ankles severed and his tongue cut out. Guts then proceeds to tear out the torturer's tongue on seeing him wearing Griffith's tongue around his neck - "I'm not letting you go to Hell two-tongued!".
      • The fact that this is a moment of Tranquil Fury from a man more known for other traits really makes you realise just how inconceivably furious Guts is at that point.
  • Femto recently topped himself by using the Skull Knight's dimension-warping attack to fuse the mortal and supernatural realms together, unleashing HELL ON EARTH.
  • Ganishka's face is very nightmare worthy at times.
  • All those rapes and attempted rapes.
    • I think what is most disturbing about the rape and sexual assault that happens in the story is that it's all very realistic (e.g. Remember that most sex crimes aren't committed by strangers, but by people that the victim knows, which makes it so much more traumatizing for the victim). Most of it is done by characters who are human, not monsters (or, they use to be human before turning into abominations) and as we've seen with Casca's rape at Femto's doing and Guts' rape at Donovan's hands the victims all suffer very realistic repercussions. Some fans might think that Miura went way too far by drawing Casca's rape scene so graphically and some fans themselves go a bit far by saying that because of the way the scene is drawn, it meant that Casca really enjoyed being raped and that she has no reason to be in the state that she is in but think about it people: rape is real and this is how it actually happens, and that's why the crime and the victims of the crime should never be taken for granted.
    • After Casca's rape she is seen taking a Shower of Angst under a waterfall fully clothed. At first glance, she looks totally serene and normal (granted you actually ignore what had just happened to her in the previous chapters), but when she turns around to face Guts - you know that something is off.
    • Casca's current state after her rape.
  • When Schierke taps into the powers of darkness and reminescents that when you look into darkness, the darkness looks back at you. And does so in form of Cthulhu-esque nightmare. Okay, it was later revealed to be just an Earth spirit, but his first apperance and build up to it was damn creepy.
  • I always find it particularly terrifying that after being reborn into the mortal world, Griffith doesn't actually seem to have changed that much. If anything, his cunning, military prowess and inhuman charisma have increased, making him even more successful than he was before.
    • Agreed, in particular the bit where he meets Guts again, calmly declares that he feels no remorse for anything he did, and says it all so damn reasonably that it's almost as if he thinks Guts is the one being irrational, is truly horrifying. Even if you didn't know what he was capable of with his demonic powers, the sociopathic lack of remorse would be frightening enough on its own. This aspect of him rattles even Guts, and considering how much he's been through without batting an eye, that says a lot.
      • What I always found scary about that bit was how Casca actually seemed affectionate towards him. She collapsed before long due to the pain his presence caused her Brand of Sacrifice, but apart from that she didn't seem bothered by him. Presumably it was the remains of her child (whose corpse Femto had used to exist in the mortal world) she was reacting to, but that doesn't stop it being horrifying that she seemed willing to embrace Femto when Guts struggled day and night to keep her safe and she still wouldn't trust him.
        • This creeps me out as well, especially since Casca can subconsciously remember her ordeal during the Eclipse when other characters are trying to force themselves on her, but she didn't seem to do that when she was near Griffith... One could argue that she didn't see a reason to fear Griffith at the time because it was Griffith as Femto who raped her but remember that Casca INDEED recognized the demonic entity as Griffith before he violated her. This just brings on an onslaught of bad thoughts and assumptions.
    • What about the way Femto builds up the new Band of the Hawk? The readers know that he's a monster, but not many of the characters do, and seeing a new bunch of people looking for a purpose in life flock to his banner just as they did before sets off no end of alarm bells for what might happen to them.
      • I always found it particularly disturbing that he actually went so far as to replace the original leaders of the Band of the Hawk, even after claiming that he felt no remorse for selling out the first batch. It was no wonder that Guts was so pissed when Grunbeld mentioned that he was part of the new Band of the Hawk.
  • Also Griffith takes a Shower of Angst after he becomes a prostitute to make money, complete with a wonderfully disturbing scene of him angsting while clawing at his arms until they bleed when washing himself. He only stops when Casca tearfully embraces him from behind.
  • Guts's childhood from Berserk is singularly horrific. His mother was hanged presumably as he was being born (yeah, we don't get it either), and he was adopted by a mercenary named Gambino, who trained him as a child soldier. During his time in Gambino's band, Guts had to endure some seriously Harmful to Minors stuff of both the horrific violence and the sex varieties—he was even raped at one point in the manga when Gambino sold him to a pederast soldier in his band as a child prostitute. It all came to a head when Gambino, his leg having been blown off by a cannonball and thus making him unfit for combat, got drunk one night and tried to kill Guts because he blamed the kid for the death of his lover from the plague. Guts had to kill Gambino in self defense and then get away from the camp to escape the wrath of the other mercenaries. And that's just peaches compared to the stuff that comes afterwards.
    • Casca's past isn't much better—she lost her village at an early age and was sold to a noble who wanted a new serving girl, only for it to transpire that he wanted her for sex. Just as he's about to rape her, though, Griffith shows up. Instead of killing her would-be rapist, however, he makes her do it instead ("If you have something you wish to protect, take up that sword."). She has a relatively easy life afterward, until the Eclipse goes down and she suffers a horrific ordeal that ends with her being driven insane.
    • Griffith's past wasn't much of a walk in the park either, as revealed in the second to last episode of the anime, just before he crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
    • We don't even need to get into Rosine's and Jill's story again...
      • In short: being a child sucks in this world.
  • The Beast - this thing is just pure evil that cares about nothing but to kill and maim and wants Guts all for himself. His most scray moment is probably when he takes over Guts and attempts to rape Casca, while giving pretty damn ugly Hannibal Lecture. And it was clearly looking like Beast plans to make Guts eat her once he's done with raping. All to make Guts his again.
  • When Guts smiles it is usually a creepy Slasher Smile. This should be your signal to run, as he's usually in a blood-spilling mood when he's got that grin.
  • Perhaps just a bit of Fridge Horror here, but I don't even want to think about what it looks like under Guts' Post-Eclipse right eyelid.
  • Farnese is shown to be turned on by people burning alive to the point where she spends some "alone time" thinking very hard about that.
    • Certainly crosses into Nausea Fuel territory in that respect.
  • The Count playing with Pippin's hollowed out corpse just to torment Guts.
  • Yeah, the anime might have dumbed down on the violence, but still: some scenes are still mega horrifying when you attach sound effects, voice acting, and full motion depictions to the mix.
    • From re-re-rewatching the series, I found it extremely unsettling hearing Guts actually scream in pain as Nosferatu Zodd prepare to tear him limb from limb.
    • Guts hacking off his arm with his broken sword while Badass was also incredibly disturbing. And in the anime the sound of him hacking at his arm. This troper clenched her arm and grimaced during that scene and is sure she's not the only one to do so.
    • And to end, Casca's rape itself. Yes, the anime was more lenient on us to at least put up a Rape Discretion Shot, but it's still sickening having to watch her writhe in agony as this is being done to her.
  • The eyes are the windows to the soul... and may account for Griffith's lack of one later.
    • There's just something very creepy about Griffith's eyes (especially in the anime) even before he crossed the Despair Event Horizon and became Femto. They become even more creepy after he loses the duel to Guts and has a Heroic BSOD which led to him sleeping with the princess out of depression. His Dull Eyes of Unhappiness are insanely creepy, punctuated with a lightning strike in the background.
    • Then, there's the look in Femto's eyes as he's raping Casca, also the fact that he stares into Guts eyes the entire time he's doing that to Casca.
      • You know what's even more creepy? We saw some warning signs before the Eclipse when Griffith was giving them the SAME STARE when it became clear to him that Guts and Casca were a couple who were in love, and not just the blind admiration that people gave to him, which probably helped to set him off.
  • During the Eclipse there's also Slan commenting on how "delicious" the whole ordeal of Griffith as Femto raping Casca is while Guts is forced to watch. She even sounds like she's having an orgasm while she talks about it.
    • Slan being female amplifies this by a few orders of magnitude. A woman gleefully approving of another woman's rape is just the bitchiest thing imaginable.
  • While an awesome moment for Casca it was also quite creepy how post-Eclipse when she ran away from Guts out of fear and ran into some bandits, who then tried to gang rape her... but by the time Guts found her, Casca was naked and covered in her would-be rapists' blood after she slashed all of their throats.
  • Overlapping with Fridge Horror, it disturbs me to realize that Guts, a guy who is really one of the only non-sexually predacious men in Berserk, nearly came close to raping Casca on three different occasions. Alright, we'll throw the hero a bone by mentioning that the first instance was only an insinuation and that the third time he was being manipulated by the Beast when he was emotionally vulnerable. However, the second time, which happened a few weeks after the Eclipse when Guts accidentally ripped open Casca's gown and he leaned in to presumably kiss and have sex with her, was really all on him. Had Casca not pushed him off and run off screaming and crying, he might not have stopped himself... And he does this despite the fact that she had just been brutally raped in front of him with the image of the act being seared into his mind.... And if Guts was really that type of man, he can easily have his way with any person that he wants, as demonstrated in volume 23. Shame on you, Guts.
  • Notice how during the Eclipse the demon apostles stripped Casca naked, one of them raised its spikes close to her vagina in between her legs and looked like it was going to rape her had it not stopped to watch Femto being born with the others.
  • The song Behelit in the anime. Hell Is That Noise indeed. It's especially nightmarish when it plays while Femto is raping Casca.
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