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{{work}}{{Darth Wiki}}
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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 Scream|eye screams]] and horrible, horrible demonic creatures...heck, this thing should be renamed High Octane [[Nightmare Fuel]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|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 Monster|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 [[Artifact of Doom|Behelit]] hits a [[Despair Event Horizon|moment of absolute despair, where he would do absolutely anything to escape his situation]]. When this happens, the Behelit, a creepy little [[Egg MacGuffin|egglike thing]] that has human facial features scattered randomly all over its surface, rearranges those features into a human face. Which then proceeds to [[Tears of Blood|bleed from the eyes]] and start screaming. Then the angles in whichever area this happened start changing and the Godhand, the [[Big Bad
** 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
** 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.
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* The reveal of {{spoiler|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 ''[[Take Our Word for It|put it back on]]''? [[Nothing Is Scarier|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
*** 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 [[Knight Templar|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 [http://www.mangareader.net/96-1138-50/berserk/chapter-18.html 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 [[Complete Monster|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
* 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.
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** 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, [[You Should Have Died Instead|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 [[Shipping Goggles|that way inclined]], [[Ho Yay|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
* 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 [[Kids Are Cruel|still children]] ''[[Kids Are Cruel|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; [[Sarcasm Mode|thankfully]] we later see (courtesy of Guts destroying the cocoons) [[Nausea Fuel|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.
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*** The fact that this is a moment of [[Tranquil Fury]] from a man more known for [[The Berserker|other]] [[Unstoppable Rage|traits]] really makes you realise just how inconceivably furious Guts is at that point.
* Femto recently topped himself by {{spoiler|using the Skull Knight's dimension-warping attack to fuse the mortal and supernatural realms together, unleashing HELL ON EARTH.}}
** Speaking of Femto - well, there's Femto. Where {{spoiler|Griffith}} in [[Humanoid Abomination|human form]] just makes me feel [[Nausea Fuel|nauseated]] whenever I see him - straight into the [[Uncanny Valley]] - in [[Eldritch Abomination|demon form]] he scares the living shit out me whenever I see him (so much so that I can't even look at a picture of him directly, he scares me that much). It's not entirely in the [[Memetic Rapist]] kind of way either, but you just get hit with this huge [[The Dreaded|wave of dread]] whenever he appears that just tells you, "oh no. He's going to ruin someone else's life now, isn't he?" Unlike the other [[Complete Monster
*** And even if Guts does manage to take revenge and kill him, everyone except his [[True Companions]] will hate him for it, since Femto has been declared [[The Messiah]]. A [[Complete Monster]] '''DECLARED''' [[The Messiah]], [[Crapsack World|it is]] '''[[Crapsack World|THAT BAD]]'''!
* Ganishka's [[Nightmare Face|face]] is very [http://www.mrsmanga.com/Berserk/227.236/109 nightmare worthy at times.]
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** {{spoiler|Casca's [[Rape Leads to Insanity|current state]] after her rape.}}
*** The nature of insanity is always a disturbing thing to think about, especially in Casca's case. She wasn't reduced to the mindset of a child, but to something ''less'' than a child. A lot of fans like the theory that {{spoiler|the real Casca is in a dreamworld where the Eclipse never happened and she has a family with Guts and she's too content to leave}}, but something from [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBuQ6dVwe0o the Dreamcast video game puts me off about that theory.] What if the real Casca is actually in [[And I Must Scream|a nightmare world and she isn't allowed to leave?]] ''And she's been insane for over two years.'' [[Fridge Horror|If this is true,]] I would not be surprised if she just [[Came Back Wrong|came back all sorts of wrong.]]
*** And to add more [[Fridge Horror]] to the mix, just the sheer thought that {{spoiler|Casca was raped by ''[[Satan|the]]'' [[Satan|epitome of evil]]}} is enough [[Go Mad
* 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 [[H.P. Lovecraft|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.
** So Miura is a [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]] fan too, eh? I was beginning to think that this series wasn't [[Nietzsche Wannabe|philosophically cynical enough.]]
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*** I always found it particularly disturbing that he actually went so far as to ''[[Suspiciously Similar Substitute|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 [[Berserk Button|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 Soldiers|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
** Casca's past isn't much
** 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...
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* 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.
** [[media:
* Perhaps just a bit of [[Fridge Horror]] here, but I don't even want to think about what it looks like under Guts' [[Eye Scream|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.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Nightmare Fuel]]
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