Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Given Roald Dahl's love for Black Comedy, this is inevitable.

  • The original draft of the book was much more violent, with children being burned to death FROM THE INSIDE OUT, ground to powder while screaming in agony, drowning, cut to ribbons, crushed, etc. In fact, Violet seemed to be the only survivor along with Charlie.
  • The possible fates of the naughty children and Wonka's cavalier attitude towards them (e.g. when Veruca falls down the garbage chute, he glibly points out that the incinerator is only turned on every other day). Rule of Funny allows these to be Amusing Injuries rather than horrific accidents and the children ultimately end up (mostly) unharmed, however, the whole situation seems to be rather macabre.
    • Especially frightening if you're claustrophobic, and don't know that the kids survive their punishments. This makes Augustus Gloop's and Veruca's demises way scarier.
  • More squicky than nightmarish, one of the products Wonka makes is fizzy lemonade swimming pools. The implication is that he expects people to drink something they've been swimming in...

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

  • Charlie and the Glass Elevator and the Vermicious Knids were definitely Nightmare Fuel. They looked like 4ft-tall furry eggs that stood on their pointy ends and had HORRIBLE staring eyes. They could twist into any shape and ate humans. One of the most unnerving things about them was that it's suggested that they don't eat people so much as absorb them - they don't have mouths, but 'they have their ways'. They were the first things that Mr. Wonka was actually SCARED about. It could be difficult just turning the page, knowing that picture of the thing standing in the elevator would be there. Even worse with the Michael Foreman illustrations... that is, BEFORE Quentin Blake did them.
  • The bit going down with the 'Minuses' to rescue the grandmother who'd taken too many of the de-aging pills and had been reduced to -3 years old. Imagine this cavern with negative ghosts floating sideways...
    • Oh, and the cavern is also populated by invisible, inaudible creatures that, if they bite you, you become one of them. And there's no way to tell where they are or if they're coming until they bite you...
    • It's worse when you notice that Wonka apparently knows how it feels to get bitten. Your age is slowly divided into a random number until you become one of them.....maybe Mr. Wonka had other reasons for giving Charlie the factory at such a young age?
    • Worse still, this is one of the few times Wonka himself seems to show fear, and as he tells Charlie, he came here by himself dozens of times to rescue the Oompa Loompas who fell victim to it while testing the stuff.


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