Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

** And the Santa commercial, oh god [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vOPPXkqm4 the Santa commercial]. A sack full of confidence indeed.

** Add to this the fact that the narrator of the commercial is David Kaye. That's right, ''[[Beast Wars]]'' Megatron is talking about male enhancement. Now think about the line "a sack full of confidence".

** Additionally frighting is that the "constant smile" is supposed to make the viewer think that he has an erection at that moment. So when he's at work, shopping, sitting around with his pals, talking to strange women, losing his swimwear in the pool...

 

* Kaede from ''[[SHUFFLE!]]'' is a non-[[Cloudcuckoolander]] example.

* Kafuka Fuura from ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]''. Much of her work comes across this way, but in particular, when she gives a scratchy recording of the Traumerei lyrics about "soup made by a lady in a catskin", "a neighbourhood where all the old ladies have disappeared" and "a hole as deep as a young man's height", inadvertently producing a song that can drive any who listen to it paranoid, depressed and insane, yet dancing to it as though it were an upbeat piece of pop music.

* [[Creepy Child|Little Kikuri]] from ''[[Hell Girl]]'' likes to draw mutilated stick-figure bodies. Granted, she is an attendant of hell...

** Her drawings are just about the least disturbing thing about her - how about the time when she threw flowers over a teenager dying from a traffic accident, after telling him that Hell is real, and then running away giggling.

* Mytho from ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' becomes one of these in the second season when his {{spoiler|heart is tainted with Raven's blood}}. He performs a ballet dance to "Night On Bald Mountain" (which those who have seen Fantasia will remember as the sequence with Chernabog summoning demons) with gestures that make his hands seem clawed and an intense, angered and almost pained look on his face. It sends a group of female dance students screaming when they watch it. He also later tells a character that he wants them to take out his heart, then "kiss it and dye your lips crimson with my blood." It's hard to tell if he's trying to scare her or if he actually thinks it's ''romantic''.

* [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Ritsuko Akagi]] fills this position several times in the show. The last time is particularly nightmarish, and left this troper with nightmares for a week.

* Konoka Konoe of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sensei_negima/v15/c136/15.html one of these]:

'''Chamo:''' Konoka-neesan, that's too grim! Too grim! }}

** Haruna, peeved that her close friends wouldn't inform a [[Muggle]] such as herself about the existence of [[Hermetic Magic|magic]], threatens to thoroughly torture each one of them, while drawing pictures for them of [[To the Pain|how she'll do it]] (thankfully, that's as far as she goes). In general, lots of characters comment on how scary Haruna is.

** ''Finland'', of all people, might be an example of this trope, considering some of the things he does.

{{quote|'''Finland:''' *on the name of his new dog* I like ''Bloody Flower Egg''!

(They seem to have settled on the "Hanatamago" instead of the Bloody... [[Awesome McCoolname|Thankfully?]]) }}

* Seiichirou Kitano, the protagonist of ''[[Angel Densetsu]]'', is a nice take on this trope: to the readers he's [[Hilarity Ensues|funny]], but to the other characters in the manga, he's a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant just by ''being around''. (Yes, he's [[Face of a Thug|that scary]])

** What's especially notable is how she manages to terrify ''everyone''. Customers, clients, bystanders, collegues, even her own twisted creations; there is not a single individual who will not be retching or screaming around her at some point. And she's ''still'' [[Cute Monster Girl|endlessly adorable]].

* The title character of ''Mato-chan'' is fascinated by bugs and frequently voices conclusions about her grade-school life that are informed by the anatomy and life cycles of insects (such as the tendency of female Praying Mantises to eat their mates).

* Sawako (albeit unintentionally) from ''[[Kimi ni Todoke]]''. In-universe, with those [[The Un-Smile|forced]] [[Slasher Smile|smiles]].

* [[Complete Monster|Johan Liebert]] of ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]''.

* Faust VIII of [[Shaman King]].

 

* In the [[Daria]] fandom is a group known as The Angst Lords. Their stories specialize in [[Horrifying Implications]] and [[My God, What Have I Done?]] moments guranteed to leave you with the desire to hug someone tightly to reassure yourself that the story is over and, indeed, fictional.

 

 

* Patrick Bateman's frequent morbid sketches throughout the book/film ''[[American Psycho]]'' certainly qualify, assuming you believe the [[Alternate Character Interpretation]] that is Patrick imagining all of the horrible things he is said to have done in the novel/movie.

* Parodied in ''[[Scary Movie]] 3'', with Cody's bizarre drawing of Samara parody Tabitha.

* The ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000|MST3K]]'' episode ''[[Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders]]'' not only has plenty of Nightmare Fuel, but an unwitting NFSA in the form of Grandpa [[Ernest Borgnine]], whose whimsical, heartwarming bedtime stories are filled with terrifying monsters and cute animal death (ironically, this is instead of letting him watch a horror movie). Mike and the bots parody this in one segment when they begin reading a series of children's books written by Ernest Borgnine. They all have cute covers and innocuous titles but feature sickening amounts of death and torture. (All except the book titled "Dr. Blood's Orgy of Gore" which is about a group of bunnies who get sweaters.)

'''Borgnine:''' Well, now you're getting ahead of me. }}

** This unfortunate problem results from a very, very simple '''''incredibly bad idea'''''; the movie was made from two failed ''horror movies'' (including one that blatantly plagiarized [[Stephen King]])... but they couldn't get them picked up like that, so they retooled them as a single family film, using ''exactly the same stories''. The very fact that someone thought it was a good idea to greenlight this script as a family film may make this [[Truth in Television]], to a degree.

* ''[[Superbad]]'' features a humorous variant of this, in that it is not that the images young Seth draws are scary, but they all involve penises in vaguely disturbing contexts (signing the Declaration of Independence, bursting out of a man's chest à la ''Alien'', [[Riding the Bomb]] from ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]'', etc). They still result in him being sent to a psychiatrist though.

** Seth himself was, however, fully aware that what he was doing was utterly bizarre and quite disturbing but was unable to stop himself, describing it as a sort of compulsion.

** What's worse is in that in the original story, the Angel has such a force of personality that the characters still loved him greatly, even while they're horrified by his very detached view of humanity. [[What the Hell, Hero?|At one point he causes a friend of theirs to drown,]] [[Fate Worse Than Death|instead of allowing him to live to an old age, where he'll be bed-ridden for '30 years', viewing it as being more merciful]]. It's implied he's such a horrifying bastard because like other angels, he has no knowledge of good and evil, having never eaten the [[Forbidden Fruit]].

* ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'' - Near the start of the movie, the kindergarten teacher shows the mother a picture which Aston Kutcher's (then 5-years-old) character has drawn: and it's him standing over two mangled corpses with a bloody knife in his hand.

* ''[[Alpha and Omega]]'' has Eve, a caring [[Stepford Smiler]] [[Mama Bear]] who, because she's an [[Ax Crazy]] [[Cloudcuckoolander]], would make various death threats against anyone who would harm her loved ones, including ripping out wolf anatomy's and shoving them down their throats or grasp at another wolf until they stop moving. However some of the other wolves, such as [[Papa Wolf|Winston]] and [[Only Sane Man|Kate]], would be easily intimidated and shocked. Despite this, she believes that her threats would make a point.

 

* The award-winning novel ''[[Knowledge Of Angels]]'' by Jill Paton Walsh features a young girl that was [[Raised by Wolves|brought up by wolves]] being taken to a church for the first time. Imagine the reaction of a child that does not even know OF the Bible, let alone the details of the stories within it, coming face-to-face with a full sized Crucifix statue for the first time. By and large, quite a lot of religious iconography - particularly relics and images of martyrs - must be horrifying to young children who have no idea what they are meant to represent.

** Many children even find them scary knowing full well what they are.

** Many [[Atheism|adults]] find [[The Fundamentalist|them]] scary, too.

* ''[[The Spitting Image Book]]'', by the producers of the satirical 1980s TV show, included a parody of the [[wikipedia:Noddy|Noddy]] children's books by Enid Blyton, in which Big Ears advises an unhappy Noddy to cheer himself up by singing happy songs. Noddy then proceeds to dance and sing a happy tune that quickly turns into a horrific, Wilfred Owen-like lyric about World War I. ("Oh what does it matter / If things aren't so merry / And death-shrouded corpses / Lie ready to bury"). The parody ends with Big Ears saying, "I don't see what you're so happy about. You've spoiled my whole bloody evening!" and an illustration (in the style of the originals) of him about to hang himself.

* In ''Mathemagics'', Riva's daughter draws a picture of her home planet for class, which leads to an angry meeting between the teacher and Riva.

* In ''[[World War Z]]'', [[Wild Child|feral girl]] Sharon describes the circumstances that left her that way with all the comprehension of a four-year-old, and that innocence arguably makes her descriptions (and impersonations) of the attacking zombies and {{spoiler|the parents murdering their own children to keep the zombies from getting them}} that much more terrifying and [[Tear Jerker|saddening.]]

* Rubeus Hagrid, in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' novels, in his role of Professor of Care of Magical Creatures, teaches the students at Hogwarts all about "interesting critters". Unfortunately, what Hagrid calls "interesting", his students call "dangerous and frightening".

 

* In the third Halloween episode of ''[[Community]]'', Annie Eddison fits this trope like a glove.

* This is the whole point of ''[[The Addams Family]]''.

* In ''[[Little Howard's Big Question|Little Howards Big Question]]'', one episode has Big Howard attempting to coax Little Howard into sleep using a lullaby his father used to sing to him. In it, he sings the giant mutant bed-bugs won't bite so long as Little Howard stays very, very still, and that the monsters under the bed ''did'' once kill a child for going downstairs in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, but that Little Howard should be okay since there's still a quarter of the kid left, and that while Little Howard is sleeping he'll be 'downstairs with a Ouija board, communing with the dead'. Little Howard complains that this is the scariest song he's ever heard, but it's subverted when he falls peacefully asleep anyway.

 

* A few of the songs by [[Tom Lehrer]], such as "Who's Next" and "We Will All Go Together When We Go" could make [[Tom Lehrer|the man]] come across as a NFSA. He also wrote a lovely lullaby that would fit the trope.

 

 

* Whoever the hell drew the illustrations in the ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' sourcebook ''Innocents''. Okay, they're supposed to be scary, but this book specifically deals with child characters and the horrors faced there. The images haven't gotten any less disturbing. For a more direct example, the children writing notes found as flavor text throughout the book.

* In the same vein as ''Innocents'', the indie RPG ''[[Little Fears]]'' is about children fighting allegorical monsters for fun topics like child abuse, kidnapping, and molestation.

* The ''[[My Imaginary Friend]]'' game books are filled with childish journal entries talking about their lovable imaginary monster and how they disemboweled their evil teachers and such.

 

* ''[[Max Payne 2]]'': The [[Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book|crayon drawings]] seen in Part 1's Prologue, {{spoiler|which depict part of the first game's story (Max's wife and baby are killed)}}, are definitely the work of a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, even if we don't know how anyone else reacts to them.

* In ''[[Bad Mojo]]'', we see a childhood drawing done by protagonist Roger Samms with a note from his teacher attached commenting to the effect that "This boy is clearly disturbed". Said drawing is obviously inspired by Roger's issues with his mother's [[Death by Childbirth]], as it consists of a newborn baby smirking evilly as he stabs his mother to death, and an animated version plays as you approach, accompanied by creepy music.

** It's entirely possible that she simply went mad from watching all her childhood friends turn into undead, especially considering that they all are significantly older than they look.

** Agitha from ''Twilight Princess'' loves bugs. She just LOVES THEM SO MUCH.

*** I know you have bugs...

* The nurse in ''[[Xenogears]]'' is constantly telling you that she hopes you come back with terrible, life-threatening injuries so she'll have something to do.

* Bebedora in ''[[Arc the Lad]]: Twilight of the Spirits''. She's a horribly creepy demonic loli marionette who apparently has no eyes, can 'see' emotions as color and casually talks about Ending The World. Oh, and she can possess people and make them do whatever she feels like doing, whether they want to or not. [http://www.flyingomelette.com/arc4/arc4bebedora.html This page] should give you a vague idea of what kind of, uh, person-doll-demon-thing she is.

** His cameo in season two {{spoiler|in hell, complete with ''[[The Exorcist]]''-style head turn,}} certainly doesn't help things.

* ''[[Persona 4]]'' has {{spoiler|Izanami, who gives the Protagonist his powers and is a literal Station Attendant. She could technically be considered one by trope definition as well, because she thought that she was merely giving the humans what they wanted.}}

* The Medic from ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', as the [[Mad Scientist]] and [[Deadly Doctor]], is perhaps '''the''' most [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc&t=1m03s terrifying] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ju-mqUvE60&t=2m07s motherfucker] on the entire team, [[Career Killers|and that's]] [[Army of Thieves and Whores|saying]] [[Sociopathic Hero|a LOT]]. Even the Heavy, the towering Soviet brawler who smashes his way through the enemy ranks with a roaring laugh, is commonly put off by the Medic's sinister tendencies. The Medic's take on all this? As far as he knows, he's just practicing medicine.

** Also, his [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ju-mqUvE60&t=3m03s screams] are definitely the most horrifying in the entire game.

* In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, who could forget Orson's wife Monica? {{spoiler|She's been brought back from the dead, but it's [[Gone Horribly Wrong]].}}

{{quote|'''Monica:''' {{spoiler|Darlingdarlingdarlingdarling....}}}}

 

* Part two of the Halloween special of [[Brawl in the Family]]. Dedede complains that the ending to the story is boring, and asks what kind of cuddly conclusion Kirby will come up with. We don't actually see the cheerfully told story, but it makes Waddledee throw up ''and scares the crap out of Dedede''.

** {{color|purple|Sometimes Waluigi thinks. He thinks about the most important things in life.}} [[Gross Up Close-Up|WAAAAAA!]]

** Made worse a couple panels later where she demonstrates this rap.

* The Hairy Criminal from [[Gunshow]]. [[Non-Indicative Name|Who isn't actually that hairy at all.]]

 

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3HGYlk89t4 This puppet]

** He sold an accompanying T-Shirt with a stick-figure-ish family of Dad, Mom, Son and Daughter with frowns on their faces with the caption "My Whole Family Is Made Of Meat". When I wear mine around, I get looks ranging from bemusement to outright horror.

{{quote|'''Strong Sad:''' And the robot's human brain remembered his children and his stolen life, and he was moved to tears. But the tears shorted out his circuits, and fried his brain, and the robot toppled over, and he crushed his children, and the Goblin, too. [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|And none of them]] [[Kill'Em All|lived]].}}

*** But then Strong Sad tells that {{spoiler|the townsfolk laughed so hard they fell into a coma for the rest of their lives.}}

* The unfocused powers of the eponymous 8-year-old [[Reality Warper]] of ''[http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus1.html minus]'' make her practically this trope personified. Among her more disturbing actions are [http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus45.html a magic show] which features a ''literal'' Cut The Lady In Half act, [http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus88.html swapping the heads of everyone], and [http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus40.html inducing rictus grins in the townsfolk].

* Lie Bot from ''[[Achewood]]'' invokes this trope at times, most notably in the "What is the [http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09052006 saddest] [http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07302007 thing?]" exchanges with Philippe.

* Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham from ''[[Questionable Content]]'' is a [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=546 somewhat light hearted example of this]. It usually comes out [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=596 while trying to comfort others].

* [[Salad Fingers]] falls quite nicely into this trope, with his childish, almost playful voice, his fetish for rusty objects, his finger puppet "friends", who he routinely talks and sings to, and his tendencies for self-mutilation.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSkT77010fE This guy]. Who knew a how-to video on making iced tea could be so friggin' creepy?

 

* Cheryl, the secretary from ''[[Archer]]'':

{{quote|'''Cheryl:''' You seriously don't think that's hot?

'''Lana:''' What the hell?!

'''Cheryl:''' I'm wet just thinking about it. }}

** When regaling [[Rashomon Style|his side of the story]] in "Once Upon An Ed", Ed comes up with an alternately ridiculous and terrifying tale of the Kanker Sisters (the three trailer trash [[Stalker with a Crush|Stalkers With Crushes]]) hideously mutated by eating radioactive mashed potatoes, who torment Ed and his friends by [[Covered in Kisses|throwing enormous, sloppy kisses]] and shooting rays from chickens on their armpits that turn houses into giant hygiene products ("Evil soap! Deodorant!"). And then they can merge their heads together to shoot a giant kiss.

{{quote|'''Eddy:''' Ed, your story's gettin' weird!

'''Edd:''' My Ed, what an enchanted world you live in. }}

** At the beginning of "Is There an Ed in the House?", he draws a portrait of Rolf... with a monster looming behind him. Ed gleefully explains "Rolf's head is about to be ''crunched'' by a four-legged mutant bus driver!"

** The Halloween Episode. Ed takes in even more B-movies than usual, which causes him to occasionally see the world as one. This turns a simple trek to a mythical neighborhood that gives out tons of candy into a battle against monsters summoned by witches.

* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', Homer makes a young Bart a [[Monster Clown|misshapen clown-shaped bed]]... which is so horrifying that Bart stays awake constantly, muttering "[[Memetic Mutation|Can't sleep, clown will eat me]]".

** Also on The Simpsons, during the episode in which Bart has his first day of school, he makes a drawing to commemorate the occasion, complete with a stick figure of himself being stabbed with knives and plenty of crayon blood. Homer's reaction?

* Dr. Barber from ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]''.

** What about Candy Wife?

* Princess Luna from ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' has rather scary tastes. Example? She arrives in a demonic chariot pulled by bat winged, menacing Pegasi and accompanied by [[Dramatic Thunder]] and the sky spontaniously darkening. She seems to think this is a perfectly normal way for one to arrive to address her subjects and that turning fake spiders into real, but harmless, ones is a fun thing to do. Her dark gothic figure and [[No Indoor Voice|echoing bellow of a voice]] doesn't help whatsoever. {{spoiler|This comes in handy when she realizes that sometimes her subjects ''like'' being frightened and lets her win them over with some light hearted scares.}}

* Nug of ''[[The Dreamstone]]'' is an in-universe supplier of [[Fridge Horror]], often inadvertantly terrifying Frizz with his unnerving assumptions of the outcomes of some of their schemes.

'''Nug:''' If you did, you'd probably break every bone in your body...probably. }}

 

* The children that were taken out of the Branch Davidian Compound before the horrifying end to the stand-off at Waco were these sort of kids, having been taught "Playground Songs" about bloody revolts and the death of non-believers while dancing in a Ring-around-the-rosie fashion.

** In the documentary that shows it, the children were seen drawing disturbing scenes, including one child depicting the compound up in flames three days before the actual event. Chilling.

** It has been suggested that ''Jack and Jill" is about the beheading of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the second verse was an attempt to make it safe for children. However, the earliest printed versions predate those events.

** One interpretation of ''Mary Mary Quite Contrary'' is that it refers to the torture devices that were used by Mary I (Bloody Mary). "Silver bells" are thumbscrews, "cockleshells" a genital torture device, and the "pretty maids" are the Maiden, also known as the guillotine. However, there's no confirmed evidence of the rhyme dating from Mary's reign, and although there was a guillotine-like device that went by that name- the Scottish Maiden- it wasn't even built when she was alive. The other contender, the little-used Halifax Gibbet, didn't go by the name 'Maiden'. Besides, most of Mary's executions were by burning.

** A thread archived in the [[Something Awful]] Comedy Goldmine presented the goons with this coloring book. They made it even more Nightmare Fuely that it loops back around to hilarious. And sometimes they just made it more Nightmare Fuely.

* Tonetta777. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHaFoLLHew Here][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Xg7h6jqAM are][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j1QVT-Atgs&feature=related some][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPhRqwcumXg&feature=related examples]

* [[L. Frank Baum]] wrote the ''[[Land of Oz|Oz]]'' books because fairy tales were too scary.

* [[Neil Gaiman]]: A [[Adorkable|very sweet looking]], [[One of Us|humble and fanboy-ish]] writer who has written stories that have included, among other things, [[American Gods|vaginas eating people]] and people eating babies. Oh, and he's responsible for an onset of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQC0QVXa33o Koumpounophobia] through [[Coraline (novel)|an entire generation.]]

* [[Tom Waits]].

* It could be said that medical doctors either are this from the start, or get to this point. Most of us are at least a little bit squicked by the thought of cutting people open and pulling out their entrails, or seeing the results of a [[Body Horror|terrible accident or disease]], but for them it's just an average day at the office, or a fascinating puzzle.

** Double that for coroners, forensic scientists, funeral home staff... really pretty much anybody who works with death on a regular basis, especially the horrible and gruesome variety.

 

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