Nothing Is Scarier: Difference between revisions

 

Not to be confused with [[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here]], [[Empty Room Psych]], or [[It's Quiet... Too Quiet]]. ''Definitely'' not to be confused with the scariest thing possible.

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* Used chillingly and terrifyingly in ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'' - especially in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RnHsV3wIo&fmt=18 buildup to and including the hotel escape scene between Anton Chigurh and Llewynn Moss.]

** Some people said the Coen Brothers would have made [[Alfred Hitchcock]] proud with this film, and that's probably true, when they can make {{spoiler|the sound of a ''LIGHTBULB'' unscrewing}}, [[Hell Is That Noise|the most terrifying sound in the world]].

* The horror film ''[[Absentia]]'' relies heavily on build-up and not showing anything for much of the film to horrifying results.

 

* The [[Stephen King]] short story ''The Reaper's Image'', one of his first published stories, focuses on something seemingly innocuous: a mirror with a black smudge that sometimes appears in the corner. The smudge doesn't appear for most people. But the few people who do see it, for some reason, become terrified and flee the room. Once they do -- and once they are out of sight of any other human being -- they are never seen again.

* The book version of ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'' has a Zoo of Death instead of the Pit of Despair. It has multiple levels of basement, and as you go down the enemies get scarier. One level has absolutely nothing in it. Just a long, black tunnel with the exit door at the other end. For Inigo and Fezzik this is doggone ''scary''. ''Something'' should be happening! This is the level of the Enemies of Fear. The idea is that you panic, run for the opposite door {{spoiler|and let the venomous spider under the handle kill you}}.

* In ''[[The Hobbit]]'' it's flat-out stated that the scariest thing Bilbo had to do in his whole adventure was walk down the lightless tunnel to Smaug's lair. Not the dragon himself, not the giant spiders from Mirkwood, not the Goblins, Trolls or Wolves from the Misty Mountains, just the tunnel and the crippling fear of not knowing what was at the end of it.

 

* In ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]'', there was a fairly long sequence in the middle of the episode "Don't Look Behind You" with Cathy Gale walking around in a large, spooky house in the countryside. It seems at first like no one else is present in the house, but then things in rooms begin to get changed while she is out of the room. There is no [[BGM]] at all during this sequence, just the sound of Gale's footsteps.

* In ''[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E10 Midnight|Midnight]]'', a [[Bottle Episode]] of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', there is... ''[[Eldritch Abomination|something]]''... that torments the Doctor and the people he's traveling with. {{spoiler|We ''never'' find out anything about it, other than that it [[Deconstruction|utterly deconstructs an ordinary Doctor Who episode]] and brings all of the Doctor's flaws to the forefront.}}

* The [[Max Headroom]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycVTXtm0U0 incident] is a bit creepy at first, but the juvenile humor of the the man in the mask, combined with his distorted voice, quickly sends it into [[Narm]]-territory. Not the case of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM7Q1WiepoQ its predecessor]: the voice is replaced by a screeching static sound, and nothing actually happens in the video; no [[Take That|Take Thats]] at politicians or corporations, no spanking, just a man in a [[Uncanny Valley|creepy mask]] bopping his head around. In addition, the delay between the interruption of the news show and the actual video makes it all the more shocking. Needless to say, it comes as surprisingly as a [[Screamer Prank|screamer]].

 

* It is common now for albums to feature hidden "bonus tracks" after the last listed song with several minutes of silence in between. Some of these can start out [[Last-Note Nightmare|startling or even outright alarming]]. If you've been forewarned and have decided to leave the player on to see for yourself, well... the people who were surprised might have been better off.

** ''[[My Chemical Romance|Well, they encourage your complete cooperation...]]'' (Bonus points because Way starts singing in a tinny music hall voice, to the accompaniment of nothing but piano, that sounds so different from earlier tracks that some people refused to believe it was the same singer.)

* The Cure's "Subway Song" from their first album is an unsettling little number about a woman being followed home from work late at night. After about a minute and a half, the song starts to fade out. There's about a second of silence, followed by a startlingly LOUD reverb-drenched scream. It manages to have the same effect every time, even when you know it's coming.

 

* A previous interpretation of ''[[SCP Foundation|SCP-087]]'' was the prime example of this trope taken to the extreme. While not exactly a game, SC-087 serves as a "simulator" of sorts. This "simulator" involves the player simply {{spoiler|going down stairs in the dark with nothing but small light sources at each platform which leads to the next flight of stairs. The paranoia level is BEYOND eleven and the tension is so thick you can't even cut it with a chainsaw. The only thing that causes the tension? Nothing. The only thing that happens is you go down countless flights of stairs and occasionally see a shadow pass by you, which can be classified as a [[Cat Scare]], since it does nothing other than scare the living s**t out of you for a second followed by an awkward laugh or sigh of relief. The simulator only gets scarier from here, since you now hear the sounds of scary breathing echoing through the flights of stairs. The breathing gets louder and louder until you get to the last platform, where you are surprised by a strange figure while cardboard cut-out hands extend their reach towards your face before the simulator intentionally crashes. While the initial scare is expected, the hands reaching out towards your face can generate mild yelps from the easily terrified.}}

* ''[[Castlevania II: Simon's Quest]]'' attempts to envoke this, with Dracula's ruined castle and the preceeding bridge being devoid of enemies. YMMV as to whether or not it suceeded.

** After leading you to believe that this trope will be played straight, the Amnesia Custom Story "The Dark Room" manages to avert this trope completely. After spending the first minute or so looking around for keys to unlock different doors, you have to go through a corridor which is completely pitch black. Once you go in the corridor, you hear an earth-shattering roar and a monster appears...{{spoiler|but it's only when you see it that you find that they've stuck a troll-face on it, and the troll's "theme music" comes on when you're standing next to it.}} The revelation that EVERY enemy {{spoiler|has something to do with an internet meme}}, despite their attempts to try and build tension, just makes it even funnier when the monsters show up.

* [[Chzo Mythos|7 Days a Skeptic]]. At the end of the game, you are {{spoiler|1=chased by John DeFoe. Sort of. In the ''original'' game, there was no way of telling when DeFoe would enter a room, or from where, which meant that in some cases, you could enter a room, wait a moment to regroup, ''and be instantly gored to death when DeFoe '''appears inside of you'''''.}}

** Harbor missions at night in '''Terror From The Deep'', as well as alien base assaults when Tentaculats are involved. Dark spaces, never knowing where the aliens might hide, outmatches troops is one half, the music does the rest.

* The ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]] DLC Dead Money'' evokes this. When you're getting swarmed by Ghosts, it's scary. When you've killed them all, the Villa gets really unnerving, really quickly. The dim lighting and constant haze limiting visibility doesn't help.

* ''[[Metroid Fusion]]'' has your first visit to Sector 6 (NOC). You're told ahead of time that there are Blue X in the sector, which are sub-zero cold and will do heavy damage if they touch you. There's no enemies except the blue X and very dark backgrounds and scenery, as well as blue X hiding in the various bits of destructible scenery. Couple the fear of the blue X with the sector's eerie music, and you'll soon be jumping out of your skin every time you enter a new room.

 

* Parodied in ''[[Adventurers]]'': Faced with the video game version of walking around a dark, dangerous hole in the ground, [http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/20021219.html Gildward is clueless].

* In ''[[Girl Genius]]'', Volume Five, two men from the troupe scout ahead, and return riding as fast as they can, and there's no pursuit. Then the monsters come...

* Discussed and parodied in ''[[Skin Horse]]'' after Tip becomes a werewolf. Unity references ''[[Jaws (film)|Jaws]]'' and ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'', both classic movies that took a very long time to show monsters that ultimately turned out to be disappointing. "The monster's always a letdown because it's not as scary as the idea of the monster! Y'know what you are? [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/skinhorse/series.php?view=archive&chapter=39951 You're a plywood shark]!"

 

* Some might say that the online point-and-click game ''[[Daymare Town]]'' is this. The lack of audio and stationary, colorless, environment.

** Lampshaded when you're forced to go into the pitch black cellar of the lowest floor of the library to obtain an item; the game refers to the cellar as "scary," and labels the exit as "get out!"

* [[media:nothingisscarier_copy.jpg|The previous image for this page]] was, in fact, a ''subversion'' of this trope. At first, it appears to be only a black screen staring at you; look at the screen from an angle (and by that we mean, from above) and you'll discover that there's something ''else'' in that image...{{spoiler|It's a cat's eye.}}

 

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' is also fond of this, the whole show sweats with creepiness even in the most casual scenes.

** Less systematic, but still present to some extent in its spiritual successor ''[[Ghost Hound]].''

* [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] does this with the monsters 'The Thing in the Crater', where all we see is a deep crater filled with lava, and 'Dweller in the Depths', where all we see is a dark cave with stalagmites and stalactites everywhere.

 

* The [[Big Finish Doctor Who]] audio drama ''Dead Air'' plays with this trope. The recording opens with a cheerful woman telling you that you're about to listen to a piece of history, the very last recording of a Pirate Radio station from the 60s. What follows is the Doctor telling you "If you can hear this, then one of us is going to die." The doctor then goes on to narrate a story (switching, a bit oddly, between first person and third person point-of-view) which is pretty standard Doctor Who fare. A nasty alien entity which is composed entirely of sound has taken over the pirate radio ship and is killing everyone aboard before going on to conquer all of Earth. Throughout the recording there are instances of static bursts, occasional distortion in sound, jumps in the recording that give you snippets of odd music that was on the tape until the Doctor recorded over it, and at one point a tinny voice overlapping the recording begging for help. In the final confrontation between the Doctor and the big bad, {{spoiler|the Doctor traps the monster in a recording, the very one the audience is listening to. The monster taunts that as soon as anyone listens to the recording the monster will be free, and the Doctor announces that no one will ever listen to the recording, because he’s put a warning on the tape to not listen to it. And that, which such a warning in place, who could possibly be stupid enough to listen all the way to the end of the recording? }} The Doctor then says a cheerful “Goodbye!” and the tape immediately cuts to a distorted portion of blaring music which clicks into static...

** Used to great effect in ''Scherzo'', where the Eighth Doctor and Charley are trapped in a [[White Void Room]] and slowly lose all of their senses except hearing, ''including their sense of time''. That the listener already only perceives the story through hearing punches it up to almost unbearably tense.

* ''[[Quiet Please]]'' uses this in the very first episode, entitled, fittingly enough, ''Nothing Behind The Door''. The protagonist and his friends try to rob a small house on a mountainside, only to find that {{spoiler|anything that passes through the door simply ceases to exist}}.

 

* DC had a horror anthology title in the 80s called ''Wasteland.'' Due to one error or another, issue #5 was published with issue #6's cover. When [http://www.comicvine.com/wasteland-method-actor-paper-hero-on-the-road-part-1/37-47657/ the real #6] came out, it was numbered "the real number six", and the cover, apart from framing elements, was pure white. For a horror comic, it worked quite well.

 

* ''[[Picnic at Hanging Rock]]'' exemplifies this trope. The mystery at the crux of the film is never explained.

** The book did explain it - eventually.

* The short film "The Confession" by Tanel Toom uses the "disturbing lack of noise" part of this trope very well. There are numerous scenes in the films, such as {{spoiler|right after the first car crash}} and {{spoiler|after little Jacob's fall}}, when there is nothing but heavy, empty, silence, allowing the horror to REALLY sink in.

 

* In "The White People" by [[Arthur Machen]], {{spoiler|we never do find out what the horrible eponymous beings ''are''.}}

* In ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'', the heroes are traveling through the Labyrinth when they hear breathing and footsteps. They escape from the maze and seal the door before they find out what the creature is.

Of nothing, nothing, nothing --- nothing at all. }}

 

* While mostly played for the Classic example, the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Midnight" also plays the full version too. {{spoiler|We're built up to believe something terrifying has happened to a woman's face, but when she finally turns around, it's completely normal, and on some level this is worse}}.

** Played with more famously in "Blink", when every time you see the Weeping Angels, people are safe. It's between these moments that they're lethal, but the audience is most frightened when everything is, for the moment, clearly fine by the story's rules.

* In the ''[[Firefly]]'' episode "Bushwacked," the entire derelict ship is one long example of this: nothing but empty corridors, signs of habitation, and a crewman's log that interrupts right in the middle. But you know something's wrong, because [[The Empath|River]] is acting very odd. This is also one of those cases where the crew discovering what caused the disaster is in fact as scary as the nothing preceding it.

 

* The [http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=870 cover art] for [[Orbital]]'s 1996 single 'The Box' is weirdly unsettling, despite the fact that it just shows a house with, well, nothing going on. The tracks on the single (especially track 2) just add to the fear factor of the house...

* Similarly, the [http://petermenz.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/david_byrne_and_brian_eno_-_everything_that_happens_will_happen_today_album_cover.jpg cover art] for [[Brian Eno]]'s and [[David Byrne]]'s album ''Everything that Happens Will Happen Today''. In this case, the artist deliberately added some unsettling details to the pictures inside the liner notes: for example, there's a discarded condom wrapper in the roof gutter, and one of the interior rooms has a large, sealed, metal door. The deluxe edition of the album takes this several few steps further by adding a sound chip to the packaging, so that it plays the sound of a door creaking open and footsteps when you open the tin.

* Oddly, yet another example involving an album cover depicting nothing but a nondescript house - Silversun Pickups' ''[[wikipedia:File:Silversun Pickups neckofthewoods.jpg|Neck Of The Woods]]''.

 

* [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/68/The_Enigma_of_the_Hour.jpg Nearly] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/The_Red_Tower.jpg all] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/TheNostalgiaoftheInfinite.jpg paintings] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Gare_Montparnasse.jpg by] [[wikipedia:Giorgio de Chirico|Giorgio de Chirico]]. [http://www.abcgallery.com/C/chirico/chirico9a.JPG Seriously].

* [http://www.abcgallery.com/C/chirico/chirico9a.JPG Surrealism in general.]

* A lot of Edward Hopper's paintings fall into this category, but in all cases overlap with [[Fridge Horror]], so you don't quite notice it until you think hard about it.

 

* Punchdrunk Theater Company's [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Hitchcock inspired, haunted-house-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-1940's Noir ballet of Macbeth.]] 'Sleep No More'. The audience is given a [[The Blank|creepy mask]] told not to talk and set loose in the 100 room, five floor, Mckittrick Hotel to find their own way through a series of beautiful, unsettling rooms. You're allowed to touch/eat/read/open anything you find and follow the performers at will. And it's instantly terrifying. *Nothing* will ever jump out at you or even attempt to scare you and there's no conventional Haunted House elements, besides the atmosphere of dread and general creepiness of the design. After a while you get into the swing of things, the place becomes familiar and you can start to really enjoy exploring or following the story- but the first twenty minutes after getting off the elevator, faced with room after creepy room, with no direction and separated from your friends, is pants-wettingly, paralyzingly scary.

 

* The level from ''[[Tomb Raider]] Legend'' which has Lara exploring King Arthur's tomb features a section where Lara must swim across a vast body of water. As she swims, the camera pulls out showing just how vast the water is and how little Lara is...and you wonder if something is going to come up from underneath...

** Another particular example is in Temple of Xian in ''Tomb Raider 2'' {{spoiler|when you enter a cave full of small and [[Giant Spiders]] you find a massive chamber with a huge egg cocoon; the level design makes you platform almost right next to it, but it never opens...}}

* Whereas the [[Dream Land]] of ''[[Yume Nikki]]'' falls under the Classic Variation (as noted above), the door in Madotsuki's (normal) room qualifies as this. Every time the player tries to enter the door, Madotsuki would nod her head and refuse to leave her room. What could be on the other side of the door that has her too afraid to leave, especially since she enters the door to her [[Nightmare Sequence|nightmarish]] [[Dream Land]] throughout the game? {{spoiler|Whatever it is, she would literally rather die than confront it.}}

 

* Technically speaking, very little happens in ''[[Marble Hornets]]''. "Nothing happening" will keep you awake for weeks.

** Case in point: Entry 21. Daylight. No [[Hell Is That Noise|audio or video distortion]] whatsoever except around a small burrow of sorts. Yet when Jay climbs up the tower, you feel like you're gonna die!

* In [[Zero Punctuation]]'s review of [[Amnesia: The Dark Descent]], Yahtzee states that the form of terror [[Nothing Is Scarier]] invokes (although he does not refer to the trope by name, instead using a humorous example), "is best, because your imagination is doing all the work. All a good horror game needs to do is hand you a piece of sandpaper and shout encouragement as you vigorously massage your own undercarriage."

 

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'': "SB-129":

{{quote|'''''ALONE'''''}}

* [[Silent Antagonist|Soundwave]] from ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' makes heavy use of this trope. Even in situations where you think he'll do something, he's usually content to just stand there and ''stare'' directly at the object of his ire (or [[The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You|the camera]]), boring into their sparks with his blank void of a faceplate, punctuating it with an occasional menacing gesture or two. Otherwise, he mostly just lurks in the background, ever watching, ever waiting...

 

* Since a [[Cessation of Existence]] is difficult to comprehend, often times that fear is more in line with characteristics of [[The Nothing After Death]]. This fear can often pop up in places of darkness and/or silence.

* [[wikipedia:Sensory deprivation|Extended or forced sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression and death...]]

* Aokigahara, the forest at the foot of Mount Fuji, is well known for being dead quiet due to its general lack of wildlife and the wind being blocked by the densely-packed trees. That may not sound too bad on its own, but the place is also known for being a favorite place for suicides (second in the world after the Golden Gate Bridge, in fact) and it is rumored that ''ubasute'' (where people would leave sick or elderly relatives in the forest to die, usually during a famine when extra mouths were hard to feed) was commonly practiced there as late as the 19th century. The eerie silence coupled with such a strong association with death can be extraordinarily unnerving.

 

* In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNSgmm9FX2s this video], if you follow the instructions of the video, {{spoiler|you don't notice the moonwalking bear}}

 

* [[Dungeon Keeper Ami]] invokes and inverts this at one point. {{spoiler|Ami is forced to discipline her minions for attempted murder. As the preffered method in the [[Dungeon Keeper]] universe is bloody, horrific torture- that she absolutely can not, will not do, she created a selective fear charm (useing a tracking spell and a general fear trap as a basis). She then knocks out the offener (and a Dark Mistress [[Too Kinky to Torture|who wanted in on the fun]]) once they wake up, the fear charm hits them and they are informed that Ami wiped their memory of the torture to preserve her technique for next time. Their imaginations do the rest.}}

* In ''[[Party of None]]'', an insane Pinkie Pie lets it slip that she's been spying on Rainbow Dash months prior to imprisoning her. From Dash's perspective, every single time, there was nothing there when she went to check.

 

* ''[[Lake Mungo]]'': While you see images of a ghost in photos and videos throughout the movie, most of these are {{spoiler|later revealed to be fake. But during the credits, you see the ghost is actually in some of the fake photos, just very well hidden.}}

* In ''[[Signs]]'', Mel Gibson's character is in his corn field at night. He hears a noise behind him and whirls around, shining his light between some rows to reveal... nothing. {{spoiler|Then the alien moves.}}

 

* ''[[Doctor Who]]''

** The first and third series had this in a unique form. {{spoiler|Bad Wolf}} is strewn heavily throughout the season, but you don't even notice until they point it out. You think to yourself, "That won't catch me off guard again" until you realise that "Mr Saxon" and "Vote Saxon" thread of series 3 connect to a newspaper article in "Love & Monsters" and ''the order to shoot the [[Monster of the Week]]'' in "The Runaway Bride". The first appearance of the "Vote Saxon" posters actually appears in series 1 of ''[[Torchwood]]''.

* In one episode of [[Psych]], a killer is stalking a woman in a cabin, and at one point, she is talking on the phone, and you don't notice the killer is standing behind her until he moves out of frame.

 

* ''[[Blindsight]]'': After frantically fumbling around while weird things happen all around them, the protagonist finally realizes that alien...things have been on their ship for quite some time, concealing themselves ''in plain sight'' by using a loophole in human visual processing. It's actually pretty ninja.

 

* In ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]'', the implication at the end that {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|the Joker]]}} was [[Hidden in Plain Sight|with you all the time in front of you]], when you visited {{spoiler|the Visitor Center}}. It gets worse when you realise that the mannequin is posed differently everytime you go into that room, and that {{spoiler|after you "speak" with the Joker & walk a certain distance away before quickly turning around, the damn thing's posed differently}}.

** Also, although you were attacked several times earlier in the game by {{spoiler|Scarecrow}}, if you find his secret lair, it is almost completely covered in pictures of you. Since they're polaroids, and due to the nature of {{spoiler|Scarecrow}}'s attacks, it's safe to assume that he has been stalking you since you arrived at the Asylum, and probably followed you around every other time you went there. *Brr...*

 

* Most photos from [[The Slender Man Mythos]]. You'll see, say, a creepy, [[Ominous Fog|foggy]] [[Don't Go in The Woods|forest]]. You'll stare at it for a while, trying to see what all the "OH SHIT" comments are about. Then you'll notice that that one tree off to the side and way in the back {{spoiler|''[[Humanoid Abomination|isn't a tree]]''}}.