Star Wars/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


That looks rather painful.


The movies:

  • Attack of the Clones has Anakin's slaughtering of a village of Tusken Raiders. It's his eyes that really clinch it; for all the complaints about Hayden Christensen's acting he does pull off pure, undiluted hatred very well.
  • Revenge of the Sith, being easily the darkest in the prequel trilogy if not the whole series, has clear cases of this.

Child: Master Skywalker, what are we going to do?
Anakin: (a moment of silence, and then his lightsaber activates)

  • A New Hope has the IT-O interrogator droid used to interrogate Leia. Interesting euphemism, "interrogator droid". The radio adaptation actually shows us Vader's mind probe-assisted interrogation of Leia, and it's terrifying. First, he tries to convince her he's another rebel who needs to know where the Death Star plans are, before just causing her horrible pain.
    • The dianoga, which is somewhere between HONF and Squick.
      • For those who don't know what a dianoga is, it's that creature in the trash compactor.
    • The sight of the charred corpses of Owen and Beru. It is very brief; you could easily miss it; but it's there all right.
  • The Empire Strikes Back has the Wampa scene, the cave on Dagobah, the torture, and the carbonite-freezing of Han Solo.
    • The moment when Luke, disregarding Obi-Wan and Yoda's warning that he has no chance against Darth Vader, leaves to help his friends in the Sith Lord's clutches. Specifically, when Yoda contradicts Obi-Wan's comment about Luke being their last chance with "No, There Is Another.'" At that point, your horror for Luke will spike when you realize the kid has just lost his Plot Armor.
    • The moment when Luke faces Vader in the carbon-freezing chamber. Specifically, when Vader knocks Luke down the stairs early in the fight, Vader leaps at him like a dark wraith from your deepest nightmares.
  • Return of the Jedi has the Cold Blooded Electric Torture Palpatine inflicts on Luke Skywalker, after he confirms that he'll never turn to the dark side.
    • The Sarlaac, which is said by Threepio to keep people alive for a thousand years, as they're slowly digested.
      • It ATE Boba Fett... may be subverted by the fact that he survived this, as explained in the EU. May also be even worse when you think about what it was like while he was down there.
      • Or, from the Sarlaac's perspective: You have just eaten something that disagrees with you. And it has begun fighting its way out from inside your stomach.
    • The Rancor.
  • When C-3PO and R2-D2 were arriving in Jabba's lair, there's this large shadowy figure of a spider in the background.
  • Darth Maul, especially on the Ultimate Edition CD cover. Sweet dreams, everyone.
  • In The Phantom Menace, in the climax when the Nabooean pilots make off in their recently-liberated fighters, one of them takes a hit from a gun turret and loses an engine, plummeting helplessly to a fiery crash in the valley below. Imagine what those last moments had to be like for the pilot...

Expanded Universe:

  • The Dark Side ending of the first game from The Force Unleashed. After killing Darth Vader, Starkiller tries unsuccessfully to attack Palpatine. Next thing he knows, Palpatine grips the Rogue Shadow with the Force and, with Juno Eclipse still inside the ship, throws it on top of Starkiller. The last thing Starkiller sees is darkness until he wakes up on an operating table, finding himself being clad in a suit of life support armor. Add some last-second Eye Scream, and you'll wish you'd chosen a different final boss.
  • Knights of the Old Republic has enough to have its own page.
  • There was a webcomic called Evasive Action, which described the lives of three Padawans who survived Order 66 and went into hiding. They were on Felucia when Order 66 was issued, and in a convenient spot to watch Aayla Secura get shot down by her own troops. Take a look at the background image of Aayla's Dies Wide Open expression... yeah.
  • Destiny's Way mentions some of the critters employed in the Yuuzhan Vong Sentient Sacrifice. Flaying knives, flesh-eating beetles... We knew already that it wasn't a barrel of laughs, these being the Yuuzhan Vong and all, but still...