Supernatural (TV series)/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



Season 1

  • "Wendigo", full stop. It's a creature that attacks in the dead of night in the middle of an isolated part of the woods. Oh, and it can unlock doors and get inside your house, and in the episode, you never see it from the front standing in the light. You only see the the characters' reactions to it when it appears. Good luck and sweet dreams if you live in Wendigo territory.
  • "Bloody Mary". Don't turn out the light, don't go to the bathroom. Don't say anything in the bathroom, because you might accidentally say 'Bloody M'--eep.
  • "Home" and the dreaded cymbal monkey.
  • It might be Fetish Fuel for some, Fan Disservice for others, but the scene in "Devil's Trap" where Dean is bleeding to death (HIS ORGANS ARE MAKING SQUELCHING NOISES!) was made even worse by the "Daddy, please...", with him crying and the blood running freely from his mouth and the demon letting John come back up to make him watch...

Season 2

  • Dean being roofied into putting the gun to his head in "Simon Said". Finding out about his suicide/death-seeking nature just makes it a hundred times worse.
  • The ghost with the slit throat in "The Usual Suspects" trying to talk.
  • The near-rape scene in "Born Under A Bad Sign". Maybe it's because we don't know Sam is possessed at this point, maybe it's because it's one of the leads doing the near-raping, maybe it's the size difference, maybe it's because Jared Padalecki is scarily good at being menacing and Alona Tal was fantastic at acting terrified...
    • There's a subtle but very noticeable contrast to how he normally acts - the way he hunches just a little and is generally the non-threatening of the duo, and all of a sudden his body language is a bit more aggressive and his smile just a little too gleeful, almost a Slasher Smile compared to his usual quick, wide, innocent one.
    • For this troper, the scare comes at least in part from the fact that You are aware that the 6"4" Sam could easily take down the petite, untrained Jo with no real effort just before he proceeds to do so.
  • "What Is And What Should Never Be": djinns have been tricking people into staying in their own heads, happy for "years", whilst outside they're slowly dying.
    • On the other hand, imagine if Dean's dream was real; what if Sam had had to watch his brother kill himself, raving on about monsters and how the whole world is a dream?

Season 3

  • The part in "The Magnificent Seven" where a hunter was brainwashed to down a jug of drain cleaner while the titular seven demons roared with laughter and his wife hysterically pleaded him to stop was possibly the most disturbing scene in the whole series
    • It's the "poetic justice" bit that makes it even more disturbing, because you can't help but understand why the demons would love it so much -- it's rather like how Bobby got posessed!Sam to drink beer with holy water in it.
  • "The Kids Are Alright" - not the Monster of the Week, but the image of a mother, with complete, cold calmness, driving to a lake with her daughter, getting out of the car, locking the doors, and then releasing the emergency brake. Finding out what the kid really was made it less scary.
  • "Bedtime Stories". Anyone who fit the fairy-tales had to act them out. The old woman was the worst part.
  • Sam's fingernail being pulled out in "A Very Supernatural Christmas".
  • The opening sequence of "Malleus Maleficarum" involving a woman's teeth falling out of her mouth.
    • Whenever witches use maggots. Especially that scene with the hamburger.
  • What about almost the entirety of "Time Is On My Side"? You've got a guy's guts literally spilling out, another guy being shown his still-beating heart and Sam's Puppy Dog Eyes nearly being gouged out with an ice cream scooper!
  • The very end of "No Rest for the Wicked": Dean chained up in Hell with hooks in his side and shoulder.
    • Worser and worser, Dean being torn apart by hellhounds.

Season 4

  • The razor blades in the candy in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester".
  • Anna crying, "Her face!" while looking at Ruby sends the imagination into overdrive. The results can be nightmare-inducing.
  • "Family Remains". The brothers believe a family who just moved into a new house is being haunted by a ghost. Turns out the "ghost" is a human girl who lives in the walls. Most episodes, you can calm yourself down by reminding yourself that monsters aren't real, but not this time...
    • In that same episode, when it's revealed what happened to Buster the dog. Heck, the savage smile on their faces as they tore a live rat apart with their teeth.
  • Dean torturing Alastair in "On the Head of a Pin."
    • One of the worst moments came when Dean forced the salt down Alastair's throat. Considering that eating ten or so table spoons of salt could kill you within an hour.
    • When Alastair gets loose, Dean goes completely limp the instant Alastair gets a hand on him. He's not even trying to resist. Thirty years' worth of conditioning, huh?
  • The guy microwaving his head to commit suicide in "It's a Terrible Life".

Season 5

  • Castiel in "The End": While not outright terrifying, the Broken Angel-ness starts bad (normally straightlaced Cas organising hippie love-fests?) and just gets worse (normally straightlaced Cas turned organiser of hippie love-fests… who is entirely unruffled, telling past-Dean about how he's effectively human and takes amphetamines as "a perfect complement to that absinthe", while on the way to what he knows is his death?). Unsettling, even by Supernatural's standards.

Dean: Are you...stoned?
Cas: Generally, yeah.

  • The Valentine's Day episode and especially that couple at the beginning was nightmare fuel in its pure, distilled form.
    • According to an interview even Ben Edlund, the writer, was disgusted.
    • The scene at the end where the guy is lying dead in the deep-fryer. His whole upper body was in there.

Season 6

  • "Two and a Half Men": A shifter poses as womens' husbands while the husband is out of town, has sex with them, and comes back for the baby nine months later. This has resulted in divorces in some cases. And he is perfectly willing to kill the woman and her husband to get the kid back.

Season 7

  • Season 7 introduces the Leviathans, who spread out into the water supply, infecting anyone who comes in contact with it. Think twice before you take that next drink from the water fountain...
  • The ending of "The Girl Next Door". The Leviathan taunts its victim and says "Plain old people taste fine, but everything is better with cheese", then upends a pot of melted cheese onto his head and, while the victim screams, reveals his Leviathan-face right to the camera as he moves in to eat the dying victim. Repulsive.
  • Bibbing. A Leviathan that has pissed off their boss enough gets a bib put on them and is then forced to eat himself. It has got to be one of, if not the, worst ways to die the series has depicted, even if it can only happen to the bad guys.
    • It Got Worse. Leviathans are nigh-invulnerable and regenerate when injured. Now think about that. You'd be trying to eat yourself faster than you can heal and, if you were too slow, would have to do it again.
  • The Leviathans' plan. Unlike other evil plans in the show, that tend to focus only on supernatural aspects, Dick Roman is manipulating numerous parts of everyday life. He's taking control of the media, food companies, and more. Why? So he can manipulate everyone on the planet into becoming stupid, complacent, overweight sources of food for the Leviathans and set up slaughterhouses so every human in the world can be used to make a massive meal for the Leviathans. Oh, and he's doing it in ways most people aren't even aware of until it is too late. Once you bite any of the tainted food he's put out there, it is so addictive, it is probably too late for you. But at least you'll become so stupid you probably won't care you're being eaten. To make it worse, as of "There Will Be Blood", Dick is putting chemicals to change people in every food with high fructose corn syrup, so almost every piece of food you can buy will turn you eventually into a Leviathan's meal.

Other

  • It has to be said, this show has a disturbing ability to make near-rape scenes a thousand times scarier: you have Shifter!Dean chasing Becky through the house and eventually tying her up in "Skin", you have Webber and the mind-raped Tracey ("And when you get there [to the edge of the dam], you're gonna think you can fly. And you're just gonna step right off. [He strokes her face.] You can fly, can't you?" [She starts sobbing again.] "I-I think so.") in "Simon Said", and the man about to rape the woman ("I'm sorry! I'm sorry, it's just I've never done this before.") in "Houses Of The Holy".
  • Death putting Sam's soul back seemed a little rape-y upon watching it again.
  • There's a lot of creepy Eye Scream in this show. For example:
    • A Season 3 episode involved an immortal parts-stealing doctor, a mellon baller, and Jared Padalecki's pretty, pretty face.
    • Most humans who look at the true form of an angel will have their eyes burned out.
    • In "Bloody Mary," the title ghost, in the coroners words, "essentially liquefied" her victim's eyeballs.
    • In "Nightmare", the kid is shown killing his mom by telepathically plunging a knife into her eye.
    • In "The Benders," little pint-sized Missy Bender was told to keep watch on Dean. Which she did by holding the point of a knife about half an inch from Dean's eyeball.