Web Comics/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


"'Let'S bE TAngLe bUdDiES

With no ratings system, no restrictions, and nothing but your skills holding you back, the next update of your favourite Web Comic might just be the one to be burned into your mind forever.

NOTE: Tropers are naturally curious. Having them stumble into links which scar them for life is not to everyone's tastes. Merely adding a link without a description is not enough for an example. Remember, even a description of what's behind the link covered up with spoiler tags is still scary on its own.

Sub-pages:

  • Whomp comic: This comic (25/4/2012) deals with what happens when your flesh falls off. Urgh.
  • Achewood gives us Cartilage Head.
    • The "Fast Times At Achewood High" arc (starting here) begins normally enough, but then it veers headlong into some pretty unnerving territory. To make this worse, this is coming off the heels of a pretty bittersweet arc with Philippe and his family. Thanks a fucking lot Onstad
  • Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja has this. A patient with a disease that turns his butt into a giant spider. If that's not terrifying, I don't know what is.
  • On this page of Aikonia, we are given a startling look at the demon possessing Ariel and her very special student club. No pupils? No problem!
  • Blank It: has quite a few examples of Nightmare Fuel.
  • The Bongcheon Dong Ghost in its entirety.
    • She can see you.
  • In Concession Joel/Miranda usually "infect" people by tentacle mind raping them as shown here. (NSFW)
  • Dead of Summer, being a Zombie Apocalypse scenario, runs on this. An example? This.
    • There's also Bug Bites, where Commander is swarmed and bitten by insects so much that his movements are slowed. On a later page, he screams that they're eating him alive.
  • The thoroughly disturbing Gorn of the Dolcett Archives. It's a series of webcomics about Gynophagia, that is cooking and eating women, sometimes alive. NSFW link: http://www.necrobabes.org/dolcett/
  • Dominic Deegan - the last panel of this strip makes it clear that that guy Stunt left for dead is totally being consumed alive and conscious by the slimes. Just look into his eyes in that last panel...
  • The horse....thing from early in the run of Girl Genius, seen through the next five pages.
  • Grey from Inhuman His occasional backstory flashbacks occasionally show his body being torn apart/altered in various ways. That and the fact that whenever someone gets shot with the special Rulerist ammo, it's always in the face, and part of their head basically goes all 'splodey depending on where the bullet enters the face. It's happened twice. So far. Oh, and let's not forget Grey tearing that one guys organs out with a kitchen knife with a bit of a gut hook in the blade, and the one whose throat he slashed open, and the one he blasted with static electricity that he had built up over the day, the fact that Grey's a 'certified schizophrenic' (in his own words), the fact that his shadow LITERALLY talks to him (He's a telepath, interestingly enough. Other people see it too.) and the freaking headworms that sometimes sprout from various parts of his body and start trying to eat him alive. In fact, anyone who reads that comic and doesn't agree that it's some form of Nightmare Fuel should get their head checked. And perhaps the artist should too.
    • It IS very graphic and a good read.
    • The second flashback of Soshiko and Kyo's parents being murdered. Especially when it turns out that it was done by Hekshanians.
  • Jack, most notably the 'Games We Play In Hell' arc. 'Deeper and Worse' wasn't much better.
    • The "Musical Holes" sequence in "The Games We Play in Hell". Rape as Drama meets Gladiator Games, and it's a thousand times more nightmarish than it sounds.
    • This troper would like to nominate "Twist, Twist, Twist," if only for the "waitwhatWOAH, didn't see that coming" factor.
      • This troper would like to say that that was scariest strip he had come across in a long time.
    • Also, it's forerunner Rework The Dead, made possibly more terrifying by the fact that all the characters are furries. Zombie Apocalypse... WITH FURRIES!.
    • We forgetting something? The premise for the story arc "Suffer" was becoming disturbing enough... then Dripshows up.
    • The arc, "What's Pissing Off Dalton," is terrifying on a personal level for me. People are trapped underground after an earthquake, in an inclosed space with a psychopath off his meds who snaps at the drop of a hat, brutally beating people to death for the most minor of infractions...
  • Kaspall has the Veritarc. The Veritarc is an entity born out of a children's scare story about lying, and we all know how terrifying those can be. He appears as a man in robes, carrying a walking stick, with his head covered with some manner of sack. The Veritarc comes for those who make a promise and break it... any promise, broken for any reason whatsoever. The Veritarc sends his children after you, living shadows that can appear from any dark place as though it were a door, and they collect you and send you to the Veritarc's home, a cold hall at the edge of the world. You can either sit there and wait for him, or run and make him chase you, but it's all the same, The Veritarc will slowly, relentlessly follow you, it's walking stick tapping in pace with every step he takes, until you can run no longer, and then he will catch you, and then... well, the next morning, they find you dead in your bed, with your little finger cut off.
  • The fate of the four jerk jocks in The Wotch tries to be Karmic Transformation, but only manages to be utterly disturbing with the fact that 1) they're STUCK and 2) their memories of their former selves are erased, leading to a disturbing case of Not Himself. And Jo? It's the WORST. They were going for funny, it ends up even more disturbing than the above. Also, what happened to Scott, his girlfriend and Ivan. Damn YOU, Miranda.
    • Ming Mei's story as well, with a huge dose of Ass Pull to boot. But really, let's say that the whole Consequences arc is HONF, especially because we know the leading girl has done a LOT OF DAMAGE, yet the aforementioned consequences NEVER COME.
  • Almost all of Lego Robotcomics can constitute as Nightmare Fuel but this specific story and the next four pages are truly horrifying.
  • Phe's death from The Meek. Made even more nightmarish from the fact that her poisoning is VERY realistic. The tracheotomy is just icing on the cake.
    • Followed shortly by the horrific way the ambassador is killed in retribution.
    • Dagre says hel lo.
  • Mind Mistress - specifically, what MM does to Anansi Webb. For those who don't get it, she's not really turning Anansi into a spider - but making her think she is works just as well...
  • Some of the things seen in Nature of Natures Art are... disturbing (the fact that the characters are animals may or may not make it worse). For starters, the first arc, 10%+, involves sapient animals being stripped of their human-level intelligence and left as mindless base animals. Now think about the effects that would have on a human being...
    • Meanwhile, Secretary has the incomplete Malice Style, which can have such wonderful effects as having your body fall apart with pieces of corn coming out and punching the bones out of your arm. And the complete version of it... well, there's something to be said about ripping open a female jerboa's innards... which turn out to be inner demons in the form of jerboa fetuses... and to top it all off, as SV is dying, he has a hallucination of himself melting away into a skeleton. Secretary is just plain charming, isn't it?
  • No Rest for The Wicked: The witch sequence starts with the knowledge that they are looking for a serial killer of children. Starting here, it piles on from there.
  • Order of the Stick, specifically Start of Darkness. On the VERY FIRST PAGE, we see Xykon as a little boy crying over his dead dog, and accidentally bringing it back to life with his necromancy. It then proceeds to kill a bird and visibly eat its brains. That's just the first page.
    • Even worse: Five year old Xykon's reaction is gleeful excitement and a desire to find it some more brains.
    • Also, V's acceptance of the Soul Splice, subsequent evil actions, then the revelation that the soul splice had no effect on V's morality, merely his/her power, and that was what V really wanted to do.
  • Penny and Aggie: You and I, we have a lot to talk about...and so little time. Unlike most of the examples on this page, I can see this scenario playing out in Real Life. Which just makes it so much worse.
  • This strip from Questionable Content. I want to taste your fluids
  • Schlock Mercenary's "Schlocktoberfest" storylines ranged from the merely macabre to the downright terrifying. This editor is still trying to repress the 2007 storyline (involving, among other things, a grotesque, animated headless corpse, and nanobots leaping from said corpse after turning into miniature lizardlike monsters bent on destruction).
    • The one from 2001 involving the crew fighting a bunch of Alien style creatures would have been scary enough, but having it from the alien children's point of view somehow made it even scarier and more depressing. The way Schlock finishes them all off is mild in comparison.
    • Schlocktoberfest 2005 -- Kevyn's assessment of what happened to PFC Adam Monk after being eaten alive by a megalodon; suddenly those healing upgrades don't seem like such a good idea after all....
  • Slashed, an Industrial Nightmare seems to exist for this purpose alone.
  • VG Cats made FROSTY THE GODDAMN SNOWMAN into Nightmare Fuel
    • Your Mileage May Vary. This troper thought that was one of the funniest strips VG Cats has posted for a while (aside from the bleeding eyes, which is his personal squick trigger).
    • I'm laughing now but I'll never be able to sleep...
  • While Wapsi Square has had many moments, the one that did it for this troper was this lovely little bit of Eye Scream.
    • Tina's Revelation that she was the girl that was in the car that collided with the back of the bus that almost killed Monica made this troper crap bricks.
  • The Zombie Hunters. They're zombies. They outnumber you 100-to-1. They all want to eat you. But some of them retain just enough humanity that you feel sorry for them... which makes them far, far scarier than the shuffle-and-groan variety
  • From late in the Problem Sleuth archives comes (spoilers) the most horrifying fractal ever. Just keep hitting "next", BTW.
  • This page (Monster Clown Alert) from Gunnerkrigg Court. Oh. My. God.
  • Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name: Lee. Especially when he possesses {...}
    • A friend of this troper wasn't sure what about that was scarier...the sight of {...} being possessed and swinging a lead pipe at a teenager, or the fact that Lee entered his body by forcing his way into his mouth.
  • Vampire Phantasm & Vampire Phantasm Excrucio. VP starts off with Orlock murdering the Jack's wife and baby daughter by ripping them to pieces, turning Jack into a vampire, and spending the next century torturing him into insanity. Excrucio is worse.
  • Charlie and Jamie's respective backstories from Khaos Komix. Charlie gets attacked by a classmate, Natalie Geln, for being a male-to-female transsexual. Natalie gives her a choice; either she subjects herself to a seriously Traumatic Haircut, or Tom, her FtM transsexual best friend, GETS RAPED BY NATALIE'S POSSE OF BULLIES. After cutting Charlie's hair, Natalie reveals that she knows where she lives and if she doesn't leave town she will attack her again, possibly fatally this time, IN HER OWN HOME. Poor Charlie and Tom both had no other choice but to run. Jamie, meanwhile, was not only raped by someone that he might have known quite well (his rapist being drawn in a seriously creepy Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book way doesn't help at all) but he also had a brutally abusive Heteronormative Crusader of a mom. When she catches Jamie Playing Doctor with Alex, her immediate response is to "clean him". She does this by DOUSING HIM IN SCALDING HOT WATER UNTIL HE FINALLY CONFESSES THAT HE DID SOMETHING "UNCLEAN" AND PROMISES TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN. Dear god.
  • The deaths of Sean, Alec, Mao, and Evan in Sonichu are horrifying; Alec is given the chair, Evan is genitally mutilated by drills, Sean is put on the firing range, and finally Mao has his limbs telekinetically bent and snapped, before his heart is exploded. *shiver*
    • Can we just say the whole of Sonichu?
  • The alt-text that goes with this Xkcd strip, particularly because we're on that path:

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

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