Yu-Gi-Oh!/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Not a kitty!

Ahh, Yu-Gi-Oh!. Filled with wonderful Children's Card Games. It's not like anything in a series like this could scare you, ri-- OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?!

The Franchise as a Whole

  • The original, Japanese version of the animes are much darker than their dub counterparts, and in Yu-Gi-Oh! 's case, the manga is much darker than the anime adaptation.
  • Many Superpowered Evil Sides Gained by characters can be disturbing. The eyes gain creepy colorations, veiny bulges tend to appear on their face and their voice changes can become really disturbing. Yami Marik here demonstrates just how creepy the evil sides of characters in this franchise can be. [dead link]
    • If we're talking about Yami Marik/Malik, we can't really leave out him scraping the skin off of his father's back while the victim screamed in pain, can we?
  • A number of the card images can be this, especially cards that deal with Dark-attribute or Zombie-type monsters.
  • Zorc Necrophades. He is large, has fangs, horns and a freaking dragon on his CROTCH.

Yu-Gi-Oh! (Toei Anime), Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and the Manga

  • Several of the Shadow Games from the Original Manga and the Toei Anime are incredibly dangerous. and many of them are from the main heroes Super-Powered Evil Side, no less. One of the mildest examples of the Penalty Games is SETTING SOMEONE ON FIRE!
    • Kanekura's Penalty Game is also disturbing, as Ammit towers over him and the shock gives him a heart attack. Neither Ammit itself or Kanekura's shocked face is decent to look at, to say at least...
      • The chapter when Jounouchi had been forced back into his evil gang, but when he rebelled, they took him to a warehouse where they TORTURED HIM, by beating him and electrocuting him with a taser.
      • Also, in Chapter 5, when Anzu gets knocked out with chloroform...and it's implied that the guy who knocked her out wants to rape her. Creepy enough...but then, we never get to see what Yami himself does to her, do we? The chapter ends with him standing next to her unconscious body. We have NO IDEA what he could have done to her, and don't forget that, according to Word of God, Yami Yugi WAS ACTUALLY EVIL then.

Yami Yugi: And over here, we have a sleeping beauty.

  • In Chapter 27 of the manga, I found Kaiba's casual mention of "human experiments" being carried out in the virtual simulator, and the fact that he's discovered he can send the average person incurably insane within 10 minutes, to be particularly disturbing.
  • Ammit...just Ammit. The Slasher Smile on that thing does not help.
  • The scene of Pegasus receiving the Millennium Eye. In the manga, the scene itself is more ambiguous, Shadi's men merely approach Pegasus with the Eye and what seems to be a knife, and the next thing we see is Pegasus' silhouette and his screams. The anime is much more blatant with Shadi pushing the artifact into Pegasus' eye socket whose face obviously shows pain and then hear his scream. The anime even adds a scene of him trying to get back on his knees, groaning, while holding the left part of his face. Then there's the scene with Dark Bakura taking his Eye out, licking the blood off it.[1]
  • The Millennium Items themselves, thanks to their evil intelligence and their possession of an independent mind to a degree. When Shadi puts on the Millennium Ring on a graverobber, it stabs him in the chest and burns his body to the bone because it deemed him unworthy. Pegasus' reaction at the scene speaks for itself.

Shadi: The Millennium Items' ownership is for those whose soul is worthy... Therefore the souls of those who don't deserve them will be burned to death...

  • The creation of the Millennium Items. Who would want to wear something made of gold and the melted remains of 99 massacred villagers?
  • Yami Bakura in particular is very disturbing. Especially when he starts laughing.
    • Yami Bakura has no fear of death, by the way.
    • Both him and the Millennium Ring are terrifying. Just think about it. You're a shy, quiet, good kid. Then one day, your Adventurer Archaeologist father gives you a shiny little trinket from ancient Egypt, and suddenly, everything changes. You find yourself with strange gaps in your memory and people around you start going into comas for no apparent reason. And most of the time, these victims are your friends, who you were just playing a friendly tabletop RPG with the day before. Then you finally make a new friend with a similar pendant, and then you start hearing a voice in your head. And it wants to skip the comas this time and outright kill your new friends. Oh yeah, and that voice also turns out to either be the vengeful spirit of an ancient tomb robber, an Eldritch Abomination, or some twisted combination of the two. It can take over your body at will, flawlessly imitate your voice and behavior, and do all sorts of horrible things and leave you to suffer the consequences. And no matter what you try to do about it, that accursed pendant of yours just Won't. Go. Away. This thing has you at its mercy, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
    • Don't forget he is probably a masochist, who will willingly harm himself leaving his host wondering what the hell "happened to his arm." Not to mention in the Egyptian season he thieves the pharaohs sarcophagus and drags it around behind his horse as a bargaining tool not to mention his monster host is impervious to the sealing powers of the millenium items. NOT TO MENTION he's still as evil and wicked when the monster is temporarily removed from him. Have I saturated it with truth enough?
  • Yami Marik is just as frightening. And laughs just as much. Actually, Yami Marik is probably the highest source of horror in the original series, with Zorc Necrophades being the only other more terrifying entity than him.
    • All the shit he does with his tongue is either seriously scary, or serious Nightmare Retardant, depending on your point of view.
    • Don't forget he was created by the hatred and pain Marik had to go through as a CHILD when he was forced into the tomb keepers ritual by having the sacred script KNIFED into his back Sure, the dub "softened that blow" by saying it was tatooed but STILL!
      • No, it does NOT soften the blow. To achieve that level of detail in a tattoo without the aid of modern needles, it's most likely that Marik's was inflicted using a method that the Inuit people used; taking a needle and thread, dipping it in ink and sliding it through under the skin like you're sewing. It leaves nice clean lines and it's reasonably hygenic, but it hurts so much. To prevent the ink from fading you need to get it quite deep under the epidermis. In amongst all the nerves. Seeing the level of detail in the thing, it's a safe bet that it would have taken goddamn days to do it. Most likely with a handmade needle, much thicker than the one in your sewing kit, with rough jute thread to pick up the ink, and the ink itself would probably be some horrible concoction. Sandpaper string. Covered in caustic ink. In the soft skin on your back. For days. Don't you love it when the dub mackeres the situation into something worse?
      • And that is saying something if it can make getting carved look pleasent (Well based on your desription at least). In other words I will never do either of those things but if I have too I'll take the japanese tattoing without question.
  • During the Battle City Finals arc, Yugi must duel Bakura on top of a moving blimp. That's not the scary part. What's absolutely terrifying is the field card Bakura uses. It turns the sky red and fills it with countless eyes and mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. HOLY.
    • Huh. Sounds like Pride.
    • In the same episode, there was the Dark Necrofear. Even in the dub, that thing was creepy as hell.
      • And that's saying nothing noise it makes.
      • In the Japanese version, when she dies, the viewer is treated to a lovely shot of Dark Necrofear's eyes burning out of her head. This was, understandably, cut out of the dub.
  • Despite the Dub having most deaths be replaced with the Shadow Realm, I still find the idea freaky. Basically we have what could be consider Yu-Gi-Oh's version of Hell, a place of darkness, pain, and agony where monsters will feast on your body and soul as you slowly disappear into oblivion. In some way, the Dub may have unintentionally created a Fate Worse Than Death.
  • The Doma/Doom/"Waking the Dragons" arc. The whole soul-stealing thing was bad, but considering how we had Yami using the evil "Seal of Orichalcos" card, and going all evil, only to loose his duel, but Yugi took his place so he wouldn't loose his soul, then the duel against Yugi where he used said evil card... not to mention the revelation of who the Orichalchos Knights were behind their helmets... gah that was a really dark season!
    • Kuribabylon, a larger Kuriboh with two fangs and a horn. Normally it's just as cute as the original Kuriboh, but when Yami Yugi corrupts it with the Orichalcos card, it's fur changes to dark blue, its eyes glow red with a malevolent glare, and its two fangs become a big wide smile of long sharp teeth. *shivers* That's one scary cottonball you've got there, Pharaoh.
    • Guardian Dreadscythe, a darker zombified version of Guardian Eatos wearing a mask. It's big, intimidating, almost impossible to defeat, and it by the look in its eye it likely takes pleasure in destroying its enemies. It beheaded a dragon!
      • Dreadscythe is literally implacable, it cannot leave the field if you draw enough cards. It will just keep hacking and slashing... and then there is Soul Hunting, its trap card, which works against cards that switch it to defense mode, the only real way to stop it. It is the Grim Reaper, and it now swipes away any defense mode monsters you have, leading to most likely a direct attack. By a big, monstrous thing wielding a huge fucking sickle.
  • In the manga, Japanese anime, and English dub, at the start of the Memory World arc, Yugi's grandpa gives us a flashback of when he took the Millennium Puzzle out of the Pharaoh's tomb. But in every single version, the puzzle is the only thing that's in the burial chamber of the tomb. The Pharaoh's body isn't there! It leads me to think that maybe sealing away that evil magic came with the price of destroying the Pharaoh's body. And if that's the case.... One of the beliefs of ancient Egyptians was that the body needed to be intact to allow a spirit to enter the afterlife, so if something happened to the Pharaoh's body he shouldn't have been able to enter the afterlife no matter what the outcome of his ceremonial duel with Yugi. He should have been trapped forever between life and death, a spirit never at rest.
  • Chapter 21 of the manga, we have Kujirada's digital pet who, apart from looking absolutely disturbing and scary, eats other pets!!

Some of the deaths in yugioh japanese anime /manga like marik dad back being cut off sure the people in 4kids removed the nighgtmare fuel away by using the shadow realm instead of death

  • The duel against Pandora (Arkana) during Battle City. Yeah, most of us know that in the Japanese anime, it featured buzzsaws that would cut the loser's feet off. In both versions of the anime, however, Yugi manages to save Pandora before the thing can touch him. He has no such luck in the original manga, where one can actually see the buzzsaw draw blood from what's probably one of his legs' major arteries before Yugi saves him. Even worse? Right after Yugi leaves, Marik looks into Pandora's memories and stirs up any and all suicidal thought's he's had before, meaning that the moment he wakes up, he'll go and kill himself. Keep in mind, this is supposed to be the "good" half of Marik.
  • The Ventriloquist of the Dead's Penalty Game. Trapped for the rest of the life in an illusion to be tortured by a very disturbing-looking, Chuckyesque puppet version of himself. Shudder.
  • In the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, Marik hypnotises Anzu and forces her to take a pill, presumably a Cyanide Pill, between her teeth. If Yugi does not duel Jonouchi, Marik will force her to swallow it. (In the anime, a giant block of concrete was suspended above her head.)
  • Another example from the Battle City arc, the fate of Seeker, the first Rare Hunter (and Exodia-user) that was defeated by Atem, especially in the dub. Just picturing what a then-faceless villain was capable by witnessing a fully-grown, hyper-confident duelist reduced to screaming for forgiveness in quite visible terror was unnerving enough, but seeing the poor man's eyes, bulging with veins and shaking with fear until the pupil slowly fades away into lifeless Blank White Eyes, with the subsequent involuntary breakdance/seizure thing that Marik forces his unwitting, zombie-like puppet to perform was extremely unnerving.

Yu-Gi-Oh! R

  • Tenma Yakou has an Eye Scream moment in the beginning of the series, after discovering the duel table with Pegasus' blood splattered over it and Crocketts telling him that Yugi had won the duel. His eye then melts out in a surreal scene. Since then, he would usually have a case of Mad Eye going on.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Pyramid Of Light

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and its Manga

  • Trueman's and Darkness' (the one from the last arc) monsters could qualify.
    • The Darkness Bramble, which bursts through Darkness' chest, Darkness Outsider, which is a clown which opens its face to tentacle rape things with its brain, and Darkness Neosphere especially.
  • The Facial expressions done By Saiou when The Light of Ruin fully posseses him are practically worthy of Rivaling Yami Marik's Facial Distortions.
  • Yubel. Just, Yubel. If anyone wants to elaborate, they can. The fact that she/He looks like Yami Marik and Yami Bakura's love child dosen't do anything to lower the nightmare factor.
    • Going into more detail, in the Japanese version it switches back and forth between using a male and female voice, and is a batshit insane stalker that considers love to be sharing of all feelings, most notably pain. So think about this, Judai is stalked by a monster that is not only possessive to the point where it tries to kill anybody else that gets close to him, but considers making his life a living hell a sign of love.
  • Also, there's something inherently disturbing about seeing Judai/Jaden, the happy-go-lucky protagonist losing everything before turning evil...
  • Episode 46. Good God.
  • Episode 65. Aside from the fact that the Underground itself is incredibly disturbing, watching Ryo fall apart, go batshit insane, and then that terrifying Slasher Smile at the end...-shudder-

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's and its Manga

  • The Earthbound Gods could qualify.
  • As Does Kiryu Kyouske.
    • Especially Kiryu Kyouske. Everything he does in the first duel with Yusei was primarily to further his deck's goal and to attack Yusei with almost sadistic glee. The Dub, while some deride it, is actually quite good at giving Kiryu a very insane laugh.
  • Divine is a source of this as well, in that he takes kids, basically who are mistreated, and trains them into being psychic weapons. And if your not strong enough to rip your enemy limb from limb, well, you are replaceable...like anyone would miss you.
    • And if you can't survive his experiments to make you strong/useful, you weren't good enough for him in the first place. He'll probably just go and look for a replacement...
      • And let's not forget how he made Aki his pawn by giving her the 'love and understanding' her parents 'did not' (they simply had no clue how to help her, but surely Divine never suggested that possibility) becoming pretty much her only reason to live. Her hairpin is meant to be a Power Limiter, so let's hope he never tried to talk her into becoming stronger the same way he did to others, like Misty Lola's brother...
  • Placido and his crew are a wellspring of horror. Who are these strange men in white? What do they want? On a side note, Lucciano's laugh would fit right at home in a When They Cry series...
  • ZONE. There's just something horribly unnerving about an either very old or very burned individual (probably the former) under 50 tons of machinery shaped like a comma. His crazy voice and the fact that he resides in a White Void Room just makes it worse. When you think about how mentally damaged Paradox and Aporia were after the ruined future, it's difficult to imagine just how ZONE will turn out as their leader.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal and its manga

  • Haruto Tenjo takes Creepy Child to a different level of HONF when he is looking over a lot of junk being dumped into a world, causing havoc and screaming...and he likes the sounds of screams, it appears to comfort him. Maybe his disease is something decidedly very malicious.
  • We also have the situation of IV's ace card, Number 15: Gimmick Puppet Giant Killer. From its creepy, unsettling unmoving face, to the very fact inside its chest is a torture device made to grind up whatever monster it takes inside of it. Fortunately, the character's monsters that were victims were inorganic. Check out how creepy that thing looks here. Granted, IV's deck of puppets is eerily unsettling as it is, especially Gimmic Box.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Tenth Anniversary Movie

  • They killed Grandpa.
  • Paradox fusing into Sin Truth Dragon. His facial expressions, the groaning in pain, the roar followed by the dragon shrieking, and the face that he refers to it as "himself".

Yu-Gi-Oh! Video Games

  • Dark Nite and Nitemare. They come out of nowhere in Dark Duel Stories, can overwhelm you within turns, and come with broken cards. Their lines are oddly cryptic and Mind Screwy.
    • And somehow, in Forbidden Memories, they became even worse. Yeah, bet you thought Heishin was the Big Bad, didn't you? Well, he outlived his usefulness, was turned into a card and then BURNED UP. And even if you manage to defeat Dark Nite, he transforms into Nitemare, who looks something like a mummy who decided to invest in Magitek.
      • Let's not forget that darknite doesn't die after forbidden memories. He only returns to wherever he came from, which makes him more than capable of returning.
  • ...which he eventually does in The Falsebound Kingdom. By manipulating Scott Irvine ( a horrifying madman in his own right), Darknite creates a giant virtual world that will bring him to the real world. Oh, and he controls all three god cards now too.
  • The falsebound kingdom was pretty scary as a whole, with very surreal graphics and a freaky, ambiguous ending.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game

  • Several of the images on cards could be counted as this. For instance, the card Final Countdown has twenty flames floating in a circle in the sky as a malevolent face forms in the clouds.
  • Some cards have images that are strange, grotesque, or just plain WTF. Some notable examples are "Eternal Rest", "Spirit's Invitation", and "Life Absorbing Machine".
  • Don't forget "Metamorphosis". I couldn't sleep for days after seeing that!
  • There is the implication in the story behind the cards that Invader of Darkness is some sort of Evil Overlord who is something like Darth Vader. And that, going by the number of cards searching for him, he probably did something unspeakably horrific. And there's how he probably did in Gagagigo, leaving the poor guy for Kozaki to repair, who probably has a Evil Plan of his own going...yeah, I am convinced Invader is the Big Bad.
  • My first YGO card was Hungry Burger. Ever since he saw it he's refused to eat burgers in fear that they'll eat him from the inside out.
    • Magic Drain. Naked white haired vampire sucks a guy's blood and it looks VERY rape-ish.
  • Parasite Paracide. TCG Artwork: a simple insect with a few worm-like tentacles. Very Squickish. OCG Artwork: Same insect, different pose, tentacles protruding from a soldier's face and mouth.
  • Tribute to the Doomed shows a old, ragged mummy taking a living person and mummifying him alive.
  • Dark Jeroid has a lot of Vagina Dentata going on, its real head is on its crotch, and one gets the feeling the weakening effect is the opponent monster being squicked.
  • The trap card Tragedy. In the OCG, it shows a guillotine. In the TCG, it's 'censored' to show a lass who looks distressed, with an evil looking chap looming behind her, from the darkness. Said evil chap has a blood red moon behind him, which happens to be full, which happens to have an effect on him...
    • Another example, although much less scary than the above, of censorship making things worse is the monster Mystic Tomato. The original artwork makes it look like a Jack-O-Lantern, but in the TCG, its a tomato with a bit-too-realistic monster face.
  • Some say that the creepiest card in existence is Il Blud.
  • Many of the earlier cards were REALLY unnerving, but one of the worst was Sorcerer Of The Doomed. It basically looks like an aged corpse with a malevolent expression and a body suit of horrified faces. The flavor text also helpfully states that it is a master of life-extinguishing spells.
  • The Verz archetype in the Duel Terminal packs. Where their 'predecessor', the Inverz (or as they've been translated to, the Steelswarm), were just ruthless invaders without purpose or cause beyond wanting to destroy everything, the Verz archetype is introduced with the reveal that the Inverz may not have been in full control of their senses . . . as the Verz archetype consists of various monsters from other Duel Terminal archetypes—every other archetype, in fact -- twisted and warped from their original forms by the the Verz virus, a Hate Plague that renders their victims not only distorted but also unable to convey their thoughts, rendering them either a prisoner of their own bodies or at the very least no longer themselves—to wit, the flavor text on the only Normal Monster among them is BACKWARDS just to show how hard it is to understand them and their line of 'thought'.
  • The Wicked Worm Beast. Look closely at its card. Is this thing a humanoid monster with worm tendrils... or (more likely) a human corpse being controled by a monster worm parasite?
  • The army of Monster Clowns. Mystic Clown, Dream Clown, Crass Clown, Saggi The Dark Clown... the list goes on...
  • Pumpking the King of Ghosts. I mean, can you imagine seeing this thing in a pumpkin patch? A huge one-eyed pumpkin with jagged teeth giving you an evil eye. Shudder.
    • In the old console games, he's even worse. Take a good look at him in the false bound kingdom.
  • Necroface, anyone? A freaking porcelain horror movie doll with some freaky tentacles smashing out of its face. That thing gave this troper nightmares for months.
    • Not to mention that bubbling mass coming out of one of its eyes.
  • The original artwork for Axe of Despair, featuring a grisly looking skull-like face with an axe blade sticking out the side of it.
  1. ↑ Manga only, the anime only shows Dark Bakura licking a bloodless Millennium Eye, which was removed from the dub entirely.
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