Archived Discussion Main / ParanoiaFuel

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Kilyle: Now I'm deeply curious about that (commercial?) mentioned here where the parents kill their teenage son via crossbow. Various search parameters fail to turn it up; too vague. Anyone around here able to point out more specific info so I can find it?

Ellen Hayes: I wish someone would better describe the distinction between Paranoia Fuel and Nightmare Fuel. Most of the examples look like Nightmare Fuel instead, or I don't get the distinction, or... something.

Caswin: No, you're right, many of these examples seem to be imported directly from Nightmare Fuel, whether they fit or not.

Blink Dawg: I think the distinction stems from the conspiratory 'feel' of many of the mentioned fuel, even though Paranoia Fuel will be Nightmare Fuel for the sufferer as well.

"There's a final boss sequence in Condemned one in which you run through a dark, claustrophobic labyrinth with a serial killer in hot pursuit. It's really intense and genuinely terrifying, and part of what makes it so effective is that it takes place in a normal house, exactly like, oh, say, for example YOURS, right down to the psychotic serial killer who lives under your bed and is standing behind you right now, but don't look 'cos that'll really piss him off!

Zero Punctuation.

Daibhid C: The way I read it, Nightmare Fuel is terrifying because it's so bizarre and unnatural and simply doesn't fit with the world as you understand it. So when your brain is freewheeling in your sleep, it latches onto these disturbing images and you have nightmares. Paranoia Fuel is terrifying because it does fit into the world as you understand it. You can relate the horrors you've just seen to your immediate surroundings, and suddenly they aren't nearly as normal-looking as they used to be. (...Or So I Heard, I'm a grown man and in no way found myself skirting nervously past a clothes shop the day after "Rose" was broadcast...)

Whether all the examples fit is another question...

fleb: Yeah, I'm gonna say no. There are an asspile of simple Nightmare Fuel examples. The Daleks example, for one-divided-over-two-bullet-points. I cut the Silence in the Library one because it's already mentioned in Moffat's spoiler-tagged "something in the dark" line. And I cut the last two, including the intriguingly mysterious Offing the Offspring 'dramatization,' because they're really, really vague. Is the teenager-killing one supposed to be a pro-life campaign ad, and it's a 'dramatization' of a woman getting an abortion? Just my Epileptic Trees.

** Indeed, the entire Doctor Who series (both of them) contains large amounts of potent Paranoia Fuel. The sweet announcer of that television program? A homicidal alien that feeds by removing your face. Your best friend that has been acting a little strangely? An android impostor that is carrying a deadly virus. Reality TV? A way of placating the human race while they are harvested and mutated. The charismatic, independent politician that is elected Prime Minister, promising to change the government for the better? Actually an insane Time Lord orchestrating the invasion of equally insane humans from the end of the universe in order to become Lord and Master of the Earth. The young girl that hangs around the school after hours? A Dalek agent that shoots purple lightning out of her fingers. The Daleks themselves are also a surprising source of Paranoia Fuel, as they appear to be little more than unnecessarily loud giant pepper pots. That is, until they start slaughtering everyone.
*** One theory states that the Daleks are so frightening primarily because they make the Doctor scared. That doesn't help, put it that way.
** The episode "Silence in the Library" features invisible creatures that lurk in almost every shadow and can strip anything to bones in less than a second. It is revealed that they are indeed on Earth and can only be seen as the dust you see in a beam of light. If that doesn't give the younger generation a fear of the dark then maybe it's true that TV desensitizes children to awful things.
* When this editor was quite young, he saw a dramatization of an event where a mother stood near a tree and called for her teenage son. He ran over and asked "What's wrong", at which point he was shot with a crossbow, by HIS FATHER. Apparently these award-winning parents decided to "abort" their child, at 16. But hey, kids, you'll be fine! Your parents probably won't decide to shoot you in the heart for no apparent reason. Probably.
* Three Words: The Twilight Zone.

• On one episode of ReBoot, nearly the entire city of Mainframe - the inhabitants and the buildings - is turned to stone by an unstoppable "Medusa" virus. As if that weren't enough, the virus eventually causes its victims to fall to pieces. This troper spent weeks scared of the same virus sweeping over his region.
  • This troper found the pastiche of The X-Files (which involves Mainframe citizens being kidnapped by an unseen monster, taken to an Abandoned Warehouse, and held in pods while being drained of Life Energy) much more chilling when she was a child. Of course, now it's one of her favourite episodes.
• (Re 28 days later) I can't drive down a long dark road without being genuinely terrified the zombies are about to lurch out and eat me.
  • I Am Legend has officially convinced me that genetic engineering on viruses is a VERY bad idea. Even if it cures cancer. Sorry little boy with leukemia, but it's either you or everybody.
    • You're an idiot.
    • This troper has a highly overactive imagination. That combined with the "realistic" effects of the virus... well... lets just say that he hasnt had much sleep since then.
    • Methinks that outburst to a simple joke was a bit uncalled for.
• I too am afraid to drive on dark, abandoned roads,but not because of zombies, cuz of Jeepers Creepers!Although I admit that after I saw Dawn of the Dead I looked outside my window every night just incase I saw suspicious lumberers.
  • (Re Truman S How) This troper accidentally began watching it with Sunn 0))) playing in the background faintly. For those of you who don't know, Sunn 0))) is a strange ambient/drone drone band with very low, slooooooow, distorted guitar. Its easy to forget they're on unless the volume is turned up. The first few minutes of this movie seemed to be horrible paranoia fuel with that soundtrack.
  • (Re Doctor Who) All of which is nothing compared to the nightmare-inducing terror of The Empty Child. It becomes worse if you think about it: All that wonderful healing technology you get in Speculative Fiction? This is what happens when it goes wrong. Thought about it? Good. Now go into a hospital.
• This troper doesn't trust Barney the dinosaur one bit.
  • Same here. Also, Elmo. That's right, Elmo.
  • Me three. There's no way it's not a sinister corporate plot to brainwash young children into becoming ever-smiling Super-Dee-Duper™ Pollyannas.
    • Not helping matters is the fact that, unlike the Sesame Street characters, Barney spends most of his time AS AN ACTUAL PLUSH TOY... until he just magically transforms into this towering technicolor terror. This troper has suggested time and again the fact that the children go "Oh, hey, Barney!" as opposed to "HOLY CRAP A SPONTANEOUS SENTIENT DINOSAUR" is proof that something's up.
    • Elmo's true colours were shown in The Simpsons episode where Homer's on the run from PBS; Oscar and Elmo get thrown through the church windows in trash cans, and tell Homer:
      Oscar: Give us the money!
      Elmo: ELMO KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE!.
    • Mr Blobby. shudder.
• A Maytag commercial back in the '90s, where aliens came and did laundry? This troper remembers not being able to go in the laundry room by herself for at least two YEARS after seeing that commercial.
  • (Re This demented ad) Yow. First time I ever saw that. I think the scariest still is when the black dude is lying in bed and the shiny yellow face slides in from the top of the screen. First, the dude's sleeping. Second, the yellow guy's grinning like a psychopathic killer. Thirdly, he's invading the guy's personal space... if the black dude turns his head to face up, they'll be almost nose-to-nose. And fourthly, there's no way to achieve that angle... unless the guy is hanging from the ceiling....
    • Not to mention the implication that humans are by nature noctural and the only reason we're even tolerating the morning is that coffee is brainwashing us into a placid acceptance....
    • You mean that's not how it actually is?
• The whole premise of the Kingdom Hearts series is potential Nightmare Fuel. The bright and cheerful Disney worlds give the game a happy, child-friendly feel... until you get to the points where things suddenly get rather dark...
  • Further into in the category of "this is a kids' game!?" is the eventual discovery of just who Ansem of the reports is, and what he's really up to. And where he is. If you are like this editor, and neglected to read the Reports all along, you will not see this coming. Riku's double voice is especially terrifying when you realise that his proper voice is very dull and flat, and all the inflection is coming from his "passenger".
  • Admittedly, this series stopped being a kid's game the minute Sora enters the second District of Traverse Town and watches as a Heartless eats a man's heart.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 2, the Nobodies are severely disturbing, as they move with a strange boneless gait and tend to resemble humanoids made of cast-off gray and white clothing. The Berserkers, in particular, are spine-tingling.
  • This guy loves Kingdom Hearts but Riku's double voice is scary. It's a wonderful game and quite wholesome compared to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2.
  • (Re Half-Life) Not to mention the headcrabs, which can pop up from anywhere. Anywhere.
    • Black headcrabs especially.
    • Such as under your chair as you surf the net...
    • ...God, I hate you.
• Where the Red Fern Grows featured the paranoia inducing possibility that a child wandering in the woods or up near the mountains might possibly run into a mountain lion. Without two faithful hounds of his own, this troper figured that if such a thing were to happen he'd be pretty well hosed.
• A book of stories about the New Jersey Devil also gave me an understandable degree of paranoia whilst living in Vineland, NJ.
  • (Re Cthulhu and apathetic gods) Exept the one that does, and seems to consider humans in the same way a kid with a magnifying glass considers ants. Worse still, he often appears in form of a man or posesses humans, and manipulates mankind to bring about their own doom, for no apparent reason than to cause chaos. This troper finds the thought that the knowlege to create nuclear weapons was given to mankind by a god who is currently manipulating things behind the scenes in order to start a war that wipes Earth clean of life just because he can very frightening.
    • This troper is confident that this indeed is the case after seeing some real life footage of nuclear explosions right after reading Lovecraft's "Fungi from Yuggoth" (end of 21st sonnet: "The ground was cleaved and mad auroras rolled upon the doomed citadels of Man. Crushing what he chansed to mould in play, the idiot Chaos blew Earth's dust away.")
    • This trope remembers reading a book of modern Lovecraft style short stories, called Children of Cthulhu. After reading the first story in the book, in which the devil is, quite literally, in the details, neither this troper, nor his friend, ever looked at a cloud (or the cracks in the sidewalk...or really, anything that you might be able to see an image in)the same again.

• Quite a lot of the Broadway musical Cats may qualify as Nightmare Fuel, but the part where nearly the entire cast gets down on all fours and recites the normally lighthearted and whimsical poem "The Naming of Cats" in an eerie monotone while staring at the audience in a fashion that can only be interpreted as a binding non-oral contract to eat your face when you're asleep is now and forever the creepiest thing ever.
  • Then there's Macavity- who when you reach the scene of crime....isn't there.
  • And in the movie version, the shadow of the Fiend of the Fell that appears while Gus is singing - oh god that was scary when this troper was a child.
• After several years of off-the-wall humor and surreal absurdity, you wouldn't honestly expect the annual X-Entertainment.com Christmas Advent Calendar to involve any dead-serious nightmare fuel. But this year, you would be wrong. The mysterious Box 23 has turned into a full-fledged Alternate Reality Game, the mystery of which is starting to leak into the main story arc. This troper made the mistake of visiting all the links in this compilation of clues late at night and got a bad, bad case of the jibblies.
  • And then, at the climax of the story, Leviathan shows up. He had been built up as probably being a terrifying, undersea monster. His actual form is different. His actual form is worse. Let's just say, it brings new meaning to the phrase, "He looks like a pink nightmare!"
• Those slippers where, to put them on, you must insert your feet into the mouth of an animal or cartoon character, as their duplicated decapitated heads stare up at you from the ground... brr...
  • This particular fear is mentioned in Mirror Mask. Valentine has a similar reaction to bunny slippers. "Is that supposed to be some sort of sick joke?! Walking on little rabbity-type animals with every step!? That's just... nasty!"
    • "They're not real...."
• This troper's sister gets creeped out by a particular image on Disneyland's "It's A Small World" ride. The Thailand set features a silhouette of a six-armed figure dancing in a veiled temple doorway. Something about all those arms mechanically see-sawing back and forth.
  • In fact, it's a small world in general.
• Meanwhile at the Universal parks, Terminator 2 3-D is an excellent show, but especially if you have to wait a while in line as we did, the queue videos and preshow are heavy on Paranoia Fuel. The idea is you're visiting the Cyberdyne corporation, which is trying to relaunch Skynet. Thus, you're forced to watch happy-happy promotional videos celebrating the barely-disguised Big Brother intentions of the company - surprisingly dark humor for a theme park - thus, it's no surprise when John Connor and his mom hack into the preshow proper to warn you what's really going to happen if Skynet goes online. Worse, the live actress in the preshow, playing a Cyberdyne representative, is a sheer Stepford Smiler. This troper liked the show itself but found the queue most unpleasant.
• This editor, after reading the Wikipedia article on Shock Site (when the article was still a long listing of major examples of such) had been mortally afraid to surf the Internet for a week, and was paranoid that his own website, or one of his favorite websites, will be hacked by someone and turned into a Shock Site.
  • (Asian ball joint dolls) This troper owns one and still hasn't gotten over how spooky they can be.
    • Don't forget the hardcore owners, who spend thousands of dollars on their clothing and their care, with all the obsessive attention you expect from parents towards their children... or worse about some hand-picked person they're grooming to be the perfect mate.
• This troper was severely creeped out when she found out the anamatronic figures in the old 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride remained in the pond for a while after it was closed. Something about dolls that once had live in them now unable to move...forced to remain in place underwater...frozen in time...
  • And then there was the Snopes and Wiki articles about the young employee at Walt Disney Land who was crushed to death between the rotating walls of the America Sings! ride...and the passengers in one area of the ride could hear her screams...needless to say, as much as this troper loves Disneyland, she can't think about it late at night before she goes to bed.
• For this editor, at least, several of the theories espoused in the Wild Mass Guessing section of this very website are Nightmare Fuel — or, at the very least, sufficiently creepy to keep him awake whenever he's silly enough to surf the site before going to bed.
  • The entry about Garfield starving to death in an empty house was enough to keep this other editor up that night — especially the creepy YTMND video linked in the entry.
    • This editor, being a soft-hearted cat person and Garfield fan, was greatly bothered by that one too.
    • Seconded, seconded, seconded. Ugh. That series of strips / the theories abounding are terrifying.
    • Yes, yes, very much so—the nerves I got watching that vid, the palpable sense of relief to type in "Jossed by Word Of God..." (for it was me)
    • Also the YTMND entry about John Candy's lovable Uncle Buck character being represented as a murderer.

• As a child this troper saw a "Paranormal News" report on aliens peeking into windows and watching families. Needless to say, he spent the rest of his life avoiding windows at night... Including -right now- while remembering it. Ugh.
  • This troper had a similar experience with an episode of Unsolved Mysteries dealing with ghost lights, which partially restored his previously-long-gone fear of the dark. Fortunately this only lasted about a YEAR or so.
    • And this troper watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode concerning aliens, bringing this around full circle. She slept with a nightlight on in her room for a year afterwards to scare the aliens away, even though she has trouble sleeping with the light on.
  • Oh God, how could you remind me?! This troper remembers going grocery shopping and having the misfortune of glancing at a tabloid cover for less than a second. The photo was of an alien picking a sleeping girl up out of bed and starting straight into the camera. Combine that with the fact that the girl was sleeping through this and that I was too jarred to examine it closely enough to reassure myself the photo was fake and...brr...
  • I've never even heard of this and I'm still terrified of windows at night for this very reason.
• This troper made the horrific mistake of reading about urban legends on Snopes, almost immediately after his parents left on vacation, and he had the house to himself for a week. Alone. The result: an inability to go to any but two rooms of the house, sleeping only on the couch near the front door, and only then if the cats were somewhere close by.
  • This troper has a similar problem. He'll read sites on conspiracy theories, ghosts, demons, and "ancient astronaut" theories that depict angels as evil aliens out to control and manipulate us all... at 3am. Night-owl tendencies plus overactive imagination equals suck.
    • This troper doesn't dream. (Well, never remembers dreaming; same thing.) He reads creepy threads after midnight, then sleeps like a baby. Be very jealous.
    • Dude, You Suck.
• This troper just finished this entry. And Creepy Child. And some Nightmare Fuel. Never. Sleeping. Again. Mommy!
  • I'm just gonna do that now!
• When he was younger, this troper bought a crucifix. His Catholic parents were pleased at this apparent display of his developing spiritual side and faith. He was a little too embarrassed to tell them that the reason he'd really bought it was to give him something to ward off vampires with after his first experiences with vampire stories.
  • I come to decrease Vampire based fears. They can't enter a house without permission. So all you have to do is NEVER trust the people who visit your house at night, not even family, friends....
    • You forget, not all Vampires have to be invited, and sometimes - if they do, even someone who should have no authority to do so can let them in.
• The old commercials for the green slime line of Masters Of The Universe toys with the tagline "You'd better get it before it gets you" managed to convince this (very young at the time) troper that the manufacturers had come up with a scarily ingenious marketing strategy.
• When this troper was eight or nine, he read an extremely creepy book on urban legends. By far the creepiest one, for some reason, was the legend of the Jersey Devil. Creepy enough on its own, but when he came home that same day and turned on the TV to watch The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, what episode was it? Yup. The one about the Jersey Devil. This troper had been over his fear of the dark for a couple years by then, but it returned full force for another two or three years after that.
• This troper was once very sick - high fever, close to delirious, and was home alone. Never has the sound of a fishtank pump or a dryer sounded so damn omnious. And the house settling? Sounded suspiciously like someone trying to creep along the floors soft-soled, clearly up to no good.

Inkblot: Should we delete all the examples, explain the difference between this and Nightmare Fuel, and just start over?

Pro-Mole: Oddly, I think that is indeed a reasonable course of action. There are way too much stuff that doesn't seem so paranoical at all.

• Global Warming?
  • Eh, maybe.
• Communism?
  • Mm...*shrug*
• Nineteen Eighty Four-esque government control?
  • Scary, but it's not like we'll ever see that. Or at least, not until it's too late.
  • What is scary is that the technology to make a world like Nineteen Eighty Four has been around for the past decade.
• Insanely high gas prices?
  • ...Not scary.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive?
  • Evil, but not scary.
• Now, look at all that, and read me this:
  The President tells you that CorruptCorporateExecutives are causing Gobal Warming and high gas prices. He then shuts them down and, while the company is recuperating, takes control. In the name of doing good for tha planet, he has the company start building hybrid cars. There are not all that popular, so they don't sell. However, he knows this. So what he does is he points at more Executives and tells us that they are evil, making us pay high gas prices. He seizes their businesses and raises the gas prices even more, so that it reaches four dollars a gallon, which is the point people will start buying hybrid cars. Then, people start pointing fingers at ''him'' (note how the Wick is pointing to a Villain article), so he shuts them down, and suddenly we have a country which esposes capitalism and freedom, while allowing the President to control the private sector and shut down dissenters.
  • That's what we think. Can you tell why we're deadly paranoid about Barack Obama yet? (BTW, I don't care about anything justifying about it—I'm not trying to be political. I'm just providing an example of Paranoia Fuel.) :)
  • Thank god hybrids actually are popular, so we don't have to worry about that scenario.

Individual examples can be replaced, if desired, but this is too much of a Thread Mode for my liking.