History NightmareFuel / PansLabyrinth

** Ofelia looks up at the ceiling of the Pale Man's lair, and sees murals of the creature skewering and eating babies. Note, [[NothingIsScarier we never SEE]] the Pale Man eat a child, but this bit is enough to set up what kind of monster we're dealing with.

* The Faun tells Ofelia to give him her little nameless brother. He says that he needs to spill the baby's blood to open the portal that will lead her home, reminding Ofelia that her mother died having it. Ofelia is horrified and refuses -- she knows that Vidal is chasing her with a gun, but she promised to protect her little brother.

* The frog regurgitating its insides to reveal the key.

* The NotSoDifferent / IronicEcho of the rebels executing all of Vidal's wounded men after rescuing Mercedes, [[PayEvilUntoEvil just as Vidal had done to their side earlier]].

[[caption-width-right:350:[[EyesDoNotBelongHere Eyes]] ''[[EyesDoNotBelongHere definitely]]'' [[EyesDoNotBelongHere do not belong there]].]]

* The scene in which Vidal beats a man to near death with a blunt object while the man's father is forced to watch, leaving him alive long enough to see his father shot down before him, and then finishing him off. And it turns out the father and son actually ''were'' only hunting rabbits, making their deaths completely unnecessary. Vidal still didn't show ''any'' signs of remorse; instead, he just tells his men to be more thorough in the future ''before coming to bother him''.

* The capture of the stuttering rebel. His fear in that scene is palpable.

** [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything The pile of shoes.]] That's where the fantastic horror becomes as real as the military violence, because you've seen images like that from the Holocaust.

** Garces is one of the soldiers that drowned Rocio. The water turns black after, mud trapping him on the bank, and he starts to change. He becomes the monster in the pond.
* Vidal in the novelization never refers to Ofelia by her name; he calls her "the girl" and wants her out of his sight. That is until he tracks her trying to run away with Mercedes. Rather than consider that Ofelia is grieving her mother and has no reason to stay, he assumes that she is with the resistance and plans to kill her when Mercedes successfully escapes. Ofelia was dead the minute she begged for Mercedes to take her away from Vidal's house.

* Vidal calmly shooting Ofelia, then her calm reaction to it, before collapsing.

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* There's a lot of violence, which is made even more disturbing when contrasted with the protagonist being an innocent child caught in many, MANY predicaments.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pale-man_9417.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[NiceJobBreakingItHero Ofelia shouldn't have eaten those grapes...]]]]

* The scene in which Vidal [[spoiler:beats a man to near death with a blunt object while the man's father is forced to watch, leaving him alive long enough to see his father shot down before him, and then finishing him off.]] And it turns out [[spoiler:the father and son actually ''were'' only hunting rabbits]], making their deaths completely unnecessary. Vidal still didn't show ''any'' signs of remorse; instead, he just tells his men to be more thorough in the future ''before coming to bother him''.

* The scene where Ofelia looks at the book in the bathroom and sees nothing but blood spreading over the pages ([[{{Foreshadowing}} forming a uterus-shaped stain to boot]]), then (clearly terrified) opens the door into the bedroom to see her mother hemorrhaging. Something about so much blood on white bedsheets, and the way she cries and her 11-year-old daughter is the only one around to get help... It just evokes [[PrimalFear such natural fear]] about [[DeathByChildbirth the potential dangers of pregnancy/childbirth]], especially at home, in a time when medicine wasn't what it is now, and in an environment where the man of the house is perfectly willing to let her die if she gives him a son first... She seems horribly vulnerable in a way that, like the realistically violent scenes, is worse because it can and [[spoiler: ''does'' really happen]].
** Her DeathByChildbirth is a cruel inevitability on re-watching, especially for people who are only used to the media's usual CleanPrettyChildbirth. She spends the movie in a clearly difficult pregnancy, and her hemorrhaging means she was hanging by a thread until Ofelia gets the mandrake from the Faun. And then Carmen finds the mandrake under her bed, gets upset at yet another of Ofelia's fantasy-trips, [[spoiler: and throws the mandrake in the fireplace to prove that magic isn't real]]. [[OhCrap Her screams of pain are terrifying.]]

* Vidal's [[spoiler:public execution by way of a bullet in the face. Though ''extremely'' satisfying at the same time, it's also graphic and realistic in a distressingly banal way: one of Vidal's eyes rolls up and wells with blood and the other stays fixed in horror.]]

* Vidal calmly shooting [[spoiler: Ophelia]], then her calm reaction to it, before collapsing.

** [[HellsThatSound The sound he makes]] when he's chasing her sounds like a combination of roaring and ''babies screaming.''

** The sound he makes when he's chasing her sounds like a combination of roaring and ''babies screaming.''