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| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
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| 8 | %% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. |
| 9 | %% Add context to the entries before uncommenting them. |
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| 12 | [[quoteright:250:[[Film/{{Eraserhead}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eraserhead_frame_crop.jpg]]]] |
| 13 | [[caption-width-right:250:... the hell?]] |
| 14 | |
| 15 | ->''"This is ''nine!'' ''Nine!'' This is ''nine!'' ''Nine!'' This is ''ten!'' ''Ten!'' We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead! This is ''six!'' ''Six!'' ''Eighteen!'' This is now ''eighteen!'' Take cover when the siren sounds! This is ''four!'' ''Four!'' ''Five!'' This is ''five!'' Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room!"'' |
| 16 | -->-- ''Literature/FourteenOhEight'' |
| 17 | |
| 18 | As much as they might scare some people, at least [[OurMonstersAreDifferent monsters]], {{Serial Killer}}s, and {{Primal Fear}}s are scary in a ''comprehensible'' way. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | This is where Surreal Horror comes in. It's not just [[NightmareFuel nightmare-inducing]]; it's nightmarish in a literal way, by being, well, [[ShapedLikeItself surreal]], disjointed, dreamlike, and filled with bizarre imagery, usually [[RealityIsOutToLunch saying goodbye to all logic and sanity in the process]]. You cannot reason with a nightmare -- something that exists only in the illogic of a dream. In some cases, though, [[NightmareRetardant it might not always work]]. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | This is likely the main reason [[MonsterClown clowns can be scary]]. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | It's worth noting that not all Surreal Horror works may be considered "horror" in the genre sense, but they're horrifying all the same. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Often overlaps with BodyHorror, DerangedAnimation, EldritchAbomination, EldritchLocation, EvilIsVisceral, MindScrew, MundaneHorror, OurMonstersAreWeird, SilenceIsGolden, ThroughTheEyesOfMadness, and YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | SuperTrope to WordSaladHorror. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | Compare AccidentalNightmareFuel and PsychologicalHorror. Contrast NightmareRetardant. Compare and contrast SurrealHumor. See also NothingIsScarier. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | ---- |
| 33 | !!Examples: |
| 34 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 35 | [[folder:Alternate Reality Games]] |
| 36 | * ''ARG/OmegaMart'': A few of Omega Mart's products are absolutely ''bizarre'' and wouldn't be out of place being contained by the Website/SCPFoundation as an SCP Object, like their "Millk" which has glitched out the aisle they're located on to stretch out like a nonfunctional window in Windows XP, never mind the eyes and mouths the flowers in the floral department have or the Omega Mart Lemons on recall, [[LetsMeetTheMeat which are sentient enough to recognize and fear their oncoming demises]]. |
| 37 | [[/folder]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 40 | !!By Creator: |
| 41 | %%* The works of Creator/JunjiIto, full stop. ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'' and ''Manga/{{Gyo}}'' are what happens when he crosses it with BodyHorror.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 42 | * Pretty much every manga by Umezu Kazuo, notably ''Manga/DriftingClassroom'', in which an entire elementary school is transported to a nightmarish AfterTheEnd world, and ''Manga/{{Fourteen}}'', in which a humanoid chicken (named George) is leading Nature's revenge against the industrialized humanity. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | %%* The Eclipse (which took place in a nightmare realm called the Nexus) and [[DarkWorld The Qlippoth]] in ''Manga/{{Berserk}}''. Calling them surreal would be an ''insult'' to how horrifying these places are.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 45 | %%* ''Anime/BlackRockShooter'': Some of the SceneryGorn has aspects of this. |
| 46 | %%* ''Anime/CatSoup'' is this combined with GrotesqueCute. |
| 47 | * ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': |
| 48 | ** The episode "[[Recap/CowboyBebopSession20PierrotLeFou Pierrot Le Fou]]", in which Spike is hunted by a bizarre, balloon-like, and apparently invincible assassin. Given how realistic and low-key the show usually is, the sudden shift in tones is [[NightmareFuel even more jarringly horrifying]] than most examples as a result. |
| 49 | ** "[[Recap/CowboyBebopSession11ToysInTheAttic Toys in the Attic]]", another unusual horror-based episode in the series, mostly plays the horror straight: It is basically an homage to ''Film/{{Alien}}'', and an affectionate parody of the genre, as a small purple BlobMonster stalks the corridors and neutralizes the crew one by one. However as the episode enters its final act, SoleSurvivor Spike spots an unpowered fridge in the cargo bay and suddenly realizes the probable origin of the creature: [[ItCameFromTheFridge a lobster he had left in that fridge]] many months earlier. Mustering up his courage, Spike opens that fridge, and [[FreezeFrameBonus for only a couple of frames]] we get a glimpse of what can at best be described as a horrifying mass of indescribable "growths". The haste at which the episode cuts away from the horror only serves to intensify the nightmarish quality of the contents of that fridge. |
| 50 | %%* In ''Manga/{{Devilman}}'', a [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demon]] disguises itself as the water in Miki's bathtub, and attempts to drown her.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample - Why is this Surreal Horror? |
| 51 | %%* ''Anime/JackAndTheBeanstalk1974'' runs on this, especially the DisneyAcidSequence during the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT14LUuSEm8 wedding]]. |
| 52 | %%* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loetcOWYfvA The Midnight Parasites]]'', a 1972 Japanese animated short based on the paintings of Creator/HieronymusBosch with a weird psychedelic rock soundtrack. |
| 53 | * ''Anime/{{Mononoke}}'' combines classic Japanese horror myths with a surreal art style and puzzle-like battles. |
| 54 | %%* ''Manga/MrArashisAmazingFreakShow'' and all of the works of Creator/SuehiroMaruo, due to belonging in the "ero-guro" or erotic-grotesque movement. |
| 55 | * ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': The second half of ''The End of Evangelion'' is pure surreal horror, especially when [[spoiler:the mass-production Evas become covered in bubbling, multiplying Rei-faces]]. The spectacle will likely leave you with the same look on your face as Shinji. There is a taste of it as early in the second episode, when Shinji sees the reflection of his Eva after a battle, half its skull showing through broken armor. A giant eyeball regenerates in the socket while he's watching, then it focuses on him. He passes out screaming. The reaction is understandable. |
| 56 | %%* ''Literature/{{Paprika}}'', especially later on in the movie. It is about the merging of dreams and the real world, so this is to be expected. |
| 57 | * ''Anime/ParanoiaAgent'' is about a serial assaulter who hits people of low sanity with a bent golden [[BatterUp baseball bat.]] This increases when he begins exhibiting inhuman powers, and events are often shown from the mental perspectives of the characters. |
| 58 | * The Witches' labyrinths in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica''. Most of which look like any victims or enterprising Magical Girls intruding within are getting attacked by a cross between a Creator/SalvadorDali painting and the opening theme song to ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei''. |
| 59 | * ''Literature/RequiemFromTheDarkness''. Bizarre imagery abounds, characters and architecture are truly strange-looking, and the series' roots in Japanese horror folk tales are rife with surrealism. |
| 60 | * ''Anime/SerialExperimentsLain'' physically represents the Internet as another layer of reality. Unlike other shows which would display a friendly, clean cyberworld, this one portrays it as disorienting and bizarre. Add in hallucinations and the blending of the real world and the Wired (Internet) and several scenes get quite intensely strange. Even the more mundane stuff has a surprisingly unsettling atmosphere. |
| 61 | %%* ''Manga/SoulEater'': 90% of this can be attributed to Asura, the Kishin of fear. Hell, he practically has NightmareFuel as a BattleAura. |
| 62 | %%* The series version of ''Manga/VampirePrincessMiyu'' has several episodes that easily fall into the surreal horror category, but as for the last story arc, two words: [[spoiler:Chicken. Heads.]] And it is terrifying. |
| 63 | [[/folder]] |
| 64 | |
| 65 | [[folder:Animation]] |
| 66 | * ''Animation/{{Clinic}}'' is a short film about a series of bizarre, MedicalHorror-themed nightmares had by an elderly patient in a hospital. |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Arts]] |
| 70 | %%* Creator/AlfredKubin (pre-Great War).%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 71 | %%* Francis Bacon.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 72 | * Creator/FranciscoDeGoya's ''Art/BlackPaintings''. One look at the horrors that this series portrays, with even the more abstract being clear representations of the ugliness that he lived through and the choice of name becomes clear as day. A very dark day. |
| 73 | %%* Creator/HieronymusBosch; the demons he painted might have founded BodyHorror and even this very trope.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 74 | %%* Creator/HRGiger. He created [[Film/{{Alien}} the Xenomorphs]], after all.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 75 | %%* Creator/SalvadorDali, one of the most famous artists who took inspiration from dreams.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 76 | %%* The Creator/ZdzislawBeksinski "Fantastic Period" between the '60s and '80s. He said he wanted his work to look like photographs of dreams, not necessarily anything horrific.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 77 | [[/folder]] |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 80 | * Much of Creator/GrantMorrison's run on ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol''. Notably, the Scissormen, his first story-arc. Weird, red-suited [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos slenderman]]-lookalikes. Oh, but they have scissors for hands, and speak in nonsense phrases, and [[spoiler:"cut" people out of reality and into a city in another dimension.]] Grant Morrison [[QuirkyWork does some weird stuff]], long story short. |
| 81 | * ''ComicBook/DylanDog'': Rather than being a monster hunter type, Dylan more often than not investigates cases that are usually pretty MindScrew-y, akin to some sort of mix between Creator/TerryGilliam and Creator/LucioFulci. An excellent example of this is the issue "Golconda!" (#41) with a giant tentacular eye killing two teenagers before riding off on their tandem, and an army of Men with bowler hats straight out of a Creator/ReneMagritte painting descending from the sky and killing people in [[CruelAndUnusualDeath graphic and bizarre manners]] with their powers. |
| 82 | %%* ''ComicBook/TheGraveRobbersDaughter'', and many of Creator/RichardSala's other works. |
| 83 | * Also from Grant Morrison, ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'' is their magnum opus but also their most complex and surreal work. It features our universe being born [[spoiler:after two higher dimensions overlapped]], [[EldritchAbomination Alien demons]] that want to turn the Earth into a death camp, an assassin from Hell that always has a sketchy, blurry face but covers it by wearing the flayed skin of his victims because he believes himself to be Xipe Totec, a living planet forcing a kid into becoming humanity's saviour by making him absorb all suffering on Earth, alien pornographers, a demon that enslaved our language and, in the end, [[spoiler:humanity collectively achieves Nirvana and dissolves into a literal sea of endless possibilities]]. |
| 84 | * ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' and its spin-offs. Throw Goth, SurrealHumor, BlackComedy and Surreal Horror in a blender and you get this... and the inside of Creator/JhonenVasquez's brain. |
| 85 | * Every conversation about ''ComicBook/LikeAVelvetGloveCastInIron'' will bring up Creator/DavidLynch. It was BasedOnADream the creator had, and a man with [[http://www.i-mockery.com/weeklies/images/comics/velvet-glove2.jpg shrimp]] growing from his [[EyeScream eye sockets]] is one of the more ''normal'' things that you'll find inside. |
| 86 | * ''ComicBook/MisterMiracle2017'' is one of the weirdest books DC has put out in years. Scott Free's story is frequently interrupted by "[[MindScrew wait, what was that]]" moments, grotesque violence, and bizarre [[PaintingTheMedium format]] [[OminousVisualGlitch disruptions]], many of which are implied to be a side effect of Scott's [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness deteriorating sanity.]] And although [[NothingIsScarier we barely see him]], the menacing atmosphere means the reader will never be able to forget how the power of '''[[ArcWords Darkseid is]]''' growing with every issue that passes. |
| 87 | * ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': The Corinthian has shades of this, where this trope meets the more reasonable horror trope of the SerialKiller. Guy who strips teenage boys to their underwear, ties them up, then cuts out their eyes to eat them? Freaky but not too out of place in a realistic setting. Immortal ''literal'' nightmare who's been doing this for about forty years running for his own amusement? Freakier. (And, of course, he has MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily in his eye sockets in lieu of eyes. Yet he can still see. And he can eat things with them, like people's fingers if they try to take his shades. And if he eats someone's eyes that way, he can see things they've seen.) |
| 88 | %%* ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'''s first villain was the American Scream, and the blend of Surreal Horror with PrimalFear recurred throughout the series. |
| 89 | [[/folder]] |
| 90 | |
| 91 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 92 | * The week-long (Oct 23-28, 1989) ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' StoryArc where he wakes up one morning and finds his home inexplicably empty and decrepit, as though no one has lived there for years, and images of the people he knows fade away into nothingness as he approaches them. Yeah, Jim Davis was really going for something else in those strips. |
| 93 | -->"An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice... or terrify, all depending upon how we conduct ourselves today." |
| 94 | * ''ComicStrip/{{Lio}}'' often resembles a Victorian morality fable, but more random. [[GreenAesop Go fishing]]? The fish are fighting back, and ready to eat ''you''! Ignore the warning not to go sledding on a particular hill? There's a monster hiding under the snow at the bottom! Naturally, the emphasis here tends to be on the brutal death awaiting those who make the wrong choice. |
| 95 | [[/folder]] |
| 96 | |
| 97 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 98 | %%* The Homestuck fan adventure ''Webcomic/AlabasterTheDoomedSession''. The entire story is slightly experimental visually, but then you have moments like [[http://mspfanventures.com/?s=236&p=755 The Glitch]] or even worse, [[http://mspfanventures.com/?s=236&p=1030 the L.E. Scratch parody]]. |
| 99 | %%* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/user/cassieiswatching CassieIsWatching]]'' (an infamous ''WebVideo/{{lonelygirl15}}'' [[Fanfic fan-created]] AlternateRealityGame.) |
| 100 | %%* ''Fanfic/ThirtyHs'' and its spinoffs have some semblance of this trope, particularly the "Rape Ape" chapter, if you don't regard them as SurrealHumor. |
| 101 | * Chapter 21 of ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail'' is filled to the brim with this as it is an intense [[NightmareSequence "Nightmare Therapy"]] session in which Goh must learn how he had been a horrible person to all he cares about with influences including Creator/SionSono films and "firefly Funhouse". |
| 102 | [[/folder]] |
| 103 | |
| 104 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 105 | * ''WesternAnimation/AChristmasCarol2009'' is full of this. The motion-capture and general animation style can make ''every'' character look creepy, but the Ghost of Christmas Past gets it the worst, especially when its face rapidly cycles between people Scrooge knows. Segments and additions that weren't in the novel, such as Scrooge being shrunk and chased by his own funeral hearse, as well as flying into the sky on Christmas Past's cap like a rocket, are also very weird. |
| 106 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Coonskin}}'' is a really trippy blaxploitation satire from [[Creator/RalphBakshi the man]] who brought you ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' and ''WesternAnimation/HeavyTraffic''. Highlights include demons ripping out a man's eyeballs, among other things. Truly worth checking out. |
| 107 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'' features the infamous "[[https://youtu.be/jcZUPDMXzJ8 Pink Elephants on Parade]]" number. After Dumbo gets UnsuspectinglySoused, we get treated to a DisneyAcidSequence featuring PinkElephants with BlackEyesOfEvil. |
| 108 | ** Creator/{{Disney}} would later follow up the creepiness of "Pink Elephants on Parade" with a similarly bizarre NightmareSequence in ''WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh''. Behold, "[[https://youtu.be/axPPL1FO5mU Heffalumps and Woozles]]". |
| 109 | * ''WesternAnimation/ItsSuchABeautifulDay'' combines Surreal Horror with SurrealHumor. Justified because the protagonist Bill is mentally (and perhaps terminally) ill, and has to deal with how his depressing (yet ridiculous) life may eventually end with premature death. |
| 110 | %%* The [[DerangedAnimation animated sequences]] in ''Music/PinkFloyd -- Music/TheWall'' are a classic example. |
| 111 | * [[https://youtu.be/wFGajxkT9UA Svetlonos]] (The Torchbearer). Made by Václav Svankmajer, the son of the surrealist Czech filmmaker Creator/JanSvankmajer. It combines Myth/GreekMythology and SteamPunk with a Nightmarish dose of LSD... |
| 112 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', Mei's nightmare involves bizarre disturbing images. Some of these include: |
| 113 | ** Devon the store clerk as a merman who flops around at first, but then this abruptly cuts to a close-up of him doing a ThousandYardStare while he's being prepared as sushi. |
| 114 | ** The members of [[BoyBand 4*Town]] appearing as flowers and doing a split-second NightmareFace while mugging the camera. |
| 115 | ** A dead bird next to shattered eyeglasses. |
| 116 | ** A folding fan that shows Ming’s distressed face on it. |
| 117 | ** A horse coughing up... something. Possibly a worm, since the next frame shows a worm split in half. |
| 118 | * The Forest of Still Life in ''WesternAnimation/WeAreTheStrange''. Toys and strange machines are scattered haphazardly all around, and then, we're introduced to a rather unnerving stopmotion CreepyChild with a doll's head. |
| 119 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/YellowSubmarine'' at least borders on this trope, featuring a lot of psychedelic and colourful imagery. |
| 120 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/WhereTheDeadGoToDie'' is pretty much nothing but this. Oh boy, is it '''[[QuirkyWork ever]]''' this. |
| 121 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheWolfHouse'' is a StopMotion film which is made to look as though it was [[TheOner filmed entirely in one take]], and the visuals constantly shift and change shape. The film itself is meant to be in-universe propaganda made by a manipulative cult leader, and despite its dreamlike atmosphere it shows some very unsettling images. |
| 122 | [[/folder]] |
| 123 | |
| 124 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 125 | !!!By Creator: |
| 126 | %%* Creator/DavidCronenberg has been known to create works featuring very disturbing visuals, particularly with ''Film/{{Videodrome}}'' and ''Film/EXistenZ''. |
| 127 | * Creator/DavidLynch is one of the most famous users of Surreal Horror, raging from having disturbing {{Nightmare Sequence}}s in otherwise understandable plots (like ''Film/BlueVelvet'' and ''Film/WildAtHeart''), to being a bit more MindScrew-y to follow (''Film/LostHighway'' and ''Film/MulhollandDrive'') to then just making a whole movie an unsettling fever dream like ''Film/InlandEmpire'' and his infamous debut ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}'', which seems to depict its main character having an AwfulWeddedLife to a woman that moves at a fast pace with things ''just happening'' (she announces having a baby the night he comes to have dinner with her parents, forcing him to get married) and the baby itself being a disgustingly deformed HumanoidAbomination that eventually ends up haunting the protagonist's dreams (pictured above) and makes things more disturbing building up to a GainaxEnding. |
| 128 | %%* Much of the works of Creator/HenrikMoller. |
| 129 | %%* All the films of Creator/JanSvankmajer (''Film/{{Alice|1988}}'', ''Film/LittleOtik'' and ''Sileni'', among others) may classify in this trope, due to heavy use of MediumBlending live-action with DerangedAnimation. |
| 130 | * Most of the '80s output from Creator/LucioFulci qualifies, with the copious {{Gorn}} mixed with bizarre dream-like happenings that really make very little sense. ''Film/TheBeyond'' is the one which likely takes the cake in the MindScrew department, [[spoiler:ending with the last two protagonists stuck in a kind of ontological maybe-symbolic [[SceneryGorn post-apocalytic hellscape]] that is either AnotherDimension they're now trapped in or [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt what our world just turned into in the space of a few minutes]]]]. |
| 131 | * Creator/MamoruOshii dips into it on occasion with his live-action films. In particular, ''Talking Head'' is about as close to a Creator/DavidLynch film as you can get without the man himself directing. |
| 132 | %%* The works of Shozin Fukui, such as ''964 Pinocchio'' (1991) and ''Rubber's Lover'' (1996) depict surreal horror in a manner similar to ''Film/TetsuoTheIronMan''. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | !!!By Film: |
| 135 | * ''Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod'' starts out as a straightforward journey through the jungle, and then numerous unexplained and/or bizarre events begin happening with the characters displaying little to no reaction. By the end, the audience ends up feeling in the same state of madness as the characters. |
| 136 | * ''Film/AlteredStates'' centers on the protagonist attempting a MentalTimeTravel by using sensory depravation tanks and a hallucinating drug he discovered from a Mexican tribe... instead it results in wild MushroomSamba sequences that get progressively more BodyHorror-ridden. |
| 137 | * Several scenes from ''Film/AngelHeart'' veer into this territory, most notably the [[FanDisservice infamous sex scene]]. You know you're not watching a normal horror movie when one of the most chilling scenes is Robert De Niro [[ItMakesSenseInContext biting into a hard-boiled egg]]. |
| 138 | %%* ''Film/{{Antichrist}}''. Those animals? According to the talking fox, chaos reigns. |
| 139 | %%* ''Film/ApocalypseNow'' has an increasingly surreal and downright disturbing atmosphere throughout its duration. |
| 140 | * ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}'' is an [[HorrorComedy interplay]] between SurrealHumor and this, given its unique take on ghosts and the afterlife. Stuff like attempting to leave the house you're haunting taking you to [[Main/DangerouslyGarishEnvironment Saturn]], where its bizarre yet creepy looking Sandworms [[SuperPersistentPredator instantly go after you]], Adam and Barbara [[BodyHorror deforming their own heads]] for Juno's approval and Betelgeuse [[AnimateInanimateObject animating]] some eerie modern art sculptures to assault the Deetzes during the climax feels as if Creator/TimBurton took the drawings of a 5 year old child's nightmares and faithfully adapted them for the screen. |
| 141 | * ''Film/{{Begotten}}'', a [[SilenceIsGolden silent]], high-contrast [[DeliberatelyMonochrome black-and-white]] [[LeFilmArtistique experimental]] film that opens with {{God}} disembowelling Himself. It just gets weirder from there. The sequel, ''Din of Celestial Birds'', is just as weird. |
| 142 | * In the film ''Film/BeingJohnMalkovich'', being the original Creator/JohnMalkovich and not knowing when a hole in an office building could allow you to be controlled by someone else; then there's the time he tries to go through it [[MindScrew himself]]. |
| 143 | %%* ''Film/LaBelleCaptive''. |
| 144 | * ''Film/BerberianSoundStudio'' is a slightly meta take on the genre, but certainly shows shades of this when Creator/TobyJones' sound engineer [[SanitySlippage slowly starts losing his mind]] as the boundaries between the main plot and the ShowWithinAShow are increasingly blurred. The final act is incomprehensibly terrifying. |
| 145 | %%* ''Film/BeyondTheBlackRainbow'' is a [[GenreThrowback deliberate throwback]] to the [[Creator/StanleyKubrick Kubrick-esque]] "cold sci-fi" films of the 70s, so there's no surprise that it lands here, thanks to bizarre visuals and tons of MindScrew. |
| 146 | %%* ''Film/BlackSwan''. It was inspired by PsychologicalHorror ''Anime/PerfectBlue'', so no surprise there. |
| 147 | * ''Film/BloodMachines'' runs almost entirely on this. Who are the HumanAliens Vascan, Lago and Tracy encounter? Their employer wants the Mima, but we never find out ''why''. What exactly is the entity that emerged from the Mima? Why did it travel to the DerelictGraveyard? It's clearly an important site to the HumanAliens, but ''why''? What destroyed so many ships in that area? Was it the HumanAliens? A similar entity? '''''What the hell is the ending?!''''' |
| 148 | * ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'': One of the main reasons this pioneering work is so creepy. The plot itself generally makes sense, but the set designs, costumes, and overall mood are ''very'' dreamlike and strange, even for a silent movie. |
| 149 | * ''Film/CarnivalOfSouls'' is another classic example, following a young woman's disturbingly surreal visions of being stalked by a terrifying ghoul, and did the [[spoiler:DyingDream plot decades before ''Film/JacobsLadder'' below]]. |
| 150 | * ''Film/TheCell'': Although it mostly limits its JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind of a SerialKiller visuals to elaborate CostumePorn worn by {{Humanoid Abomination}}s, a surreal horror stand-out is the scene of the horse getting vertically sliced up by thin slabs of glass and the separate parts [[AndIMustScream remaining alive]] between them. |
| 151 | * ''Film/UnChienAndalou''. Watch out for [[EyeScream razors]]. It also contains elements of SurrealHumour, which makes the atmosphere even more unsettling. |
| 152 | %%* The content of the video tape in ''Literature/TheRing'' is clearly a homage to ''Film/UnChienAndalou''. |
| 153 | * ''Film/ComeAndSee'' uneasily swirls together the [[WarIsHell nightmare reality of war]] with the surreal weirdness of ''regular'' nightmares to very disturbing effect. Several sequences in the movie are implausible and downright surreal, and intentionally so. |
| 154 | * ''Film/{{Cube}}'', for taking place in a bizarre yet definitely dangerous setting of the, well, cube. |
| 155 | * ''Film/DeathBedTheBedThatEats'' is a strange arthouse-horror-sexploitation movie about a demon possessed bed that eats people by melting them with a pee-like substance. It gets way weirder, nonsensical, and trippier from there. And there's a guy who lives behind a {{painting|s}} that constantly talks to the bed with no response. |
| 156 | * ''Film/DonnieDarko'' is about a troubled teenager who has regular meetings with a six-foot tall anthropomorphic bunny rabbit who can see the future, and just gets weirder from there. Like, when a translucent wormhole comes out of his chest, or when a movie screen ''implodes''. |
| 157 | * ''Film/DontLookNow'' has several scenes where the main character has recurring visions of his deceased daughter and of his own death and funeral as he wanders lost in abandoned plazas, courtyards, and palaces in Venice (which themselves are distorted and dreamlike due to the near-absence of other people). |
| 158 | * ''Film/DreamScenario'' depicts the surreal nature of nightmares, with an emphasis on SceneryDissonance. Like Sophie's DreamIntro of helplessly floating up to the sky and calling to her dad, [[DissonantSerenity who keeps raking leaves absently]], or Andy's nightmare of walking through a sunny forest wearing a smoking and eating strange mushrooms before finding himself on a meadow among a group of well-dressed men standing still and having to run from a blood-soaked HumanoidAbomination coming to get him. |
| 159 | %%* ''Film/EventHorizon'' went in that direction, since it is about the thin line between [[spoiler:our world and a dimension made entirely out of ChaoticEvil]]. |
| 160 | * ''Film/FriendOfTheWorld'' is a black-and-white film with an aesthetic for NightmareFuel and bizarre imagery. |
| 161 | %%* ''Film/{{Gozu}}'' by Creator/TakashiMiike was a very surreal nightmare on film, a sort of Asian ''[=Eraserhead=]''. |
| 162 | * ''Film/{{Hausu}}'': The premise - a group of young protagonists enter a house in which bad scary stuff happens - is simple enough, but the "scary stuff" is much more bizarre than the film's Western peers. |
| 163 | %%* ''Film/{{Hellraiser}}'' and ''Film/HellboundHellraiserII'' mixes this with ungodly amounts of {{Gorn}} and BodyHorror. |
| 164 | * ''Film/{{Holidays}}'': ''Father's Day'' has some strong elements of this. A woman is led by a tape her father left to her into a very strange place where she thinks she'll meet him again, [[spoiler:while instead encountering... ''something'' bad]]. |
| 165 | %%* ''Film/HourOfTheWolf'', Creator/IngmarBergman's attempt at the horror genre, was also one of his most surreal works. It's a classic example of the "[[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane are the ghosts actually real]] or are the protagonists [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness just losing their minds]]" sub-genre of horror. |
| 166 | * ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'' is pretty much a surreal CosmicHorrorStory, being full of {{Mind Screw}}s, {{Cosmic Retcon}}s, and BreakingTheFourthWall sequences. But the tip of the iceberg is the ending: [[spoiler:[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou It turns out the movie you're watching is the one which is driving people insane and turning them into monsters]]]]. |
| 167 | * The amateurish B-movie ''The Item'' by Dan Clark goes into surreal horror territory when the [[BreakThemByTalking mind-breaking, talking]] worm creature shows up. |
| 168 | * ''Film/TheLighthouse'' contains surrealistic elements, insofar as it's often unclear which of the disturbing and grotesque events are actually taking place as opposed to being nightmares or hallucinations of the main characters. |
| 169 | * ''Film/JacobsLadder'', which also [[spoiler:turns out to be the protagonist's DyingDream]], slams back and forth between terrifying weirdness and mundane drama with the abruptness of getting hit over the back of the head with a brick. Also, that damn DemonicHeadShake... |
| 170 | %%* ''Film/TheMachinist'' has many grotesquely surreal MindScrew scenes, particularly the amusement park ride and all of the scenes with Ivan. |
| 171 | * ''Film/Mandy2018'' is the rare place where this trope crosses over with the revenge thriller genre. The premise - An '80s period piece with Creator/NicolasCage taking vengeance on evil cultists - is fairly straightforward, but its bizarre, hypersaturated visuals and intensely ominous atmosphere (in addition to the cult's [[AmbiguouslyHuman possibly demonic biker henchmen]]) make it ''much'' weirder than that plot description makes it sound, and it's ultimately unclear how much of what we're seeing [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane is actually taking place]] and how much of it is the protagonist [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness losing his mind.]] It's directed by the same guy who did ''Film/BeyondTheBlackRainbow'', so no surprises there. |
| 172 | * ''Film/TheMask1961'', billed as the first Canadian horror film (no relation to [[Film/TheMask the 1997 movie]] with Creator/JimCarrey), is mostly a pretty standard, even slow-moving scary movie about a haunted Aztec death mask that drives anyone who wears it to madness. The thing that makes the movie truly memorable, however, is that every time the DoomedProtagonist puts on the mask (three times, in total), we're treated to an elaborate and genuinely strange NightmareSequence in [[Platform/ThreeDMovie 3D]]. |
| 173 | * ''Film/MayIPleaseEnter'': Throughout the short-film, it's clear that something isn't right in the house, and there are moments of very strange and nightmarish imagery alongside the otherwise mundane scenes of Amy and John giving the Cowboy a house-tour; for example, their doorbell ends up spooling-out on the ground like a noodle, they own a "weapon" that looks more like an ominous breathing sock, and have a room full of people "sleeping". Everything just leads to more questions, and nothing is resolved or explained by the end. |
| 174 | * ''Film/{{Men}}'' plays on this several times. To start, every man the protagonist, Harper, encounters around the small town community the story takes place in has the same face (with all being played by Creator/RoryKinnear), but Harper never comments on it, nor seem to notice, and the narrative never explicitly acknowledges it either. While something the events of the movie can only be explained as the result of some supernatural force, there is nothing to suggest what that could be. And then there's [[spoiler:the sequence where the various men Harper has met throughout the film [[MrSeahorse give birth to each other]] [[WombHorror in visceral and gory detail]]]]. |
| 175 | * ''Film/{{Monkeybone}}'' has several moments of this, particularly the DeliberateMonochrome nightmare scenes (Julie dreaming of Stu getting his life support cut off, causing him to ''deflate'' into a rubbery hollow husk, or when Stu revisits his old nightmare of being a root headed for a MeatgrinderSurgery by a doctor with an EldritchAbomination sticking out of his forehead) or when Herb is exposed to the Oneirix (which is a literal NightmareFuel chemical solution) and hallucinates his clothes coming to life and attacking him. |
| 176 | * ''Film/MontyPythonsTheMeaningOfLife'' utilises a heavy amount of this, hopping disjointedly from one bizarre and creepy scenario to another. Let's see, there's Find the Fish, [[OrganTheft Live Organ Transplants]], [[NauseaFuel Mister Creosote]]...and it all culminates in a meeting with TheGrimReaper himself. Worth noting that the segment with Mister Creosote is the only scene in any movie that's scared Creator/QuentinTarantino. |
| 177 | * ''Film/Mother2017'' fits this trope like a glove, made by grandmaster of psychological-thriller surrealism Creator/DarrenAronofsky, featuring a [[MinimalistCast tiny cast of nameless characters]], a ''[[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory heavily]]'' allegorical plot featuring tons of sexual and violent unpleasantness, climaxing in literal [[spoiler:[[IAmAHumanitarian baby eating]]]]. |
| 178 | * The 1981 porno ''Nightdreams'' was an attempt to make porn that worked as legitimate art. Along the way, something went horribly wrong, and the final product was a bizarre, nightmarish, sick movie that is very disturbing and [[FanDisservice not the slightest bit arousing.]] Totally worth checking out. |
| 179 | * The surrealistic elements of Michael and Mark Polish film ''Northfork'' are more absurd than horrifying, but some of his creations, from the porcelain hands and strange glasses of "Happy" to the Dali-esque horse on crutch-like stilts are certainly unsettling. |
| 180 | * ''Film/ThePassionOfTheChrist'' is already a [[{{Gorn}} horribly gruesome movie]] before you bring in the weirder touches like a group of possibly demonic children tormenting Judas, shots of the rotting corpse of a donkey with an [[TheUnsmile eerie grin]] on its face, and one of the weirdest depictions of {{Satan}} in cinema - as a bald, androgynous woman with an eerily deep voice, who is occasionally shown carrying a disturbingly ancient-looking baby. |
| 181 | %%* The ''Film/{{Phantasm}}'' series goes back and forth on this - the latter films were always at least rather ''weird,'' but the 1979 original truly fits this trope best. |
| 182 | %%* ''Film/{{Pi}}''. The ''Eraserhead''-esque black and white atmospheric directing style certainly helps. |
| 183 | * ''Film/{{Possession}}''. A husband searches for his missing wife with her lover. They find out she's shacked up with a second lover, who turns out to be [[EldritchAbomination not a human]]. It all goes downhill from there. |
| 184 | * The 1983 short film ''Film/PossiblyInMichigan'' won some notoriety on Website/{{Reddit}} and Platform/TikTok for its use of this trope. Its [=YouTube=] summary ("Two women are chased through a shopping mall by a cannibal") isn't necessarily ''inaccurate'', but it only gives you the faintest idea of the movie's true scare potential. You see, the victims are a pair of AmbiguouslyHuman women with eerie lilting voices who burst into rhyme at random moments, the cannibal is a mysterious tuxedoed stalker with a distorted rubber face who somehow no one can see, the shopping mall is an almost-empty building that hosts wild dance parties for people in animal masks, and the chase is punctuated by random bursts of StockFootage. ''That's'' Surreal Horror. |
| 185 | %%* ''Film/{{Repulsion}}'' enters this territory once Carol's [[spoiler:rape dreams]] start. |
| 186 | * Finnish director A J Annila's ''Film/{{Sauna}}''. Its main antagonist is the titular piece of [[SinisterGeometry Sinister Architecture]] that feels far more sentient and malevolent than an immobile building rightfully should. |
| 187 | * ''Film/TheShining''. In the book, a lot of the hotel's history is explained to us. In the movie, we see the ghosts and visions as the characters do — with little to no context or explanation as to what the hell is going on. |
| 188 | * The ending to the film ''Film/{{Society}}''. An incredibly bizarre exercise in BodyHorror as the protagonist stumbles across [[spoiler:[[FanDisservice the most disgusting orgy]]]] in cinema history. With legendary splatter-movie guru Screaming Mad George doing the effects, what else would you expect? |
| 189 | %%* ''Subconscious Cruelty'' is this with very disturbingly [[FanDisservice erotic]] and [[{{Gorn}} bloody]] scenes. |
| 190 | * Creator/DarioArgento's ''Film/Suspiria1977'' is somewhat like ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'' in that the unsettling tone of the film owes much to its characters going about their business in some [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} pretty bizarre interiors]]... apparently without ever [[http://i.imgur.com/f2X9P.jpg noticing]] [[http://i.imgur.com/7VZPA.png anything]] [[http://i.imgur.com/mwwi5.jpg unusual]]. ''Suspiria'''s actual plot details are a little weirder, though. |
| 191 | %%* ''Film/TetsuoTheIronMan'' is this combined with BodyHorror, particularly of the bio-mechanical sort. |
| 192 | %%* Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/{{Tideland}}'', while disapproved by critics, was a surreal horror fairytale. |
| 193 | * The [[BodyHorror transformations]] in ''We're All Going to the World's Fair'' definitely count as this. From turning into plastic, to having arcade tickets come out of your arm, to having a game of Tetris ''inside your body''. |
| 194 | * In ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'', the whole portion inside the factory is surreal and often creepy, but the ultimate example is the infamous DisneyAcidSequence during the [[https://youtu.be/XB401RfGMlM boat ride]]. [[EnforcedMethodActing Even the cast had no idea Gene Wilder would be singing!]] It's so creepy that many modern showings leave it out, and Creator/DisneyChannel put a {{content warning|s}} before their showings of the film (the only time they've used a content warning for anything below a PG-13 rating) mainly on the strength of this scene being included in its near-entirety. |
| 195 | * ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9nQG1J7Xs The Woman Who Powders Herself]]'', an insane black and white short from the '70s that features lots of animation effects and disfigurements. |
| 196 | [[/folder]] |
| 197 | |
| 198 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 199 | !!!By Author: |
| 200 | %%* Some other works by ''Creator/DonHertzfeldt'', while driven by SurrealHumor, can be sometimes this. |
| 201 | * Most of the stories and novels of Creator/FranzKafka qualify as this trope. |
| 202 | * Creator/HPLovecraft: A horse with a hundred horse legs, 50 human heads, 200 human legs, and the whole thing is purple. H. P. Lovecraft one ups that by 100 levels. |
| 203 | * Lots of Creator/NeilGaiman's works use this. For instance, ''Literature/AmericanGods'' has a scene in which a prostitute swallows a man through her vagina, and "Literature/TheProblemOfSusan" shows us a deranged version of ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' in which Aslan rapes the White Witch and gruesomely devours the Pevensie children. Hell, even his children books revel in this. ''Literature/{{Coraline}}'' is about a girl who crawls through a tunnel into another world full of puppets who want to stitch buttons onto her eyes, and ''Literature/TheGraveyardBook'' has a scene in which two children enter a mausoleum inhabited by a naked, tattooed Celtic warrior [[spoiler:(who, thankfully, isn't real)]] and an enormous, undead, snakelike monster. |
| 204 | * Creator/ThomasLigotti, who has drawn on a lifetime of intricate and disturbing nightmares for much of his writing. |
| 205 | * Creator/TimWaggoner tends to do nightmarish imagery a lot. ''[[http://timwaggoner.com/pickingup.htm Picking Up Courtney]]'' is a good short-form example. |
| 206 | |
| 207 | !!!By Title: |
| 208 | * This is the reason some people find ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' to be nightmarish rather than amusing. |
| 209 | * The Torque in China Mieville's ''Literature/BasLagCycle''. A cancerous force of mutation that is hard to describe in its effects. It blights the landscape turning them into constantly shifting and wrong geometries, it has startling effects on living things (one of the most prominent examples in the series is a train full of people, merged with the train car they were in turned into one enormous amoeba like mass which seems impervious to damage, or the researcher who slowly notices that small circular holes of herself are disappearing). Even the MadScientist main character of the first book views Torque as an uncontrollable and terrifying force. |
| 210 | * ''Literature/Catch22'' starts out as a silly, absurdist parody... until about halfway through, where it starts veering into this trope by [[{{Deconstruction}} showing how horrifying it would really be]] to live in a world where things like loyalty oaths or turning a profit by selling eggs to yourself are treated as totally sensible and rational; many of the characters show absolutely no reaction to the utterly bizarre and horrific events occurring around them, culminating in [[spoiler:Aarfy getting off [[KarmaHoudini totally scotfree]] after raping and murdering a woman. Why? Because nobody with the power to punish him cared enough to do so]]. |
| 211 | * Even the original ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' series introduced this at one point, when the characters sail through a fog of nightmares in ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader''. Since RealDreamsAreWeirder, some of these nightmares are pretty surreal -- for example, Eustace's nightmare involves giant scissors, [[NoodleImplements and we can only guess what that entails]].[[note]]Though it became HilariousInHindsight after ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' featured a more comedic NightmareSequence with giant scissors, this time representing the threat of a GroinAttack.[[/note]] |
| 212 | * The alien needle monsters in ''Literature/EdenGreen'' take strange, absurd shapes, and the title character nicknames them things like 'herbivore' and 'giraffe'. |
| 213 | * Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/FromABuick8'' has as the theme that there are some things you just can't understand and sometimes you'll never have answers. Also, the things that come out of the Buick's trunk make you feel like you're being raped. They're not even malicious, but their bizarre nature horrifies everyone who sees them. |
| 214 | * ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' has its fair share of these in many books. However, none of them could match the bizarre and graphic horror this trope displays in ''I Live In Your Basement'', which even has children turning ''inside out of its graphic, gory glory!'' |
| 215 | * ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'': A book that is a labyrinth of {{Framing Device}}s, set in a house featuring a hostile labyrinth built from AlienGeometries that [[NothingIsScarier may or may not contain a minotaur]], featuring stories that [[MetaFiction fold back in on themselves]] or may all just be a tangle of metaphors. |
| 216 | * ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd''. The crude humor might lead you to assume otherwise, but it's definitely horrific and strange. |
| 217 | * ''Literature/TheKingInYellow'', an anthology of short stories all based around a common idea: There is a play so decadent that it acts as a BrownNote linked to a HumanoidAbomination implied to be the AnthropomorphicPersonification of decadence; we don't know how that can even be possible. And the play is also linked to a cursed symbol which summons an undead creature; that creature's nature/origins are completely unexplained. We don't even know if the CrapsaccharineWorld depicted in "The Repairer of Reputations" is real or not; the tales featuring the play are interconnected, but that's the only one which explicitly depicts such a world, and it has an UnreliableNarrator. Everything is weird and nothing is certain; only decadence and doom are (except for the sort-of lucky pair in ''The Mask''. Maybe). Naturally, this book was a huge influence on Creator/HPLovecraft. |
| 218 | * The later stages of ''Literature/{{Lamplight}}''. What starts off as a shadowy ghost story takes a full turn into reality-warping horror by the final third of the novel. |
| 219 | * ''Literature/NakedLunch'' is full of surreal {{Body Horror}} and BigCreepyCrawlies, as are most of the books of Creator/WilliamSBurroughs. |
| 220 | * Creator/MikhailBulgakov 's ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita''. Satan arrives to Moscow with his minions, and surreal things begin to happen. |
| 221 | %%* Again Creator/AlfredKubin with his ''The Other Side''. |
| 222 | * ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'' reads like a fever dream. The world reflects the fears of all the characters in the most bizarre way possible, and things continue to unravel the further they go, typically ending in a forest made of liquid meat that surrounds a black hole shaped like a willow with teeth. |
| 223 | * ''Literature/TheThirdPoliceman'' is a nightmarishly surreal novel by Irish author Flann O Brien (think James Stephens meets ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' while being dictated to by Creator/SalvadorDali) and after reading you'll probably never look at a bicycle in the same way again. |
| 224 | %%* The ''Circe'' section in ''Literature/{{Ulysses}}'' is full of this. |
| 225 | * ''Literature/{{Unhallowed}}'', a surreal horror WebSerialNovel about three sisters dealing with dark family secrets and witchcraft in a small New England town. Is this the story of a girl spiraling into madness? Or did a young witch really break the universe by invoking mystical forces? Influences include Creator/{{HP Lovecraft}} and Creator/{{David Lynch}}. It's not about the goat. |
| 226 | [[/folder]] |
| 227 | |
| 228 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 229 | * The House in ''Series/BeyondTheWalls'' has its merry way with the laws of physics in every conceivable way. The zombie-like creatures inhabiting it don't help either: you can't communicate with them, they vastly differ in intelligence and hostility and sometimes seem to [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking wear boar heads for fun]]. |
| 230 | * ''Series/ChannelZero'': Each season so far has featured some ''very'' bizarre moments of horror, ranging from a monster made entirely out of teeth to zombies that consume memories to a chess-playing butler made entirely out of meat to a MonsterClown who brutally kills a man only to then perform a circus act (complete with jazz hands). |
| 231 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' has dipped into this with some storylines: |
| 232 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E5TheWebPlanet The Web Planet]]", which focuses on several races of InsectoidAliens and uses lots of dreamlike imagery in the visuals, sound and deliberately nonsensical dialogue ("We must make mouths in the walls and then they will speak more light"). Not to mention the sheer dream-logic which the aliens run off — beeping ants with larvae that fire bolts of shrieking light controlled by a strange tentacled creature that speaks through web tunnels, makes the TARDIS console go spinning out of the TARDIS and away, and can control anyone wearing gold; giant bees with [[AccentUponTheWrongSyllable strange inhuman voices]] that can fly through space to the moon… The rather unrealistic costumes also enhance the weird atmosphere, perhaps unintentionally. |
| 233 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E2TheMindRobber The Mind Robber]]", which takes place in a kind of dream dimension, starts in a blank white void, and has things like Jamie's face getting turned into a 'puzzle' that the Doctor has to solve, but he does it wrong and ends up changing Jamie's appearance. |
| 234 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin The Deadly Assassin]]" involves the Doctor being sent into a computer nightmare based on common bad dreams strung together with no narrative coherence in a dreamlike manner — a surgeon with a giant syringe about to inject him full of blood while he's paralyzed, a soldier leading a horse wearing a gas mask, and sudden falling being just three things. |
| 235 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E4TheDoctorsWife The Doctor's Wife]]" has the characters landing on an extra-dimensional junkyard asteroid... that turns out to be an EldritchAbomination that devours [=TARDISes=]. Among this entity's minions are a sinister {{Cthulhumanoid}} and a ragged man and woman made from dead Time Lord body parts woven together. |
| 236 | ** Notably, this trope is why a number of fans, most notably Creator/PeterCapaldi, believe that the original cheap-looking [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet Mondasian Cybermen]] are much scarier than the cosmetically superior Cybermen from the new series. The audience has seen plenty of scary killer robots, what they ''haven't'' seen are clearly-living humanoids with blank, cloth-covered faces, empty black voids for eyes, and mouths that just kind of hang open when they talk in [[AccentUponTheWrongSyllable bizarre singsong voices]]. They're less a logical, realistic depiction of cybernetics and more like a child's nightmare version of what a KillerRobot would look like. |
| 237 | * ''Series/TheEricAndreShow'' is basically what would happen if Creator/DavidLynch hosted a daytime talk show. Most of the time, the [[SurrealHumor surreal bits are humorous]], but when they aren't, they're usually this. Especially if you're one of the guests. |
| 238 | %%* ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'' has some comically absurd horrors, like Skipper the Eyechild. |
| 239 | * ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'' initially makes a half-hearted gesture at realism by having its protagonist suffer regular hallucinations, but eventually that explanation is dispensed with. And often the more horrifying things are ''literally happening'', like a man whose skull was hollowed out to make room for a working apiary, the two separate "artworks" constructed from mutilated human corpses by unrelated "artists", the... everything involving horses or pigs, and a body flayed and manipulated to resemble an oversized, anatomically-correct human heart. The show draws inspiration directly and openly from Creator/DavidLynch. |
| 240 | * The Danish TV series ''The Kingdom'' (''Series/{{Riget}}''), which is set in a hospital and involves such things as the birth of a fully-grown man with ''way'' too long legs, and a doctor having the cancerous liver of another man transplanted into his own body ForScience and as a trophy. |
| 241 | %%** The Creator/StephenKing-led American version, ''Series/KingdomHospital'', has elements of this as well. |
| 242 | * ''Series/Legion2017'' runs off of this, given that it's the story of a man with both deadly mutant abilities ''and'' severe mental illness. It's the kind of show where the BigBad can give the protagonist a chilling BreakingSpeech comparing love to a disease spread by ants and then bust out into a spectacular Film/JamesBond-style dance solo set to a raucous cover of Music/NinaSimone's "Feelin' Good". And it actually gets even weirder as the series progresses. Bonus points for most of the scenes with the Devil With the Yellow Eyes successfully conveying the "slow-moving, inescapable, irrational horror" feel of an ''actual'' nightmare. |
| 243 | * The infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion Max Headroom incident]] is a good example of this. On 22 November 1987, an unidentified prankster hijacked Chicago airwaves [[note]]first during the WGN-TV news, and then during WTTW's airing of classic ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Horror of Fang Rock"[[/note]] and broadcast eerie footage of a guy in a Series/MaxHeadroom mask spouting gibberish (and briefly, at the end, being spanked by someone in a FrenchMaid costume). Website/{{Cracked}} has a good [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18381_the-5-creepiest-unexplained-broadcasts.html summary]]. |
| 244 | * ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'': Did he escape? Who captured him? What the hell is going on? Who is #1? Why do they care? Who are these people? [[spoiler:[[ParanoiaFuel WHY DOES THAT DOOR OPEN THE SAME WAY AS THE ONES IN THE VILLAGE?!]]]] |
| 245 | * The British series ''Series/SapphireAndSteel'', while nominally SF, is also deeply unsettling in the fashion of a good ghost story — little or nothing is explained in any detail, which tends to enhance the dream-logic feel of the show. |
| 246 | * ''Film/ThisHouseHasPeopleInIt'' is a short film from Alan Resnick that never explains itself. Nothing seems to make sense? Why is that girl sinking into the ground? Nobody knows! Why does this simple house need a surveillance system? Nobody knows! What the hell is Tom's deal? Nobody knows! Why is [[spoiler:everyone sinking into the ground now]]? NOBODY KNOWS! |
| 247 | * ''Series/TimAndEricsBedtimeStories'' abandons the SurrealHumor of previous Creator/TimAndEric creations for this, featuring a world where toes are removed by scissors as often as tonsils are taken out. |
| 248 | * Various scenes from ''Series/TwinPeaks'' (again by Creator/DavidLynch), including the dream at the end of episode 2, the Black Lodge scenes in the finale, and every scene with Killer BOB. ''The Return'' also has plenty of this, [[WhamEpisode Episode 8]] of the Revival is almost an entire episode of nothing but weird nightmare imagery. |
| 249 | * ''Series/WandaVision'', featuring two superheroes, [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar one of whom is supposed to be dead]], trapped in a StepfordSuburbia sitcom reality while the government tries to figure out from outside what the hell is going on; [[spoiler:and it seems that one of the heroes may be somewhat responsible for this.]] |
| 250 | [[/folder]] |
| 251 | |
| 252 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 253 | !!!In General: |
| 254 | * Many of the stranger bands in BlackMetal are prone to doing this, often through use of UncommonTime, bizarre vocals, dissonant guitar tunings, and unconventional song structures. Music/DeathspellOmega and Music/BlutAusNord are the poster boys for this style. Some of the other bands who practice it include Oranssi Pazuzu, Jute Gyte, Spectral Lore, and arguably Music/{{Liturgy}}. |
| 255 | * Many modern TechnicalDeathMetal bands that focus around using dissonance, disorientating time signatures and bizarre vocal styles to create an extremely dark and dreamy atmosphere fall into this. Examples include Music/{{Pyrrhon}}, {{Music/Portal}}, Artificial Brain, and Music/{{Ulcerate}}. This style can be traced back to Music/{{Gorguts}}' album ''Obscura'' and the Finnish band Demilich; arguably the two most unsettling examples. |
| 256 | |
| 257 | !!!By Artist: |
| 258 | * Antihoney, a [[AnonymousBand mysterious]] Japanese musical project, features a unique dreamlike soundscape. Their songs are free, available to download on their [[http://antihoney.com/ official site]]. The music is already pretty weird on its own (some songs even completely reversed on release), the ethereal vocals only emphasizes the creepiness. It was brought to fame (among fans) largely by the sinister imagery created in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd5jpVLJGWg fan made music videos]] by Youtube animator [[https://www.youtube.com/user/nana825763/videos nana825763]] (best known for the famous Youtube video Username 666), and they fit suprisingly well with the music. It's [[NightmareFuel very]], [[MindScrew very trippy]]. |
| 259 | * Much of the work of Richard D. James, better known as Music/AphexTwin, falls into this category. Whether it's the often robotic vocal effects, discordant melodies, or bizarre and often frightening lyrics, we guarantee that you won't be sleeping for days. Oh, and the music videos. |
| 260 | * "Revolution #9" by Music/TheBeatles has this effect on some people. It's a mashup of strange sounds which bears little to no resemblance to what most people think of as "music." |
| 261 | * Likewise, Music/DavidBowie's [[https://youtu.be/CMThz7eQ6K0 video]] for the song "Ashes to Ashes" on his album ''Music/ScaryMonstersAndSuperCreeps''. Again, the song itself has some dark RealitySubtext, this time about Bowie's drug addiction -- though as with the aforementioned Queen song, the video is just a mishmash of freaky images. Even darker are Bowie's videos for "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw Blackstar]]" and "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8 Lazarus]]", both released right before he died. |
| 262 | * The music video of [=LeaF=]'s ''[=MopeMope=]'' is [[DisguisedHorrorStory infamous]] for its frequent ArtShift from adorable kids-themed animation to a creepy seizure-inducing DerangedAnimation with {{botanical abomination}}s with [[UncannyValley human arms for petals and realistic human lips, etc]]. |
| 263 | * Music/TheMarsVolta slips into this at times, with their odd WordSaladLyrics and odd, MindScrew music. |
| 264 | * Music/NeutralMilkHotel's lyrics fall here pretty often. Especially "A Baby for Pree" and "Two-Headed Boy". |
| 265 | * Some of Music/PinkFloyd's early instrumentals have this effect on some people, particularly "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt0He6I09CY A Saucerful Of Secrets]]", "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmtK1X-5OgE Main Theme]]", and "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpo35OqasTk Sysyphus]]". You can definitely count also "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPgAM31N5Co Careful With That Axe, Eugene]]." |
| 266 | * Music/ThePixies were influenced by movies like ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}'' and ''Film/UnChienAndalou''. ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pixies&oldid=624024907#Influences Source]]) |
| 267 | * Music/{{Queen}}'s [[https://youtu.be/Od6hY_50Dh0 video]] for "[[SanitySlippageSong I'm Going Slightly Mad]]" -- well, what do you expect for a song with RealitySubtext about dementia brought on by the terminal stages of Music/FreddieMercury's AIDS? |
| 268 | * Music/TheResidents. An avant-garde music group formed in the 1960's who have managed to stay anonymous throughout their whole career. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcI5rNR5TGM Here's a taste.]] Besides the music itself, the music videos, ''video game'' and other creative output all serve to emphasize this. |
| 269 | * Music/{{Rush|Band}}'s "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkIIlkyZ328 Cygnus X-1]]", which also overlaps with CosmicHorrorStory. |
| 270 | * The later works of Music/ScottWalker are the stuff of nightmares, especially the album ''The Drift''. |
| 271 | * Pretty much everything by Music/{{Swans}}, an experimental industrial band from New York. One of the band's members, singer/songwriter/proverbial witch and keyboardist Jarboe, has solo material that delves so far into the realms of Surreal/Psychological Horror to the point that it becomes impossible to listen, although you can't help but wait it out in terror. The release of their 2012 album marked their 30th anniversary; it sounds as though they haven't missed a step nor do they plan on doing so. |
| 272 | %%* A lot of Music/TomWaits' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9mhsW5aWJM stuff]]. |
| 273 | [[/folder]] |
| 274 | |
| 275 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 276 | * ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'' can venture into this on occasion, especially whenever the VictimOfTheWeek finds themselves dealing with The Other Circus. Including the protagonists, at the end of season 3. You know things are bad when the violin music in the intro is replaced by circus noise. |
| 277 | * ''Podcast/WelcomeToNightVale'' straddles the line between SurrealHumor and this, focusing on news broadcasts from a small town with a terrible and unknowable dog park (where dogs are not allowed), a faceless old woman who lives in your house (yes, yours), a Boy Scout troop with ranks that go up to "Eternal Scout" and whose initiation ceremonies result in dark-eyed children coming to town, and the sheer carnage of Street Cleaning Day. |
| 278 | [[/folder]] |
| 279 | |
| 280 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 281 | * ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' has Arcadia, comprised of the domains of [[TheFairFolk The Others]]. The other {{Dark World}}s in the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'' pale compared to it, simply due to its sheer variety and absurdity (except for possibly ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'''s Temenos, the part of the astral world where every idea humans have ever had is real and can be found somewhere - including all derangements, fictional works, and flights of fancy). |
| 282 | * In ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'', players may have to run through a session or two of this if they [[spoiler:die and come back harrowed]] or [[spoiler:travel through the Hunting Grounds]]. |
| 283 | * In ''TabletopGame/DontRestYourHead'', the player characters are people with abnormal insomnia that gain strange powers (which work with dream logic) and are driven to a place called Mad City, a city that is a total mess full with AnachronismStew and {{Bizarrchitecture}} where all the missing things and people from our world go. Also, the city is ruled by [[HumanoidAbomination strange beings]] that prey on humans and have dream logic powers as the protagonists. |
| 284 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': The entirety of the Wyld. Mortals entering it will be unmade, but the Exalts might have a ''slight'' chance of surviving with both their mind and body intact. |
| 285 | * ''TabletopGame/InvisibleSun'' has players as magic-users called vislae who have discovered the Actuality, a dream-like dimension of magic and imagination. With its fantastical nature, the imagery can quickly go from semi-normal to nightmarish when spells are used, leaving characters covered in screaming mouths, having eyeballs for fingertips, or any other kind of twisted deformations that they can use to hurt others... or as an advantage for themselves. The horror comes especially when the story involves a horrific war of magic that happened in the past and caused many vislae to flee the Actuality in the first place. |
| 286 | * In ''TabletopGame/JAGSWonderland'', Chessboard One has elements of this. The Chessboards below it ''are'' this. |
| 287 | * The Hastur Mythos in ''TabletopGame/DeltaGreen'' are made of this, because Hastur personifies the breaking of the laws of reality and logic. They are modelled after ''Literature/TheKingInYellow.'' |
| 288 | -->It's horrific when an unnatural tome reveals the secrets of the universe; it’s surreal horror when that book written in 1611 contains a description of you down to the smallest details, including the fact that you’re reading that book right now. |
| 289 | ** The campaign ''Impossible Landscapes'' starts fairly mundane, but as the players get exposed to Hastur's corruption and inadvertedly start entering deeper into Carcosa reality starts to break down more and more. The [[GameMaster Handler]] is recommended to throw in completely mundane scenes to contrast with all the insanity going on. |
| 290 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Normality}}'' embodies this trope, as it lacks a dice mechanic and largely consists of furious ranting at a world gone wrong. |
| 291 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Try leafing through the descriptions of Chaos mutations sometime. And good luck catching a peaceful night's rest if you do. Oh, and Chaos imagery and architecture also counts. Explicitly described is the alphabet of Chaos as "sanity blasting sigils". |
| 292 | [[/folder]] |
| 293 | |
| 294 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 295 | * ''VideoGame/ElevenFortyFiveAVividLife'' certainly counts. It's a strange story about a woman, Laynie, who discovers some things in her body that she doesn't know the origin of and has to find out why they're there over the course of the story. |
| 296 | * ''VideoGame/AfraidOfMonsters'' is incredibly surreal. The protagonist, David Leatherhoff, goes through several nightmare sequences in his own mind, where the world is a deep, matte black. Twitching, growling things lurk in the walls, which seem to be drawn out of white ink. |
| 297 | * ''VideoGame/AllOfOurFriendsAreDead'''s nightmarish imagery is a particularly hellish example of this. Being a RunAndGun, it has been described as "''VideoGame/{{Contra}}'' [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs on a really bad acid trip]]." |
| 298 | * ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesAlice'': [[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland The source material]] is pretty surreal already, so of course a darker version of it is going to evoke this. |
| 299 | * ''VideoGame/AoOni'' would just be normal horror, if it weren't for the fact that the monster is a bizarre invocation of the UncannyValley that manages to look simultaneously humorous and horrifying. |
| 300 | * ''VideoGame/BaldisBasicsInEducationAndLearning'' is a game with the general aesthetic of one of these really terrible {{edutainment game}}s from the '90s, except it takes a horrific turn a few minutes in. |
| 301 | -->'''Baldi:''' Great! You're doing fantastic! Problem three! ''([[HellIsThatNoise loud static noise]])'' plus ''([[BlackSpeech loud static noise]])'' times ''(loud static noise)'' equals... ''([[FailureIsTheOnlyOption player inevitably gives a wrong answer]])'' I GET ANGRIER FOR EVERY PROBLEM YOU GET WRONG. |
| 302 | * ''VideoGame/{{Baroque}}'', especially the original release due to a heavy atmosphere created by the limitations of the system. |
| 303 | * ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' is the deranged tale of a little boy whose [[AbusiveParents brutally abusive]] mother intends to sacrifice him to God, filled with BodyHorror, BigCreepyCrawlies, disturbingly Freudian imagery, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and]] ToiletHumor. |
| 304 | * ''[[https://ln404.itch.io/blank-01 Blank_01]]'', a freeware horror game that combines minimalist graphics and increasingly bizarre visuals to make a SoulCrushingDeskJob truly nightmarish. |
| 305 | * ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'' drifts deeper into this the further you stray from the main plot. /x/, which is mandatory, has several optional areas filled with unexplainable monsters, especially the house with the doll which loops over and over again and has things like faceless copies of your party members. The [[BonusDungeon Deep Web]] is filled with nightmarish enemies, like huge skeletal mantises and the giant floating head of a little girl that's [[EyesDoNotBelongThere unraveling into a mass of eyes]]. Then there's the many hidden rooms sprinkled throughout the game, like Ny'agai Street and the haunted subway platform, that seem to exist purely for the sake of being utterly weird. And the secret "[[GainaxEnding PC Ending]]" calls the game's entire setting into question in the freakiest way possible. In short, if you follow the plot and don't get lost, then you'll mostly have a grand old time -- however, if you wander off the path, you might end up in a totally different, much creepier type of game. |
| 306 | * ''VideoGame/BugFables'': This trope plays a part in making a group of lategame enemies as disturbing as they are. [[spoiler:The Dead Landers barely resemble anything on Earth. Alpha vaguely looks like a stickbug and Gamma vaguely looks like a spider or crab, but all of them have surreal and warped appearances that are a far cry from the more defined bug designs of everything else in the game. What they are exactly is never explained.]] |
| 307 | * ''VideoGame/CastleRed'': The Hedge Maze is a sprawling labyrinth fool of bizarre and random imagery meant to disorient the player. The rest of the game features strange happenings and inexplicable events as well, but the Hedge Maze is perhaps the point of maximum surreality. No other section of the game features a garden of human heads, for example. |
| 308 | * ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'': Never have the consequences of infidelity looked quite so nightmarish. |
| 309 | * ''VideoGame/ChzoMythos'': A bit of SerialEscalation in that the first two games are mostly about supernatural but still comprehensible killers, and the latter two have transcended into full-on CosmicHorrorStory. |
| 310 | * ''VideoGame/CloseYourEyesRedux'' is a bizarre and surreal adventure through unreal worlds as your murderous marshmallow protagonist attempts to escape their execution by hanging, their journey narrated by the voice of a hammy gameshow host who encourages them to "Close... your... eyes...". |
| 311 | * ''VideoGame/{{Coil}}'' provides little context for the events within yet seems very sinister even in ambiguity. Most people interpret it as a story about rape, but Creator/EdmundMcMillen's [[WordOfGod personal interpretation]] is about somebody meeting with Death. |
| 312 | * ''VideoGame/CryOfFear''[[note]]which is made by the same team as ''VideoGame/AfraidOfMonsters''[[/note]] features this to some extent throughout but a few "nightmare sequences" use this to even greater effect, the start of one is signified by AlienGeometries and/or hallways and rooms coated in blood. [[spoiler:In the subway behind the brick wall is an excellent example, after some hallways using AlienGeometry you drop down into a maze covered in blood and full of impossibly tall people bound up in bags with twitching heads that look like they've had their grey matter squeezed out. All of them are hanging from the ceiling like cattle in a butcher factory and constantly moving around. Touching one results in instant death and the soundtrack does not make things any more pleasant.]] |
| 313 | * ''VideoGame/CubeEscape'': The [[RoomEscapeGame room escape]] puzzles include slicing open a fish and watching a fully grown tree sprout out of it, descending into Van Gogh's severed ear to his bedroom in Arles, and cutting open an old man's [[MouthStitchedShut sewn-shut mouth]] to let his human head be replaced by a crow's. Oh, and terrifying {{Humanoid Abomination}}s created from the unpleasant memories extracted from the bodies of dead humans. |
| 314 | * ''VideoGame/{{Darkwood}}'' features a great number of [[EldritchAbomination eldritch natured creatures]] that roam the forest, leading to the Protagonist having to fend for himself against a variety of horrors. And while not all the creatures are hostile by nature, many don’t go out of their way to befriend him either. |
| 315 | * ''VideoGame/{{DARQ}}'', being set in [[DreamWithinADream a series of nested nightmares]], is packed with this, from the bizarre enemies to the way the protagonist can [[DreamWeaver walk on walls and ceilings and rotate the world around him like a puzzle box]] to the [[AlienGeometries unnaturally connected areas]]. |
| 316 | * ''VideoGame/DeathStranding'' is full of this. The reveal trailer alone is one long parade of bizarre, inexplicable happenings, with such sights as [[MisterSeahorse a man suddenly acquiring a bloated, glowing, translucent, pregnant belly, revealing the fully-grown infant inside]], a titanic MechanicalAbomination, and a man being saved from drowning... by the aforementioned baby... which appears inside his windpipe... giving a thumbs-up. Okay. |
| 317 | * ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' sneaks up on the player, beginning as a dark MedievalEuropeanFantasy that just happens to have weird references to "the Watchers" sprinkled in. The standard ending mostly avoids the trope, but each unlockable alternate ending gets successively more unhinged until the fourth, in which [[spoiler:''giant demonic babies fall from the sky'']]. |
| 318 | * In ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'', the Surreal Horror angle runs rampant, especially once your sanity meter runs low. The whole thing is just one big screwed up wide awake nightmare. |
| 319 | * ''VideoGame/{{Eversion}}'' is a [[CrapsaccharineWorld very happy]] example of this. [[HaveANiceDeath Enjoy your blood]]. |
| 320 | * This trope pretty much describes most of ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin''. It starts off with the main character investigating a mass murder, but then you encounter monsters that reek of BodyHorror, FacialHorror, and occasional UncannyValley, locations that just randomly appear and disappear, various enemies (namely the BigBad) that can [[RealityWarper warp reality]], and a really creepy hospital that you can go to to upgrade and save your progress. [[spoiler:All {{justified|Trope}} once you discover exactly [[BrainInAJar where you are]].]] |
| 321 | * ''VideoGame/ExcuseMeSir'' certainly has shades of this. The itch.io page describes the game as "creepy, surreal, and if you're not careful... ''deadly!''" |
| 322 | * ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' and its spinoffs ''VideoGame/SunlessSea'' and ''VideoGame/SunlessSkies'' are full of nightmarish imagery, which particularly spikes up when your SanityMeter gets low. Sunless Skies takes the cake for taking place in a world where the [[RealityIsOutToLunch laws of reality are literally dying off]]. |
| 323 | * The pages consisting of ''VideoGame/FancyIsland'' are full of nightmarish imagery, jumpscares, and pages that look just plain wierd. For example, Chaos.html is a series of moving fake pop-up windows with an eye and several organs where each window redirects you to a different page, and Eye.html (accessible when you click on the eyes on Chaos.html) is a rather striking page with a pair of zombie-ghosts with their entrails showing, and on the center a pair of blinking eyes that act as the entrance to the next page, and on top of the eye some strange gibberish. |
| 324 | * When it isn't a tactical shooter, ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' goes for this. |
| 325 | ** One of the highlights of the first game is an extended sequence in which you can't be sure if the man taunting you is a hallucination or in the room with you, and doors you try to flee through seem to move away from you. It ends with a dive into a pool of blood that leaves you standing beneath a gore-soaked ceiling. The first expansion has a very memorable sequence in which the player tries to open a door at the end of a hallway. Finding it locked, you turn around to see that the hallway you just came down has transformed into the entranceway to an asylum. |
| 326 | ** Entering one room and finding it empty, save for an operating chair and a door on the end. Go through that, and find ''two'' operating chairs. Repeat until blood starts appearing and the increasingly large volume of chairs start getting attached to the walls and the ceiling, as the walls start to progressively cave in. Hmm. |
| 327 | * ''VideoGame/GreyMatter'' uses motifs based around mental illness and the brain in general. |
| 328 | * ''VideoGame/{{Harvester}}'' has absolutely [[{{Gorn}} copious amounts of blood and guts]], but a lot of the creepy factor comes from just how utterly ''wrong'' the entire town is. Then, in the endgame, you break into the headquarters of the Lodge of the Harvest Moon, and things get ''really'' weird. |
| 329 | * In ''VideoGame/HereTheyLie'', the main character takes a journey through a muted dreamlike apocalyptic landscape encountering impossibly vast industrial cityscapes, insane people with animal heads, boat journeys through kaleidoscopes, an abandoned train station filling up with blood deep underground, sinister giant businessmen on fire and a theater filled with people attempting suicide among other bizarre events along the way. |
| 330 | * ''VideoGame/{{Ib}}'' has some pretty decent {{mind screw}}ing. A few examples: stairs that meow, walls that give applause, hallways that never end unless you walk through it a certain way, paintings that come alive, roses that determine your value of life, marble statues that can walk, and crayon drawn books whose pictures move and depict preschooler murder. |
| 331 | %%* ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' |
| 332 | * ''VideoGame/Killer7'' is a technicolor acid nightmare of a video game. |
| 333 | * The normally comic ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' descends into this in its more serious zones, such as fighting an EldritchAbomination resembling Mr. Peanut in [[EldritchOceanAbyss the Caliginous Abyss]] or having [[BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind the embodiment of the Crackpot Mystic's fears, doubts, regrets, and anger]] be old-school video game characters. |
| 334 | * ''VideoGame/TheLastDoor'' is chock-full of this. Everything feels a little unhinged from reality and each person seems to be at least a little insane. The closer Jeremiah gets to solving the mystery of what's going on, the more warped and bizarre everything gets. |
| 335 | * ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': Of the games, ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' uses this trope to the largest extent, which inspired the creation of ''WebVideo/BenDrowned''. The titular mask of Majora is shaped like a heart but [[EyesDoNotBelongThere with eyes on it]] and it's being worn by a demented scarecrow. Meanwhile, the moon has an evil leering face that constantly stares down at the people [[ColonyDrop it's about to crush]]. Just to name a few points. Other games show surreal moments at specific times, such as the Fused Shadow backstory in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]''. |
| 336 | * ''VideoGame/Limbo2010'' is set in a grainy, [[DeliberatelyMonochrome monochrome]] world mixed with forested and industrial terrain. There are dead bodies in the early part of the game, and [[EverythingTryingToKillYou almost everyone and everything are there to kill you]] -- and when they do, the deaths are quite gruesome. There is one part where you have to use the husk of a GiantSpider as a makeshift bridge across a pit of spikes -- and that is ''not'' the end of it. |
| 337 | * ''VideoGame/{{LISA}}'' seems fairly tame at first glance, up to the point when the people around the protagonists begin to [[BodyHorror horrifically transform into savage and contorted monsters]] and their hallucinations gradually worsen. |
| 338 | * ''VideoGame/LittleNightmares'' takes place in a world of twisted humanoid monsters where diminutive children are captured and [[ImAHumanitarian butchered to be served]] to the gluttonous Guests of the Maw, a floating restaurant that surfaces once a year. Its owner is a mysterious woman known only as the Lady who [[VampiricDraining feeds on her Guests' life force]], and she employs two monstrous Twin Chefs and a creepy long-armed Janitor, all of whom appear to be wearing masks made of skin over their true visage. |
| 339 | * ''VideoGame/LoneSurvivor'' is this mixed with SurvivalHorror. The monsters are fleshy, twitchy things, walls are covered in gore, half the dialogue makes no sense, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and mirrors teleport you to your apartment]]. |
| 340 | * In ''VideoGame/LSDDreamEmulator'', you explore colorful and quirky [[DreamLand dreams]] with a lot of randomly generated content. The more dreams you play through, the stranger and more deranged things get. |
| 341 | * ''VideoGame/TheMagicSchoolBus'' games can veer into this with the amount of odd things that can show up when the player clicks around. This is especially true with the first two (''Solar System'' and ''Human Body''). While a lot of it is played for SurrealHumor, some of it can also end up becoming ''quite'' unsettling instead. Solar system in particular has an odd globe where the player can [[https://youtu.be/F5noQzr5Xkk?t=229 view some very odd things]]. While intended to resemble a tech demo, it can easily come off as unsettling. |
| 342 | * ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'' is a DarkFantasy AdventureGame inspired by ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'' set in [[CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain a futuristic city of constant rain called Kanai Ward]], and aside from the aesthetic, the characters, plot, names, music, and the title itself, and possibly even the pre-release marketing too, all feature an overwhelmingly strong, mysterious, cyberpunk style, and the entire game is seemingly backed with a strong BrutalHonesty and a harsh criticism of [[CrapsackWorld society and its issues]], in a DarkerAndEdgier way with a darker message than its predecessor. |
| 343 | * ''VideoGame/MeatBoy'' is tame compared to the other examples here, but it still contains {{Hell}}, sawblades, zombies, copious amounts of blood, sawblades, ruined landscapes, and a psychotic fetus. [[RuleOfThree And lots of sawblades]]. |
| 344 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' has a lot of very weird, disturbing imagery, such as unmanned biomechanical robots that moo like cows and can rotate their legs on 360-degree joints to climb buildings, a very sexy woman in a skintight suit wearing Snake's face while murdering people with huge robotic tentacles and laughing, and the 'white room' segments after defeating the bosses in which you hear a distorted soundtrack of women moaning in orgasm and crying/screaming/snarling/laughing, and so on. |
| 345 | * ''VideoGame/MilyaBroken'' takes place in a nightmarish world where BodyHorror lies at every corner. In addition, little of the story makes sense at first, thanks partially to an intentionally shoddy machine translation. |
| 346 | * The atmosphere in ''VideoGame/MondoMedicals'' and its sequel ''VideoGame/MondoAgency'' is very oppressive and your goals vague. Even the gameplay evokes this trope through the bizarre perspective tricks. |
| 347 | * ''VideoGame/{{Mother}}'': |
| 348 | ** While much of ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'' is surreal and trippy, its endgame heads ''straight'' into this trope. |
| 349 | ** ''VideoGame/Mother3'''s famous removed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNx8oPefQs unused enemy backgrounds]] even more so. |
| 350 | * Everything in ''VideoGame/MotherChefTheMusical'' is quite dreamlike and strange, such as the moving backgrounds, the odd looking "food babies", and the giant arrows pointing toward the demon customer's mouth. It gives the whole game an off-putting and unsettling nature. |
| 351 | * ''VideoGame/{{OFF}}'' eventually turns into one during Zone 3. [[spoiler:Even earlier than that if you return to one of the purified Zones and discover that the Batter's mission [[VillainProtagonist isn't as good as you thought it was]].]] |
| 352 | %%* ''VideoGame/{{Paracentric}}'' |
| 353 | * ''VideoGame/ThePath'' is the story of Little Red Riding Hood as a series of nonsensical (or possibly allegorical) scenes and vignettes. |
| 354 | * ''VideoGame/{{Penumbra}}'' starts off as a fairly normal horror scenario of the PC going into an abandoned mine full of savage wildlife to find his father. [[spoiler:Then you end up in the ElaborateUndergroundBase of an ancient conspiracy dodging sentient virus-infected zombies, and in the final game, you're solving puzzles in a weird mash of all the locations in the first two games while the PA system begs you not to finish the game so that she won't be alone and dead supporting characters rant inanely at you.]] |
| 355 | * ''VideoGame/PilgrimRPGMaker'' involves very strange logic in order to get past the floors of the strange building in the Other World. For example, each Storey except the first and last is guarded by a [[AnimateInanimateObject living, sentient door]] with a realstic human-looking face, and the way to unlock them is to put a fake eye in their empty eye socket. Other phenomena include two {{Womb Level}}s, various faces melted into the walls but still alive, {{Giant Spider}}s and {{Creepy Cockroach}}es, and odd [=NPCs=] like a giant {{talking|Animal}} cat who wants to [[SapientEatSapient eat an also talking mouse]]. |
| 356 | * The horror in ''VideoGame/PityParty'' relies on things being nightmarish and strange, such as the two creepy guests, the protagonist being alone, and the guests casually eating poison and thumbtacks. |
| 357 | * ''VideoGame/RuleOfRose'': A cruel caste system ruled by little girls is weird enough, but then there's the monsters... |
| 358 | %%* ''VideoGame/{{Sanitarium}}'' |
| 359 | * ''Sentinel Returns'' has been described as "the most terrifying E-rated game ever made". It is set in a surreal, dark, chequered landscape where you play as a robot with the mission to absorb [[EldritchAbomination monstrous creatures of flesh and metal]] called Sentinels before they absorb you, by teleporting to gradually higher altitudes. The landscapes feature trees that look like spermatozoa and breathing boulders with a sphincter on the top. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdI99Q56LCs This]] is the introduction. And the soundtrack has been composed by Creator/JohnCarpenter. By the way, if you're expecting explanation for anything about the game to come from ''anywhere'', you're going to be disappointed. |
| 360 | * ''VideoGame/ShadowsOfTheDamned'' drifts toward this frequently, with content that's as disturbing as it is nonsensical. Somewhere between goats being a source of light and finding out strawberries are made of ground-up tongues, you either learn to just roll with it, or give up. |
| 361 | * The ''Franchise/SilentHill'' series sometimes drifts into this: |
| 362 | ** ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' contains several examples: |
| 363 | *** Pyramid Head's appearance in ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' is also a visual example of Surreal Horror, with his massive, rusted polygonal head that could never be supported by the rest of his body. It's even deconstructed; it's shown that he hates the big heavy helmet but has long since given up on trying to get it off (closer inspection shows that it's apparently ''part'' of his head, [[BodyHorror with flesh reaching all the way to the "brim"]]). |
| 364 | *** The AlienGeometries of several locations are very disorienting. |
| 365 | *** Maria's repeated [[spoiler:deaths and [[UnexplainedRecovery sudden reappearances]]]] are very disquieting. |
| 366 | ** The nightmare hospital from ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' and its infamous mirror room that shows various mismatched reflections. |
| 367 | ** ''VideoGame/SilentHill4'' has an infamous hospital [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgWbYsHMPSw room]]. |
| 368 | ** ''VideoGame/SilentHills''' playable teaser has you looping through a slowly degrading suburban home over and over again, finding ''Film/{{Eraserhead}}''-esque babies in a decrepit bathroom and talking to a mutated paper bag, among other strange things. |
| 369 | * ''VideoGame/SonicDreamsCollection'' uses this in conjunction with SurrealHumor. Every game except ''Make My Sonic'' (which is almost entirely surreal humor) has some degree of disturbingly bizarre content: |
| 370 | ** ''Eggman Origins'', after going through the hidden process of making it available, turns out to be a game where the player's custom Sonic character feeds an egg/bird-like Eggman worms in an empty white void. Eventually, a tower rises with Eggman in the middle, and he seemingly [[spoiler:turns the character into the original Sonic. This is noted as the player having "One ascension"]]. |
| 371 | ** ''Sonic Movie Maker'' features one-eyed egg people that ask for bizarre things, a noisy eye inside of the moon, a hidden glitchy blue ball that can deform structures and blares out static if one moves too far away from it, [[spoiler:Sonic eating Tails]], and [[spoiler:a section [[WombLevel set in Rouge's womb]] (which is also like a stomach) where the player eventually falls into a crib]]. |
| 372 | ** ''My Roommate Sonic'' is a first-person "DatingSim" where a spying Eggman sends the player text messages explaining what to do. Eventually, [[spoiler:Sonic's eyes merge into one, which becomes a portal that sucks the player into an alternate landscape where they become a Sonic-like creature. While the phone appears in the background, giant, giving one final message]]. |
| 373 | * ''VideoGame/SouthOfReal'' starts in a rather bog-standard haunted mansion, albeit one the player character grew up in. True to the title, though, the reality of the game goes completely south by the end of the game as [[SanitySlippage the main character realizes the depths of depravity their own parental figure sunk to in an effort to save the world]]. |
| 374 | * ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' starts veering into this territory as the main character's [[GoMadFromTheRevelation grip on reality becomes more fragile]]. It doesn't help that the setting, UsefulNotes/{{Dubai}} in ruins and constantly wracked by sandstorms, makes for a vicious, victory-less battle on ever-shifting ground amidst collapsing infrastructure with basic supplies dwindling... set among some of the most beautiful and opulent displays of wealth on Earth, all rendered worthless in the struggle. Say, a shoot-out in a glitzy night-club between dusty, screaming soldiers, bullets ripping into the artwork on the walls and cover provided by life-size jewel-studded giraffes, while a floor-installed aquarium of live fish flits beneath their feet and burning hot sand spills in through the windows. Hallucination? Nope. It's just what warfare in Dubai would look like. |
| 375 | * ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' has a subculture among the creators known as UBD, which ''lives'' for surreal BodyHorror, making bizarre, twisted versions of just about any animal, plant, body part, or object you can imagine, as well as a few you thankfully can't imagine. The [[BlackComedy morbid]] {{pun}}s they use for names don't help. Neither does the fact that all of ''Spore'''s hardcoded character animations are [[MoodDissonance goofily exaggerated]]. |
| 376 | * The Orz from ''VideoGame/StarControlII'' are your [[DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu friendly neighborhood aliens]], who look a bit like large parrotfish, and, due to their [[StarfishLanguage language]] being too alien for the TranslatorMicrobes to manage, [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels they also speak in broken English]]. In truth, they are [[spoiler:not individual creatures, but the physical manifestation of an extra-dimensional EldritchAbomination]]. And remember: [[BerserkButton never, ever ask them what happened to the Androsynth]]. |
| 377 | * ''VideoGame/SurvivalCrisisZ'' looks like a standard ZombieApocalypse at first, but the observant player will notice something... ''odd'' about these undead. (For instance, they [[GigglingVillain giggle]] as they attack.) The farther you get, the crazier it gets. |
| 378 | * ''VideoGame/{{Tamashii}}'' is inspired by Japanese horror games and takes after them with bizarre Satanic imagery. The levels are filled with fleshy, J-horror-esque monsters, the bosses are fleshy monsters with [[MyBrainIsBig their brains visible]], much of the dialogue is cryptic, and there are many creepy secrets and {{Easter Egg}}s with no explanation (for example, in the HubLevel, a JumpScare will sometimes randomly play and turn the whole area into a WombLevel for a brief time), and {{Ominous Visual Glitch}}es appear as well to break the fourth wall and make everything even more surreal. |
| 379 | * ''VideoGame/TimeFcuk'' is the deranged tale of a young man whose future self throws him into a very strange box in which time and physics make little sense. Most of the horror here is {{psychological|Horror}}, as the protagonist slowly goes completely insane navigating the physics-breaking puzzles, dying repeatedly with no consequence, talking to both past and future versions of himself, and talking to the growing lump/clone on his head (which he names "Steven"). |
| 380 | * ''VideoGame/{{UIN}}'' is the story of a boy lost in a cupboard filled with {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. |
| 381 | * ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' has [[spoiler:[[OneWingedAngel Photoshop Flowey]], often known by the {{Fan Nickname}}s God Flowey and Omega Flowey]], in the Neutral/Pacifist Route climaxes. It appears a horrific fleshy pronged skull with eyes that appear to be crudely cut out from video footage, connected to a series of tubes and a TV screen showing a 2-bit photorealistic human face that looks like it's in intense pain. Endlessly looping thorny vines stream from its face and two clawed cactus-arms appear to be connected to the tubes. Its attacks include rains of nuclear bombs with normal [[spoiler:Flowey]] sprites drawn on them, huge bush-worms with human teeth, finger guns connected to plants that fire pairs of sunflowers, and laser-guided vines aimed at the player. During the fight, horrific [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxC3ILPiz98 "music"]] plays and [[spoiler:Photoshop Flowey will repeatedly use the power of the ''human souls'']] to attack with crudely drawn knives, star/ballet shoe combos, and abusive words among other things. The horror is taken further [[spoiler: if you're on a pacifist route as you're forced to take on multiple nightmarish abominations in the hellish True Lab]]. [[https://youtu.be/RJ4kumxv_1k?t=98 Both must be seen]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8wMHeXmdc to be believed]]. |
| 382 | * ''VideoGame/WeirdDreams'' is set in a demon-addled mind. Therefore, rather bizarre and horrifying situations such as being EatenAlive by a soccer ball with teeth or having to fight [[BeeAfraid a giant, hostile bee]] with an electric eel are in high supply. |
| 383 | * ''VideoGame/TheWhiteChamber'', thanks to its shifts to a DarkWorld. |
| 384 | * ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' occasionally veers into Surreal Horror when the players encounter something truly [[RealityWarper mindbending]]. Certain locations like the top of Karazhan and the depths of Ahn'Qiraj seem to be in endless voids, when they're both tangible places you access in the real world, and certain bossfights, notably [[EldritchAbomination Yogg-Saron]]'s, screw with the player's perception of the world, forcing them to kill illusions of friends and heroes. |
| 385 | * ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'': Sure, it's [[NightmareSequence a dream]], and [[RealDreamsAreWeirder dreams are weird]], but how many people have [[MentalWorld whole worlds in their head]] full of bloody eyeballs? The {{fan sequel}}s, including ''VideoGame/DotFlow'' and ''VideoGame/Yume2kki'', fall into this category as well. |
| 386 | [[/folder]] |
| 387 | |
| 388 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 389 | * ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub'', a cheery, seemingly innocent RomanceGame that nevertheless is prefixed with a ContentWarning about [[DisguisedHorrorStory disturbing content]]. [[spoiler:The game eventually devolves into a mix of PsychologicalHorror and metafictional, fourth wall-breaking ExistentialHorror, with lots of [[OminousVisualGlitch disturbing glitches]] and the occasional bit of gore.]] Surreal though it is, it makes sense eventually -- but before that, if you don't already know, it's just inexplicably freaky for a long time. |
| 390 | [[/folder]] |
| 391 | |
| 392 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 393 | * The ''WebAnimation/AlfredsPlayhouse'' videos have quite a bit of this with SurrealHumor, including singing about Alfred's sexual abuse and his escape from it into fantasy to the tune of the ''Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse'' theme song, Dictator Alfred is friends with cheerful imagined versions of Hitler and Stalin, and Alfred cross-dresses from time to time. |
| 394 | %%* "[[https://www.youtube.com/c/BenWheele/ Ben Wheele]]" is a lesser known example of this, but their videos are on par with, if not surpassing those of David Firth and Cyriak. He is most known for Henry Eats and Bump Classique.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 395 | * ''WebAnimation/{{Boisvert}}'' is a Youtube series based around an antler-headed guy who suffers from being haunted by demons who make him more depressed. The gritty and dark atmosphere of the videos emphasizes the emotions the antler-headed guy is feeling. The series makes use of digitally mirrored images, floating motion graphics, and dirty footage and artwork. |
| 396 | * WebAnimation/{{Cyriak}}'s works are DerangedAnimation par excellence, tending to intersect somewhere between BodyHorror, EldritchAbomination, and AcidTripDimension. Most of the situations depicted don't make a lot of sense (for instance, in ''7 billion'', unusually rubbery rabbits reproduce in a variety of unsettling and horrific fashions before merging to form frolicking bipedal HiveMind {{Kaiju}}), and it doesn't help that many of his animations are oddly rhythmic, [[MickeyMousing usually in time with the music]]. |
| 397 | %%* David Firth often uses this trope, particularly in ''WebAnimation/SaladFingers'' and ''WebAnimation/SpoilsburyToastBoy''.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 398 | * ''WebAnimation/HololiveERROR'', mostly the animated manga. The story of Shino Misora and Aogami as a whole is filled to the brim with [[OminousVisualGlitch Ominous Visual Glitches]], characters inexplicably acting ''out''-of-character or going all "WelcomeToCorneria", and plain confusion on both the characters' and viewers' ends as to just ''[[MindScrew what the hell is going on]]''. [[spoiler:''Especially'' after the twist in Chapter 15, showing that the NewTransferStudent we've been following in the present day segments ''is'' Shino... even though the apparent ghost of Shino had been the antagonist for most of the series until then.]] |
| 399 | %%* WebAnimation/{{Interface}} by u m a m i uses a lot of scary and creepy surreal imagery to unsettle the viewers.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 400 | %%* WebAnimation/{{Pamtri}} fits this trope like bark on a tree.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 401 | * Read the first word of "[[WebAnimation/SurrealEntertainment surreal entertainment]]". The "entertainment" part depends on how well you sleep at night. |
| 402 | %%* ''WebAnimation/MeatCanyon'' specializes in this. The videos this dude makes are horriffic in ways many viewers didn't know was possible. |
| 403 | * A lot of animations (including ''WebAnimation/JimmyNeutronHappyFamilyHappyHour'') made by WebVideo/{{Seinfeldspitstain}} are all this, especially alongside SurrealHumor. As an example, ''Happy Family Happy Hour'' contains a scene where [[WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius Hugh and Jimmy Neutron]] watch TV with the former holding a shotgun to the latter's chest, before being decapitated by a pizza delivery. |
| 404 | %%* Almost everything made by "[[http://somebody.newgrounds.com/ Somebody]]" of Newgrounds. Especially his animations "Puppy Whirl" & "Ghost Eater".%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 405 | [[/folder]] |
| 406 | |
| 407 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 408 | * ''Webcomic/Astray3'' is plenty surreal from the first strip, but the oven-head monster is even worse than the carnivorous umbrellas. At least the [[BeastMan killer whale guy]] seems friendly... |
| 409 | * ''Webcomic/{{June}}'' uses this and creepy art to its advantage. Talking Communist dogs, [[spoiler:Stan's repeating deaths]], the obsession with faces (or lack of), no inner fourth wall with a TV that can control space... |
| 410 | * In ''Webcomic/LittleRobotBigScaryWorld'', some of the dream sequences were done in jarring art styles, often with flashing lights and scary noises to add to the experience. |
| 411 | * ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'' has one where Sette falls through a shadow and into the Khert, or fabric of reality itself, which is created from the memories of the dead. It's as bizarre as it sounds. |
| 412 | [[/folder]] |
| 413 | |
| 414 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 415 | * Website/{{Bogleech}} heavily favors examples of this to more conventional horror, the [[Literature/NightmareBeings accounts of people's real-life nightmares]] are prime examples. |
| 416 | * ''Literature/TheCityOfNever'' is full of this. The story focuses on a community of ordinary people being under attack by bizarre, uncannily built monsters and creatures from another dimension -- one of which is capable of putting its victims into a coma if they gaze at its body. As the story progresses, the characters venture into the eponymous City, an EldritchLocation in another dimension full of these creatures, as well as powerful deities and entities that have the power to travel between the City and the real world as they attempt to destroy the universe. |
| 417 | * ''WebAnimation/{{ENA}}'' uses this and SurrealHumor interchangeably but leans more towards horror as the series goes on. |
| 418 | * ''Literature/TheInterfaceSeries'' runs wild on this, starting with accounts of bizarre [[WombLevel organic tunnels]] called "flesh interfaces" appearing all over the world, a terrible being called [[EldritchAbomination the Mother with Horse Eyes]], and time travel, among many equally weird things. This one is particularly notorious not only for its content but for its dissemination, rather than posting the stories in one place at one time, the author cut out tiny snippets and [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou posted them in comments all over Reddit]], sometimes on pages that had [[ParanoiaFuel nothing to do with the series or creepypasta in general]]. |
| 419 | * ''Blog/PoisonBonbons'': Many of the stories use horrific, dreamlike imagery. In "Laundromat at Night", for example, the narrator has a pleasant conversation with a woman's severed head in a clothes dryer. |
| 420 | * Many Website/SCPFoundation pieces use this; the objects are often extremely strange (some are even surreal ''without'' being particularly horrific) and the way the clinical, detached nature of each article gives you a feeling that, even though you have some information, [[NothingIsScarier you have no way of knowing]] exactly what these things are all about. A few specific examples include [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1782 SCP-1782]], [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1425 SCP-1425]], [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2030 SCP-2030]], and [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/bees Bees]]. |
| 421 | ** The artist behind [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4158 SCP-4158]]'s image, [[Blog/{{Slimyswampghost}} Trevor "@slimyswampghost" Henderson]] has a reputation of creating FoundFootage artwork not that out of place from the SCP Foundation's world. |
| 422 | * ''Literature/TheSickLand'' veers back and forth between this and [[CosmicHorrorStory cosmic horror]]. |
| 423 | * ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': Maybe half the dimensions Josie ends up visiting in "I Looked into the Abyss", including one that was half Franchise/CthulhuMythos and half ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland''. |
| 424 | [[/folder]] |
| 425 | |
| 426 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 427 | %%* What WebVideo/{{Alantutorial}} eventually turns into. |
| 428 | %%* Since you watched the ''WebVideo/{{Dad}}'' ARG webseries you still noticed about the hint the lore and event the creepy plotlines and storytelling. |
| 429 | * ''WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared'' depicts this and SurrealHumor. because each episode has a trio of puppet characters (Red Guy Yellow Guy and Duck Guy) being teached by talking objects causing them to enjoy themselves by using their imaginations... until their imaginations turn the episodes nightmarishly surreal. In the end, everything goes back to normal and nothing happens. |
| 430 | * WebVideo/{{Hbomberguy}}'s video ''Serious Lore Analysis 3'' -- an analysis of ''Webcomic/CtrlAltDel'', its animated series, and ''Film/TheRoom2003'' -- has Hbomb getting hunted by a masked man trying to stop Hbomb from creating lore analysis videos. |
| 431 | * ''WebVideo/LasagnaCat'', while obstinately driven by SurrealHumor, is not afraid to play into this at times, especially in second "season" which overall is markedly darker than the first. Just check out the ending of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgmoMO66uPg Sex Survey Results]]". |
| 432 | * ''WebVideo/MadGod'' is an ongoing StopMotion series that runs on this. There's not much of a story, so it's hard to describe the series, but it seems to be about an [[NoNameGiven unnamed]] figure in a [[GasMaskLongcoat gas mask and trenchcoat]] traveling through a WorldGoneMad for [[AmbiguousSituation an unclear reason]], and seeing some very strange things along the way. It's also unclear who the MadGod of the title is, but the obvious interpretation is that it's the show's creator himself, animation legend and [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/meme_5.jpg neglectful dinosaur supervisor]] Phil Tippett. |
| 433 | * ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'', especially the videos made by [[TheDragon totheark]]. A ''lot'' of [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slendy stories]], actually, especially once SanitySlippage sets in. After all, it's a freaking terrifying [[MemeticMutation meme]]/artificial UrbanLegend where the primary figure is... [[HumanoidAbomination a tall guy in a suit with no face]]. |
| 434 | %%* Many of the videos made by "[[https://www.youtube.com/user/nana825763 nana825763]]" in Website/YouTube. Especially his videos "username666", "another youtube", "pokopokopikotan", "none", "cooking idol" and "embryo" just to mention some of them. He likes to make scary videos with Japanese terror legends and other related things. |
| 435 | * WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=870OhSp4ai0 Top 11 Nostalgic Mindfucks]]" discusses some of these moments (in addition to some less scary ones, like {{Toontown}} from ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'' and the TitleSequence to ''Series/PeeWeesPlayhouse''). In a meta-example, the video itself can be pretty freaky as well. |
| 436 | %%* Three words, ''WebVideo/ShayeSaintJohn''. |
| 437 | [[/folder]] |
| 438 | |
| 439 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 440 | * ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' drifts into this sometimes: |
| 441 | ** The episode "No One Can Hear You" features Finn [[AbandonedHospitalAwakening waking up alone in a hospital]], finding the Candy Kingdom abandoned except for a delirious and concussed Jake, who has convinced himself everyone is off preparing for a surprise party. Then Finn finds out everyone was abducted by a bipedal deer with '''human hands'''. |
| 442 | ** Marceline's father turns out to be a demon lord who rules over "the Nightosphere" which, as seen in "Return to the Nightosphere" and "Daddy's Little Monster", is more or less a cute, animated version of Bosch's hell. |
| 443 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce''. It's usually SurrealHumor but occasionally it crosses the line into whacked out nightmares.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 444 | * ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': |
| 445 | ** In "Nightmares and Daydreams", most of Aang's nightmares (and later, hallucinations) are merely funny. However, his last nightmare before he decides to avoid sleep altogether (leading to the hallucinations) is downright terrifying, even making Momo (Aang's [[NonHumanSidekick pet lemur]]) creepy. |
| 446 | ** Zuko's NightmareSequence in "The Earth King." |
| 447 | * On the topic of Creator/DrSeuss cartoons, ''Literature/TheButterBattleBook'' features a similarly creepy DisneyAcidSequence about building weapons of mass destruction. ''The Butter Battle Book'' is way darker than Seuss's other material for kids, and Creator/RalphBakshi directed the AnimatedAdaptation, so no surprise there. |
| 448 | * ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'' tends towards this sort of style to keep its DefangedHorrors scary: on top of the creator's overall outlook (claiming heavy influence by [[TropeCodifier Salvador Dali]]), the show often uses MediumBlending for when a villain ''really'' needs to stand out, like, say, the Spirit of the Harvest Moon, King Ramses, or that [[JumpScare cute]] [[NightmareFace violin girl]]. |
| 449 | * ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' has [[EldritchAbomination Bill Cipher]], living embodiment of all that is both [[LaughablyEvil hilariously]] deranged... and [[KnightOfCerebus just plain deranged, when his interests are against yours]]. |
| 450 | * The paraphernalia wagon sequence from ''WesternAnimation/HalloweenIsGrinchNight''. It's very easily comparable to ''VideoGame/YumeNikki'', being basically the protagonist walking through a series of strange, nightmarish visuals. |
| 451 | * The collective animation project ''Hopital Brut'' (French for "Gross Hospital") has something to do with horrific experiments at the eponymous hospital, including lobotomies that entail the complete obliteration of the rest of the head. It's best not viewed by the [[NauseaFuel faint of heart]] or the [[MindScrew sound of mind]]. |
| 452 | %%* The AnimatedAdaptation of ''ComicBook/TheMaxx'' has lots of this, even more than the original comic. |
| 453 | * The ''WesternAnimation/OKKOLetsBeHeroes'' episode "Plaza Alone" leans into this during its climax. After wandering the mysteriously empty plaza all day, KO, Rad, and Enid accidentally get locked in the bodega's break room. They then suddenly begin to hallucinate. Rad turns into a hot dog, Enid fails to stop KO from eating Rad and then explodes, KO turns into a horse, and they all panic about both their actual situation and their bizarre hallucinations. |
| 454 | * ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' exhibits this whenever Him (a CreepyCrossdresser HumanoidAbomination) shows up. |
| 455 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters''; especially episodes happening in AnotherDimension or those that involve poltergeists, goblins and the like. |
| 456 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' delves into this on occasion, in particular "Hermit Ren" and the Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy episodes. Lots of DerangedAnimation too.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample |
| 457 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheShiveringTruth'' is essentially just a series of short nightmares directly transcribed into a television format, and in the creepiest possible stop-motion animation, with all the horrifying strangeness that implies. It's done by the same people who did ''Series/TheHeartSheHoller'' and ''WesternAnimation/XavierRenegadeAngel'', so if you've seen any of those shows, you [[DerangedAnimation know what you're getting into]]. |
| 458 | ** ''WesternAnimation/OffTheAir'' is more or less the same. |
| 459 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': |
| 460 | ** The show parodies ''Series/TwinPeaks'' in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E1WhoShotMrBurnsPartTwo Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)]]". Chief Wiggum falls asleep on the job and finds himself in a strange building (which looks just like the Black Lodge), where Lisa makes odd, cryptic references ("THIS... SUIT... BURNS... BETTER") in a stilted voice and reality changes at a moment's notice. The trouble is that Wiggum is [[TooDumbToLive too stupid]] to figure out what the heck is happening, and Dream Lisa is eventually forced to drop the mysterious act and outright tell him her message ("LOOK AT BURNS'S SUIT! Yeesh!"). When the Chief awakens, he happily talks about the "weird backwards-talking dream" he just had, prompting concern from the other cops. |
| 461 | ** Creator/DonHertzfeldt directed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m78gYyTrG7Y this]] CouchGag for "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS26E1ClownInTheDumps Clown in the Dumps]]". Yes, it's a satire of a FranchiseZombie. Doesn't make it any less surreal/disturbing (it looks like something StarfishAliens could make when trying to imitate ''The Simpsons''; it even mentions viewers' flippers. And whoever made it [[EvilOverlord is ruled by a self-styled "dark lord"]] who seems to want to remark that all animals can scream and that "amusement is control"). |
| 462 | * Some of the [[SeasonalRot post-movie]] episodes of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' qualify, possibly unintentionally. The most obvious case is the Season 7 episode "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS7E7 Squidward in Clarinetland]]": it ''starts'' with two nausea-inducing scenes of Krabs completely breaking out in hives, and [=SpongeBob=] getting the flesh of his right arm eaten off by a cloud of insect-like creatures... [[FromBadToWorse and then Squidward enters the safe]]. The [[CosmicPlaything poor guy]] first navigates a labyrinth of filing cabinets that [[BiggerOnTheInside could not possibly fit in there]], while following [=SpongeBob=], whose laugh is unusually creepy in this episode. Then he opens a door, and winds up in a field that is empty except for the giant clarinets growing out of the ground and a buried, talking eagle head, which eats him. In its stomach, we see that the eagle has multiple esophagi despite only having one beak. Then Squidward gets flushed out of the eagle's stomach, somehow winding up inside a pinball machine which turns out to be a giant [=SpongeBob=], with a giant Patrick there to torment him as well. Even the Encyclopedia [=SpongeBobia=] admits that "this episode scares children." [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids They would hardly be the only ones.]] |
| 463 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'' is known for this, in particular the episodes "Dream Machine" (with Jailbot's dream of being the Warden's human(oid) son resulting in creepy animation part, and the part where the Warden dreams of his crotch morphing into Jared's head and face, while his dream version of Alice quickly rots into an angered zombie that shouts "I need my BEAUTY SLEEP!") and "Don't Be A Negaton" (the hallucination scene at the end, especially with the rotting dog and D.L. Diamond's actual face without his wig or makeup is exposed as sore-infested and decaying). Creator/AdultSwim shows in general could probably qualify. |
| 464 | * Of all places, this shows up to surprisingly chilling effect in ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' in "[[Recap/ThomasAndFriendsS5E25RustyAndTheBoulder Rusty and the Boulder]]". It concerns a new quarry that's being dug in the mountains of Sodor, but the mountain they dig into happens to have a gigantic, [[SinisterGeometry unnaturally spherical]] boulder sitting on the cliff face high above, [[NothingIsScarier threatening to fall down at any moment]]. To make matters worse, the boulder is [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane heavily implied]] to be ''sentient'', with Rusty feeling like he's BeingWatched whenever he's near it, and when rock fragments start falling onto the railway below, he observes "The boulder is telling us to go away." When it inevitably falls off the cliff onto the rail line, it seems to [[ImplacableMan actively pursue]] the engines in ways that should not be physically possible and completely defy the laws of physics (moving [[LightningBruiser absurdly fast]], not losing any speed when going uphill, and even appearing ''[[OffscreenTeleportation behind]]'' Rusty and his driver at one point) before eventually destroying a shed and almost several of the engines. Oh, and it has a [[UncannyValley weirdly realistic]] ''[[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/ttte/images/2/21/Boulder.png/revision/latest?cb=20171004105020 face]]'' that we see twice, once when it's staring at Rusty on the clifftop and at the end when the Fat Controller moves it to another mountain very far away like he's trying to ''exorcise a demon.'' |
| 465 | -->'''Fat Controller:''' ''([[OOCIsSeriousBusiness disturbed]])'' [[DugTooDeep We should have left this part of the island alone.]] |
| 466 | [[/folder]] |
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