Nightmare Fuel / Animator vs. Animation

Wanna know why this little red stick-figure is called "The Dark Lord"? Allow him to demonstrate with an assistant.

Just because they're stick figures doesn't mean they're incapable of delivering you some genuinely terrifying moments. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned!

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Main Series

Animator vs. Animation V

The Flashback

• It's revealed that, after destroying Alan’s computer, the first thing the Dark Lord and the Chosen One did was go on a massive rampage across the internet as they destroyed various sites and killed various characters from all over the internet. Even worse, the characters included other stick figures, something which even the Chosen One thought was too much. It started out rather mild at first, but it quickly becomes terrifying as we hear screams in the background, ending things off with a genuinely chilling shot of the Dark Lord choking and preparing to kill the Tankman as the Chosen One pleads for him to stop with a destroyed Newgrounds city in the background.
• After learning about the ViraBot, the Chosen One has a vision of the Dark Lord standing on top of a mountain, with countless stick figures running and screaming in fear before two ViraBots appear and kill some of them. The Chosen One's reaction is justified for every single reason, because this was not him overthinking: The Dark Lord truly intended to rampage across the Internet and slaughter countless all because he took joy in it. Suffice to say, he is easily the darkest villain in the entire series thus far.

The Showdown

• Seeing the Dark Lord killing Red, curb stomping Green, Blue, and Yellow, killing them too and then going after Second Coming himself, stabbing him in the back without any warning and then throwing him in the air and then slashing him multiple times. Yeah, it later turns into Death Is Cheap, but seeing the beloved characters turn to code and then Second Coming getting beaten up can be really shocking.
  • Notably, despite the characters being stick figures, the Dark Lord's attacks leave visible scars on the Second Coming, which look absolutely brutal. In fact, he's covered in them.
• In its own way, the Second Coming in his Super Mode, dubbed "Awakened TSC/Orange". He is a completely stoic, emotionless entity that easily curb-stomps the Dark Lord and destroys the ViraBots by more or less touching them. While mostly awesome, it's also chilling to see the happy and energetic hero of the series as what is more or less a force of destruction.

Animator vs. Animation VI

Wanted

• The Mercenaries - "Agent" specifically - quickly prove themselves to be a real threat when one of their bullets shocks the Chosen One while continuing to glitch him out, leaving him lying on the ground in agony for minutes on end while the Second Coming can do nothing but slow them down for a few minutes as they start brutally kiling off each animal he spawns to defend himself. With how much of a powerhouse the Chosen One, it can be quite shocking to see him be more or less tortured by what's not even the villain's strongest weapon; by the time it's the leader's turn to 1v1 the Second Coming, the Chosen One is not even moving, and can barely get himself to get up later on.

The Box

• The Chosen One has a horrific experience. He's trapped in a large box that can disable his abilities and grant his opponent superhuman powers; more or less a repeat of his experience in the Animator's computer, except worse. Despite the massive effort he puts in fighting back, the Chosen One is ultimately beaten down into submission.
• At one point during the fight, when the Chosen One really starts to get brutalized, he chooses to freeze himself solid. While it turns out he was preparing to launch a sneak attack against his enemy, for a moment it looked like the Chosen One froze himself just to get away from the pain.
• Then there's his opponent: victim, the first of the Animator's creations. He is nothing but ruthless, cruel, and dehumanizing to the Chosen One. After the Chosen One is too injured to fight back, victim wraps a rope around the former's neck and whips him with the other end as he treats the Chosen One like an animal.
  • Even worse is that it looks eerily similar to how the Chosen One looked with the ball and chain as a pop-up blocker- almost as if victim is deliberately trying to trigger that trauma.
• Why is victim even attacking the Chosen One to begin with? He wants information about the Animator. This means the beatdown the Chosen One was subjected to was basically a torture session, all so victim could get back at something from 17 years ago that Chosen had no part in.
• Then there's Second Coming relearning about his powers. Amnesia is the reason why he forgot about his powers - implicitly because his Super Mode is taking too much energy, and he already doesn't have much - so when he learns he actually had them to begin with, his body language heavily implies he's terrified of himself. He's not alone here, as the Mercenaries quickly put metal doors on his cage in a desperate attempt to make sure he doesn't break out.

AvM Shorts

Animation vs. Minecraft

• The Herobrine-haunted Red crouching and browsing through Minecraft items can be rather creepy for some.

Season 1

The Killer Bunny

• The titular rabbit is a cannibal. Kinda creepy for such a cute animal in a mostly innocent series.

Season 2

Lucky Blocks

• The sheer power the Orb holds, it being able to overpower the stick figures with relative ease even after they start using its powers against it. Once removed from Yellow, it simply floats passed them and returns to its temple, leaving it unclear as to whether it wanted to kill them all out of malice or just punish them for stealing it. Though to be fair, it didn't want to leave Yellow's body and seemingly wasn't going back to its dimension willingly, so it's heavily likely it's an incredibly evil godlike entity that will cause chaos the second it gets the opportunity; making it even worse.

Season 3

The Piglin War

• The Zombified Piglins are perfectly willing to kill the Piglin Child.
• Blue starts sinking into the lava while trying to save the child. Despite having no voice, his body language makes it clear he's screaming in pain.

The Witch

• The Witch proves to be too much for gang as she has them at her non-existent mercy twice in the final fight. Both times they're saved by a Big Damn Heroes intervention. But that by itself isn't the scary part. The scary part is that Purple, who we know was plotting to capture them, just happened to be in that world. Add in the fact that the Witch knew enough about the group to bait them into her world in the first place, and it becomes likely that the Witch was working for King Orange. This leaves two options:
  • 1, she was just supposed to imprison them and let Purple 'save' them to gain their trust so they would be more likely to do the parkour trap, but she went rogue and tried to kill them.
  • Or, and since we later see King Orange able to quickly improvise with Yellow and Blue when they escape, this might be more likely; the Witch was supposed to kill them and the parkour trap was the backup for if she failed.

Parkour

• The episode starts out fine, with the group enjoying the parkour course Purple invited them to. But on the final course, every one is sent out separately, which makes sense. But then we see the track changes for each of them, which is weird. Then they all somehow finish first, and it starts sinking in that something is off. Its only after they each notice the others are missing does the music finally appear, getting more intense until they finally realize they've been trapped. It's such a slow, creeping sense of everything being wrong with this scenario that puts the viewer on edge all the way until the massive scale of the trap is revealed.
• While it's quick and deserved, the Second Coming and Red glitching the Piglin chasing Red out of existence as it screams in pain. It kinda makes you feel sorry for the guy, especially since he was just a random henchman who would've likely been killed by King Orange if he disobeyed.
• King Orange, after learning that Green escaped, erases the AI of one of his Piglins, with all the dark music to make the atmosphere scarier.
  • Mind you, he doesn't kill the poor bastard; he sets his AI to 1, leaving his body a lifeless, unmoving husk. In a way, it's worse than death.

Titan Ravager

• You thought normal Ravagers were bad? This one is bigger than the buildings the Villagers live in, devouring gardens and livestock like it's nothing and destroying buildings looking for more food. It's also indestructable, no-selling a fletcher's arrows before smacking it into the sky. The cherry on top is the fact that it (or rather one of its family members; yes there's more than one of these things) is later shown to be more than happy to eat other villagers.

Lush Caves

• When Red and Second Coming encountered alexcrafter28, one can only imagine the horror that they had with seeing two non-blocky characters that ended up running towards and even through the fourth wall of the game, especially as it's likely they're young. It's a miracle the stick figures weren't there to destroy their computer and instead mail themselves home, but it could have possibly terrified Alex. You can even see them shaking their mouse when the stick figures escape Minecraft.

The Ultimate Weapon

• We now know what King Orange and Purple's intentions were; Create a gigantic black void that sucks everything into it, including their underlings, meaning they are a pair of Omnicidal Maniacs.
  • This is especially jarring for Purple, as previously he never showed a side like this before. Sure, he was never a saint, but there were no indications beforehand that he would go this far. The most important thing is the fact that Purple is an Attention Whore who seeks to have people following his orders, and destroying the world would kill anyone willing to be friends or subordinates. And at the end of vs. League of Legends, he gained exactly that; Friends who are willing to hang out with him and give him attention. Just what happened to make Purple suddenly throw it all away, and more importantly, how long was he like this?
    • This is thankfully all explained in "Note Block Universe", but that just shows how screwed up Purple's mind was. In his desperation to get his father's approval, he risked the lives of countless people, because he wanted to be loved by someone that bad. Definitely makes him sympathetic, but still, rather creepy.

The Warden

• The Second Coming was this close to dying to the Warden had he not figured out that Music Soothes the Savage Beast.
• The Warden in general. Alan said he wanted it to be as close to canon as possible, and said canon describes it as a force of nature that you can only run from. With how relentless it is in chasing the unarmed Second Coming, it's safe to say he nailed it. In sharp contrast to the general theme of the series, this episode is more or less a horror up until the end.

Monster School

• Imagine falling into a building that's full of monsters and all of them notice you. Good thing that it turns out that they're (partially) benevolent.
• Just what would've happened if Herobrine had recognized Red? Red's lucky that it's been six years since they last met; and even then the way Herobrine looked Red over seemed like Herobrine knew Red looked familiar but couldn't place it, meaning it was a near miss.
• The bullying Red suffers through can induce Realism-Induced Horror in some viewers, as he is mocked and laughed on by people for zero reason. And at the very end of the reason, pretty much the entire class with few exceptions gangs up on Red and proceeds to brutally beat him up. Thankfully, he is saved by his teammates.

The Raid

• The ending is surprisingly chilling, especially due to the dramatic music: King Orange defeats the entire set of heroes while spawning a dozen Dark Mobs to surround them and beat them up, all while he combines the Game Icons into one, the episode ending as he unleashes a massive black hole that dwarfs his last one.

Note Block Universe

• Dark Blue: In contrast to the cartoonish villains of the series, he is an abusive father who beat up Purple in delusional attempts to raise him into a fighter, got mad at him for not living up to his expectations, and then ditched the whole family once his wife dared to stand up to him. He was also preparing to hit her, only stopping himself at the last minute. Given how cutesy, innocent and silly this series is, it's definitely surprising to see such a dirtbag, serious villain.
  • And that's not mentioning how it screwed up Purple: The kid teamed up with an Omnicidal Maniac in an attempt to impress Dark Blue and make him rejoin the family after his mother's death. Despite having short screentime and possessing zero powers, Dark Blue is easily one of the worst and scariest characters in the entire Beckerverse.
• We finally see the end result of King Orange's second blast; it basically destroys the Nether ceiling and opens the whole thing up to the void.

The King

• The death of Gold - King Orange's late son - is one of the scariest moments in the series and a horrible way to go out. As he's simply having a fun time, the simulator his Minecraft world ran on started glitching out, resulting in the game's Sun being replaced by a black void that explodes and starts consuming the whole world into nothingness. Gold just barely escapes the simulation before the menu is assimilated, but pieces of the void escapes out of the simulation with him and start slowly dragging him back into the Minecraft world, Gold desperately trying to reach the door that would let him out of the attraction as he glitches out, pieces of his body flying into the void. But it's all for naught, as he's suddenly thrown back into the Minecraft world, him panicking before the whole simulation crashes, thus killing him. Given how he was Forced to Watch his own son die such a brutal death, can you really blame King Orange for being who he is in the present?
  • Also, just how Gold was finished off: Halfway through his panic, he realises he can still see the Minecraft Sun glowing through the glitches. As he looks at it, it explodes, and we can very briefly seen Gold exploding into little pieces before the system crashes. Mind you, he was still just a little kid, and he had the single most horrifying death in the whole series.
  • At first, after witnessing King Orange's backstory, you might expect that everything he's done is in an effort to open some kind of portal bring his son back. You'd be wrong, Gold is simply gone, there's nothing to bring back and King Orange knows it. What he actually plans to do is bring the same fate onto the game that "took" his son's life out of revenge.
• King Orange summons the Abomination: a monstrous combination of a Titan Ravager and a Warden that towers over the actual Titan Ravager. Made worse by it's how it moves, with the Warden and Ravager aspects clearly not fitting together properly in either form or function. Both of the Abominations are happily taken care of by Herobrine very quickly, though it's clear they would've been as dangerous as King Orange himself if they got to live.
• Even though he's on the side of good, Herobrine is still particularly menacing with how he slowly hovers over to fight King Orange and delivers a brutal beatdown. The stare he gives as he realises his students in danger help to frame him as incredibly furious and angry.
• You know the void that King Orange opened up at the end of the previous episode? Yeah, that thing grows until it consumes almost all of Minecraft and deletes every mob, entity and stick figure still within it. Once the Stick Gang's allies are killed off, we get to see the black hole consume all the Minecraft worlds - the Titan Ravager Village, the Monster School, and even the Witch's Hut - into it, with the mobs panicking for their lives as they're sucked inside. Once King Orange dies, we still get to see the world collapsing in the background, which looks beautiful yet scary.
• When the Stick Gang tries to take down King Orange, he sends them flying into the beam he uses to power up his black hole: Just being inside the beam for a few seconds results in them glitching, with pixels floating off them, just like with Gold. It even kills Purple and King Orange for a bit!

Season 4

Lucky Block Staff

• The Orb returns and, while no King Orange or Dark Lord, it's still a rather menacing foe. It's actually creepier then the last time we saw it, being more clearly a Digital Abomination that sends everything it touches into chaos, its final form being a very powerful hybrid of dozens of staffs, with it at the centre. While it doesn't express body language due to the limited nature of its vessel, it's still very clearly sapient and evil, even roaring when attacked by Red's bees.

Actual Shorts

• "Backrooms" takes the Second Coming into the titular location when trying to dig for the coin he lost in the couch. It's got the same eerie vibes as the source material, and it's not at all mitigated by the fact it's All Just a Dream. The clip ends with the Second Coming finding that same coin and looping to the beginning of the short, bringing question whether or not it actually was a dream.

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