Nightmare Fuel / Batman: The Brave and the Bold

"Smile... darn ya... SMILE!"

Just because this series is Lighter and Softer compared to its predecessors, doesn't mean their horror elements have been stripped away.

• Commented on in "Invasion of the Secret Santas!", when Batman hurls an exploding Batarang at an evil robot Santa, which catches fire and burns down to a metal skeleton— while continuing to march at him and ho-ho-ho:
  Fun Haus: Gee, that won't give kids nightmares, will it?
  • And if that wasn't enough, he even challenges Batman to find a hidden bomb before it destroys the town and Christmas! He was lying.
• "Shadow of the Bat!" seems calculated to give the audience a good scare. Vampire Batman is ruthless and savage (he even takes out Alfred), and the sound of him chomping down on people is remarkably unpleasant.
• "Emperor Joker!": How many of you expected to see the skeletonized remains of Batman in a vat of acid?
  • Worse yet, there's a list of the death methods that the Dark Knight goes through in a Death Montage (mostly offscreen and less graphic than in the original Superman comic book):
    1. Squashed Flat by a giant iron hammer in a Rube Goldberg Death Trap (the creators tried to soften the blow by showing the audience a winged spirit of Batman complete with halo, harp and cowl, flying off to the heavens after he gets crushed, which only makes it a bit better, but still disturbing for some children)
    2. Stripped to the Bone by the aforementioned Acid Pool
    3. Incinerated to ashes by flamethrowers
    4. Shredded into bits by a woodchipper
    5. Decapitated by a guillotine
    6. Dropped into the Shark Pool and Eaten Alive by Threatening Sharks
    7. Crushed by snapping spiked wall trap thingies
    8. Chained to a Railway and run over by a train
    9. Electrocuted by the electric chair (as indicated by the smoke rising from his newly-revived body as he falls over from the chair)
  • Joker's Villain Song seems innocent enough...but with his new powers, every surreal image seen throughout is real. Joker blew up the UNIVERSE for the sake of a music video.
  • “I’ll just climb inside your noodle, loosen a few screws, and then... I’M GONNA KILL YA SOME MORE!”
  • He came dangerously close to finding out Batman’s identity, but when realizing that he would just be plain ol’ average Joe without Batman in his life, he ends up a drooling, catatonic mess, much to Harley’s shock.
    • Furthermore, it could still have been worse; in the comic series that inspired it, the repeated deaths ended up mentally breaking Batman, and Superman had to erase his memories just so he'd be able to return to himself.
  • Earlier in the episode, Bat-Mite mentions a few of the classic clashes between Batman and The Joker, and among them he mentions A Death in the Family, and explains how the fans got to choose Jason Todd’s fate. Bat-Mite then heavily implies that he was among the many who voted for Jason to die.
• Joker gassing the Amazons, resulting in them gaining rather creepy laughing faces. He then knocks out Hippolyta and Wonder Woman ends up gassed when she tries to grab him.
• In one of The Teasers, Batman teams up with The Spectre to defeat Professor Milo. Batman subdues the criminal and leaves, but The Spectre stays behind. Once Batman is far enough away, The Spectre deliberately goes against Batman's one rule by first transforming Milo into cheese (Milo remains conscious), then releasing the man's trained rats to EAT HIM ALIVE.
  • The Spectre in general, including the rather creepy way it's implied he's the one who killed Joe Chill after Batman refused to do the job, with the camera zooming in on the Spectre's eyes to show skulls for the pupils and his Blatant Lie about not knowing what happened (though Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold indicates Batman found out).
• Then there's the episode in which Batman goes back in time to meet Sherlock Holmes and Etrigan the Demon and try to stop Jack the Ripper AKA Gentleman Jim Craddock from draining the life out of unlucky women to summon forth a fiend from Hell to gain supernatural powers. Batman tries to warn Craddock that he doesn't know what is actually going to happen but is ignored. At the very end we see the ghostly Craddock standing over his grave, in his usual Edwardian finery, his body as always invisible, until the lightning flashes and we see him as he truly is: a rotted and demonic-looking corpse.
  • And it's all made even more fiendish by the dialogue between Craddock and the conjured demon:
    Astaroth: Give me the horn, human.
    Craddock: First complete your end of the bargain! Make me immortal!
    Astaroth: Very well. Your soul shall never pass from the Earth.
  • Laser-Guided Karma after what Jim Craddock did to Batman during his first appearance.
• The Brain in a Jar in "Creature Commandos: A War That Time Forgot" - enough said.
• In-Universe: Batman revealing himself to Joe Chill, for Joe Chill. Imagine that you orphaned a little kid. Now, 30 years later, imagine that you're in a fight with one of the most dangerous people on the planet, who's constantly defeated crazed villains, supernatural foes, and advanced technologies of all kinds. He bypasses a room full of that kind of crazy just to single you out. Why? Because he's the kid you orphaned, and he HATES you. That. Damn. Much.
  • To make it worse, said room full of crazy now hates you too for creating their sworn enemy, and they'll do MUCH MORE than he will.
  • In the context of Batman, imagine how terrifying this would be. You kill a boy's parents, and the boy spends the next thirty years obsessing over this one act. He trains and trains, until he is considered one of the deadliest mortals on the planet. And now he's here, and he's mad, and he wants to hurt you. Almost immediately afterward, so do the enemies he's made because you're responsible for making him who he is, and they'll do it more than he does.
• The STARRO episode:
  • STARRO. It latches onto your face, takes complete control of you...oh, and there are at least billions and have taken over almost every person in the world making them only able to speak the Madness Mantra of "Starro Lives" as shown by the very creepy teasers for Revenge of the Reach!, Clash of the Metal Men! and The Power of Shazam!. More and more keep getting made and worse, even killing the giant main Starro and taking off the Starros from everyone does not end its threat...no, Starro's Dragon just merges all of the excess Starros into a giant Starro creature with which he nearly uses to destroy Earth. Why? Because he enjoys destroying things!
  • Speaking of which, the Faceless Herald is a monster. He roams the universe, finding worlds that his master, Starro can conquer, by attaching horrible mind-control probes to their faces. He's a god in physical combat, can teleport, turn invisible, and has a terrifying arsenal of traps and weapons. He spends most of the series tracking, defeating and mind-raping the various DC heroes. And if you can't be posessed by a Starro spore? He'll horribly kill you. It gets worse though. How and why did he become Starro's herald? He asked Starro to destroy his homeworld, because his people were pacifists and they looked down on him for his career in hunting. It's pretty bad when you make a world conqueror look good by comparison. And the creepiest John DiMaggio voice imaginable doesn't help matters.
• Every member of the Injustice Syndicate is considered this in their own right, but especially Scarlet Scarab (Mirror Self of Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes). What could have happened to turn him from good-hearted kid to gleeful sadist— or was he always like that?
  • If the Mirror Universe of the show is anything like the one from the comics, yes, he was born that way, because in that universe, evil is the dominant force of the universe.
  • There is a brief Hope Spot when he insists to the Scarab he has the heart of a hero, which makes Batman think Mirror Jaime can be redeemed... only for the kid to add, "I keep it in a jar in the back of my closet."
• Kanjar Ro's torture of the little Gibbles from Rise of The Blue Beetle! The worst part is how many of the poor things he's already gone through.
• Bat-Mite kidnapping Batman and throwing him in the 5th dimension after Bats unknowingly insulted him. As funny as Bat-Mite is, his perfect willingness to kill his former favorite hero is creepy as hell.
  Bat-Mite: If you won't be my hero, I'll make you my toy. And just like all toys, I'll play with you till you break!
  • The massive Syndrome vibe. Syndrome's origin story was dark enough, but imagine if it happened to a omnipotent reality warper.
• Black Mask in general, but especially that voice.
• "Mayhem of the Music Meister" can be terrifying when you give it some thought. A villain who can control your mind by singing and make you commit crime while under his sway? Not terrifying at all. Not to mention that he almost wins.
  • As a distraction, he ordered some of his thralls to kick their way into rocket exhaust.
• "Inside The Outsiders!" is another terrifying episode. Psycho Pirate kidnaps the Outsiders, a group consisting of Katana, Black Lightning and Metamorpho (who are all teenagers, by the way) and hooks them up to some deranged machine that traps them in their worst nightmares and regrets, while literally feeding off of their pain, fear and anger. His creepy, hushed voice certainly gives off a creepy, almost inappropriate vibe. Even worse, when Batman attempts to free them at first, Psycho Pirate warns him that doing so will fry their brains, giving Batman no choice but to go into the machine himself to save them. Psycho Pirate stands out as one of the more horrifyingly exceptional villains, despite only appearing in this episode, making his spot under Complete Monster in the YMMV page completely earned.
  • Katana's Dream Sequence has her remembering the death of her master. She told their enemy Takeo where they kept a magical sword, and her master sends her to hide while he deals with him. We then get to see Takeo cut down her master, who refused to fight back. Poor Katana also blames herself for it, and it's implied that she's so quiet because it was her "big mouth" that got her master killed. Even worse, it seems that the dream loops over until she goes through with revenge, at one point even turning on Batman, who will die permanently if killed in the dream.
  • Black Lightning's dream involves him in the middle of a busy street, angrily electrocuting everyone who angers him, such as a guy putting sprinkles in coffee, a man letting his dog poop without picking it up, and a woman whose car is too big. While it's funny that he's getting angry at such seemingly insignificant stuff, the fact that he's likely being pushed by Psycho Pirate to react to everything with the same animosity that people apparently gave him is very unsettling. Black Lightning’s overreactions also stop being funny when you realize He is a teenager with what amounts to an electric gun; firing it off at innocents for absolutely nothing.
  • Metamorpho turns out to be the one who is providing Psycho Pirate with the most energy, much to the confusion of Black Lighting and Katana, who always found Metamorpho to be so upbeat. When they get to his dream world, Metamorpho is 50 stories tall and destroying everything in his path, while Psycho Pirate acts as the voice in his head and has him turn on his friends after convincing him that they think he's a freak and only value him for his power. Thankfully, his friends manage to calm him down (thanks in part to the villain being forced away from Metamorpho's side by Batman), but still.
  • Finally, Batman frees the kids and escapes to reality - or so it seems. Psycho Pirate pulls a lever that immediately incinerates Outsiders, complete with lovely visuals of them screaming in pain. Then Psycho has the audacity to tell Batman that it's his fault for making them heroes in the first place. That's right, they showed three kids being incinerated to death on screen. It turns out to be part of Batman's dream, so the kids are fine, but the whole scene is still horrifying.
• "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" is largely a more comedic episode acting on Swapped Roles with Joker as the Villain Protagonist. But the premise has some VERY dark undertones. Ignoring the episode is from Joker's warped perspective, the very concept of Batman's crime predicting computer is disturbing. It doesn't just detect crimes in progress, it alerts Batman or the police BEFORE they happen. Conceptually it's got vibes akin to Nineteen Eighty-Four; with Batman as Big Brother. This is best shown when a kid, attempting to steal a single stick of gum notices the thing going off and puts it back.

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