Nightmare Fuel / Castle in the Sky

• Sheeta's entire ordeal certainly counts as this, as she's a girl who is barely thirteen, has been by herself for much of her childhood, and the entire world seems to be after her in the hopes of exploiting the power of her crystal, which possesses abilities far beyond anything known to mankind. Her terror throughout is more than justified.

• Let's just say if you have acrophobia, many of the scenes aboard Laputa itself, a floating city dominated by high towers and dangerous platforms thousands of feet above the earth will leave you feeling rather uneasy. Taken up to eleven when Muska sends most of the soldiers falling to their deaths as he unleashes the city's massive army of robots upon the unsuspecting Redshirt Army.
• And speaking of the robots, the one Sheeta encounters while imprisoned by the Army definitely qualifies, laying waste to an entire fortress that is helpless to stop it even with everything they throw at it. And if that weren't bad enough, it was Sheeta who accidentally awakened her robotic protector, absentmindedly uttering a spell taught to her in case she ever needed to call upon her crystal for protection; apparently Laputian standards for protection include exterminating everything non-Laputian.
  • Another, particular moment from the same sequence. The robot is preparing to laser a group of soldiers, but Sheeta flings herself at it, throwing off its aim. The hills in the distance, which must be at least ten miles away, burst with little pockets of flame. A cut or two later, Dola and crew are flying over a town, confusedly looking at their clock tower, whose top has exploded, presumably hit by the stray laser. If the robot's head was angled down just a fraction of a degree more, the town could very well have been wiped off the face of the earth, in an instant, the people in it never knowing what happened. Could Have Been Messy indeed!
• So, in most of Miyazaki's works, there's usually not a major antagonist because of his disdain for Black-and-White Morality… and then there’s Colonel Muska, a completely deranged and obsessive psychopath who carries out all his plans with eerily calm and calculated precision; easily one of Mark Hamill's most chilling performances.
  • Muska demonstrating the great power possessed by Laputa, unleashing a powerful blast of energy equivalent to or even superseding the effects of a nuclear weapon; the fact that something so beautiful could be capable of such destruction, especially in the hands of a psychopath like Muska, is too frightening to dwell on.
  • And then there's the rest of his actions near the end of the film, where he abandons his cold composure and outright massacres the entire army he duped into serving his ends, all while cackling madly and taking way too much pleasure in the deaths of dozens of soldiers right before him; his calm, almost uncaring stalking of Sheeta as she tries to escape with the crystal is like something out of a horror movie.
  • "A superior being such as myself has only one option: Burn them."
  • The way he gets rid of the soldiers is opening the floor below them, letting them fall to their deaths from gods know how high up!
    • Hell, even just the way the floor opens up is terrifying. It doesn't disappear segment by segment like some kind of mechanism, or the panels moving like an obvious machine, literal holes just appear beneath the soldiers and drop them one by one, until the entire platform has disappeared
• The very start of the film, involves Sheeta climbing along the side of an airship in order to escape her would-be pirate captors. When one of them lunges for her, she loses her grip and falls for thousands of meters to the earth below. Lucky for her, she still happened to be wearing her crystal.
• The Goliath, a gargantuan, floating warship bristling to the brim with guns, carrying a full army and dwarfing just about everything it encounters, boasting enough firepower to level an entire country if it wanted to. Hell, the thing looks to be about half the size of Laputa when it finally arrives to occupy the long-lost city. The fact that it is actively stalking the heroes the entire way only adds to its menace.
  • The fact that all its firepower proves to be utterly useless later when the Army abandons Laputa in a panic and becomes a falling inferno when Muska sends the robot army after it is also a shocking sight. The fact that even this hulking monster didn't have a prayer against Laputa's ancient defenses speaks volumes of why Muska could not be allowed to remain in possession of its power.
• The hurricane itself could easily be this, with Pazu and Sheeta forced to brave the menacing storm all by themselves and unable to rely on Dola and her crew to help them from below. If not for the crystal ending the storm surrounding Laputa, the two likely would have perished.
• Pazu leaping to a collapsing platform in order to free Dola and the pirate gang on Laputa, even as the column collapses in his grip. And poor Sheeta can only stand frozen in horror, knowing he could fall to his death at any moment. Thankfully, he does not.
  • Laputa literally falling to pieces in the sky, with Muska being crushed and blinded.
• The sheer power of Sheeta's crystal is as terrifying as it is awe-inspiring, and by the end Sheeta is desperate to rid herself of it.