Nightmare Fuel / Digimon Tamers

"Running away from destiny...?"

• The series in general is a bit outclassed by later works of the franchise has in terms of the Darker and Edgier spectrum, but there's a reason why it's the most remarkable — the audience back in the time where this is aired are mostly young children who didn't expect Digimon to degenerate into outright Lovecraftian horror with gruesome and permanent deaths that have lingering consequences.
• So, how about IceDevimon, eh? A white-colored, psychotic devil who desperately wants Rika to be his tamer for the sake of power, to the point of coming off as a Stalker with a Crush, complete with the invasion of her personal space and attempt at sweet-talking in her ear. That's not even counting his "trophy collection": a bunch of Digimon that bio-emerged into the real world and met their ends at this thing's hands, with him temporarily doing the same to Guilmon and Terriermon, and attempting to make quick work out of Renamon even when she Digivolves into Kyubimon. Even after Takato and Guilmon finally put him down and absorb his data, the end result of his encounter puts the poor girl in a massive Heroic BSoD for a couple of episodes, causing her to distance herself from Digimon entirely.
• DarkLizardmon's fate: It was captured by Hypnos, interrogated under torture and literally torn apart for analysis while fully conscious after Yamaki was done, in a process that actually looks more painful than the equivalent, that is to say the vivisection of a conscious human. Not to mention that this is a close up to what Shaggai/Juggernaut does to it's victims in episode 14.
  • What's worse is that DarkLizardmon spends its final moments begging to be let free as Yamaki coldly strips it down to its component data because he and Hypnos in general don't realize that DarkLizardmon is a thinking, living being and not a mere program.
• An early warning of things to come, episode 14, where the dying screams of the Digimon deleted by Shaggai/Juggernaut can be heard. A tamer version of Homeworld cataclysm's corruption by the beast. It's so bad that even one of Yamaki's Bridge Bunnies can't take it.
  Tally: (seemingly on the verge of tears) AAAH! That sound! Make it stop!
• Shortly after the Shaggai gets activated, Mihiramon of the Devas shows up: a giant, flying tiger with Super-Speed and the ability to use its tail like a lethally damaging and lethally fast three-section staff. It effortlessly curb-stomps Kyubimon and Gargomon, and ends up putting Growlmon on the ropes. Oh, and it's also the first indication that tamers with a strong bond to their Digimon can, and will, feel every single hit their partner does, as Takato keeps feeling Growlmon/WarGrowlmon take blow after blow from an Ultimate level out to kill. Even more horrifying is the realization that, while the injury was obscured by shadows, it's heavily implied that Mihiramon tore off Growlmon's arm and that Takato felt it.
• There's also Yamaki's Villainous Breakdown once the Deva shows up in spite of his efforts. He actually assaults Henry in his rage! Who knows what he would have done had Rika not shown up? Also not helping is Steve Blum's performance in the dub; hearing the same voice that came from Spike Spiegel and Roger Smith utterly lose it just feels like a scarier version of O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
• As scary as Dark Digivolutions are in general, Megidramon definitely takes the cake. It certainly doesn't help that its name is derived from the words "Megiddo" and "Dragon". You know, like Har Megiddo. The mountain where the end of days is supposed to start. Oh yeah, and Megidramon's presence is actively causing the apocalypse in the Digital World due to his power rampaging out of control. It doesn't help that before it Takato is practically screaming about how he is going to make Beelzemon suffer for killing Leomon.
  • Guilmon's transformation into Megidramon is horrifying as well. Up to this point in the franchise, the hero's Digimon usually got more and more monstrous until reaching Mega, where they become sleeker and more heroic looking. Guilmon? First, he immediately digivolves into Wargrowlmon in a split second, from one camera angle to the next, without all the heroic flash and flare (no "Guilmon digivolve to...", the colorful special effects we expect in this season, or the bright flashing lights of power), as what usually happens in any digivolution. Then he becomes more monstrous, transforming into a massive demon with a snakelike tail where his lower body should be, fearsome armor and acidic saliva which we get to see in action when he tries to eat Beelzemon alive. He's so horrifying that even though he's fighting their enemy Jeri is traumatized by his existence and Takato's realization of what his anger turned his sweet lovable friend into causes his D-Power to shatter to pieces. Not even SkullGreymon was as traumatic to Tai and the Digidestined.
  • Calumon's reaction to powering up the evolution—he's still being imprisoned by the Sovereigns and once the evolution starts up, he holds his head while squealing a panicked "Oh no!" and then screams in pain as the light of digivolution shoots out of his head.
  • Guilmon becoming Megidramon winds up dropping one hell of a reveal. That cool symbol that's been present on Guilmon's design since the day he was born is the Digital World equivalent of a biohazard warning. It only appears on Digimon with the potential to destroy the entire Digital World The only other Digimon who has the symbol naturally is Lucemon's line.^*MirageGaogamon also has it, but it's more so warning of it's unequaled Super-Speed if anything else.
• Just the sheer sight of Takato, easily the sweetest of all the goggleheads, angrily screaming for Beelzemon's head is enough to make one uneasy. Fox Kids even played up the unsettling nature of the event in the commercials when they got to this point, especially focusing on a shot of Takato's rage-filled glare as Growlmon digivolves; it looks like he just got possessed for a second.
  Takato: I'll make you hurt! I'LL MAKE YOU PAY!!!
• Chatsuramon approaching and manipulating Impmon into taking the deal to become Beelzemon is creepy and unsettling, especially with the way he uses Impmon's memories against him. His voice is calm, commanding, and rational in the way you know he's good at sweet-talking in all the wrong ways. The whole scene is oozing the foreboding feeling of 'this is not going to end well'.
  • Beelzemon is arguably the most horrifying Digimon villain from a psychological standpoint, barring perhaps the D-Reaper who also hails from this season. Unlike most of the villains who are evil from the get-go and have over-the-top motives like taking over the world, Impmon was just a troublemaker who the audience was deliberately made to sympathize with or at least pity, and see that despite his bratty nature he had some good in him. The process of watching a character who seemingly had redeemable qualities make the decision to throw away all his morals to become a Psycho for Hire, all for the sake of proving to the world that he isn't a weakling, is basically paranoia fuel. Especially given that similar misguided progressions unfortunately actually happen to real people.
  • When Impmon agrees to the deal with Chatsuramon, he is clearly fighting his conscience. The idea of killing his would-be friends bothers him greatly. And yet, he still decides to ignore it anyways.
  • The worst of this is while Beelzemon did kill Leomon and Caturamon did manipulate him to make the deal with Zhuqiaomon, Zhuqiaomon himself does not object to his subordinate and gleefully gives Impmon the power to evolve into Beelzemon. He probably didn't even enable Caturamon, but ordered him to smooth-talk Impmon into becoming a last line of defense for his sake, indicating that Zhuqiaomon indirectly killed Leomon (and traumatized Jeri) by proxy. There's a jarring lack of care for a Physical God about some humans and Digimon becoming collateral damage to the Digital World's social darwinist ideology, viewing it as a natural cause rather than something horrifically traumatizing.
• Takato screaming in terror inside Gallantmon's mind when Beelzemon has a gun to his head.
  • Beelzemon's a humanoid digimon whose main weapons are guns. The kids spend three episodes trying to fend off and survive an assault by an insane digimon whose design is, apart from his tail, third eye, and creepy proportions, not very fantastical. The parallels one can draw to a school/mall shooter situation are pretty disturbing.
  • The entire fight with Beelzemon is extremely anxiety inducing, if not outright terrifying, once he kills off Leomon and the audience is slapped in the face with the reality that he is legitimately aiming to kill everyone. Other major digimon battles are usually just action-packed beatdowns with flashy effects with no real worry that the heroes will come through unscathed in the end, but with Beelzemon on the battlefield, Anyone Can Die. Beelzemon comes uncomfortably close to killing Taomon, Rapidmon, Gaurdromon, Kenta, and Gallantmon (who is made up of Takato and Guilmon), and two of the Deva's die as collateral. And just to top the experience off, Beelzemon becomes increasingly unhinged and cackles madly all the while, taunting the children for their terror and how he plans on picking off everyone one-by-one. There is absolutely no room to breathe until Guardomon distracts Beelzemon enough for Gallantmon to finally turn the tide and Jeri spares Beelzemon's life when he's down, snapping him out of his Power High and at last putting the rampage to an end.
  • That's not even considering the fact that the battle with Beelzemon had additional stressors on top of everything else. Guilmon spent half of it in the form of the world-ending monstrosity Megidramon as a result of Takato losing control of his anger, causing the dimensional plane to start imploding so strongly it could be felt in the real world. And in all this, Zhuqiaomon decided this was the perfect time to try to kill Lopmon for betraying him, putting Suzie in the direct line of fire as a result. Basically the whole fight feels like everything that can go wrong seriously just might, up until the heroes triumph.
• The D-Reaper. Imagine a monster that combines the most horrifying aspects of Lovecraftian horror, the Angels, The Beast, and the Anti-Spirals. Now remove any Well Intentioned Extremism replace it with sheer Blue-and-Orange Morality ...and put it in a kid's show.
  • Its battle capabilities are nothing to scoff at, either. In its initial form, just the red liquid bubbles it spouts are capable of deleting any form of data that it touches. After it "evolves," it can create agents that become increasingly bigger, stronger and more menacing, including those that dwarf the Digimon Sovereigns themselves. The only thing that the D-Reaper seems to be afraid of is MarineAngemon's Ocean Love for obvious reasons, but because MarineAngemon is on the lower end of the Mega power bracket, it alone doesn't cut against anything but individual agents. Oh, and by the halfway point, it becomes so resilient that it takes the power of a Demon Lord and a Royal Knight to even put a dent in its brain.
  • As if that weren't enough, let's add to it the fact that it's literally powered by the grief and despair of a depressed little girl, uses her as its avatar and uses her to justify what it was intended to do because it thinks everyone, as in every human in the world is like that girl. This abomination has the voice of a ten-year old girl that breaks down into a Madness Mantra often.
  • Also, the red goo created through D-Reaper's existence? It could double as a Nausea Fuel. Imagine a fleshy, organic-sounding, pulsating goo flooding through the entire city! If you're not into the kinds of giant monster shows like Godzilla or Ultra Series, the Nausea Fuel gets even worse.
  • The fake Juri. Holy shit, the fake Juri. Even from the get-go, when "she" appears it's clear there's something very definitely wrong with her, in case the dull eyes, vacant stare, pale skin and un-smile weren't a major warning sign. Amazingly, it does not get better when she starts speaking. Or when it turns into an older version of Juri. At that point, revealing its true form almost comes as a relief...until said true form gains enough power to almost kill a freshly mode-changed Gallantmon: Crimson Mode.
  • The Paratice Head. A giant, pink headless thing covered in mouths, all chattering away with Juri's voice. Then one of the tentacles grows a camera.
• An easily missed moment, but at first the D-Reaper simply talks about how humans don't respect boundaries and repeats Broken Record speeches, but several episodes later they gain dialogue, though they're all just nihilistic ramblings in a rather crooning synethized voice. Given this is after D-Reaper's been absorbing Jeri's emotions for days, it's not hard to think the D-Reaper has actually managed to go insane.
• Everything that happened to Juri post-episode 34, after Leomon died, is pretty creepy. So much so that Juri in general might just become Nightmare Fuel for people upon re-watching the series now that they know everything about her.
  • Her creepy Hand Puppet might have already been this. It definitely is when Juri starts talking to it like it's a separate person.
  • The scene in episode 40 where the puppet somehow becomes sentient and actually talks to Juri, convincing her to walk off from the group. The next time Juri's seen, it's actually the D-Reaper's agent, which raises so many questions...
• The infamous scene in episode 47, pictured above, where the audience is treated to a Mind Rape sequence in which Juri is forced to relive her mother's death. Taken out of context, it could easily be mistaken for a scene in an adult horror anime. To make matters worse, in-universe, we are told that this goes on for at least an entire week.
  • The extremely dark moment where Jeri decides, after undergoing over a week of Mind Rape by the D-Reaper and realizing that it's feeding off of her to fuel its mission of destroying the world, to take herself out of the picture and attempts to strangle herself.
  • The bit in the penultimate episode when, as Gallantmon charges the Mother D-Reaper, it grows a giant Juri head in the middle of its body to attack him.
• The Body Horror Beelzemon undergoes after absorbing Taomon and Rapidmon's data. It involved Beelzemon's shoulders bulging until parts of Taomon and Rapidmon started protruding out of his skin with Beelzemon clearly in pain from the experience. Surprisingly enough, Saban kept this part intact, completely unedited, in the English dub.
  • The reason he had to do this was to avoid a brutal death (even by the standards of the show) by being eaten alive by Megidramon.
• Megidramon itself. While reminiscent of SkullGreymon, Megidramon's worse. It is nothing but a Kaiju that destroys and devours without hesitation. It doesn't even speak, which most Digimon with a consciousness do. Remember that this came from Guilmon, all because of Takato's rage and desire to kill.
  • Not to mention the process of digivolution itself was so drastic that it began to cause issues in the Human World too. If he hadn't devolved back down how much damage would Megidramon have caused to both worlds just through his existence alone?
  • Megidramon becomes even more of this when you take its species' nature into account: it's a member of the Four Great Dragons alongside Magnadramon, Goddramon, and Azulongmon. Unlike those three, however, Megidramon is not at all benevolent. Its very existence is said to herald the absolute destruction of the Digital World, and all who inhabit it. Simply existing is enough for it to be a Dragon of Mass Destruction.
• Mephistomon dropping his human disguise in Battle of Adventurers, specifically the part where his human head retracts and his normal one bursts out.
• Even the Digivolution sequence itself. Their skin is ripped asunder, exposing the true Digital Monster underneath. Then we're treated to the lovely image of their flesh growing back, slowed down so the viewers can follow. Worst of all, judging by some of their expressions, they're fully conscious for all this.
  • Terriermon > Gargomon is especially bad because he pulls an expression during it that suggests he's in a lot of pain during the process. He squeezes his eyes tight shut as his skin peels off, and grimaces in pain as it reassembles itself onto his form. Ouch!
• Cyberdramon's fight against Majiramon. At first Majiramon has the edge against the other Digimon, but Ryo turns the tide by using a special card to make Cyberdramon incredibly huge. With his newfound size, Cyberdramon is easily able to crush Majiramon's head and destroy him. The other children are visibly shocked afterwards.
  • Hell, Cyberdramon himself is a source of this. His Desolation Claw attack erases anything it hits and fires rapidly like a machine gun, shown to horrifying effect by his first battle in the series against Megadramon as the camera violently shakes and refuses to linger on the results of the shots to play up just how brutal of an attack it is. Ryo has to keep him in check with an energy whip projected from his D-Power to keep him from running berserk and hurting someone and based on his canon backstory, Cyberdramon is a forced fusion between Ryo's partner Monodramon and the Big Bad of his debut series ZeedMilleniummon. He's probably the most horrifying Digimon partnered with a hero in the entire franchise!
• The concept of "loading" Digimon can be horrifying. When a Digimon dies or is destroyed, its body becomes pure data and can be absorbed by the Digimon that defeated them, in order to become stronger. This makes every Digimon, even the ones we like, a cannibal. Later on, most of the Digimon stop loading the data of other defeated Digimon, though.
  • Can be even more horrifying when you think of it as them turning their enemies into experience points to level up.
• You wanna know how Makuramon dies? By having his head crushed in Beelzemon's hand like an egg, screaming all the way through. Just imagine how horrifying that would have been if the show didn't run on Bloodless Carnage...
• Beelzemon's near-death at the hands of the D-Reaper at the end of episode 48. How do you kill someone practically Made of Iron? You impale them with dozens of knives. They only show the silhouette of this, thankfully, but the sheer brutality of it makes this less of a comfort and more a necessity.
  • The scream Beelzemon lets out when it happens. Sometimes, just hearing what's happening is worse than actually seeing it.
  • Digimon who get badly wounded usually regress into a lesser form. The notable brutal beatings in this show usually only knock someone down one level. Beelzemon was so badly wounded, he shot down three levels into Impmon.
• Early example: Yamaki manages to confront Henry in the park when he's alone and when Henry won't tell him what he wants, Yamaki physically lifts him off the ground. Though Henry makes it out of the mess unharmed, he's obviously scared and at the time, there was no indication Yamaki wouldn't use drastic means to get what he wanted. Yes, this scene made it into the dub.
• The Digital World itself in this iteration is an Eldritch Location where everybody is The Social Darwinist. Digimon are basically programmed to fight to the death and load each other until they evolve to a perfect form, and different from other seasons, the Digimon who are killed in this version do not return, ever. This is all treated as natural and even the main partner Digimon do not question the moral implications of it outside the real world. It doesn't get any better when you learn the gods of said world are literally enforcing these Social Darwinist rules that don't need to exist, since they're keeping the magical artifact that makes evolution happen sealed away.
• Suzie getting spirited away to the Digital World isn't usually focused on because of her befriending and redeeming of Antylamon. However, the fear that permeates the scene is palpable as during a conversation with Yamaki about Shibumi's programming being akin to playing God, Suzie wanders off to the nearby playground only to stumble into a digital anomaly caused by Shibumi helping Henry and Takato out. In that anomaly she sees Terriermon and being six tries to reach him, unintentionally causing the DigiGnomes to grant her wish and take her to the Digital World just a few moments too soon for her father and Yamaki to save her. After that she spends some time bumbling around the deepest and most dangerous layer of the Digital World, has a few close shaves and ends up meeting Antylamon, who she tries to befriend in a fit of childlike naivety and innocence not knowing she's standing in front of one of twelve beings who want nothing more than to wipe her species out. Thankfully Antylamon turns out to be noble and doesn't crush the six year old to paste, but given the last Antylamon viewers had likely seen was the Big Bad of the 02 movie the fear was there for an uncomfortable amount of time.
• Makuramon pulling an Exorcist Head in his human disguise, followed by Calumon's desperate pleading for Jeri not to let him take him back to the Digital World is pretty terrifying.
• The D-Reaper’s final evolution into the Mother D-Reaper: Juri has finally snapped out of her Heroic BSOD thanks to Beelzemon and is pounding on the walls of her prison, screaming to be let out. The D-Reaper’s response to this is to use its cables to bind and further terrorize her, while the Juri Agent mocks her before being consumed by the D-Reaper herself. And while Juri does try to free herself with Calumon’s help, the whole thing quickly becomes too much and she screams in absolute despair, causing the cables to glow red. Cut to outside, where more cables are growing, red lights are shooting out of the red mass and the Hypnos buildings raise a bit before they melt away into more red mass and engulf the Kernel Sphere, merging with it to form the Mother D-Reaper.
  • While the D-Reaper evolving into the Mother D-Reaper by torturing Jeri by binding her with its cables is bad enough, at least afterwards, she and Calumon were able to fight back. In the manga, however, when Gallantmon breaks open the Kernel Sphere and Jeri reaches out for him, the D-Reaper responds by fully engulfing her and Calumon with it’s cables causing its final evolution. In that state, neither of them could do anything to free themselves as they had been essentially consumed by the D-Reaper until a Sakuyamon-powered Gallantmon cuts it in half, freeing the both of them.

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