Nightmare Fuel / Fate/strange Fake

• The circumstances of True Archer's summoning. Upon declaring that he will refuse to kill children for his master, his master uses all three of his command spells to force him to relive his worst memories in gruesome detail and forcing him to "accept his human nature." Then the cursed mud of the Grail was inflicted upon him - corrupting every aspect of him completely. What remains of True Archer after all that can barely be called the same person as he was before.
  • His Master, without batting an eyelid, reveals he has sacrificed twenty-four thousand nine hundred and seventy-six people to produce mana crystals to sustain True Archer.
• Despite the existence of Servants like Pale Rider and Alcides, it's probably True Assassin who takes the cake for the scariest Servant in this Holy Grail War. His Master initially has no idea that he's even summoned a Servant and he communicates with his Master by having him unconsciously write what Assassin is saying and when he's sent out to assassinate a target by his Master, people around the location of Assassin's target begin dropping like flies from "mysterious circumstances".
  • Not that Pale Rider is any less terrifying. A literal embodiment of disease, its master is an innocent girl who doesn't grasp the vast powers of her Servant, merely asking it to bring her things and people into her dream. For its first act, she wishes for her parents to join her. Instants later, the couple begins breaking into sores as their vision fades and they drop dead. Moments later, their zombified bodies rise, oblivious as they continue to deteriorate. Rider's left to puppeteer their empty bodies as he takes their spirits into Tsubaki's dream... and it keeps on doing so as Tsubaki asks it to keep bringing animals. Soon, Snowfield's vet clinics are overwhelmed with hundreds of barely responsive animals. Sure, they seem to recover a short while later... but it looks like Rider's left its taint in them, turning most of Snowfield's pets into latent vectors for its return.
  • For that matter, neither is Tsubaki herself. Her parents are completely uncaring of anything about her other than the prana she's generating. Her brain matter is saturated in black magic-infused bacteria, keeping her in a vegetative state - and the only thing either cares for is whether she'll still be able to bear children, children who will carry her powerful Magic Circuits - even in her coma. They're so detached from her the attending doctor mistakes their attitude for seriously poorly-channeled grief. Even as they collapse to Rider's attack, neither spares a thought for their daughter.
  • And then, Tsubaki idly wishes nobody would leave Snowfield. Pale Rider just stares at her for a second and seems to agree. The scene changes to a group of mafiosi leaving Snowfield, scared off by the chaos of the Grail War. Just as they're about to leave the city limits, they're seized by convulsions and foam at their mouths. When they come back to themselves, they gleefully floor it back to the city, eager to get "good seats" for the carnage to come. To Faldeus' horror, every single person leaving Snowfield, magus or civilian, immediately turns back. Meanwhile, back at his hotel, Flat feels Rider's Bounded Field engulf the entire city.
• Jester Karture’s initial reason for joining the False Holy Grail War was to WAKE UP O.R.T. FGO veterans can now clarify how much of a FUCKING NIGHTMARISH APOCALYPSE (See the Cosmos in the Lostbelt section for all the terrifying details) this would be. Thank goodness Jester decides on the less omnicidal (but still deeply creepy) option of stalking after False Assassin. Except, following him seeing Her and John Wingard working together and a scathing rejection from his patron Caubac Alcatraz, Jester seems to have chosen to wake The Spider up anyway, out of pure spitefulness at being dismissed.
• Flat's version of Jack the Ripper is a formless, shapeshifting spirit capable of self-duplication. To put this into perspective, they are a perfect assassin and infiltrator, capable of worming their way past any security measures and murder anyone they please; choosing to avoid any solitary figures isn't going to help at all, and they fight with multiple bodies in a fight. They can read your memories and generate matching bodies, so there's nobody you can trust. Their Noble Phantasms make them even scarier - the first one generates different bodies to attack with. Flat's outstanding Magic Circuits allow them to summon up to 520 bodies. Their second Noble Phantasm uses the ambient fear and terror to transform themselves into a demon and their surroundings into Hell - and both can be used together. Sure, the demon transformation's more costly than mere duplication, so they can only sustain around 200 demons... but in a crowded area like Snowfield, each demon body is able to match any of the knight classes.
  • As a Berserker, Jack does have Mad Enhancement. It's sealed at the moment, but the seal is extremely unstable, and they're keenly aware that their Tranquil Fury can boil over at any minute, to the point they make Flat promise to use a Command Seal to outright order them to kill themselves the instant they go insane, fully aware that the instant they slip their leash, they're going to leave a bloodbath behind.
  • And, again, even as terrifying as Jack is, sometimes Flat unnerves them. They outright say Flat's the kind of person who would give a heartfelt apology for either seeing through a familiar's eyes or murdering someone.
  • To make Jack's Noble Phantasm even worse, True Archer uses his final Noble Phantasm to steal From Hell... after an earlier attempt to steal EA.
• Clan Calatin's fight against the Beautiful Assassin. She keeps spamming different flavors of Zabaniya, and the elite corps keeps trying to bog her down. It has the same effect as throwing meat into the grinder. And then Karture decides to drop by.
• Filia, AKA Ishtar without Rin's influence. There's a reason if Gilgamesh' proper response to her coming for a fight would be using EA. And while the circumstances prevent her from having that kind of power, she still has Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven that took the full might of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to defeat, and no qualms about unleashing him... And she has stolen it from her Fate/Grand Order counterpart, meaning she could find a way to reacquire her full power.
  • Remember that bit about Gilgamesh planning to use Ea to fight her in case he met on the battlefield? He can't: Gil tossed away the key to the original Gate of Babylon that was used to summon him, and Filia used it to turn off the Noble Phantasm Gate of Babylon.
  • In Mesopotamian myth Ishtar is normally a positive if warlike figure, whose anger is terrible but needs to be provoked first and will still be kept in check to protect her worshippers... But the only reason she manifested into Filia is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu betrayed their oaths to the gods, and since nobody worships Ishtar in Snowfield she has no reason to hold back - and in fact she may well consider that an offense against the gods, if she doesn't recognize the Christian religion practiced by the majority there.
  • Filia was eventually taken down and killed... But Ishtar's most famous myth is about her dying and coming back to life by having her disloyal husband take her place. There's a good chance she'll come back to finish the job with Haruri's help.
• True Rider manages to stab True Archer, but the Black Mud comes out of his wound instead of blood. Then the Black Mud comes to life and attacks her. Her Master rescues her with a Command Spell, but still, she was terrified.
• False Rider unleashes a wave of blackness that sends everyone it touches into Tsubaki's dream world. While True Archer escapes, the wave gets his Cerberus and three of the Mares of Diomedes. False Rider takes control of them and enlarges Cerberus from elephant-sized to bigger than a house.
• Flat gets sniped by a team sent by Faldeus. Something crawls out of his corpse, mauls the sniper team that killed Flat, and starts lashing out. That something? Thia Escardos, an existence devised by Flat's ancestor on a theoretical "True Human"...and an attempt in recreating Brunestrud aka Type-Moon.
• Two of Thia’s acts immediately after his/it’s awakening demonstrate both his terrifying might and a frightening lack of concern for human lives, (though given some of his declarations Thia may very well hate humanity outright).
  • First he attacks and brutally kills the mercenary team who sniped Flat. At least one of them had their thoughts forcibly accelerated by magecraft, turning the last few seconds of his life into a hellish nightmare. AFTER Thia mentions gouging his eyes out and ripping off one of his fingers.
  • Second is his Noble Phantasm (or what it would be if he were a proper Servant), “A Clockwork Abaddon.” Thia draws in fragments of metal and other debris from space and launches them as meteorites. Even with Enkidu using Enuma Elish to try to block it, several fragments still make it through. The “smallest” hits near the Potomac and is mistaken for an earthquake with heavy rain. The next impacts in Yellowstone and gives the geologists a heart attack making them believe the caldera’s erupting. Another goes down near Japan and people can’t decide if it was an underwater eruption, an alien invasion or a missile strike. Yet another lands in Russia being mistaken for an attack from a foreign power, setting the whole world on edge. The second largest straight up erases 12% of the Arctic ice shelf, and and the largest would have wiped Snowfield off the map. Though Enkidu knocked that one off course it still would have vaporized all of Los Angeles if Gugalanna hadn’t stopped it.
• Because of all the craziness in Snowfield, the government decides to firebomb the city, not caring about the civilians.