Nightmare Fuel / Gotham Season Two

Season 2

2x 01 Damned If You Do

• Barbara's phone call to both Jim and Lee. She puts on weepy, damsel voice for Jim and tells him it was Lee who attacked her. Then immediately after, she leaves a voicemail on Lee's phone and says she hopes she 'dies screaming.'
• When Penguin and Zsasz invade Loeb's home, the commissioner tries calling his security guard to stop them. Cue Zsasz taking out the guard's decapitated head and making it "talk".
• Tabitha stabbing Richard Sionis to death, complete with blood spatter. The real kicker? Jerome isn't the least bit shocked by the incident, he just laughs his ass off.
• The revelation that Edward Nygma now has a split personality, as demonstrated when his reflection starts talking to him. At this point, poor, poor Eddie is completely out of his mind.

2x 02 Knock, Knock

• Jerome. Nearly everything he does in this episode.
  • To be more specific, when the Maniax massacres the entire GCPD, he has a creepy confrontation with Sarah Essen. She headbutts him defiantly... Cue his head snapping upright, nose broken and blood all over his face... "My turn!" And he starts laughing in an incredibly unnerving way. A few scenes later, it's revealed he shot her.
    • His red hair in that moment is sticking up near the edges, like horns. That, combined with everything else, makes Jerome look like the devil incarnate.
    • The video he leaves behind is very similar to the one Heath Ledger's Joker made in The Dark Knight.
  • His smile in general. Jerome expresses his mood with his smile in the same way Mark Hamill expresses the Joker's mood with his laughter: it varies and changes subtly depending on how he's feeling. His smile might show more teeth when he's menacing someone, or it might tighten around the edges in response to another character's slight, or worse, his grin might get bigger and more relaxed when he's about to murder someone, etc.
• The site of the GCPD massacre. Dead bodies everywhere.
• Robert Greenwood, the Maniax member who ate 12 women. The Fridge Horror comes in when you consider that might be why he's so portly.
• The Maniax taking a schoolbus full of cheerleaders hostage, with the endgame of dowsing them in gasoline and lighting them on fire. The GCPD massacre was just a back-up plan they had to come up with when Gordon stopped them. Their first goal to make waves was to burn innocent girls to death.

2x 03 The Last Laugh

• Jerome tying his helpless father to a chair and menacing him. The darkness of the apartment makes the scene even more unnerving to the audience. For blind Cicero, all he can hear is his son's sadistic voice, and he cannot see the knife coming at the end.
• When Jerome attacks Jim in the hallway. Jim hearing Jerome's whistling through the effects of the vapor drug sounds very mindscrewy.
• Jerome's father says Jerome's destiny will be to bring madness and death to Gotham. Although Jerome apparently dies, ending speculation that he is the Joker, his example has inspired normal people, common criminals and children to imitate his madness. Galavan killed Jerome to make himself a hero, but in doing so he immortalized Jerome's legacy of madness and death. He may not be the Joker, but Jerome is where the madness began...
  • Jerome's death scene is fairly creepy on its own, sharing uncanny similarities with the Joker's death in Batman (1989) (he dies with a permanent smile on his face while creepy music plays in the background). Then there's the ending scene, where we witness Jerome's chaotic legacy influencing a number of Gothamites into becoming crazed murderers (one of which is a young boy). The final shot is a closeup of Jerome's dead face smiling towards the camera.
    • In the scene where the little boy goes crazy, you can see his parents arguing in the background. It's quite obvious what he's planning to do with them now that he's insane...

2x 04 Strike Force

• Ed's little slip-up during his dinner with Miss Kringle. The dimness of their surroundings and the scare chord don't help matters.
  • Galavan blackmailing Penguin to commit a few murders by keeping his mother imprisoned shows how dangerous having loved ones is, when you are a key person. And the murders themselves qualify he stabbed poor Mrs Caulfield in the neck to the point of drowning in her blood while he sent Zsasz to deal with the other candidate.

2x 05 Scarification

• Tabitha tortures and tears out Bunderslaw's eye in a moment so brutal than even Theo finds it slightly cringeworthy.
  • Oswald goes completely bonkers in this episode and beats a man to death with a fire poker for bringing him bad news. He seems to have a thing for messengers, no?
  • The history of the Waynes and the Dumas which had Jonathan Wayne severing Caleb Duma's hand after being falsely accused of raping Celestine Wayne.
  • Which gives Oswald a great idea about making Butch a convincing spy.

2x 06 By Fire

• Edward murders Kristen, accidentally strangling her while trying to keep her quiet. And all while telling her earnestly that he would never hurt her and that he loves her.
  • Leading up to it, Edward confesses to murdering Tom Doherty, right after he and Kristen have finally made love, as a way to reassure her that she's safe from Tom. She doesn't believe him at first, and her growing discomfort and horror makes the scene even worse, because the audience knows what's coming. The cheerful smile as he holds up Tom's badge (that he stole from his corpse) is what really sells it: "Do you believe me now?" And then Kristen's terror and anger and her attempts to escape his apartment, the whole scene is just... Ugh.
  • Kristen's terror deserves an extra mention. To put it in context: she was abused by her last boyfriend. She got a creepy vibe from Ed from the very start. And now, seconds before her death, she learns that she was right, and that her current boyfriend is just as disturbed and dangerous as the last two. Just knowing that Kristen dies being abused, after having experienced so much abuse already at the hands of her previous boyfriends, is a domestic abuse survivor's worst nightmare come true.
• When Gordon and Bullock go to the Pikes' hideout, the first things they see are the charred corpses of Joe and Cale, freshly-burnt after Bridget roasted them alive. Then one of them grabs Harvey before expiring for good.
• Bridget accidentally burning herself alive is pretty damn disturbing, especially when you start hearing her agonizing screams as she falls to the floor in flames. She manages to survive, but is left horribly scarred from head to toe (like her comic book counterpart), and ends up becoming a guinea pig for the disturbing experiments at Indian Hill.

2x 07 Mommy's Little Monster

• Oswald's tearful, blinding rage right after Tabitha kills his mother.
• Silver showing her true colours to Selina in Wayne Manor. She switches from angel-faced 'proper' schoolgirl to a sociopath in the blink of an eye, and Selina's clumsy attempts to show Bruce what she is backfires horribly.
• Tabitha killing Martinez by stepping on his throat with her heel and leaving him to drown in his blood. It might sound a bit silly on paper, but the actual scene has no Gory Discretion Shot and is downright disturbing, complete with icky sound effects.
• Edward's complete breakdown after Kristen's death, manifesting in his Riddler personality hiding her body as a game that he eventually admits to enjoying before cheerfully carving her up.
• This episode was a nightmare for Gordon. He begins to have suspicions about how...easy Galavan's rise to power was, and by the time the pieces fall into place, Galavan is the new mayor with power to turn Gotham into a literal police state as he sees fit. And he can't do anything to stop him.

2x 08 Tonight's The Night

• Barbara Keane going full-blown Yandere, leading Jim into a trap all so she can force him to marry her and embrace his 'true' feelings. The icing on the cake is her in her wedding dress, holding a knife to Lee's throat and telling both her and Jim that she's going to carve her face off.
• Seeing Nygma going from completely horror-stricken at accidentally killing Kristen to having no trouble burying her in the woods, and killing a hunter who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • If you're a survivor of domestic abuse, Ed cutting up Kristen's body and burying her in the woods where no one will find her can hit terrifyingly close to home.
• Galavan showing his true colors to Bruce after he refuses to sell him his controlling shares in Wayne Enterprises. He does this by burning the only evidence of the identity of the Wayne killer in front of a shocked and horrified Bruce and Alfred.

2x 09 A Bitter Pill To Swallow

• Eduardo Flamingo, the cannibalistic hitman so psychotic that his membership to Gotham's underground hitman's club was revoked.
• The look on Jim's face as he beats Eduardo to a bloody pulp, then shoves a gun in his mouth to kill him. He only manages to pull himself back from the brink at the last minute.
• Flamingo brutally murdering Officer Parks by biting into her neck. She ends up spending her final moments laying down in a puddle of her own blood.
• Penguin and Nygma's burgeoning Villainous Friendship is mostly funny and oddly sweet, but the fact remains that Nygma pretty easily convinced Oswald to enjoy the fact that his mother is dead, because now nothing can hold him back. The way he casually talks about Kristen's death freeing him, something he was previously so traumatized by, is pretty unsettling too. Their segment in the episode ends with them gleefully celebrating the fact that Penguin has what it takes to start murdering people again, and they proceed to do...something to Galavan's captured lackey.

2x 10 The Son of Gotham

• Tom, the sadistic crook who kidnaps Bruce and Silver, hits Bruce a few times, then drags him into a room to slice off all his fingers. Well, he's pretty scary until you found out that he was hired by Bruce and Selina to scare Silver into spilling the beans about her uncle.

2x 11 Worse Than A Crime

• As much as he deserved it, Theo Galavan's death is still hard to watch: beaten to a bloody pulp by an enraged Penguin, shot point-blank by Gordon (who doesn't even flinch at killing him), and then has Penguin's umbrella shoved down his throat.
  • What's more, it's not clear that Gordon's shot killed Galavan on the spot or stunned him unconscious. If the latter, then it would mean that the umbrella was rammed down his throat while still alive.
• The way the Dumas remnants are so convinced that killing an innocent little boy - who knows nothing of the part his family played in their downfall - will bring about their salvation.
• Theo almost killing Silver for stopping Bruce's ritualistic sacrifice. He's that far gone that he'll not only get his hands dirty, but will gladly strangle a young girl to death, a line even his psychotic sister won't even cross.
• The ending scene. A man in a fedora frantically runs down a parking lot, finds out all the cars are locked, then chooses to hide behind a dumpster. We then see an equally mysterious (if not more so) man in a parka-like gunmetal suit similar to Bridgit Pike's, but with a large rifle connected to a coolant tank on his back, and arctic goggles along with the hood. The ice-themed man turns a corner to see the cowering man in the fedora, whom he decides to freeze over expressionlessly. What a (chilling) way to end the first half of the season.

2x 12 Mr. Freeze

• Test subject A-14's body liquefying on the table before ending up on the floor as a puddle of human effluence.
• The cop being frozen at the beginning. The sight of her eyes, now hardened and blue, almost corpselike... *shudders* And then of course she dies.
  • All of Victor Fries's victims in general are frozen slowly enough (half a minute instead of instantly) to imagine that it must have caused them horrible agony.
• "He told me they were mice."
• Nora coughing up blood. Imagine your loved one dying in your arms, and you being powerless to stop it. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• Doubles as Paranoia Fuel: just what the hell was in that tea that Penguin drank in Hugo Strange's office?
  • It must be something bad since that, or whatever Strange did, left Nigel the Asylum patient clawing out his own eyes while cackling similarly to another infamous loon.
  Nigel: See no evil! Do no evil! EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
• Eddie's Suppressed Rage at Bullock's insults. Slow burn indeed. He's never shown his anger visibly before; the cracking of the frozen rose in his hand alarms both Gordon and Bullock. Also, the last time he tried to talk through his feelings, and someone ignored him, well... Ask Doherty.
• For some untold reason, Butch drills a hole through a hapless mook's skull. Presumably the Mook had done something disloyal, but we don't see what: for the audience, it comes completely out of nowhere.

2x 13 A Dead Man Feels No Cold

• The horrific mental torture Oswald gets subjected to at the beginning of the episode. Whatever he was made to see was enough for him to start acting like the other inmates. And while he regained some sense of self briefly, who knows how long until he permanently breaks?
  • The Duck, Duck, Goose game immediately after Oswald's "therapy" session. It sounds like it should be funny, but instead it's disturbing. Oswald is so utterly confused and bewildered and seems unsure even of who he is.
  Inmate: You're the goose.
  Oswald: No, I'm- I'm a penguin.
• Bruce being so coldly determined to find the man who killed his parents...and kill the person in return. Even Selina is horrified at how far he's willing to go.
• Victor's modification to his freeze ray. He develops an ice grenade, casually tosses it into the river and it spreads all over the city.
• What Victor, Nora, and Leslie must have gone through this episode:
  • Nora realizes that she will not be reunited with her husband ever again, and decides to end her life right then. She must have been so terrified and so, so sad.
  • Victor loses his wife, the only person who mattered to him, and very probably blames herself for her death, even though she switched the cartridges. The horror of seeing his wife's frozen body crack, and realizing that she was dead...
  • Leslie in retrospect. She sees not one but TWO people die, both taking their own lives, and she is probably blaming herself for not being able to stop them somehow, even though there is nothing she could have done.
• The true purpose of Indian Hill being revealed: Hugo Strange wants to use Fries' research to bring back to life every arc villain since the second series began. That not only includes Galavan, but also Jerome.
• Strange's disturbing grin all throughout the episode. He looks like a delighted child, enjoying a very entertaining game as he plays with the prison doors and plays with the lives of Nora Fries, Victor Fries, Gordon, Leslie, the police, his own patients, Oswald, his experiments down in Indian Hill...

2x 14 This Ball of Mud and Meanness

• One that doubles as a tearjerker; Oswald's mental torture (powered by Crane's fear formula) at the beginning involves him being forced to watch another version of himself beat his beloved mother to death. Also, the real Oswald is gagged, and can do nothing but sob in horror.
• Nygma's increasing paranoia of Gordon. On both occasions, when Gordon turns his back on him, his friendly if inquisitive demeanour turns threatening and his sqeakish voice turns to a whispering growl as he talks to himself about Gordon plotting to arrest him.
• Bruce's entrance into the Celestial Garden. It's a club full of Nightmare Fetishists who idolize the Maniax and Jerome in particular... Didn't Jerome hold Bruce at knifepoint just before he died? On citywide television? Scary to think of what could have happened if someone in the club had decided to finish what Jerome started.
  • Or even kidnap him so they can cruelly interrogate Bruce about what it was like to meet Jerome.

2x 15 Mad Grey Dawn

• Four words: Barbara Kean is awake.
• How easily Nygma frames Gordon in this episode, as well as his callous murder of Officer Pinkney (which he clearly enjoyed). Ed is completely unstoppable and gets away with the whole thing. It's a terrifying glimpse of how much destruction he could wreak if he ever chose. Yeah, "don't screw with the Riddler" is putting it lightly.
  • The murder itself. Ed seems to be pulling a page out of his friend Penguin's book; beating Pinkney to death with a crowbar while he gleefully cackles. It doesn't help that we see the gory aftermath.

2x 16 Prisoners

• The stepdaughter's Attempted Rape of Oswald. Poor Oswald looks terrified.
• The beating the inmates inflict on Puck.
• Elijah's family tampering with his medication and his drinks. Serves as a very large dose of Paranoia Fuel, especially seeing what happens to Elijah in the end.

2x 17 Into the Woods

• The second half of Penguin's arc in the story - he poisons the dog upon finding the poison used to kill his father and then kills Elijah's stepchildren before feeding them to Elijah's widow and slashing her throat.
• Jim's terrifying Alone with the Psycho scene in Ed's apartment. He slowly realizes that the nerdy scientist he thought was his friend is actually the mastermind behind the utter hell he just went through...only for Ed to reveal that he knew Gordon was onto him and proceeds to try and kill him. All while the Riddler's creepy-as-hell theme plays in the background.
  Jim: I know it was you, Ed.
  Ed: (framed in shadow and red light while laughing) Guess what? I knew that you knew that I knew. (electrocutes him)
• Jim's confrontation with Ed in the woods. Ed's creepy riddle about death, his utter calm, it's all very unnerving.
  Jim: What happened to you? How did you become this way?
  Ed: (smugly) You dummy. This is what I am.

2x 18 Pinewood

• Just as our heroes are about to make it out okay, suddenly a familiar face arrives: Victor Fries, in a new suit reminiscient of his '60's suit and still armed with his icicle grenades and ice gun. Needless to say, everything goes south from the moment he appears.
• The very end of the episode - Theo Galavan is alive, and clearly out of his mind.
• Although it's Played for Laughs, the scene where Bullock sees Barbara leaving Jim's apartment, then starts calling for Jim while fumbling with a pile of pizza boxes, has some Fridge Nightmare Fuel in it: for all he knew, she'd just murdered Jim and blithely strode away.

2x 19 Azrael

• Galavan's resurrection manages to get even more horrifying, as we get to see his violent psychosis play out over the course of the episode. Getting a focus as Azrael actually makes it worse.
• Strange adoring Galavan's change, and expertly manipulating him, all while planning to do this to more test subjects.
• In contrast to Oswald's experience in Arkham, Ed is thriving in this environment as he has the intelligence to manipulate all of the crazier inmates into doing his bidding.
• Barbara has slipped back into insanity, and while it's played for laughs, even a professional mobster like Butch is terrified of her.
• Remember when Penguin killed his stepmother a few episodes back? Turns out, he's just left her corpse sitting right where she fell.
  • And his reaction to finding out that Galavan is alive? He starts laughing hysterically.
• Strange succeeding in resurrecting Galavan might cause some additional nightmares when one remembers that back in "Worse Than a Crime", when it was seen that Strange had Galavan's body, one of the other stored corpses looked like it was probably Jerome. And if Strange succeeded once and produced an axe-crazy psychopath, what happens if he tries again with someone who already was?

2x 20 Unleashed

• While Selina is sneaking around the halls of Arkham, she spots the guards struggling against a particularly vicious inmate. When we get a closer look at him, we can see he has green, scaly skin and bright yellow eyes. That's right, folks. You just got a glimpse at Gotham's version of Killer Croc, and he's just as terrifying as he usually is. The fact that he's a normal human size and not a hulking titan like he normally is doesn't really do anything to diminish the effect.
  • What's worse is that he actually spots Selina, and his first instinct was to try and lunge at her. If the guards had lost control for just a second...

2x 21 A Legion of Horribles

• Strange's backers are revealed: THE FRIGGING COURT OF OWLS.
  • Their first onscreen order for him is to burn Arkham Asylum to the ground in order to cover their tracks.
• You thought Fish was scary before? Now she's gained the power to make people obey her just by touching them.
  • And from the security guard's reaction, it's clear that Fish's mind control powers can leave anyone completely aware and yet unable to stop their bodies from following her commands.
• When Nygma holds Bruce and Lucius Fox in a Death Trap, it brings back a lot of memories of his role in Arkham City due to utilizing his Saw-esque challenges. But this time, an innocent civilian and an inexperienced Batman are caught in it.
• This episode introduces us to one of Strange's latest experiments: Basil, AKA Clayface. Unlike his monstrous comic book counterpart, Clayface is depicted as a normal man with eerie-looking eyes that lack irises, along with rubbery skin that can stretch off his face like elastic. The worst part? At the end, he ends up stealing Gordon's face and identity.
• Brigit Pyke aka Firefly is scary on her own, the way she mercilessly stalks Selina. Factor in that unlike every other Indian Hill experiment, she was brought in alive and more than likely fully conscious of what Arkham had in store for her. God knows what sort of psychological torture Strange inflicted on her...

2x 22 Transference

• Penguin displaying the rotting, decapitated head of his dead stepmother as a bust. It falls into Black Comedy territory when he and Barbara casually treat it like a fine work of art.
  Penguin (placing the "bust" in the center of the room): Here?
  Barbara: A little too central, maybe? You don't want one piece to overpower the room. Try over there.
• During the climax, Fish manages to escape Arkham by stealing a bus, which just so happens to hold all of Strange's test subjects as passengers. At the end of the episode, when the bus crashes, an unknowing old lady hears the subjects' cry for help and unwittingly frees them, and watches in horror as the freaks exit the bus and head to city. Keep in mind, Hugo Strange had mentioned several times that if they were to be released, all hell would break loose, and now they're free to roam about the city...
  • Also, listen closely during the scene. You can hear a familiar Evil Laugh amongst the experiments, followed by a very brief glimpse of a certain redheaded maniac. It makes you think, oh noJerome is back!