Nightmare Fuel / Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

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Despite being marginally lighter than the films, the series has the island throw just about as many terrors as it can at our main characters.

In General

• Toro, a foul-tempered Carnotaurus that seems to have it out for Darius and Kenji after they indirectly caused him to injure and scar himself. He then becomes the primary antagonistic dinosaur in the last few episodes of the show, at one so desperate to eat the characters that he runs/hops/shoves his way up the steps leading towards the monorails that the kids are trying to reach. In the lore, he was a Carnotaurus that was just so violent that he had his own special paddock away from the camp. He's resilient enough that he seems to survive an encounter with the Indominus rex. He's essentially Sharptooth in the modern day despite not being a T-rex.

Show

Season 1

• At an early point in the series, Kenji is almost eaten by Blue (who has largely become a mascot dinosaur for the series) and the rest of the Raptor Squad.
• Darius and Kenji's first run-in with Toro. The Carnotaurus wastes no time trying to chase them. Darius gets stuck in one of the feeding holes and would have gotten devoured if Kenji didn't pry it open.
• Brooklynn and Darius nearly drowning inside their Gyrosphere when it gets stuck in a sinkhole.
• The I. rex's first appearance, making it very clear to the audience that it's every bit as sadistic and cruel as it is in Jurassic World. After killing the park workers who came to help them, it snaps its head up and glares at the kids, making it very clear that it's going after them simply because it can.
• Eddie (the scientist) giving a manic laugh when the kids tell him they hoped he could help them. Aside from the implication that he's gone insane, the kids are chilled when he tells them he has no clue how to aid them, dashing any hopes that a grown-up could help them home. As if they hadn't lost enough innocence, he goes into a mad spiel about how Jurassic World is all about making monsters…
  • The fact that Eddie straight up abandons the kids. He really couldn't care less that these kids are out here by themselves and in danger, he just wants to save himself.
• The Indominus rex is up to her old tricks and eats at least three people (with one other kill being found just out of frame by Ben). One particular nasty death goes to the aforementioned Eddie after he abandons the kids and tries to steal their vehicle, only for the Indominus to ram the vehicle, smash it until he leaves the inside of it, and then finally devours him. Only a bush obscures us from seeing his body being torn to shreds.
• Roxie and Dave are kept in a waiting room for hours when trying to contact Claire about the multiple near-death incidents the kids got themselves into. Roxie suspects something is going very wrong and lockpicks a cabinet with radios. What they hear is gunshots and the ACU team screaming during their attempt to capture the Indominus Rex. The lines go out one by one as it kills them. Dave and Roxie can only stare in silence as they realize how bad the situation really is.
• The whole Mosasaurus encounter. There's just something so helpless about being stuck on a boat and trying to out-paddle a giant sea and hungry sea creature. Kenji's initial terror after realizing where they are really selling it. After Yasmina distracts the Mosasaur from eating Darius and Sammy, she ends up dangling on the feeding line, just barely missing the mosasaur. She ends up falling a considerable height, landing on her foot and badly spraining it.
  • A little bit of Squick, but Yasmina twisting her ankle. The show displays her foot giving out from the bad fall and in subsequent falls when she's trying to run away. The absolute terror it becomes for Yasmina to keep up with the other kids while limping badly. Eventually, it gets so bad that she can't support herself on her own and requires help or a walking stick.
• In the peaceful moment after surviving Jurassic World Lagoon, Kenji is seen looking for scraps of food in strewn popcorn containers. Here comes the realization that these kids haven't eaten a proper meal for over half a day until that point. When was the last time they even had a drink of water?
• Even though it turns out that the blaring sirens were just the park letting everyone know that the last ferry was leaving soon, the ominous echo of the Emergency Broadcast is just horrifying.
• Ben falling to his apparent death after being attacked by a Pteranodon in the monorail. Darius tries to save him but loses his grip and Ben ends up falling. Throughout the whole ordeal, Ben is heard begging for Darius to help him.
• The final chase scene between the kids and Toro. They are in the maintenance tunnels, which are lit in a freakish red light in addition to a majority of the hallways being blocked off due to the lockdown. It illuminates Toro in a way that makes him seem like some sort of demon. Just when there was some hope of making it to the ferry on time, the vents they escaped from end up being sealed in. Cornered, the kids are forced to finally face down the Carnotaurus in order to survive. The final showdown is mostly just the kids scrambling around trying not to get caught, despite their initial efforts to try to scare Toro off.
• When Roxanne and Dave try to convince a guard to hold out and keep the ferry from leaving just a little longer, he coldly makes a point that if they refuse to get on the ferry boat, he'll force them with a cattle prod if he has to. In reality, he is only doing his job and ensuring the counselors' survival. He has a point, they don't know for sure if the kids are alive and waiting might endanger the rest of the guests.

Season 2

• The Wham Shot of Rexy carrying something in her mouth while headed towards Main Street… where the kids are.
• In recent years, Rexy has very much been portrayed in an anti-heroic role, never really being a threat to the heroes while actively taking on the various villains or threats in the franchise. Here, she's one of the primary threats to the kids and forces them to move into the jungle as she's taken over Main Street as her lair. We also see what effect she has on the dinosaur population and they are terrified of her. An entire stampeding intraspecific herd does a 180 at the sight of her and gets the hell out of dodge as quick as they can.
• Mitch and Tiff become this when we learn they're big-game hunters. For Darius, he discovers this while sneaking into their yurt and finds the disembodied head of a Sinoceratops. So much for being eco-tourists.
  • Just the way Mitch and Tiff quickly change their tune towards the children once Darius learns the truth. They quickly make a 180 from being sweet and accommodating to menacing and threatening, making it a point to Darius that they will electrocute his friends (Sammy and Yaz) to death if he doesn't give them what they want.
  • Tiff on her own is pretty unsettling. She takes way too much pleasure at the thought of killing children via electrocution. Nothing is sacred to her to the point she'd willingly abandon her husband to a hungry T-Rex just to save her own hide and gleefully mocks Darius and Brooklynn for missing the boat, proudly boasting that she'll never tell the world that the kids were still trapped and that she hopes that they all rot. This lady is a scumbag.
  • Worse than a scumbag, she's a monster. If her shooting Grim was any indication, she goes hunting in order to vent any murderous tendencies she has. Anyone who needs to shoot another living creature just to feel better has issues.
• When the kids are in the tunnels and are at the control station, Kenji repeatedly presses a button. A shot follows the wires to reveal that it leads to something frozen in ice, which his incessant pressing has now started to thaw. We don't know what it is, and the last shot of the season reveals that it's out.
• Tiff's death. After killing Grim, Tiff leaves Mitch to get eaten by the Tyrannosaurus rex and abandons the children by getting on the boat and taking off. She doesn't get that far however as Grim's siblings - Limbo and Chaos get aboard the boat for revenge. We don't see the deed but we hear glass breaking and her terrified screams which suddenly cut off as we see her boat drift off into the ocean.
  • Limbo and Chaos in particular holding a grudge and hunting down Tiff shows that raptors are perhaps not the only dangerously smart dinosaurs.
  • What makes it worse is that for a few seconds, Tiff believes she's home free until she hears a thump, and the glass fogs with the two dinosaurs peering in at her. It's almost as if they gave her a false sense of hope before they killed her as payback. Even worse - she's away from the shore at the time: she has nowhere to run... and they know it. They definitely waited for revenge.
• During the scene in which Mitch and Tiff are pursued by Rexy, Mitch shocks Rexy with a cattle prod multiple times as she screams in pain and rage, cutting to a shot of her eye seemingly focusing on Mitch. Come the season 2 finale, when Mitch is hung up in the tree by the snare, Rexy comes up to him and her eyes actually narrow and lets out an angry snarl as she recognizes him. Before during her pursuits of humans, she seemed to view them as just food or intruders trespassing on her territory (mainly because no-one else human has managed to lay a finger to her). Here, she holds a grudge against Mitch and seems to remember what he did. From the sound of it, she finishes him off in one single bite.
• Yaz visibly reacting in revulsion as she apparently sees the remains of the Indominus rex in the Mosasaur exhibit. We the audience don't get to see it, but apparently, some pieces were floating on the water.
  • Fallen Kingdom makes it worse - the head is upside down, meaning the Mosasaurus snapped the Indominus's neck instead of drowning. Anyone want to guess what is floating on the surface? Neck muscles and tendons, perhaps?
• Ben having to survive for weeks on Isla Nublar with no human aid. That alone is terrifying but he has to deal with the local carnivores like Toro and the compys. Luckily, he has Bumpy by his side to protect him… until he accidentally drives her away in a fit of anger, and has to spend the rest of the day and night surviving alone while the compys slowly surround him.
• Darius confirms that the compys are venomous and you have to quickly drive them away before they bite. If the original Jurassic Park novel is anything to go by, a compy's bite can put a human in a dream-like paralysis, completely helpless and dully aware as the compys eat them alive. And after being treated as a relatively harmless nuisance in the first season, the compys start displaying their Lost World pack behavior and their primary targets are children.
• During the Main Street stand-off, Rexy managed to chase Tiff and Mitch away. Darius and Sammy watch Rexy begin to storm away when she stops…senses them, and turns around. Once she finds them, she chases them into a corner and snaps her jaws at them as they back up further into the corner screaming for their lives, her jaws inches from their feet. The only thing really stopping her from getting them is that the corner's opening is too small for her head. It reminds one of Lex and Tim in the first film only having a pane of glass blocking them from her jaws.

Season 3

• In general, the third season of the series is much more horror-based. The season's dark atmosphere is visually illustrated by the constant overcast, gloomy and stormy weather. It also has the largest body count of the season so far, though they're mostly dinosaurs.
• The homicidal monstrosity that is the Scorpios rex, aka E750. This new hybrid is clearly the building blocks of what led to the Indoraptor and even the Indominus rex. It's a misshapen mutant that's described by Dr. Wu as being unpredictably bipolar in behavior - placid one moment, highly aggressive the next - as well as extremely venomous. A jet black demon with red eyes (and vision POV shots not unlike the ones featured in Predator), it's first introduced killing a Ceratosaurus. What makes things worse is that there are TWO of them. Not only that they HATE each other and go out of their way to attack one another on sight. They're without a doubt two of the most explicitly horror-themed dinosaurs in the entire franchise - and as a final point, all the other dinosaurs are more terrified of them than they are of Rexy. As in, Rexy the Tyrannosaurus rex.
  • Speaking of its venom (which is deployed via quills), it's strong enough to bring down a full-grown Brachiosaurus. Sammy herself gets poisoned and comes extremely close to dying.
  • Before that, there's the entire first encounter. The Scorpios rex notices the kids and lets out a loud, absolutely chilling scream that deafens the kids, before disappearing in the lightning flash. When the kids notice it again, it was already climbing on the tree ready to pounce on them. The rest of the encounter has the kids being absolutely terrified out of their minds as the Scorpios stalks them without giving them any breathing room, and would have killed them right then and there if it didn't get distracted by the flaming tree or the sounds in the distance and left, though not before poisoning Sammy with its quills first. The kids really stood no chance against it.
  • While not as big as the Indominus, the hybrid is noticeably larger than the Indoraptor. Which makes it all the more surprising and terrifying that the thing can climb trees. It even drags its kills up there, which Darius finds out when half of a dead Gallimimus almost falls on him.
  • The Scorpios rex's constant use of Death from Above is so horrifying because in the dark all that's visible is its red eyes. In addition, as shown in the first scene with Blue in the old visitor's center, most dinosaurs don't normally look up, making the Scorpios an outside context problem even for predators. No wonder the entire island is in a panic.
  • During the first fight between the two Scorpios, some of the characters flee and lock themselves in the limo. However, this does little as the limo finds itself smack dab in the middle of the fight, leading to it getting bashed, slashed, and smashed from the force of the fight's impacts. These things really hate one another, and it makes perfect sense why the Indominus rex ate her sibling.
• Immediately Everything the Camp Fam goes through after the Scorpios rex's initial attack. At first, it seems everyone got out of the attack relatively unscathed… until Darius points out Sammy's been hit by the creature's quills. Eerily, she remarks she didn't even know they were even there. And then the venom takes effect. Brooklynn and Yaz are forced to painfully remove the quills from the already-poisoned Sammy, making her last conscious moments in agony before she passes out. But the worst part is, they realize taking out the quills doesn't help, and are (momentarily ^note  thanks to the video revealing there's an antidote ) facing the very real possibility that one of their own could die!
  • It's even worse when one observes that sickly shade of green she starts turning as the venom gets more and more into her system, especially when it reaches a tipping point where she shivers uncontrollably. Reminds one all too well of how Nima must've been when she was suffering from the Troodon's venom.
  • It's an absolute miracle she's even alive as several moments earlier, as mentioned above, a Brachiosaurus was brought down by its venom. If the venom is that potent in that big a dinosaur, imagine how potent it is in a human.
• Yaz's escape from the Scorpios - from the tense staring match that starts the scene to the chase.
• The group finds themselves being caught in between both Scorpios in the visitor's center - who both want to eat them and kill one another. The gang is fortunately lucky that Blue repays Darius for helping free her from the pinned truck by throwing herself at both hybrids.
• Remember the kitchen from the original film? It reappears and like Lex and Tim, our cast finds themselves being stalked by a predatory dinosaur. Though stalking isn't the right word - Scorpios absolutely trashes the place in its pursuit of our cast.
• The Ouranosaurus. In Jurassic Park III we were introduced to the sail-backed Super-Persistent Predator that is the Spinosaurus. Here, we have sail-backed super persistent herbivores. These dinosaurs pursue the characters from land to sea, not letting up until the gang manage to scare them away with fireworks.
• The Monolophosaurus. Darius informs the group these are loner dinosaurs. No one told the Monolophosaurus that though - a bunch of them swarm into Kenji's father's penthouse and hunt the characters in the hallways, rooms, air ducts, and elevator shafts.
• Rexy pursues the group towards the end of the season, chasing the characters in the gorge and leading to multiple instances of being too close for comfort. She has them in her "claws" with the only thing stopping her from being a team of ACU soldiers in Main Street (ie, the same ones Rexy pursued at the start of Fallen Kingdom).
  • Right before her pursuit, however, Rexy does get a human kill in that is seconds away from being fully onscreen before it cuts away at literally the last second. We see her jaws open over the unlucky soul and start to slam shut, then bam, cue a reaction shot from the characters and a grisly crunch.
• The Reveal that the kids have been on the island for six months since the fall of Jurassic World.
• The possible death of the female pilot who was with Kenji, Ben, and Sammy. The moment she took her eyes off the skies, a brachiosaur rises out of nowhere and causes a swerve, sending the group into a tailspin. Kenji first regains consciousness and almost falls out of the crashed chopper. And then as the others awaken, they find the pilot gone with no corpse to be found. Sammy's question on what happened to her is never answered, leaving the audience to imagine all sorts of unpleasant outcomes. Doubles as a Tear Jerker since the pilot's Tragic Mistake in turning away was her finally coming around to the kids. Sort of like Hap from Season 2.
• At the end of the Season finale, when it seems like the kids might finally be safe and heading home, the ending shot reveals that there's an unknown stowaway on the boat, which is growling and rattling the door handle trying to get out. Becomes Nightmare Retardant in season 4 when it’s revealed to merely be a lone Compsognathus.

Season 4

• In the first episode of the season, the boat gets attacked by the Mosasaur while at open sea. The Mosasaur is faster than the boat, which gets trashed and it's a miracle the kids all wash up on the same part of coast on the same island.
  • Immediately preceding the Mosasaur attack is Darius having to untangle the propellers, which have been caught in kelp. Said kelp forest being a known place sharks appear, and do appear given the bad luck the kids often get.
    • It doesn't help that the Mosasaurus is bigger than a sperm whale at this point. And has two rows of incredibly sharp teeth.
• Ben upon finding water and fresh berries, he panics that perhaps the berries are poisonous look-alikes of the berries he and Bumpy used to eat.
  • It also brings up Fridge Horror that had Ben been right, and had he not thought of this sooner, anywhere between one to all of them could've been lying dead by now. The idea of them all being dead would be scarier, as they would've died before coming home, and none of their loved ones would've never known they were still alive!
• Yaz experiencing PTSD, after all the dinosaurs they've been through, is all too real. She has nightmares involving the previous dinosaurs they've survived, freezes up at danger, and has troubles falling asleep. It's pretty unnerving from a certain stand-point.
  • The way these sequences are shot is pretty unsettling on its own, as there's often little distinction between her nightmares and reality until the scary stuff starts happening. It makes for some very effective Mood Whiplash.
• Kash. For being a nerd who tries to overcompensate with tattoos and flashy technology, he's nobody to take lightly. He's the very embodiment of how unethical Mantah-Corp is, either forcing normally peaceful dinosaurs to fight each other (Big Eater and Little Eater) or putting them through inhuman conditions (Pierce). But the most troubling indication of his cruel tendencies is to how he treats the BRAD that greets him. It wasn't the one that failed him, but when it brings him to the ice water where its comrade fell, he callously shoves it in. By all accounts, he makes Henry Wu's own cold handling of his creations look affectionate.
  • He immediately tries to kill Dr. Mae Turner with VELOCIRAPTORS the moment she tries to call him out (and tries to steal her research on top of that), and Darius has to constantly tip toe around his complete disregard for life, dinosaur or human. The ONLY reason he stops his sick dinosaur fight is because Darius makes him think of how much money each dinosaur costs, and Darius is only alive by playing to his ego.
• The BRADs are like the Dogs from Black Mirror: persistent in their tasks and ruthless towards anything they consider a threat.
  • And then there are the BRAD-Xs. Larger, stronger, and near-indestructible. They are basically the T-800 of the Jurassic franchise.
• Imagine Kenji's devastation to learn that his own father is the enigmatic head of Mantah-Corp.
• The surreal first encounter with the Spinosaurus. It causally approaches barely visible in the heat, in broad daylight before attacking.

Season 5

• The way the Mantah Corp Raptors deal with their victims show that they are just as sadistic as their cousins, specifically the Big One.
  • Once they are free from Kash's control, did they immediately attack him? No, they knock him down and let the asshole realize that he's fucked before they drag him off and rip him apart. They want to make him suffer.
  • After one of the raptors pin down one of the goons by stepping on her hand, she clicks her toe claw as if telling to look up and sees her teeth bearing down on him.
• The Compies killing Molina. It starts with one biting her leg, paralyzing it. Then another gets the other leg, leaving her to futilely try to crawl away while they swarm her and eat her alive. The feed cuts out just before anything can be seen, but there's a distinctly wet crunching sound for a moment before that.
• In its own way, the startling accuracy that Mr. Kon can manipulate anyone to his whims. Brooklyn and Sammy snoop around his office? He'll later use it against them to turn his son on them. Try to warn Kenji's his dad's a bad guy? Gaslight him into thinking they're going behind his back. Mae protests helping him mind-control the dinosaurs? Blackmail her with the threat he'll hurt the children. He's a chessmaster who's "as smart as he is evil".
  • Heck, there's the sadistic way he tried to break Sammy's will to give her the password.
  • There's also a tinge of Mundane Horror that, like any abusive parent, he methodically gaslights his son and manipulates him with promises of love and father-son bonding. It's to a degree of precision that, once you take out the dinosaurs, it's a toxic parent manipulating his child to cut his friends out of his life so he can have more control over him...
  • Towards the climax of the season, Daniel uses what little control he has over the environment on Mantah Corp Island to make it hail on the children, his own son included. It's a small thing compared to the lines he has crossed and has yet to cross, but it's a very unsettling prelude to how he'll do anything to sweat out the password from the kids.
• Mae voicing that mind-controlling the dinosaurs makes them scared...

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