Nightmare Fuel / Justice League

Now you see the real me.^note This isn't a mask. This was behind his face.

WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.

Justice League may have heralded the end of the DCAU, but it still had plenty of chilling scenes to send shivers down any viewer’s spine.

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Justice League

1x01/02/03 — Secret Origins

• Really, the nightmares started from episode one. However narmy the Imperium may have been, its attack was anything but.
  • For starters, there's the fact that they replace key figures in society entirely, and keep the victim trapped in a sort of pod. That's some real Invasion of the Body Snatchers level stuff.
  • For that matter, there's a certain shock to seeing what appears to be an ordinary guard dog start walking straight up a wall as it transforms into something entirely different.
• Whenever Superman cries out in pain and images flash through his mind, it's probably a good idea not to pause the video and look at them. Some of them are truly terrifying◊.
• J'onn's torture. It, quite frankly, looks like someone digging their fingernails inside someone's face. All bloodless, though. Even so, it's terrifying, especially when he's essentially absorbed by another Martian.
  • The absence of blood arguably makes it even more disturbing, almost like J'onn's body is being denied the chance to even express or expose its pain.
  • The part where he deals with the Imperium, grabbing the tentacles still embedded into his own body and dragging it into the sunlight. We see the Imperium's outer layers starting to form bubbles that quickly burst like a hyper skin irritation or boils. And as it screams, J'onn delivers the line: "You live in the shadows, and shun the light. Why? Does it burn your pale, putrid skin?" The seething hatred in J'onn's voice is all the more chilling.
• J'onn tricks a pair of Imperium soldiers into cornering a few League members so he can get the drop on them from behind. He puts an intangible fist through each of their chests and goes solid. Ouch. Lampshaded by Flash who highlights how J'onn veers into being a straight-up Horrifying Hero because of this.
  Flash: Is it just me or does he creep you out too?

1x08/09 — Paradise Lost

• Faust's ultimate fate. Yeah, he deserved it, but it's still really chilling to see him go from Smug Snake to screaming horror while Hades just stands there calmly explaining that he now merely has knowledge of human suffering. The scene cuts away as he undergoes Rapid Aging and is implied to have crumbled into dust.
  Superman: Good Lord.

1x16/17 — Legends

• While generally amusing, the entirety of the episode has some extremely creepy subtext. Indeed, the fact that the world is so bright and sunny makes it all the more frightening when you put together the pieces. The idyllic 50s comic book fantasy world was created by Ray Thompson, formerly a young child who had to experience his entire world go up in flames when a nuclear war broke out, was mutated by the radiation into some... inhuman... cancerous... thing, and was driven so insane that the only way he could cope was by using his newfound psychic powers to create an eternal happy dream world where this horrible tragedy never happened.
  • The Reveal of what happened to Earth in that alternate dimension is chilling, when you consider how close our world has come to that, and that it could still end up as such.

1x20/21 — A Knight of Shadows

• We get to see what J'onn is really capable of when he cuts loose. Under Morgan le Fay's influence with the promise of bringing back his dead family and homeworld, J'onn starts fighting Etrigan for the Philosopher's Stone and shows off a few different powers that we hardly ever see again: he turns into solid metal, apparently becomes invisible to to get in a sucker punch, and turns into smoke to get behind Etrigan before attacking his mind with a declaration which seems to suggest he's planning to kill Etrigan right there.
  J'onn: Nobody will keep me from my loved ones! Especially not you!
• We also get to see Morgaine le Fay kill a man onscreen by stealing his life-force.

1x24/25/26 — The Savage Time

• J'onn being tortured by the Nazis. We don't actually see what happens, but we can definitely hear the screams...
  • Well, actually, that was probably him faking it, since he replaced the torturer easily enough. Shape-changing, Super-Strength, phasing...he's equipped for this. Doesn't make his screaming any less creepy. Seriously, something about J'onn's voice makes any screaming, real or faked, kind of scary.
  • Hearing what sounds like J'onn's voice as he is tortured on an operating table becomes Harsher in Hindsight as J'onn's voice actor Carl Lumbly would play Isaiah Bradley who revealed to have being forcibly turned into a Super-Soldier human experiment for thirty years with memories of it continuing to haunt him up to his advanced age in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
  • Given that the torturer looks weak when the guards find him strapped to the table, this leads to the very real question of whether some of those screams might have been from J'onn torturing him?!

2x01/02 — Twilight

• The sheer destruction the New Gods inflicted upon Apokolips's army and Darkseid's palace shows that Good Is Not Soft. Granted Darkseid started it.
  Highfather: We know of your mad ambitions. Break the treaty again and you will be destroyed.
• Desaad's death. Darkseid blasts him to oblivion after he called him a fool without thinking.

2x03/04 — Tabula Rasa

• By the end of the episode, the Monster of the Week, AMAZO, leaves Earth and heads out into space. That would be a good thing.....until you realize that he'll explore new worlds and gain new abilities along the way. Like J'onn said, we better pray he better not comes back.
  • And then, of course, come Unlimited, AMAZO really does return. And the entire expanded Justice League is absolutely powerless to stop him. Luckily for the entire universe, AMAZO decides against doing anything especially destructive and becomes fully neutral by the end of the episode.

2x05/06 — Only a Dream

• The episode's plot itself. You can't deny this is a cartoon adaption of Nightmare on Elm Street. That was a horror movie for adults; this is a cartoon for kids.
• The ending of Part 1 where Doctor Destiny (who provides the page image) has gotten everybody but Martian Manhunter and Batman to go to sleep. Each of the heroes go to sleep, while a toned-down music box plays in the background. Finally, you hear Doctor Destiny softly chuckling. Not an Evil Laugh, just a...chuckle. Worst of all, Superman goes to sleep and Batman calls him moments later, trying too late to warn him. End of episode.
• What John Dee does to his wife Penny. She leaves him for another man, but upon getting his powers, Dee pays her a visit and unveils his costumed, skull-faced appearance as Doctor Destiny, growing a set of razor-sharp fingernails as he does. Whatever he does to Penny, she is left screaming in a sleep no one can wake her from. She dies not too long afterwards.
  Penny: John, please.
  Dee: You know, I never liked that name. It's so...ordinary. Especially for someone who has such big things in store. You know, a destiny. Oh, destiny! I like it—Doctor Destiny. What do you think?
  Penny: You're crazy.
  John: I think you're finally seeing the real me. [his clothes turn into spooky robes] And now that I'm a doctor... [his face falls off, revealing a skull] ...I think I'll perform some surgery.
• Doctor Destiny looms over Flash when he enters his dreams and delivers a chilling line.
  Flash: I get it, I'm dreaming. All I have to do is close my eyes and I'll... [closes eyes, nothing happens]
  Doctor Destiny: Wake up?
• While someone is inside the dream Doctor Destiny traps you in, you can't wake up, and the torture the victim goes through causes their heart to accelerate to dangerous levels until it eventually gives out. Batman and Martian Manhunter make every attempt they can to wake the others, and Martian Manhunter in the end resorts to entering the dreams to save the others, with nothing else working.
  • There is no hiding from this guy. You can be anywhere in the world, and he can find you, even if he doesn't know where you are. If you get closer to him, his powers can affect you even if you're awake. Batman thankfully had the Heroic Willpower to keep him out.
• Hawkgirl's nightmare deserves mention. Green Lantern, Flash, and Superman all have nightmares relating to their powers. Hawkgirl has the much more relatable fear of confined spaces, which Doctor Destiny exploits by burying her alive. The terrified screaming from the otherwise tough Hawkgirl doesn't help. She breaks down and cries in fear, begging for anyone to help while Supes, GL, and J'onn are right outside the locked dream door unable to go through, an unsettling reaction she never quite matches later on in the series. Prompting a Heroic Willpower moment in GL (which is good, as his powers are driven by willpower). Unfortunately, the door to Hawkgirl's dream even being locked in the first place serves as subtle Foreshadowing that Hawkgirl isn't what she seems, and it would've certainly doomed her to die at the hands of Doctor Destiny if Batman hadn't beaten him in time.
• The cannibalistic kids in Flash's nightmare? They had nothing to do with the nightmare per se, but it was so out of nowhere. They got to be even scarier than the context of the scene. Good thing he has Super-Speed... Or not.
• Superman's nightmare is both horrifying and heartbreaking. It starts with him accidentally frying Lois with heat vision. We don't even see it, but from Supes' response, it must have been horrifying, especially given what we see of his reactions; of all the Leaguers, his is the most outwardly pronounced. After he accidentally kills Lois, we cut to his apartment where we see him screaming and flailing around as if in agony. And given what we see of the rest of the nightmare, it probably didn't get any better for him from there.
  • Superman accidentally destroying Metropolis and snapping Jimmy Olsen's spine later in his nightmare. When Superman inadvertently crushes Jimmy with a hug, you can actually hear the poor teen's bones snap as he screams in agony — and suddenly goes limp. Then the viewer gets treated to a few seconds of seeing his body, his eyes wide open in a chillingly blank stare. The whole thing is completely bloodless, but that doesn't mean it isn't disturbing.
• Green Lantern's nightmare is another one that's very effective in how relatable and relatively subtle it is. Imagine coming home, only to find that it isn't home anymore, that no one recognizes you, and that the people you care about are terrified of you for reasons you don't understand, that even your surroundings have changed.
  • Later in the nightmare, Green Lantern is being led to a giant battery with false promises of finding inner peace when he is actually being lured to his doom. Superman and J'onn's desperate attempts to stop him are overpowered by Doctor Destiny. The moment GL runs into the battery, Doctor Destiny lets out an uncanny laugh that truly signals his transition from a vindictive human experimenting with powers into a genuine monster.
• Even though he's on the side of good, hearing Batman's quiet humming in his head has a creepy sound to it, like you can hear him about to snap underneath from lack of sleep, and yet he's so calm...
• Dee's fate at the end is creepy. He's lying in bed, seemingly catatonic and humming Frere Jacques. Who knows what he's seeing...

2x07/08 — Maid of Honor

• What happens to the King of Kaznia, who is poisoned and paralyzed by Vandal Savage as part of his plan to take over the country. He's unable to move and Forced to Watch his daughter Audrey get married to the man responsible for his predicament.
  • Worse, since we never see what happens to him, it's heavily implied he most likely perished when the rail-gun was redirected to destroy the castle!
    • Which, if that wasn't bad enough, also means that Batman, of all people, almost killed him with a big honking space gun!
    • When we see the people running out of the castle, you can see one of the soldiers carrying someone dressed in purple. The king was wearing purple pajamas. So, the king didn't actually die in the explosion. But what if the guard hadn't been on the watch?
• Near the end of the episode, Savage, who was in ground zero for an asteroid hitting the Kasnian royal palace, confirms his immortality by breaking out of the rubble, still healing from the blast, resetting his bones, and screaming in a mixture of rage and indescribable pain.
• The look of horror on Flash's face when he briefly gets spaced.

2x09/10 — Hearts and Minds

• Despero tries to Mind Rape Hawkgirl, causing her to scream in agonizing pain that grows louder and more intense until Green Lantern saves her.
• The ending. Despero's army is turned into trees, all the while they are aware of this. Their faces as this happens tells you everything need to know. Especially chilling is a close-up of a face stuck in a scream, while only one eye is left open.

2x11/12 — A Better World

• The Justice Lords' Superman's Psychotic Smirk after he kills President Luthor, all with creepy background music.
  • Also, Lord-Batman asking "Do you smell something burning?" right before a cut to where we see the burned remains of the Oval Office desk and Lord-Superman standing next to it, which lets us know that, yes, he did blast Luthor.
  • What he says to Lord-Batman and Lord-Diana right after makes it a LOT worse. "I'm great."
  • Lord-Superman lobotomizes Doomsday. The matter-of-fact way in which he does it and the speed in which Doomsday goes from being relatively well-spoken to drooling are equally chilling.
    • In "The Doomsday Sanction," the real Superman is actually driven by desperation to attempt the same maneuver, but due to Doomsday's Adaptive Ability, this no longer works. Thus three bits of Nightmare Fuel in one scene: 1) Superman can do that, 2) and he will if he's desperate enough, 3) and on some enemies, it still won't be enough.
  • Lord-Batman. The biggest nightmare in all this is that Batman himself has turned over to the dark side. That in itself is scary enough (this is the guy who sees the Justice League, all of the Justice League, as a countermeasure to himself). But what's scarier is that after Lord-Superman vaporizes Luthor, all he offers is a disinterested "Well, it had to be done." He has no sadness, no revulsion towards Lord-Superman; in fact, he sees Lord-Superman killing Luthor as a necessary move. If Thou Shalt Not Kill was ever a principle for this version of the character, he abandoned it before even Lord-Superman.
• The League visits the Lords-verse Arkham. Many villains, particularly Batman's rogues gallery, are acting very much out of character. Then you notice two small dots on all of their heads. Then, you recall what Lord-Superman did to Doomsday. Oh, and Scarface's dots are on the dummy, not on the ventriloquist.
  • The first person who is revealed to have been lobotomized by Lord-Superman is Joker, who is now the secretary of Arkham Asylum. Hearing his voice and seeing his appearance to be so calm, almost serene, it really draws an unsettling feeling, considering we're used to seeing him as a psychopathic and murdering clown. Who would've thought one way for Joker to be scarier was to calm him down?
  • Flash's scene with Poison Ivy. Ivy's an unpleasant and fanatical piece of work in the DCAU and without, but seeing her like that...content, calm, friendly, and humming as she cuts the the buds off of flowers...seems just fundamentally wrong. Creepy, you might call it. Especially when you think about Ivy's obsession with plants—she nearly goes into conniptions if anyone so much as touches one of her plants. For her to go so far as to actually be "hurting" plants...it's so thoroughly not her. Even when a decapitated robot head falls right next to her, she just continues on with her work.
• Then there's Flash telling Lord-Superman that he couldn't kill him, since the death of his Flash was what started everything, and that even now he wouldn't go that far.
  Lord-Superman: I've done a lot of things I've never thought I'd do these last two years. One more won't hurt.

2x13/14 — Eclipsed

• The soldier who is possessed at the beginning. This guy wakes up and learns he killed his whole unit, with whom he seemed rather close. Especially since the last time we see him in the episode, he's still held responsible for it.
• The song people possessed by the gem sing starts out kinda narmy until everyone but Flash gets possessed and starts singing it. Combined with the dark, enclosed Watchtower with no exits, it really hammers home the oppressive nature.

2x15/16 — The Terror Beyond

• Being an homage to the Cthulhu Mythos, this episode is stuffed to the gills with it.
  • Ichthultu is an expy of Cthulhu, appearing as a gigantic and monstrous skull-like apparition with flaming eyes and Combat Tentacles. Even worse, Hawkgirl's race used to worship the thing because it gave them technology, knowledge, and prosperity, but they eventually took a Nay-Theist approach when its exchange price of the souls of Thanagarians people became too great. Ichthultu is shown to still be bitter about the rejection.
  • The Screamers. Oh God, the Screamers. These are headless horrors with screaming mouths in their palms.
    • It only gets worse when you realize that they're Shoggoths in the shape of Y'golonac, Lovecraftian God of Rape and Sexual Perversion.
  • The huge multitude of Elder Things that attack Atlantis and try to defend Ichthultu from our heroes.

2x17/18 — Secret Society

• Killer Frost is basically Mr. Freeze but much more gleefully homicidal. Grodd even states that the only reason Frost joins the Secret Society is just to have the opportunity to kill people.

2x19/20 — Hereafter

• Savage himself in said future. There's another reason why he's become much more sedate and friendly: Countless generations of living with the consequences of his actions had made him bored with insanity and madness. Which makes the way he chirpily recalls how he killed the Justice League as if he remembering a sports game seem so unnerving.
• Though it doubles as a CMoH, the ending. The particular alternate future, 30,000 years older and more insane version of Vandal Savage encountered in this episode had destroyed almost all life on Earth except himself, allowing himself 30,000 years to think about what he has done. He wants Superman to use his Time Machine (that Savage could not use himself) to rectify his mistake despite his knowledge that, in doing so, his current self would cease to exist, while the present-day Savage would live forever. Savage hits two birds with one stone: Simultaneously ceasing to exist and living and living and living until no one and nothing is around to care that he still exists... Either that, or stopping the evil plan that had resulted in the apocalypse in the first place resulted in the actual death of the present-day Savage...which is unsettling in and of itself.

2x21/22 — Wild Cards

• The episode's twist gives a healthy dose of Paranoia Fuel: Joker set up the bombs in Las Vegas just to increase viewership so he could broadcast Ace's hypnotic waves to drive them all insane. And guess who's watching the television while Ace blankly stares at the screen...
  • Then there's the scene where Ace shows Joker that, no matter how crazy you are, there's always an even lower depth to fall...though seeing Joker Hoist by His Own Petard was simply priceless.
  • Not to mention, the Justice League is utterly helpless to stop Ace. Her psychic powers are so strong that Superman and Flash are dumbstruck and paralyzed, and Batman—who managed to shut Dr. Destiny out of his mind—is left crawling around and doing his best not to throw up. Even after the threat has passed, Batman can do nothing but watch Ace escape. Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds though she may be, Ace is a pretty terrifying villain.

2x24/25/26 — Starcrossed

• J'onn's mental interrogation of Kragger; he couldn't normally read Thanagarian minds due to their mental defenses.
  J'onn: I'll just have to try...harder.

Justice League Unlimited

1x02 — For the Man Who Has Everything

• At the end, Wonder Woman puts the Black Mercy on Mongul. Right before the episode ends, we get to hear painful screaming and horrible destruction, presumably all from Mongul's fantasy. And Superman wasn't the only one screaming.
  • This episode deserves mention for when the Black Mercy is put on Batman: We get to relive the moment his parents were shot (in black and white, to give it a proper Film Noir feel), but in his dream, his father fights Joe Chill and continues to punch him. But as Wonder Woman tears off the plant, we see Thomas Wayne be overpowered by Chill via shadow, zoom in on young Bruce's face turning more and more horrified as we finally hear a combination of a tearing sound and a gunshot when the Black Mercy is removed...it's truly horrifying. Made worse in that when the plant attaches to him, we see the only genuine and contented smile Batman ever has in the entirety of the Justice League run.
    • Even the nature of the fantasy is unnerving in and of itself. In the comic the episode was based off of, by the time the Black Mercy is pulled off of him, the fantasy had extended to growing up, settling down, and having a child. That's not the case here; Bruce's deepest, truest wish is simply to watch his dad beat Joe Chill to a pulp. Forever.
• Wonder Woman falling victim to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Mongul is pretty unsettling to watch. We have seen her take a beating before, but this episode in particular makes it worse than the others. For instance, you have Mongul coming close to actually killing her. She had to crawl to Batman to save him from the Black Mercy because she can hardly stand after the beating she took from Mongul. When Mongul takes her down and then stomps on her, the scream she lets out is chilling.
• This episode also stresses just how dangerous Mongul is. Literally the only being that can stop him is Superman, but he was already taken care of (temporarily). Batman even states that if Superman doesn't snap out of it, Mongul will kill Wonder Woman, then him, then everyone on the planet. That's right, even Batman is scared of Mongul and can't think of a plan to beat the alien tyrant other than "get Superman into the fight."
  • Mongul himself gives a very chilling Badass Boast right before he starts beating Wonder Woman.
    Mongul: You don't understand. He was the only obstacle in my way. The rest of you are already dead.

1x03 — Kid Stuff

• The ending. Mordred's spell to get rid of all grown-ups is reversed when Mordred is tricked into turning into an adult himself, and his mother Morgan le Fay notes the spell giving him eternal youth is now broken, leaving him only with eternal life. As if simply thinking about the ramifications of this isn't enough, the last shot of the episode shows Morgan tenderly wiping the drool from the mouth of a glassy-eyed old man wearing the clothes Mordred wore as a child. That's not to say he didn't deserve it, though.

1x04 — Hawk and Dove

• When Wonder Woman is trying to get the Kasnians to stop fighting to depower the Annihilator armor, one of them gets the terribly bright idea to not only be indignant and say he doesn’t take orders from women, but assault her with the butt of his rifle. Then Wonder Woman gives him this look of murderous rage and snatched his rifle from him and almost runs it through him, before calming down and simply bending it instead. The nightmare fuel is in that brief moment of anger, had Wonder Woman not been tempered with compassion and wisdom she could have just as easily broken him like a twig.
• While Dove’s plan to stop the Annihilator is a Moment of Awesome, Hawk is visibly terrified at the sight of his brother potentially dying. Made even worse if you’ve read Crisis on Infinite Earths.

1x06 — Fearful Symmetry

• The episode starts off with a horrifying nightmare of Supergirl hunting down and trying to kill a man in cold blood and demolishing any forces that get in her way. She wakes up right as she kills the man with heat vision and is so frightened by the dream she actually blew through the ceiling with her heat vision. Gets worse when it's revealed they were actually memories of her assassin clone Galatea, essentially meaning Kara has been reliving the murderous acts of a psycho clone.
  "Supergirl": You can scream now if you want.
  (cue blood-curdling scream shot heard from afar)

1x08 — The Return

• Seeing Amazo tear through the Justice League to get to Luthor. In space, he destroys a fleet of Javelins and defeats nearly dozens of heroes, including Green Lantern, Doctor Light, Captain Atom, and Superman himself. In the sky, he goes through the second wave (Supergirl, Fire, Red Tornado, and Rocket Red) like tissue, during which he splits Red Tornado in half and destroys him. He doesn't even try in the last wave (Wonder Woman, Flash, Steel, and Ice). The thought of something that powerful existing is horrifying. Doctor Fate was not kidding when he claimed Luthor was saving the world.

1x09 — Ultimatum

• Amanda Waller knows Batman's secret identity and holds the knowledge over his head during every one of their later meetings.

1x10 — Dark Heart

• Earth is being devoured piece by piece, and everyone involved in the situation is mostly being able to do nothing as they see the wave of machines sweeping towards them.
  • How Cadmus decides to take the machines that utterly destroyed the Justice League and could have possibly destroyed the world with ease. Even after learning of what they are, they still think they are capable of controlling it.
  • From the US government's view, the fact that the Justice League's Watchwower has a nuke beam equivalent on board that is pointing down would scare anyone. The League didn't tell anyone about it; they just had it, justifying it by saying had they had it during the Thanagarian Invasion, it would have ended sooner. It solidifies the fear the government and Cadmus has for the League; if they wanted to take over the world, the beam combined with their metahuman manpower would make it so.
• The episode starts with a nightmarish moment. A couple are out rock-climbing and the boyfriend gets to the top of the mesa first; the girlfriend is apparently getting a bit fed up with him and is about to chew him out when she sees the Dark Heart on the plateau, its mechanical spiders starting to come out, and literally all that's left of her boyfriend is one of his shoes, already devoured by the extraterrestrial abomination. She screams in horror. Fade to opening title sequence. Luckily for her, there's a very brief, easy-to-miss moment where we see her being evacuated by the US military as they get there even before the Justice League does—if they'd been only a few seconds late, she would've been eaten by the Dark Heart, too.

1x11 — Wake the Dead

• The nerds who performed the satanic ritual and accidentally revived Solomon Grundy definitely got killed by him and possibly the nerds' family as well.

1x13 — The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time, Warped

• Chronos. His wide-open Creepy Blue Eyes and soft voice really sell the whole "mad with power" thing.
• Static's death howl after getting sucked into a spatial rip is rather chilling, as is Terry dying from being ripped limb from limb by the Dee-Dees. Worse, the universe is collapsing all around them and they are all completely helpless to stop it.
  • Wonder Woman fades out of existence thanks to Chronos' meddling with the timeline, an insubordinate Chucko is dropped in the Cretaceous Period to be killed by the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, plus the implication that every other member of the Justice League is already dead. Green Lantern nearly had something like this happen to him, too—luckily for John, he was just temporarily replaced by Hal Jordan and came back after a few minutes.
• Batman traps David and Enid in a time loop to ensure that David never enacts the chain of events that occurred over the episode. That is one chilling And I Must Scream fate.
  • Though this might not be as horrible as it seems; see the Fridge Brilliance section.

2x01 — The Cat and the Canary

• After Green Arrow make too many cracks about Wildcat's age and competence, Wildcat mercilessly beats him to a living pulp. By the time he was done, Wildcat had seemingly killed Green Arrow. First, we only had silence, horror from both Wildcat and Black Canary and then, the audiences start cheering. This is more than enough to convince Wildcat to stop participating underground fighting.

2x01 — The Doomsday Sanction

• Dr. Milo, in means to get vengeance on Waller and the board of Cadmus, releases Doomsday from confinement. Doomsday doesn't go along with Milo's pact and kills. We don't see how, and only hear Milo's screams as Doomsday's hand reaches him.
  Doomsday: Your problem's solved.
• In the comics, Doomsday was horribly killed over and over until he became the insane mindless beast he's most known for. Here Doomsday was tortured and conditioned into hating Superman by Cadmus, but he still retains intelligence and ability to communicate. There's one thing about his character that hasn't changed; he still has a desire kill anything he sees. Superman tried to reason with him and Milo told him of his origins; Doomsday just doesn't care about why.
• Doomsday remembers Justice Lord!Superman lobotomizing him with his heat vision. So he punches Superman in the eyes with his spiked fist.
  • Superman's battle with Doomsday is arguably the most brutal fight he's been engaged in. By the end he's covered in scars, (In particular a large one across his face over his nose) while Doomsday doesn't have a scratch on him. Superman gets so pushed to the brink that he tries to lobotomize Doomsday. Eventually he's so exhausted that Wonder Woman has to carry him.

2x04 — Task Force X

• Task Force X sneaks into the Watchtower, makes off with the secret weapon they've been sent for, mops the floor with several unexpected obstacles, and suddenly comes face-to-face with J'onn. And suddenly the Martian is really creepy.
  J'onn: Ask yourselves: is being in here with me what you truly desire?
  • It's one thing to say that to an enemy who's ass you're about to kick. But it's after the event that brings concern. J'onn finds a Cadmus mole amongst the watchtowers' staff who's mind he couldn't read, and when GL asks what's to be done with him, the normally calm and civilized Martian says this;
  J'onn: I would like to go in there and wipe clean the last two years of his memory.
  

2x08 — Hunter's Moon

• The consequences of J'onn's interrogation of Kragger back during the Thanagarian Invasion: Years later and he's now a babbling fool who has been Driven to Madness.

2x09 — Question Authority

• The vision the Question sees while being TORTURED is pretty chilling. Hell, him being tortured period was chilling.
  • He was missing for almost a week before Huntress tried to get Superman's help. Even then, nobody in the League noticed he was missing.

2x10 — Flashpoint

• Luthor hijacks the Watchtower's binary fusion generator, forcing it to fire on an abandoned Cadmus facility. When the gun goes off, the scene cuts to a peaceful suburban neighborhood that suddenly goes very quiet as the sky starts to light up. Then the blast wave comes and nearly levels the city, followed by a mushroom cloud. Aside from the fact that, somehow, nobody (onscreen) is killed, and there's no residual radiation, the entire sequence is frighteningly reminiscent of a nuclear attack.
  • That's right, kids! Death from Above, with no warning, no escape, and no explanation! It could happen to you before you finish reading TV Tropes!
  • Well, it was an abandoned facility. For all we know, the city was merely a model used for experiments like in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
• When Green Arrow tries to call out Superman on seriously considering burning a government agency to the ground and generally putting himself and the team above humanity as of late, all the attention Superman can spare for him is to say he could care less about his opinion or that Batman recruited him to be the team's conscience. When Green Arrow admits he's starting to become scared of Superman himself, it's pretty understandable, especially since if Superman had just snapped then and there, he could have blown Green Arrow's brains out with the flick of a finger for talking back to him, or simply turned him to ash with a glance—not an unreasonable response from Lord-Superman, who Superman teeters on the verge of becoming for the entire Cadmus arc.

2x11 — Panic in the Sky

• The League just lost control of their Kill Sat superweapon that they save for emergencies like the events of "Dark Heart," which they fear may have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians. Understandably, the President is pissed about this and the founding members of the League, sans Batman, decide to submit to government custody until they can sort it out. While they're gone and the Watchtower is still out of commission, Cadmus sends Galatea and an army of Ultimen to attack the Watchtower and kill—not arrest, not defeat, KILL—every last person on the Watchtower. That includes the non-powered civilians who run the Watchtower's everyday systems. In particular, we're treated to a group of those non-metahumans hiding in a safe room when one of the Shifter clones rips the door open, then transforms into a Tyrannosaurus rex. The workers are clearly ready to fight for their lives as they charge at her and the Ultimen are eventually defeated, but one shudders to think about what may have happened to some of them.
• Supergirl fries Galatea with the Watchtower's reactor. There's a good shot of her twitching corpse!
  • As a clone of Supergirl, she might have survived. Still disturbing, though.
• Brainiac slowly bursting his way out of Luthor's body in a manner very reminiscent of The Thing. If observed closely, one can see Luthor's limbs painfully exploding and his fingers flying off as his limbs contort into tentacles.

2x12 — Divided We Fall

• It turns out Brainiac was hiding in Luthor all along, having infected Luthor with his nanites during the events of STAS' "Ghost in the Machine."
• Brainiac tries to absorb the Justice League. Fortunately, he fails.
• Flash finally turns the tables on Brainthor by going all out. He knocks Brainthor down, pins him, and starts tearing them apart with his fists while Brainthor screams.

2x13 — Epilogue

• The flashback involving eight-year-old Terry and his parents walking from a movie. As they start to head home, the Phantasm stalks them from behind. Upon getting closer, she raises her hook hand, moments away from killing Terry's mom and dad, all to give Terry the motivation he needs to become the next Batman. Even more Nightmare Fuel when you learn the Phantasm was ordered to kill Terry's parents so Terry could experience the same pain that Bruce did and take up the mantle, and was real close to doing so.
  • Also a rare case of Even Evil Has Standards being invoked to avert Nightmare Fuel. The Phantasm is willing to murder unsuspecting strangers but, when it comes right down to it, can't bring herself to traumatize an eight-year-old for life.
    • It could also go even further than that: Andrea, having been close to Bruce years ago, couldn’t stomach the idea of putting another child through the same fate, knowing full well what it could lead to.

3x05 — Flash and Substance

• While he's Played for Laughs and is rendered sympathetic as a victim of mental illness, the Trickster is by no means a Harmless Villain. If you actually listen to his scheme to kill Flash, it may come with silly choices such as fake vomit and grease, but it includes killing Flash by having him do a Slippery Skid into a wall of metal spikes and having him buried in the fake vomit while he's still alive... and then finishing with an Everything Explodes Ending. When the heroes corner him in the bar later, he pulls out a weird gun that shoots out acid corrosive enough to instantly destroy a pool table. While his "tricks" may look silly and his motivations sympathetically drawn from mental health problems, he's still just as violently dangerous as the Joker and should not be taken lightly.

3x09 — Grudge Match

• A rather small one, but the Justice League women being brainwashed and pitted against each other. Huntress and Black Canary manage to free Shayera and Vixen from their Mind Control pretty easily, but then Roulette pits all four women against Wonder Woman who is able to almost match Superman in terms of power. Their reaction is entirely justified. During a rather brutal fight, a few of the League girls come frighteningly close to a bloody death. Hawkgirl almost smashing Vixen's head with her mace, for example.
  • Also, the way Wonder Woman overpowers all four Leaguers and takes absolutely everything they throw at her like it's nothing. Then there's the way she's about to kill the badly-battered Shayera and Vixen by crushing their skulls together.
  • More terrifying is the fact that she was completely unaware of what she was doing and would never have remembered it had she been able to follow through.

3x12 — Alive!

• Tala's screams as she's being used up in Luthor's attempt to revive Brainiac. The showrunners even admitted they were unsettled by this, even after having toned it down considerably from the original recordings.
  • Immediately before this, when Tala begs Luthor to spare her for betraying him to Grodd, she tells him she's "a sick person." When she realizes he planned on using her up even before she betrayed him, he coldly replies, "I'm a sick person, too."
    • And she ends up releasing Darkseid, endangering Earth and the Universe, just to screw Luthor out of reuniting with Brainiac and for spurning her.
• Grodd getting spaced in this episode was pretty disturbing, as well.
• Killer Frost kills half of the Legion of Doom, ON SCREEN. Just to get back in Luthor's favor.
  • Okay, she doesn't KILL them per say, but we know they're finished.
• Metron's cryptic warning to Luthor comes out of nowhere. Luthor's ambitions have gone too far that an outside force had to intervene to give reality one last chance.

3x13 — Destroyer

• The portrayal of Darkseid in the DC Animated Universe is often seen as the definitive portrayal of his character (outside of comics), and for good reason: He is a terrifying character. Not just because he's the only one who can take Superman at his full power, but because he is relentlessly evil. Other villains had reasons that you could like them; at least Lex Luthor was suave, and at least Joker had a happy attitude and comic timing. Darkseid is not that kind of villain: He is the absolute evil.
  • To give a sense of how terrible Darkseid is, he is the only villain that Superman actively tries and wants to kill.
    • Which is easier said than done: Darkseid is not only able to take Superman when he's unrestrained, but is the only main villain to have curb-stomped Superman! Not only merciless and somber evil, but nigh-unstoppable.
  • Darkseid describes what he's going to do to Superman while he's writhing on the ground in pain from the Agony Matrix. Then he pulls out a Kryptonite knife and tells Superman he's going to carve out his heart and place it on a pike as a trophy.

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Sweet dreams, Tropers.... (Evil Laugh)