Nightmare Fuel / MILGRAM

As per troping policy, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

”After knowing all, I wonder. Can you really say INNOCENT?”

When the majority of the characters are murderers, it's only a given that there would be lots and lots of nightmare-inducing content...

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Trailers and Other Supplemental Material

• The teaser trailer managed to be terrifying in just 30 seconds. The video is done entirely in black and red, with symbols and silhouettes being shown in between credits of the people involved in the then-upcoming project. Everything gets worse when they play the voice clips, which overlap with each other to the point of being almost unintelligible. Then, everything is silenced with Es' signature "Come, sing your sin." A simple, but unsettling glimpse of what Milgram entails. It gets even worse once you actually do manage to make out what the voice clips say. Some highlights:
  • "There's no way something like this is forgivable! This is a human rights violation!" The speaker was later revealed to be Futa. Unlike the Haruka and Yuno, who spoke in rather soft voices, he angrily shouts the line to the point he easily covers up what they're saying.
  • "You’re a nuisance... Hurry up and die..." The speaker was later revealed to be Shidou. This line is spoken in a harsh whisper that oozes malice, wildly different from the gentle stoic we're familiar with.
  • "This is... love...!" The speaker was later revealed to be Mahiru. She almost sounds deranged as she speaks.
  • "Aaaaah!! Just destroy everything!!!" The speaker of this line is ambiguous, and is implied to either be Mikoto - the polite, ever so happy guy who believes expressing anger is unsightly, or his alter John, out of anger and fear for Mikoto's safety.
  • "Everyone in here is confirmed to be a murderer?" The speaker was later revealed to be Kotoko. Out of all the lines, this is the only one that actually gives anything concrete about the premise, casting the rest of them in a chilling new light.
• Jackalope's video explaining how Milgram works is okay until right before the end. The video is framed as him explaining the system to Es. As he wraps up his lecture, he brings up a myriad of questions that Es probably has, and... dismisses them, saying "You're the warden, they're the prisoners. That's all you need to know." If you understand Japanese, you'll also notice that he uses a plural pronoun to address Es, just for this one sentence. The implication is that he is very aware of the audience and what they’re supposed to do.
• For each character, the voice trailer included a line of them introducing themselves, a line that gives insight into their personality or mindset, and... one heavily distorted extra.
  • Es' third line, "I am... Es. Milgram's warden... That's the only thing I remember," is not distorted, but they still sound rather dejected and unsure.
  • "Then, then what should I have done?! What should I have...? Tell me! So even I can understand!" After being established as a nervous and timid boy, hearing Haruka scream like that is freaky. His tone is some sort of cross between panicked, hysterical, and furious.
  • "Hah... I can't be bothered." Yuno generally speaks in a cutesy and friendly manner, but she sounds completely dead inside as she speaks.
  • "Why...? It's not just me... Weren't we all just having fun?! Why am I...? Why am I the only one taking the blame?!" More than angry, Futa sounds scared - his voice quivers and his breaths are shallow and shaky.
  • "Fufufu... It's your fault... for doing horrible things to me..." Mu's nearly flat tone here is downright creepy, almost sounding like she's totally lost it.
  • "Hahaha...hahahaha... Definitely not dead... Still not dead... I finally understand...the value of what I've been robbing people of." Even ignoring the Mirthless Laughter, Shidou's line comes with absolutely no context.
  • "This is... love...? This is...love...!" With the full line from the teaser, Mahiru sounds as though she has discovered something horrible and Gone Mad From the Revelation.
  • "Why did I have to dream...? I’m so dumb...!” Kazui's voice is barely audible, coming out as a bitter rasp.
  • "Aah! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry for breaking the rules!" Amane proves to be quite mature and calm in her first two lines, so to hear her having a Freak Out over "breaking the rules" (whatever that might imply) is alarming, especially for someone so young.
  • "My life...wasn't supposed to be this way..." Mikoto here sounds completely and utterly defeated, in contrast to both his normal cheer and the screaming from the teaser.
  • "Fuh... It feels so good..." Compared to her normally rational and cool nature, hearing this come from Kotoko would send chills down anyone's spine.
• The app's timeline is mostly a source of hilarity, tugging heartstrings, and other interesting moments. However, our first direct look at the noises Mikoto's alter makes at night is frankly terrifying, consisting of garbled and choked sounds. Some of it is even censored by black boxes. And these happen regularly.

First Trial

• While Undercover is mostly Awesome, it still manages to be scary near the end as it shows silhouettes of each prisoner brutalizing Es, complete with blood splashes. Doubles as Fridge Horror when the viewer realizes that the prisoners' method of attacking alludes their crime.
  • Haruka sits on Es' torso with his hands wrapped around their throat, strangling them.
  • Yuno stands over Es as blood coats the insides of her legs.
  • Futa holds Es by the shirt and screams at them.
  • Mu stabs Es with a box cutter.
  • Shidou has Es lifted high above the ground and seems to be cutting into their chest.
  • Mahiru sits behind Es with her hands holding their neck.
  • Kazui cradles Es' body as he screams.
  • Amane bashes Es with what appears to be a pipe or stick.
  • Mikoto cracks Es' skull from behind with a baseball bat.
  • Kotoko just kicks Es, her mouth open in laughter.
• The ES voice drama features Jackalope giving Es a tour around Milgram. Some of his comments are concerning, to say the least.
  • As he's introducing the prisoners, he makes it clear that they can use their own standards, even encouraging them to go by their favoritism or lust. When Es dismisses the idea as nonsense, he comments to himself that "the warden this time is so naive."
    • First off, there's the base implication that there have been past wardens, thus past Milgram trials. We don't know how many times this has happened.
    • Then there's the implication that past wardens did use such standards to judge prisoners. Imagine being one of those prisoners, hoping to escape whatever kind of place Milgram is, only to discover that the person in charge of deciding your fate does so on totally arbitrary grounds.
  • Or even before that, Jackalope spells it out that, as warden, Es has the power to make the rules and run Milgram however they want. If past wardens might have judged with their random decisions, who's to say that they didn't also make Milgram a living hell...
• "Weakness" shows Haruka to have a... loose grip on reality. The whole video looks like an Acid-Trip Dimension, with traditional 2D-animated characters over cut-and-paste backgrounds from real life. Even then, the woman and girl have their facial features covered by blobs of color. Sharp-eyed viewers will also notice that there’s some sort of old, faded effect overlaid on everything.
  • The way Haruka tilts his head back and opens his mouth whenever he laughs looks downright freaky, like his neck is stretching farther than it should be able to.
• Crying B, Mu's first voice drama, is rife with scary moments.
  • Of course, we have the conversation that makes this the first Wham Episode. Mu is the first prisoner to notice that it's a little weird that Es, the person in charge of judging the prisoners, doesn't know what they think of them. Her wording, which refers to "other people", means she's unintentionally Leaning on the Fourth Wall. Even as Es' breathing becomes noticeably more labored, she keeps pursuing this line of questioning, leading to her dropping the Wham Line (even the ambient background noise cuts out):
    Mu: Hey...when you say "I"...who are you talking about?

  Es proceeds to have a breakdown, stumbling away as they try to breathe. When Mu tries to see if they're alright, they scream and shove her away. Es has never lost their cool before this.

  • Right before the end, Mu drops another line that cuts out the background noise:
    Mu: If I see anything odd about your judgment, I won't forgive you.

  The pitch of her voice drops as she says this; she almost sounds like she's threatening Es.

• The flower-person-thing from "Throw Down" looks like it came straight from the depths of the Uncanny Valley, having a humanoid shape but no distinguishable features. It's also animated with CG.
• Mahiru's first cover song is Psychogram. A song known to be depicting a toxic relationship where one attempts to control the other party's activities and prevent them from leaving the relationship.
  • The original was a heavy rock song, switching between intense guitars and lighter instrumentation to highlight a common cycle in relationship abuse. Meanwhile, the cover has more of an electronic sound with a pumping beat during the chorus, being creepy in a more subdued way.
  • In particular is when the "SUKI" Madness Mantra comes in after the second chorus (in the original, this part was just instrumental).
  • If you listen closely, you can hear Mahiru giggle as the song ends.
• "Magic" is mostly a cute and peppy rock song, but the bridge undergoes a shift and combines an Ethereal Choir with an Ominous Pipe Organ and church bells. During this portion in the MV, we get to see Amane's absolutely brutal punishments at the hands of her leader figures for helping an injured cat. Then the song picks the rocking back up like nothing happened. Even worse, is that for the rest of the song, the cat is nowhere to be seen.

Second Trial

• "All-Knowing And All-Agony" uses much less of the surreal imagery, but manages to be even more terrifying. Here, we're treated to visuals of many, many animals Haruka has killed in the past, including fish, insects, two dogs, and a cat!
  • At the end of the song, we're treated to the lovely visual of Haruka standing atop a bloodied mess in a dark room. The door opens, showing a woman (implied to be his neglectful mom) frozen with fear. He stops singing to plead with her, and then walks towards her... then, cut to him sitting in a chair, submerged in the orange "blood" used throughout the video as he stares at the camera with horrible sunken-in eyes. Brrr.
  • There is a Freeze-Frame Bonus at the end, right before the credits. It shows someone being strangled, and we do not know who are involved in the scene.
• Contrary to Mu's portrayal in "After Pain" as a Bully Magnet, "It's Not My Fault" reveals that she used to be the Alpha Bitch of her school and shows her as a literal queen bee surrounded by attendants (i.e. her Girl Posse). Each one presents her with a juicy green grub on a plate, except for one girl whose plate is empty. Mu pushes her over with one finger, and she falls to the floor and smashes into a million pieces. Later, her shattered remains are seen strewn over the steps of Mu's "throne" as she treads on them. What did Mu do to that poor girl in reality??
• The video for "The Purge March" begins with an army of Amanes dressed as parade conductors, waving flags with the symbols of the cult's leaders on them. When the "main" Amane fumbles and drops her flag (which seems to be symbolic of her doing something that went against the cult's teachings), another, bigger Amane looms over her and slams the butt of her own flag into the ground. The bubbly white clouds above them turn dark and stormy, and the first Amane sinks through the ground into the water, frantically reaching for the flag she was carrying with the blue symbol on it. Cut to Amane soaking wet in her bathroom, heavily implied to be waterboarded by her own parent.
  The “It can’t be helped”, from the scum who can’t be helped
  That makes them doubtlessly, clearly, absolutely, unequivocally, beyond any doubt, GUILTY
  I disavow you, eyes corrupted must be crushed
  So nary a sound can be uttered a second time, I’ll crush your throat too