Nightmare Fuel / Mystery Science Theater 3000

MST3K being the Trope Namer of Nightmare Fuel, it sometimes delivers on the spooks, and this page is a testament to that.

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• It's hard to not feel offput by the overall construction of the props and bots from the KTMA era. Servo is the only one to not feel off, as he's basically the same as his final design, just all silver. Meanwhile, Crow looks like he's dead,◊^note his eyes are too far apart and practically bulging out of his head Gypsy looks severely menacing,^note entirely gold-painted, with angular, hole-filled scoops for her head and Cambot looks like a monster.^note Rather than being the camera itself, he's a robot operating the camera; with the two long bolt-like objects for eyes, and the fact he's large with no moving parts, Cambot comes off far too menacing for his own good. And that's not even getting into the borderline-Harryhausenesque Hallway Sequence, complete with jerkily moving doors, jail bars, and an entrance with two unexplained flailing tentacle creatures.
• The Observers' Slasher Smiles in the Stinger of Terror from the Year 5000 and the following two episodes. Yes, they're observing you.
• Timmy. Considering the host segments involving him are a homage to Aliens, it's expected.
  • He's even scarier in the theater. He just sits there and you know he's going to do something. Yeah, it's distracting from the film, but still! He keeps bothering Servo until he's annoyed, then chokes him, and drags him out of the theater whilst we can hear Servo's muffled sobs and cries for help. This doesn't last long, though.
• In the movie, Dr. Forrester turns off the oxygen to the satellite and Mike starts suffocating to death.
  • Watching the bots' reaction is worse. Granted there's the fridge heartwarming fact that they're doing it for Mike's sake, but it's still unnerving to see our snarky bots bowing, with Servo speaking in tongues and Crow crying a little.
• Seeing Crow partially melted in the first segment from "The She-Creature" from using the Thaw Master, mistaking it for the Thighmaster.
  • The Tickle Me Carlo Lombardi doll sketch, from the same episode. Firstly, it has a miniature Carlo Lombardi laughing in a devilishly low voice. Secondly, it sticks to Mike's hands and he can't get the blasted thing off. Thirdly, Crow's slow, trance-like voice, even when he sings that little ditty, gives an unnerving sense of possession. Lastly, the doll keeps making that horrible laugh even after Mike's flailing has damaged it so badly that its head seems to now look like a skull.
    Crow T. Robot: Tickle Me Carlo Lombardi is your friend...forever!
• EVERY FREAKING HOST SEGMENT in The Giant Spider Invasion. Even by the show's standards, Any "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" plot is what makes the episode easily, if not, the most disturbing and nightmarish episode in the entire series,. The pod clones' quality attempt to talk like normal people while hiding any emotion and it's very horrific. Thankfully, Mike does get Professor Bobo to save everyone's lives, but at the cost of Pearl forcing the crew to watch the movie again.
  Bobo: I saved you and the whole galaxy! Aren't you proud?
  Pearl: You mean they watched the movie, and I didn't get to watch them watching the movie? Bobo, get rid of my body, Brain Guy, send them the movie... again.
  Mike and the Bots: Movie sign! Again!
• In the "local color" sketch from The Amazing Transparent Man, Mike (as the crazy "Mikey") doesn't blink for about an entire minute on camera. Over the run of the series, Mike's characterization has consistently been that of an amiable, animated midwestern doofus, so this portrayal is far more unsettling than it even sounds, and the scene is made more unnerving by Crow letting out progressively more and more distressed llama-screams as Mikey, out of distress, starts roughly petting it.
  Mikey: You people bring matches for Mikey?
  Tom Servo: (to Mikey) YOU SHUT UP MIKEY, SHUT UP! (to the camera) You folks don't give no matches to Mikey, YER HEAR ME?! YER HEAR ME!?! I DON'T CARE WHAT MIKEY SAY OR MIKEY DO, DON'T GIVE HIM NO MATCHES! I DON'T CARE IF MIKEY COME CRAWLIN' IN THROUGH YER WINDOW, STARK NAKED WITH A BIG OL' KNIFE!! DON'T YOU GIVE NO MATCHES TO MIKEY!!!
  • There's an in-universe justification for Mike and the bots acting like this, in that they're intentionally invoking Nightmare Fuel to scare away a victim of one of the Mads' scams. But they still did a good job invoking it, both in-universe and out!
• The Holo-Clowns in Attack of the Giant Leeches: Joel was unable to turn them off for three weeks following the previous experiment, and in the process, they have become self-aware, and extremely unstable. One asks Gypsy if she wants a salted nut roll, and it's very unnerving. Joel is forced to shut them off the hard way to put them out of their misery.
  Clown: (to the other clowns as everyone screaming out of horror) SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU THINK I LIKE IT, BEING STUCK HERE IN LIMBO WITH YOU?! NO!!! GET DOWN ON YOUR ORANGE-AND-YELLOW KNEES AND KISS MY CLOWN FEET THAT I HAVEN'T KILLED YOU!!
  • To top it off, even the Magic Voice hates them.
  Magic Voice: Joel, do something! I don't like these clowns and I don't even exist!
• The Violent Years started off with Tom Servo replacing his head with a Danny O'Day puppet head. Crow's reaction sums it up really nicely.
• Gunslinger opens on Joel having modified Tom so that he and the others can play Kaboom, something that causes him mild discomfort the more the balloon gets pumped. But then, Gypsy asks if they can't just cut to the chase and pump until the balloon pops. This causes the others to get a little too ecstatic:
  Crow: Yeaaah... Pop him...
  Joel, Crow and Gypsy: (as Joel begins pumping more and more, over Tom's distressed noises) Pop him, pop him, pop, pop, pop... Pop him, pop him, pop, pop, pop... Pop him, pop him, pop, pop, pop! POP HIM, POP HIM, POP, POP, POP!
• The DVD menu for The Crawling Eye. Crow is just reading the paper while, occasionally, the main entrance to the theater opens to reveal the eponymous monster's freakish face. What really makes this horrifying is that Gypsy and Servo pass on by and are dragged by the creature's tentacles, screaming in terror. Despite the relief of what Crow does to it, we never find out what happens to those two.
  • The DVD menu for The Giant Spider Invasion is also discomforting, as there are a bunch of spiders crawling across it. Not too bad per say...if you don't click on some of the buttons. Cover your ears if you do so. The same thing occurs for Horrors of Spider Island.
    • The Giant Spider Invasion's host segments are also a little too scary for the shows' standards, that almost everyone, including Gypsy in a possessed state is very horrifying. Even though Mike convinced Bobo to save everyone, (and he does) that doesn't stop Pearl from resending the movie due to her getting caught up in the predicament.
  • The Blood Waters of Dr. Z menu is a bit more benign, but right at the end, Crow and Servo fire a harpoon at Dr. Z. This doesn't appear to faze him, as he drags them underwater.
  • The Beast of Yucca Flats has the eponymous beast emerge out of the entrance and stomping towards Crow, brandishing his club. Not too bad (considering the dialogue), but then Crow fires a shotgun into his shoulder and manages to draw blood. It's likely Crow got killed by the enraged beast's counterattack.
  • Bride of the Monster has Lobo get grabbed by the robotic octopus and reduced to bloody PULP. Even the bots were perturbed.
  • Robot Holocaust features the bots and the main antagonist of the film in the same room. When Servo makes a 2001: A Space Odyssey joke, the computer's eye, with a pretty startling sound effect, turns blood red and awfully familiar to the joke's context...
  • Revenge of the Creature is shot from a POV shot of a diver. There is NO comedic music and the whole thing comes off as eerie barring Servo's appearance as a fish. Suddenly, the Gillman is right in front of you...and is quickly revealed to be a cardboard cutout.
  • The Magic Sword is mostly nightmare free...should you NOT pause at the exact moment a spell backfires on the sorceress mother figure. The results aren't pretty.
  • The Mad Monster is a good deal more subtle, quiet, and eerie. Tom and Crow quietly sit at a desk in a gray, dingy office while something dog-like stands in a cage in the shadows behind them. A strange howl is heard, and something unseen races past at tremendous speed, but all the audience sees is its shadow flickering across the walls...
  • The menu for The Incredible Melting Man features the bots riding in space with Steve, the titular monster, before his accident. Should you leave it on the menu screen too long, you get treated to the lovely visual of Steve's face graphically melting. And if you watch the episode after it cuts back to the menu, we get a brand-new menu animation where his face is now in an even worse state than it was in the first animation, with it continuing to melt until it's nothing but a skull.
• The Beast of Hollow Mountain has one host segment where Crow and Tom are dancing around and creepy-looking costumes obviously inspired by the celebration being set up in the movie. They also don't speak. Despite Jonah, Kinga and Max trying to talk to them, they just keep dancing and don't talk, genuinely freaking everyone out (Jonah is screaming at the bots to talk to him, Max is reduced to tears, and Kinga screams "MAKE IT STOP!!!!!").
  • When the Movie Sign comes, much to everyone's relief, Tom and Crow claim that that wasn't them doing the dance.
• Even more unsettling is the ending of The Loves of Hercules, where in the movie's final moments Jonah and the Bots all start loudly vocalizing random sounds for no reason at all. They're still doing it on the bridge, and then we cut to Kinga and Max doing it too, and then come the credits as the audience is left wondering what in the absolute hell they just saw.
  • Well, they're doing it because of the weird screaming soundtrack that accompanies the end of the movie, so they start vocalizing for a reason. Why they continue doing so for several more minutes, particularly with Jonah's almost panicked expression toward the end, is another terrifying matter entirely.
• Jonah almost certainly being Eaten Alive in the season 11 finale. Easily the darkest cliffhanger the show has had, even if he survived. Tied with the cliffhanger ending of Laserblast in Season 7!
• In-Universe: Mike botching Crow's routine maintenance and making him act like Arnold Horshack definitely freaked out Mike and Tom.
• Jonah is forced to relive traumatic childhood memories thanks to the alien from Lords of the Deep, with an unnervingly convincing performance.
• Kinga's devastating "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the audience at the end of The Gauntlet, with Felicia Day proving just how intimidating she can be with the right material.
  "First, I have something to say to them. The lowlifes who just spent eight hours of this precious one way trip we call life watching schlock. I'm in your heads, folks. And you're never gonna get rid of me. Every time you see a movie with a cheap set, I'll be there. Every gaping plot hole or a monster costume with a zipper, I'll be there too. The fact is, we've always been here. We're the ones who sucked all the art and replaced it with trash. We're the ones who fill your life with so much noise and visual clash, you can't tell the good from the crap anymore. Maybe the truth is out there, but we mix it up with so much other stuff, you're never gonna find it. You are alone in this whirlpool of meaningless images...my point is, your minds have been skillfully mismanaged since the beginning. You are not a person, you're just a data point. And with all the multitudes working to amuse and distract you, there's no one taking the time to look out for you."
• Munchie's introduction scene. Where to begin? His appearance and how that ugly-looking creature first appears in the movie is so screwed up that it sends the SOL Crew into a massive uncontrollable Freak Out, not wanting to watch anymore until Kinga cuts off the oxygen supply to force them to keep watching, and it works.
• The crew physicals in Gamera vs. Jiger are quite disturbing... and it is then capped with Dr. Donna St. Phibes being Eaten Alive by a giant brain.
• At one point during The Projected Man, Crow is said to have acquired the Touch of Death, something Mike refuses to buy... until Crow manages to accidentally use it on him, causing him to drop dead. While Crow and Tom are rather calm and showed no remorse about the fact they accidentally killed Mike, they get the idea to drag his corpse back into the theater, and prop him up in his seat. What then follows is a roughly two minute stretch of Crow and Tom trying to continue riffing the movie as if nothing changed, all while Mike's corpse keeps falling over.^note Luckily, Crow soon decides to see if the Touch of Death works both ways, and brings Mike back. He's more concerned about the fact he has to keep watching the movie.

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