- The very first plot had Dr. Sloth planning to hit Neopia with his mutation ray, turning every pet into a mutant. To make it worse, he captured the Space Faerie, the only being capable of stopping him.
- Some of the colors you can paint your Neopet are pretty scary.
- The Transparent color. This
◊ is what happens. Sure, Invisible was literal... But this is what happens when your pet is permanently stuck in an X-ray! - The Mutant color makes your pet look horribly ugly and menacing with a dose of Body Horror, including features like extra eyes, limbs, or heads. The Mutant Kau◊ takes the cake, especially compared to a normal Red Kau◊. It has tentacles coming out of its mouth!
- ...but it's got nothing on the original, unused Mutant Aisha design, which has the body of a chestburster and elongated eyeballs popping from its sockets in lieu of the ear stalks. Can't imagine why they redid that one.
- ...but it's got nothing on the original, unused Mutant Aisha design,
- The Burlap color makes a pet look like a Creepy Doll or Scary Scarecrow made from ragged burlap, with Coraline-style button eyes and a stitched-up mouth.
- The Wraith color makes your pet look like a demonic ghost or Living Shadow with a purple glow, a jagged Slasher Smile, and what can only be described as glowing empty sockets for eyes. The Wraith Nimmo, in particular, appears to have a Belly Mouth!
- The Robot color isn't particularly scary, besides the fact that some Robot Neopets don't appear to have faces or have only rudimentary faces. Until one takes into account that the outer plating of a Robot Neopet counts as clothing and can be removed, exposing the wiring underneath. Were you expecting the uncased Robot Poogle to look like this◊? Yeah, didn't think so.
- The Transparent color. This
- The entire Haunted Woods probably counts, if you go into detail... There's a tree with an exposed brain and a face there!
- The games that are based off the place, too. One has a friendly Kacheek that has to feed the Esophagor constantly, or else he would become a Mutant forever! Yeesh.
- The Web of Vernax game also has a rather menacing soundtrack, what with hunting Mootixs and all.
- There is a creepy animation for the Y8 Day Six of the Advent Calendar. A young Sophie the Ixi and her family are enjoying some holiday time at home. For some reason there is a distinctly foreboding theme playing to the cheery scene. Then three dark figures loom just outside the window...and there's a knock at the door. Sophie happily answers the door only to see three zombie Neopets looming over her. She looks up at them, horrified, then shrieks bloody murder. The gift for that day is a screaming Sophie toy. See it here.
- Back in the older days of Neopets, there was an incident where Maraqua was hit by a whirlpool. You actually could go in and see the entirety of Maraqua with a whirlpool scene over the top of it. It gave you a serious close up on what happened.
- The Spooky Food Shop. It has a cute name but horrible wares. For example, the Blumaroo Steak, the description of which reads thus: "What goes bounce, bounce...whirrr....splat?" Then there's the several food items that involve Petpets, like the Baked Intesteen and Roast Tentacle. Let's not forget the pumpkin pie, either. Its description says: "Legend says that they used to make these pies out of something other than pumpkin in the past..." The Neopets Team horribly confirms that the Neopets sometimes eat food products made from OTHER NEOPETS, and some even eat Petpets! And it's not even necessary, since there are other foods in this shop that are perfectly fine, like Mashed Eye Potato. The Tyrannian Food Shop isn't much better. There is an item called Stick-O-Mynci, and it's apparently chunks of Mynci flesh skewered on a stick and "roasted to perfection". The Lost Desert Food Shop also has dubious food items, most of them involving Petpets.
- Beware, all users with laggy computers, or who dare to wait between levels on certain games (looking at you, Typing Terror). You might be surprised by something...
- There is just something oddly creepy about most of the Advent Calendar animations and accompanying music.
- The Haunted House. It's a Choose Your Own Adventure flash game from the old era of Neopets. Two pets are driving along a road during a storm and they break down right near a haunted house. All manner of horrible things can happen to the pets in the house: they can get turned to stone, turned into skeletons, caught by shadows and even Eaten Alive. If they don't leave their car, they see ghostly faces and if they still don't leave, you see their empty car before the scene changes to a police officer on the phone, stating that the pets were never found. The early era of Neopets was definitely dark.
- The loud sound effect that always plays when you lose Darigan Dodgeball and considering the type of game it is, losing is inevitable.
- The Jump Scare at the end of Lair of the Beast is the most famous example, and the current page image. It's just a pterodactyl that screams very loudly at you and can't do anything to your pets and/or account, but still. Oh, and you can get the same animation if you stop on a certain space in Wheel of Monotony, except this time it also can reduce your pets' health to one point. It's, unfortunately, the most common "prize", so expect to see this animation a lot. Furthermore, back before the wheels' revamps, landing on the space that brings you to this will go to the page without confirmation taken, so imagine just browsing another tab while the wheel's going, and then all of a sudden... FRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
- The infamous Beast also appears in Bouncy Supreme. The game is about a jelly Blumaroo bouncing on pillars over a volcano to get away from it. If you lose all of your lives or run out of time, the game over screen appears and plays a loud roar, just as effective at jump scaring you as the Lair of the Beast. Not to mention the scare that comes with the concern for the fate of the Blumaroo.
- The Malevolent Sentient◊ Poogle Plushie◊.
- Neopets: The Darkest Faerie has some pretty creepy places. This includes a maze-like dungeon towards the end of the game that has what looks to be execution chairs.
- Back when the site was run for college students, the NP Staff team did two contests where their avatars were competing in a Survivor-like game where their avatars got killed if they were voted off, and stuck in a murder mystery plot. While it was essentially meant to be nothing more than Black Comedy, the deaths got quite gory.
- The end of the murder mystery plot had the murderer revealed to be a robot controlled by Dr. Sloth.
- One of the TCG cards, Wocky Beast◊, features a bipedal Wocky with its face upside down and one gigantic swollen eye with no pupil! The only consolation is that his card is labelled as a Hero card, so he could be an example of Dark Is Not Evil. The caption doesn't make it any better.They never went back to the fairground again, not after what they saw...
- If one really thinks about it, the Grundos' backstory as a Slave Race is a mixture of this and Tear Jerker. It's shown throughout the Dr. Sloth storylines that they are kidnapped, mutated, and brainwashed. They can, however, get a Happy Ending if you adopt them.
- The backstories of some of the villains are surprisingly chilling, especially for a kids' website.
- The Jelly Chia. Basically, a crazy candy maker named Wizzle created an "edible friend" in the form of the Jelly Chia. He loved the little thing and took care of it...until Wizzle got hungry one day and decided to try and eat it. Instead, the thing jumped on him, devoured him and dissolved him alive. And then we get this lovely gem...If you look carefully at that old, disused chocolate factory on the hill, you may still be able to see this lonely Chia bouncing around, and you may still hear Wizzle's screams. Don't go inside however... whatever you do....
- The Shadow Usul, whose entry begins with this: "... creeping slowly up the wall, the shadow usul did not make a sound. The light from the moon illuminated the whole area, apart from a slow, crawling blackness, an area in which no light shone. climbing up to the unlocked window, the shadow flowed inside like a river of darkness..."
- Count Von Roo, whose entry is topped off with the epitome of Paranoia Fuel.Always make sure your window is closed at night, because if you leave it open, you may not be there in the morning...
- Vira was once a pretty young Acara who wished to be the most beautiful Acara in the world, but an unknown entity heard her wish and made her ugly instead. Ever since then, she hands out cursed magic mirrors to give other Neopets the same fate as she.Anyone who looks into her mirrors at first finds themselves very beautiful, but that beauty fades into ugliness, and the mirror whispers with a dark voice, "There's only one way to get your beauty back..."
- The Three are a trio of spirits, a Faerie, Gelert, and Skeith that represent Revenge, Greed, and Ambition. They whisper in the ears of kings and rulers during dire times, telling them to commit terrible deeds in the name of power. Entire kingdoms have fallen because of them, with new kingdoms being built on the ruins of the old ones, and the cycle continues. It is implied that they are on a level of evil even above villains like Captain Scarblade and Galem Darkhand, who are still just mortal, flesh-and-blood Neopets at the end of the day, no matter how evil they are. The Three are immortal, apparently ageless spirits who will always exist, and they cannot be stopped or punished in any way, because revenge, greed, and ambition will always exist.Up the stairs of the old ruined castle the caretaker climbs, holding a candle for light, causing shadows to flicker along the walls. Sometimes, these caretakers say the shadows make shapes that they shouldn't, but everyone knows that isn't possible. However, they do anyway. Why do you stay here? Your king is insane, the castle in ruins... you deserve so much more. Take the army, they'll listen to you... find a better land. Take it from those who look down upon your kingdom. You could be rich beyond your wildest dreams...
Caretakers never last very long. No one lasts long once the voices begin... but the damage they do before going is unspeakable. Kingdoms have fallen, collapsing on themselves. Eventually they are forgotten, and a new nation is built upon the land, with no memory of the first... and so the cycle goes. The only thing that seems to be a constant is that prickly feeling along the back of your neck, when your mind considers a dark deed... and that's where they are waiting for you.
- The Jelly Chia
- The game Spell or Starve is about the malevolent AI Neopet v2, who is so lonely he's kidnapped you and forced you to play his new word game. After 3 days, you are on the verge of starvation and have no choice but to play along in order to escape.
- Xandra crashing Faerieland to the ground, changing the entire site forever. When you tried to visit before it was restored the game displayed the following message. For veteran Neopets players who grew up with Faerieland, it was a Darkest Hour.Something horrible has happened...
- One of Jhudora's entries in the Neopedia has her doing... something... to a Kacheek who had already failed her quest by bringing her an item five seconds too late."Do you know what Illusen says about failure, little Kacheek?" Welldap shakes his head. "She says, 'Failure is its own punishment.'"
Her laughter fills the room... every shadowy corner, and every corridor. "I say..." she pauses, watching the darkness swirl about his neck, ready to devour his head. "Illusen suffers from a severe lack of imagination." - This Story-Telling Contest about Jhudora taking over Neopia in a Bad Future where smiles are nonexistent, pets are shadows of their former selves, and several species went extinct due to her actions."That's when Jhudora cast her ultimate spell. Historians think she had it planned from the start. Once she used all the other Faeries to take control of Neopia, she—she..." tears began to pour from the young Wocky's eyes.
"She what?!?" asked a frantic Jurgis.
"Oh, Jurgis!" Lerea cried, "She cast a spell to destroy all wings!"
"But, but... without wings!—" Jurgis stuttered in shock.
"Yes. The winged pets that had fought so valiantly-they... fell." Jurgis tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but could not. "They fell from the high clouds of Faerieland, and perished upon impact with the sea." Jurgis shook his head in horror. It was just too much. It was not only the Eyries that were extinct, but the Scorchios, Shoyrus, Unis, and Draiks, too! The Eyrie fought back tears; so many fine species lost—forever... - Maybe not as horrifying as the others, but in the Cyodrake's Gaze plot, Orrin had been quite literally locked in the storeroom just before the storm hit. If the boat had actually sunk...Made worse by the fact that Captain Tuan seemed to have forgotten Orrin was down there, and didn't remember until the next morning.
- There is a random event that says that all your pets are sick and hungry, your items are stolen and your neopoints are all gone... but it's All Just a Dream. It's horrifying the first time you get it. Maybe not so much after that, but still.
- A Halloween Tale. DEAR. FUCKING. GOD! It may be the scariest story on the site to date. Just... what IS that old lady?!
- One of the fun images contains what seems to be a simple white Meepit, with only a blinking animation◊... until for a split second, it turns into THIS.◊ For anyone who isn't willing to click the link, it's a Meepit with elongated ears, a big disturbing stare, and a huge maw with a set of Scary Teeth.
- Petpets can get eaten by Turmaculus when trying to wake him up, or disappear completely if zapped with the Petpet Lab Ray.
- The Desert Abominable Snowball is a puddle with snowman features inside, implying the Snowball got melted alive. The only consolation is that they can still talk to your Neopets, which means that at least they aren't dead.
- The April Fools' prank where everyone got The Scourgies, they even implied that Neopets could die from it.
- Edna is not (established to be) evil, and it was an accident, but her turning some Feepits into Feepit Pie is scary. There is also the rumor that she "smites" people who go near her tower.
- One of the phrases that Desert Petpets can say is "A CURSE ON YOU". Another spooky thing that Desert Petpets do is this.[Name of Petpet] starts to glow and shudder...
- The Tale of Woe plot from Neovia certainly counts. A mysterious Snake Oil Salesman sells mysterious potions to the townfolk of Neovia, turning them into nightmarish and twisted monstrosities. Then there is the curse that the Spirit of Slumber cast on them...
- Another Jump Scare can come from the Snow Beast, which comes along roaring when you wait too long on Snowball Fight.
- Jhudora can be pretty creepy. Her Gallery of Evil entry states that while she hasn't done anything truly evil just yet, that's why she's creepy. Nobody knows when that's going to change, or how terrible her first malevolent action will be.
- The Awakened are an army of undead Neopets, led by creepy Wocky twins named Lanie and Lillie. It is implied that they themselves are Undead Children, and that they are responsible for doing away with other Neopets. Then there's dialogue like this, which is Played for Laughs but is actually disturbing when you really think about it:"Someone told us there was a war and we should go somewhere safe.""We ate him for breakfast. Yum."
- In a Neopedia entry about The Deserted Fairground an Acara is telling her friends a scary campfire story about the aforementioned attraction. The story goes that on its opening night, Halloween, monstrous Neopets snuck into the fairground, unnoticed in the crowd of costumed fairgoers. As the clock struck twelve, they attacked. Despite the desperate attempts of the trapped fairgoers, only those who had left before midnight survived. The story doesn't leave anything to the imagination — the unlucky pets got eaten and all that was found in the morning was a ruined fairground and "wet earth beyond the gates". Legend has it that the fairgrounds come alive on Halloween, with the same danger to visitors who stay past midnight. After hearing the tale, the friends decide to go see if the story's true, and surprise, it is. They play and then prepare to leave just before midnight. The Acara nervously asks her friend for the time but his watch has stopped. Then the gates ahead of them suddenly swing shut...
- The Neopets Team loves indirectly saying there has been violence while at the same time saying there's no violence. A book called "How to Teach Your Pet Not to Eat Everything They See Book"'s announcement description is as such: "It's been a while. You decide to check on your Pet. You open the door and – oh not again! You better pick up this guide: How to Teach Your Pet Not to Eat Everything They See Book. You can get your hands on a copy at the Book Shop. And then you might want to grab some towels to clean up the spilled... milk..." 'Milk' is in bright red text, indicating blood.
- In the "Tale of Woe" plot, one of the puzzles has the player trying to open an old metal door with...something covering it. In the official solution for the plot The Neopets Team officially and insistently said the something was rust, but it didn't look like rust to some players, who think this was a Suspiciously Specific Denial to draw attention away from the dark elements of the plot. Later, after opening the door, the player finds the skeleton of a Neopet, a nurse, who'd died after being trapped inside when all the asylum's patients went on a rampage one day. This is illustrated in the comic as well.
- The Annihilation◊ trading card, which shows the Darkest Faerie burning an unknown Neopet alive until all that's left of them is a skull. Talk about Family-Unfriendly Violence.Caption: She always greeted uninvited guests with a "warm" welcome.
- The tale of the Amulet of Thilg: In the ancient days of the Lost Desert, a cruel pharaoh enslaved many pets and forced them to build a massive pyramid as a monument to his glory. Many pets died making it, and when they could take no more, they took their revenge by unleashing a magic spell on him. This turned him into a statue except for a single drop of his blood, which transformed into a deep red gemstone. His son became ruler after him and treated the Lost Desert's citizens more fairly, but secretly vowed his revenge on them. He set the gemstone into a golden amulet, put a curse on it, and hid it in his father's pyramid, waiting for its time to come. The article ends with a footnote stating that the research group who discovered the amulet never made it back to the museum, and none of them were ever seen again.
- The Scary Abandoned Plushie◊ trading card, which currently provides the page image for Vengeful Abandoned Toy, shows a creepy-looking, one-eyed stuffed Acara lying on a tree stump in the pouring rain.Caption: Through the sheets of rain, one eye glinted malevolently.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
