Nightmare Fuel / Ninjago

End of episode!

Of course, a LEGO TV Series about 4 butt-kicking Ninjas was maybe going to get dark...

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Pilot

• Lord Garmadon being struck by lightning and being turned into his present form.

Season 1: Rise of the Snakes

• Pythor's tomb. As if the bones scattered everywhere wasn't enough, its implied (and later confirmed) he ATE the other members of his tribe!
• The Great Devourer as seen in the page image. Her roars and Eat the Camera moment in episode 12 will make you squirm.
  • To make the aforementioned Eat the Camera moment better, all you hear during the credits is a faint, unsettling heartbeat.
• The Treehorns. Their bizarre proportions are what really sell it...
• It's never explained what happened to the third judge after the Ninjago Talent Show. We know Pythor ate him, and Pythor threatened that he would not let him out if the judge did not keep quiet. Knowing how digestion works, it is very probable that the judge is dead.

Season 2: Legacy of the Green Ninja

• The Grundle, hoo boy.
• The Overlord's true form. Especially when it goes dark and all you can see is its head before it eats Lloyd.
• That growl the Overlord makes when he is about to spit out dark matter. It sounds like a horn with an extremely low pitch.

Season 3: Rebooted

• Cyrus Borg's Unwilling Roboticisation delivered by the Overlord. What's worse is how the camera turns away from Borg during the "surgery", so all we can see is his shadow and Borg's horrific, gut-wrenching screams, leaving the horror of how the Overlord attached the cybernetic legs to Borg up to the viewer.
• When Cyrus Borg is seen again, it is revealed that the Overlord cut off his right arm and replaced it with a mechanical arm for apparently no reason, other than for cruelty.

Season 4: Tournament of Elements

• Clouse's Serpent has a den filled with literal mountains of skulls — actual corpse piles that tower over the protagonists. Also, the way Chen casually slides down the corpses of his enemies like it's a kiddy slide before punting a skull like a soccer ball is quite... disconcerting...
• The main plot in Season 4 is that Chen is hosting a tournament to eventually steal all the elemental powers and torture and enslave their former owners so he can bring even more suffering to Ninjago.
  • Some of these events are also quite brutal. Imagine you're on a bridge suspended over lava and you're fighting against someone whose only goal is to throw you to your death, or someone who can telekinetically pick the leaves off a sakura tree and stab you repeatedly with them, or maybe someone who can command vines to choke and strangle you while you can only stand there and suffer. Sound familiar? Because that's what actually happened.

Season 5: Possession

• Lloyd being possessed by Morro. Just his scream when Morro successfully takes over. Especially since he's still clearly aware of everything Morro is doing with his stolen body—namely trying to murder his friends and family.
  Lloyd: Kai! Help me!
  • And look at it from Kai's point of view. One of his teammates, who he considers family, is being used and manipulated by a villain for his maniacal biddings...and Kai has to fight back.
• In "Temple on the Haunted Hill", the Ninja are tested by the ghost of Sensei Yang - the man who invented Airjitzu - via facing their fears. It gets really creepy really quickly (Kai's fear of water involved locking them in a room and attempting to kill the ninja by drowning them, for example). Not to mention how the episode ends with Cole becoming a ghost.
  • In fact the whole idea of Cole being a ghost is absolutely terrifying to think about. The only way to become a ghost is through dying, meaning Cole is technically dead now. Additionally, Cole said that he no longer has the ability to feel anything. To top it off, a single drop of water can cause him to explode with nothing left behind. It's perfect to see why he was so upset.
• From "Kingdom Come", we get Nimbus◊. What's worse is that it's never explained exactly what he is or why he's trapped in the Cloud Kingdom. He is arguably one of the more poorly animated creatures in the series, which only adds to its unsettlingness.
• In the episode "The Crooked Path", we get a good look at Morro's skeletal remains. It hammers home the point that yes, he did die.
• The ending of Cursed World Part 1. Lloyd is unable to get the Realm Crystal and he's captured by the Preeminent and is dragged into the vortex as the others scream his name. This is a kids' show, right? Right?

Season 6: Skybound

• Kai being chased by fangirls, thanks to the second wish Nadakhan grants him. In any other situation, it might be funny, considering it's Kai, but these fangirls are staggering like zombies and are all wearing a very unnerving Slasher Smiles. Not to mention the scene ends with him getting sucked into the Sword of Souls.
• Lloyd's wish to be wise like Wu in "Wishmasters" results in him rapidly aging into an old man, and he's shown to be growing weaker with almost every passing second until he gets sucked up into Nadhakan's sword. Honestly, that's the lesser of the evils.
• Nadakhan casually telling Monkey Wretch to dismantle the Falcon. Considering we don't see what happens to it, it's clear Monkey Wretch succeeded in killing the falcon, and Zane likely never found out. And keep in mind that, while it IS a machine, it still has feelings and possibly even a soul, if the conditions of Zane and the Nindroids are any indication. Likewise, Monkey Wretch, another machine (even if one with more human origins) would likely recognize the falcon's status as a creature with emotions. Thus, with that in mind, Monkey Wretch, from his perspective, was basically dismembering a living creature with emotions as it screeched in pain the entire time. Thank goodness the Falcon's death was undone.
• The Sky Pirates' unprovoked attack on Gayle Gossip's helicopter, which presumably ended in her death.
  • Later seasons confirm that she is in fact alive and well due to Jay's last wish, but still...
• Nadakhan's brutal mind rape of Jay throughout "My Dinner with Nadakhan".
  • Kai and Zane are both mind raped as well, but Jay's one is particularly long and brutal, as Jay is made to do increasingly dangerous tasks to clean Misfortune's Keep, all the while intermittently participating in "Scrap and Tap", a sadistic game in which Jay is beaten to death endlessly by the members of Nadhakan's crew while he can only sit there and suffer in pain and agony.
    • Even Flintlocke is disturbed by Nadakhan's treatment of Jay. And we're talking about someone who knows and is accustomed to Nadakhan's ways.
• The inside of the Sword of Souls. A twisted, distorted version of reality where everyone and everything, even time itself, has been distorted to a sluggish pace, slowly dragging yourself through the void in a cavern of endless green crystals, many of which are slowly consuming the souls imprisoned inside, who are already losing consciousness and fading away. And to make the sluggish nature of everything worse, it's also the idea that Jay and his friends might end up trapped FOREVER in a state of frozen limbo - and what's more terrifying is that when they escape, several souls (Clouse as well as one pirate that Jay accidentally strikes) are still trapped inside.
  • And on a second note, Nadakhan's ancestors are trapped inside as well, meaning that it's the fate of every Djinn King to be condemned to this hellish limbo... or it SHOULD be, anyway, since Khanjikhan is at least dead and presumably at peace in the Departed Realm.
• Going by "The Tall Tale of Monkey Wretch" mini-movie (since declared non-canon), Monkey Wretch was created when Nadakhan fuses a monkey, human, and box of tools into one being. Not only are the implications of a forced fusion horrifying, but it's left ambiguous which mind dominates - the monkey, or the human? And that's assuming some twisted conglomeration of their minds wasn't what was made instead...
  • Or indeed that the "tool consciousness" wasn't the dominant one. That's a whole heap of messed up right there...

Day of the Departed

Season 7: The Hands of Time

• The reason why Ray and Maya were absent from Kai and Nya's lives: Krux threatened to kill Kai and Nya if Ray and Maya didn't help him forge armor and weaponry for the Vermillion warriors for over a decade nonstop, all out of revenge that they created the Time Blades that took his and Acronix's powers away. Keep in mind that Kai and Nya were at least five and three years old respectively when Krux took their parents away.

Season 8: Sons of Garmadon

• "Game of Masks" reveals that people did die during the Great Devourer's rampage. Including Harumi's parents.
  • Harumi lost her adopted parents (the Emperor and Empress) and guardian very early in the season. These three probably matter less to her than her birth parents... because she willingly caused the events that killed them.
• Lord Garmadon is back. And he is not the loving father of Lloyd anymore. He's the dark lord once more and this time, he's a monster who won't hesitate to destroy his son.
• Season 8 ends with the Sons of Garmadon, Harumi, and the resurrected Garmadon victorious, the 4 original ninja and Wu being presumed dead and only 3 people left to fight the newly arisen Emperor Garmadon, even with Lloyd's determinator status and promise to fight on it's still a terrifying ending to an already dark season.

Season 9: Hunted

• If people thought Season 8 was dark, then Season 9 was far darker. Ninjago City is now in a post-apocalyptic state, with the victorious Sons Of Garmadon policing the streets, and Lloyd and Nya being locked in a desperate and seemingly hopeless struggle against the newly-proclaimed Emperor Garmadon.
• In "Iron and Stone". Emperor Garmadon punishes Mr. E's failure to capture Lloyd by using his powers to painfully tear him apart from the inside out, followed by burning his insides and reducing him to a pile of lifeless scraps. Quite a nasty and horrific way to go, even for a robotic villain.
• After destroying Mr. E, Emperor Garmadon threatens his generals by warning that if they fail him in the way Mr. E did that "I will tear you to pieces".
• The humans in the wasteland. They capture dragons and torture them (and even do something much worse), all for the sake of finding the armor of the First Spinjitzu Master, who was the son of a dragon and an Oni. And their leader is a cruel man who nearly came close to his goal until the First Dragon vomited magma on him, trapping him alive in the hardened magma meaning he will either die of starvation, thirst, or suffocation while helpless at all.
• Garmadon is defeated in the final episode of Season 9, but he warns Lloyd and the Ninja that something far, far worse than himself is coming that will destroy all of Ninjago: the Oni.

Season 10: March of the Oni

• The titular nigh-invincible army arrives and proceeds to turn Ninjago into their version of Silent Hill with a cold, dark fog that puts anyone it touches into a petrified coma. This made Lloyd and the Ninja realized that Garmadon was right about the Oni coming to destroy Ninjago, so they reluctantly released him from prison in order for better chances against the Oni.
• The sheer brutal power of the heinous Omega, the leader of the Oni. Even when Garmadon and Lloyd, who are undoubtedly the two most powerful people in Ninjago, used their full powers to attack the Omega, the latter easily whacks both of them out in retaliation without getting a single scratch. Even the powers of the Golden Weapons that the Ninja are using aren't still enough to stop the Omega and the Oni from attacking Ninjago.

Season 11: Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitzu

• Zane is revealed to be the Ice Emperor in Season 11, the same villain who Akita and her people have lived in fear of for years upon years. However, he is not at fault, as it was Vex who deliberately erased Zane's memories and manipulated him to use his powers to take over the Never-Realm in the first place.

Season 12: Prime Empire

• The whole premise of Season 12 is terrifying. The Ninja are forced to enter Prime Empire, a video game in which literally everything that is considered normal in the real world is trying to kill you in every way possible. The scariest part is that the NPCs in the game are totally unaware that they exist in a video game.
  • And let's talk about the villainous faction of the season, the Red Visors. The Red Visors are shown to have no feelings or emotions, and just fire on their victims until they run out of lives. If you do indeed run out of lives, you turn into a lifeless orange cube.
• The Ninjas' "Digi faces". They consist of a black face with giant emotionless bright blue eyes.

Season 13: Master of the Mountain

The Island

Season 14: Seabound

Season 15: Crystalized

• The final scene of "The Council of The Crystal King". Everything, from the blurry camera to Harumi's creepy nursery rhyme, makes this scene very unsettling.
• The sheer scale of the Overlord's new plan is terrifying. He appears to have gained control of Ninjago's entire network of organized crime and has been able to recruit just about every villain that is still alive in Ninjago. All this and more makes it clear that this is the biggest threat the Ninja have faced since the Oni, and possibly in their entire career as Ninja.
• In "A Sinister Shadow", the Overlord's "ball form" from Season 2 reappears. Except this time, he takes the appearance of a virus. Considering what the world had gone through over the previous few years prior to the season's release, this could be pretty scary to some people.
• In "Darkness Within", the Overlord finally returns to physical form, following a ritual conducted by the Council of the Crystal King. The entire scene is very eerie.
• The Crystal King in Season 15, who turns out to be the Overlord. As opposed to destroying Ninjago, he instead focused his new intent to destroy the balance by corrupting the powers of Creation for himself. To that end, he revives Harumi by forcing her to serve him and then tasking her to smuggle various amounts of Vengestone in order to create his new powerful armies of Crystal Warriors and Dragonides. The Overlord also tasked Harumi in releasing and hiring several of the Ninja's enemies (Mister F, Pythor, Aspheera, the Mechanic, and the Skull Sorcerer) to serve as members of his new council and have them steal and corrupt the Golden Weapons in order to attain a new powerful vessel for himself. Upon obtaining the vessel, the Overlord gathers enough power to levitate the Oni Temple and use it to attack Ninjago City, condemning thousands of lives to be crystallized and leaving the Ninja powerless as the Vengestone armies nullify their powers. Even the survivors find this to be far more worse than the time when Garmadon was ruling over Ninjago City.
  • Upon hearing of Pythor, Aspheera, Vangelis, and the Mechanic's failure to capture the Ninja, the Overlord became furious and threatens to kill the four villains, implying that he's only using them as pawns. And he would've succeeded if Harumi and Mister F hadn't come by and informed the Overlord of the Ninja's actual location thanks to a radio transmission that they intercepted.
  • When Garmadon and Lloyd attacked the Overlord from behind during the final battle, the Overlord angrily swears to make both the father and son perish with all life in Ninjago. Even when Garmadon uses his full Oni powers to help Lloyd fight back, it doesn't do much as the Overlord brutally thrashes both Garmadon and Lloyd before electrocuting them. Even when Garmadon successfully gets Lloyd to unleash his Oni form in a possible attempt to take down the Overlord, it became all for nothing as Lloyd represses his Oni form after being scared by his reflection on a crystal, which allowed the Overlord to strike back, much to Garmadon's distraught.
  • While electrocuting both Garmadon and Lloyd, the Overlord spitefully confessed that he was the one who created and controlled the Great Devourer that turned Garmadon evil and attacked Ninjago City, which drove Harumi's Heel–Face Turn (as her family was killed during the Great Devourer's attack on Ninjago City). Despite the combined efforts of Garmadon, Lloyd, and Harumi as they work together, their brutal attacks only intensified the Overlord's rage as he knocks out Harumi, defeats Garmadon, and sends Lloyd to fall from the Oni temple. Even when the ninja reclaimed the Golden Weapons and defeated the Overlord's council members and their armies with the help of their friends and allies, the Overlord retaliates by unleashing a powerful blast from the Oni Temple to petrify all life in Ninjago (including the ninja, their friends, allies, and even former enemies). Hell, the Overlord would've succeeded in murdering Harumi and getting away with all of it, that is if the ninja hadn't sacrificed the Golden Weapons before they were petrified, otherwise the powers wouldn't take an ultimate form to save Lloyd and give him another chance to stop the Overlord.

Other works

• In Garmadon Issue 2, Garmadon is swallowed by what he thinks is Kuma but manages to escape from the bear's mouth and defeat it. As Garmadon and his companions celebrate their victory the ground begins to shake, and all of the bears fall upon their faces. The real Kuma, an enormous bear with glowing red eyes emerges from her cave. Thankfully, Garmadon is able to defeat Kuma.
• In the "could-be-canon" novel The Splinter in the Blind Man's Eye, we get several glimpses into Lloyd's mind. There is one thing he keeps thinking about, and that is his past with Harumi. It becomes even clearer how much trauma Lloyd has sustained from Season 8 and Season 9.
  • Later, in Chapter 17, we discover what happened to Fenwick. He has lost all the flesh on the right side of his face due to Nimbus' claws, leaving him with an appearance, not unlike the fatal injuries that Gustavo Fring sustained. See for yourself.
• The entirety of the "could-be-canon" novel Way of the Departed. The story centers around Cole and the scar on his face, taking place after Season 7, and boy the entire story just seems to be a mishmash of the worst nightmare fuel one could imagine. Tommy Andreason has even said that the story itself was too dark to be ever be used in the series, and he's right.
  • The story starts off with Cole's recurring nightmare of being in an Icy Labyrinth with his friends but is trapped looking at his own reflection. He laments that he is feeling cold, but that he shouldn't be feeling anything because he is 'not alive'. His reflection's head then is torn to pieces, and its lifeless body drops to the ground. Only the nightmarish glow of the scar remains, haunting Cole until he wakes up.
  • The revelation that Cole's scar is actually an actual rift to the Departed Realm. The nightmare that Cole had been plagued by is actually a premonition. Cole's face was actually going to split open, which will allow a portal from the Departed Realm to the living world. Master Yang expects this to be extremely painful and Cole would likely die in the process.
  • The fact that Cole basically followed the path to his doom, thinking that it would be the answer to the problems. He abandoned his friends to pursue this and was too afraid to confide in anyone. He goes to Nom, which had been slowly building Edo magic unbeknownst to the residents. Being exposed to this much unstable magic causes the tearing of the rift on Cole's face to accelerate. Cole's mind gets dragged to the Underworld where he is trapped by a tortuous Clouse while his physical comatose body is in shrieking pain and agony because the rift is threatening to rip his face to shreds. Jerahn comments that he hears Cole's faint cries of agony from down the street. Jeez.

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