Nightmare Fuel / Peaky Blinders

All spoilers below are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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• The slo-mo scene where the Shelby boys curb-stomp the Lees is unnerving, with the silent screams and shouts of the men and only the soundtrack playing.
• The sudden onset of paranoia, fear, and PTSD flashbacks all three of the Shelby boys develop when they find that the Lees have left a bomb in the ransacked house. It could literally be anywhere, and then it gets worse when Tommy figures out where it is, and finds Finn playing in the booby-trapped car.
  • When Finn opens the door and trips the bomb, Tommy grabs it and throws it away from Finn—directly at a dozen other people, who only barely get out of the way in time before it explodes.
• Something is really not quite right with the one IRA sympathizer Tommy meets with, screaming an IRA song in the Garrison and looking as if he might break the whisky bottle over Tommy's head. Not to mention being suicidal enough to threaten a notorious gang leader in his own pub.
• Campbell threatening to have the Shelby siblings killed in 1.04 if the guns aren't returned soon—all of them except Finn (eleven years old), whom he plans to dump in an adult prison "where men have the most appetite for boys like him."
• Darby Sabini's introduction: having his goons beat Tommy to within an inch of his life, then opening his mouth, ripping out one of his teeth, and cutting his cheek. He's left with broken blood vessels in his right eye that make it look downright demonic.
• The attempted rape and beating of Ada from the same time period.
• Alfie's violent outburst against a random Black Country recruit.
• The Peaky Blinders' takeover of the Eden Club. Their thugs beat the shit of any patrons, men and women, who happen to get in their way and Arthur brutally stabs the boss in the throat and face repeatedly with a broken bottle.
• Campbell's rape of Polly from 2.05.
• In 3.02 when Hughes threatens the life of Tommy's son and he comes home to find a postcard in Charlie's crib reading "R.I.P. Charles Shelby".
• Tommy's descent into despair and near monstrousness in 3.03, where he nearly tortures Vincente Changretta before Arthur and John intervene and kill the old man first.
• Tommy's night with a drunk and dangerous Tatiana in 3.04, who dances half-naked around the house with a loaded revolver while Tommy chases her frantically trying to get it back.
  • It's the same model of gun that John and Arthur described as unstable on the trigger in 3.03.
• The aftermath of Tommy's cracked skull in 3.04.
  • Topped off with Father Hughes's sadistic enjoyment of the dinner the next day, forcing Tommy to stumble through the Act of Contrition while he can barely sit upright and is clearly in agony. He forces Tommy to address his contrition to him, rather than to God.
• Tommy's months-long hospitalization to recover from his fractured skull in 3.05.
  • He starts drinking morphine like water, but pours it out when he gets home and is reunited with his son. He then spends the next several weeks visibly in considerable pain.
• Polly learning why Michael wanted Father Hughes dead. And her implied realization that the authorities took her son away from her on the pretext that she was abusing him, only to dump him in an orphanage where he really was abused, horrifically.
  • Tommy points out that the abuse happened in God's house.
• Tommy's blind panic when he realizes that Charles isn't in the house anymore and has likely been kidnapped.
• Tommy back in a tunnel again for the first time since the war, in a tiny underground hole, digging all night long in a blind panic well past the point when the other diggers say it's unsafe to continue.
  • He jumped in the tunnel without a moment's hesitation to get the robbery done in time to get Charles back.
• Finn is just seconds too late to tell Arthur and John that Charles has been rescued and they no longer have to go through with the train explosion. Six completely innocent people were killed, and Arthur's responsible for it. And because the explosion wasn't stopped in time, Tommy is able to make a deal with the police to pin the blame on his brothers.
  • Just before the explosion, Arthur and John come to clear the trainyard, except for six men. Six men of Arthur's choosing.
• The deal Tommy made to sell out the rest of his family. And the implication that his "apology" meeting was a ruse to hold all of them at the house until the police arrived to arrest them.
• The opening of 4.01, where Arthur, John, Michael, and Polly are all nearly hanged, their necks in the nooses and salvation only coming at the last second.
• The kitchen murder in 4.01, with Tommy using a butcher's hook to rip open a spy in his household. He ends up just soaked in blood.
• Michael pointing out that the only thing standing between the Shelby family and total destruction is Tommy, a shell-shocked violent gangster who refuses to let anyone in on his plans and demands complete trust and blind obedience from his family at all times. And the only thing standing between that man and total destruction is Polly, who would very much like to murder him after the outcome of one of those plans nearly got her and Michael executed.
  Michael: Without him, they'll take us all.
• Luca Changretta faking-out Tommy and turning up in Michael's hospital room, holding a gun to his head and dry-firing it. This is the third time Michael has been prepared to die.
• It's quite disturbing to see Tommy egging Finn on to blind a man, telling him to "do it for Arthur", especially considering Arthur was alive the whole time, meaning Finn just blinded a man for the sake of making the coverup look convincing.
• Charlie's reaction to Tommy having shot a horse in 5.01.
  Tommy: Did Arthur explain?
  Charlie: He said it was God's will. But you're not God!
  Charlie storms off angrily
  Tommy: No, I'm not God. Not yet, anyway.
• The teaser for season 5 (scene is from 5.02) shows Tommy walking into the middle of a field with a weird scarecrow. The scarecrow has a note on it for Tommy stating "Look down on earth and see the seeds you have sown." Tommy then notices that he is in the middle of a minefield. As he is slowly making his way out of the field, he sees his son running toward him.
  • He abandons his careful, methodical exit strategy of matching his own footsteps and breaks into a desperate sprint to get to Charlie.
• Aberama Gold is helpless as he forced to watch as the Billy Boys torture his son by beating him with the butt of a shotgun and crucifying him. They then finish him off with a bullet to the head while Aberama cannot do anything to stop them.
• The reveal in 5.02 that Ruby is scared of Tommy. She's just turned four years old and is already terrified of her father. And it's not because of anything he's done to her.
• Aberama turning up at Tommy's house with Johnny Dogs after his son is killed, desperately injured, mad with grief, and fully prepared to kill both Tommy and Johnny. He's only stopped by Tommy's insistence that he needs a hospital, and by Lizzie firing warning shots and demanding that they get away from the house with her child in it. All four of them are at their very lowest points, riding so high on terrible emotions that any one of them might have killed the others right there.
  • And there's little Charlie, standing in the entryway, calmly watching the whole thing.
• Karl in 5x03 calmly parroting the racism he's learned at school, and Ben Younger trying to correct him, thinking the boy has been led astray by ignorant people in his life. Then Karl informs Ben that he doesn't want him as his stepfather because he's not white.
  • Becomes even Harsher in Hindsight after the car bomb in 5.06.
  • And worse again in 6.04, when Karl smugly tells his mother that when the fascists take over Britain, they'll send baby Elizabeth back to Africa. Ada points out that Freddie Thorne's grandparents were Jewish, and that the Shelby family is half Romani, and asks just where Karl thinks the fascists will be sending him when it's all said and done.
• Arthur beating a man almost to death at the Quaker meeting house, for no reason other than telling him that Linda didn't want to see him, which soon turns into an animalistic Villainous BSoD. He winds up on top of the man's body, screaming in despair that he's a good man with good in his heart and the devil in his hands.
• The final step in Michael's long-brewing Face–Heel Turn at Polly's funeral in 6.01.
• Tommy's conversation with Lizzie in 6.01, which starts out as proof that Tommy really has changed over the past four years, worrying about his daughter's health but calmly trusting Lizzie to handle it and promising her that he'll be done with his "business" for good this time. But as soon as he learns that Ruby had been speaking Romani in her feverish delirium, he flies into a furious panic, screaming at Lizzie just like the old days. Except this time he apologizes in the middle of his frantic instructions.
  • What Ruby was saying: tikno mora o beng, roughly meaning the devil's daughter will die. Tommy is known as "the devil" among the Nelson family.
• Tommy's nightmarish PTSD episodes in 6.02:
  • The first is bad enough, with a seemingly normal scene being suddenly interrupted by a loud crash and Lizzie running in to find Tommy lying screaming and writhing on the floor at something she can't see.
  • The second, after he's informed that Ruby has deteriorated, is even worse, suddenly hallucinating that he's back in the tunnels and violently battering an imagined opponent before coming round on the floor. Made worse by the close-ups from his perspective as he slits the imaginary enemies throat.
• The scene in 6.05 where Arthur forces Billy to strangle a referee with razor wire for not taking bribes.
• From the same episode comes the scene where Jack Nelson wraps garrotte wire around Billy's genitals, leaving him sobbing on his knees and bleeding from the scrotum by the end of the scene.