As a moments page, all spoilers are unmarked!
"You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!"
- Anytime the crew of the Black Pearl become skeletons. These aren't clean skeletons, (like in most of the films up until this one) either. They've got bits of rotten flesh and clothing hanging from them, and perfectly intact eyes.
- Elizabeth knocks one of the skeleton's heads back using the ship's wheel. Said skeleton makes a sickening gurgling noise as he cracks his head back into place.
- For no other reason than to terrify Elizabeth, Captain Barbossa, in his skeleton form, takes a long swig of his drink, and the audience is treated to a disturbing shot of the wine trickling down his mangled ribcage as Elizabeth watches in horror/disgust.
- Also, when Elizabeth is trying to escape from Barbossa in his cabin, and stabs him in the chest with a knife is a particularly horrifying moment. Barbossa simply stares down at the knife sticking out of his chest, before casually reaching up and pulling it out, while Elizabeth watches in horror. Then he holds up the knife, which is covered in his blood, and looks at Elizabeth with a terrifying gleam in his eye...Barbossa: I'm curious! After killin' me, what was it you were plannin' on doing next?
- The first half of the Black Pearl's attack on Port Royal is actually pretty scary, especially with the choice of music when it switches from the cannon fire and the pirates slaughtering people.
- Plus when the ship quietly comes in the night is a little creepy.
- Watching as a falling building nearly crushes a screaming toddler. Fortunately, the boy's mother grabs him and rushes him to safety at the last second.
- Even without knowing they are undead, the attack itself is pretty unnerving, they are all so sadistic about it, clearly loving all the fear and death they are causing. It's probably accurate to how pirates really acted. Plus the cellmate's line helps, too.
- Actually, real pirates generally avoided killing as much as possible, instead relying on their fearsome reputation to scare people into compliance. When attacking a ship out on the open sea, the black flag indicated that they would give quarter to any who surrendered, as opposed to the rarely used red flag which meant no quarters. Pirates were out to live good lives with comfort, freedom, and happiness for as long as possible, and that meant getting into sword and gun fights was unwise, both from the immediate threat of death and the delayed threat of a harsher sentence should they be arrested. In particular, they would take great care not to harm a ship's captain, as he could be negotiated with and ransomed, and killing him would impact their criminal record more than other crew members (preferential treatment much?) And on the rare occasion they'd attack a settlement, they'd most likely try to blockade it first, and at worst would shoot it with cannons from a distance, and only set foot on land after it surrendered. The best example of this is the pirate that Barbossa is loosely based on, Blackbeard, who famously spurned the use of violence and, allegedly, never killed a single person before the day he died. He cultivated a particularly brutal and terrifying reputation even among pirates of the time to ensure he could always get what he wanted, without ever actually following through on his threats. If anything, Barbossa and his crew behave like how Blackbeard wanted people to believe he behaved, and that's what makes them truly horrifying, when even someone as self-centered and morally grey as Jack still acts relatively civil with his enemies throughout the first three movies.
- The destroyed merchant's vessel in the opening scene. At that point, first-time viewers have no clue of what happened beyond that creepy ship with the black sails that may or may not have been out of Elizabeth's imagination. When you know about the Pearl and its crew, you have to wonder how horrifying it must have been for them. Their first sight of the Pearl, the attack, the realization that this pirate crew just won't die...
- Also take into account that the Pearl had been doing this for years. All because they were trying to find the last medallion.
- The threat made towards Elizabeth after she tries to reject Captain Barbossa's dinner invitation and gown.If that be da case, den you be dinin' wiv de crew. An' yewll be nekkid.
- Remember the hand that Elizabeth's father breaks off of a pirate's arm, then shoves into the drawer during the fight when it attacks him, that apparently turns back to flesh once the curse is broken? Now remember that Elizabeth knocks two guys to pieces when she's freeing Gibbs and crew on the Pearl, and the fact that we never see those two again...
- Or the three blown up when one gets one of his own grenades put inside him, then pushed out of the moonlight.
- The fact that any organic creature could become cursed. Case in point, Jack the Monkey. Just imagine if you trained other animals besides small primates to steal the gold, like a bird of prey or something... bigger, with teeth and claws. Now imagine the kind of terror that could be instilled if that something bigger couldn't die, no matter what. Just put it back together if it falls apart and it's good to go again for another set of rounds...Especially something much bigger and more dangerous, like say, the Kraken. And it looks really scary too.
- What Barbossa did to Bootstrap Bill. He tied a cannon to the feet of an immortal and tossed him overboard in the open ocean which would be deep and dark. Sure, he got out of that by making a deal with Davy Jones but it's pure nightmare fuel for people with claustrophobia, thalassophobia or fear of the dark or drowning. The curse only grants immortality and removes the ability to feel physical gratification; from the taste of food to temperature and that gratification. It doesn't grant superhuman strength; the weight of the water around him immobilized; which he outright stated in the second movie. Of course, the fact that he made a deal with Davy Jones in the first place might point to how horrible it was for Barbossa to leave him like that.
- When Barbossa cuts Elizabeth's hand in the first movie in order to try and lift the curse, he only cuts her slightly, drawing only a little blood. She's visibly surprised, as she was expecting much worse. "That's it?" She asks incredulously. "Waste not, want not." Barbossa replies. That could be interpreted to mean Barbossa knew that only a little blood would do the trick, and that would be enough to transform them all back into men, meaning that they would be able to do things they hadn't been able to do in a long time, and here's a beautiful woman they have all to themselves that they can do anything they want with.
- It goes further than that, Elizabeth is pretty much constantly getting threatened with rape during the movie. Besides the point mentioned earlier about "dining with the crew, naked", its followed shortly by Barbossa outlining the details of the curse, where he comments on how they can't enjoy apples or "satisfy their lust" in a leery fashion. This is called back to after the "waste not, want not" moment, when he turns to Elizabeth with a creepy gleam while declaring he intends to enjoy a "bushel of apples", which is pretty clearly innuendo for "rape Elizabeth". These threats get even more explicit when, after the curse fails to save them and the subsequently attack and capture Jack's crew, Barbossa warns Elizabeth that she won't enjoy their "hospitality" any further and tosses her to his crew, who proceed to start tearing away at her clothes as she struggles to pull awaynote . It's only through Will trading his life for hers that she's spared being raped to death. As scary as the zombie pirate stuff is, the Realism-Induced Horror of this really makes you wonder how they got away with it in a Disney movie.
- Deleted Scenes:
- Two deleted scenes taking place on the desert island show Jack at the angriest he's been in the entire franchise, with the first having him going on a calm rant about how Will's decision to use himself as a bargaining chip resulted in him and Elizabeth being marooned.Jack: Is there a problem between us, Miss Swann?
Elizabeth: You were going to tell Barbossa about Will in exchange for a ship.
Jack: We could use a ship! The fact is, I was going to not tell Barbossa about bloody Will in exchange for a ship because as long as he didn't know about bloody Will, I had something to bargain with. Which now no one has, thanks to bloody stupid Will.
- Two deleted scenes taking place on the desert island show Jack at the angriest he's been in the entire franchise, with the first having him going on a calm rant about how Will's decision to use himself as a bargaining chip resulted in him and Elizabeth being marooned.
