Nightmare Fuel / Pokémon Adventures

"Psydead used Terror! It's super effective!"

RBG arc

• Red's encounter with the zombie Pokémon haunting the Pokémon Tower. They are seen with empty eye sockets. An undead Psyduck attacks Red (complete with out-of-place sharp teeth) and on closer inspection, he sees its rotting corpse (complete with an intact eyeball) collapsing limp onto the ground. Luckily, the art is drawn in a cartoonish style, but just try to visualize that rotting zombie Psyduck in a realistic way...
• In the next part, Blue's Charmeleon cuts an Arbok in half. (though you find out later that it lived...)
• Giovanni in an early chapter finishes off two wild Magmar on a rampage that he had already froze with his Cloyster, causing them to break into pieces.
• Blaine's Mewtwo cancer. His skin is literally bubbling and melting off, and from the RGB arc to the GSC one, the cancer spreads from his forearm all the way to his chest.

Yellow arc

• Red in the Yellow arc getting beaten to a pulp, falling off a large hole, and getting frozen alive. For two months.
• The Elite Four and their omnicidal plan to Kill All Humans for the harm they've done to Pokemon.
  • Lance's reasoning for coming up with this plan; he can hear the thoughts of all Pokemon... which means he can feel all the pain and suffering they've gone through at the hands of humanity.
• Green's hand getting cut off during her battle with Lorelei, which mercifully she later reveals to be her Ditto transforming as a fake hand.

GSC arc

• Damn near everything about the Mask of Ice, aka Pryce and the backstory about how he kidnapped children, forced them to wear masks at all time, and put them through Training from Hell in order to use them as tools in his plan to gain control over time.

RS arc

• How about Team Aqua kidnapping Flannery and attempting to drown her and Sapphire in a flooded cable car? Imagine how horrible that must've felt.
• The mere presentation of Archie and Maxie’s orb-induced Sanity Slippage and subsequent possession by Groudon and Kyogre is enough to scare you, with their looming shadows and deranged expressions, never mind its full implications—exacerbated by the fact that it’s never really made clear just how far gone they are until they’re already at the point of no return.
  • Especially supplemented by the horrified reactions of Tate and Liza’s grandparents, the guardians of the blue and red orbs.
• After forcing the Orbs out of Archie and Maxie in RS, Ruby and Sapphire wind up on Mirage Island, where Juan reveals that their efforts were only a temporary solution and that 21 days have passed in the outside world. Let that sink in for a moment: 21 days of Groudon and Kyogre fighting nonstop, droughts and floods all around the region and the Gym Leaders and Elite Four doing all they can to contain the damage. Twenty. One. Days.
• Maxie setting Norman's corpse on fire during the final battle of the RS, right for Ruby to see. Can you imagine how Ruby felt, having already seen his father die in his arms?

FRLG arc

• The infamous Downer Ending conclusion to the FRLG arc in which the heroes get turned to stone.

Emerald arc

• The bloodshot eyes of the berserk Pokémon seen throughout the arc are simply horrifying.
• Maxie's fate is finally revealed... Sird made the two fight to the death for the armor and the sword, where Archie then killed him for it. His ruthlessness was seen throughout the RS arc, and this is the culmination of it.

DP arc

• Team Galactic is much more sinister than they are in the games due to the grunts being all Brainwashed and Crazy as part of a Hive Mind, and basically act exactly like how Cyrus wants to reshape all of humanity into: cold, emotionless, robot-like beings who only exist to perform their function.

Platinum arc

• Dia's Disney Death caused by Giratina. Doubles as a Tearjerker.

HGSS arc

• The ending of the HG/SS arc. Giovanni's able to get his medicine and helps save the world... and then reveals that he was Evil All Along and leaves Silver behind to rebuild Team Rocket, giving Gold and Silver an offer to join him if they wish. It just goes to show that even if he's a Noble Demon who loves his son, he's still a megalomanic criminal and this may never change.

BW arc

• The ending of Black/White. Ghetsis gets off scot-free and Black is absorbed into the Light Stone.
  • By the time the B2W2 arc starts, which is set two years later, he's still in there. This means that Black's been a rock for far longer than Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Silver have.
• Hell, Ghetsis in general. His Faux Affably Evil front from the games is taken to an even greater extent in the manga, and to see him act so polite and kindly while doing the most vile, sadistic things is just completely unsettling.
• As a display of Team Plasma's power, the Gym Leaders are kidnapped and hoisted up on crucifixes.

B2W2 arc

• Unlike in the games, rather than just Opelucid, multiple cities are frozen with the Plasma Frigate's Kyurem Cannon, starting with the most populated one, Castelia City. And we actually get to see people frozen solid. And because the cold weather rapidly spreads, Rood ends up confirming a few chapters later that about 70% of Unova is now frozen, made about 80% when Undella Town and Lacunosa Town are frozen over, the former getting frozen by Black Kyurem's Freeze Shock on page, meaning it's also decimated by lightning strikes. Were Kyruem to raise its power to the maximum at the Giant Chasm, the remainder of Unova would have been frozen over completely...
  • The people who've been frozen don't even resemble living people anymore, but instead appear like still-standing, lifeless snowmen with ice and slush covering all of their features. It's stated later that this freezing effect doesn't immediately kill most of its targets but rather their mind and consciousness enters a hibernation state that they cannot get out of unless their bodies are thawed out, but there is still a risk of dying for those left in this state for too long. Colress suggest freezing Sage Rood rather than "let him live", and when Colress himself is later frozen by Kyurem's Sheer Cold, it's reported that it's uncertain whether he's still alive or not.
• If you thought Whi-Two's childhood of naively following Team Plasma was messed up, Lack-Two's backstory takes it to another level. He was taken in by the Interpol as an infant, where he had essentially spent his entire life trained and working for them, a weapon of Interpol.
• The penultimate chapter features Ghetsis' long-anticipated Villainous Breakdown, which is triggered when N tries to save him from falling off the Frigate and tells him that in spite of everything he still loves him as a father. Ghetsis' Mask of Sanity breaks and his face is twisted with anger and hatred◊ as he savagely and bloodily beats N with his cane◊ while ranting about how N is a "monster" who disgusts him. It's only thanks to Foongus that N doesn't die from bleeding out. When N falls unconscious he lets Ghetsis fall, but he's caught by Zekrom who squeezes him tightly in Tranquil Fury while looking upon him with a Death Glare that terrifies the man. And finally, as he's being arrested, Ghetsis boasts that one day he'll escape and fool the people of Unova again, only for Whitley to interject that he'll never fool all the Pokémon he's hurt, who will never forget and never forgive him. Cue hundreds upon hundreds of Pokémon, some still inside Poké Balls and some lining the walls of N's Castle, surrounding Ghetsis and giving him the same Death Glare as Zekrom, causing Ghetsis to go completely Laughing Mad in terror as he scrambles to the police helicopter to escape the Pokémons' angry gaze. The final facial expression we ever see on Ghetsis is a truly horrifying look of utter madness.◊
  • That last scene is Nightmare Fuel from Ghetsis' perspective as well given the sheer amount of angry Pokémon. On his Twitter account, Satoshi Yamamoto said he was inspired by Phenomena when he drew the scene, and if anyone who's seen that movie knows what the animals in it can do to a person and apply that to the Pokémon, they can hardly fault Ghetsis for the fear that consumes him.

XY arc

• X/Y opens with the protagonists' hometown being destroyed.
• The arc in general is one of the series' darker arcs, what with Team Flare attacking the kids nearly every chapter and how they have spies everywhere, leading the protagonists to realize that they have no one to trust except themselves. It's basically Paranoia Fuel: the Arc.
• Things are made worse once they learn that the entire Kalos media may be under Team Flare's control, where looking at the people in the streets, Y thinks it's as if everyone's their enemy.
• Shauna having a Honedge forced into her hands while a Aegislash is looming behind her. Which means she's simultaneously being brainwashed and having her life force drained out of her.
• When Shauna and Tierno encounters a whole pile of Pokémon drained of their life energy. They're not dead, but it still feels like looking at a pile of corpses.
• She may have been really Essentia in disguise and wearing a helmet, but the sight of Y's head being crushed by Pinsir's claws is terrifying.
• Judging by the pools of blood by their heads as well as everyone else's reactions, Lysandre and Malva were likely killed in the final battle...or not. However, he'll be paralyzed forever from the damage to his spinal cord. Also, we've thought Malva wanted an Unholy Matrimony for him, and deliberately fell with him to save him. But it turns out she despised him for preferring Diantha over her all this time, and was going to get back on him once the weapon was activated by killing him herself and then taking over as the new ruler of Kalos.
• The cherry on the top's the aftermath of the final battle, where after all the shit they had to go to save everyone, they see that no one in the city cares one bit, with them even looking down at the children for being so dirty. It leads to them wondering if all of that was worth it. Even after AZ snaps them out of it, they focus on their normal lives to in an effort to not drown in their despair and feeling of futility.

ORAS arc

• The absorber needed to power the Dimensional Shifter. What it does to Sapphire and Emerald's Pokémon are horrific, but is seen as a necessary sacrifice to save the planet.
• After all of the Jerkass things she pulled throughout the entire story arc believing she's The Chosen One, Zinnia gets her Laser-Guided Karma when Rayquaza shows its discontent and confirmation she isn't by stabbing her in the stomach with its tail. Then, when she still dares to convince it that she's The Chosen One, Rayquaza shoots her point blank with a Hyper Beam. Luckily, she survives to have her Heel–Face Turn, but damn, that had to hurt.

SM arc

• Upon losing a battle, Guzma proceeds to scream at himself while smashing his head repeatedly to the ground, to the point his glasses break and the pieces end up in his profusely bleeding forehead. He then gently thanks his Pokémon for their hard work and assures them that they'll all do better next time.
• One word from Rotomdex: "Necrozma".
• Lusamine is even darker than she was in the Sun & Moon games, just a mere thought of Lusamine abusing Lillie with her forced clothing is enough to give Lillie something similar to PTSD. And unlike in the games, she always seems to have this unnaturally wide-eyed and wide-smiling expression on her face to show that there is something seriously wrong with her mental state.
  • Lusamine's crazy expressions after fusing with Nihilego, in addition with Guzma's explanation of how she came to it. The chapter's even called "Madness!! Mother Lusamine!".
• Faba causing the misery of the Aether family, first out of lust for Lusamine and then out of anger because she rejected his advances. He wants them to never be happy again and he doesn't care if he has to kill them!
• After running in terror from a tranquilly furious Cent, Faba ends up accidentally summoning a throng of Nihilego to him. They wrap their tentacles around him and drag him through an Ultra Wormhole to Ultra Deep Sea, all while injecting him with a toxin that makes him giggle in deluded bliss. It's Laser-Guided Karma that he more than had coming, but still disturbing to witness.
  • His fate sounds frighteningly similar to the hunting methods of the Compsognathuses from the book version of Jurassic Park, wherein they inject venom into their prey so they feel like they’re in heaven even as they’re being devoured.

SS arc

• While the situation is played for laughs, the first appearance of Schilly's Ball Guy headpiece is when Marvin wakes up to find her looming over him ominously, the perspective showing how unnerving the dead-eyed painted on smile might look outside of the proper context.◊
  • This happens again later when Allister sneaks onto the group's RV and winds up with the Ball Guy headpiece stuck on his head.
• Schilly's first encounter with Opal involves the Gym Leader in question looming ominously over her with an eerie expression◊ quite suddenly in the middle of a conversation.
• All this time, we've seen Soudo with a calm, relaxed face, and always seem to be in control even with a serious face. That just makes his face when he realizes he can't fix the Rusted Sword and Shield all the more terrifying.
  • Then there's his semi-Villainous Breakdown, where Eternatus' toxin destroys all his inhibitions and he rants about how getting his hands on the Rusted Sword and Shield and repairing them was the only thing he truly cared about on this whole journey, and that he won't hand them over to anyone even if it means the Galar region is destroyed. Once back in a rightful state of mind, even Soudo himself is utterly horrified by what he said and did, to the point where he has trouble trusting himself anymore.

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