Nightmare Fuel / Stampy's Lovely World

Since many episodes listed here involve HitTheTarget attacks, all spoilers are off.

Sometimes, the premise of several episodes, especially Hit The Target attacks, can fall into this. And to think this was mainly watched by young children…

General

• While definitely the least serious of all the Hit The Target episodes, his first attack in Episode 42, "Unexpected Drama", definitely counts.
  • Stampy has just chased him down through a maze of hidden traps in his castle, and is about to attack when Hit The Target lights himself on fire, killing himself in the process. Yeah, that's right — the children's Let's Play series just had their main antagonist commit suicide on-screen. Granted, it's not graphic at all (since it's Minecraft) and he does recover, but still, the implication is there.
  • What makes it arguably even worse is that due to what Stampy describes as "the wonders of lag-free Xbox Live", even after he dies, Hit The Target's body is still there, flickering with ghostly flames up until the very end of the video. Brrr...
• Episode 69, "The Show Must Go On": You're enjoying a play meant to celebrate obtaining 4,000 subscribers, when all of a sudden your Arch-Enemy, Hit The Target, appears on the stage — and unlike a few minutes ago, when it was just one of your friends in a costume, he's real. You order for the curtain to be lowered as he starts to aim an arrow at you, and when it's risen again, he's gone. The worst part? He's supposed to be dead — you saw him die only a few episodes ago, yet somehow, he's come back to haunt you.
• Episode 320, "Sleepy Stampy":
  • You wake up from a deep sleep with all your possessions stolen and you are trapped in a prison Made of Indestructium by your worst enemy, who then tries to drown you the moment you wake up. You try to digging your way out, even though you know that it would be in vain as it takes longer to dig underwater. And then there's the realization of how you got there...
  • And when you finally get out, dripping wet and probably traumatized, your enemy has managed to make his escape and kidnap your beloved pet/companion in the chaos. It's honestly a wonder that Stampy managed to keep an optimistic front for the outro without having a breakdown halfway through trying to do so.
  • And then, according to the following episode, "Tick Tock", Stampy returned to the fortress to try and find Barnaby, to no avail (as he had expected). His main "reassurance" was that HTT was trying to train Barnaby into becoming evil and so would treat him well enough for Stampy and Lee to pull off a rescue mission in HTT's next attack… but in all honesty, it's not much of a reassurance at all, is it?
• Episode 355, "Friends and Foes": You are tricked into a trap by your trusted friend, who reveals that they had been working for your Arch-Nemesis all along... and they proceed to spawn in an Eldritch Abomination which can also function as a Person of Mass Destruction to kill you and destroy the home you have been building for years. Now that's what we call Trust Issues 101.
• Episode 500, "Memories":
  • Hit The Target — your worst enemy — killing Barnaby — your loyal Canine Companion of 492 episodes (nearly 5 years in real time)… on your 500th episode special of all days. Even knowing that Barnaby would be Back from the Dead due to a well-timed Rewind Gag, it's still quite horrific to think about.
  • Even from a villainous standpoint, this episode is nightmarish. Your sworn enemy, usually too scared to even hit you in a one-on-one fight, sees you kill his dog — and everything shifts. Suddenly, he's absolutely destroying you, fighting harder than you've ever seen him fight before, hard enough to kill you. Had it not been for your partner utilizing the Time Rift Manipulator, you would have been stuck in the Nether once again — yet despite said utilization making it so you never killed his dog, he's still angry, and ends up killing you a second time. He calms down after yet another rewind, thankfully, but the whole scenario reveals a side of him you never even knew existed.
• Episode 526, "Saving the World": In the episode, Hit The Target speaks through Stampy's voice, giving him a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech with his own voice. At one point in the episode, he even tried pretending to be Stampy all the while saying what he wanted to say rather than what Stampy himself would have said. Imagine being forced to be the voice of your Arch-Enemy and losing the ability to control what you are allowed to say, while your mind is intact; and, according to the episode, if Stampy killed HTT, he would lose his voice forever... thank goodness there's an off switch to the Remote Mind Vocalizers, which allow Stampy to speak as himself to try to get help. Stampy even describes it in the episode to be "not a very pleasant experience for [him]". On second thought, the next attack is quite similar in premise to "Saving the World"...
• Episode 541, "I Lost": The ending. You're surrounded by lava and the only way out is blocked by a tripwire trap, where your beloved pet and longtime companion is positioned so that if you try to escape or deactivate the trap, your pet is pushed into lava and dies. No wonder the episode gave so many fans the chills.
• Episode 575, "Polly-Bot": Not only is the entire episode a major case of Adult Fear (your friend has been held hostage in a tiny cell for months while an impostor pretended to be them), but considering that Stampy is essentially the Team Dad, the episode could very easily be reinterpreted as a parent realizing their child had been kidnapped without them even knowing.
• Episode 670, "Hacked":
  • The main premise of the episode. You receive a pop-up notifying you that someone else was able to access your account, i.e. it got hacked. Or worse still, in Stampy's case, you lose your permissions, i.e. to interact with the world, including losing the ability to defending yourself in a world with Everything Trying to Kill You, e.g. the Nether... he honestly got off lucky in the episode, where his ability to leave the Nether isn't hindered by hostile mobs on the rampage. Then, when he tries and fails to attack HitTheTarget, who can attack him in return, Stampy gets kicked out of the game, despite the fact that it was his own world... The premise of the episode as a whole can be categorized as Nightmare Fuel, to the point that Stampy describes it as "their scariest plan yet" at the end of the episode. His realizations of the situation don't make it better either.
    Stampy: How have [Hit The Target and Veeva Dash] made it so I can't do any of this– This is my world, I made this world, they should not be able to make it so I can't do anything; they've taken away all of my permissions. You don't think that they've... somehow... hacked into my world, or... got control of all of it in some way? Because if that's the case, then I have no chance in this world, because they can do anything: they can just keep kicking me from the game, or they could just keep taking away my permissions, they could... delete my entire Lovely World if they wanted to– but I don't think they're gonna do that, because Hit The Target doesn't want to get rid of my Lovely World, he wants to take control of it by using my dogs as a dog army, so hopefully he won't delete the whole world, but... if I can't get into the world, what difference does it make to me?
  • The climax of the episode classifies as an Adult Fear. The Helpers enter the Nether to fight Hit The Target and Veeva Dash, while Stampy is forced to remain off the battlefield due to trying to defy becoming The Load. Switch around things a bit, with the Team Dad interpretation — your kids are going off to war against very dangerous enemies while you, the more experienced adult/parent/mentor, are forced to stay back, not knowing what is happening on the battlefield and if everyone is okay.
• Episode 704, "Corridors": Stampy has started hallucinating. Seeing the world around him shift (like Secret momentarily becoming Fluffy) is rather creepy, and even worse, his dialogue ("I had a bit of a flashback then, again") implies that it's happened before, and this is just the first time the audience is seeing it.
• Episode 719, "I Won": The Magic Campfires, which produce smoke that cause memory loss. In small doses, it would make someone's memories fuzzy, but in large doses, it could cause Loss of Identity.
  • In the context of the episode itself, Stampy is distracted by Fluffy, who had been assumed dead for over four months, which caused him to doubt his memory... then HitTheTarget and Veeva Dash enter the scene, whereupon Stampy greets them as friends, not knowing who they were, despite them being enemies for up to almost a decade.
  • The two then lure Stampy to their fortress, but upon passing a stretch of ice without Magic Campfires, Stampy realizes the gig is up and immediately starts putting out the campfires. Then he ends up on the wrong end of a slime-piston trap and... falls straight into a pit, with walls that are lined with Magic Campfires, with strong enough effects combined for Stampy to forget even his own name.
  • A small one during Stampy's montage of cake memories. Most of them were comprised of happy memories of friendship and sweetness, but three of them stand out — the field of cake from Episode 62, "Lovely Waterfall" (in an almost-real nightmare where HitTheTarget's then-ghost shot him), and the two cake traps from "Ocean Adventure" and "Sleepy Stampy". All three of the memories are arguably traumatic. Wonder what was going through Stampy's head while relieving those memories.
• Episode 733, "Christmas Invasion":
  • The thumbnail of the episode features an unhealthy and inordinate amount of TNT being placed in the Love Garden. And also on Stampy's balcony and next to Frosty Long Nose, where Duncan and Mittens were residing for the holidays. Uh... uh oh...
  • The episode itself doesn't go start off well either, considering Stampy finds all his dogs other than Barnaby missing from the get-go. He then runs off to the fortress, only for it to be completely covered in and surrounded by lava. If it weren't for Stampy's recent addition of diamond armour to his daily outfit, he wouldn't have even got out of the fortress alive, let alone made it to the sea to put out the fire (which he succeeded in, but it took away half of his health).
  • When Stampy returns to the trap, he finds that it was empty, meaning Veeva Dash had broken HitTheTarget out, with the orders for him to go to the train alone.
  • As for the train itself, it gets messy. All of his dogs and Mittens were being held hostage there as the train was covered in TNT, alongside Fizzy and Mattress Man.
  • We then get a little glimpse into HitTheTarget's perspective as he forces Polly and William out of their respective homes to the train as well. Oh, and he blows up Stampy's bedroom and redecorates it for himself and Veeva Dash.

Paranoia Fuel

• As Stampy himself mentioned in the Recap Episode "Stampy vs Hit The Target – The Story So Far", you might never know if HitTheTarget is going to be attacking, and there's canonical justification of his paranoia. Many of the attacks can be anticipated and are outright foreshadowed, but there are some which catch viewers entirely off-guard since they have little to no forewarning whatsoever, e.g. "Sinking Feeling" (Episode 124), "Evil Plan" (Episode 375), and "Gate Crashers" (Episode 472). Special mention, though, goes to "I Lost" (Episode 541), as the only indication that the episode wasn't going to end well was the title — there wasn't a Spoiler Thumbnail like the others mentioned before, and Veeva Dash's secret appearance in the episode to kidnap Barnaby is very difficult to spot first-try, making the big twist at the ending a massive shock to both Stampy and the audience.
• Episode 320, "Sleepy Stampy": Are you sure your food isn't tampered with?
• Episode 575, "Polly-Bot": It takes you almost three months to notice that one of your friends has been kidnapped and replaced by a Deceptively Human Robot. Granted, Stampy isn't the most observant cat around, but knowing that your close friend has been substituted by a robot designed by your enemies to mimic your friend is pretty terrifying. How can you be sure your close friend isn't being impersonated by an evil robot?
• Episode 719, "I Won": The Magic Campfires were everywhere around the Lovely World, with one even being located on the rooftop of Stampy's bedroom. At least some fans were fearful watching through the introduction of the episode, afraid that Stampy would lose track of even his Morning Routine within the first couple of minutes of the episode.
• Episode 749, "Ten Years Later...":
  • A subtle one that starts in this episode — imagine slowly watching your own pet decay in health after getting poisoned by your worst nemesis without noticing yourself and thinking it's signs of old age.
  • What makes this worse is that two signs appeared in the Love Garden starting from the very next episode as a Freeze-Frame Bonus. As of Episode 754 ("School Game"), it reads the following:
    Barnaby has
    been poisoned
    
    He will
    slowly die
  • As of Episode 757, "Colosseum", the message has lengthened to include the following:
    Come to my castle
    For the antidote
    – Hit The Target

---

Well, there goes your childhood. Not so lovely now, is it? Sweet dreams...