Steven Universe Season 1A / Nightmare Fuel

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/frybo_nf.png

"We didn’t tell him to do that, did we tell him to do that?!"

open/close all folders

Gem Glow

As much as she became a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in later episodes, Centipeetle is still the first Gem Monster to appear, and barring perhaps the Slinker she's also the most dangerous one seen thus far; at her full power, during the final fight, she cornered the Crystal Gems and would have probably killed them with her acidic spit if it wasn't for Steven's quick thinking.
- Her design immediately sets the alien, unsettling trend for Gem Monsters in general, with her millipede-like serpentine body, rock-crushing pincer tail, leonine mane that vaguely makes her look like a demented caricature of an oriental dragon, and huge, serrated beak/mandible mouth with a huge, cyclopean eye on the inside. That spews ACID.
- Think Centipeetle's corrupted form was creepy enough? Well, the Steven Universe: Art & Origins book can prove that she could've been far worse.◊

Together Breakfast

The evil painting might not seem scary at first, but when you learn via Word of God that its paint was made of ground-up gemstones from other Gems, it gets seen in a whole new light and makes its death seem like a Mercy Kill.

Frybo

Frybo itself. You... just need to see the thing in motion to get the full effect of how creepy it is. The effect gets worse when you see it restraining people using its Combat Tentacles and force-feeding them fries. Then things take a turn for the gruesome once Pearl javelins one of its eyes with her spear, causing ketchup to come spewing out, giving the impression of Bloody Eye Scream.

Cat Fingers

You might not think being able to turn body parts into cats would be this. You would be horrifyingly incorrect. It comes out looking like a malformed telepod mixture of The Thing, Tetsuo, a monster from Silent Hill, and one of David Cronenberg's unholy creations. For those brave enough, this is the result.◊ For those not brave enough, it's a once-humanoid blob with a dozen cat heads poking out of massive holes in its body, each of them warping and stretching as they shift across its surface.
- The sound... They weren't meowing.
- And the music in the background. That... did not help.
When Steven starts losing control, he pretty much starts screaming for the Gems to help him... except they're too far away to do anything for him or even know about what he's going through.
- That moment when he comes crawling out of the bushes toward Greg at the car wash. One YouTube comment describes it thus:
  "Imagine your child crawling out of the bushes with cat heads growling all over them with no way to stop their horrible, painful fate."
As the cats become even more out of control, some of them seem to emerge from Steven's eyes!
Also, it shall be worth mentioning that Estelle, who voices Garnet, said in an interview that this episode is "the least kid-friendly episode of season 1A". That's right, even Estelle is fully aware of the horrifying nature of this episode!

Serious Steven

In this episode the Gems find themselves stuck in what seemed like a never-ending death trap. It was rather unsettling to see both Amethyst and Pearl beginning to get very worried about not only getting out of there, but also that they had no idea how the place worked.

So Many Birthdays

This episode demonstrates another consequence of Steven losing control of his powers. Should he act too old, his gem will shapeshift and age his body, to the point where his human half will die of old age Steven also appears to have lost his sanity, as he is sitting on the floor and gasping for breath without focusing on the other Crystal Gems.

Lars and the Cool Kids

Rose Quartz's moss. It seems to have some level of sentience, and at one point succeeds in engulfing the titular "cool kids", who are audibly struggling to breathe, then proceeds to slowly ooze over Steven and Lars as they frantically try to get it to the top of the hill where it supposedly wants to be.

Onion Trade

Much of Onion's behavior is extremely disturbing: he steals a bag of chips from a vending machine, makes his moped explode in flames and tries to drown Beach city with toys for no real reason other than boredom. He even tries to KILL the Gems by crushing them with cars! It doesn't help that he has pretty much the same blank expression the whole time and doesn't get any comeuppance for his actions.
Onion's expression when he offer to trade Ranger Guy for a replicator wand is unexpectedly terrifying. Made worse by the pitch-black background and growing sounds of fire sirens wailing in the background.

Steven the Sword Fighter

Pearl gets stabbed in probably the most violent manner a children's show can get away with. Her hologram suddenly comes up from behind with no warning and impales her through the chest. Her pupils shrink to dots, her hair dishevels, and she lets out a gasp of pain. Garnet and Amethyst react in horror, Steven watches in disbelief with tears in his eyes, and only her shadow is seen as her hand loosens on her sword, causing it to drop slowly to the ground. Then the sword can actually be seen through her chest, though there's no blood, and she desperately tries to comfort Steven before she explodes into a poof of smoke. If she wasn't a Gem, she'd be unquestionably dead.
Pearl: Whoopsie-daisy! Steven, it's okay! I'm gonna be just— (POOF)
When Hologram Pearl starts going after Steven, and none of the other Gems are around to help him. He's a young child alone in a dark room with an entity that designed to try and kill you with a sword, which can't be reasoned with because it's not sentient and will stop at nothing to kill you.

Rose's Room

Rose's Room. Basically, Steven ends up in his mother's room which materializes everything he could want, but it's all made of clouds. So he wishes to leave to get donuts. But everyone in the town starts acting weird, barely moving, glitching up and repeating motions or speaking only in repeats of things they've said before. Steven first realizes something is wrong when his dad starts repeating old advice instead of answering what he's actually asking - and then the town starts actually falling apart, revealing itself to simply be another construct and basically crashing under its own weight. It's played entirely for horror and it is terrifying.
As if Frybo wasn't bad enough the first time, we get to see him again. Except this time, he's not doing anything inherently horrifying. He's just standing there and handing out fry bits. Which are glitching as he replaces each box with another one in the exact same place. While staring out of a dark room.
Steven sees Connie and calls out for her... Only for her to turn around, revealing that she has no eyes. Then the voice clip from "Bubble Buddies" where she says "He was incredible!" gets played over and over again, echoing throughout the "town", all while she stands there motionless and eyeless.
The room's representation of Greg. From the moment Steven sees Sadie and Lars, the way everyone and everything acts is so off that it seems obvious to the audience that Steven is still in the room, but when he finds his dad, who responds coherently to what he says at first, it's hard to see anything wrong with him, so the build-up to the reveal that he's also an illusion as his words and actions become repetitive and nonsensical is even more gradual and jarring.
The general premise of the episode is very much like a Creepypasta, right down to people acting strange and them having surreal faces (with one of them having no eyes). It starts out innocent enough with Steven having fun in his mother's room, but once he "leaves" the room, the atmosphere begins to gradually change for the worse and builds up tension with a short moment of calm before suddenly becoming even more horrific than it previously was and ending with a Wham Line: "What do you want, Steven?". It's then that the utterly terrified Steven openly wishes to be back with his friends. The episode's biggest Creepypasta-like highlight would be this music track (which is appropriately titled "Glitch City"), being almost like a typical video game Creepypasta with unsettling music playing in the background during gameplay.

Coach Steven

Amethyst and Garnet's Fusion, "Sugilite" is undeniably cool, being a gigantic, trollish, four-armed, rock-star looking thing. And then, moments after her introduction, she's shown to be immensely destructive, brutish, and virtually uncaring when she accidentally hits Steven with a rock. And that's before she shows up again, nearly destroys Pearl by sending her into a Heroic Blue Screen of Death mode, and shows that Gem Fusions can actually be a downright terrifying case of rage-fueled identity erasure.

Joking Victim

Lars breathing fire due to Sadie putting too much fire salt on his doughnut. Even if he deserved it, it's still pretty horrifying, especially when he starts running around setting the town on fire.

Steven and the Stevens

This episode have multiple Stevens building dozens of alternative timeline versions of himself to fight each other. When the starting story Steven sees the chaos and pain this causes, it convinces him to destroy the Time Machine, resulting in all the alternative Stevens to painfully disintegrate around the Steven whose story will play out without the device. Some are begging for help as they die while the first Steven desperately tells that normal Steven to find another solution before disintegrating himself as Steven looks on in horror. Then Steven writes a song about it.

Monster Buddies

The part where Centipeetle pushes Steven out of the way of a falling stalactite and gets impaled by it. Once she gets severely hurt, Centipeetle lets out a painful shriek and collapses onto the floor, moaning and making gurgling sounds as she stops moving with her "eye" gem dimming and losing its pupil before she releases her physical form. Even if Gems don't actually die this way, the whole thing makes it seems like actual on-screen death - and a really nasty one at that - to the point of a few foreign countries removing most of the scene.

An Indirect Kiss

As the crack in Amethyst's gem gets bigger, her form further degrades into Body Horror. And then she starts emitting a series of terrified shrieks...
Earlier, Amethyst tries to assure the Crystal Gems and Steven that she's not going to get any worse. But then, mid-sentence, she goes into something uncannily like a seizure caused by a brain disease or a foreign object. Just seeing it gives one the second-hand feeling of how sudden and painful it makes it to so much as utter a word.

Mirror Gem

Lapis was trapped in a mirror for who knows how many years, with no one to talk to and no one to help her escape it, far from her home planet.
Steven: What's it like being a mirror?
Lapis (mirror): (Playing back) You work!
- Even without knowing it was Lapis it's horrifying. Garnet asks Steven to hand over the mirror. The mirror's reaction is to scream "Nooooooo!" in Steven's voice. On a loop. It screams and screams and screams...
For a more mundane kind of horror, it's rather unnerving to see the Crystal Gems' treatment of the mirror after realizing it's sentient. Pearl says, "It shouldn't be able to do that! It should only be following orders!", Amethyst wants to bubble it, and even when Steven protests that it's alive and doesn't want to go with them, Garnet doesn't relent.
Garnet: (approaches from behind, casting a looming shadow) Steven.
Mirror: (stops laughing) Nooooooooo!
Garnet: You should just give us back the mirror. It will be safer where we can watch it.
Mirror: Nooooooooo! (repeats the same sound clip) Nooooooooo! Nooooooooo! Nooooooooo!
Garnet: (sternly) Steven, don't make me have to take it from you.
Steven: (starting to panic as the mirror continues to scream) It doesn't wanna go with you! Don't you hear it screaming?!
Garnet: (starting to sound either stressed or angry) Steven, it's just a mirror. A tool. It can't "want" anything.
The face Garnet makes◊ when Steven accidentally knocks her shades off, accompanied by a discordant Scare Chord. The scene already has a strange, unnerving atmosphere due to how secretive the gems are acting over the mirror's true nature, but Garnet's sudden anger makes her and the others seem outright malevolent.
After Steven flees the house with Lapis' mirror in hand, the mirror starts replaying images from everything Lapis witnessed that day. Except said images become increasingly distorted, ending with a very grotesque version of Garnet's furious face screaming "Let. Me. OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT!" It's a fitting yet nightmarish depiction of Lapis' sheer torment and panic.

Ocean Gem

The way the water clones mirror their Gem counterparts.
How the Steven Clone comes out, first by lifting Steven off the ground, then yelling at him in Lapis' voice.
Lapis: I said... leave me ALONE!
Then there's the retaliation the clone does to Connie and Steven. Damn, even if it was in self-defense, Lapis was willing to drown both Steven and Connie right then and there a la water orb engulfing the face!
Greg shows up to rescue Connie and Steven by mowing down the Steven clone with his van. The Steven clone responds by sending Greg's van flying high into the air with a geyser-like spout, leaving it to crash on the ground face-first. With Greg still inside. He was lucky to survive with a broken leg, but there's a huge possibility that he could've died.

Nightmare Fuel / Steven Universe Season 1A

Previous

Index

Next

Nightmare Fuel / Steven Universe Season 1A

Edit Locked

Previous

Index

Next