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Nightmare Fuel / Superman: Doomsday

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Considering the animated film is the first in a line of Darker and Edgier DC Animated Films, you can expect some particularly horrifying moments. Especially since the movie revolves around the brutal death of the Heroic Man of Steel.


  • Doomsday itself is In-Verse Nightmare Fuel considering it was created to be an unstoppable killing machine, sealed up on Earth by its creators because they couldn't kill it, and is more than capable of rag-dolling the Man of Steel. It will never stop killing and never tire. It first appears as a sort of horror movie monster brutally and visibly crushing all of Luthor's employees who unearthed it and proceeds to kill any living being it senses. Then it goes about going mano-a-mano with Superman no matter what he throws at it and all but demolishes Metropolis in the process.
    Superman Robot: The subject in question was biologically engineered to be the ultimate soldier. Precise. Clinical. Unstoppable. But its creators came to realize that it could not distinguish between friend or foe. Thus this Doomsday Machine lives to extinguish any and all life forms. Because it must.
  • Luthor himself is nightmarish in this verse strictly because he's a consummate example of The Sociopath and a much more proactive murderer while still being a Villain with Good Publicity given his money laundering charities and libel suits against dissenters. He has no scruples or morals at all, and is shown outright killing his assistant Mercy Graves with a bullet to the face to tie up any involvement he had in unleashing Doomsday. He found the cures for many diseases and turns them into long expensive treatments just so he can milk money out of desperate people indefinitely. He then goes about cloning Superman, beats the clone in a disturbingly rapish manner, and plans to clone more to conquer the planet. It's safe to say he's as much of a threat to the world as Doomsday.
  • The Cloned Superman takes a disturbing dip into a murderous and virtually unstoppable Well-Intentioned Extremist over time and fully shows why it's a good thing Superman is such a nice guy. His murder of Toyman and veiled threat to an old woman after retrieving her cat are dark turns for an already dark film. Even worse in that he wordlessly burns and removes a ball of lead containing Kryptonite Luthor installed in his brain to keep him docile with heat vision. He's Beware the Superman incarnate. The kicker is that Superman admits that he may have turned out the same way if he was raised by someone like Luthor. When he rescues a cat, he exudes so much Tranquil Fury at "wasting his time" that it's not clear if the cat, the owner or both would make it out alive. He's that threatening.
  • The film's version of Toyman, unlike the comics, is a willful child-murdering maniac who sees people as toys to play with and break. His first appearance involves him threatening to kill a school bus full of kids and it's known he actually murdered a four year old girl for fun.


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