Nightmare Fuel / Teen Titans (2003)

There's nothing to be afraid of.

Moments subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

It sounds somewhat bizarre when a show about teenage superheroes ends up being considered one of the darkest to ever go out on Cartoon Network, but trust us, you will understand once you find out the reasons why.

From dark and mature moments in abundance that will often leave you wondering if the kids really should be seeing this, to two outright horrifying villains masterminding the majority of these moments - not to mention characters so powerful you'll be questioning whether they really should have that kind of power at all - you really will be more fearless than any character in this show if you can get through it all without flinching.

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• Any episode with Slade or Trigon, and their episodes/arcs have profound Knight of Cerebus overtones. Slade in particular, since he's basically the Titan's Arch-Enemy that uses a nasty combination of brains and brawn to browbeat each of the Titans into submission and takes great pleasure in trying to break and torment them in the most intimate ways. The amount of emotional abuse he's inflicted over the series is staggering, nearly driving Robin insane with paranoia and causing Beast Boy and Raven to have near complete mental breakdowns. Considering he's an adult preying on and mentally tormenting teenagers, the whole situation is profoundly creepy. Trigon is notably WORSE, since he's the setting's equivalent of the Devil, causes Slade to fear him, and causes the apocalypse just by entering the world. Even worse, season 4 has both of them.
  • Slade's treatment of Terra reeks of Domestic Abuse. Considering their romance history in the comics, it becomes even more jarring to see. Even after she was initially beaten by the Titans and crawled to him for help, his only response was the following statement: "That was nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you." followed by a sudden beating.
  • All of the interactions that Slade has with Raven in "Birthmark" are seriously creepy. Including the end where he actually strips her clothing to the point where she's nearly naked and then shows her hellish visions of the future.
  • Think of all the creepy things Slade did to Raven during Season 4, now realize that Raven's own father put him up to that.
  • And finally, the coup de grace of Nightmare Fuel, Trigon breaking free and razing the entire planet in less than ten seconds. Lighter and Softer, this is not.
• Slade's fixation on Robin is as creepy as it is repugnant. He wishes to pass on his evil to a suitable successor and has decided Robin would be the best fit. To that end, he's abducted Robin and poisoned his friends with nanomachines that he can use to kill them anytime he wants and promises to make Robin helplessly watch their deaths unless Robin abandons them and obeys him without question... and he nearly succeeds in destroying the team in only the first season finale.
• The very episode "Haunted" gives a whole new definition to the word "nightmare", considering how Slade seems to be slowly killing Robin with no one else seeing him, only for his friends to discover that it's his own mind destroying him thanks to a hallucinogenic gas.
  Slade: I am the thing that keeps you up at night, the evil that haunts every dark corner of your mind. I will never rest, and neither will you.
  • Even creepier is the fact that the above quote is said in a very similar tone to Batman's "I am vengeance! I am the night! I am Batman!" implying that's probably where Robin's subconscious got the idea from, meaning that he literally considers Slade to be Batman's counterpart.
  • Also the part where Robin has been strapped to a bed so he doesn't hurt himself, only for Slade to appear and approach him with an electric scalpel.
  • Especially the part with the final fight between Robin and Slade. Robin, Badass Normal who pretty much defines The Determinator as a trope, is getting the hurt laid on him so bad that he is begging Slade to stop.
    • It also depends what age you are when you watch it, but the way the scene is scripted and lit, it reads one hell of a lot like a rape scene. It's incredibly disturbing.
    • Then we find out he's doing it to himself.
  • After he is finally given the antidote for hallucinogenic gas, Robin wants to make sure it really did work, so he turns off the lights in the infirmary (since Slade appeared to him only in the dark before) and looks around for a few moments, in complete silence. This whole scene has a similar vibe to many horror movies — you know that nothing is going to happen (it's obvious Robin is cured now), but you still expect something to suddenly pop out in the darkness.
  • The ending of "Haunted" is the creepiest part of the entire series. The dust on Slade's mask didn't activate on it's own. Somebody activated it with a remote. From outside the tower. We never find out what or who triggered the dust.
    • It's strongly implied that Slade himself triggered the mask since only he would know of the hallucinogenic dust on it. The scarier part is that this means he triggered it while in Purgatory with his new master, Trigon.
    • At the ending we also get this wonderful scene where the view goes down to the basement with creepy music playing showing the light flickering as we zoom in on the mask that caused this problem in the first place and then the eye piece on it turns red and the screen fades to black.
    • A fanmade alternate ending makes it even worse; the scene is accompanied by the laughter of a certain clown...
  • The scene where Raven tries to telepathically reassure Robin that Slade isn’t really there by letting him see through her eyes. It seems to work… only for Slade to pop up and deck Robin so hard that it knocks Raven on her back. What she says next is chilling.
    Raven: SLADE!!
    Cyborg: You saw him?
    Raven: I don't know if he's real or not, but he's real to Robin, and that's all that matters. The stress on his brain is destroying his body. Robin truly believes he's fighting Slade… and Slade is winning.
    • When Raven first enters Robin's mind, the screen flashes through a series of paranoid images of Slade and the inside of Titans Tower. The last one, however, is a split-second shot of a circus tent with two figures falling. The death of his parents.
  • Interestingly, Slade almost gets creepier in Season 4. While he still talks like the emotionless Manipulative Bastard he was in the first two seasons, his movements when in combat seem much more primal, he now has dangerously precise pyrokinetic powers, and at times mimic some downright zombie-esque moves due to being undead, like surviving and healing from a broken neck and spine. It's downright jarring to compare exactly what he has become to what he was before.
  • Though his movements were still unnerving in Season 1, the way that he appeared and disappeared behind the swinging pendulum in his second real fight with Robin. His entire presence was akin to that of a ghost.
• "Aftershock" in itself is creepy, but the most horrific part may be when we discovered the extent of the neural suit's control over Terra. Slade can command her to do anything he wants, regardless of her will, and the suit is (supposedly) literally impossible to remove because it's been integrated to her nervous system. Granted, Terra was able to overcome that due to great inner strength, but imagine a non-superpowered person being stuck in that suit, at the mercy of a master they hate for the rest of their life.
  • And the seriously creepy line uttered by Slade:
  Slade: She wanted control, and that's what I gave her; my control, her body.
• Kitten's boyfriend Fang has a giant spider for a head!
• Melvin's imaginary teddy bear in "Hide and Seek". Think about it: it's a giant, super-strong, invisible-when-it-wants-to-be teddy bear with rows of pointy teeth and razor-sharp claws.
• And there's the Puppet King, who is completely creepy.
  • His death was even creepier. He loses the connection to his magic, and without his magic, he's just... a puppet. He just drops mid-sentence and returns to being an inanimate ventriloquist dummy.
• Kardiac, a giant mechanical heart (with tentacles) that abducts small children for unexplained reasons. Which is probably for the best.
• In the episode "Nevermore", when Robin goes into the roof of Titans Tower to tell Raven about her door being broken down, she breaks out into hysterical laughter which sounds just like something out of Higurashi: When They Cry, then she just abruptly stops and goes inside. Hell, the whole episode itself is pretty frightening.
  • Also during that insanely creepy Journey to the Center of the Mind scene when we see the Raven's Emoticlones. *shudders*
  • The cute little demon birds with the Glowing Eyes of Doom singing "Turn back!" over and over in their sweet, childlike little voices. Beast Boy acknowledges how creepy this is, but decides that hey, he'd know if they were dangerous.
• How about that Eldritch Abomination that Raven becomes when she gets angry? Big black tentacles, her eyes all red, gaining an extra two eyes to resemble a very familiar parental figure, she gets really tall. And then there's that thing she turned into to scare Gizmo into helping them. We don't actually see it, but apparently there were tentacles, horns, and dragon-like jaws.
• Raven sucking Doctor Light into the magic shadows within her cloak; when he's pulled out at the last second, his face is ash white and all he can do is curl up into a fetal position and say, "So dark. Make it stop. Please, make it stop." The fact that in a later episode, all she had to do was snarl at him and he immediately went into Terrified Surrender Mode doesn't ease the imagination of what might have happened under that cloak. Also note that his armor appears to be crumbling away when he's pulled out. Makes you wonder what the shadows do.
  • Crumbled? Try chewed...
• Starfire going through alien puberty in "Transformation" and the scene in the same episode where she meets the lady who looks like the benevolent DC character White Witch - but turns out to be a bug-like creature who eats young Tamaranians going through said alien puberty, as she explains what said puberty will eventually turn her into... which is a chrysalis. Just imagine it. You're going through freaky transformations before being enclosed in a chrysalis for reasons you don't understand and nobody can explain, nobody is there to help you, you're all alone in a cocoon with your thoughts... except in Starfire's case because she is about to be eaten by an alien.
  • Not to mention that, all the while Starfire is slowly encased in her cocoon, the monster keeps taunting her about how much she's going to enjoy eating Starfire while she's helpless.
• Beast Boy turning into a monster that resembled the Beast in the episode "The Beast Within" due to a mutation-inducing chemical. And it's implied that the chemical unleashed the combined primal instincts of all of BB's most dangerous animals.
  • There's also some of the background music in the episode which has a lot more creepy, dark, and unsettling ambience to it than usual.
• Since both Slade and Raven tend to inspire this, how about that scene in "Birthmark" where Slade is sent by Raven's demonic father for no other reason than to torture her about her destiny to cause The End of the World as We Know It? Which he does by shredding her clothes and then tossing her unconscious body off a roof? "Oh... and happy birthday."
  • Then there's the reveal at the end of the season, after Trigon escaped and razed the entire planet in under a minute: Slade may have returned, but it was only what he had of a soul, inhabiting his undead fleshless, muscleless skeleton, wrapped up nicely in his normal outfit.
• Mother Mae-Eye. It's actually a pretty creepy episode, what with zombie cookiemen, the menacing, hopeless music, what could actually be in the pies (They're red, think about that for a second), and there's the Mean Green Mother herself, who is difficult to explain, but scary none the less, think Wicked Witch of the West, then give her Mind Control.
• Madame Rouge is actually in-show nightmare fuel considering Titans and members of the H.I.V.E. Five alike are shown to be absolutely terrified of her, for good reason since she is a murderous shapeshifting rubber woman who is effectively indestructible. Exceptionally displayed in "Trust" where she relentlessly hunts down Honorary Titan Hot Spot no matter where he goes or what he throws at her, chasing him and beating him down until he exhausts himself like an unstoppable predator hunting their prey. Not to mention she can actually shapeshift to effectively drive her victims crazy by perfectly pretending to be figures they trust before revealing herself to strike. In "Calling All Titans", Robin freezes her, then shatters her into little frozen pieces. She then reforms herself in a manner similar to the T-1000. She also managed to wear down Kid Flash when the entire Hive Five couldn't even touch him.
• In a combination of Paranoia Fuel, Slade laser-injects nanobots into the Titans in season one. Think about it. Thousands of nigh invisible robots floating around in your body, possibly for decades. And what Slade wanted to use them for is a whole other can of scary.
  Slade: If you join me... if you swear to serve me... if you never speak to your friends again... I will allow them to live. But... if you disobey even the smallest request... I will annihilate them, Robin - and I'll make you watch. So, do we have a deal?
  • Looking at the screens showing the Titans' bloodstreams reveals that the probes specifically target their red blood cells. You know, the ones that you need to keep your organs functioning by transporting oxygen. Basically, Slade created the probes to mimic the symptoms of hemolysis and malaria! No wonder the Titans are holding their abdomens in pain, their organs are literally failing.
• Terra and Raven's mud fight. Sure, it sounds kinky in text, but poor Raven... The episode really drives home the feeling of betrayal through the dialogue, where Terra's cold taunts push Raven far enough that she goes into demon mode, and even that doesn't help her in the fight. She's then helplessly drowned in mud by her former friend, onscreen, the first time one of the Titans in the show actually looked like they were about to be successfully killed off. None of the other fights in that episode are as prolonged or vicious.
• The opening of "Aftershock Part 2", with Terra's Creepy Monotone monologue over some scary visuals, like the Titans falling into the earth which is then sealed shut by Terra, and Terra using her powers to conquer the city, complete with people running and screaming before being obscured by sudden geysers of mud. The post-apocalyptic feel of the city afterwards further underscores the point that Terra probably racked up quite a body count in that attack, hence her emphasis on how she has done "horrible things".
  • The Titans themselves are nightmare fuel for Terra when attacking her in revenge for her betrayal and previous murder attempts on each of them. There's no banter or fanfare. No taunting or jokes. They're Good Is Not Soft at its most terrifying. Especially from Beast Boy who's turned into a growling wolf ready to maim. Just a pissed off coordinated and efficient team of One-Man Army teenagers out for blood against someone who shattered their trust. Not to mention they aren't seen since they're hidden in a fog while attacking. Raven notably outright tries to kill Terra by crushing her with a bus.
• The episode "How Long Is Forever?", is the episode where Starfire is sent into a Bad Future and sees everyone's lives in the present destroyed with the dispersal of the Titans following Starfire's absence. It definitely counts as some type of horror. Between seeing Beast Boy as a washed up, depressed, carnival animal, Cyborg as a person that can't even get outside a decaying tower, and Raven going insane to say the episode is unsettling is a major understatement.
  • Cyborg's circuits and backup power cells had all died out, so he's forced to remain within Titans Tower with the rest of the Titans gone, letting it fall to disrepair as he simply tries to keep himself alive while hooked up to a non-portable power cell that can't even allow him to leave the tower.
  • Beast Boy attempted the solo hero thing, but turned out too chicken and was beaten up routinely. He decided to resign himself to being "the one-man zoo" at a freak show, so he could cage himself in and protect himself from others as he grew old, a far cry from his start as the Plucky Comic Relief and The Big Guy.
    • A small bonus nightmare, the kids laughing at Beastboy in the freak show? If you think you recognise their designs, you do. They're Mutants, as in Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns', the future timeline where Batman retired and let Gotham go completely to shit as a street-gang called 'the Mutants' took control.
  • Raven, despite reaching her White Raven form permanently as a result of her increased strength and presumably stopping the prophecy of "the jewel of Trigon" alone, has suffered from major trust issues with the loss of her friends, and isolated herself from the world so that she doesn't have to be hurt anymore, though Cyborg still knows where she is due to her transmitter in her cloak. Apparently, her friends really were what she needed to keep from complete and total isolation from humanity, as is implied later in "Go!" and the season 4 Trigon arc.
• While it was epic, the ending to Mumbo's Villain Song might be considered rather unsettling...
  Mumbo: Tonight, I will make the Titans (Dramatic Pause) disappear...(whispering) forever.
• Whatever the heck that thing the rest of the Titans were chasing in "Things Change" was.
  • Slade's return. It comes out of nowhere (the last time we saw him was the end of Season 4), and the fact that it's in the same place that Slade and Beast Boy fought implies that he was following him long before Beast Boy got to the amusement park. Even though Slade doesn't actually have evil intentions in this episode, it's still a creepy scene.
  • Even though Slade turns out to be another robot replica, the fact that Beast Boy tried to kill him is a little unsettling. He had no idea Slade wasn't real, but still went full T. rex mode and literally pulverized him. It makes him probably the only Titan capable of murder. Had that been the real Slade, there's no way he would have survived.
• The episode "Fear Itself". The scariness kicks in when you remember that Raven was the one who made these things without even thinking about it. Yes, the snarky, demonic, demigoddess who's in near-constant control of her emotions. Makes you wonder about the extent of her powers.
  • One particularly unsettling part was the part where Cyborg goes next. Immediately after Starfire's taken by those creatures, Cyborg pulls Raven outside and convinces her to keep moving. After a while, she agrees. He tells her not to be scared, but she angrily reassures him she's not afraid, and starts walking, while Cyborg just stands there, illuminating the hallway with his shoulder-mounted flashlight. We get a shot of Cyborg looking very put out over Raven's poorly timed aloofness, but still looking in her direction. We pan over to Raven, and the light turns off. She turns around, and he's gone.
    • Take a closer look at Cyborg's face in that scene. He's not upset with Raven, he looks shocked, like he just realized or noticed something...and a moment later, he's gone. With other Titans, we see what took them, but not Cyborg; what happened to him, as well as what he noticed just before, is never revealed.
  • Beast Boy's Genre Savvy is right on the money, but it doesn't save him...
  Beast Boy: (as he's dragged away by shadow monsters) What did I tell you!? Funny guy goes first!
  • Starfire's "disappearance" scene is pretty creepy- a bunch of (what look like) mutated rats jump on her, and even though she frantically tries to zap them with Starbolts, there are just too many of them and they drag her down into the ground, and Starfire lets out a terrified scream before getting totally submerged by monsters. And when Cyborg jumps in to try and save her, the monsters part to reveal nothing but the floor beneath them left.
  • The monster from that episode is pretty creepy too. A green wraith-looking thing covered in black fanged mouths and tentacles, and it has three eyes, one in the front, and two on the sides.
    • The shot of the monster chasing the Titans is pretty frightening. It's gliding down the hallway with its claws scraping the walls, leaving sparks.
  • Don't forget the blood-curdling scream that the woman in the movie "Wicked Scary" (which sets off the plot) makes as the film ends with the monster coming down on her. That same scream later wakes Raven up, but it doesn't come from the movie.
  • After Cyborg disappears without a trace, Raven is chased by a demonic pterodactyl, which has the same set of four eyes as the demonic rats. She gets into an elevator, which slowly fills up with a strange liquid.
  • Eventually, Raven gets cornered in the Main Operations Room by the Wicked Scary monster, the pterodactyl, and the rats. The way each monster enters is pretty creepy, due to their eyes piercing through the dark. Best mention goes to the pterodactyl, which takes the form of the front window(making it pitch black).
• "The Sum Of His Parts" is quite terrifying. Here's Cyborg, a guy who's had most of his body replaced with robotic parts, and a fellow cyborg named Fixit has kidnapped him with the intent on making repairs. It doesn't seem too bad since Cyborg's power cell had just died... but Fixit makes it clear that even though Cyborg is repaired, he intends for Cyborg to stay so he can finish the job... as in Complete repairs by removing Cyborg's biological components and basically making him a full robot. It's a total horror movie premise made even more frightening by the fact that it's not part of the seasonal arc and starts out as one of the more light-hearted filler episodes. On top of everything, Cyborg's worst fear is losing his humanity and when he begs for release on those grounds, Fixit calls his humanity "flawed". Plus, there's something chilling about that mask Fixit tries to replace Cyborg's face with (and at the climactic moment, he presses it on, muffling Cyborg's speech so that no one can hear his screams).
  • It should be noted though that Fixit did come to realize the error of his ways by the end of the episode and is shown to be helping the Titans in the tie-in Teen Titans Go! comics once or twice.
  • Even more unsettling is when Cyborg manages to pull aside Fixit's cloak... we see a truly bizarre show of biology: nothing but pulsating/beating organs a la General Grievous... no blood/bones or anything remotely like nerves or muscles, and a deformed third arm randomly jutting out. How Fixit ended up like this, no one knows.
  • It doesn't help that the parts Fixit wants to replace Cyborgs human parts with are not exactly top of the line, and look more like junkyard rejects.
• The horrible moment when Slade's mask was knocked off in Season 4 to reveal a monstrous dead skull can freak out even the most tough-as-nails viewers.
  • A flashback that occurs shortly afterwards shows Trigon coming to Slade at the moment of his death, with the latter's costume hanging very loosely onto the charred remains of his skeleton, spine and ribcage on full display.
• In "Hide & Seek," Raven's flat and stoic recounting of most of the season 4 events, which include the aforementioned undead Slade unmasked, global apocalypse, and unfathomable evil that is Trigon to a group of innocent little kids and a toddler. Naturally, all three kids are very freaked out.
  • Monsieur Mallah actually manages to catch the kids when Raven has her back turned for five minutes. Fridge Horror kicks in when you wonder what would have happened to them if Raven didn't get suspicious and turn back. Especially since all you could hear were the kids screaming in terror.
• Heck, plenty of the villains from the so-called "joke" episodes are actually really creepy.
  • Mother Mae-eye, a witch with pies that brainwash you, zombie cookies, and the strange tendency to bake her "beloved children" into pies with love.
  • Mad Mod, who despite being an old coot, is highly intelligent, what with a hologram to pass himself off as a younger man, robots, and hypnotic screen that could turn you into a vegetable simply because you aren't referring to cookies as "biscuits".
  • The Amazing Mumbo, who could erase you in a blink by sending you into his magic hat...
  • Control Freak, a couch-potato with a souped-up remote as Raven describes him, but still a potential threat to reality... the list goes on and on.
• The evil doppelgangers of Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy, created by Trigon and infused with some of his own dark power to give them an edge in battle.
  • What's worse? They have all of their memories, thoughts, and emotions, so they know about their losses, insecurities, and tics that make them sloppy in combat.
• In "Go!", the alien who has just come to Earth. Shackled and scared, and yet she's destroying the city just trying to break the shackles, and if anyone interferes she starts throwing cars and bus at them. And once the shackles are damaged, she adds energy bolts to the mix, with even the future Titans being helpless against her. And even when she calms down after Robin frees her from the shackles all she says is "If you wish not to be destroyed, you will leave me alone!". But the scariest part is who the alien is: it's Starfire.
• The Brain and his Creepy Monotone that never lets up, making many of his lines particularly chilling, especially in "Calling All Titans" and "Titans Together."
• Brother Blood's obsession with Cyborg. What started out was an interest in Cyborg due to him being his best student, turned into a fixation on recruiting him, eventually to him creating a robot army of Cyborg look-alikes, and finally with him turning himself into a cyborg and trying to turn others into one as well.
• The design of Killer Moth deserves at least a courtesy nod. One of the silliest Batman villains ever created, so utterly pathetic that when he was down-graded to fight what is essentially a spin-off of Batman, that being Robin, nobody even cared. But his design is legitimately unnerving, being insanely creepy and actually kinda cool, like some kind of organic moth-human beast, half-insect and half-man.
• In Season 4, it's implied that Slade helped Trigon to take over Earth, just to receive his soul back. From this point of view, Slade is actually worse than Trigon, as he is Satanic Archetype, so he doesn't really has any choice in that matter, other than being slave to his own nature; but Slade, who is human, who has the capability to chose between evil and good, chooses to sell out possibly the entire Universe for his own benefits, like in this case... restoring himself to living flesh and blood after being knocked into lava by Terra in Season 2's finale.
  • And even worse, he didn't care not even for his own children. Jericho and Rose are canon in this universe. Trigon actually left Raven alive, after using her as a portal, and destroying the world (but not without reducing her to a child version of herself without any memories of her life with the Titans). While Slade, happily took part in it, not caring that among Trigon's victims, are his children too.

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