Nightmare Fuel / The Dark Knight Rises

This is a Moments page, so spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"I was wondering what would break first...Your spirit, or your body?"

• The weird monk chanting and riot videos from The Dark Knight Rises' Alternate Reality Game, where, in the latter, we see how far down Gotham is gone in becoming chaos.
• The chanting in the soundtrack.
  Deshi, deshi, basara, basara! Deshi, deshi, basara, basara!!
  • "Deshi basara" means "rise" ("come quickly") in Moroccan Arabic.
• The first confrontation between Bane and Batman, which ends with him breaking Batman's spine over one knee.
  • Bane broke Batman's back so the vertebrae is sticking out. Later we see the inmates of his prison jam it back in. We never actually see any of it, but damn. Bruce's screams throughout the latter event only serve to drive the point home.
    • The worst thing is when he does drop Batman on his own knee to snap the latter's spine, there is no scream from Batman once that happened. Just a cracking noise, and his body falling to the floor.
  • The entire first fight against Bane is incredibly brutal to watch. It's so unbelievably one-sided, it's hard to even call it a "fight".
• The scene where Bane is shown lurking nearby during a football game and presses the button on what is presumably a detonator. Next, we see a football player running to make a touchdown, not noticing that the entire frigging field is collapsing behind him. And for added affect, we get to watch the opposing team fall into the massive pit this creates.
  • And then he turns around. The way he drops the ball conveys the shock.
  • "That's a lovely, lovely voice."
  • After watching that scene, you'll never listen to a little boy singing the national anthem the same way again (Yes. It's the same little boy from the movie, CJ Coyne!).
  • The entire scene for the audience's perspective, especially for the children, starting from the aforementioned football field collapsing, Bane's doomsday plans for Gotham, which concludes with Bane himself snapping the neck of the only person able to deactivate the bomb for the entire audience to see. It doesn't help matters that what appeared to be most of Gotham's ordinary citizens turned out for the event, hoping to see a fun football game and instead becoming witnesses/victims of a terrorist plot that had just begun to unfold.
• After the Curb-Stomp Battle, Bane has a wounded and beaten Bruce Wayne at his mercy. The scene is made chilling by this exchange:
  Bruce: Why didn't you just kill me?
  Bane: You don't fear death, you ''welcome'' it. Your punishment must be more severe. ... When it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die.
• The implied fate of Talia's mother. The doctor forgot to lock her cell door. And we actually see more inmates running across to join in...
  • There's also some implications in Talia's escape. Bane received his injuries fighting off the prisoners who were trying to stop the only female in the prison escape. It's no wonder Ra's Al Ghul sent the League of Shadows in to kill all the prisoners aside from Bane. They're not only implied to have raped/killed his wife, but that they were going to do the same thing to his daughter. His pre-teen daughter.
  • Young Talia's short hair develops a certain Fridge Horror when you take the above into consideration. She had to not only hide her gender, but any trace of physical softness, and she probably didn't have much longer before puberty made it impossible to hide.
• Get convicted in Crane's Kangaroo Court, and you get your choice of punishments: death or exile from Gotham City. If you choose exile, you're free to leave! ... assuming you can walk across a frozen river without the ice breaking under you feet so that you drown or die of hypothermia. And hey, just in case you like your chances, here's a crane shot showing several dozen bodies under the ice. If you choose death, surprise — it's death by exile.
  • The Kangaroo Court in general is downright disturbing, given that neither option will result in you living, the people around are seconds away from trying to rip the defendants to shreds, and the idea of a place where even Bane has no authority is just chilling.
  • Oh, and that 'exile' option? As Scarecrow said, it's also the 'death' option. No matter what, the moment you're caught and brought into Crane's court, you're crossing the ice and can't say anything about it.
• Whatever happened to Bane to make the mask necessary. We don't know what's underneath it, and from all the implications, we should be grateful.
• The part where Bane's minions kill three Special Forces soldiers and he has them hung from the Gotham Bridge for the whole world to see... to say that was disturbing would be an understatement. This is where it sinks in that the situation is completely out of control, and the government is powerless to stop the horror.
• Seeing ordinary people being torn to shreds by an angry mob, in a scene disturbingly similar to real-life mob lynchings. Imagine you are walking home one day, minding your own business... when a howling mob appears seemingly out of nowhere looking for blood. Oh, and don't think that going in-doors is going to protect you. The mob won't be stopped by a measly door; they'll destroy your home and possessions, attack your family, and either kill you or commit something worse than murder on you and your loved ones. Safety no longer exists in Gotham.
  • If you pay attention in the one scene of carnage, you see a man dragging a woman in a fur coat into the streets. She's kicking and screaming all the while, and the implications are chilling. Even worse here is that, judging from his attire, the man seems to be the doorman. It's a little unnerving to add those implications in when the perp is the person who, in normal circumstances, would've been her first line of defense against that sort of thing.
    • It also taps into a very potent fear when you consider the myriad of people who have indeed been assaulted or murdered by employees that they trusted—housekeeper, gardener, nanny, etc. She could very well have been the kindest and most respectful of tenants and yet he was still harboring fantasies of doing horrible things to her. So much for being Nice to the Waiter.
• Bane manipulating people into embracing their worst aspects and attacking those they feel have taken control of the city from them. Just the fact that Bane is skilled enough to manipulate people into doing this is disturbing, when even The Joker with his Humans Are Bastards belief couldn't do this. Showing the aftermath of Bane's manipulations makes it worse and the fact Bane and Talia are going to nuke the city regardless makes it scarier. To top that off, sure in the end Gotham is "saved"...but after almost everyone in the city snapping and creating anarchy, it probably won't ever be the same.
  • Fridge Horror ensues when you think about this. Joker said that everyone was a monster, but only needed to be pushed hard enough. Joker was completely right. He only failed to push them as hard as Bane and Talia did.
• When Bane and his men attack the Stock Exchange, when Bane is overpowering the security guards at the checkpoint. He weaponizes his motorcycle helmet, but what's cringe-inducing is when he strikes the last guard over the head. You can hear bones crunching and see the body sort of drop like a ragdoll. And later, when Bane slams a trader's head against a table and uses his security card to run trades, you hear a crunch and there are a few hostages who flinch.
  • John Daggett getting his neck snapped is absolutely horrid if only because, since Bane is facing him dead-on instead of standing behind him, he stays alive long enough to give out a muffled scream of pain.
• Bane and all his teammates are completely unafraid to die. In the beginning, Bane orders a "prisoner" to stay behind on the crashing plane, and he accepts with a smile on his face. When Gordon stumbles onto Bane's lair by accident and is presumed dead (due to henchmen firing on him as he is escaping, hitting him a few times), Bane orders one of the guys who delivered Gordon to search him and promises to kill him when he's done. The henchman eagerly begins searching and Bane keeps his promise, by shooting the man with Gordon's pistol.
  • When Bane rebukes the henchman for bringing Gordon down to his lair, the other guy who helped bring Gordon starts to speak in the first henchman's defense. Bane's response is to simply grab the other guy by the neck, strangle him, and drop his lifeless body to the floor. It all happens with a manner of seconds, and Bane does it without even looking at the second henchman the entire time.
• The scene in the tunnel where the machine gun wielding thug starts blindly firing into the darkness and with every flash you see Bats getting closer and closer like some kind of horror movie monster.
• During their final battle, when Batman breaks Bane's mask, Bane initially tries to repair it, but when Bruce keeps attacking him, stopping him from doing so, a combination of the pain from his injuries, no longer kept in check by the mask and anger at being on the losing end of the fight this time cause Bane to lose it completely. Bane then flings Bruce into a nearby pillar and starts pummelling him with blows strong enough to shatter concrete, all the while shrieking and snarling like a wounded animal. Given how calm and collected Bane has been throughout the film, it's unnerving to see him degenerate into a rabid berserker.
• On the deluxe version of the movie's soundtrack there's a song called The End. Overall the song isn't scary, but if you listen closely throughout most of the song you can hear something that sounds a lot like Bane breathing through his mask. It really stands out because there's nothing like this any of the other songs. It's very reminiscent the background noise in Batman Begins soundtrack.

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