Considering that the series draws inspiration from various tabletop games, such as Warhammer 40k, Pathfinder, and the Chronicles of Darkness, nightmare fuel is pretty much expected here.
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- Imagine being a regular human finding out about the true nature of the world. There are monsters that literally feed of your fear and anguish, your children are at constant risk of being taken by supernatural beings, not to mention the fact that there are several kinds of monsters that will flat out eat you, or worse, steal your soul and use your hollowed out body as a meat suit. At the heart of it all, while humanity may rule the mundane world, they are merely one mundane species subjected to the whims of the magus world. The sheer amount of helplessness and insignificance we play in the universe is practically Lovecraftian in scale.
- Creatures like the elementals and the yokai can bring up a lot of adult fear. These are beings who are capable of taking children to the magus world in order to turn them into changelings and zashiki warashi. If you happen to know they exist and what they do, it doesn't matter one bit because nothing you can do will be able to stop them from taking your kids away.
- Fiends are monstrosities that feed off the fear and anguish of other beings. They accomplish this by inducing a condition in people known as hysteria, which causes effects ranging from paranoia to crippling dependency on others. The worst part is that they can assume human form to better stalk their prey, meaning they can literally be anywhere without you realizing it.
- In the magus world, there are two kinds of subhumans: humanimals and witches. It's really hard to pick which is worse: the humanimals being the descendants of feral humans brought to the magus world, only to be domesticated into companion animals (all while still looking fairly human), or the witches being an all female race that kidnap human men in order to reproduce and eating them afterwards, harvesting organs and body parts from dead bodies in order to enhance their own magic, and slowly mutating into grotesque, inhuman hags as they age.
- Demons are entities who are living souls independent of a physical body. Native to the world of Infernus, they often go into mundane and strike up deals with unsuspecting humans. Needless to say is that when the deal is done, the demon will tear out the persons soul, send it to its own personal hell, and wear the remaining, hollowed husk as a disguise. For the demon, this isn't part of some master plan. No, taking over someones existence is just their version of moving day.
- The good news is that angels exist in this universe. The bad news is that they are just as morally ambiguous as people are, and probably aren't even that interested in helping the puny mortals; viewing their suffering the same way as we would view a fly being eaten by a spider.
- Sometimes, people who are trapped in these personal hells escape back into the mundane world. Once freed, they become monsters known as twisted, usually taking on a grotesque form that is symbolic with their sins. They are usually lurking around, searching for their old selves and try to take back their old lives (no matter who gets in the way).
- Familiars in this universe completely invert the concept of familiars, being the result of animals mutated by magic, and are keen on hunting down and devouring humans. They range from snakes the size of buses, to spiders that can turn people into meat puppets by burying strands of webbing into their flesh.
- Vampires, lycanthropes, and the undead were normal people (or in the undead's case, a normal corpse) at one point or another. Imagine walking down the road one day, only to be assaulted by some kind of blood sucker or beastman and losing consciousness. When you come to, you'll find that you're not only a monster yourself now, but also your entire life before has been completely taken from you.
- It's even worse for the undead, considering the wide range of undead there are. When a corpse is transformed by death magic, it usually becomes a shambler, which usually just a corpse that goes around attacking the living, and is only capable of muttering a few sentences that it may have said in life. If the corpse, however, suffered a passionate death or if it was exposed to more death magic than usual, it'll come back as a revenant; which is basically a just a zombie with all its human faculties intact. Imagine how twisted it would be being a revenant, coming back from the dead only to see that some of your friends or loved ones who came back as well have been reduced to these weird, shambling things (with the only remnants of their old selves being a couple of phrases they've said in life), and realizing that if you hadn't lucked out, that could've been you.
- For anyone whose ever played Warhammer 40,000, they'll understand how terrifying the concept of the chaos God Nurgle is. Now imagine an entire breed of fallen elementals that combine everything terrifying about Nurgle with real life diseases. That pretty much describes the plaugers. Just like Nurgle, they believe the diseases they create are gifts to humanity, the difference being that view it more like an artist who crafts diseases to be as flashy and devastating as possible. One of their most famous creations, the Black Plague, you know, the one that wiped out half of Europe.
- Not even modern society is safe, as it's under the influence of fallen elementals known as Institutionals. These creatures are responsible for everything that makes up modern culture. Unfortunately, they are only concerned with maintaining their respective domains, and the only way to do that is to cause strife; regardless of how it affects individual humans.
- Wiccans are human/witch hybrids who lurk around in the dark corners of the magus world. However, the process of creating a new wiccan is pretty graphic, consisting of a human being kidnapping a witch, taking her back to the mundane world, raping her until she births a wiccan, and killing her when the job is done. It's says a lot when you sympathize with a cannabalistic sub-human.
- The worst part is that most people in the magus world think they're a myth, believing that human beings would never be that depraved. And looking in the main story, not only are they proven to be real, but they are also ferociously dangerous.
The Midnight Diner
- When the plate giant tries to crush Leon with a chunk of concrete, Pete saves him by pushing him out of the way, only to be crushed by the concrete. While it's subverted with Pete revealing himself to be a changeling capable of surviving being crushed, it's still pretty horrifying to think that someone just died right in front of you while saving your life.
- While Leon is questioning the moral nature of the elemental-changeling dynamic, Ray gets so pissed off that his voice literally crackles with electricity. Just one reminder that while the changelings still resemble humans, they most assuredly aren't.
The Campus Tour
- What happened to Hezekiah Blackdale and his followers.
- The fact that the Necronomicon is real is terrifying enough, but what about the fact that it served as inspiration to H.P. Lovecraft for many of his stories.
- Earnest Blackdale in general.
- To begin with, he's a 6'8" tall, 280 lb. giant of a person, and yet he can easily sneak up on you from behind without you realizing it; and by the end of the story, it's shown he has murderous intent, so if he wanted to kill you, he could easily do it.
- The fact that he has access to the Necronomicon is terrifying enough in its own right. And it's implied that he knows a lot more about the magic within than he lets on.
- The fact that he takes joy from inflicting pain on people is terrifying enough, but the fact that he wants to cast a spell on his own father that causes both is even worse.
The Heist
- Earnest is at his most horrifying in this story, especially when he reveals his true form as a wiccan.
- To elaborate, Earnest is revealed to have not only known about the attempted heist, but has turned his dad into a monster to either kill the Forsaken Children, or have the Forsaken Children kill his dad. To make things worse, he's enjoying every moment of it, so long as someone is killed.
- He also summoned a force field of hat separated Leon and Herman from the changelings, leaving the two to fight the monster on their own. Bear in mind that they've only recently become heroes, and only one of them has any actual combat experience.
- When the monster is finally defeated, it reverts back to his human form, with all the wounds it has taken intact.
- The way Earnest describes the process of turning his dad into a monster is disturbing. The worst part was when he described how his dad was in so much pain during the process, he ended up tearing off his own scalp.
- Things only get worse when Earnest reveals his true wiccan form. In less than a few minutes, he managed to slam Herman into a wall, and was seconds away from evicerating Leon. If Arlene hadn't fired an arrow into Earnest's leg, Leon would've been killed on the spot.
- Even with and arrow in his leg, Earnest manages to manage to grab Mary in one hand. It's left ambiguous whether he was planning on eating her or was about to rape her.
- The most terrifying thing about Earnest is how easily he can manipulate people, like tricking Arlene into deleting the only evidence she has against him, in exchange for Leon's life, only to reveal that he had no idea where he was and couldn't kill him even if he wanted to.
The Aftermath
- The way Vac describes how he electrocuted the pedophile priest that tried to rape Ray, comparing his skin to cooked pork.
- Pete describing how he got his revenge on the hitman who killed his parents years ago, explaining that he inflicted all the pain the hitman had caused without actually harming him, driving him insane.
- The only thing that makes it worse is that while Pete only aged six years since the murder, the hitman aged thirty years, aging into an old man.
- When Herman and the others are investigating Earnest's office, they find a hidden cache of lycergy (a chemical that can turn people into monsters) in his closet. The real nightmare fuel is what exactly does Earnest plan on doing with it?"
- Also, when Pete and Earnest were fighting after the former had turned himself into a monster with the lycergy, Earnest mentions that lycergy usually kills people who ingest it. Did he test this on other people before.
- Frank's situation is pretty horrifying. First off, he claims to have seen God, which apparently so traumatic that he was driven completely insane; and was told to go kill Earnest. Then he and Shirley ended up becoming Earnest's servants. Chances are, things are only going to get worse for him.
- The twisted turning into its true monstrous form and trying to kill Leon and the others.
- To further explain, the twisted begins bleeding black sludge from every orifice, eventually being encased in a cocoon. He then bursts out as a grotesque, multi-armed bondage demon dripping body fluids.
- Also, the way the twisted tried to take Leon's body also has the sense of a rape scene.
- The fact that Nyarlethotep is not only in this universe, he's also a God of chaos. To put this into perspective, Earnest (I.e. The guy who was barely phased by death threats when he had a crossbow aimed point blank at his face) was scared shitless by this guy (enough to actually consider going to the Forsaken Children for help).
