Nightmare Fuel / The Legend of Vox Machina

Unmarked spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

"Now, your soul is forfeit."

Tal'Dorei may be a realm of mystery, magic, and marvel, but it is also a realm of danger, darkness, and death. Safe to say, the adventures of Vox Machina are not all for the faint of heart.

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In General

• Most of the on-screen deaths in this series are really, really brutal. Gorn and Cruel And Unusual Deaths abound.

Season 1

Episode 1- 3

• The death of the townsfolk that Vox Machina met early on. The mother and daughter are tightly holding onto one another as they were clearly burnt to death, and the son (who Vax manages to find) is also horribly burnt and barely breathing. He then soon dies in Vax's arms, still holding onto the coin Vax gave him.
• Brimscythe's attack on the encamped soldiers at the start of Episode 2 really drives home just how horrifyingly powerful a dragon truly is. It tanks everything the Arms of Emon throw at it, before immolating the soldiers with columns of lightning. Special mention goes to Brimscythe's cruel murder of the captain, and her horrified shrieking as she dies, that sends the rest of her soldiers futilely running for their lives.
• General Krieg revealing himself as the dragon Brimscythe. He seemed to have earned a position of trust and authority, being on the council, but he still had no qualms about murdering Sir Fince.
• The Briarwoods' Establishing Character Moment at the end of Episode 2, which sees the Whitestone nobles held up by highwaymen. Sylas proceeds to plunge his hand through the bandit leader before tearing him in two, complete with a Slasher Smile, before lifting up a fallen tree and using it to utterly destroy the underlings. All the while, Delilah remains in the carriage, calmly sipping tea and completely apathetic to the bloody violence taking place just outside.
• Percy having a PTSD nightmare of his family's slaughter. He barely even acknowledges Vex, who tries to comfort him.
• Episode 3 hits hard with the triple-whammy of the Briarwoods' evil nature coming to the fore, their subsequent Curb-Stomp Battle of the heroes, and Percy falling under the influence of Orthax, complete with a Plague Doctor mask. Vax getting caught alone, with (initially) no route of escaping or talking his way out of danger, and then being magically paralyzed as he’s helpless against Sylas’ vampiric bite while Sylas tells him how delicious he looks, is terrifying.
• Percy's rage at the Briarwoods escaping in Episode 3 is terrifying. Not only does he yell at Vox Machina for "letting" the Briarwoods get away (even though they were getting beaten nearly to death by them), but Percy brutally shoots off the hand of the carriage driver when he won't give answers that Percy wants to hear. If that's not bad enough, Orthax, the shadowy entity that Percy made a vengeance pact with, can be seen around Percy as shadowy tendrils emerge from around Percy's body, especially after he puts on his mask. Even the rest of Vox Machina are thoroughly unnerved at what they see.
  Vax: What the actual fuck?!
  Vex: Holy shit, Percy, what are you doing?!
  • Creepier still is Orthax's figure appearing in Percy's shadow as he coldly stomps on Desmond, who's trying to crawl away.

Episode 4- 6

• In Episode 4, Delilah summons a pack of wraiths to retrieve the book Vax stole from her luggage, and they are terrifying. Their mere presence extinguishes any non-magical light source, their touch causes their victims to be weakened as black bile oozes from every orifice, and worst of all their intangibility means that walls offer no protection and weapons pass harmlessly through them. To make matters even worse, Pike is still unable to channel her divine power after she was struck by Delilah's spell. The only reason Vox Machina and Captain Jarett survive the night is because Keyleth manages to conjure up enough magical sunlight to make the wraiths tangible.
  • The first one we see ends up reaching into a guard's chest, pulling them to the wall, then reaching into their head and crushing it from the inside. This death is so brutal and graphic it got this one episode a higher rating in some regions.
• A Freeze-Frame Bonus from Percy's flashback in episode 4 to his and Cassandra's escape: they both appear to be missing their fingernails◊.
• In Episode 5, Vox Machina arrives in Whitestone. They find a decimated city patrolled by undead giants, with the great Sun Tree a withered husk. As they scramble to hide, they see people hung from the tree. People dressed up to look like them. Including two children made to look like Pike and Scanlan. As the characters (and first-time viewers) reel from the shock, the credits play, with the sound of something heavy swaying on a rope over somber music.
  Keyleth: It's us. (Smash to Black)
  • The screeching, atonal violins playing over the discovery are nightmarish as well.
  • Some of the doubles had their tongues hanging out and all of their mouths are open, implying that they were executed by hanging. All of them were wounded/tortured, the soles of their feet sliced off. "Keyleth’s" antlers and "Vex’s" blue feathers looked nailed to their heads, given the blood at the site. It’s less worse than the stream version as there is no Trinket double, but much worse because the victims look closer to Vox Machina than the on-stream slapdash effort of matching them (with red paint beaten through "Keyleth’s" hair, for example).
  • The doubles wear Vox Machina’s normal outfits, not the banquet outfits that Sylas and Delilah saw them in. This, on top of Delilah’s undead abominations showing up exactly where the heroes are, implies that she scried on them.
  • Making this even worse is that, unlike in the stream, we actually see these people before their deaths. The Briarwoods invited these ordinary townsfolk to what they thought was a feast. The girl wonders if they won some sort of prize, while Delilah places the replica of Pike's holy symbol around her neck. She leaves the scene giggling and holding the hand of the man that would be Grog's double, likely her father. It makes the Briarwoods that much more horrifying.
  • In episode 9, as all the dead are rising as zombies, this also includes the ones hanging on the tree, whose bodies are still in good condition.
  • It gets even worse for anyone keeping up with the campaigns when you remember that one of the people hung from the tree is Laudna.
• Deaths in the show have been pretty graphic, but one of the more disturbing ones comes in Episode 6. During the infiltration, when Vox Machina and the rebels get found by Captain Stonefell, a battle breaks out. One of the rebels, a woman who had been aiding Vox Machina throughout the episode, gets her legs smashed from the side by Stonefell's giant hammer, which he then brings down on top of her head. Think her head would get utterly smashed in? Nope - instead, it flattens the top of her head to mush, giving us a view of her brains, while everything from the forehead down remains intact as blood runs down her face and her expression turns lifeless.
• If you thought No Mercy Percy was frightening in Episode 3, he manages to top himself at the end of Episode 6 when he manages to track down Captain Stonefell, one of the targets of his revenge. If the casual brutality with which Percy executes him doesn't scare you, the reveal that his plague doctor mask hides Black Eyes of Evil will when he takes it off in front of Stonefell.
  Percy: I wanted you to know it was me.
  • As if that isn't creepy enough, once he's done killing Stonefell, he hears footsteps behind him and quickly turns...pointing the gun straight at Vax. Vax is, understandably, freaked out and pissed off.
  • Also adding to this is Stonefell's reaction to this; all he says is "Percy?" before he is gunned down. He was geuinely shocked and likely terrified that the kid that got away is now this specter of vengeance.

Episode 7- 9

• When Scanlan asks Percy who the last barrel is for, Percy doesn't really answer. However, if you look at his shadow closely, it shifts in a way that it looks like Percy is pointing the gun at his own head.
• In fiction, a Slashed Throat is typically considered a very quick, relatively tame way to go. Yeah, not here. Though she survives thanks to perfectly-timed intervention on Keyleth's part, when Anders inflicts this on Cassandra, she spends a good ten minutes of screentime choking on her own blood and struggling to breathe, pale-faced and terrified. It's a chilling reminder that death, no matter how seemingly straightforward, is almost never pretty, clean, or dignified.
• Not that he didn't have it coming, but Professor Anders meets a grisly fate in Episode 8. Using his Compelling Voice to force Vox Machina to attack, Anders has Percy pinned to the wall. Percy then fires a shot which ricochets to shoot Anders in the mouth, blasting out his tongue and shooting off his jaw, after which he jams The List up the gaping hole he created in Anders's face and reduces his head to a fine red paste.
  Percy: You were the face I saw when murder entered my heart.
  • We never see Percy put the mask on in this scene. One moment he's not wearing it, then the next it's suddenly on his face as he passes behind Keyleth, and at no point does he make any motion to don it.
  • There's also something very unsettling that the silver tongue started to run away from Vox Machina. Implying it's a living organism that was embedded into Anders' mouth.
  • Doubly so when this is based on a real creature that eats and replaces fish's tongue.
• Delilah angrily calls for her steward and then kills him in cold blood. Then she drags his dead body into a magic circle to use his corpse to summon the undead.
• Zombies are bad enough, but it's worse when one of them bites a chunk out of Scanlan's arm, leaving a gnarly wound that grows increasingly gangrenous over time. Thank the Everlight Pike pulls her Big Damn Heroes moment and gives Scanlan the heals he needs.

Episode 10- 12

• The Cold Open to episode 10 is a flashback to Ripley torturing a teenage Percy, and it's horrific. She uses a hook to tear his skin open from his shoulder to the bottom of his ribcage, and sticks it through the skin of his neck to pull at it, grinning while Percy screams in guttural agony. She then brings in Cassandra, presumably to torture her while Percy is Forced to Watch. To make this even worse, they weren't holding out or refusing to break. She wanted to know how to get to the ziggurat under Whitestone, which Percy and Cassandra didn't know existed. Ripley was torturing these kids for information they never even had.
• Cassandra is being turned against Percy by the Briarwoods. She could have been charmed all the way, or the Briarwoods could have kept her under their heel by cowing her with Cold-Blooded Torture, general fear, and Stockholm syndrome, only reinforcing the charm when she's being troublesome. Either way, it's horrific, as Cass nearly kills her brother before she is freed. A close-up of her at the ziggurat shows why she's wearing a high collar now—she has multiple puncture wounds in her neck, suggesting that part of her being controlled involved Sylas feeding off of her for years.
• The inside of the ziggurat is just as nightmarish as it was described in the original stream, with writhing corpses lining the walls and waving unnaturally in rhythm as Delilah begins her ritual to summon the Whispered One.
• Percy's speech to Delilah at the start of episode 12.
  Delilah: You've taken my husband, and any hope of getting him back. What more could I lose...? End me.
  Percy: (puts his mask on with a Slasher Smile) No. Your pain will linger. I'll shatter your ankles for my sister Vesper. Your hands belong to Julius. Each De Rolo will have their pound of flesh, before I flay the skin from what's LEFT of you!
• Orthax.
  • He sends Percy's mind into a series of nightmarish visions, mixing between convincing Percy that he's shooting at the people on the List when he's actually fighting Vox Machina, and convincing Percy to kill Vox Machina themselves as they desperately try to get Percy not to kill Delilah.
  Orthax: Fire the weapon. Be at peace...
  • Possessed Percy is his own brand of high-octane nightmare fuel. When approaching Delilah he sports a grin that's far too wide to be any semblance of sane, his speech devolves into animalistic snarling, and once Orthax fully takes over, the smoke and glow around him make him look like he's walking through the middle of an inferno.
  • The name "Cassandra de Rolo" appearing on the List was shocking enough, but it's also a highly anticipated moment because it's a turning point in the original arc. What isn't in the original is that as Orthax attempts to exert more and more control over Percy, the names of the members of Vox Machina appear on the barrel of the gun too, one after the other, as an increasingly-terrified Percy tries to fight Orthax's influence.
  • At one point, Percy tries to stop himself from shooting his friends by putting his gun to his own head, not because he wants to die, but because he can't think of anything else to do to stop Orthax. In the end, the only thing that manages to harm Orthax enough to force him to retreat into the pepperbox is Percy blowing a hole through his own hand.
• The last thing in episode 12, cliffhanging the entire season: A quartet of ancient chromatic dragons descending on Emon, ready to wreck the city and claim it for their own. One of these was enough to seriously endanger the city and stood a good chance of wiping out Emon's army in open combat. Vox Machina arguably beat Brimscythe using trickery, sheer good luck, terrain advantage, and the blue dragon's arrogance towards them. This time, there are four times the danger, and they're explicitly pissed at their brethren's demise at the ends of such 'unworthy' opponents. Cut to black, and cue Thordak's roar. Oh, Crap! of the highest order. Matt has said that Brimscythe wasn't an ancient dragon. As Matt put it, "They [dragons] get bigger."

Season 2

Episode 1- 3

• The first episode shows the Chroma Conclave attack and it is not pretty to watch at all. The destruction is massive and widespread, the body count is HUGE and the gore is upped to show how just how minuscule the heroes and people are when Dragons DO decide to attack. Think Brimscythe destroying the guard camp in episode two was bad? Four dragons, each of them individually far more powerful than Brimscythe was, destroy Emon in an HOUR. Every member of the Conclave has a different - but equally horrific - way to use their elemental powers for mass slaughter, all of which they use to maximum effect as they gleefully murder soldiers and random civilians alike.
  • Raishan breathes thick green Deadly Gas that causes near-instant death as the victim bleeds out from every orifice. Even worse, some of those caught in the gas include a mother and baby.
  • Umbrasyl makes relatively little use of his Breath Weapon... because he can rain acid from his wings. During the attack he flies low over the city, drenching people in acid strong enough to instantly melt them to bloody sludge.
    • As Pike, Vax and Percy are running to Gilmore's, Umbrasyl's acid nearly catches Vax, but Percy shoves him out of the way. Heartwarming... Until Percy howls in agony and collapses to the ground as massive acid burns erupt all over his body. Their next scene starts with Pike desperately trying to heal the otherwise lethal wounds as Percy, only half-conscious, tries to warn his friends that Umbrasyl is coming back for another sweep.
  • Vorugal breathes a cloud of concentrated cold that instantly freezes anything and anyone it catches. Harmless Freezing is averted hard here — anyone caught in his ice breath is not only killed instantly, the violence of the impact itself rips their bodies to shreds until they are nothing but vaguely person-shaped splatters of gore frozen into blocks of ice.
  • Finally, Thordak breathes a stream of fire hot enough to vaporize stone and people alike. In an awesome display of power, he supercharges his breath into a plasma Wave-Motion Gun that obliterates not just the palace but much of the mountain beneath it, leaving only a bubbling crater.
• Another nightmarish moment occurs with Raishan’s first encounter with Vox Machina in the midst of a fume-covered Emon. Namely, after Keyleth disperses her poison breath, what is Raishan’s response? “You. I’ve seen you.” Cue a flashback to “The Terror of Tal’Dorei, Part 2” when Keyleth sees those orbs from Brimscythe’s lair, and a Draconic voice saying “Intruders.”
• Grog's maniacal slaughter of the fish people as it becomes clear the sword is starting to mess with him. Pike is horrified at the sight of it.
• While Vex's death is also very tragic, there's something disturbing about just how brutally fast it is. She's Killed Mid-Sentence from a trap on the Deathwalker's Ward from the Champion's coffin, and it's a One-Hit Kill. People dying from only a single move has been shown plenty of times on the show, but for one of the main characters to go out like that just reinforces that Anyone Can Die with no chance to save themselves.

Episode 4- 6

• Vax's Raven Queen-induced dream at the end of Episode 4 ends with a Jump Scare as he turns around to see a rotting corpse staring at him. If you're sharp-eyed or manage to get a screencap, you'll see it's not just any rotting corpse—it's Vax's.
• While "Pass Through Fire" isn't as dark or heart-wrenching as the past 4 episodes in this season or what's still to come, there are some horrifying moments when you think about it. Vax'ildan has another vision from the Raven Queen, complete with the Chroma Conclave destroying cities and burning people alive set to low base background music punctuated here and there by dragon roars and people's muffled screams. It all culminates to Vax kneeling in front of a tomb, which opens to a flash of Vax's rotting corpse.
• More nightmarish moments in "Pass Through Fire" occur when Keyleth arrives at Pyrah, she (and the rest of the audience) witness firsthand the ongoing destruction of Pyrah, and it's not pretty. Because of the rift to the Fire Plane was torn open, there are thousands or millions of salamander bat monsters roughly the size of a large dog escaping into the village where they destroy property and hunt people, leaving their half-eaten corpses in the street and turning Pyrah into a fiery hellscape. Possibly the most frightening revelation in this episode is that Scanlan just so happened to notice the erupting volcano on their travels.We don't know how long Pyrah's been under attack nor how many people were killed in the interim nor how many more would be killed hadn't Keyleth swooped in to save the day.
• Grog's bloodbath nightmare from Craven Edge in "Into Rimecleft". It starts with him happily slaughtering a Colosseum's fighters...and then seeing he's murdered all his friends while Pike cries out why and Kevdak shows up to say how proud he is of Grog for the murder. No wonder he wakes up in a panic.
• The ending where Grog impales Pike on Craven Edge in the middle of the bloodlust.
  • Craven Edge grows increasingly aggressive and controlling as its hunger grows. Eventually, it starts draining Grog's own blood, shriveling his arm as it threatens to "feed itself." It later outdoes itself when it overwhelms Grog with bloodlust, forcing him into a suicidal one-on-one battle with Umbrasyl.

Episodes 7- 9

• Saundor is not only creepy for his rotting tree body and Black Blood, but for being an emotionally-manipulative, gaslighting Yandere. Sendhil Ramamurthy gives a spine-chillingly creepy performance.
• Kevdak. He's violent and cruel and strikes fear into the usually recklessly fearless Grog. Watching him beat his young nephew nearly to death is horrifying.

Episodes 10- 12

• Kevdak continues to be nightmarishly cruel and horrifying.
  • Gruesomely impales Grog on a spiked barricade, so he would be Forced to Watch Kevdak slowly crush Pike.
  • Rips off his own arm and uses it to bludgeon Grog with.
• Umbrasyl's invisible assault on the Herd and Vox Machina.
• In contrast to the more adventurous tone that was present in their fight against Brimscythe in the first season, the confrontation with Umbrasyl in his lair is an absolutely terrifying experience where the party finds themselves thoroughly outmatched in virtually every way possible. The entire "fight" is basically made up of members saving each other at the literal last second and running like hell to evade him. Umbrasyl's sadism as a black dragon does not help. It's made very clear that Umbrasyl only loses at the end due to his own carelessness.
• While Umbrasyl definitely deserved it, Scanlan kills him by stabbing Mythcarver into his eye and basically obliterating his brain inside his skull with a massive magical burst. After he falls to the ground, it's revealed the blast erupting out of the other side of his head left it nothing but a scorched mass of bloody tissue.
• Raishan appears in Whitestone, disguised as Keeper Yennen, and no one had a clue.