Nightmare Fuel / The Property of Hate

"I'll get you my pretty... and your little dog too."

Even in a world as charming and whimsical as The Property of Hate's, there's still a lot of Nightmare Fuel as to be expected from a world where mental phenomena have a physical reality and absolutely everything is a potential threat.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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General

• RGB's nightmares during Page 73, Page 74. and Page 75
  • The nightmares he has during Page 250and Page 251 show that RGB isn't fond of irons...
  • The nightmare sequence during Flood (Pages 506, 507) involve RGB performing in dangerous stunts and then being the director in an theatrical auditions with a giant black train behind him and another voice screaming NEXT, much to RGB's surprise. Unlike the other times, RGB is actively trying to remember how he died instead of avoiding it.

Some of the chapter intros such as POV, the fakeout for Dolly Zoom, Dissolve or Cutting Room tend to give off an unnerving atmosphere, setting the tone for the chapter in question.

• Negative debuts in his self-named chapter after RGB is nearly killed by a Grief. Unlike RGB, Negative is monochrome, says nothing and is incredibly aggressive towards his enemies. Hero's first impression of Negative traumatizes her enough that any attempts from Negative are rebuffed out of fear and it takes until Double Exposure for her to finally tell RGB about him.
  • It says a lot about Negative that when the Grief that nearly killed RGB is stared down by Negative, it decides to leave rather than risk it's own life to fight Negative.
• Page 307 has RGB reveal that the world they're is the world that dreams. What he says here brings up some Fridge Horror:
  RGB:But imagine being told one day- 'your story is not safe'. That your story might no longer exist- have never existed- may never end because it never was.
• Hero's description of her nightmare after being attacked by one during Page 313
  Hero:And I was put in a little glass box and it was dark and- and- nobody heard me and- I couldn't breathe and... Then? I think? I died? And- A-And they ate me...
• The amour worn by the tree in "Dissolve" is made up of smiling teeth and contains Lies, the adorable little tooth-like creatures seen at the beginning chapters of the story. Hero is also dissolving with her body melting until RGB is able to help her get her sadness out of her system. The tree then is surrounded by what appears to be Griefs until Melody comes to save them and transforms them into an instrument that frees the tree from it's amour.
  • The future that RGB and Hero travel to was not kind to Julienne. Due to her body being made of candy cane, it ended up melting in the water, causing her body to be reduced to a candy coloured skeleton. The face that this is revealed by her existing Melody's body does little to help this, even if Julienne herself lacks the vitriol she had towards RGB earlier in the story.
• The House of Lead is already unnerving due to it being a monochromatic Eldritch Location that involves Painting the Medium. However, accidently shattering a mirror behind RGB causes a maze worth of them all to shatter at once before RGB himself gets hit with mirror shrapnel. RGB is fortunate that the shrapnel didn't hit anything vital or it would've been the end of him; his reaction of course is mere annoyance, lightening the tension somewhat. Their journey to the basement ends with an encounter with The Butterfly, who is as unsettling as ever.

Monsters and Antagonists

• While some of the inhabitants are simply regular beings living out their time until they become realized characters, or have simply accepted their new lives, there are monsters who are anything but cheery.
  • The Fears, true to their name, are quite scary. They're black, lanky creatures with scythes for heads and can root you to the ground if you let them. During Hero's first bout with them, they shank her and RGB through their chests and they probably would've been done for if Hero didn't accidentally crush that vial when she fell on it. RGB's reaction to seeing them implies that these creatures aren't native to the Lake of Tears and that he had expected them to show up far later in the story.
  • Doubts are see-through leech monsters who can cause their targets to doubt themselves and if they band together, they can swallow their target whole. RGB dismisses them at first and is lucky that he was able to save Hero from them when they both encountered a swarm of them in the Plains of Hesitation. During Hero and RGB's trip to the House of Lead, The Butterfly aka Anxiety surrounds the duo with a swarm of fully grown Doubts to prevent them from escaping.
  • Grief. A giant shadowy plesiosaur monster whose main method of attack is to drown their enemy with molten tears. RGB's reaction to seeing one of them in the Plains of Hesitation makes it clear that it's not a monster to messed with. It very nearly kills RGB by burning him to death with magma and it's tears and only leaves because it decides it doesn't want to mess with Negative.
  • Tempers are adorable little things, that is as long as they aren't broken. RGB tries to explain to Hero about them only to get cut off by Hero due to TG's appearance. During Casting, RGB reveals that Click was a previous Hero, and the recollection of Click's brief stint as a hero shows him crushing a Temper under his foot and using one of the shards, with full intent to use it as a weapon In the page after, the broken Temper is seen crying before it transforms into a Grief, with the implication that it killed Click due to RGB running away and leaving him to die.

The various antagonists Hero and RGB go up against are anything but comforting and as nightmarish as expected:

• TOby is a humorous character who just wants to be left alone. Him being reconstructed from his own nerves after being torn apart? Not so much.
• Dial himself isn't too disturbing though the implication that Hate listens in on his conversations means he that cannot escape her even if he wanted to. He has access to a secret white room which he uses to watch RGB and Hero in order to keep tabs on them. When the cameras get too dark for him to see (e.g Negative, the Market or the train RGB and Hero hide in during their trip to the Sands of Regret), he decides to go the long way and pursue them himself. During his dialogue with Hate, she at one point threatens to erase Dial after he makes a joke about Time.
• Click is the first antagonist they face who isn't just a mindless monster. He pursues Hero and RGB with murderous intent, taking out one of his eyes to see where they're running before transforming his arms into bird-like legs to continue the chase. When he finally gets the duo in a corner, he reveals that he wants vengeance for RBG "murdering" him and goes as far as to manipulate Hero into executing RGB with his shotgun. When Hero chooses to save him, Click intends to attack RGB before blasting him and Hero to death with his laser cannon. Even when the citizens of the bazaar stand against him, leaving only his waterlogged face as well. His remaining eye is still there, allowing him to forcefully fuse himself with Ratfink when the bird tries to steal it to complete himself.
  • When RGB finally explains to Hero about why he needed a hero, he tells the story of the first hero he recruited. A policeman who wished to become a royal guard, and has pictures of war and a woman on his wall. In the next page, RGB realizes he's made a horrible decision when Click stomps on a Temper and uses one of it's shards as a knife. Further still, it's implied that Click sacrificed his right arm for a mechanical one at the Black Market, and that according to RGB was on the path to destruction in every way. In the page after, we see that Click's right arm had become a mild case of Body Horror with two metal tubes jutting out of his elbow with the right sleeve of his shirt torn off to accommodate it.
  • The Body Horror train doesn't stop even when Click is reduced to a Puppeteer Parasite using Ratfink to further his own plans. He has Ratfink search for pieces of his body and forces Ratfink to eat them, convincing him that doing so will allow them to regain their separate forms. A Wind-Up Key sprouts out of Ratfink's back and it's implied that something may've snapped out of his body as well.
  • Ratfink and Click are seen looking around a beach filled with various body parts. Though considering the lyrics of Dial's song, there is the possibility that Click's quest to regain his body might not end so well.
• The Butterfly is a creepy, insidious character. During their first and second meetings with Hero, they tells Hero to be wise with the intent on playing on her anxieties to erode her trust in RGB. When they tries again at Elastic Valley, Hero immediately questions why she should trust them and winds up paying for it when the Butterfly decides to drop the manipulation in favour of ta more direct method. Hero and RGB end up pursing them in the House of Lead, with the intro page of Cutting Room showing them looking at the viewer through the glass shards after they leave through the prop house area.
  • The reveal of their true identity. When Hero and RGB finally make it to the basement, they see The Butterfly sat on a pulpit. As it turns out, they are a powerful monster called Anxiety, and unlike most of the other monsters seen up until this point (e.g Fears, Doubts, Griefs), they're the only monster of their type that can talk, putting them a cut above the rest in terms of sheer creepiness.
• During Chapter 25, we finally get to see RGB's past. It turns out that he actually fought Hate and ended up close to death, with his clothes torn to shreds and one of his legs broken. The only reason Hate doesn't just straight up kill RGB is because she finds his pleas for mercy amusing.