The monsters are lucky; he's much scarier behind the wheel.
"Generally speaking, when scary things get scared? Not good."
— Xander Harris, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It's one thing to Punch Out Cthulhu. It's something else entirely to scare the living bejesus out of him. This is a trope for when someone — or something — is frightening enough to scare things that would usually be an object of terror themselves. If someone can scare demons, monsters, and Eldritch Abominations, they're probably a force to be reckoned with.
Can equally well be played straight or Played for Laughs — for example, as a Scared of What's Behind You Bait-and-Switch gag.
All too likely to happen when a Food Chain of Evil is in effect. Break the Badass is when this happens to more human entities. May overlap with Mook Horror Show for sufficiently monstrous mooks. Compare Even Evil Has Standards for when the horror is morally outraged at what they've seen.
See also Always a Bigger Fish, The Worf Effect, Eviler than Thou, Failed Attempt at Scaring, Outscare the Enemy, Respected by the Respected, Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth.
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Advertising
- Disneyland Resort ran a commercial, advertising the Park Hopper ticket deal, starring the ghosts of The Haunted Mansion. The spirits flee the mansion and whoop it up at both Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure, riding the rides and running amok. When the ghosts ride "it's a small world" however, they scream in terror at the singing, brightly colored dolls.
- In the 2000's, Universal Studios advertised Halloween Horror Nights with a commercial of some teenagers in a forest, suddenly confronted with a charging mob of stock slashers. The teens are terrified, until they realize they are not running towards them, but away from something else. The teens are then attacked by the entity which we never actually see, ending with the trademark slogan: "What Fear Fears Most".
Blogs
- Slimyswampghost: The monster Cartoon Cat is only one of many monsters Trevor Henderson depicts in his artwork, but according to him, all the others are so terrified of it that they actively avoid the dirt mall it's trapped in "if they know what's good for them".
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- Nearly every sorcerer and supernatural being in the DC universe is afraid of John Constantine. Neatly shown in The Books of Magic when an entire room of very evil magical entities stop dead when John enters and tells them Tim Hunter's coming with him.
- Later in the series, Tala, a "Queen of Evil", needs help from Zatanna, despite them normally being on opposing sides of the Good vs. Evil magic thing. Tala tellingly reveals that Good can be just as scary to Evil as the reverse:
Tala: Don't look at me that way. Please. Do you know how terrifying you are to us? You creatures of the Light, with your pitiless eyes. You're so quick to judge us... but what do you know of the imperatives of Darkness? You've never seen past the Shadows.
- In a newer series, in the story "This Sceptred Isle", the one who gets horrified is an Emotion Eater feeding on fear itself. The ancient monster, Rawhead, is impressed by the fear-mongering of a xenophobic British politician Clem Thurso and steals his face and takes his place. Later, he starts feeling uncomfortable in the xenophobic nationalist movement because it starts to be more about pride than fear (which is, in fact, being influenced by another evil supernatural being). When the new nationalist cult tries to recruit Rawhead-as-Thurso into its ranks, he vomits and flees the scene when he sees the extremely weird and perverse ritual they're doing in their underground lair. Afterwards, he's found holed up in his office, trying to call Constantine for help before he's assassinated by the cult.
- As stated by the Trickster in Underworld Unleashed, when super-villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories.
- Even the Joker is scared of the Creeper and Junior... and, as shown by Death of the Family, his own name.
- In Saga of the Swamp Thing, the most disturbing omen of Anton Arcane's resurrection and unleashing of the powers of Hell is that the Joker stops laughing at Arkham.
- The Batman Who Laughs disturbs and horrifies the Joker so much that whenever he talks about him, the Joker becomes deathly serious. He even quit a team-up with Lex Luthor on the spot after learning Lex was dealing with BWL, confessing that while he was planning on betraying and giving Luthor an incredibly Cruel and Unusual Death, whatever BWL has planned would be much, much worse.
- Played for laughs in Detective Comics story "Joker's Millions". After he gets an Unexpected Inheritance from rival mob boss "King" Barlowe, Joker states he cannot go after the Intimidating Revenue Service. It's later discovered Barlowe's windfall fortune was fake, so the Clown Prince of Crime dreads becoming Gotham's Butt-Monkey for the rest of his life if he admitted being swindled by a dead man. This was later adapted into an episode of The New Batman Adventures.
- Happens twice to Joker in Joker The World. First, when he goes to Madrid, he calls it such a Wretched Hive that someone like him wouldn't be able to make the news, and that he'd probably be elected mayor if he stayed any longer. He decides to leave because Victory Is Boring. Then, when he is transferred to an Arkham franchise in Minas Gerais, he hears about the genocide that occurred there, and asks Batman to take him back home the first opportunity he gets, because as horrifying as he can be, he could never compete with institutionalized psychopathy.
- Robin (1993): Fright Knight has the ability to utterly horrify opponents with a simple "Boo" no matter what they've witnessed before. This becomes hilarious when they come up against the Terror Hero Ragman, who routinely creeps out his own allies and occasionally even unsettles himself, as they send him running a block away to cower in an alley after casually asking him if he wanted to see their power.
Ragman: It's the scariest thing I ever saw, and now I can't recall what it was. But I'd rather fight a dozen specters than face that horror again.
Blue Devil: It was obviously some kind of mind attack. Nothing to beat yourself up about, Rags. - This is one of the reasons why Lobo is Barred from the Afterlife: during one of his deaths, he went to Hell — and they kicked his ass out. That's right: Lobo is too much for Hell itself to want to deal with. During Dark Nights: Metal, Lobo himself became scared of Devastator, a murderous alternate Batman who fused with Doomsday.
- Used in a plot arc in Forgotten Realms. The dragons of Faerun are generally badass, aloof, and most if not all of them have killed plenty of "lesser" beings before for some reason or other...but even they have a collective Oh, Crap! moment and are earnestly considering leaving their familiar home grounds behind and moving into places more commonly populated by humans, elves and so on when a mysterious killer starts to leave a trail of headless dragon corpses behind him-, her- or itself.
- Invincible: Conquest is a brutal, sadistic psychopath who relishes in wanton carnage and bloodshed, and threatens to rip out and devour Mark and Oliver's hearts in the aftermath of the Invincible War. But when he's ultimately defeated by Mark and forced to face the Viltrumite Grand Regent Thragg for his failure, Conquest is reduced to getting on his knees and shamelessly begging for mercy.
- Marvel Universe:
- Similar to Constantine, Doctor Strange has a threatening reputation among other-dimensional and supernatural beings thanks to being the Sorcerer Surpreme and having fought against enemies like Dormammu.
- The titular version of the Hulk in The Immortal Hulk, already proven to be one of the most outright malevolent of the Hulks (maybe not out-and-out evil, but he sure as Hell ain't nice), screams in fear and terror when he encounters Brian Banner. The fact the Hulks are born out of the trauma that was Bruce's childhood, the Devil Hulk in particular from his desire for a loving dad, feeds into this.
- Doctor Doom fears nothing! ...Except for Squirrel Girl. When she shows up to borrow his time machine, he just lets her have it, with a caption reaffirming that their previous encounter is canon. The Titan of Death, Thanos, was once defeated by Squirrel Girl... or, at least, a copy of him, as he claims. After it's pointed out that beating a perfect, exacting copy of him is no different than beating him for real, Thanos visibly pales and leaves. Deadpool finds her terrifying as well. In fact, she's slowly gaining a reputation as The Dreaded among Marvel's villains.
- Proteus from X-Men manages to horrify Wolverine so bad that he vomits in terror, and Cyclops has to enrage Logan to get him back on his feet. This applies double with Ultimate X-Men (2001), where Wolverine is decidedly more amoral, and he calmly tells Charles Xavier that the amount of hatred Proteus has for him scares Logan.
- Ultimate Universe (2023): The Maker, even after the however many years it's been since he first went up against his universe's Spider-Man, and all the things he's done since then, is still afraid of even the possibility of a Spider-Man, any Spider-Man, messing up his plans. So when he rewrites Earth-6160's history, Peter Parker is one of the first people he goes after.
- Non-canon as it may be, The Punisher should still feel proud of being one of the few people who had managed to make the Joker almost wet himself in fear once he computed that, nope, Frank is really just going to shoot him dead.
- Rom: Spaceknight: Rom himself is a figure of terror for the Dire Wraiths, what with having led the charge to eradicate them, and then spending two hundred years chasing them across the universe, subjecting any he finds to a Fate Worse than Death. Besides that, some of the Wraiths' own creations give them the grus, like the Deathwing, a demonic shadow creature which is usually used to kill any Wraith who's failed too often, and which won't stop until it's caught someone.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: After Captain Nemo sees Hyde ripping apart a Martian tripod with his bare hands, and then ripping apart the Martian inside and eating him right in front of his fellow invaders, he comments:
"We...we cannot know what feelings our enemies have...But we may be certain at least, that Hyde taught them terror."
- Many horrific creatures are scared shitless of Doc Stearne, aka Mr. Monster.
- Paperinik New Adventures:
- The Evronians are a whole species of Emotion Eaters who fuel their war machines with emotions and feel little emotions themselves (only the Emperor and the other two-headed Evronians, the Imperial Council, and some mutants have a full emotional spectrum, and the latter will be hunted down and exterminated if discovered), basically look like a beaked and tailless Xenomorph, and are even more terrifying opponents than this description would make anyone think. Yet, even they are scared of a few things:
- The looks of their own hybrid Super Soldiers created from the Beasts of Ragnar. That said, a baseline Evronian can easily conquer said (minimal) fear and kick their asses thanks to being more competent.
- Xadhoom. She has the power to fly faster than light, fire energy blasts that can destroy a planet, change her shape to dodge attacks, and immunity to all weapons that haven't been made specifically to kill her, and even those don't work fast enough to actually do more than contain or hurt her, and she wants them dead for destroying her homeworld while she was away obtaining her powers and fooling her and the rest of the government into deactivating their defences to not shoot down their "merchant ships"... And they know it. For obvious reasons, even Lower Caste Evronians (almost completely emotionless) fear her to the point that the threat of being assigned to the Anti-Xadhoom Force is a powerful motivator.
- For those who have encountered him, Paperinik himself. He's a Terror Hero, but that's not why they fear him, it's because of the merciless beatings he inflicts on them. It's bad enough that a warrior who had once fought him was reduced to terrifying attempts at denial when Paperinik popped out on the Evronian mobile homeworld.
- In the reboot, Lower Caste Evronians also fear the Guardian Drones, Super Soldiers who can outfight the Evronians and are completely merciless, razing entire planets and destroying their spores (basically, Evronian fetuses). High Caste Evronians such as general Zondag, on the other hand, are too full of complete and utter loathing for the Guardian Drones to fear them.
- Trauma is an Evronian general who had developed a full emotional spectrum and a sadistic and independent streak even before becoming a Super-Soldier with the strength to casually throw around cars, the toughness to take a rocket to the chest and be none worse for the wear, the ability to instill primal and complete fear in anyone and making them live their worst nightmare before draining it and turning the victims into mindless slaves, and that of imitating voices (excellent for luring unsuspecting heroes into traps). At the end of his second and final battle with Paperinik, he was on the ground in terror and begging for mercy after our hero conquered the fear he was inducing and accidentally reversed his mutation.
- The Evronians are a whole species of Emotion Eaters who fuel their war machines with emotions and feel little emotions themselves (only the Emperor and the other two-headed Evronians, the Imperial Council, and some mutants have a full emotional spectrum, and the latter will be hunted down and exterminated if discovered), basically look like a beaked and tailless Xenomorph, and are even more terrifying opponents than this description would make anyone think. Yet, even they are scared of a few things:
- Revival: Jordan Borchardt is a typical emotionally-detached reviver, which makes her a textbook Creepy Child. Over the course of the series her separated soul is destroyed, allowing her to imprison someone else's soul inside her. The Passengers find this terrifying.
- The Shadow: The Shadow is a Terror Hero, but in Dynamite's Special #1, he has a disturbed look when he learns just what his old comrade has been up to.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Megatron is still The Dreaded of many Autobot stories. He's directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of billions of people. And he is absolutely pants-shittingly terrified of mnemosurgeons. Just seeing one in prison (the sullen, depressive, and not particularly intimidating Chromedome) had him calling for guards and threatening that the only way they would read his memories would be after he was dead. The series makes it abundantly clear just how justified his fear is in several story arcs.
- Usagi Yojimbo: Ryoko is a witch who can mind-control others in huge quantities, even at vast ranges. Then she runs into Jei while remote-piloting her servant Kitanamono, and is appropriately horrified.
- Vampirella: Allegedly (it's not entirely clear if the issue in question just made it up for a quick laugh), monsters scare their kids with stories about Vampirella. Not entirely unreasonable, since she's often portrayed as a relentless Hunter of Her Own Kind.
Films — Animation
- In Beowulf (2007), Grendel is a hideous deformed troll of a man who haunts the land of Herot, committing brutal violence against merry-makers and revellers. When Beowulf comes to Herot to fight Grendel, the former almost immediately turns the tide on Grendel and gains the advantage while completely naked and unarmed. Scared shitless, Grendel can only shrink in size and try to escape, only for Beowulf to trap him in a large doorway and slam the door on his arm. Repeatedly. Until his arm pops off.
Beowulf: *slam!* Your blood-letting *slam!* days are finished, *slam!* demon! *slam!*
Grendel: Ich nayt daemon 'ere! (I'm not the demon here!) - A Bug's Life:
- After terrorizing Dot a few times and when Flik encourages the ants and bugs to fight back against Hopper and the grasshoppers, Thumper gets frightened when Dim appeared behind Dot and makes a Mighty Roar, causing him to yelp in fear and fly away with the escaping grasshoppers.
- After spending the whole movie as The Dreaded along with his fellow grasshoppers to the ants, and when believing the real bird was another one of Flik’s tricks, Hopper becomes frightened and screams in horror after he discovers that the bird was real when it screeches at his face, and he tries to escape to no avail as the bird quickly catches up to Hopper and snatches him quickly with its beak and hovers over to its nest with its three hungry chicks waiting. Throughout the whole ordeal, Hopper fearfully yells a Rapid-Fire "No!" as he is dangled over the chicks and ultimately makes a huge scream when the bird lowers down for the chicks to eat him alive offscreen.
- How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Stoik realizes something's gone horribly wrong with the assault on the dragons' nest when the thousands of dragons occupying it take off flying as fast as their wings could carry them, paying no heed whatsoever to the Vikings. Moments later, the furious Red Death comes barreling out of the side of the mountain.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): Judge Claude Frollo terrorizes the city of Paris throughout the film. When one of Notre Dame's gargoyles takes a demonic form and roars in his face, Frollo spends his final moments screaming in terror.
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: One of the baby T. rexes explores the water and finds a school of piranha that flash their teeth at it. The baby then does the same, scaring them away instantly.
- Kung Fu Panda 3: Kai, the evil, super-strong, undead warlord who knows magic and kung-fu, ends up on the receiving end of this trope, Played for Laughs. Kai cringes in fear and disgust when he gets a close-up look at Hom-Lee's horribly crooked teeth.
- The Land Before Time: In the first movie, Littlefoot, Petrie, Ducky, and Spike end up glued together after falling into a tar pit, and their combined form looks scary enough to frighten away a group of pachycephalosaurs that were attacking Cera.
- Migration: In the final scene, Gwen tries to make a pet out of a crocodile she names "Toothpick". Toothpick is clearly terrified by the prospect.
- Minions & Monsters: When the Minions and the Fun Size Cthu-Lookalike Goomie are attacked by a Threatening Shark, Goomie roars at it. It's so scared it just swims away backwards.
- Children in Monsters, Inc. 1 scare monsters... including the ones whose job it is to scare children for a living. Played for Laughs. It's implied that the CDA deliberately cultivates the image of human children as horrors that the monsters should fear in order to keep them from being exploited as Waternoose tried to do with Boo.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie Boogie, as his name suggests, is a version of the Boogeyman and is the only resident of Halloweentown who's actually evil, taking sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing people while everyone else is scary but harmless and any frights they give are all in good fun. Oh, and he's actually a burlap sack filled with thousands of nasty bugs. In the climax, it turns out that Oogie himself is scared of just one thing: Jack Skellington.
- Osmosis Jones: Frank's childhood, lack of self-restraint, and outright mental insanity (all of which is not helped by his unhealthy lifestyle) freaks out Thrax, a serial killer virus (the Red Death) who has infected and killed over twelve people.
Thrax: This cat was sick before I even got here!
- Played for Laughs with Snoopy and a grizzly bear in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.
- In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Spot is well on his way to becoming a Transhuman Abomination, exploring the multiverse through his dimensional holes, when he ends up in Mrs. Chen's convenience store. Her complete lack of reaction to his reality bending abilities genuinely disturbs him, and he quickly makes an exit.
- The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: The Prison Warden Lumalee actually manages to horrify Bowser, who himself is pretty scary, at the prison Fox sent him and Junior to. It is likely shenote is doing this out of Revenge for what the Koopa King did to his Lumalee prisoner in the first film.
Films — Live-Action
- In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, when the Monster is introduced it takes a close look at Costello's face, only to recoil with a cry of fear. Dracula reassures him.
"Don't be afraid. He won't hurt you!"
- In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos the Mad Titan, Greater-Scope Villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Dreaded to much of the known galaxy, is left staring in horrified dismay when Carol Danvers singly takes on Thanos' dreadnought, and punches her way straight through yet another warship, bringing it crashing to the ground. Shortly before that, he's nearly overpowered by a very angry Wanda, and panics just enough to call an airstrike from said warship to fend her off.
- Blade is this to vampires, carving a terrifying path of death as he slays whole legions of vampires. Nyssa brings this up in Blade II.
- Many of the most hardened convicts aboard Con Air are freaked out when the Serial Killer Garland Greene joins them.
- Freddy vs. Jason:
- In the final battle, sadistic dream stalking Serial Killer Freddy Krueger looks like he's about to wet himself when he realizes that he's been pulled into the real world, where he is vulnerable and he has to deal with an extremely pissed off Jason Voorhees coming after him with a machete.
- This trope goes both ways—earlier in the film after realizing that Jason's fear is water (or, more accurately, the trauma of having drowned as a child, not so much water itself), Freddy threw Jason into a nightmare where he was forced to relive his traumatic childhood memories of being relentlessly bullied and picked on and then pushed into Camp Crystal Lake to drown. After some exposure to these memories, Jason devolves from a Nigh-Invulnerable undead menace to a sobbing, terrified child.
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: When the Ghostbusters bring the orb containing Big Bad Garraka, a phantom god who seeks to destroy humanity and bring a new ice age into their newly founded laboratory and ghost prison, all of the ghosts in the building get frightened without the demon even being directly present.
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Tie-in materials reveal the Big G himself is keeping a healthy distance from the site that contains Ghidorah. In the film proper, Rodan lets out a panicked screech upon realizing he's flown right into Ghidorah's storm... right before battling him anyway.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2: When Voldemort converses with Nagini in parseltongue at Malfoy Manor after violently rage killing a number of Gringotts employees as a result of the Golden Trio escaping Gringotts bank with one of Voldemort's horcruxes, Bellatrix Lestrange, one of his most faithful followers and known to be gleefully sadistic, can be seen in the background sitting against the wall covering her head and cowering in fear.
- In The Hunger Games, like in the book, Clove is one of the most dreaded and skilled of the Tributes. Although she's a normal human like everyone else, she's an Ax-Crazy Psycho Knife Nut who has been raised The Spartan Way to compete in the Hunger Games and strides across the Moral Event Horizon by gloating about killing Rue. However, even she is visibly terrified of Thresh, desperately screaming and pleading when he grabs her by the throat, enraged at the death of his district partner Rue. Justified by the fact that he then proceeds to kill Clove in a single blow.
- Inglourious Basterds: Pretty much the idea behind assembling the Basterds:
Aldo: We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty, they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sound good?
- John Wick is this to the criminal underworld. Even the head of The Mafiya presence in New York is stopped cold at the news that his son crossed Wick.
Viggo: They call him Baba Yaga.
Iosef: The Boogeyman?
Viggo: Well, John wasn't exactly the boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman. - King Kong (2005):
- The extended edition has a sequence that starts with the rescue party being attacked on their makeshift rafts (they're in a swamp) by a pack of cat-sized scorpio-pedes, which abruptly break off the attack and flee moments before the arrival of a piranhadon -- a predatory fish the size of a small whale.
- In the theatrical cut, Anne is attacked by a pair of Foetodon, land crocodilians roughly around the size of tigers, and crawls into a log to escape them. As she does, one is pulled offscreen and upwards by something, and the second stares at whatever it was and promptly beats it. Anne, exiting the log, finds a V-Rex standing there staring at her, the remains of the first beast in its mouth.
- In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, an army of goblins surround the Fellowship, only to immediately scurry off in fear after hearing the roar of the Balrog.
- At the climax of The Matrix, once Neo figures out he's the One, the sight of the stuff he then does to Agent Smith causes the other two Agents present to just plain run for their digital lives. While the sequels provide for more nuanced interpretations, when the first film is viewed on its own this scene runs rather clearly along the lines of this trope.
- Earlier in the subway station fight, there's also a hint of this, as Smith's grin of triumph quickly fades to incredulity as Neo gets back up after being sent flying, wipes the blood off his chin, and calmly challenges the agent to come at him again.
- The Tuaregs from The Mummy (1999) decimates Rick's regiment and sends some of them like Benny fleeing. They are scared off after realizing they are in Hamunaptra, the city where the infamous Imhotep is buried.
- Will Graham invokes this in the film adaptation of Red Dragon when Francis Dolarhyde holds his young son hostage by putting on a show of parental abuse that hits the deranged Serial Killer right in the Freudian Excuse. It unsettles Dolarhyde enough for Will's son to get away.
- In Scary Movie 2, a Monster Clown gets the tables turned on it when it tries to "play" with Ray.
Clown: Hey... W-what are you doing?!
Ray: Uncle Ray-Ray's got a game...
Clown: Hey, get your finger outta there!
Ray: Tickle, tickle, tickle!
Clown: AAAHHHH!! OH GOD!! - In Serenity, the Operative, who is an elite assassin given carte blanche and unlimited resources by his government to carry out his mission, nearly panics when he realizes Mal has lured a fleet of Reavers to his location.
The Operative: Target the Reavers. Target the Reavers! Target everyone! SOMEBODY FIRE!
- In "ShinUltraman", Mefilas is not only a match for Ultraman in combat, but due to him having no time limit to his giant size, is on the verge of destroying him. However, he catches a glimpse of Zoffy and instantly quits the fight, abandoning his plans for Earth and the humans within a few seconds.
- Sinners: Big Bad Remmick for the majority of the film is basically The Juggernaut against the main protagonists by virtue of being a Vampire Monarch controlling a Hive Mind of loyal vampires facing Badass Normal humans. His introductory scene, however, had him fleeing for his life from horseback warriors of the Choctaw Native Americans. During daytime no less, with the very strong implication that his willingness to risk being burnt alive in sunlight was preferable to facing them head on. Considering that he's shown to be absolutely covered in several dozen incredibly nasty wounds, whereas the Choctaw warriors don't have a mark on any of them, makes it very clear that they are exceptional against the nightstalker and his kind, to say the least. It's worthy of notice that even after night falls, Remmick confirms he has no intention of facing them again, even with the environmental advantage of nightfall, making them a heroic version of this trope.
- In Starship Troopers (1997), the humans victoriously cheer when Carl Jenkins uses his telepathy to announce that the captured leader of the Arachnids, the Brain Bug, is afraid of them. Given that the film is meant to be a reversed alien invasion story in which we humans are the warmongering bastards, this isn't exactly something to feel proud of, but for the in-universe War Is Glorious population, it's music for their ears.
- Thomas and the Magic Railroad: Diesel 10 is a devilishly Cool Train with a hydraulic claw (which would be an illegal modification IRL) and a deep hatred for steam engines. His only fear? Sugar.
Diesel 10: AHH!! IS THAT—?!
Mr. Conductor: That's right, it's sugar, Diesel! And if I throw this in your tank, it'll seize you up for good! - In Willy's Wonderland, the Hostile Animatronics (later revealed to be possessed by the spirits of a prolific Serial Killer and his accomplices in a satanic ritual) grow increasingly horrified at the nameless Janitor as he takes them out one by one. The only one to avoid being horrified is Willy Weasel, who feels nothing but hatred at the Janitor and actually manages to win Round 1 of their fight.
Jokes
- Back in the age of Chuck Norris jokes, people would occasionally counter them with the following:
Every night, before he goes to sleep, Chuck Norris looks under his bed for Willem Dafoe. (Or in some tellings, Christopher Walken or Neville Longbottom)
- Speaking of those jokes, quite a few follow the pattern of something terrifying being afraid of ol' Carlos Ray Norris:
- "Chuck Norris died six years ago; Death has been trying to work up the courage to let him know."
- "The dark is scared of Chuck Norris."
- "Freddy Krueger has nightmares about Chuck Norris."
- This concept is often borrowed from the Bill Brasky sketches on SNL, which predate the Chuck Norris memes by a couple of decades.
- And of course, Norris himself is terrified of the IRS
- Speaking of those jokes, quite a few follow the pattern of something terrifying being afraid of ol' Carlos Ray Norris:
- On various circulated lists of "Why Kirk Is Better (or Badder, or Cooler) Than Picard", one of the reasons is stated to be "The Klingons didn't even have a word for 'surrender' until they met Kirk."
Music
- The Disturbed song "Fear
" is written from the perspective of the victim... so now it's the criminal that is experiencing fear:
Reject, are you no one?
Feel you nothing?
You know I'll bet you think
You have a good reason to be living
In the limelight of the fortunate ones
You're too weakened by the poison
That they feed you in the living lie
They don't believe you:
Call to no one
Trust in nothing,
Little impotent one - Played for laughs in the "Dream Warriors" music video attached to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The only thing that scares the film's main villain Freddy Krueger is the band Dokken.
Freddy: What a nightmare... who were those guys?!
- At the end of Leslie Fish's Filk Song "Banned from Argo", a gang of Klingons land on Argo, see the havoc wreaked by the crew of the USS Enterprise, and turn and run away. Years after the original song was written, a Firefly variant was made, with the Serenity crew scaring off Reavers.
- Leslie Fish has another song called "Where Has Cthulhu Gone?". The premise is about the Great Old Ones fleeing earth in fear of the atomic bomb.
Mythology & Religion
- Classical Mythology:
- This was part and parcel for Hades, who was known as "he who The Dreaded dreads." Since part of his job included keeping beings like the Titans and the various other Eldritch Abominations locked away in Tartarus, it was an important skill to have. That said, his wife Persephone, whose authority was equal to his, seemed to be even more feared by mortals.
- Famously, in The Iliad, Zeus tried to punish Hypnos for lulling him to sleep, but refrained when the latter ran towards his mother, Nyx, as Zeus apparently thought that challenging her was not worth the risk. Yes, even the Top God of the Greek pantheon was afraid of another goddess (albeit one who was much older than him, being not so much a goddess as an Anthropomorphic Personification).
- In the Book of James in The Bible, it's stated that demons tremble in fear of God.
Podcasts
- In The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Nightmares the Clown is an Emotion Eating Monster Clown who feeds on fear and is a recurring nemesis of Frank and Sadie Doyle. In their fifth encounter, he finally has the Doyles on the ropes, forcing upon them their two biggest fears of sobriety and being separated from each other. Frank's response is a Badass Boast about how dangerous he once was and could be again if he got serious, and that Sadie is even more dangerous than him. The ultimate effect is to cause Nightmares to realize what it is he truly fears: Frank and Sadie Doyle.
Professional Wrestling
- The Undertaker has a gimmick of a nearly unstoppable deadman with supernatural powers. One time, in a match with Randy Orton, Orton ordered a casket brought out. Undertaker incapacitated Orton and opened the casket to throw him in, only to find a realistic dummy that looked exactly like him inside. Undertaker still won the match, but he was really shaken up.
- At WrestleMania 31, Undertaker faced Bray Wyatt, who has a similar supernatural gimmick and is basically a horror movie villain. At one point, Wyatt starts gloating over a downed Undertaker and does a spider crawl out of The Exorcist, only for Undertaker to sit up. Wyatt immediately stops and backs away, terrified.
- At Payback 2017, Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton faced each other in a house and the fight ended with Wyatt dropping a refrigerator on Orton. Wyatt then arrived at the arena, gloating that Orton wouldn't show up for their match so he would win by forfeit. Orton appeared right behind Wyatt and attacked him. To quote the announcers, "I didn't think it was possible to scare Bray Wyatt!"
Radio
- Laurel and Hardy managed to do this in the single episode of their never-picked-up radio show. The two are hired by a poultry shop, and while out on what they believe to be a delivery run, accidentally encounter a group of gangsters. Stan and Ollie mistake them for their customers, the hoods mistake Stan and Ollie for a pair of tough hitmen they're supposed to meet. Thanks to the magic of One Dialogue, Two Conversations, when the hoods ask Stan and Ollie about their work, they are made green with nausea as they hear how the two dispatch their victims with a butcher knife or axe, dunk the tough carcasses in boiling water, and then deliver them, sometimes as often as 12 times a day (especially weekends and holidays) to the people who ordered them killed. The police arrive before the duo can clarify that they were referring to slaughtering chickens.
Theatre
- EPIC: The Musical: When Odysseus tricks the sirens into telling him what path he can take to escape Poseidon, they tell him to go to a place where even the mighty god of the sea is too scared to venture; the lair of Scylla.
- By the end of the musical, it's implied that the sea god has a second fear: Odysseus himself. "Six Hundred Strike" ends with Poseidon very rapidly going from smug gloating, to screaming in pain, to telling Odysseus to stop, to screaming that Odysseus is a monster, to begging him to stop. Turns out, even gods can bleed if it's their own weapons being used against them, and immortality just means that you don't need to worry about killing them while torturing them.
- There's a stock routine in Pantomime that uses this. Three characters, one of them the dame (an older female character played by a man), are onstage and comment that the place they're in is haunted and they need to be on the lookout for ghosts (or other monsters), and ask the audience to tell them if they see one (they may then start to sing a song to keep their spirits up). A ghost (or whatever) then enters behind them, prompting the audience to shout "Behind you!" in the classic panto style. The characters then look around and fail to spot the ghost, as it follows them and always stays behind them until it exits (they never think to look in different directions to cover the whole area between them because that wouldn't be funny). Then the routine is repeated, except one character (unseen by the other two) spots the ghost and runs offstage in terror. The others wonder where they've gone and repeat the routine (more nervously) and a second character is scared off, leaving only the dame. The routine is repeated once more — except this time the ghost runs offstage in terror at the sight of the dame.
Toys
- BIONICLE: One of the defenses surrounding the Mask of Life is the Zone of Nightmares, which manifests your worst fears to menace you. When the Piraka reach it, their fears give life to Irnakk, a terrifying monster from their folklore, who incapacitates five of the six before engaging their leader Zaktan in a Battle in the Center of the Mind to further torment him. Zaktan, however, hits Irnakk back with the ways his every waking moment have been a nightmare ever since he was transformed into The Worm That Walks, and succeeds in making the fear-monster feel fear itself, causing it to dissipate and allow the Piraka to pass (with its congratulations).
Visual Novels
- Combining this trope with Even Evil Has Standards, Jimmy Aleister of Code:Realize acknowledges how he is so unfathomably evil and twisted that the most hardened and depraved killers were themselves horrified at glimpsing his true nature.
- In Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp, Korekiyo offers to have Mikan "nurse at my sister's side" (his sister is dead, so he kills "worthy girls" so they can "be friends" with his sister). Mikan says she'd like to do that, because his sister would be so weak, which has him give a Flat "What", before she then gets off on how weak his sister would be. He goes into Stunned Silence, before quickly reversing course and claiming that he couldn't ask for the luxury of having her nurse his sister.
- The Big Bad from Dies Irae, Reinhard, is a man said to have been born in the wrong universe and is so unreasonably powerful and has such an overwhelming presence that anyone who faces him can't help but shake in their boots, even those that are honest to goodness monsters themselves. He is just in a different league. Mercurius meanwhile tend to cause a different kind of fear in those same individuals. Instead of a fear based on awe, it is one based on hatred and disgust born from just how odd his entire existence is, like he is detached from the very fabric of reality in both body and spirit.
- Fate/stay night: The Shadow that appears in the Heaven's Feel storyline has such ominous powers that it creeps out even the servants, extremely powerful spirits themselves. However, even this nightmare flees in terror when faced with Gilgamesh. When it actually manages to devour him, it immediately breaks him down to magical energy, fearing that he could take control from the inside.
- Hatoful Boyfriend has The King trying to push Yuuya over the Despair Event Horizon by reminding him of Yuuya's greatest failure, in the hopes that Yuuya will agree to have his soul absorbed to forget the pain. Yuuya stands stalwart; he accepts what he's done, knows he can't change it, and wants to remember it in order to go forwards. He's found meaning in the pain. The King retreats in a hurry.
- In the true ending of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, the villain, Matt Engarde had nearly broken both the fake culprit, Adrian, nearly driving her to suicide, and Phoenix Wright himself... then Shelly de Killer turns on him if Phoenix plays his cards right. The result is Matt freaking out and pleading to go to jail to be protected from the assassin.
- Slay the Princess: In some routes, you accidentally goad the princess into becoming a violence-loving maniac with a hard-on for turning you into chunks of sausage... and in some of those sub-routes, you then proceed to push past everything she throws at you, reanimating your dead body with the force of pure determination or crumpling her swords into balls with the power of sheer will. She then spends a few minutes stuttering and trying to rationalize what she's currently witnessing, with a look of terror on her once-confident face.
- In the true ending of Sucker for Love: First Date, the player character manages to utterly terrify Nyanlathotep, the second-most powerful of all of the elder gods, with his sheer lust and desire to 'plant a wet one' on ALL of the elder gods. Including Nyanlathotep.
- In every route of Yo-Jin-Bo, Harumoto is in full Villainous Breakdown mode by the climax, ready to blow up the watchtower that he and the heroes are standing on in order to die taking them with him rather than live to be captured; in Ittosai's route, he uses Sayuri as a Human Shield and forces her to make an Anguished Declaration of Love to Ittosai just to twist the knife by making Ittosai choose between killing them both or doing nothing until they all die from the impending explosion. When Ittosai declares his willingness to run his sword through the woman who loves him in order to get to Harumoto and then kill himself afterwards, even Harumoto is thoroughly unnerved.
- Your Turn to Die: Midori, a.k.a. the actual Sou Hiyori, is a complete psychopath and one of the worst people in the game. Meister scares the ever-loving hell out of Midori, for reasons that are never made apparent.
Web Animation
- Chikn Nuggit:
- Sody Pop tends to scare Iscream, either because he's a kid or the odd things he does sometimes, like shrinking his face.
- During their "first" meeting with Iscream, Fwench Fwy brings the usually unflappable Iscream to their knees with just a glare.
- Cofi scares Iscream too, as in her first encounter with Iscream they're absolutely mortified by her. Though as of now it seems Iscream is just annoyed by her presence.
- Crispy Toast: The second time Foxy reaches Luigi in "Luigi's Night at Freddy's", the plumber gives him a Death Glare which scares him back to Pirate Cove.
- DEATH BATTLE! often has this occur, considering that at least half of the combatant list qualifies as Horrors in their own right. Notably, it's not always the winner horrifying the loser.
- Goku Black vs. Reverse Flash: Thawne is so terrified by Goku Black's Super Saiyan Rosé that his first reaction is to Ret-Gone Black with a time-jump. When that doesn't work, he kills Super Saiyan Rosé Black a couple times from behind, and ultimately finishes off Black for good the same way.
- DIO vs. Alucard: When Alucard unleashes Level 0, DIO and The World are both horrified at the literal ocean of blood and horde of zombies that washes over them, despite both of these factors ultimately being to DIO's advantage in the long run.
- Shigaraki vs Mahito: Although it takes some time and losing some powers to do it, by the end of the battle, Shigaraki reduces the nihilistic living embodiment of humanity's fear of itself to a panicking mess desperately running away and crushes the life out of him with all the merciless might of a real demon king before using Decay to permanently kill Mahito.
- Dungeon Soup: Most of the Barbarian's adversaries are literal monsters that torture and kill innocent people for their own gain, but they quickly become disturbed by the Barbarian and his methods.
- Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): In "🎃 Fazbear and Friends Halloween SCARE CONTEST!! 🎃" Baldi is the last contestant to participate, and the rest of the horror characters murmur what he is going to do, after that Baldi takes out his ruler and when he gives the first blow, the guests get scared, then with another blow and they get scared more until he starts hitting his ruler very hard and quickly to the point of levitating and letting out a scream so loud that it ends up scaring everyone, and at the same time he wins the contest.
- Helluva Boss: Crimson is shown to be a ruthless mob boss during his introduction in "Exes and Oohs", having a commanding presence and being able to boss around much larger demon sharks with little issue. However, when Millie crashes his attempt at forcing Moxxie to marry his ex Chaz, Crimson is left utterly terrified as Millie effortlessly slaughters all of his goons, letting Moxxie go without a fight when Millie wordlessly demands her husband back.
- Hunter: The Parenting: Kevin is a powerful 9th Generation Tremere with extreme proficiency in Dominate, and Guy Chapman is an inhumanly strong Ghoul that has murdered people to stave off his addiction in the past. Both of them are left utterly terrified after accidentally stumbling onto a Pentex "internal affair". Kevin even admits that he could maybe take them, except for one man, Ross, strongly implied to be a Black Spiral Dancer, who could easily tear him to shreds.
- Journey to the Quest: When Pepper and Elliot end up on trial for consuming food left out by the fae with their souls on the line, Elliot calls on his patron as a surprise witness to argue that all of the party's souls are already their property. We don't actually see who the patron is, but it ends up terrifying an entire courtroom full of fae.
- Played for Laughs in Red vs. Blue: During The Chorus Trilogy, O'Malley, the Big Bad of The Blood Gulch Chronicles and the literal Anthropomorphic Personification of Unstoppable Rage, is terrified of Doctor Emily Grey after interacting with her for barely ten seconds.
- RWBY:
- Cinder Fall is nothing short of a murderous, spiteful, manipulative sociopath, but the sight of Tyrian butchering a Beowulf out of anguish over disappointing Salem is enough to terrify her.
- The creatures of Grimm are consistently shown to be mindless killing machines, with only the oldest and most intelligent ones displaying any kind of self-preservation instinct. The arrival of the Hound in Volume 8 is enough to make three Sabyrs stop in mid-charge, turn around, and run; this freaks out the heroes, who have never seen Grimm flee like that.
- The Jabberwalker in Volume 9 marks its presence as a lethal force to Ever After, having the ability to perma-kill its inhabitants when they would normally resurrect upon dying, as well as being the Flawed Prototype to the Grimm as a whole. Neo is already a terrifying psychopath on her own, but her semblance evolving to Self-Duplication is enough to make the poor Jabberwalker beg for its life.
- SuperThings: The episode "Halloween" has the sudden appearance of Grafon, at this point thought to be a ghost haunting his thought-to-be-abandoned mansion, reacting to the villains using his mansion as their base of operations due to all the noise they're making. This sudden appearance terrifies them, including the plan's leader Pumpking, who has the ability of creating paralyzing fears.
Webcomics
- Amazing Super Powers in the Ghosts Of Christmas episode.
- Boyfriend of the Dead: A Zombie Apocalypse happens, turning most of Tokyo into an undead wasteland. The zombies view the humans as nothing but food — that is until they meet Alex. Alex is an ordinary girl who wants to go shopping now that there are no crowds. She kills over a hundred zombies without breaking a sweat, to the point that she befriends a couple of them because they're so little threat to her it doesn't occur to her to be scared. The zombies, on the other hand, see her as a horrifying monster and flee from her whenever they can. At least a few zombies regain their sanity out of sheer terror.
- Cursed Princess Club: When the Pastel Princesses and the Plaid Princes go to an amusement park haunted house full of Monster Clowns, one "vampire clown" jumps out to scare them, only for Lorena to reflexively kick him in the head. Then Gwendolyn goes to see if he's okay, and he's so terrified of her apparent Slasher Smile that he passes out.
Clown: Is this what we do to people??!!
- Dark Carnival: Downplayed but the demons are pretty on edge when things start going south because of the presense of a demon hunter. They also briefly act briefly afraid in an surprising moment when they start to realize they might be in trouble with whatever they answet too.
- Daughter of the Lilies: Whatever Thistle's face looks like, it's enough to send one of the cannibalistic night elves running away in panic. There's a reason she always wears a hood. It turns out the Cave Elf was just horrified that he had attacked and tried to eat a fellow Cave Elf — a female one at that (Cave Elves have a matriarchal society).
- In Eldritch Darling, the reason why CJ doesn't find any ghosts when she goes ghost-hunting with Ina is because the latter scared them all away, with the promise to devour their souls if they lay a finger on CJ.
- Erma is a very cute Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl with a rather innocent view of the world, a somewhat macabre sense of humor, and an impressive suite of supernatural powers. Put it all together and you get a pretty creepy kid who would make a plausible horror-movie villain in her own right, although in reality she's a Nice Girl who would never intentionally do anything really nasty. Many of the one-off comics, and even one or two of the shorter arcs, derive their humor from either her terrifying others (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not), or others doing it to her.
- Several genuine horror-movie villains have gotten this treatment from Erma, including Pennywise, Freddy, and the monster under her bed.
- On the other hand, her younger cousin Emily routinely does it to her, namely because Emily's lack of fear and high energy level leave Erma overwhelmed. However, Erma does indeed love and watch out for her cousin.
- When Erma visits a mall Santa Claus for the first time, the man gets irate with Erma being quiet when it was her turn to sit on his lap and ends up unnerving and scaring her, and so she uses her powers in self-defense mode. The incident leaves her with a fear of Santa. One subsequent Christmas comic shows her waking up to the sound of jingling bells from above, and she grabs a knife to protect herself. During another Christmas, she falls asleep on the couch with her parents and has a nightmare of them revealing themselves to be a monstrous version of Santa and an elf, who then tie her up, cover her in gingerbread dough and shove her in the oven to make a "little gingerbread girl."
- The "Dentist" arc gets a lot of dark humor out of Erma's fear of dentists, and also the dentist's fear of dealing with her.
- When her parents Sam and Emiko began shouting at the TV during an American football game, Erma goes into a fetal position in her corner, freaked out by how angry her parents got.
- Despite loving jump scares, she gets spooked during her surprise party.
- In "Making Faces", as she and Felicia playfully make scary faces at each other, Felicia makes a face that is so scary that it causes Erma to back herself up against the wall.
- A more dramatic example occurs in the "Family Reunion" arc. Erma's grandfather Osamu is shown as an immensely powerful and malignant daitengu-type Yōkai, who terrifies all other yokai in the area of his estate. However, just before Erma's mother Emiko leaves with her family to return home, she tells him something that causes him to panic, dropping his cane and falling into his throne from the shock. It's unknown what she said; when asked about it, all she says is it was "something he won't forget."
- Girl Genius has got the lot:
- The Heterodynes typically struck fear into other monsters. The Heterodyne Boys, who became the first heroes in the family, also earned the fear and ire of the monsters living peacefully in their city-state.
- The Other, the genocidal entity that wiped out major parts of Europe and created Mad Science monstrosities of every stripe (that themselves terrified Mad Scientists back in the day), is afraid of the mere mention of the name Barry Heterodyne.
- Similarly, the Other was scared (momentarily) out of Agatha's body by Von Pinn.
- The Dreen. Nothing in Europa has ever defeated them in combat, and they casually brush giants aside with sheer brute strength. When the audience finally discovers their motives, it only makes them look even more unhinged and willing to kill gods for fun; they're Munchkins, and they treat Earth itself as a PVE zone in an MMO.
- The Jägergenerals, massive Lightning Bruisers, are absolutely terrified of the Dreen; extra-dimensional beings employed by the Baron. They're also, to a lesser extent, scared of the Baron himself.
- Apparently, at some point in the past, Old Heterodynes meddled with time itself, but while doing this they discovered something that terrified even them, the worst Spark overlords that the whole continent trembled before. They turned their back on all the power they could possibly gain because of this. Turns out, that thing was also the Dreen. The novels are clearer on this: everybody is scared witless of the Dreen: the Other, Wasps, Jägers, the Pirates...
- The Dreen's quarry terrifies Castle Heterodyne. It assumed only tiny Eldritch Abomination's could pierce the veil and invade reality. The thing ripping a hole through a Negative Space Wedgie next to Mechanicsburg is at least eight times larger than the castle.
- On that note, we have the fight between Gil and General Vole conclude with Vole baffled by how it seems Gil wants to die at his hands.
Gil: No, no! I want you to try! After all, I have to show that I'm strong enough to rule the Empire! We'll make it a game: "Who's the scariest monster?!"
Vole: Urg... mebbe hyu could just keel me instead?
Gil: Oh, no! Just think how impressive it will be when word gets out - that I keep a pet Jäger around to attack me - just to keep me sharp! - Agatha takes a moment to paralyze Bangladesh Dupree and let her know in no uncertain terms that if she ever hurts her friends again, she will end her. Bang's expression says the rest.
- The Polar Ice Lords, when they finally get some proper exposition, are described to be not inhuman, but more akin to actual demons capable of warping reality to a higher degree than even Queen Albia. And one of them addresses Agatha as a horror that should not be underestimated (whether he's talking about her specifically or just the Heterodynes is not made clear).
- Goblins: Inverted — Big Ears The Paladin is so "stupidly, ridiculously Lawful Good" that a literal angel is shocked and impressed.
- Gunnerkrigg Court:
- Mort's duties involve getting people frightened. But this girl is really scary. And this one is just that sneaky.
- And then there's Zimmy, who even freaks out Reynardine, a body-snatching demon, enough that he won't voluntarily touch anything that belongs to her.
- Zimmy is herself freaked out by Kat. This is what Kat looks like to her.
- Mort's duties involve getting people frightened. But this girl is really scary
- Malory from Head Trip is plain Ax-Crazy whenever any deserving target is in sight. However, The Twilight Saga scares her reliably.
- Homestuck:
- The Lovecraftian Horrorterrors terrify the trolls, a culture of violent psychopathic Proud Warrior Race Guys, to the point of sleeplessness. In turn, the Horrorterrors turn out to be terrified of something that's killing them, and their horrifying communications are pleas for help.
- Caliborn is a thoroughly nasty and unrepentantly evil kid, but when he sees that Dirk has the puppet Lil' Cal in his possession, he, in a moment of uncharacteristic sincerity, urges Dirk to get rid of the puppet immediately, as he can sense that it will bring great disaster. Dirk ignores him. Caliborn's attitude changes when he later learns that he is the reason Lil' Cal is dangerous.
- I'm the Grim Reaper:
- Scarlet's demon form is powerful enough to scare Brook badly, far more than he would like to admit. It's implied he would much rather ignore her than risk her going out of control again.
- Judah, despite being a mere human, is able to horrify Scarlet with what few memories she has of him as Ante. Later, after being sliced into pieces and melted down into liquid except for his hand by him, even Brook is terrified of him.
- Kill Six Billion Demons:
- The multiverse is split into 7 parts, each ruled by one of the seven Demiurges, including a decadent witch queen, a titanic dragon banker, an eldritch abomination made of worms, a kung-fu god-king, a master of dreams, and an all-knowing corpse entombed in glass. All of them powerful enough to rule one-seventh of the multiverse, all of them deathly afraid of the last Demiurge, a nigh-invulnerable warlord zealot dead set on destroying all existence.
- Also Zoss. Incubus is understandably scared when Zoss shows up in the same dream as he's visiting. Zoss is the one who used to rule all the multiverse before vanishing without a trace, allowing the demiurges split it between themselves.
- Played for laughs with Gog Agog, the aforementioned eldritch abomination made of worms and the second most powerful demiurge, being absolutely horrified by Allison's missing eye.
- The Last Days of FOXHOUND: Psycho Mantis, despite the amusing snark and the coffee obsession, is a terrifyingly powerful psychic engine of mass murder whenever he cuts loose. The Sorrow's "test", confronting him with the souls of everyone he's killed, reduces him to a quivering mess for a while, although he comes to terms with it relatively quickly.
- Narbonic: Mell, the Cute But Psycho intern who got bodily thrown out of both Heaven and Hell, admits that even she is afraid of the things lurking under Helen B. Narbon's mask of comparative sanity.
Mell: Not even I wanna meet Real Helen in a dark alley.
- Oglaf: In one strip, some warriors boast about how they'll defeat the Grendel expy with handicaps ranging from fighting unarmed to self-mutilation and suicide. When the monster arrives, he's visibly disturbed to find the mead hall full of dismembered corpses and can only blurt out, "What the fuck happened here?"
- Our Little Adventure: The succubus demon Yo-Lee is initially thrilled to be unleashed on the world, but when she senses that a much worse demon lord has escaped its prison in Hell and broken into the material realm, she tables her plans for minor corruption and mayhem and takes the first opportunity to get banished.
- In Ow, my sanity, "Nancy" is a Humanoid Abomination, who discovered fear at the hands of the art building's manager.
- Polandball: ISIS makes the mistake of provoking Germany into turning into Reichtangle. Cue the latter looming over a terrified ISIS.
- The Sanity Circus: When Safeguarde spirits are summoned, even the Scarecrows become afraid.
- In Schlock Mercenary, after Schlock grows himself a body made of dark matter, he promptly starts eating the Pa'anuri surrounding him. When their consciousnesses end up in the infosphere of his ship as a result, they start discussing exactly how horrifying Schlock has become.
Pa'anuri: This new enemy has all the fast-burning ferocity of baryonic life, and it has all our own power over the shift and shape of space. It is not a monster. "Monster" is not enough of a word.
Schlock: The word you want is "mundivore".
(cue Schlock's avatar dwarfing the Pa'anuri)
Schlock: It means world-eater. Or maybe universe-eater. I won't know which until I'm done eating. - Slightly Damned: When the thunderbolt wyvern that had previously been menacing the main characters sees Rhea looking at it hungrily, it feels all too much like prey, and decides to leave in a hurry.
- In Stand Still, Stay Silent, the main threat in the Death World Forbidden Zone that the main characters are exploring are Plague Zombie monsters that mutated from humans (trolls) and animals (beasts). Later in the story, they start running into ghosts that are a danger to all living beings. Chapter 10 showed that animals sharing space with ghosts tend to avoid the rooms in which they dwell. Chapter 12 shows that trolls that roam in an Abandoned Hospital with a ghost-room avoid the place as well.
- User Friendly has strips about Cthulhu being scared/bothered/worried/amazed about mundane things such as the RIAA's tactics, finance and accounting, etc.
- In Weak Hero, Giju is established as Cheongang's resident psycho with a creepy obsession towards Wolf. Then, when they finally face off, Wolf reveals that he's such an intense Blood Knight that his idea of "fun" is to beat each other to death, which creeps Giju out and puts him on the back foot.
Web Original
- This trope is a common theme in Chuck Norris Facts.
Chuck Norris attacks sharks when he smells them bleed.
Chuck Norris died 20 years ago; Death just hasn't built up the courage to tell him yet.
When The Bogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris. - The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: When Lord Nachtos materialises in the Cupid Homeworld in The Copper-Colored Cupids go Caroling, his recurring fellow Eldritch Abomination Lord Thymon locks himself in the nearest building without so much as a by-your-leave.
- A 4chan greentext story involving a weightlifter and a haunted house involves the narrator's friend, known only as Lifting Buddy, being set upon by ghosts after disturbing a cursed skull. In response, he loudly and viscerally antagonizes the ghosts by, among other things, destroying ouija boards, killing snakes, flinging weights through walls, and walking aroud the house violently taking swings at shapes in the darkness with holy-water doused fists. After some time of this, the ghosts are the ones who absolutely refuse to deal with this madman, as they come to realize that anything they do just makes him escalate his response. It gets to the point that they beg the spirit medium to tell Lifting Buddy what their Ghostly Goals are, just so he'll stop performing heinous acts of defiance.
- Neopets: The mere presence of Death is enough to terrify Creepy Twins Lanie and Lillie and their Night of the Living Mooks army, the Awakened. Death (who happens to be the little brother of Lanie and Lillie) serves as Neopia's Grim Reaper, although he is mostly focused on making the undead Deader than Dead, which is why they fear him.
- SCP Foundation:
- The Foundation's attempts to pit living SCPs against SCP-682 in a bid to destroy it usually leave 682 alive but injured and the other SCP utterly terrified of 682. SCP-173 is noteworthy because it is the only thing that 682 fears. SCP-682 also happens to be scared shitless of SCP-524, a fluffy little bunny rabbit that just so happens to be able to eat anything and everything... including 682.
- SCP-1730 is a Foundation site from an Alternate History where they had a merger with the GOC and became something utterly horrifying, becoming endlessly worse than the monsters they fought. In our reality Bobble the Clown is some kind of signal-born abomination that has been meddling with humanity from the start and now teaches children murder and violence through a brainwashing TV show the Foundation has to contain. In this alternate site, he was one of the "lucky ones" who was merely locked up and experimented with, and is still a mangled, crippled, and utterly traumatized survivor, who witnessed atrocities so huge burning an entire alternate dimension to the ground and salting the ashes was just the start.
- SCP-5000 is 1730 on steroids, an Alternate Timeline in which the Foundation actively started working to Kill All Humans as well as every anomaly that wouldn't get with the program (which was most of the ones that were still capable of reason). To make it more messed up, their ultimate goal was... destroying something living within humanity's collective subconscious. And it's implied that the Foundation failing to do this was the bad ending. One Tale has this entity apparently in control of the afterlife and forcing every soul to suffer literally unimaginable pain, forever, constantly increasing.
- The Foundation's attempts to pit living SCPs against SCP-682
Web Videos
- Ask That Guy with the Glasses:
- He has committed acts of Black Comedy. Even he is horrified by the stuff Bennett the Sage says.
- Similarly, another episode has That Guy describing something so horrific that SATAN HIMSELF is disturbed enough to censor him. This occurs twice in said episode.
- The Fear Mythos has Aqualung, who scares the other Fears, and the Deep, who terrifies EAT to the point of refusing to enter its home, the oceans.
- Boatmurdered: "Our legendary miner headed out to work on the elephant trap... and the elephants -ran away- from him."
- The Awakening arc of the Ben Drowned ARG reveals that there's a second entity beyond BEN in the cartridge, and as Jadusable gets closer to awakening it from its slumber, BEN starts pleading for him to stop playing before it's too late.
- The Creepypasta "It Has No Face" features a Humanoid Abomination that has mutilated and killed countless victims panicking as it encounters a man who (seemingly) has no face and (seemingly) doesn't fear it. Taken even further when the man scares it away with the noise and flashlight coming from his phone.
- The idea behind "Pyro's Night at Freddy's". By the second night, the robots are huddled in the security room checking the cameras for Pyro.
- Similarly to "Pyro's Night At Freddy's", "FNAF vs TF2'' features Pyro terrorizing Freddy and Mangle.
- Karolina Żebrowska: Miss Tatternickle scares away the ghost that's been following her through the cemetery, and is rather disappointed it wasn't a more impressive monster.
- Smithers O'Neil from SkyCorp Home Video's recurring "Wide World of Web" series is an Evil Nerd who does things like crafting fake pages accusing a teacher of sexual misconduct, Catfishing women who reject him, scamming the elderly, tanking his boss's company over a minor spelling mistake, and even starting a death cult. "How to Chat on AIM" begins like any other episode... until Lilah, the girl Smithers flirts with, turns out to be so deranged and obsessive that even he recoils from his monitor in horror. He ends up faking his own death just to get away from her.
Real Life
- The main reason for the existence of gargoyles on churches is that they are so terrifying, they frighten off demons and evil spirits.
- On a similar note, this trope is also the theory behind exorcism: which is why creepy masks and such are often part of the ritual.
- This is what spawned the tradition of dressing up for All Hallow's Eve (a.k.a. Halloween), as the costumes were meant to confuse or scare potential monsters away from the festivities.
- Sharks are known to migrate and stay out of waters where they have spotted orcas (which have been known to attack and kill sharks, including adult great whites) roaming in. In one case, after orcas killed a great white off the California coast, another radio-tracked great white that normally hung around the area took off to Hawai'i. However, Orca-preyed sharks are understood to have been quite young. As noted on the page for Orca: The Killer Whale, Orca have been known to avoid dense great white population.
- Honey badgers have been known to chase lions and leopards away from their kills.
- In cold climates, it's wolverines that hold off bears or whole packs of wolves to retain possession of a scavenged carcass.
- Golden eagles will take on wolverines, honey badgers, bears, and wolves.
- The Siberian tiger targets wild boars as one of its preferred prey items, has been documented to suppress wolf numbers to the point of near local extinction, and even habitually hunts black and brown bears when ungulate numbers are low.
- The giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) hunts in family groups (akin to wolves) and they have been known to kill caimans and anacondas, and also to chase away jaguars, to the point that the latter seldomly hunt the giant mustelids.
- Any time an animal frightens a human. Humans are top tier predators, and everywhere we go, we tend to drive out or kill every other apex predator. And yet humans are often frightened of any number of animals, including many, such as most varieties of spiders, that cannot hurt us at all. Zig-Zagged since not all humans are equally capable or willing to do damage and not everyone is scared of harmless things. Also certain animals and plants are genuinely dangerous for humans.
- Gustave is a giant, vicious man-eating Nile crocodile who is known to strike fear in even hippopotamuses, some of the most aggressive and powerful animals in Africa.
- Examples from prehistory:
- The lion-sized Smilodon fatalis, the fabled saber-toothed cats, was one of the most feared predators of ice age North America, but it was still small fries compared to the sympatric giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus), which could reach up to 2,000 lb and easily steal the kill of a sabretooth or even a group of them. Similarly, the extant brown bear (the second largest land predator alive today) didn’t migrate south of Alaska throughout much of the Pleistocene, which experts have attributed to competition with the much larger short-faced bear.
- Deinosuchus is a genus containing several species of giant crocodiles estimated to have reached up to 30-40 feet in length and the weight of an elephant, which lived in North America 82 to 73 million years ago and would have preyed on dinosaurs, including the various mid-sized tyrannosaurs alive at the time, like Daspletosaurus and Appalachiosaurus, with the latter’s holotype specimen even sporting tooth marks attributed to Deinosuchus.
- Britain was never invaded in World War II. Why is this? Well, one of the reasons could be because Adolf Hitler is reported to have once described Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, as "the most dangerous woman in Europe".
- Even some Nazis found the Rape of Nanjing horrifying. John Rabe — a German businessman and Nazi party member — was one of the key figures in setting up the Nanjing Safety Zone at the height of the massacre and tried to save as many civilians as possible from the Japanese soldiers. Rabe wrote to Hitler, expecting him to intervene if he knew, but the Gestapo intercepted the letter and arrested Rabe. They eventually released him but forbade him to mention the atrocities again, and his family was harassed and threatened repeatedly by them just to make sure.
- Many Third Reich officials in the Independent State of Croatia, and EVEN Adolf Hitler himself, were horrified at reports about brutality in Ustaše/Ustashas’ genocide waged on Serbs, Jews, and Romanis.
- The notorious Oskar Dirlewanger was nearly sentenced for war crimes, stripped of rank, and imprisoned after an investigation by an SS judge. This didn't stop Himmler from employing him at the head of a penal battalion, however.
- Britain's most violent prisoner, Michael Peterson, a.k.a. Charles Bronson, a.k.a. Charles Salvador, once sat in the cell next to serial killer Robert Maudsley. Peterson was a carnival strongman prior to his sentence and is still a mountain of a man even though he's pushing seventy. He requested to have his cell changed because Maudsley freaked him out.
- Many tactics for repelling dangerous animals rely on the human horrifying the animal, even though said animal could quickly get very aggressive and seemingly effortlessly turn the human into bloody frappé in few enough seconds. Bear Bangers are harmless but effective at scaring off bears, and scaring off a cougar involves opening one's jacket and/or standing on someone else's shoulders to look big enough to scare it out of attacking. Examples could fill this entire page.
- Yellowjackets are widely feared, and for good reason. But they're terrified of Asian giant hornets, to the point of abandoning their nests if just one is detected nearby. Considering how much damage the hornets can do to bee and wasp hives even when outnumbered by thousands to one, this reaction is entirely justified.
- An official title given to St. Joseph by the Catholic Church is "Terror of Demons".
- Hyena clans might harass a lion pride as long as the adult male is currently away on patrol. But the second the much larger male returns, the hyenas will scatter.