Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons/Nightmare Fuel
- The top floors of the Fluttershy Medical Center.
- Blackjack gets a first-hand view of how the Enclave mark dashites. Their cutie marks are burnt away by chemicals strong enough to produce smoke, and the fresh wounds are then immediately branded. Worse, this happens to Morning Glory, arguably the most moral character in the story, who is completely loyal but being set up for political reasons.
- Enervation. It's completely undetectable, except through its effects, and even minor exposure is enough to degrade healing supplies over time. More serious exposure results in internal bleeding, and existing wounds worsen rapidly. At high concentrations, victims suffer from Mind Rape and melt.
- Enervation is practically alicorn kryptonite. They percieve it as a constant psychic screaming which breaks down their Hive Mind. Only Lacunae is resistant (but not immune) to its effects,[1] and even the Goddess is tormented by it. When Lacunae is briefly exposed to an Enervation source at close range, all of Unity is injured by it.
- Stable 90 was registered as complete and ready for habitation, despite having none of the essential fixtures or equipment installed. When the bombs fell, the residents were trapped inside, descending into barbarism and dying off completely in under a month.
- Chapter 22 is rife with nightmare fuel. The first thing Blackjack sees is her mother's decapitated head, and it only gets worse from there.
- Rampage being chained down and Eaten Alive. She's clearly traumatised, even though she 'dies' every other chapter.
Rampage: You want fear? Fear is being strapped to a table as a permanent lunch for a bunch of cannibals. Knowing they’re going to rip you apart and eat you over… and over… and over again. Fear is knowing you might spend years or centuries that way, your flesh fueling the nightmare and you helpless to stop it.
- All of final scene of Chapter 26, especially Glory's wing falling off, and her reaction to it.
She slowly picked it up and held it in her hooves. “It fell off…” she said with a whimper, like a foal whose favorite toy had broken. She started to shake, at first with tears… but then she threw back her head, laughing hysterically. “It fell off! It FELL the fuck off!” And with bloody tears she laughed and sobbed at the same time. “We’re going to die! We’re going to die! Please let us fucking die!”
- Chapter 30, where the taint building up in Blackjack's body causes a tumor to grow in her eye socket, forcing Glory to perform emergency surgery and get it out.
- Horizon Labs' cryo room, where a number of ponies have been melted and fused with the walls and equipment, screaming. On some level, they're conscious of what they used to be.
- Blackjack's various nightmares, particularly the one in Chapter 33. Blackjack wakes up, apparently whole and healthy, in a Bad Future where Hoofington has become a monstrous world power. Blackjack's friends have all met awful fates - Rampage has lost her mind to the Angel of Death, Scotch Tape is a breeding slave, Glory is a pitiful, mutated abomination, Lacunae and all of Unity have had their minds completely wiped out, and P-21 is behind it all.
- Chapter 33 begins with a disclaimer warning readers of a particularly brutal scene. Said scene involves Blackjack, who is blind and practically immobile, being mutilated[2] and gang-raped. The entire ordeal is narrated from BJ's sightless first-person perspective. There is no Rape Discretion Shot. Scotch Tape, who is hiding in the hold below, overhears everything.
- Priest's death at Sanguine's hooves. It brings to mind this (NSFW and graphic) picture of a Hiroshima survivor.
- Blackjack's encounter with pink cloud results in a fair degree of Facial Horror, including a self-inflicted Glasgow Grin after her mouth is fused shut. Illustrated here. (NSFW, bloody)
- The visual representation of Blackjack's traumatised, suicidal mind.
'Glory': It doesn't have to be dark. Your subconscious is... terrifying.