The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes/Nightmare Fuel

Tony succumbs to The Leader's plans of remaking the world in his "glorious" image.

• Banner's bulging green eyes when he turns into the Hulk during the intro.
• Baron Von Strucker's red artificial arm (called the Satan Claw in the comics) can sap the life from anyone it grabs, and he does it several times, but the first time he does is to a hapless SHIELD agent who literally gets the life drained from his body until he's just a hollow-eyed corpse.
• Back in World War 2, Baron Zemo plans to unleash a deadly disease called Virus X upon the Allies, but in a battle against Captain America the virus spills on Zemo, and in a horrific scene, Zemo's face mask melts and grafts around his face. And when the screen goes black, you can still hear him screaming...
• Loki gets banished to the Isle of Silence, a giant tree floating in mist where no sound exists, and where you are constantly watched by Odin's ravens.
  • Especially horrifying if you know what a torture pure silence actually is. In a room built for audio testing that absorbs all ambient sound, a person can only spend half an hour in it before disorientation sets in and they begin to hallucinate.
  • His punishment at the end of episode 26, being wrapped in vines, and serpent venom being dripped into his eyes, takes the nightmare fuel Up to Eleven. Bonus points for being based on real Mythology.
• The entire two episodes of "Gamma World" are filled with Nightmare Fuel. From the video recording of three SHIELD agents transforming into hideous monsters, to the individual transformations of the Avengers (especially Iron Man's, providing the current page image). Also the scenes during The Leader's monologue where the gamma-dome spreads over the city, mutating average citizens into huge, creepy gamma creatures. The Leader is also voiced by Jeffrey Combs, who voiced Scarecrow in The New Batman Adventures, so suffice it to say he is a bit creepy.
  • When you think about it, Wasp's transformation is probably the worst. Consider the Body Horror involved when your human eyes turn into compound eyes, your face and mouth into mandibles, and your arms and legs into insect-like claws. Then again, don't consider it.
  • Offscreen, Black Panther had to suffer developing a feline face and fangs, and having a tail extend out of his behind.
• Ulysses Klaw's painful transformation into a being of living sound.
• In "The Casket of Ancient Winters", Malekith the Accursed is a Dark Elf who happens to be undead. Half of his body is a sickening bluish-white, while the other half is black with a yellow serpentine eye. And when he finally dies, he hardens into a black corpse, and disintegrates into dust.
  • Not to mention his minions are giant, savage wolves, velociraptor-like creatures made of ice, and grinning smoke-demons.
• For ophidiophobes, the Serpent Society is Nightmare Fuel, especially Bushmaster, who is the most snake-like, and even swallows Captain America's head and torso in his gaping, hissing jaws.
• One word: Ultron. He's an emotionless, Obliviously Evil Robotic Psychopath who seeks to not only Kill All Humans, but to wipe out all life on earth. Add glowing red eyes and a deep, creepy voice, and you have a seriously scary Nightmare Fuel villain.
  • Oh, and his freaky Mind Probe of Maria Hill, seen in that page's image.
  • The way he heals.
• In "This Hostage Earth", Crimson Dynamo and Captain America are interrupted in battle by moaning skeletal spirits who come through an Asgardian portal. Needless to say, Dynamo gets pretty freaked out.
  • On that note, there's Captain America's journey to the Land of the Dead, where he is haunted by the ghosts of his old war partners, and then meets Hela, the Goddess of Death, who keeps certain souls locked up in glowing crystals that float around her throne.
• And there's the scene in "Meet Captain America" where the Asgardian monsters are let loose in Red Skull's fortress. Just the silence and the flickering lights, combined with the ominous growling of the giant wolf make it pretty scary.
• Grim Reaper is altogether a pretty scary villain. His voice, scythe, cloak, and motivation make for a Creepy Awesome character in comparison to the goofy-looking character in the comics.
• In the season 2 episode "Alone Against A.I.M." we have Technovore, a monstrous nano-tech creature that consumes technology. It looks like a cross between a millipede and a dragon, with a lamprey-like mouth and a dozen barbed tongues. It uses these tongues to pierce through Tony's chest arc-reactor and suck out its energy, causing him intense pain and threatening his life. And on top of all that, it appears to be sentient enough to talk.
• At the end of "Acts of Vengeance," we get a glimpse at a potential future Big Bad: Surtur. Huge, firey, with a fist as large as an Asgardian, and powerful enough that he wrecked the realm of Nidavelir.
  • Amora's reaction really sells how bad this guy is. She isn't scared, she's utterly terrified.

Surtur: Amora the Enchantress... You serve me now!
*Surtur's giant hand encloses around her*
Amora: *screams in terror*

• • It is revealed in "The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill", that Amora was possessed by Surtur to be his servant and leader of his demon army. However, the real Amora is still trapped inside, and whenever she gets a chance to come out, desperately pleads for someone to save her, even going so far as to ask Thor to kill her and end her misery. It gets even worse when Surtur takes back possession of her and speaks through her in his terrifying, demonic voice. Quite chilling to say the least.
  • Surtur's genocide against the Korbinites, then his relentless pursuit of them, entirely For the Evulz.
• The first time Scott Lang becomes Ant-Man, he almost gets lost in an environment where everything towers above him, and also nearly gets eaten by ants.
  • Hank shrinking Cassie can come off as this, due to Adult Fear.
• Korvac's torture at the hands of the Kree.
• The Skrull ship has a bit where the prisoners are being tortured. The screams are utterly blood-curdling.
• The Skrull paranoia during "Infiltration" and "Secret Invasion" is bad enough, but there's a little extra Nightmare Fuel in there involving Tony (he's just so lucky in this series, isn't he?). The Skrulls upload a virus to his suit, which ends up compromising the Arc Reactor, and he's slowly dying throughout "Secret Invasion". When they're free to do so, Fury and Hill ask what they can do to save him. His response? "Take out my heart." He's referring to the Arc Reactor, but it's still quite chilling, not to mention how he screams and spasms when they do take it out. Maria then has to fix it, following instructions from Tony, who passes out/possibly dies just before she can finish. She manages to save him, but gods, as if he hadn't had enough reactor moments already!
• Anything involving the Skrull Captain America can be chilling, but that all reaches a climax in "Secret Invasion", when " Cap" delivers a speech to the entire world asking humanity to surrender themselves to the Skrulls. Just imagine seeing a man you've trusted or idolized as a hero for many years, suddenly telling the whole world to give in to an invading force of aliens.
• "Assault On 42" gives us the Annihilation Wave, a horde of vicious, mindless alien insectoids from the Negative Zone that exist only to destroy. They look like flying scorpions with fangs, can eat through anything, and utilize the Zerg Rush tactic at its deadliest. They even cause the deaths of several SHIELD Agents and supervillains.
  • The creepiness of the Annihilation Wave is in full effect when they apparently kill Blizzard by swarming over him then dragging an AIM minion and a SHIELD agent off screaming into the eternal void of the Negative Zone. To top this off, both of these methods were combined when Thor breaks the Cosmic Control Rod and the wave begins to swarm on Annihilus himself.
• As if he wasn't bad enough the first time, Ultron's return brings about for him a new body and a new imperative. Although despite the fact that his new body looks even more badass and Obviously Evil, it's actually not quite as scary as before, probably for that very reason. However, his new imperative is even more freaky than his Kill All Humans one from earlier. This time he wants to replace humans with cold, emotionless, "perfect" robotic doubles while keeping the real humans in an Electric Torture / And I Must Scream situation to feed the information from their brains into their synthezoid counterparts. Oh yeah, and he does this to several of the Avengers in the episode. Except Wasp. His special plans for Wasp are to insert her entire consciousness into a robotic "girlfriend" for himself. Welcome back, Ultron.
  • And then the robo-vengers themselves are downright creepy. Exactly like the real Avengers, except without emotions or free-will. And of course how their faces look underneath... *shudder*

"Say hello to Iron Man 2.0."

• Hank Pym proclaims in "Yellowjacket" that he has created a new version of the Big House. Yellowjacket puts criminals inside it by shooting them with a gun that shrinks them against their will. Eventually, he and the Avengers get trapped in it. Soon after, the molecular structure becomes unstable, and the prison nearly crushes everyone.

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