Horror on TVTropes.org

Table of Contents Elements of Horror

Willing Suspension of Disbelief...... 1 Rule of Scary...... 17

Primal Fear...... 3 Paranoia Fuel...... 18

Anyone Can Die...... 3 And I Must Scream...... 20

Monster Delay...... 5 Mechanisms of Horror

Nothing Is Scarier...... 5 Jump Scare...... 20

Ultimate Evil...... 6 Cat Scare...... 21

Dark Is Evil...... 7 Leave the Camera Running...... 22

Darkness Equals Death...... 8 Gory Discretion Shot...... 23

Daylight Horror...... 8 Cruel Twist Ending...... 24

Uncanny Valley...... 9 Genres of Horror

Quieter Than Silence...... 11 Horror...... 24

Awful Truth...... 12 Cosmic Horror Story...... 26

Through the Eyes of Madness...... 12 Gothic Horror...... 29

Mind Screw...... 13 Religious Horror...... 34

Cabin Fever...... 15 Survival Horror...... 35

Creepy Basement...... 15 Body Horror...... 36

Ocean Madness...... 16 Horror Tropes...... 37

Space Madness...... 16 Index of Gothic Horror Tropes...... 48

1 Willing Suspension of Disbelief An eagle­eyed viewer might be able to see the wires. A pedant might be able to see the wires. But I think if you're looking at the wires you're ignoring the story. If you go to a puppet show you can see the wires. But it's about the puppets, it's not about the string. If you go to a Punch and Judy show and you're only watching the wires, you're a freak. — Dean Learner, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet and author, called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith ..."

Any creative endeavor, certainly any written creative endeavor, is only successful to the extent that the audience offers this willing suspension as they read, listen, or watch. It's part of an unspoken contract: The writer provides the reader/viewer/player with a good story, and in return, they a) accept the reality of the story as presented and accepted that characters in the fictional universe act on their own accord.

An author's work, in other words, does not have to be realistic, only believable and internally consistent (see Magic A Is Magic A). When the author pushes the audience too far, the work fails. As far as science fiction is concerned, viewers are usually willing to go along with creative explanations unless the show tries to use real science, at which point it's fair game, though this is because Science Fiction is just that: Science FICTION. Attempting to use actual science to explain something you made up removes the story from its own fantasy universe and places it in the context of reality. That's why people don't criticize your wormhole travel system or how a shrinking potion doesn't violate the laws of matter conservation. Suspension of disbelief can be broken even in science fiction when a show breaks its own established laws or places said laws outside of fiction.

A common way of putting this is "You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable." For example, people will accept that the Grand Mage can teleport across the world, or that the spaceship has technology that makes it completely invisible without rendering its own sensors blind, but they won't accept that the ferocious carnivore just happened to have a heart attack and die right before it attacked the main character, or that the hacker guessed his enemy's password on the first try just by typing random letters, at least without some prior detail justifying it or one of the Rules listed below coming into play. What is in Real Life impossible just has to be made the norm in the setting and kept consistent.

Most action movies push this trope almost to the breaking point; for the sake of action, the heroes can do virtually anything, given enough Phlebotinum.

As always, the various Rules override nearly all other considerations. When the audience's disbelief, which was suspended during the show, gets reinstated some time afterward, what you get is Fridge Logic.

The MST3K Mantra is an exhortation to reinstate your Willing Suspension of Disbelief even if it's been broken, because "it's just a show".

2 Incidentally this is one of the more controversial elements of, believe it or not, Professional Wrestling, and is heavily tied to Kayfabe.

Primal Fear "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." — H.P. Lovecraft

A baby rabbit, even one that has never encountered a bird before, will still cower at the sight of a hawk's shadow.

Some fears are universal. The dark, heights, blood, enclosed spaces, snakes, spiders, psychopaths, loud sounds, pain, death, monsters, humiliation, loneliness; these fears have always been with us. They are the dangers our early ancestors faced, and their shadows still haunt our nightmares. Most people are a little nervous about such things ­ not many people could walk on a glass bridge over the Grand Canyon without any railings, and not feel a little anxious ­ and full­blown phobias are easily enough induced.

Naturally, writers of Horror fiction like to exploit these.

See also: Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?, Bears Are Bad News, Fangs Are Evil, Eye Scream, And I Must Scream, Enclosed Space (which isn't necessarily this trope), Dark Is Evilnote , and a fair number of Horror Tropes. And of course, Fetish Fuel, for those of you who are Nightmare Fetishists.

Anyone Can Die "Once you decide that you're going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, 'You can't kill him'. And I said, 'Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well'." — Nicholas Meyer, Director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Most of the time when you finally grasp who the main characters of the story are, you can expect that these characters will survive through the end of the story (or at least until the last episode). Well, This Is Not That Trope.

This is very common in Darker and Edgier works. When the writers want to impress you with their ruthlessness, they may trumpet that Tonight Someone Dies, then kill off a random second­stringer that nobody much cares about. They might even kill off a major character because his actor was leaving anyway, or because they needed a good cliffhanger to convince

3 people to watch the next season. That is also not this trope (although it's pretending to be).

Anyone Can Die is where no one is exempt from being killed, including pets, children, the elderly, even the main characters (maybe even the hero)! The Sacrificial Lamb is often used to establish the writer's willingness to kill off important characters early on. To really be the Anyone Can Die trope, the work must include multiple deaths of named characters, happening at different points in the story. Bonus points if the death is unnecessary and devoid of Heroic Sacrifice.

This trope is very helpful in keeping Genre Savvy fans from being Spoiled by the Format. In a kid's show, of course Alice and Bob are going to survive the raging rapids. In a work of this type however, the danger actually becomes dangerous.

War shows like Mobile Suit Gundam benefit from having a larger cast since there are so many people to kill off. The frequent deaths within a wide cast make the storyline unpredictable, forcing you to wonder who'll be left standing once the dust settles.

Still, even if all characters are allegedly up for the possibility of a dance with the reaper, the general laws of storytelling (and, more importantly, how actors are contracted) tells us that you can expect the chances of main­character death to increase as you approach the climax of an arc, the final episodes of a season, the final chapters of a book, or the final instalment of a series, even if the work averts Death Is Dramatic. A creator needs to be quite committed to the concept to kill off an important character in a completely plot­irrelevant way.

Note that the character needs to be Killed Off for Real or Character Death for the trope to have the desired effect; it does not work if the writers cheat and bring back the guy later (see Not Quite Dead, Disney Death, and Climactic Battle Resurrection). As such Super Hero Comic Books as a medium have gained a reputation of "Anyone Can Die... until someone wants to use the character in a later story."

A good way to check if this trope applies is to see if who survives is an important plot point, rather than only how they survive.

Contrast with Tonight Someone Dies, Sorting Algorithm of Mortality and Contractual Immortality. Compare Second Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics. Compare Characters Dropping Like Flies, which is just about lots of people dying, and can overlap with this trope.

See also Kill 'em All, when everyone will die. Opposite of Nobody Can Die and Plot Armor, where not even situations that should kill people manage to. See also Dwindling Party, where the deaths are evenly spaced rather than near the end. Easier to do in works with Loads and Loads of Characters.

This is Truth in Television because immortality does not exist. According to The Onion, world death rate has been holding steady at 100% every single year for the last five billion years.

Red Shirt is (usually) when the deaths are reserved for nameless extras. This trope tries to upgrade them to Mauve Shirt first.

4 Monster Delay "They're taking a very restrained approach to this, so much like Jaws did — Steven Spielberg didn't always show the beast, [yet] the essence is present and it's there and it's moving and you know and it's creepy and it's — so the tension will mount for sure." —Bryan Cranston on Gareth Edwards' approach to Godzilla (2014)

When the Big Bad is a monster — especially a large monster — it is imperative to avoid showing us the monster for as long as possible.

It is OK to show small portions of the monster (tails, claws, etc.) earlier; the filmmaker should be toward revealing such a monster as an exotic dancer is toward removing her clothing. But the full reveal of the monster should take a long time — at least several episodes on television; at least twenty or thirty minutes in film.

The larger and badder the monster, the longer it will take for them to become visible.

This law emerges from the cost of special effects and the desire to keep the audience in suspense until the "good stuff" appears. It has become a standard feature of monster movies.

Conforming to this law often involves extensive use of reaction shots, shadow shots, or shots of the monster that are obscured by smoke, waves, darkness, blood, etc.

Of course, actually showing the monster usually heralds the decline of its earlier invincibility.

Nothing Is Scarier If less is more, then nothing is everything.

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." — Alfred Hitchcock

A Horror trope where fear is not induced by some traumatic visual element or by a physical threat, but by the sole lack of event. This is a case of rampant creepiness, associated not with what is happening, but with the general atmosphere of a scene. When properly done, it can result in one of the scariest moments. It does so for one simple reason, the author refuses to show us what is causing this scariness but we desperately wish to know what, so our minds fill in the blanks.

It often has to do with where the events are happening, generally because said place is just inherently scary somehow, but sometimes merely because of the way it is filmed or described.

This trope comes in three flavors:

• The classic version, where the moment serves to build up suspense and tension, until something scary suddenly jumps at you from nowhere. It has been done a million times, and is often poorly executed, ending up with the killer/monster/whatever apparition

5 being less scary than the preceding sequence.note Many times, what the directors do is make the character look around with some small light source (flashlight, cellphone, camera flashes) for that mystery noise and then suddenly turn around right when the suspense music reaches that peak. Of course, they sigh when they see nothing, and then they turn around again. • The full version is when there is really nothing happening, but the result can be several orders of magnitude scarier than the classic version, because the audience is left to imagine what could have happened. • The rarely used third variation is where there's nothing there... nothing there... nothing there... and then you realize there is something there, and it's been there all along.

For both versions, scary music can be used to reinforce the effect, but it seems to work best when there's no music at all. The camera might slowly close in on the "nothing", either as a character musters the courage to open the door, enter the dark depths, or cowers abjectly at the impenetrable darkness.

This trope can be used in combination with many other tropes; Through the Eyes of Madness, Darkness Equals Death, Quieter Than Silence, Leave the Camera Running, Mind Screw, and Obscured Special Effects are just some examples. Since the space is very, very empty, it may also appear as a part of Space Madness, usually as the second variant. Anything will do as long as the result is scary. Paranoia Fuel is a near­must, though.

In Real Life this trope is why it's so scary to walk through even a familiar dark room by yourself, or through the woods or a secluded street at night. This is one horror trope everyone is familiar with.

Compare and contrast And I Must Scream, Cat Scare, Creepy Basement, Daylight Horror, Gory Discretion Shot, Jump Scare, Monster Delay, Ultimate Evil, and The Unreveal. One of the counterarguments against leaving nothing to the imagination, and sometimes an argument against Gorn as well.

Interestingly, this is probably what makes people afraid of whatever The New Rock & Roll is.

Not to be confused with Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here, Empty Room Psych, or It's Quiet... Too Quiet.

Ultimate Evil "You approach the door in the old, deserted house, and you hear something scratching at it. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten­foot­tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. 'A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible,' the audience thinks, 'but I can deal with a ten­foot­tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall.'" — Stephen King, Danse Macabre

6 A villain­specific type of He Who Must Not Be Seen, Ultimate Evil is evil so horrifying it cannot be shown on screen. Used when nothing the art department could come up with could possibly be horrifying enough. Or because you have no budget for effects, and need an easy out (see Shaky P.O.V. Cam).

In some cases the Ultimate Evil is eventually shown on screen, perhaps because the heroes are finally at the end of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and need something tangible to oppose. These cases usually end in disappointment, and prove the original decision not to show anything correct. If said disappointment is intentional on the authors' part, then the villain is just The Man Behind the Curtain.

Sister trope of Nothing Is Scarier, where an entire story's terror factor relies on the invisibility of...whatever it is. Compare Satan. And, for that matter, God, who often gets portrayed this way for entirely different reasons (we hope). Odds are, if multiple gods are present in the setting (or not, even), this character is the God of Evil. Do not confuse with the Bigger Bad, who is literally the most powerful evil force in a given setting. The Bigger Bad may well be Ultimate Evil in this sense as well, but it doesn't have to be, and less powerful evil things can get this treatment too. You Cannot Grasp the True Form is sometimes used in conjunction with this trope; even those who attempt to look at the Ultimate Evil are unable to do so.

Compare Eldritch Abominations, which are just as freakishly powerful and mind­shattering, but more often callously indifferent than actively malignant, though there is some overlap. Not to be confused with Complete Monster.

Dark Is Evil "From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment."

—Charles Manson

Darkness is associated with evil, ugliness, scary monsters, and super creeps. This is the reason for the naming of The Dark Side and why Evil Counterpart characters and certain Underground Monkeys often have 'dark' in front of their names. Like all Colour­Coded for Your Convenience/Good Colors, Evil Colors examples, this is common, but not universal, and will vary from culture to culture.

The logic behind the trope is as follows: most humans fear the dark, at least to some degree; our sight is the sense we depend on the most, and we cannot see well in darkness, therefore a lack of light makes us feel very vulnerable to danger.note Furthermore, the fact that it's so hard to see in darkness (well, for humans, anyways) has caused some of us to associate darkness with deception. Evil is associated with deception as well, so, from Star Wars to cowboy movies, a lot of bad guys wear black hats. If you want to be even more obvious about it, give the bad guy a name that has something to do with darkness.

7 If a character has darkness­based powers, see Casting a Shadow.

Stories where Dark Is Evil and Light Is Not Good are commonplace to show that the light can be just as foul as darkness.

Why Evil Is Not Well Lit, and why having the sun vanish is a bad sign. See also Light is Good, Bad Powers, Bad People, and Obviously Evil.

A Super Trope to Evil Wears Black. Black is the favorite color of the Card­Carrying Villain, as it is associated with the color of death in the western world. Vampires, witches and necromancers are also traditionally seen in black garb.

Dark Is Not Evil is the inversion and the good counterpart of this trope. Another one is The Sacred Darkness, where Dark may or may not be evil, but is just as important as Light.

Darkness Equals Death The entry is simply: "Lights out. God help me." — The Haunter of the Dark by H.P. Lovecraft

If someone enters a dark space in any horror media (though action films also use the trope), you know something's going to happen, and it's not likely to be good. Something's going to snatch someone, burst into the room, be lit dramatically by a sudden flash of lightning, and/or bull rush the heroes.

Happens especially in rooms where there are dangly things to hide the villain. Foreboding Architecture and evil being poorly lit tend to compound the problem. Bonus points if a storm causes the aforementioned lightning flashes. More bonus points if it's the attacker who set up the dark room in the first place.

In real life, associating darkness with impending doom is just one of the many evolutionary survival techniques that makes us fear of the dark, many predators that could take down humans are nocturnal hunters and humans have poor night vision in comparison.

Daylight Horror is Not a Subversion, but an inversion of this trope. Not to be confused with Dark Is Evil, although it can invoke this.

Daylight Horror Kennedy: Okay. Okay, this is what we're going to do, okay? We're going to go inside the cabin, we're going to lock ourselves in there, and we will leave first thing in the morning. Chet: What? No, he's not a fucking vampire, Kennedy. He can still kill us in the daytime. — Death Do Us Part (2014)

8 Evil Is Not Well Lit. We all know this. It's human nature to believe that Darkness Equals Death. Therefore, it's been a commonly held trope for centuries that scary things have to happen in the dark. This is why there are so many horror movies where it's Always Night, or why The Lost Woods never see daylight, or why whoever owns the Haunted House never pays the electricity bill. Conversely, well lit, sunny areas with 100% visibility must be safe. We know that no monsters will harm us once the sun comes up. Hey, the Things That Go Bump only do it at night after all. If spooky things always lurk in the darkness, then Light is Good.

Right?

Wrong.

The reasons for this may vary...

• Most often, the writers want to play on the false sense of security we feel about light and turn it on its head. • Sometimes, the budget does not allow for any night shots and the filmmakers don't want to use Hollywood Darkness. • The sunlight illuminates the ugliness and gore in shocking detail and clarity. • The sunlight adds a sense of realism often found in documentaries, where mankind's brutality doesn't wait for dusk, as often seen on the news. • It's the perfect environment for They Look Just Like Everyone Else. • Contrast. The jarring emotional roller coaster ride between the dark and the light. • The daylight is dampened by normal clouds, creating a depressing atmosphere. • It's sunlight, but the sunlight is dampened for another reason, and the reason is horrifying. • The sunlight is used to diffuse the horror in a non­horror story, especially stories aimed at children, often failing for the above­listed reasons.

Whatever the reason may be, we get scenes of frightening imagery in broad daylight or well­lit rooms. The Ax­Crazy serial killer suddenly shows up at your home when all of the lights are on. The Eldritch Abomination decides to rise on a sunny day. The Zombie Apocalypse around the corner doesn't care if it's nice out and you've decided to go sunbathing. The point is: you're screwed and you have nowhere to hide. Not only are the monsters after you, the most basic of tropes has failed.

Not to be confused with Light Is Not Good, although it can invoke this.

Uncanny Valley "These were robots in human form with distorted faces, and they gave my daughter nightmares. When I asked her why she was frightened of the Cybermen but not of the Daleks, she replied that the Cybermen looked like terrible human beings, whereas the Daleks were just Daleks." — Ann Lawrence, writer for The Morning Star on Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen

9 In 1970 Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed in The Uncanny Valley that the more human a robot acted or looked, the more endearing it would be to a human being. For example, most lovable Robot Buddies look humanoid, but keep quirky and artistically mechanical affectations. However, at some point, the likeness seems too strong and yet somehow, fundamentally different­ and it just comes across as a very strange human being. At this point, the acceptance drops suddenly, changing to a powerful negative reaction. The Uncanny Valley doesn't necessarily have to invoke fear though; for some people, the reaction is more similar to Narm or unintentional comedy. Either way, you don't feel the same about that character as you would a human, or even something less realistic.

If shown as a graph (like the one to the right), the acceptance on the Y axis and increasing X approaching human normal, there is a slow rise, then a sudden drop, then a sudden peak as "human normal" is reached. Masahiro Mori referred to this as the "uncanny valley". This video explains it extremely well.

Thus, things that look somewhat human, but are clearly not — such as C­3PO (in Star Wars) or a Golem — produce an accepting reaction, while things that are very nearly human, but just a little strange — such as a child's doll, a ventriloquist's dummy, or a clown — produce a negative response. For some people, the resonance is stronger with a moving object, which is why a corpse is creepy but a moving corpse is creepier still. In fact, some people that don't have a problem with things like zombies and consider them merely another monster may still be creeped out by things like unnatural movement.

This may also apply to sound as well. For example, a voice speaking words, but at a higher or lower pitch than is humanly possible, or a recording of a human voice, but played backwards. Or maybe a computer voice like Microsoft Sam. Though some people just find the effect comical and/or silly.

This idea has recently been applied to CG effects. While it's become very easy for programs to simulate textures and skin tones, convincing movement and facial expressions aren't always as simple. This can produce an effect where the character comes off as a zombie, if a production company is going for a purely realistic human look.

Many cartoons nowadays prefer a simultaneously stylized yet simplified character design, versus the realistic look amongst some older cartoons. In the latter, it's more obvious the budget just didn't allow characters to move much. Heavily rotoscoped characters also often seem less real than more stylized animated characters, especially when they're in the same production. See the Fleischer Studios version of Gulliver's Travels for an example.

This also happens in video games, as technology has developed over time to allow for more photorealistic graphics, but not necessarily realistic movements within the game world. A more stylized game or a 2D game can generally get away with odd animations or expressions, but the more realistic the graphics shoot for, the more noticeable it is when something isn't lining up with reality. This is normally a cost issue, as detailed animation cycles are extremely time­ consuming to craft and even more so when they must be applied to multiple NP Cs and still

10 look natural for every single person. For one notable example, the critically acclaimed L.A. Noire received special recognition for its high­quality facial motion capture, allowing for the gameplay to focus heavily on reading the expressions of witnesses and suspects for the purposes of interrogation. However, because the engine only provided this level of detail in faces while human bodies were unnaturally stiff and jerky, many critics also cited being unnerved by the obvious dissonance between the active and alive faces and the rod­still bodies.

The psychological reasons behind the Uncanny Valley reaction are unknown, but seem to be rooted in human evolution. Under one theory, a thing that appears human, but moves unnaturally or herky­jerkily, is interpreted by the viewer's brain as a terribly damaged human and is thus unfit for mating. Hence the natural instinctive response is revulsion (compare to the reaction of seeing a person with a missing limb or feature). Another theory holds that the response is a vestigial reaction to what is perceived by the brain to be a predator's disguise or lure.

Rather unfortunately, this trope can be applied to real life people and may be in part an explanation (though not an excuse) for things like racism when other groups of people inspire this reaction in certain people. People with social disabilities tend to be hurt hardest by this reaction, as people usually don't try to see past the "unnatural" behaviour of the individual and may have the same negative reaction that this trope describes.

See also Reality Is Unrealistic, where the poor impression comes less from being "creepy" as from breaking existing conventions which audiences had come to expect. In addition, there's Off Model, Bishonen Line, No Flow in CGI, and Ugly Cute. And while you're at it, see What Measure Is a Non­Cute?, as the scientific study of that trope gave birth to this one. An opposite is Eldritch Abomination, where the unsettling effect is caused by being way too unfamiliar rather than being way too human, yet still produces the same abominable effect (although the two can overlap as a Humanoid Abomination).

This trope can also be used purposely, to make something creepy when creepiness is called for. Some examples of particular ways to produce this effect are listed under Creepily Long Arms, Creepy Long Fingers, Malevolent Masked Men, and Uncanny Valley Makeup.

This should not be confused with the 5th anniversary of That Guy with the Glasses.

Quieter Than Silence "It's Quiet... Too Quiet..."

If a scene, response or view is shown in total silence, often the audience may simply think the sound is out on their TV or movie theater. Having a background noise that is normally drowned out by foreground noise— a quiet wind, faint crickets chirping, etc. —is a marker to say "nothing is happening" to the audience. The Manga Unsound Effect shiiiiiiinnote does the same thing. A visual of a tumbleweed blowing across the scene is used in Westerns, and nowadays

11 mainly in comedies, to convey the same effect. A low rumbling is often also used, to simulate that sort of feeling a person gets in their ears in a dark, quiet room.

If it's quieter than that, the hero's heartbeat may be amplified. This kind of silence almost always ends with a Scare Chord.

Compare Visible Silence, Nothing Is Scarier, Chirping Crickets, Loading Screen (so that Video Games make it clear they are still on while the level loads). The inverse is Music Video Syndrome or Left the Background Music On.

Awful Truth "What I'm about to tell you, you might not want to know. Even so, you absolutely must hear it. [...] Given who you are and how you've lived, what I have to say may tear at your hearts..." — Leder, MOTHER 3

A truth so awful it must be kept from the players/characters. That, or a mocking cry by the jaded Anti­Hero to illustrate his belief that the main hero is too naive to be trusted with the truth.

Compare You Are Not Ready and Forbidden Fruit. Contrast You Didn't Ask. If they're being obnoxious about it, it's Figure It Out Yourself. See also These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know for when you really shouldn't know. Can also be a case of You Do NOT Want To Know. Compare Heel Realization, which is an awful truth, but not one anyone else kept from you. Often invokes Schmuck Bait.

Through the Eyes of Madness Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today Oh how I wish he'd go away. — Hughes Mearns

Life is going good. Oh, okay — you might be a little stressed out or a little down in the dumps but it's nothing serious. Then things start going wrong. You see a face on the outside of a ten­ story window; an impostor seems to be taking your place at home; the same white­eyed man keeps watching you from a distance; a tramp gives you proof that your neighbor is a demon, but the proof disappears soon after (as does the tramp).

You try to gather proof, you try to convince your wife, but she doesn't believe you. None of them

12 believe you. They say you're crazy, but you're not crazy. Not at all. It's them making everyone think that. And they replaced your wife with one of them, so you had to kill it. You wouldn't kill your wife, would you? Would you? Of course not. It's all real. It has to be, because otherwise you'd be seeing Through the Eyes of Madness.

The creepy, foul­smelling uncle of the Cuckoo Nest, this trope makes a point of obscuring the objective truth of the tale in order to screw with the audience's minds. Sure, we see the grotesque tendril moving under the neighbor's skin just like the protagonist does, but who says the camera is telling the truth? Then again, there's never any conclusive proof that he's not a monster either. By their very nature, these stories end without any definite decision as to what was really going on.

Compare to Only Sane Man; in it the Only Sane Man, along with the audience, is sure that the strange thing is real and everyone else just turns a blind eye on it, while this leaves it ambiguous. Another key difference is that trope is often used for comedic effect while this trope is horrific if done properly.

Unlike the Cuckoo Nest, there isn't an "either/or" pair of realities that can be switched between, or a truthful reality waiting to be accessed — just a long, horrible descent into the darkness of the human mind.

Compare Unreliable Narrator, for instances in which this character is telling the story. Is often Paranoia Fuel at its purest, if done well. Contrast Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. If madness gives a person the ability to see real things that others can't, that's a variety of Power Born of Madness.

If it's clear that it's not all in the protagonist's mind and the danger is real, then the main character is Properly Paranoid. If the madness conceals the fact that the protagonist is a murderer, that's The Killer In Me.

Mind Screw "Everything you know is wrong. Black is white, up is down and short is long." "And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter." — "Weird Al" Yankovic

The Mind Screw is something that relies so heavily on symbolism or surrealism/absurdism, or failed so extremely in an attempt at regular old coherency, that the immediate response afterwards is "What the heck was that?!?!"

These works beg for fans to invent their own improbable theories about Epileptic Trees and such.

There are several criteria for a Mind Screw, and a Mind Screw will usually fit a few of them:

13 • The work looks weird due to symbolism or just general surrealism. • The symbolism is used heavily and never explained. • Things happen, but the work never explains how they are connected. • The Reveal is left out. • Things happen without a cause, even in context. Especially in context. • Several plot developments are obscured. • The work is non­chronological. • A few random scenes (such as vignettes or non­sequiturs) are added in, breaking up the narrative. • The story has No Ending. • The Reveal is vague, or contradicts the rest of the story. • There are several surprises, and the story only makes sense when you have them all.

While some fans can make arguments over what the symbolism means, and what everything represents, many mind screws will pad themselves with meaningless sequences to make the audience work even harder. Arguments over which sequences are significant are common. Don't expect the writer to be very helpful. And if the show has supplemental materials, don't expect them to be much help either. (If, by some miracle, they are helpful, you've got yourself a Mind Screwdriver.) The more decipherable symbolism tends to focus on the perceptions people have of one another and puberty and sex. Japanese and South Korean often produce this sort of thing and particularly in the horror and psychological drama genres because Asian audiences thrive on this type of oblique, enigmatic ambiguity. David Lynch is hugely popular in Japan for this reason.

Note that the screwing is not the kind that involves romantic candlelight, long walks on the beach and the throes of passion. Unless you're into that.

Not to be confused with Mind Rape, no matter how the audience feels, nor with the Mind Game Ship, nor Mental Affair, which is a literal mind screw. Distinct from an In­Joke, which is designed to make sense to a portion of the audience. When trying to get the creators to explain just what the heck is going on, expect some form of Shrug of God or worse.

Examples listed are works that are either intended to provoke this reaction or have provoked this reaction in a large spectrum of the audience, but one troper's Mind Screw is another troper's Fridge Brilliance.

Sub Tropes include Gainax Ending, Dada Ad, Alien Geometries. The Ending Changes Everything is an ending that does not rely on overt symbolism for its confusing nature, but has much the same effect on viewers. When this is funny, it's Surreal Humor. When frightening, it's Surreal Horror.

Compare with Putney Swope Panic, True Art Is Incomprehensible, Deranged Animation and What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?.

Contrast with Mind Screwdriver, where the Mind Screw elements get rationalized/explained.

14 Cabin Fever I got cabin fever It's burning in my brain I got cabin fever It's driving me insane! —Muppet Treasure Island

Cabin fever is a term for a psychological reaction closely related to claustrophobia, that takes place when a person or group is confined to a small isolated space for an extended period of time (this might be a ship, a cabin in a storm, a space rocket etc.) Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, and distrust towards others and an urgent need to go outside, even if it is physically impossible. In fiction, these symptoms are usually even more exaggerated, to the point of the character becoming a raving lunatic who is a danger to both himself and others.

This is a land based trope, if it happens at sea that is Ocean Madness. IN SPACE!! it may be presented as Space Madness, even if it's actually due to confinement.

Ironically, plays no part at all in Cabin Fever, the Eli Roth film, in which people fall physically ill in the most popular of horror movie vacation places: a spacious cottage in the woods.

Creepy Basement Hey daddy­o, I don't wanna go, Down to the basement; There's somethin' down there. — The Ramones, "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement"

If you don't go down in the cellar, how can you call it a classic horror film? — Joss Whedon

Let's face it. The darkness is scary. Even if you aren't terrified of it by itself, it can sometimes give you a horrible feeling that you're Being Watched, because you just can't see if there's something there. Children everywhere feel nervous about the closet or the space under the bed, but while those little bits of darkness are unnerving, there is a place yet creepier. A room where the darkness is the color of pitch, with no little lights anywhere, where even standing still and waiting for your eyes to adjust doesn't help. That room, home of the really, really really scary dark, is the basement.

Perhaps it's the fact that most basements are built into the ground, or how the dank, sparsely furnished ones seem horribly reminiscent of some kind of tomb or prison. And those spiders that like to hang out in the cracks and corners spinning their sticky transparent webs probably don't help much.

15 It should be noted that for a lot of people, this trope is Truth in Television.

See also Torture Cellar. If there's a monster locked down there, see Madwoman in the Attic or Room Full of Zombies.

Ocean Madness "Don't drink the ocean, K'nuckles! Seawater makes you crazy! Look at me! I've been drinking it for hours!!! NYEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" —Flapjack, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Related to Space Madness.

Being away at sea for a long time seems to take its toll on your mind. Maybe it's the unchanging landscape, maybe it's being away from your loved ones. Either way, in period pieces and even sometimes in modern ones, you can expect any characters away on sea for extended periods of time to go crazy.

Historically a Truth in Television. In addition, there's a lot of validity to the "don't drink seawater" idea, since salt water has the nasty effect of making you even more dehydrated, which can lead to delirium. And, y'know, death.

Compare Cabin Fever.

Note that this is no excuse for ocean rudeness.

Space Madness "Our deepest fear is going space crazy through loneliness. The only thing that helps me keep my slender grip on reality is the friendship I have with my collection of singing potatoes." — Holly, Red Dwarf

Something about the deep recesses of outer space seems to inspire insanity in a lot of fictional characters. Maybe it's the loneliness, the feeling of insignificance it inspires, or things that mankind was never meant to encounter. Or, perhaps, Hyperspace Is a Scary Place. Or the mind that can't handle the emptiness itself long enough starts to make things up to fill it. Regardless, a good chunk of fiction seems to link outer space with insanity. Can occur with Ludicrous Speed.

The trope takes its name from an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, about, well, Ren's space madness (and only Ren's, because his moronic sidekick Stimpy seems to be immune). It is of course an example of SpaceX.

16 Compare Ocean Madness, since Space Is an Ocean and all that. Cabin Fever is a related trope, due to its similarities to the close confines of a spacecraft.

Rule of Scary Like the Rule of Cool and the Rule of Funny, the Rule Of Scary says that if it's creepy enough, it doesn't matter how illogical it is. Why the maniac has a hockey mask, where he got it, and how it survived a shotgun blast to the face are irrelevant. All that matters is that it creeps you out.

Most effective formulas for scary: • Mixing the paranormal or abnormal with the mundane and familiar. Even if the Willing Suspension of Disbelief remains intact, blatantly scary things are easy to shrug off when they are happening in a completely unrelatable situation. But when the same elements are placed side­by­side with familiar settings and elements, suddenly The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You. Even with flawless special effects a Starfish Alien in an Eldritch Location can be mere Narm, but invoking the Uncanny Valley with a Humanoid Abomination in an Abandoned Hospital can be downright terrifying. • Ending on a note or element no sane person would. You'll find humans are psychopathic. What is funny, notched up, is scary (and still kinda funny.) Exempli gratia: "How about a magic trick? I'm gonna make this pencil disappear..." • Vividly showing (or describing) something scary which directly affects the human body. Body Horror is a part of this, but this is not always Body Horror. eg, The Matrix using humans as "living batteries", or some portrayals of viruses. Art Major Biology is a major factor in this. • Not showing anything, and leaving some things unexplained. This works on the (fairly reliable) premise that no expensive special effect or clever writing can ever top what the viewer imagines to fill in the blanks. Used well, this method creates suspense, enhances the ultimate reveal, and can magnify a simple Jump Scare into a Brown Pants Scenario. Often combined with Hell Is That Noise and Obscured Special Effects. Offscreen Teleportation, Unreveal Angles, and implausibly agile monsters using Air­Vent Passageways are all classic methods of keeping the scary unseen as long as possible. The plot aspect often involves His Name Is..., Conveniently Interrupted Documents, Apocalyptic Logs, and/or Plot­Based Photograph Obfuscation. • Just making something mindblowingly scary and showing it in all its well­lit horrific glory­ the hardest to pull off, as it risks highlighting even minor Special Effects Failures and Conspicuous CGI unless done superbly, and often has to overcome the lack of menacing atmosphere. On the rare occasions it is done well, however, it can be absolute Nightmare Fuel, all the more jarring because both viewers and characters tend to associate well lit areas with safely­ which is not always the case. Numerous particularly

17 well­done instances of this form can be seen in The Walking Dead, with walkers as likely to attack in open fields in broad daylight as in dark basements, making for prime Paranoia Fuel.

If you cannot tell from the listings below, this is overwhelmingly a Film trope. Whether this is because producers don't care about silly things like logic, or they just don't have enough time to explain every little idiosyncrasy is a debate that will rage on for as long as the medium exists.

See also Hand Wave, Nightmare Fuel.

Compare Fridge Logic. Offscreen Teleportation is a Sub­Trope of this, as is Body Horror.

Contrast Narm, Nightmare Retardant, Rule of Cute.

Paranoia Fuel ALWAYS WATCHING NO EYES — One of the eight notes, Slender

When things that should be harmless, or on the viewer's side, turn nasty, stripping away all sense of safety. THEY CAN SEE YOU. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!

How can a viewer sleep easy in their bed, when they've seen how toys can come alive when all is dark and wreak unspeakable vengeance? What trust can they have that anyone will protect them, when they've just seen some cheerful kid's program where a kid just like them was bloodily slaughtered by his own possessed mother as she sang a sweet lullaby?

This is perhaps the main reason why the Monster Clown, and especially Bad Santa, are Tropes unto themselves. He sees you when you're sleeping...

To clarify, paranoia, by definition, requires a level of suspicion and distrust. A monster chasing after you in broad daylight is probably not Paranoia Fuel, but a shape shifting murderer targeting you who may be hiding among your friends or family or the clothes in your closet most likely is. A good rule of thumb is if a show or commercial makes you double check the people or objects around you (or triple check, or quadruple check, or...) then it fits here.

One of the most psychologically devastating forms of Nightmare Fuel, because of its mental persistence and perception of inescapable omnipresence.

Other paranoia­inducing concepts include:

• Invasion of privacy (from Big Brother Is Watching to literal Telepathy): One of the most pervasive forms of Paranoia Fuel, since we basically know they can use our secrets against us (Black Mail, Room 101, etc). • Hypochondria Fuel: playing on fear of diseases, parasites, medical Body Horror and the

18 fragility of human biology in general. Do you know how easy it is to infect you on the microscopic level without you yourself noticing? Or how easy it is for one genetic disorder that can make you go And I Must Scream to suddenly go horribly wrong inside you? • Slipping a Mickey/Tampering with Food and Drink: Do you know how easy it is to poison you? Goes hand in hand with Hypochondria Fuel above. • Attack of the Killer Whatever/Everything Trying to Kill You/May Contain Evil: betrayal by everyday items. • Malevolent Toys: a subtrope of the above, specifically for toys. • Chest Monster: That chest could contain (or even be) a malevolent creature ready to kill you. • Artifact of Death: That beautiful ring you just found? Has a part of a radioactive source as its stone. That big metal thing your shovel hit while digging up your backyard? Is a World War II­era land mine or other explosive device. • Gaslighting is when someone tries to deliberately provoke a feeling of this upon you by altering your everyday environment without your knowledge, often with the intent of sending you crazy. • Fate Worse than Death or And I Must Scream: You can suffer one of them anytime, anywhere. • Good Luck Sleeping: things that attack specifically while you're sleeping. • They Could Be Anyone: Anybody could be out to get you, even your friends and/or family • Invisible Jerkass: They're everywhere. • Sinister Conspiracy: there is a... well, sinister conspiracy at work in the world, and they have it in for you. Sometimes goes hand­in­hand with "They Could Be Anyone" above: Anyone, even someone you trust, could conceivably be part of this conspiracy. • Mind Manipulation: Especially if they control your loved ones, or worse, controlled you, made you do humiliating things and then subjected you to Laser­Guided Amnesia. • Nothing Is Scarier: Sure that sound could have just been the neighbor's cat, but then again... • Through the Eyes of Madness: The very nature of the story is that you can't be entirely sure of what the truth is... • Justified Paranoia: Then again, once you've had absolute proof that something's out to get you, you have every valid reason to seek security.

Fear of the dark is related, but falls under Primal Fears.

Not directly related to the game Paranoia. Or, at least, that's what they want you to think.

19 And I Must Scream "Some hundreds of years may have passed. I don't know. AM has been having fun for some time, accelerating and retarding my time sense. He made certain I would suffer eternally and could not do myself in. He left my mind intact. I can dream, I can wonder, I can lament. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. I have no mouth. And I must scream." — Ted, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

A character suffers from an extremely horrifying Fate Worse than Death. Suicide is not an option; even death never comes to free him from it. He is immobilized or otherwise contained, unable to communicate with anyone, and unlikely to be removed from this situation — not even by death — anytime in the foreseeable future. As the name of the Trope suggests, he can't even scream in anguish, even though he would if he could.

This is often a variation on Taken for Granite in which the victim remains conscious, and the worst­case scenario for tropes such as Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere, Baleful Polymorph, Phantom Zone Picture, and Who Wants to Live Forever?.

Some other torture — eternal pain, seeing your worst fears forever, et cetera — may be layered on top of it, but simply being stuck like that forever can be more than enough.

Usually, when this arises, it is eternal unless he's freed by outside forces, but a "mere" years­ long or centuries­long fate is possible. For instance, a robot with a 100­year battery life, buried underground. In fact, this is a very common sci­fi trope involving artificial intelligences who are potentially immortal due to being made of software.

Sometimes appears as a Backstory, if a Sealed Person In A Can was aware while sealed away. Can overlap with Go Mad from the Isolation if the character's separated from other people rather than among them but unable to interact.

Generally used two ways, either for horror, or as a way to defeat immortal villains.

Jump Scare "Survival Horror" is a fancy way of saying "Monsters will come through windows." —Gabe, Penny Arcade, "Dino Crisis Sucks "

Building up suspense without boring the audience is not easy. Whatever is a director to do? Jump scares to the rescue! Everyone knows what a jump scare is: it's the horror technique of having something happen unexpectedly and suddenly (usually something popping up out of nowhere). It's frequently accompanied by an equally sudden loud noise to go with it, and often happens after a period of tension­building to ramp up the nerves of both the character(s) and

20 audience and make the scare that much more effective for both.

The classic example uses a loud brass horn, or a woman's scream. Jump Scares follow the law of diminishing returns. They're effective when accompanied by a slow build up of suspense, but too many will turn them into more of a nuisance than a genuine scare. A common Video Game version is when the player is climbing a ladder, receiving a Jump Scare at the top.

Sometimes overlaps with Mirror Scare, Screamer Trailer, Spring Loaded Corpse, Peek­A­Boo Corpse, Take a Moment to Catch Your Death, Nightmare Face, Scare Chord, Surprise Creepy, and Last Note Nightmare.

Cat Scare and Bat Scare are subtropes in which the scare itself is false but the jump effect is retained.

When used on its own in a Web Original, it can be known as a screamer or a prank. You know, the videos that encourage you to turn up the stereo and/or examine the picture closely. Related to Shock Site, where the startlement and horror arises from unexpectedly viewing a disturbing image.

See also Chandler's Law.

Cat Scare "Where did it come from? There's nothing here but ceiling! I love how these animals just fall out of nowhere, right into your hands. What do they do, just hang up there by their claws and wait for people to pass by?" — Mike, There's Nothing Out There

A Cat Scare is a strong buildup of high tension, followed by a fright from something harmless (say, a startled cat) to release that tension with.

For example, a heroine may be tiptoeing down a dark hallway to escape the serial killer who cut the power in her house when a door in the hallway starts to slowly creak open ... she pauses, a look of genuine fear in her face as the door slowly edges open and out leaps ... a cat! Phew, not what we were expecting. It was only a cat....

Note that although the Cat Scare is harmless by itself, it is very often used to effectively subvert a Jump Scare. In this scenario, the Cat Scare is introduced to soften up the audience for a real scare to follow shortly — so in the above example, although the heroine (and the audience) is relieved that it was "just a cat", the camera may subsequently cut back to her and reveal how the serial killer is approaching from behind while she's breathing that sigh of relief. Similarly, another variant is that some Fridge Logic associated with the cat's presence clues the character in to the real horror to come. ("Hang on, if all the doors were shut how'd that cat get in...?")

21 As Roger Ebert points out in his book of Hollywood Cliches, the cat often enters shot hissing and raving, airborne at chest height, as if it has been thrown into shot by a technician. (Hence another common name for this phenomenon: "the spring­loaded cat;" in particular because the feline in question often appears to be deployed as soon as the door / chest / other suitable object is opened).

Moving toward Discredited Trope territory, but still shows up done straight from time to time.

Can overlap with That Poor Cat.

Not to be confused with Convenient Decoy Cat, where the cat diverts the attention of the bad guys from a hiding hero.

While sometimes the "cat" is logically hidden, sometimes it's Behind the Black ­ a place where the person should see it but is off­camera.

Although the use of an actual cat for a Cat Scare is common enough to have named the trope, the general technique of building up tension and then startling the audience with something that turns out to be harmless is also known as a "Lewton Bus". This name comes from producer Val Lewton, who popularized the technique with a scene in his 1942 movie Cat People: the heroine is being stalked by a hostile were­panther, but the cat­like hissing noise that startles the heroine and audience turns out to have come from a bus's air brakes.

The mass equivalent is Bat Scare, in which a whole flock of startled creatures provides the scare. Also see Hope Spot (a false sense of tidy resolution before heading into an ugly one instead), Hey, Wait! (a false sense of discovery of subterfuge) and Your Princess Is in Another Castle (a false sense of resolution quite early in a story). When you want a fake scare without launching a feline, you deploy the Scare Chord. Contrast Imminent Danger Clue, where instead of mistaking something harmless for something dangerous, the character temporarily dismisses or fails to notice a sign of danger because it seems completely ordinary.

Leave the Camera Running Sometimes a shot goes on for a very, very long time. Though this is usually a bad thing when done to stretch the film and/or its budget, it can also be done deliberately for artistic reasons (or because Nothing Is Scarier). For example, a director might illustrate the lonely and mundane life of a solo astronaut by showing him going about his daily routine, never speaking a word because there's nobody to talk to.

See also, Scenery Porn, Padding and The Oner. Compare Overly Long Gag. Might lead to Get On With It Already.

22 Gory Discretion Shot There's a saying in interrogation: "Violence perceived is violence achieved." — Michael Westen, Burn Notice

Blood or brains are seen splattering against a wall and the rest is left to the imagination.

Most often used with women and children, whereas it seems to be okay for guys to undergo whatever onscreen suffering Hollywood can think of. Often found in the form of a Reaction Shot as the reacting characters's expression (or lack thereof) can serve as a commentary on the action, the character, or the world they inhabit. Sometimes combined with Blood Spattered Innocents, as the gore splatters on or near them.

A Japanese variation of this trope involves seeing the silhouettes of the participants from behind a translucent washi screen, typically a shouji sliding door, on which the blood gets spattered. The form has since been widely adopted by the west and is often used to give a sense of art. A similar variation is to have the splatter hit the other side of a pane of glass or a window. Another variation shows blood seeping out under a door, through an opening or across a sill or a threshold to imply that violence has occurred on the other side.

A Gory Discretion Shot can serve to keep the rating PG­13 to reach a wider audience. It may also be done for budgetary reasons: red dyed corn syrup splashed over a window: cheap. Showing someone's head explode: expensivenote . Note that it could also be done to keep the truth hidden from the viewer. Showing the murder in question straight out, so the viewers can see the culprit, doesn't make a good murder mystery in most shows or movies after all.

Combine it with Bloodless Carnage, and you get the Sound­Only Death — the audience hears the gunshot and the body hitting the deck, but what they see is (for instance) the victim's hat falling to the ground with a hole through it. Or the killer walks through a door and we hear gunshots and screams after it closes behind him. Also crosses paths frequently with Scream Discretion Shot.

A related trope is the camera cutting away when things get nasty. Say if someone is getting whipped, we'll only see their face contorting in pain. Alternately, a cut similar to a Screamer Trailer may be used, showing a split second worth of the carnage. In the same vein, the aftermath of a murder may be demonstrated minimally with a Dead Hand Shot, hopefully one still attached to the body.

Contrast Gorn. Compare and contrast Battle Discretion Shot and Nothing Is Scarier; though this may be less "scary" than not showing anything at all in a less overtly violent work, in Gornographic works this can be used for horror—with all this overt violence running around, what is so horrible you don't get to see it...? See also Empathy Doll Shot and Pink Mist. May precede a Mortal Wound Reveal, especially if it's unclear who exactly got injured—note that this is a Subversion of sorts, when it does happen.

23 Cruel Twist Ending "It's not ironic, it's just mean!" — Bender, Futurama

A Twist Ending that serves no purpose other than to be excessively cruel.

The Cruel Twist Ending is basically the Evil Counterpart of the Karmic Twist Ending: in the latter, the twist is a form of divine justice, a bad thing happening to stop a bad person from getting away with it (or a good thing happening to someone who deserves it). In the former, it's just Finagle's Law: the universe is a mean place and wants to hurt you. Often, a Cruel Twist Ending is what happens when a writer attempts a Karmic Twist Ending, but fails to carry it off.

Most common in genre anthologies with a darker tone than The Twilight Zone: Tales of the Unexpected, Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, The Outer Limits (1995) (so often, in fact, that "Outer Limits Twist" was the previous trope name), One Step Beyond, etc.

Lighter­weight versions come up very often in shows where Failure Is the Only Option, especially when the show has run for a long time, and the writers need to contrive more and more extravagant reasons why the protagonists can't win. It can also be used as a shock subversion of a stereotypical happy ending. If it's overused, it becomes a Mandatory Twist Ending. If the ending makes you wonder what the point of the story was, it can come across as a Shoot the Shaggy Dog. The Diabolus ex Machina also often gets involved. And Then John Was a Zombie is a subtrope.

As this is an Ending Trope, beware of spoilers.

Horror The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. — The world's shortest horror story

Horror is a Genre of fiction that exploits the Primal Fears of viewers with things ranging from the Uncanny Valley, Body Horror, and Dramatic Irony AKA Suspense to cause the viewer anxiety, fear, and ultimately thrills. It uses various Horror Tropes to cause these effects; however, partly due to the rise in complexity of Special Effects, overuse, and viewer desensitization, several of these are now cliché.

This is a very broad genre, it can go from tasteful and timeless tales of psychological suspense (a trademark of people like Alfred Hitchcock) to gross out horror (which tends to become campy). It often employs the supernatural, but "normal" people are more than sufficient to scare audiences when used properly.

Subgenres of horror include: • Cosmic Horror: Paints a picture of human insignificance dwarfed by a cold, uncaring

24 universe which will never even notice how casually it destroys us. • Gothic Horror: Is the oldest subgenre of horror. • Psychological Horror: Uses in­depth explorations of human mental anguish to horrify. • Religious Horror: Uses the unknowns and symbolism of organized religion, including tales of the apocalypse, Satan, The Antichrist, and cults, to scare viewers, and desecrates what is considered comforting and holy in order to shock them. • Sci Fi Horror: The purpose of this genre is to use horror to show how scientific knowledge can be used for evil ends, how cutting edge research can go horribly wrong, how crippling a lack of knowledge can be, or if you want to be campy how people get the bejeezus scared out of them in the future. • Splatter Horror: Horror that uses the fragility of the human body to scare. Currently The Scrappy of the horror genre, due to its association with Gorn, Torture Porn, and carbon­copy Slasher Movies in recent decades. • Survival Horror: Plays on fears of nature, re­casting its human protagonists as prey and victim of creatures or forces more numerous and powerful than they are. The central focus is on stripping away the protections of the modern, "civilized" world, leaving the protagonists at the mercy of some natural or pseudo­natural force like disease, the undead, barbarian hordes, inbred hillbillies, aliens, wild animals, etc.

Horror and Speculative Fiction also overlap very well. The latter provides the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and the former the creepy crawlie to terrorize the hapless astronauts. Mystery fiction meshes nicely as well, with cerebral brain teasers and ontological mysteries to captivate and terrify the audience.

Works of horror will sometimes include An Aesop or morality play, especially if it includes a Karmic Twist Ending, or is a Slasher Movie. In these cases, a few characters will usually survive, especially if they catch on quickly. Other times, it will go for a Mind Screw and throw calamity after tragedy onto the hero with a Downer Ending or Cruel Twist Ending.

Suspense: Suspense, though not technically horror, tends to get lumped with horror beacuse they both want the same thing: to scare the viewer. However; both go about it different ways. Suspense relies on themes, tight plot, and subtlety over brute force. It uses camerawork with lots of shadows, and tends to either evoke claustrophobia, or isolating vastness. Lots of silence punctuated with creaking doors, or ambient sounds hinting at approaching danger. If there's a monster, it will appear in brief glimpses and silhouettes, and generally try to leave more to the imagination.

Splatter horror: Splatter horror goes to the other extreme. Excess rather than restraint. Shock treatment instead of slow, ambient build­up. Visceral rather than cerebral. This is not to say it's not effective, which it can be, but that it can very easily get out of hand and leave so little to the

25 imagination that the viewer quite quickly goes from afraid, to surprised, to the concession stand for more popcorn. This subgenera has produced its own share of respected masterpieces, however when in the hands of a skilled writer or director. The films Psycho, Se7en, and the original Saw, for instance, mix Splatter and Psychological Horror to great effect, and the drama of the live action version of The Walking Dead is only enhanced by the tension of knowing that Anyone Can Die a gruesome, visceral death at any moment.

As mentioned earlier, horror movies do not age too well. Generally, those films with the least reliance on special effects will seem less dated. Those with excessive visuals of monsters, gore, and other creepy things tend to drift into Narm and camp after a decade or two, once people become desensitized to them. Monster and supernatural horror movies in general are under more pressure to survive, but quite a few have become cult classics.

Posters for horror movies will usually be red and/or black, with lots of blood and pain. Other times, gray and mysterious. See also the Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror.

Cosmic Horror Story "Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos­at­large." — H.P. Lovecraft

Imagine a universe where even the tiniest spot of hope for the future is blindness in itself, the insane Straw Nihilist yelling about The End of the World as We Know It in the asylum is actually the only one with a clue, and too much curiosity about the true nature of the world is a precursor to a Fate Worse than Death. A universe where humanity is preyed upon as a mere plaything for all kinds of inconceivable horrors, and all our ideals are naught but cruel illusions; a universe which was once ruled by such eldritch abominations from the depths of space long ago. Nor are they dead; they merely wait, and soon they shall wake. They shall return to rule this world, and all our grandest achievements shall have been in vain. For all our blind hubris we are but mice in the wainscoting, making merry while the cat's away—but even today, the world is more dangerous than we may know.

Take one step away from the comforts of home, and you will find terror and madness on every nook and corner — dark cults, hideous monstrosities, truths so terrible that none may comprehend them and remain sane. Demons gibber in the tunnels beneath your feet. Parasites and worms slither unseen in whatever food or drink you dare put into your mouth. Ghosts hover unseen and unheard around you, discerning and mocking your every thought and secret. The vile essence of an alien disease lurks in the recesses of your own family tree, a genetic time bomb just waiting to go off...

Such was the vision of H.P. Lovecraft, pioneer of the Cosmic Horror Story. This type of fiction doesn't just scare you with big, ugly monsters—though it can certainly have them—it depresses

26 you with the fatalistic implication of being insignificantly powerless before such vast, unknowable and fundamentally alien entities. On the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, it sometimes lies near the cynical Despair Event Horizon.

If you aren't sure if a work is a Cosmic Horror Story or not, ask yourself these questions:

• Is the antagonist evil or uncaring on a cosmic scale? We're talking a Big Bad who is capable of destroying humanity, planet Earth, the universe, or all three and doing so with very little or no preparation and/or intent, and with about as much effort as it takes to swat a mosquito that's landed on your arm. • Is the attitude of the antagonist towards humanity disregard, simple pragmatism, or incidental hatred? (A godlike antagonist that actively hates humanity and its works is more in line with Rage Against the Heavens or God Is Evil.) Does the antagonist have a worldview and motivations that doesn't really seem to take humanity into account? Are the motivations of the antagonist difficult to explain using human terms? • Are the antagonist or its minions so alien in appearance or mentality that simply being near them or seeing them is sufficient to drive a human to madness? • Are the antagonist or its minions indescribable ­­ literally? Lines like "I cannot find the words to describe the vile thing I saw..." are a hallmark of Cosmic Horror Stories. • Is the tone of the work deeply pessimistic about the possibility of the antagonist being defeated completely? If it isn't, the work is more likely to be Lovecraft Lite.

Answering "No" to more than two of these means that the work is probably not a Cosmic Horror Story, although it may share tropes with the genre.

Common tropes in Cosmic Horror Stories include: • Above Good and Evil • Alien Geometries • Apocalyptic Log • Body Horror • Beneath the Earth • Blue and Orange Morality • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu • Brown Note • Closed Circle • The Dark Times • Diabolus ex Machina • Diabolus Ex Nihilo • Dug Too Deep • Eldritch Abomination • Eldritch Location • Go Mad from the Revelation • God Is Evil

27 • Half­Human Hybrid • Humans Are Morons • Insignificant Little Blue Planet • Leaking Can of Evil • Lovecraft Country/Campbell Country • Lovecraft Lite • Mad God • Mind Rape • Mythopoeia: Most Eldritch Abominations do not derive from folklore. That said, there are quite a few of them that created folklore accidentally. • Outside­Context Villain • Planetary Parasite • Psychological Horror • Puny Earthlings • Puppeteer Parasite • Sealed Evil in a Can • These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know • Through the Eyes of Madness • Time Abyss • Tome of Eldritch Lore • Town with a Dark Secret • Ultimate Evil • The Unpronounceable • You Cannot Grasp the True Form

The genre is sometimes called "Cosmic Horror", Lovecraftian Fiction, or Weird Fiction. Very likely to use Paranoia Fuel and invoke an atmosphere similar to Room 101; both tropes play with the fear of that unknown thing that happens to traumatize all those who encounter it. A Despair Event Horizon or a Downer Ending can be used to add to the depressing atmosphere. Compare/contrast with Gothic Horror (on which prose the first Cosmic Horror Stories, like those from Lovecraft himself, borrowed), Dark Fantasy, Crapsack World, Mind Screw and Through the Eyes of Madness.

Note that while the Cthulhu Mythos Shared Universe origi nated in the Cosmic Horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, a Cosmic Horror Story need not refer to the Mythos or borrow from its imagery. Lovecraft Lite goes a step further than that and does not expect us to take Lovecraft's vision seriously in the first place.

28 Gothic Horror Gothic Horror is one of the oldest of the horror genres. Darker, edgier and on the Romanticism end of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment, it tends to play on both the thrill and the fear of the unknown, and places a great importance on atmosphere. It's usually heavily symbolic, sometimes even dreamlike. In addition to being important to the horror genre, the first scifi, fantasy, romance, mystery, and adventure authors drew inspiration from Gothic horror, so it's sometimes considered the parent of all modern genre fiction.

Gothic fiction is usually used as a synonym or is the name given to Gothic horror stories that are saturated with the above mentioned scifi, fantasy, romance, mystery, or adventure elements.

The name "Gothic" comes from a kind of architecture from The Middle Ages (christened as such by those who considered it barbaric in comparison to classical architecture, the name coming from the barbarian tribe of the Goths). There were a lot of Gothic ruins lying around Britain, and people in the 18th and 19th centuries developed an interest in them because (a) ruins are always kind of mysterious and melancholy and creepy and (b) they evoked the time period they were built in, which was thought of as a barbaric time where people believed in (and did) all kinds of weird stuff. For this reason, most early Gothic horror novels were set in that era. They were usually also set in Catholic countries, because the Brits who wrote them considered Catholicism sinister (yet also kinda cool).

The renewed interest in Gothic stuff also led to the Gothic Revival movement in architecture, but for the purposes of this article we're not so interested in that.

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, written in 1764, is considered the first Gothic horror novel. Walpole was a big fan of William Shakespeare and proudly declared that he borrowed most of the tropes from his idol's plays, particularly Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. Ann Radcliffe helped popularize the genre, and authors such as Matthew Lewis, Ludwig Flammenberg, Eliza Parsons, Eleanor Sleath, and Francis Lathom finished out the eighteenth century Gothic horror writers. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw Gothic horror being parodied by authors like Jane Austen, but there were still straight examples provided by authors such as Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. By the time the Victorian era rolled around Gothic horror was beginning to run out of steam, but there were still quite a few people writing it — in fact, most of the Gothic horror authors and works you've heard of probably come from this era, such as Edgar Allan Poe and the Brontë sisters. There were a few more notable Gothic authors in the early 20th century, but by the 1950s or so the genre had given way to modern Horror.

Universal and Hammer Films are responsible for successfully adapting this genre onto the big screen. For a modern take on the genre see Gaslamp Fantasy and Supernatural Fiction.

For a list of tropes used in the Gothic horror genre see Index of Gothic Horror Tropes.

29 Authors who wrote partially or entirely in the Gothic fiction genre include:

Eighteenth Century • Horace Walpole (1717­1797). His novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) makes him the Trope Maker. Also gave us Haunted Castle. • Eliza Parsons (1739­1811). Better known for her novel The Castle Of Wolfenbach (1793). • William Beckford (1760­1844). Author of Vathek (1786). • Ann Radcliffe (1764­ 1823). Author of, among others, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797). Notably replaced real supernatural events with the Scooby­Doo Hoax. • Regina Maria Roche (1764­1845). Her novel The Children Of The Abbey (1796) was a best­seller of its time. But she is best remembered for the moodier Clermont (1798). • Carl Friedrich Kahlert (1765­1813), alias Ludwig Flammenberg. He is better known for the novel The Necromancer (1794), also known as The Tale of the Black Forest. The work was written in German and translated into English. The translator Peter Teuthold considerably revised the text and even added a chapter of his own. The Teuthold version is still the best known form of the work. • Carl Grosse (1768­1847) alias Marquis de Grosse. Better known for Horrid Mysteries (1796), the English translation of his novel Der Genius (The Guiding Spirit, 1791­1795). • Eleanor Sleath (1770­1847). Married name of Eleanor Carter. Better known for her novel ''The Orphan of the Rhine'' (1798). • Charles Brockden Brown (1771­1810): The first important American Gothic writer, best known for Wieland (1798). • Francis Lathom (1774­1832). His better known work in the genre was The Midnight Bell (1798). He is also known for The Mysterious Freebooter (1806), an early work of Historical Fiction Literature. • Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775­1818). His novel The Monk (1796) gave us the Sinister Minister.

Pre­Victorian Nineteenth Century • Jane Austen (1775­1817) — wrote Northanger Abbey (1817), the most famous Parody of the genre. The novel was written between 1798 and 1803, but remained unpublished for several years. • E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776­1822). The most important German author of Gothic fiction. His novel The Devils Elixirs (1815) is a classic of the genre. His best known work, however, is the short story The Nutcracker (1816). • Charles Robert Maturin (1782­1824). Author of Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a notable use of the Nested Story style to tell a complex tale. • Washington Irving (1783­1859): Author of numerous classic tales of terror. Some, like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), have rational explanations a la Radcliffe. Others, like "The Devil And Tom Walker" (1824), are purely supernatural.

30 • Eaton Stannard Barrett (1786­1820). Wrote The Heroine (1813), a notable parody of the genre. Particularly of the Changeling Fantasy plots which had been used by several gothic novels. In these novels, characters of seemingly modest backgrounds often found themselves secret progeny of noble and/or affluent families. Barrett's "heroine", Cherry Wilkinson, is a farmer's daughter and an avid reader of gothic novels. She convinces herself that she is heiress Cherubina de Willoughby and embarks on a series of quixotic misadventures. • Lord Byron (1788­1824). His Byronic Hero was a major contribution to Gothic fiction. The type was introduced in the narrative poem Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (1812­1818). His poem The Giaour (1813) is one of the earliest depictions of vampires in fiction. The satiric poem Don Juan (1818­1824) is not part of the genre. • John William Polidori (1795­1821). He wrote the first vampire novel, The Vampyre (1819). • Mary Shelley (1797­1851). Her novel Frankenstein (1818) gave us Frankenstein's Monster. She is also considered the first Science Fiction writer.

Victorian • Edward Bulwer­Lytton (1803­1873) of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night fame. He had an actual interest in the occult and the paranormal. He incorporated elements of his study in various tales, most notably Zanoni (1842). His most enduring work is probably The Coming Race (1871), combining elements of occultism, gothic horror, and science fiction. • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804­1864):Intertwined Gothic Horror with the history of New England in such stories and novels as "Young Goodman Brown" (1835), The House Of The Seven Gables (1851), etc. • Edgar Allan Poe (1809­1849). One of the most important writers of Gothic fiction; wrote the first Great Detective Mystery. He revisited classic gothic themes in the short stories The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1839), and The Pit And The Pendulum (1842), among many other classics of the genre. His best known Gothic poem is probably The Raven (1845). • Charles Dickens (1812­1870). He gave us Victorian London or at least the Hollywood version of it. He tended to use old gothic tropes in new ways. Such as secret heirs to prominent families ("Oliver Twist", 1837­1839), and wicked uncles plotting or performing murder (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870). All in an urban environment and graphically depicting the life of the low classes. • Sheridan Le Fanu (1814­1873). Better known as the author of Carmilla (1872). Gave us the Occult Detective and Lesbian Vampires. • George W.M. Reynolds (1814­1879). He wrote the serial novels The Mysteries Of London (c. 1844­1848), and The Mysteries Of The Court Of London (1848­1856). He was a pioneer of the "urban mysteries" style of gothic horror. Tales changing the story setting from the haunted castles of the past to the great metropolis of the Industrial Revolution. He luridly depicted the poverty, crime, and violence of London life.

31 • Charlotte Brontë (1816­1855). Gave us Mad Woman In The Attic in Jane Eyre (1847). • Emily Brontë (1818­1848). Author of Wuthering Heights (1847). • Wilkie Collins (1824­1889). Author of The Woman in White (1859­1860). • Mary E Braddon (1835­1915). Writer of sensation novels, which took on Gothic tropes like secret marriages and madwomen. Author of Lady Audley's Secret (1862), one of the first mystery novels. • Louisa May Alcott (1832­1888). While best known for Little Women (1868­1869), She Also Did reasonably successful "sensational" Gothic romances such as A Modern Mephistopheles (1877) under the pen name of A.M. Barnard, and one called A Long Fatal Love Chase that everyone in her own lifetime found too scandalous to publish. The latter was written in 1866 and first published in 1995. • George Du Maurier (1834­1896). Author of the novel Trilby (1894), which was the Trope Namer and possibly the Trope Maker for The Svengali. • Ambrose Bierce (1842­1913?). Another precursor to the Cosmic Horror Story. His short story An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (1890) is a classic case of Dying Dream. The lesser known An Inhabitant Of Carcosa (1886) is an influential use of the Eldritch Location. The mysterious disappearance of this author has also inspired younger storytellers. • Henry James (1843­1916). Author of The Turn of the Screw (1898). • Bram Stoker (1847­1912). Gave us Dracula (1897) and Überwald. • Robert Louis Stevenson (1850­1894). Gave us the Jekyll & Hyde trope through Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1886). • Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852­1930): Author of regional Gothic tales like "A Symphony In Lavender" (1883), "The Twelfth Guest" (1893), "Luella Miller" (1902), and "The Shadows On The Wall" (1903, adapted as an episode of Night Gallery). • Oscar Wilde (1854­1900). Author of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). • Arthur Conan Doyle (1859­1930). Creator of Sherlock Holmes. His novel The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1901­1902) uses classic gothic horror elements. • Arthur Machen (1863­1947). Author of The Great God Pan (1894). • Robert W. Chambers (1865­1933). Paved the way for the emergence of the Cosmic Horror Story with The King in Yellow (1895).

Post Victorian • Montague Rhodes James (1862­1936). Credited with updating the ghost story for the 20th century. His works often used Sealed Evil in a Can. His short stories were collected in volumes such as "Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary" (1904), and its sequel "More Ghost Stories" (1911). • Edith Warton (1862­1937): Disciple of Henry James' . Wrote classic ghost stories, collected in volumes like Tales Of Men And Ghosts (1910). • Algernon Blackwood (1869­1951). Influential writer of ghost stories. His better known works are The Willows (1907) and "The Wendigo" (1910). Both are influential works in

32 the Cosmic Horror Story genre. • William Hope Hodgson (1877­1918). Author of The House on the Borderland (1908), The Night Land (1912), and Carnacki The Ghost­Finder (1913). • Hugh Walpole (1884­1941). Author in several genres. His better known gothic horror tale is "Portrait Of A Man With Red Hair" (1925). • Marjorie Bowen (1885­1952). Prolific author of gothic novels, horror tales, and historical novels. Several of her stories were collected posthumously in the collection "Kecksies And Other Twilight Tales" (1976). • Dennis Wheatley (1890 ­ 1977), author of The Devil Rides Out

• Guy Endore (1900­1970):Author of the classic werewolf novel, The Werewolf Of Paris (1933). • William Sloane (1906­1974): Author of two classic horror novels, To Walk The Night (1937) and The Edge Of Running Water (1939, filmed as The Devil Commands in 1941 with Boris Karloff). • Daphne du Maurier (1908­1989). Granddaughter of the above­mentioned George du Maurier; wrote Rebecca (1938), Jamaica Inn (1936) and the original short story on which The Birds was based.

Authors influenced by Gothic Fiction: • Agatha Christie (1890­1976). • H.P. Lovecraft (1890­1937). • William Faulkner (1897­1962). • Shirley Jackson (1916­1965). • Robert Bloch (1917­1994). • Flannery O Connor (1925­1964). • Toni Morrison (1931­). • Margaret Atwood (1939­). • Anne Rice (1941­). • Stephen King (1947­). • Barbara Gowdy (1950­). • Amy Tan (1952­). • Neil Gaiman (1960­). • J. K. Rowling (1965­). • Billy Martin (1967­). Psychological Horror

Psychological Horror is an element of fiction, not tied to a particular genre (it manifests itself in many stories which are not identified as "horror stories"), which aims at creating horrific or unsettling effects through in­depth use of psychology. This may involve replacing physical threats with psychological ones (e.g. madness), thorough exploration of the mind of the involved protagonists (including the bad guys/Monster of the Week), replacing overt displays of horror by more subtle, creepy details, and so on. Often overlaps with Surreal Horror.

33 Often works hand in hand with Nothing Is Scarier, Mind Screw, and Through the Eyes of Madness. Due to the nature of this form of horror, it is usually Nightmare Fuel.

This type of horror is particularly common in Japanese horror, or "J­Horror" as it is often known as.

Religious Horror 1. A subgenre of Horror that relies on presenting the motifs of a real­life religion as fact within the story's universe. Since this is mainly a Western subgenre, that religion is normally Christianity.

Satan is the Big Bad in a typical Religious Horror story, although he's rarely shown. He is mediated through a human vessel, such as a Creepy Child or a degenerate rock musician. Sometimes Satan is not much or even at all present in the story, but is instead a distant force of evil responsible for the actual Big Bad in the story. The protagonists are usually innocent people trying to live ordinary lives, not sensing anything wrong until their daughter or son starts speaking in someone else's voice, using foul languages she or he never studied, spewing Finnish pea soup, and/or chanting Satanic praises. Members of the clergy (most likely the Catholic variety; in this case it is justified by the fact that the Catholic church, of all the few that employ exorcism, is the most noted, although it does so very rarely) intervene eventually, with varying degrees of success. If there are human villains, they're evil cultists who facilitate Satan's activity on Earth (or, rarely, the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts, if the author is less favorable toward organized religion in general). A variation is a woman giving birth to Satan's child. This type of horror is often written just to cash in on the popularity of The Exorcist.

Another perspective, more common in recent years, is an inverted one, that of how God Is Evil; the fire and brimstone Disproportionate Retribution aspects of the Old Testament god are built upon to depict Him as the Big Bad. God Is Evil stories have an overlap with Cosmic Horror Story, as God is often described as alien, omnipotent, invincible and whose nature is impossible to ever comprehend, in a very Lovecraftian style. Our Angels Are Different is usually in effect.

2. Occasionally, the story revolves around a Religion of Evil that has nothing to do with Satan, which may or may not replace him with a Satanic Archetype or an Expy in the form of a God of Evil. These tend to be more creative than the Christianity­based novels, but not necessarily more bizarre, as you'll see.

3. Very rarely, you get a film that actually bothered to do the research, and includes horror either from the point of view of some religion other than Christianity, or more commonly have another religion as an antagonist. In the former cases, even if the movie itself is bad, the concept is very interesting. In the latter case, it ends up a variant of type 2, with the added problem of sounding like something from Chick Tracts.

34 Contrast Cosmic Horror Story, which is mutually exclusive with the first type of this subgenre. If a Cosmic Horror Story's Eldritch Abomination is worshipped as a god, then the story can fit into the second type.

See also The Bible.

Survival Horror "Crushingly, AMY is one of the few survival horror games beside Amnesia that actually is survival horror, and not just a Shooter that ate some marinara sauce too quickly." — Zero Punctuation on the frequent misappropriation of Survival Horror.note

Somehow, the world, or at least the city you are in, has had its inhabitants slaughtered and resurrected with a hunger for brains, or their murderers have minions trying to find you and any accomplices. Your goal: Don't die before help arrives or before you reach an exit. You will have close escapes from horrible creatures. Things will jump through windows at you. Sometimes, you will be forced to fight the horrible creatures or flee for your life.

Not unlike Post Modernism, modern Survival Horror isn't really a clear­cut genre in itself; it exists more as a blurred subset of Horror and First­Person Shooter or Third­Person Shooter. Older games or installments of long running series are closer to adventure games in gameplay, with much less focus on combat and more on puzzles. It requires you to figure out how to survive the onslaught and the related puzzles, and escape usually comes after you stop the source of the problem or secure an escape route. It should be noted that, unlike shooter games, there is no penalty for not killing non­boss enemies — indeed, in some games ammo is in such short supply that evasion, not confrontation, is the best tactic, similar to Stealth Based Games. This is usually compounded by having the protagonist be an Action Survivor or Non­Action Guy who is poor at combat, rather than a Badass.

Note that simply featuring large amounts of monsters, zombies and/or demons does not make it survival horror; even if the game has supernatural elements, or scares you in some way, it may not be a survival horror game. Even though Portal has Chell fighting for her life against a scary adversary without a real gun, it is most definitely not a survival horror title.

There's some debate as to what truly makes a game survival horror. Some claim that any sufficiently scary counts, while purists often believe that it must have a heavy focus on resource management to qualify, believing that providing too many resources, no resources, or otherwise sidelining it disqualifies a game. As a rule of thumb, a game typically labeleled Action Horror is not Survival Horror. This includes games such as Resident Evil 4, which, despite keeping the tense atmosphere of the previous games, has the player sitting on a pile of ammo and supplies by comparison, making it a different genre to its Ur Example predecessors. In order to minimize confusion, try looking at the protagonist's despair; if the protagonist is oppressed and their

35 major issues seem too petty for action games (extreme scarcity of ammunition & supplies, very tough enemies regardless of difficulty, enormous objectives, etc.), then you may be looking at survival horror.

Examples of Survival Horror games: Metro 2033, Manhunt, Silent Hill, ZombiU; overwhelmed protagonist(s), oppressive atmosphere and a need for careful management of resources (ammo, health, etc.).

Examples of non Survival Horror games: Halo, Doom, Half­Life 2, Resident Evil 4, Left 4 Dead and so on; despite grim prospects and scary content, just about any fight can be won at a gain and there is always enough ammo and supplies on hand to win most scenarios.

We also have advice if you want to Write A Survival Horror Game.

Body Horror "Arthur, my mustache is touching my brain..." — The Tick, That Mustache Feeling

Welcome to the lovely land of Body Horror. Simply put, this is any form of Horror or Squickiness involving body parts, parasitism, disfigurement, mutation, or unsettling bodily configuration, not induced by immediate violence.

For example: Being shot in the chest and having your organs exposed is Bloody Horror, not body horror. Turning into a monster is a Baleful Polymorph, but still not a body horror. Having your chest tear open of its own free will, exposing your organs as your ribcage is repurposed as a gaping maw full of boney teeth? That is Body horror.

This trope is difficult to pin down, as it has a wide range of potential applications and invocations, but what they all hinge upon is the Primal Fear of the Uncanny Valley, deformity, parasites, contamination, the ravages of disease, and the aftermath of bodily injury. The mind knows on a deep instinctive level that faces should have eyes and hands should not. Organs and bones belong on the inside, and parasites and circuit boards do not. Bodies should be roughly symmetrical and have logical proportions. And nothing should ever look like this page's example image.

Slowly mutating in a sickeningly twisted and deformed manner after contracting The Virus, a close encounter of the squick kind leaving someone the incubator for a Chest Burster, a rotting zombie, an Eldritch Abomination resembling a tangle of organs, and a shapeshifter abandoning any attempt at aesthetics or imitation to become a writhing mass of random but recognizable parts are all examples of Body Horror.

Obviously as a trope based on Primal Fear body horror is Older Than Dirt. Important modern

36 examples include the Alien tetralogy, with its skeletal, vaguely humanoid aliens, Trope Making Chest Bursters and iconic hand­like Face Huggers; The Thing, which codified the connection between shapeshifters and body horror in the popular imagination; and Dead Space, which is essentially an interactive demonstration of many of Body Horror's various subtropes and related tropes.

For a character or Mook who has this as their back story, see Was Once a Man and Tragic Monster, and/or The Grotesque. If Body Horror is played for sympathy, it can be used to explore the issue of What Measure Is a Non­Human?. Can result in And I Must Scream if the victim is aware of their condition but totally helpless. Using this trope can result in Our Monsters Are Weird of the most horrific kind.

Sub­supertrope of Evil Is Visceral.

Horror Tropes Horror stories, from any medium...

A subgenre of Speculative Fiction as many contain supernatural elements.

Compare Fear Tropes, Paranormal Tropes, Skeletal Tropes, Darkness And Shadows Tropes. Categories:

• Bloody Tropes • Cosmic Horror Story • Lovecraftian Tropes • Gothic Horror • Index of Gothic Horror Tropes • Hammer Horror • Haunted Index • Madness Tropes • Nightmare Fuel • Psychological Horror • Religious Horror • Slasher Movie • Subverted Innocence • Survival Horror • Undead Index • Tropes of The Living Dead • Zombie Stories

37 • Vampire Tropes • Vampire Fiction • Universal Horror • Werebeast Tropes • Werewolf Works

• Abandoned Area • Abandoned Hospital • Abandoned Hospital Awakening • Abandoned Playground • Abandoned Warehouse • Ghost City • Ghost Town • Ghost Planet • Haunted Castle • Haunted House • Absurdly Ineffective Barricade • The Adjectival Man • Afterlife Express • Alien Geometries • All Hallows' Eve • All in the Eyes • All Webbed Up • Alucard • Always Night • Ancient Tomb • And I Must Scream • And Show It to You • Ankle Drag • Another Man's Terror • Anyone Can Die • Apocalyptic Log • Artifact of Doom • Artifact of Death • Summoning Artifact • Tome of Eldritch Lore • Attack of the 50­Foot Whatever • Attack of the Killer Whatever • Attack of the Monster Appendage • Autocannibalism • Ax­Crazy • Backstory Horror

38 • Bad Black Barf • Bad Humor Truck • Barred from the Afterlife • Barrier­Busting Blow • Bat out of Hell • Bat Scare • Bear Trap • Beast with a Human Face • Beat Still, My Heart • Belly Mouth • Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts • The Blank • Blood Bath • Bloody Handprint • Bloody Horror • Blue­Collar Warlock • Body and Host • Body Horror • Body of Bodies • Brain Food • Broken Heel • Buried Alive • The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House • Campbell Country • Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore • Cannibal Clan • Cannibalism Superpower • Cat Scare • The Chain of Harm (especially #4 and #5) • Chest Burster • Spawn Broodling • Child by Rape • Chinese Vampire • Chupacabra • Circus of Fear • Clingy Costume • Cobweb Jungle • Complete Monster • Conjoined Twins • Connect the Deaths • Corpse Land

39 • The Corruption • Cosmic Horror Story • Creepily Long Arms • Creepy Basement • Creepy Cemetery • Creepy Changing Painting • Creepy Child • Creepy Children Singing • Creepy Circus Music • Creepy Crows • Creepy Doll • Creepy Housekeeper • Creepy Long Fingers • Creepy Souvenir • Crop Circles • Cruel and Unusual Death • Crusty Caretaker • Curiosity Killed the Cast • Damsel in Distress • Dangerous Key Fumble • Dangerous Windows • Danger Takes a Backseat • Dark Lord on Life Support • Darkness Equals Death • The Darkness Gazes Back • Dark World • Daylight Horror • The Dead Can Dance • Vampire Dance • Deadly Bath • Deadly Doctor • Deadly Prank • Deadly Road Trip • Death by Materialism • Death by Mocking • Death by Sex • Defanged Horrors • Demonic Dummy • Depraved Dentist • Developing Doomed Characters • Distress Call

40 • The Doll Episode • Don't Go in the Woods • Stay on the Path • Drool Hello • Dwindling Party • Ear Ache • Eaten Alive • Eldritch Abomination • Electromagnetic Ghosts • The End of the World as We Know It • The End... Or Is It? • Enemy Rising Behind • Enfant Terrible • Eerie Pale­Skinned Brunette • Everybody's Dead, Dave • Everything Is Trying to Kill You • Evil Elevator • Evil Hand • Evil Is Visceral • Evil Orphan • Evil Overlooker • Evil Phone • Exorcist Head • Extremely Dusty Home • Eye Awaken • Eyeless Face • Eye Scream • Eyes Are Unbreakable • The Eyes Have It • Face­Revealing Turn • Facial Horror • Tear Off Your Face • False Innocence Trick • The Family That Slays Together • Faux Horror Film • Faux Horrific: Pretending something is scary for laughs. • A Fête Worse than Death • Fetus Terrible • Final Girl • Fingore • Flat Scare

41 • Flaying Alive • Flies Equals Evil • Food Chain of Evil • Footprints Of Muck • For Doom the Bell Tolls • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You • Freak Lab Accident • Fridge Horror • Gate of Truth • Ghostapo • Ghost Butler • Ghost Fiction • Ghost Story • Ghostly Chill • Ghostly Goals • Ghostly Glide • Giant Eye of Doom • Giant Spider • God and Satan Are Both Jerks • Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death • Gory Discretion Shot • Sound­Only Death • Gross­Up Close­Up • Grotesque Gallery • Gutted Like a Fish • Gypsy Curse • Half the Man He Used to Be • Halloweentown • Hair­Raising Hare • Harbinger of Impending Doom • Haunted Fetter • Haunted Headquarters • Haunted Heroine • Haunted House Historian • Haunted Technology • Hazardous Water • Headless Horseman • Hell Hotel • Hell Is That Noise • Hockey Mask and Chainsaw • Hollywood Exorcism

42 • Homicide Machines • Horny Devils • Horrifying the Horror • Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday • Horror Host • Horror Struck • A House Divided • Humanoid Abomination • Human Resources • Human To Werewolf Footprints • I Can See You • I Hate You, Vampire Dad • I Love the Dead • Inescapable Horror • I'm a Humanitarian • Cannibal Clan • Cannibal Larder • Cannibal Tribe • Horror Hunger • Invited As Dinner • No Party Like a Donner Party • Picky People Eater • Brain Food • Monstrous Cannibalism • I'm Cold... So Cold... • Impromptu Tracheotomy • Indian Burial Ground • Infernal Retaliation • Initiation Ceremony • Inn of No Return • Inscrutable Aliens • In That Order • Ironic Nursery Tune • It Can Think • It Won't Turn Off • The Jersey Devil • Jump Scare • Kaiju • Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge • Kensington Gore • Kidnapping Bird of Prey

43 • Kill 'em All • Lamprey Mouth • Let's Split Up, Gang • Life or Limb Decision • Amputation Stops Spread • Light­Flicker Teleportation • Lightmare Fuel • The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday • Living Bodysuit • Living Shadow • Long Neck • Losing Your Head • Lost in the Maize • Made from Real Girl Scouts • Made of Plasticine • Madwoman in the Attic • Magnetic Medium • Malevolent Masked Men • Malevolent Mutilation • Man­Eating Plant • Marionette Motion • Meat Moss • Meaningful Background Event • Medical Horror • Menstrual Menace • Mirror Monster • Mirror Scare • Mobile Menace • Monster Clown • Monster Progenitor • Monsters Anonymous • Monstrous Humanoid • Mook Horror Show • The Most Dangerous Video Game • Mother of a Thousand Young • Mouth Stitched Shut • Mummy • Mummies at the Dinner Table • Mundanger • Murder by Cremation • Murder Water

44 • Murderous Mannequin • Murderous Mask • Museum of the Strange and Unusual • Nested Mouths • Never Sleep Again • New House New Problems • Nightmare Face • Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book • Night Swim Equals Death • No Face Under the Mask • No Immortal Inertia • Not a Mask • Nothing but Skulls • Nothing Is Scarier • Not Using the Z Word • Occult Detective • Occult Law Firm • Offscreen Teleportation • Ominous Crack • Ominous Fog • Fog of Doom • Ominously Open Door • Ominous Music Box Tune • Once is Not Enough • Organ Theft • Orifice Invasion • Orifice Evacuation • Our Werewolves Are Different • Paint the Town Red • Peek­A­Boo Corpse • People Farms • Personal Horror • Perverse Puppet • Pest Controller • Phlegmings • Picky People Eater • Pleasure Island • The Power of Blood • Prank Date • Pretend We're Dead • Protect This House

45 • Psychological Horror • Psychological Torment Zone • Psycho Party Member • Puppeteer Parasite • Over­the­Shoulder Murder Shot • Quarantine With Extreme Prejudice • Rain of Blood • Raising the Steaks • Razor Apples • Regret Eating Me • Resist The Beast • Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain • Rise from Your Grave • Room 101 • Room Full of Crazy • Room Full of Zombies • Rule of Scary • Sadist • Safe Zone Hope Spot • The Savage South • Scare Chord • Scary Flashlight Face • Scary Jack In The Box • Scary Scarecrows • Scary Scorpions • Screamer Trailer • Screaming Woman • The Secret of Long Pork Pies • Security Cling • See­Thru Specs • Senseless Phagia • Sensor Suspense • Sensory Abuse • Serial Killer • Serial Rapist • The Seven Mysteries • Shadow Discretion Shot • Shaggy Search Technique • Silver Bullet • Sinister Scraping Sound • Skele Bot 9000

46 • Skeleton Crew • Slashers Prefer Blondes • Slow Transformation • Sole Surviving Scientist • Sorting Algorithm of Mortality • Spiders Are Scary • Spooky Painting • Spooky Photographs • Spooky Seance • Spring Loaded Corpse • Stages of Monster Grief • Staking the Loved One • The Stars Are Going Out • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome • Supernatural Proof Father • Super­Persistent Predator • Surprisingly Sudden Death • Surreal Horror • Swarm of Rats • Taxidermy Is Creepy • Taxidermy Terror • Tentative Light • Television Portal • Terror At Make Out Point • Too Much For Man To Handle • These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know • Things That Go Bump in the Night • Through the Eyes of Madness • Too Many Mouths • Touch of the Monster • Tongue Trauma • Torso with a View • Torture Cellar • Town with a Dark Secret • Transformation Horror • Traumatic C­Section • Tulpa • Überwald • Ultimate Evil • Uncanny Valley • Uncanny Valley Makeup

47 • Undead Author • Unexpectedly Abandoned • Unfinished Business • Urban Legends • Vampire Invitation • Vagina Dentata • Van Helsing Hate Crimes • Very Loosely Based on a True Story • Viral Transformation • The Virus • The Corruption • Virus Victim Symptoms • Walking Backwards • Wax Museum Morgue • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties • Wendigo • What Happened To Mommy? • White Mask of Doom • Who You Gonna Call? • Wipe That Smile Off Your Face • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity • Word Salad Horror • The Worm That Walks • You Are Who You Eat • You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost • Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb • Zombie Apocalypse • Zombie Puke Attack

• Index of Gothic Horror Tropes • A list of tropes found within the Gothic Horror genre. While you don't need all of them to write a gothic horror novel, the more you have the better. Horror has some things that are universal to all genres of horror but not everything on that page is used in gothic horror.

• Other genres that might employ heavy use of these tropes:

• Cosmic Horror Story • Dark Fantasy • Gaslamp Fantasy

48 • Ghost Fiction • Fairy Tale • Mystery Fiction ­ depends on the subgenre • Punk Punk • Gothic Punk • Myth Punk • Steam Punk • Romance ­ depends on the subgenre • Supernatural Fiction • Urban Fantasy • Vampire Fiction • Weird West • Werewolf Works

Note:Zombies didn't start appearing until the 1920s, but many older creatures were absorbed into the zombie mythos. So use caution when adding zombie examples. (Technically speaking, vampires are a kind of zombie, so they can easily be swapped.)

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