4. Bill Cipher:
"When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, beware the beast with just one eye."
Bill Cipher is the primary antagonist of a series that I LOVE called Gravity Falls. He is called a "dream demon" and he usually only exists in the Nightmare Realm. He's the only metaphysical villain that I find spooky. His goal in the series is to open a huge dimensional rift allowing his own world to enter ours. If he does, he will attain physical form and become completely unstoppable. Even in his normal existence, he is a very dangerous being. He can posses the bodies of others, steal memories, and has an unbelievable amount of knowledge (including knowledge of the future). He is described as being older than our galaxy and far more twisted.
One thing that makes Bill so frightening is his personality. He is incredibly twisted. He readily admits to being insane. He also clearly enjoys corrupting others or watching them suffer. He seems to be somewhat masochistic, hurting himself when he possesses the bodies of others. He is taunting, teasing, sarcastic, and witty, but beneath all that he is willing to do anything to achieve his goals. He toys with people, knowing that all he needs to be is patient. After all, compared to him we are "One life-span, three dimensional, five sensed, skin puppets". The fact that he is extremely enigmatic also helps him be spooky. For a very long time in the series we know very little about him or his plans. And even now, some things about him remain completely veiled. With Bill in a story, the advice of the man who knows him best is to "Trust no one." Good luck sleeping after this guy. After all, the nightmare realm is his world.
3. Indominus Rex:
"She is learning where she fits in the food chain, and I'm not sure you want her to figure that out."
With the summer blockbuster of Jurassic World, I also got a brand new thing to be afraid of. The Indominus Rex is a genetic hybrid designed to draw in visitors by being bigger, louder, and having more teeth. Instead of attracting park guests, this highly intelligent animal escaped from her paddock and reeked havoc on the park. She is an interesting antagonist. She is very much like an animal, with no real signs of human personality, and yet she is seen hunting for sport. As the above quote notes, she is learning throughout the movie. Her instincts tell her to kill every new thing she encounters. She is the new alpha predator, and now she is gonna figure out what is on her menu.
It was kind of funny how I actually became really afraid of this dinosaur. Sure, she looks pretty freaky, and she's eating people, and she's taking over packs of velociraptors, but that isn't what really scared me about her. What happened was I had nightmares after seeing the film. These were caused partially by conversations I had debating who would win in a fight: Toothless or her. Well, I then had quite a lot of nightmares in which I saw her kill Toothless, and that was pretty scarring! Haha, and as if my dreams wanted to guilt trip me, Toothless always died because he was protecting me! When you've seen this giant abomination of a dinosaur crunch down on your favorite character of all time (and then sometimes had her turn and get you) it makes her seem a whole lot scarier! She holds a very solid third place. I don't want myself or my dragon to be a dino snack... not at all.
2. The Skrill:
"I'm guessing your cranky, and hungry too..."
This entry really shouldn't surprise any of you if you've been reading my blog for a while! The Skrill is a incredibly scary dragon. At least for me. Yes, I think they are cool, but the above image scarred me for life (ironically, I was part of the creative process that wound up creating it). The Skrill is everything cool about the Strike Class without any of the love and charm that makes Toothless wonderful. It is a spiky, vicious, clever, stealthy creature. Anything that tries to deal with it is doomed to go down, paralyzed or dead from a burst of lightening. Let's hope dead... otherwise the Skrill might start eating before you actually die.
Let's face it: smart predatory animals are scary... especially when all their smarts haven't developed into any sympathy. The Skrill still holds the record for giving me nightmares. After reading a particular fan fiction (the one that is associated with the digital painting above), I woke up about four nights in a row, my entire body cover in cold sweat. I had these horrible dreams about being eaten alive by this thing, and it wasn't pretty. I almost had a panic attack when this dragon first came out of the ice in DoB. Thankfully nothing too terrible happened in those episodes... but considering the Skrill is coming back in RttE... we may not be as safe as I would like.
1. Toothless
"In the face of it, you are nothing."
So, when the day ends, I can still firmly say that nothing in a film has ever unnerved and terrified me like when Toothless turned on Hiccup in HTTYD2. Everything that made the Skrill story bad was because the dragon was like Toothless, but it was killing Hiccup. Suddenly I had a fully rendered, fully soundtrack-ed, fully canon scene in which Toothless was actually about to kill Hiccup... not a Skrill, not a wild dragon, Toothless. It was so devastating my friend who watched it with me said I had gone into shell shock in the days afterwards.
The thing with Toothless was that it felt personal. I know it wasn't him, but it was his instincts following the Alpha Dragon (I've done a few posts on the "Red Rage", if you'd like to go and look for them). He had always been something that made me feel safe, secure. When he was with Hiccup, Hiccup was safe. He would throw his life on the line for that boy without question. But then he was stripped of all that and turned into something utterly terrifying. Image your best friend trying to kill you. Just think about how close Toothless got to snuffing out Hiccup's young life. What would it have been like if the dragon had hit his intended target? What would it be like for Toothless waking up to that? And even though Hiccup survived, Toothless's falling to the Red Rage caused the death of Stoick, the man who loved Hiccup most. Under the control of the Alpha, Toothless is by far the most terrifying thing I've come into contact with. Nothing can hurt you more than the things you love most.
Haha, now, I have fully forgiven Toothless. I'm not saying I hate him or anything... just that he really, REALLY scared me. I sat up until three in the morning shuddering after seeing that movie... and my heart rate still picks up drastically when that scene comes around. I hope you've enjoyed my little list here. Which characters have frightened you the most? Who are the top phobia-causers in your fandom experience? If you'd like to let me know in the comments, this is the post to discuss it on. Let's all be thankful that the terrors of these films are short lived, and eventually goodness and love claim victory.
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