Sherlock/Nightmare Fuel

A Study in Pink

 * Lovely, kind-hearted Mrs Hudson's husband was such an awful person, and apparently committed such a heinous crime, that she loves Sherlock forever for ensuring the man was executed.
 * The kidnapper. Just because  you're going to be forced to kill yourself.
 * There's something that's simply... off about him. His body language is utterly creepy and he even sneaks into the flat with a police group and Sherlock still in there.

The Great Game
"Sherlock: People have died.
 * Holmes and Watson's first encounter with the Golem. The guy is freakishly large and all you see of him is his shadow, lurking behind a corner in an underground tunnel; then there's a vague shot of him running to his car in the creepiest way possible, magnified by that freaking shadow.
 * His shadow is also reminiscent of the Slender Man
 * The moment when the Golem creeps up on Sherlock from behind in the Planetarium is pretty unsettling too, especially with the flashing lights and garbled audio.
 * All those poor people in The Great Game. The palpable fear. The sobbing breaths. The things they were
 * The little boy who, incidentally, is Moffat's son. Brr. "Okay, kiddo, act scared for Daddy." Brr.
 * In particular: "Hello, sexy." The dissonance between those words and the woman's sobbing is horrifying. Also "this stupid bitch is reading it out."
 * This:
 * One could almost say that Sherlock himself was working towards nightmare fuel in The Great Game. Especially at the very end, with Sherlock grinning most of the time the ; he has a nice little moment of swagger and egotistical pleasure before finally . Remember that.
 * The moment at the end of The Great Game when gives the first real flash of what he really is -- with just a single word at the end of a four-word sentence. Give the actor a gold star.

Jim: That's what people DO!"

A Scandal in Belgravia
"Jim: SAY THAT AGAIN!! ... Say that again, and know that if you're lying to me, I will find you, and I will ssssskiiiinnnnn you..."
 * Irene stabbing Sherlock with a hypodermic needle that causes him to collapse, completely weak and helpless on her bedroom floor, eventually becoming a delirious babbling mess . She then tells John to see that Sherlock doesn't choke on his own vomit. With Irene half-naked while whipping Sherlock with a riding crop and John not seeming all that concerned, the scene is played more for Fetish Fuel. But just think of how it must feel to be drugged against your will, your body basically paralysed and unable to speak, to say no.
 * Mycroft threatens to have Irene tortured for the password to the phone: "You have a pass-code to open this. I deeply regret to say that we have people who can extract it from you..."
 * Even more horrifying, Sherlock's objection is not that torturing people is horrible and wrong, but that to torture Irene would simply prove ineffectual as there are likely two pass-codes. The Holmes brothers have a lack of empathy that is often Played for Laughs or otherwise causes offence to those around them with no real harm done, but here they're discussing whether or not they're going to torture Irene and decide not to for practical reasons only.
 * The Oh God.
 * In this scene the mood whiplashes so fast your head will spin:


 * ... His face. Holy crap. And he probably would very literally skin someone.

The Hounds of Baskerville
"Shunk. Shunk."
 * The Hound of The Baskervilles has always been one of the most chilling of Holmes' adventures. Updating it to the modern day setting of the series does little to change this. Especially when the end leads one to believe there isn't an actual hound..
 * Especially when you take into account that all four of them -- Sherlock, John, Henry and Lestrade -- they are all They're all seeing whatever scares the hell out of each of them individually.
 * In a similar way, the sequence with John locked up in the lab This whole episode is fuelled by the psychology of fear and that's what makes it great.
 * Not to mention that it's totally unnerving to see three characters in particular who normally have nerves of steel -- the sociopathic detective, the war veteran and the DI from Scotland Yard -- totally freaked out over something that doesn't technically exist.
 * Those bloody flood lights. Nothing Is Scarier indeed.


 * The whole fandom is glad that The Hounds of Baskerville wasn't written by Steven Moffat. We wouldn't have survived.
 * Sherlock's
 * The information they find on We never get details, but the photographs and snatches of headlines like "blood-brain" "severe frontal lobe damage" "gross cranial trauma" and "multiple homicide" projected across Sherlock's face are incredibly creepy. Then in retrospect we find out
 * Dr Stapleton is chillingly matter-of-fact when she agrees with John that she has very little compassion (toward her own daughter), and that sometimes she hates herself.
 * The death of Henry Knight's father. His traumatised memories of the event are bad enough, as we hear his father screaming as he's mauled,.
 * The Room Full of Crazy at the end.

The Reichenbach Fall
"Moriarty: Ok. Let me give you a little extra incentive... your friends will DIE if you don't.
 * Kidnapped children are nightmarish by definition, but Moriarty's not content with that. He.
 * Sherlock's chilling re-enactment of the kidnapping of the children. "Help us" glowing eerily on the wall. Sherlock's silhouette at the door, hand held like a gun. The details of the boy on tip-toe with a gun to his head. The little girl being grabbed around the neck.
 * Moriarty smirkingly asks a young female police officer to fish into his pocket for a mint and put it on his tongue at his trial. The way he does it takes his character into the new and terrifying implications of his also potentially being a sex offender.
 * When Moriarty's team offers no defence at his trial, he looks up at John in the gallery and smirks. John is visibly upset by this. Sherlock described his standoff with Moriarty as "five minutes... I pointed a gun at him, he tried to blow me up." But for John, the ordeal went for hours. He was knocked unconscious, unarmed, totally unable to defend himself, and he was the one actually wearing the bomb. He has impressive nerves, and considerable loyalty to Sherlock, to bring himself to be in court at all.
 * The series itself never tells us what happened between John leaving the apartment for Sarah's and Sherlock arriving at the pool some hours later. John later blogged a basic outline --he was bundled into a car and knocked unconscious-- but most of the details are missing. It was clearly extremely traumatic for him; in terms of his blog, he posts that he took some time away from guns and bombs and maniacs after that incident. In the actual series itself, the effect that being Moriarty's hostage had on him is hinted at earlier than the trial. When John intercepts Jim's text on Sherlock's phone, and tries to bring it to Sherlock's attention, he looks like he's about to pass out. Not a reaction we've come to expect from someone who developed a hand tremor because he missed being in constant danger. It's highly implied that there are some details of his hostage experience prior to Sherlock appearing that he's unwilling to share, because they are really, really bad.
 * Moriarty
 * Also known as: the moment where everyone in the fandom doubted their entire existence.
 * Moriarty threatening not just John (which is expected at this point), but everyone Sherlock has ever cared about, in order to convince the detective . If Moriarty's words alone don't do it for you, the sick, ferocious glee with which he says them probably will:

Sherlock: ...John.

Moriarty: Oh, not just John. Everyone.

Sherlock: Mrs. Hudson?

Moriarty: EVERYONE.

Sherlock: Lestrade?

Moriarty: Three bullets. Three gunmen. Three victims. There's no stopping them now."


 * And after that, "Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaase?"
 * Moriarty  was incredibly unnerving.
 * Agreed. Especially considering the "you'd do anything to not feel bored" comment the Cabbie directed at Sherlock in the pilot.
 * There's also something absolutely chilling about his words to Sherlock when he arrives on the roof about "staying alive" and "All my life I've been looking for a distraction." Because he freaking means it. He's not thrilled that he thinks he's beaten Sherlock Holmes. He's suicidal because he thinks he's beaten Sherlock Holmes. As Sally Donovan pointed out in A Study in Pink, psychopaths get bored. They tend to commit suicide in prison because of it. Jim's realisation that he could makes perfect, horrible sense.
 * A less internal detail, but if you look closely
 * All this to prove just how The Unfettered can get deconstructed. Jesus...
 * John unknowingly
 * The idea of Moriarty  What could possibly go wrong with that?
 * or not, John witnessed . It doesn't matter how many dead bodies John has seen in his life, which no doubt is a lot, this was someone he cared passionately about. It wouldn't be surprising if Series 3 mirrored Series 1's opening by showing us John reliving that moment in a nightmare.

Blogs/Other

 * Moriarty breaking into 221B while Sherlock and John are out and recording his whispered observations on a shaky video camera, then posting the whole thing to John's blog? Very creepy. The fact that he did it while Mrs. Hudson was home? HEAPING BUCKETS OF NIGHTMARE FUEL.