Horror Tropes

Tropes that are associated with Horror stories, from any medium.

A subgenre of Speculative Fiction as many contain supernatural elements.

Subcategories and Trope Indexes

• Horror: The whole genre itself.
• Adult Fear: Tropes tied to realistic fears an adult could have.
• Fridge Horror: Fridge Brilliance meets Nightmare Fuel.
• Nightmare Fuel: Scary moments to be found in any work of media.
• Played for Horror: A trope is used for scary effect.
• Rule of Scary: Something doesn't have to make much sense as long as it's creepy.

Genres/types

• Action Horror: Horror meets the Action Genre, in which terrifying monsters are confronted by well-armed, well-equipped protagonists who the audience knows are capable of fighting back.
• Alien Works: Stories themed around extraterrestrial life.
• Analog Horror: Horror in the format of TV broadcasts and VHS tapes (with occasional film reels).
• Body Horror: Horror derived from disturbing disfigurement or alteration of someone's body.
• Cosmic Horror Story: A sub-genre popularized by H. P. Lovecraft, which revolves around mysterious, terrifyingly powerful entities that cannot be safely understood by human beings.
• Creepypasta: Works of horror fiction that are posted and spread on the Internet, typically written in a first-person narrative to give the appearance of being a report on events that actually happened and therefore make things especially scary.
• Dark Fantasy: Fantasy stories that are played for horror, often involving the use of occultist dark magic and malevolent supernatural beings.
• Demon Works: Stories themed around creatures spawned from Hell.
• Dragon Works: Stories themed around giant reptilian beasts.
• Ghost Fiction: Stories themed around the spirits of dead people.
• Gothic Horror: A classic horror sub-genre mostly associated with Romanticist literature of the 19th century.
• Horror Comedy: Comedy stories which parody horror tropes for laughs (often in a very morbid manner).
• Horrorcore: Horror-themed Hip-Hop.
• Medical Horror: Horror derived from terrible physical illnesses or injuries being inflicted on living beings.
• Monster Media: Stories featuring miscellaneous or multiple types of monsters.
• Mummy Media: Stories themed around gauze-wrapped Egyptian corpses.
• Psychological Horror: Horror derived from the abuse of someone's fragile mind and unstable emotions, rather than threats from more physical forms of danger.
• Psychosexual Horror: A subgenre that explores psychosexual development as a subject matter, including themes of sexual development and sexual activities.
• Religious Horror: Horror derived from theological or mythological themes.
• Sci-Fi Horror: Science Fiction stories that are played for horror, often involving the use of futuristic technology and space/time travel gone horribly wrong.
• Slasher Movie: A very popular sub-genre of horror films, involving some sort of monster or villain hunting down and killing people in incredibly gruesome ways.
• Splatter Horror: Scary stories that use explicit blood, gore, and violence for shock factor.
• Spooky Kids Media: Horror aimed at children.
• Superhero Horror: When Superhero Tropes are played for horror. Expect superheroes to be utterly ineffectual against some unusually fearsome supervillains.
• Survival Horror: Mostly a video game genre, in which the protagonist must try to survive encounters with enemies rather than directly fighting them head-on.
• Vampire Fiction: Stories themed around immortal blood-drinkers.
• Werebeast Works: Stories themed around men who transform into beasts.
• Werewolf Works: Stories themed around men who transform into wolves, specifically.
• Witch Works: Stories themed around female magic-users.
• Zombie Stories: Stories themed around corpses that walk as if they live.

Stock characters

• Alien Tropes: Tropes about extraterrestrial beings, which are often depicted as malevolent invaders, mindless savage beasts, or Body Horror assimilators, usually thanks to their Bizarre Alien Biology. These monsters are common in Sci-Fi Horror stories.
• Dragon Tropes: Tropes about giant reptilian beasts, which have often been depicted as dangerous man-eating predators, thus making them fairly common monsters in horror stories that may lean more towards Dark Fantasy.
• Haunted Index: Tropes about the ethereal spirits of dead people.
• Infernal Tropes: Tropes pertaining to hellish realms, along with the damned souls and devilish beings who reside there.
• Mummy Tropes: Tropes about undead corpses preserved in gauze.
• Tropes of the Living Dead: Tropes about those generic walking corpses.
• Undead Index: Tropes about all kinds of monsters which are supposed to be dead but won't stay dead.
• Vampire Tropes: Tropes about undead people with an addiction to blood.
• Werebeast Tropes: Tropes about shapeshifting monsters who switch between human and animal forms.
• Witches and Wizards: Tropes about human magic users, with wicked wizards and witches being fairly common villains in horror stories that may lean more towards Dark Fantasy.

Other categories

• Abandoned Area: Buildings and places which are (mostly) empty of people will make good stock settings for scary stories.
• Apocalyptic Index: The End of the World as We Know It will always involve mass death and destruction on a grand scale, and thus is never a pleasant event to experience (if you can even survive it, that is).
• Bloody Tropes: Whenever you see this precious body fluid getting spilled, it means bad things have or will happen.
• Darkness and Shadows Tropes: The absence of light is often feared to be where danger is lurking.
• Dead Body Index
• Death Tropes: Obviously enough, the end of anyone's life is not something you really wish to witness (or experience directly).
• Evil Is Visceral
• Evil Music Index: The typical soundtrack associated with any horror movie/show/game.
• Evil Tropes: All competent villains can invoke great terror from their sinister behavior and cruel actions.
• Fear Tropes: The emotions of horror and terror itself.
• Halloween Tropes: Tropes related to the holiday of Halloween, which in modern times has basically become a secular pop-cultural celebration of the horror fiction genre, along with all of its associated tropes and cliches.
• Index of Gothic Horror Tropes
• Lovecraftian Tropes
• Madness Tropes: Tropes about extreme mental illnesses and insanity in general.
• Paranormal Tropes: Tropes about the paranormal and supernatural, or unexplainable phenomena beyond our (safe) understanding of reality. Often invokes our fears of unknown and unusual things.
• Scary Animals Index
• Screaming Tropes: Yelling out a loud shriek is an appropriate response to feeling truly terrified.
• Skeletal Tropes: Since it takes a long time for bones to decompose, skeletons are often associated with long-decomposed corpses and by extension death.
• Subverted Innocence: When horror is derived from something that's (seemingly) nice, sweet, and wholesome getting twisted into a malicious mockery of itself.
• Violence Tropes: Direct physical conflict between two or more characters can result in very disturbing injuries and consequences.
• You Would Not Want to Live in Dex: Locations and settings that are inherently bad places to ever visit.

Individual Tropes

• Abandoned Camp Ruins: The people who camped here probably didn't count on this place having something dangerous in it.
• Abandoned Hospital: Definitely not a place that one wants to visit when feeling unwell.
• Abandoned Hospital Awakening: A hospital patient wakes up to find the building empty of all other life.
• Abandoned Playground: Something is inherently spooky about a former play-place for children.
• Abandoned Warehouse: This building is probably storing things that are best left alone.
• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The threat is able to break through a barricade near-effortlessly.
• Absurdly Sharp Claws
• The Adjectival Man: A character named after an adjective, often Names to Run Away from Really Fast
• Adorable Abomination: An eldritch abomination that is cute.
• Afterlife Express
• After the End: What the world looks like in the aftermath of a terrible disaster.
• Alien Abduction: A human gets kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings, often for creepy or sinister purposes (usually involving very invasive, torturous medical experiments).
• Alien Blood: Creatures bleed unusually colored blood.
• Alien Geometries: An area, being or object with impossible dimensions, common in Cosmic Horror.
• Alien Invasion: Extraterrestrials attack Earth with the goal of destroying or enslaving all of humanity.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Aliens are evil and malevolent towards humans, often kidnapping people to do terrible things to them, or attacking Earth just because they can.
• All in the Eyes: A character is in darkness except for their illuminated eyes.
• All Myths Are True
• All Webbed Up: Someone is trapped in a giant (spider) web, ready to be devoured by whatever spun it.
• Alone with the Psycho: A defenseless character is alone with a murderer who wants to kill them.
• Always Night: A location — or story in general — is in constant and unending darkness.
• Amputation Stops Spread: An infection can be stopped by amputating the infected limb.
• Amusement Park of Doom: A dangerous amusement park where oblivious families and tourists visit at their own risk.
• Ancient Evil: An evil force that is thousands of years old or even older
• Ancient Tomb: Old tombs and crypts, invariably filled with The Undead.
• And I Must Scream: A person is trapped in a terrifying condition where they can't move or escape, they can't communicate to anyone around them, and they are unable to die, all while suffering in pain or fear the whole time.
• And Show It to You: A character has their organs removed and shown to them.
• Angels, Devils and Squid
• Animalistic Abomination: An eldritch abomination with animal traits.
• Ankle Drag: A character is dragged by their ankles by the threat.
• Anomalous Art: Works of art that possess strange, paranormal powers.
• Another Man's Terror: A character goes through the experiences of a dead character.
• The Antichrist: A supernatural human/entity meant to bring about the Apocalypse.
• Anyone Can Die: Not even the main protagonists are safe from mortal doom.
• Apartment Complex of Horrors: Getting trapped in an apartment with evil and/or sinister forces.
• Apocalypse Cult: An underground religious sect which is obsessed with a doomsday prophecy, either trying to help jumpstart the process of destroying our own world or doing terrible things to others in selfish hopes for their own survival.
• Apocalypse How: All the various ways in fiction that a doomsday event can happen.
• Apocalyptic Log: A diary, journal, or other records made by someone which details how something they witnessed went terribly wrong. It may even end just before their own demise.
• Artifact of Death: An object that inevitably cause the death of its owner.
• Artifact of Doom: Supernatural objects that are cursed or can cause terrible things to happen when (ab)used.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever: Something that would not usually be dangerous becomes a monster.
• Attack of the Monster Appendage: A limb, often independent of a body, is a dangerous monster.
• Attractive Zombie
• Atrocity Montage: A sequence of horrific events portrayed graphically.
• Ax-Crazy: Someone who is violently insane.
• Backing into Danger: Backing into the very thing you were watching out for.
• Backstory Horror: Something horrifying happened in a character's backstory.
• Bad Black Barf: Black vomit is a sign of oncoming Body Horror or Bloody Horror.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The villain/monster wins at the end of the story.
• Bad Humor Truck: An ice-cream van is a mortal threat.
• Bad Santa: When jolly old Saint Nick gets a terrifying dose of Adaptational Villainy.
• Balloon of Doom: Either when a party balloon is used as a symbol of evil or an anthropomorphic balloon is villainous.
• Baphomet: A goat-headed demon with both male and female features.
• Barred from the Afterlife: A character cannot enter the afterlife, often resulting in And I Must Scream or Walking the Earth.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: A single blow is enough to break past a barricade.
• Bat Out of Hell: A monstrous and/or abnormally large bat.
• Bat People: Humans with bat-like traits or humanoid bats who, depending on the work, may be connected to vampires.
• Bat Scare: A jump scare involving bats flying out of a dark space.
• Battleaxe Nurse: An evil nurse.
• Bear Trap: A character is caught in a sharp trap activated by stepping on it.
• Beast in the Maze: A monster dwells inside a maze.
• Beast of the Apocalypse: A monster that brings on the end of the world.
• Beast with a Human Face: An otherwise clearly non-human creature has a human face.
• Beat Still, My Heart: A heart is ripped or cut out of a chest and continues to beat.
• Bedlam House
• Bedsheet Ghost
• Behavioral Conditioning: Someone is brainwashed into certain behavioral patterns.
• Belly Mouth: A creature has a mouth on their stomach.
• Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: Ghosts masquerade as hitchhikers and get inside cars.
• Beware of Vicious Dog: A vicious dog.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Giant bugs.
• Bizarrchitecture
• Black Dude Dies First
• Black Eyes of Crazy: The dangerous psychopath with black eyes
• Black Eyes of Evil: Dark, pitch-black eyes which give off evil and soulless vibes.
• Black Magic: Magic used for evil/demonic purposes.
• The Blank: A being without any visible facial features is quite disturbing.
• Blob Monster: A monster made of slime.
• Blood Bath: A character (often a vampire or sorcerer) bathes in blood.
• Blood for Mortar: Human remains are used in the construction of buildings.
• Blood from Every Orifice
• Blood from the Mouth
• Blood Is Squicker in Water
• Blood Magic: Blood is used for occult purposes.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents
• Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress
• Bloody Handprint: A handprint in blood is seen, usually used to imply a bloody killing.
• Bloody Horror: Blood and violence are used to generate horror.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: A working-class enchanter.
• Body and Host: The relationship between a spirit or parasite and the person they inhabit.
• Body in a Breadbox
• Body of Bodies: A being made out of the bodies of many smaller beings.
• Body Snatcher
• Botanical Abomination: An eldritch abomination plant.
• Brain Food: A character eats brains.
• Brain in a Jar: A brain in a jar.
• Breaking and Bloodsucking: Vampires break into bedrooms to attack women.
• Broken Heel: A character trips, breaks their heel or stops running for some other reason.
• Brown Note: Seeing, hearing, or otherwise directly sensing this object can be very harmful to one's mind and/or body.
• Brown Note Being: A person, creature, or thing that will make you regret ever meeting and witnessing them up-close.
• Bunker Woman: A Damsel in Distress is imprisoned underground.
• Buried Alive: A live person, usually after being mistaken for a dead body due to unconsciousness, gets dumped into a grave and sealed inside. Should they fail to escape in time, they'll run out of oxygen and become corpses for real.
• Burn the Undead: When fire is effective at destroying vampires or other undead creatures.
• The Butcher: Anyone nicknamed “The Butcher” is evil.
• Bystander Action-Horror Dissonance: An action sequence shifts to a much darker tone when we see how it's affecting those who aren't part of the fight.
• The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: When you pick up a stranger's call on your phone and realize that they're even closer than you thought...
• Campbell Country: Creepy communities in the British Isles.
• Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore: A seemingly safe site is actually dangerous.
• Cannibal Larder: A kitchen stocked with the other white meat.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: A supernatural being is incapable of movement while being watched.
• Casts No Shadow
• Catapult Nightmare
• Cat Scare: A Jump Scare involving a cat.
• Ceiling Corpse: A corpse is suspended from the ceiling unnoticed.
• The Chain of Harm (especially #4 and #5)
• Chest Burster
• Child Eater: A villain that eats children/babies.
• Chill of Undeath
• Chinese Vampire: An undead hopping corpse from Chinese folklore that drains life force.
• Chupacabra: A legendary monster (of wildly varying descriptions) that is said to prey on livestock.
• Circus of Fear: A circus is a place of evil and malevolence.
• City of the Damned
• Civilization Destroyer: A species, creature, group or Eldritch Abomination capable of destroying a civilization.
• Classical Movie Vampire: In some fiction, vampires are pale people in evening dress.
• Clingy Costume: Clothes that are impossible to remove.
• Cobweb Jungle: An Ancient Tomb, Haunted Castle or other old location has to be full of cobwebs.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: People getting subjected to extreme pain and torment by other people; either as a means of interrogation, punishment, or just out of sheer sadism.
• Complete Monster: A character who is pure evil. In horror stories, these villains are usually the ones who produce the most Nightmare Fuel through incredibly cruel and sadistic acts against others.
• Connect the Deaths: The Reveal involves a character working out the connections between deaths.
• Corpse Land: A location made of or covered in corpses.
• The Corruption
• Council of Vampires
• Crapsaccharine World: A seemingly nice, pleasant place that only appears to be this way on the surface. In reality it's hiding some very awful secrets...
• Crapsack World: The story's setting is a terribly nightmarish dystopia full of misery and suffering.
• Creepily Long Arms: A character or monster has eerily long arms.
• Creepy Ballet: A ballet — or the events backstage — are spooky.
• Creepy Basement: A basement in which horrific or supernatural events occur.
• Creepy Camel Spider: Solifugids portrayed as hyperaggressive desert terrors, often well beyond what they are in reality.
• Creepy Cathedral: Religious buildings played for horror.
• Creepy Catholicism: Catholicism is portrayed as sinister.
• Creepy Cave: Caves are dangerous, unsettling, and scary.
• Creepy Cemetery: Graveyards are homes or hunting grounds for The Undead.
• Creepy Changing Painting: A painting that supernaturally alters itself.
• Creepy Child: A child who has something odd or disturbing about them.
• Creepy Children Singing: We hear children sing in an unnerving manner.
• Creepy Circus Music: Circus music is used for a spooky effect, often in a Circus of Fear.
• Creepy Cleanliness: A place is clean to a disconcerting degree.
• Creepy Crows: Crows and ravens often appear in spooky places.
• Creepy Doll: A doll which is malevolent or just spooky.
• Creepy Dollhouse: The natural habitat of the above.
• Creepy Family: A family has something sinister about them.
• Creepy Gas-Station Attendant: This man will give you petrol and very bad directions or may be intentionally malevolent.
• Creepy Housekeeper: The women who keeps your Haunted Castle spick and span and scares off arrivals.
• Creepy Long Fingers: A villain has eerily long fingers.
• Creepy Mascot Suit: A person in an animal suit or mask is scary, if not evil.
• Creepy Monotone: Monotone talking played for horror.
• Creepy Mortician
• Creepy Old-Fashioned Diving Suit: Old model diving suits are disturbing.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes
• Creepy Souvenir: A memento that is either creepy or has a creepy past.
• Creepy Twins
• Crop Circles: Patterns left in fields by aliens.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The more gory and painful it is, the worse it is to die like this.
• Crusty Caretaker: The man responsible for cleaning a typical Haunted House and intimidating visitors.
• Cthulhumanoid: A humanoid eldritch abomination with cephalopod attributes, resembling Cthullu from the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Cult: A group of people with sinister customs and goals.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast: Characters are killed off for getting too curious.
• Curse of the Pharaoh: If you try to rob the tomb of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, then you will suffer their posthumous vengeance.
• Cute and Psycho: Someone who is as adorable as they are violently insane.
• Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: An entity that would otherwise be cute but has a horrifying mouth.
• Dangerous Key Fumble: A character gets delayed locking out the impending threat or unlocking the door keeping them in.
• Dangerous Windows: Windows of oddly fragile glass which monsters and villains bust through.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: Something horrifying lurks in the backseat of your car.
• Danger with a Deadline: The protagonists must avoid the threat until the danger passes.
• Dark Is Evil: Darkness is associated with evil.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: A villain is mortally wounded and on life support.
• Darkness Equals Death: Shadows are often very ominous. Who knows what they hide?
• The Darkness Gazes Back: A dark area is full of eyes staring at the protagonists.
• Darkness Von Gothick Name: A dark name.
• Dark World: An entire world in constant darkness.
• Dead All Along
• Deader than Dead
• Deadly Bath: A bath that ends in the bather's death.
• Deadly Book: A book that has fatal consequences for the reader.
• Deadly Doctor: A murderous or simply highly incompetent doctor.
• Deadly Lunge: Sudden zombie leaping attack.
• Deadly Prank: A not-so-harmless prank resulting in someone getting killed.
• Deadly Road Trip: A road trip from which you will not return.
• Dead Weight
• Deal with the Devil
• Death by Materialism: A character's greed results in their death.
• Death by Mocking: In Horrormovieland, Alpha Bitches and Jerk Jocks cannot expect to live long.
• Death by Pragmatism: People get murdered for taking the sensible option.
• Death of a Child: The story openly depicts young children dying.
• Defanged Horrors: Horrors presented in a child-friendly manner.
• Dem Bones: Undead skeletons.
• Demonic Dummy: A ventriloquist's dummy that is most certainly not friendly.
• Demonic Head Shake: A victim of Demonic Possessions's head shakes furiously.
• Demonic Possession: When an evil spirit seizes control over someone's mind and body.
• Depraved Dentist: A dentist who gets off on hurting their patients.
• Developing Doomed Characters: We get to know the cast just before they start dying.
• Devil in Disguise: Satan or someone working for him living amongst humans.
• Devoured by the Horde: A character is torn to pieces and eaten by a horde of antagonists.
• Dhampyr: The offspring of a vampire and a human.
• Digital Abomination: A digital eldritch abomination.
• Disguised Horror Story: Starts off as cute and/or innocent, then becomes scary and/or macabre.
• Distress Call: Emergency communications made by people in trouble, which may become especially worrisome if any potential rescuers find that they have arrived too late to help save anyone...
• Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: A Mad Scientist lost their medical license for performing horrible experiments.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Forests are full of all kinds of scary and dangerous things hiding between the trees, so one must be careful to never get lost in them.
• Door Handle Scare: Something pulls down the handle of a door.
• Downer Ending: The story ends sadly.
• Dragged Off to Hell: A character is taken to Hell.
• The Dreaded: A character everyone else is scared senseless of.
• Drone of Dread
• *Drool* Hello: Bodily secretions, usually drool, are the first signs of a monster's presence.
• Drop-In Nemesis
• Dug Too Deep: A mining operation shouldn't be mining there.
• Dumbwaiter Ride
• Dwindling Party: The group of survivors is getting smaller and smaller.
• Ear Ache
• Eaten Alive: Getting devoured while still alive.
• Eats Babies
• Ectoplasm
• Eerie Arctic Research Station: An isolated research station in one of the Poles where horrifying events occur.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Often indicates a ghost, vampire or simply a Mundanger.
• Eldritch Abomination: A horrifying, otherworldly creature that is beyond human understanding.
• Eldritch Location: An otherworldly location that is strange and off in all the wrong ways.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss
• Eldritch Transformation
• Electromagnetic Ghosts
• Emergency Broadcast
• The End of the World as We Know It: A catastrophic disaster that results in mass death and destruction on a global scale.
• The End... Or Is It?: A classic Twist Ending which implies that the monster, villain, or other source of conflict hasn't actually been defeated or solved, and that it's only the beginning of more trouble for our protagonists.
• Enemy Rising Behind
• Enfant Terrible: A child who is evil.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: The story ends with everyone dead.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave
• Everything Trying to Kill You: A location full of all sorts of hostile creatures.
• Evil All Along: Villains who pretend to be good people tend to be much scarier than the Obviously Evil.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: An animal can sense evil, danger, or the supernatural.
• Evil Elevator
• Evil Hand
• Evil Mask
• Evil Orphan: This is decidedly not a Heartwarming Orphan.
• Evil Overlooker
• Evil Phone
• Evil Smells Bad
• Evil Sounds Deep
• Evil Tainted the Place
• Existential Horror: Horror derived from a futile effort to make sense of the true meaning of life and reality.
• Exorcist Head: When the possessing demon causes their host's neck to spin around a full 360 degrees in homage to The Exorcist.
• Extreme Close-Up
• Extremely Dusty Home
• Eye Awaken
• Eyeless Face: A face that hasn't got eyes or even eye sockets.
• Eye of Newt: Unusual ingredients used for sorcery.
• Eyes Are Unbreakable
• Eye Scream: Someone gets their eyes gouged out very painfully.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There
• The Eyes Have It
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Getting attacked by a parasitic alien creature trying to lay its eggs inside you.
• Face Hugger
• Face-Revealing Turn
• Facial Horror: Gruesome injuries to one's face.
• Fainting Seer
• False Innocence Trick
• Familial Body Snatcher
• Familial Cannibalism Surprise
• The Family That Slays Together
• Fate Worse than Death: Someone suffers a fate so horrific that death doesn't seem so bad in comparison.
• Faux Horrific: Pretending something is scary for laughs.
• Feathered Fiend: An evil bird.
• Fed to Pigs
• Feral Vampires
• A Fête Worse than Death: Festivities that revolve around killing people.
• Fetus Terrible
• Fiendish Fish: Fish are vicious predators.
• Fight Dracula
• Final Girl: A female character who survives the story's events after everyone else dies.
• Fingore: Violence inflicted upon the fingers.
• Fish People: Humanoids with fish-like characteristics.
• Flat Scare
• Flaying Alive: Someone has their skin removed while still living.
• Flesh Golem: A monster made out of body parts.
• Flies Equals Evil
• Flower Mouth
• Fog of Doom
• Fold-Spindle Mutilation
• Food Chain of Evil
• Footprints of Muck
• For Doom the Bell Tolls
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The monster or villain makes threats toward the audience, or at least gives the impression that they are capable of harming the audience.
• Frankenstein's Monster: A Frankenstein’s monster Expy.
• Freak Lab Accident: A common backstory for the origin of a mutant monster or some other catastrophe resulting from careless mistakes in science experiments.
• Fright Beside Them: A character realizes they're in danger when the friend or loved one who they thought was right next to them is actually revealed to be somewhere else.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend
• Fur Against Fang: Vampires and werewolves fight.
• Game Face
• Gas Station of Doom
• Gate of Truth
• Gay Guy Dies First: An LGBTQIA+ character dies before all the other characters.
• Genuine Human Hide: Clothing made from human skin.
• Geometric Magic: Drawing certain symbolic shapes to practice dark or demonic magic.
• Ghastly Ghost: A terrifying/evil ghost.
• Ghostapo: Nazis dealing with dark magic and the occult.
• Ghost Butler
• Ghost City: A former metropolis now in ruins. Definitely a sign that something went terribly wrong.
• Ghostly Chill
• Ghostly Goals
• Ghostly Glide
• Ghostly Wail
• Ghost Pirate: An undead pirate who continues to haunt the seas long past their natural lifetimes.
• Ghost Planet: A whole world that has been emptied of its inhabitants.
• Ghost Ship
• Ghost Story: Campfire tales about ghostly hauntings and other supernatural creepiness.
• Ghost Town: A formerly inhabited human settlement that was abandoned, usually due to some kind of disaster.
• Giant Eye of Doom
• Giant Spider: Arachnophobia is a very common fear, so why not amp it up to giant proportions?
• Giant Squid: A monster squid.
• Glasgow Grin: A mouth sliced at the sides to resemble a sinister grin.
• God and Satan Are Both Jerks
• God of Evil
• Gorn: Over-the-top violence.
• Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death
• Gory Discretion Shot: During particularly gory scenes, the violence happens off-screen.
• Goth: A member of the Goth subculture.
• Goth Girls Know Magic
• Goth Spirals: Creepy spirals.
• Green Is Gross
• Gross-Up Close-Up: A horrifically detailed closeup of something gross or scary.
• The Grotesque
• Grotesque Gallery
• Ground by Gears
• Gruesome Goat: A scary/Satanic goat.
• Gutted Like a Fish
• Gypsy Curse: If you piss off some Magical Romani, they can put one hell of a terrible spell on you.
• Hair-Raising Hare: A scary rabbit.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Someone gets cut in half.
• Halloweentown: A setting based on Halloween.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom
• Haunted Castle: A very old fortress or palace that is said to be haunted.
• Haunted Fetter: An inanimate object that is possessed by a ghost.
• Haunted Headquarters: Spooky buildings that are said to be inhabited by ghosts, demons, spirits, or other supernatural entities.
• Haunted Heroine
• Haunted House: An old home whose late previous residents never really left.
• Haunted House Historian: An expert who knows why this place is haunted.
• Haunted Technology: When ghosts take control of machines.
• Hazardous Water: The water is dangerous.
• Headless Horseman: A ghostly man who lost his head, riding around on horseback for all eternity. May often be trying to replace his lost head by stealing someone else's.
• The Heartless: An evil entity made from negative emotions.
• Hell: An afterlife world that is believed to be inhabited by demonic beings, along with the damned souls of dead sinners who are suffering terrible punishments for their misdeeds in life.
• Hellevator: A sinister elevator.
• Hell Hotel: If you decide to check into this shady inn for the night, you may never check out alive.
• Hellhound: A demonic dog.
• Hellish Horse: Sinister horses.
• Hellish Pupils: Non-human shaped pupils.
• Hell Is That Noise
• Helpless Kicking: Someone kicks their legs as they're being dragged to their doom, killed or Eaten Alive.
• Helpless Window Death: Someone dies behind a window while the protagonist can do nothing but watch.
• Hidden Harasser
• Hillbilly Horrors: Beware of evil rednecks in the countryside.
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: A classic Stock Parody of a slasher wearing a hockey mask and carrying a chainsaw, in reference to Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, respectively.
• Hollywood Exorcism: Attempting to rid a possessed person of their demon through religious rituals.
• Hollywood Satanism: Satanism is shown as an evil and cruel religion.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Voodoo is shown as a sinister variant of black magic.
• Holy Burns Evil: Sacred religious objects can harm vampires, usually because of their demonic nature.
• Homicide Machines
• Horrifying the Horror: Something is so shocking that even the monsters are scared of it.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Scary events happen on a holiday or special occasion.
• Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: In horror stories, those who have done wrong are especially likely to suffer the wrath of the supernatural terrors.
• Horror Hippies: These guys don't really mean to bring love and peace with them.
• Horror Host: Works in the horror genre (primarily comics as well as anthology films and television series) often feature a framing device where the featured story or stories are introduced to the audience by an eccentric and creepy narrator.
• Horror Hunger
• Horror Struck
• Hostile Animatronics: Evil animatronics.
• Hostile Hitchhiker: It's not a good idea to allow suspicious strangers to ride in your car (or inversely, accepting rides from suspicious strangers).
• A House Divided
• Human Architecture Horror: Bodies fused to their surroundings.
• Human Head on the Wall: Seeing one of these is a clear warning to stay the hell away!
• Human Jack-O-Lantern: What a cute jack-o— my gosh! Is that somebody's head?!
• Humanoid Abomination: A humanoid that defies logic.
• Human Resources
• Human Sacrifice
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Even in a supernatural setting full of dangerous nonhuman creatures, the evil of ordinary human beings is still just as disturbing (if not far worse).
• Human-to-Werewolf Footprints
• Hungry Jungle: Tropical rainforests are foreboding and dangerous places full of death, disease, and madness.
• Hunter of Monsters: A professional who knows how to fight and kill evil monsters.
• Hybrid Monster
• I Can See You
• The Igor
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad
• I Love the Dead: Someone has a depraved lust for dead bodies (necrophilia).
• I'm a Humanitarian: Human cannibalism is incredibly disturbing because it violates so many moral and ethical concerns.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...
• Impromptu Tracheotomy
• Inbred and Evil
• Indian Burial Ground: Buildings that were constructed on Native American cemeteries tend to be cursed or haunted by the vengeful spirits of dead natives.
• Inescapable Horror
• Infernal Retaliation
• Initiation Ceremony: A ceremony that permits the participant to enter an organization, often a Religion of Evil or Ancient Conspiracy
• Inn of No Return
• Inscrutable Aliens: Aliens are creepy because of how inhumanly weird they act.
• ...In That Order: A list of horrific things ends with "and in that order".
• Invincible Boogeymen: An unstoppable monster that you have no hope of ever fighting or defeating; you can only (try to) run far away and hide from them. And even doing that may not guarantee that they won't still be able to get you.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: A song with creepy subject matter in the style of a nursery rhyme.
• I See Dead People: Characters who can see ghosts that are invisible to the other characters.
• Isle of Giant Horrors
• It Came from the Sink
• It Can Think: What was thought to be a non-sapient monster turns out to be capable of intelligence.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
• It Was There the Whole Time
• It Won't Turn Off
• Jacob Marley Apparel: A ghost wears the clothes it died in.
• The Jersey Devil: A demon/dragon-like cryptid from Joisey.
• "Join Us" Drone
• Jump Scare: Shocking the audience with the sudden appearance of a frightening image accompanied by an equally frightening sound.
• Kaiju: Giant monsters that can easily crush or devour humans whole and demolish entire buildings if set loose on a city.
• Karloff Kopy: A character based on iconic horror actor Boris Karloff.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge
• Kensington Gore: Bright red fake blood. Now a Discredited Trope as special effects have improved.
• Kidnapped from Behind
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: An evil and ravenous bird of prey who kidnaps their prey by picking it up with their sharp claws.
• Killer Robot
• Killer Teddy Bear: An evil sentient teddy bear.
• Kill the Lights
• Kiss of the Vampire
• Knight Templar: Villains who are convinced they are heroes are usually much more frightening and realistic than Card-Carrying Villains who are Obviously Evil.
• The Krampus: Often depicted as being an Evil Counterpart to Santa himself.
• Lamprey Mouth
• The Legions of Hell
• Lesbian Vampire: Gay vampiresses.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: When a group of people ignore their relative safety in numbers, dividing themselves so that the monster or villain can pick them off more easily.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Having to choose between dying by staying where you are or cutting off your trapped limb to escape.
• Light-Flicker Teleportation
• Lightmare Fuel
• Literal Maneater: A (usually female) monster that uses their beauty or sex appeal to lure in victims to eat them.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday
• Living Bodysuit
• Living Doll Collector
• Living Shadow: A spooky being made of literal darkness.
• Living Toys: Toys that are alive.
• Looks Like Cesare
• Looks Like Orlok: A vampire or other type of humanoid monster resembles Count Orlok from the horror film Nosferatu.
• Lorre Lookalike: A character based on iconic horror actor Peter Lorre.
• Losing Your Head: Non-fatal decapitations.
• Lost in the Maize
• Lottery of Doom
• Lovecraft Country: New England is a land of weird and supernatural goings on.
• Lovecraftian Superpower
• Luck-Based Search Technique
• Ludicrous Gibs
• Macabre Moth Motif: Moths are evil omens.
• Mad Doctor: A crazy medical doctor who plays the role of a mad scientist on their own patients.
• Made from Real Girl Scouts
• Made of Plasticine: Someone is ridiculously easy to kill by tearing apart.
• Madwoman in the Attic
• Magic Is a Monster Magnet
• Magic is Evil: Sorcery is inherently sinister and dangerous, inevitably causing all sorts of supernatural disasters.
• Magnetic Medium
• Malevolent Masked Men: Scary villains who cover up their faces when they attack.
• Malevolent Mutilation
• Man-Eating Plant: A monstrous plant creature that eats people.
• Marionette Motion: A character moves in a way reminiscent of a string puppet.
• Meaningful Background Event
• Meat Moss
• Menacing Museum: A museum portrayed as ominous, dangerous or just plain evil.
• Menstrual Menace
• Mentally Unwell, Special Senses
• Messy Maggots
• Metamorphosis Monster
• Mind Rape
• Mirror Monster: An evil entity lurking behind a mirror's reflection.
• Mirror Scare
• Mobile Menace
• Monster Clown: A scary, evil circus performer.
• Monster Delay: Heavily playing into the Nothing Is Scarier trope seen below, we oftentimes don't ever see any of the monster in question at all until well into the film's runtime.
• Monster Mash: Several different monsters are shown together at one time.
• Monster Mouth
• Monster Progenitor
• Monsters Anonymous
• Monster Town
• Monstrous Cannibalism
• Monstrous Humanoid: A hideous creature with a vaguely human-shaped body.
• Monstrous Scenery
• Mook Horror Show: The hero beating up the bad guys is shown from the bad guys' perspective, treating the hero like he/she's a movie monster.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: An evil video game that can cause real-life harm to its players.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: A monster that gives birth to many other monsters.
• Mouth Stitched Shut
• Mummies at the Dinner Table
• Mummy: A preserved corpse wrapped up in bandages, that usually becomes undead. You really don't want to see all the decay beneath those bandages.
• Mundane Horror: Scary events that are more realistic than fantastic in nature.
• Mundanger: The danger has no supernatural elements.
• murder.com: Murder or other gruesome crime is put on the Internet.
• Murder by Cremation: Killing someone by burning them alive in an oven.
• Murderous Mannequin
• Murderous Mask
• Murder Water: The water is evil and out for blood.
• Museum of the Strange and Unusual
• Must Be Invited: A supernatural creature cannot enter a dwelling without permission from the homeowners.
• Nature Is Not Nice: The natural wilderness is a very savage and dangerous place, not meant for unprepared humans used to living in urban civilization.
• Nazi Zombies
• Nested Mouths
• Neverending Terror
• Never Sleep Again
• New House, New Problems
• Nice Day, Deadly Night
• Nightmare Face: A very scary face.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Disturbing drawings made by creepy children.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
• Nightmare Sequence: A very, very, bad dream.
• Nightmarish Nursery: A childish setting such as a nursery or playground played for horror or suspense.
• Night Swim Equals Death
• No Face Under the Mask
• No Immortal Inertia: A centuries-old immortal loses the source of their eternal life, which often results in quickly being reduced to a corpse.
• Noodle People
• Not a Mask: What appears to be a mask is actually the person's real face.
• Nothing but Skulls
• Nothing Is Scarier: We don't see exactly what the horror is, but it's still pretty damn terrifying.
• Not Quite Dead: Often done to show that a horror villain or monster can't be defeated so easily.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: A monster isn't directly called what they essentially are (e.g.: a zombie not being called a zombie).
• Number of the Beast: The number 666 is the number of the Devil/the Anti-Christ.
• Nuns Are Spooky: Nuns are played for horror.
• Obliviously Evil: A villain's actions are hurting others, but the villain is so thoroughly convinced that their actions are mundane, acceptable, or helpful, that the contrary idea doesn't even occur to them without external feedback, and even then, the villain might have difficulty understanding how their actions could possibly be wrong.
• Occult Detective: Someone who investigates supernatural activity.
• Occult Law Firm: Lawyers are demonic/occult creatures.
• Off with His Head!: Beheadings are always a very gruesome way of killing someone.
• Old, Dark House
• Ominous Crack
• Ominous Cube
• Ominous Fog: When a thick cloud of mist appears, it's a sign that bad things will happen.
• Ominous Knocking
• Ominous Latin Chanting
• Ominously Cut Tether
• Ominously Open Door
• Ominous Music Box Tune
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Black goo can only mean disaster.
• Ominous Owl: Along with Creepy Crows, these birds tend to show up for spooky situations.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Is it really any wonder why a musical instrument associated with funerals is good for a horror soundtrack?
• Ominous Television
• Ominous Visual Glitch
• Once is Not Enough
• One-Winged Angel
• One-Woman Wail
• Organ Theft: Stealing a person's organs.
• Orifice Evacuation
• Orifice Invasion
• Orphanage of Fear
• Otherworldly Visits Youngest First
• Ouija Board: An occult board game used to communicate with ghosts, demons and other spirits.
• Our Banshees Are Louder
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious
• Our Demons Are Different: Evil spirits and monsters from Hell or another awful place.
• Our Gargoyles Rock
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The disembodied spirits of dead people, who almost always died in terrible ways and can't rest because of it.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier
• Our Liches Are Different
• Our Monsters Are Different: Not all classic creatures of horror fiction are guaranteed to be exactly the same as one another.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Some monsters are creepy because of how bizarre they are.
• Our Sirens Are Different
• Our Slashers Are Different: Slasher villains differ depending on the work.
• Our Spirits Are Different
• Our Vampires Are Different: Undead fiends who prey on humans to consume their blood.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Various different types of shapeshifters who change into animalistic monsters.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The rules for werewolves vary between works.
• Our Witches Are Different
• Our Zombies Are Different: Undead ghouls who wander around in search of people to eat.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank
• Over-the-Shoulder Murder Shot
• Painful Transformation: A transformation causes severe physical agony and suffering for the victim.
• Paint the Town Red
• Paranoia Fuel: A work has disturbing scenes that would make the audience become paranoid of similar things happening to them in real life.
• Parasites Are Evil
• Parasitic Horror: Parasitism being played for horror and squick.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse
• Pendulum of Death
• People Farms
• Personal Horror: Horror derived from one's own severe internal conflicts and fighting their inner demons.
• Perverse Puppet
• Pest Controller
• Phlegmings
• Phone Call from the Dead
• Picky People Eater
• Pig Man: Humanoid pigs.
• Pleasure Island
• Poltergeist: A particular type of troublemaking ghost found in haunted houses.
• Poorly Lit Pareidolia
• Portrait Painting Peephole
• Possession Levitation
• The Power of Blood
• Precautionary Corpse Disposal
• Predators Are Mean: Carnivores are dangerous.
• Pretend We're Dead
• Primal Fear: Nearly universal (or just widespread) sources of fear.
• Protect This House
• Psycho Knife Nut: Knives are used for evil purposes.
• Psychological Torment Zone
• Psycho Party Member
• Psychopathic Manchild: A childlike lunatic who tends to do very horrific things because of their insanity and immaturity.
• "Psycho" Strings: Having a waterphone/string instrument play loud, shrill sounds is an effective way to make the scene intense and disturbing.
• Pumpkin Person: A being with a pumpkin for a head.
• Pupating Peril: Cocoons and what will eventually emerge from them being depicted as creepy, ominous and horrifying.
• Puppeteer Parasite: A creature that invades someone's body to seize control of their brain.
• Pushed at the Monster
• Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: There's a serious outbreak of a horrible illness going around, and anyone suspected of being infected is forcibly locked up and isolated from the public (or even killed outright) to prevent the disease spreading.
• Raincoat of Horror
• Rain of Blood
• Raised Hand of Survival
• Raising the Steaks: Undead animals.
• Rape as Drama: Onscreen sexual assault can be very disturbing.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
• Rapid Aging: Someone's youth is drained right before their very eyes.
• Razor Apples
• Realism-Induced Horror: Fear and terror that is derived not from supernatural monsters or slasher villains, but from things that could very plausibly happen in reality.
• Really 700 Years Old
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: An evil character has red eyes.
• Red Sky, Take Warning
• Regret Eating Me: Someone about to be eaten spites the one eating them by stating that they hope being eaten gives them digestive problems.
• Religion of Evil
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: A monster has to be killed by a blow to the head.
• The Renfield
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent
• Resist the Beast
• Resurrected Murderer: Sometimes killers don't stay dead.
• Rise from Your Grave
• Ritual Magic: Magical rituals that are usually demonic or dark by nature.
• Rivers of Blood
• Room 101: A Torture Cellar that encapsulates the worst fears of the victim.
• Room Full of Crazy
• Room Full of Zombies: A character is trapped in a room full of undead Mooks.
• Run or Die
• Sackhead Slasher: A murderer who wears a mask made from sackcloth.
• Sadist: A sick and twisted person who enjoys hurting other people.
• Safe Zone Hope Spot
• Salem Is Witch Country
• Sanity Slippage: Someone gradually becomes insane.
• Santabomination: Santa Claus is an Eldritch Abomination.
• Satan: An evil demon from The Bible that rebelled against God.
• Satanic Archetype: A (demonic) villain modeled after the above.
• The Savage South: Places in southern regions are barbaric and dangerous.
• Scare Chord: A disturbing note of music plays during a scary scene.
• Scare Dare
• Scary Flashlight Face
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box
• Scary Scarecrows: There's a good reason why the crows stay away from this thing.
• Scary Scorpions: You definitely don't want to be on the recieving end of its venomous stinger.
• Scary Skeleton
• Scary Stitches
• Scary Teeth: Teeth that are disturbing.
• Scenery Gorn
• Science Is Bad: Not all scientific research will lead to beneficial enlightenment or social/technological progress for the better. Especially if a Mad Scientist with little in the way of moral ethics or common sense decides to mess around with things that are better left alone...
• Screamer Trailer: A trailer featuring a jump scare.
• Screaming Woman: A female shriek is often heard in response to something scary.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Villain is imprisoned somewhere, usually so that he/she can be let out to wreak chaos.
• Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear: An evil entity in a cute body.
• Sea Monster: A monster that lives in the ocean.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: Food made of human meat.
• Secret Squatter
• Security Cling
• See-Thru Specs
• Self-Made Orphan
• Sense-Impaired Monster
• Senseless Phagia
• Sensor Suspense
• Sensory Abuse
• Serial Killer: A murderer who has made a sick hobby of killing a series of individual people, one after another.
• Serial Rapist: A sick pervert who has made a hobby out of molesting and raping people.
• The Seven Mysteries
• Sex Signals Death: People get murdered after having sex.
• Shadow Discretion Shot
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The story ends with the protagonists dying rendering their efforts to stop the evil pointless.
• Sickly Green Glow
• Silver Bullet: Weapons made of silver are extra-effective against supernatural beings, usually vampires or werewolves.
• Sinister Car
• Sinister Geometry
• Sinister Minister
• Sinister Nudity: Nudity is used as a signifier of villainy and horror.
• Sinister Scraping Sound
• Sinister Scythe
• Sinister Southwest
• Sinister Subway
• Sinister Whistling
• Sirens Are Mermaids: Don't let their beauty fool you, these sea nymphs don't intend to keep you around after dinnertime.
• SkeleBot 9000: A robot that looks like a skeleton.
• Skeleton Crew
• Skull for a Head
• Slasher Smile: A villain has a broad and disturbing grin, usually shown before or after causing serious mayhem.
• Slashers Prefer Blondes: Murderers tend to target blonde-haired women.
• Sleep Paralysis Creature
• Slow Transformation: A metamorphosis is gradual, building up dramatic tension until it's complete.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Snakes are creepy.
• Snuff Film: A film that portrays real torture and murder.
• The Sociopath: A person lacking in empathy and morals can be capable of doing very evil, scary things without hesitation or remorse.
• Sole Surviving Scientist
• Sorting Algorithm of Mortality: The order in which characters are typically killed.
• Soul Jar
• Sound-Only Death: The violence is only heard, not seen.
• Southern Gothic: Horror, madness and decadence in the southern U.S.
• Southern Gothic Satan: A mysterious stranger arrives in town to bring its sins to light and make sure that it's eaten alive by them.
• Space Isolation Horror: The fright comes primarily from being isolated in the cold, dark void of space, occasionally magnified by an external threat like an alien or a dangerous AI.
• Spawn Broodling
• Speak of the Devil
• Spiders Are Scary: A monstrous spider that you should be terrified of, whether you have arachnophobia or not.
• Spider Swarm
• Spirit World: The world of spirits.
• Spooky Animal Sounds: Ambient animal sounds used to create an atmosphere of danger.
• Spooky Painting
• Spooky Photographs
• Spooky Séance: A séance where weird and paranormal things occur.
• Spree Killer: A mass-murderer who goes on a quick killing spree.
• Spring-Heeled Jack: A Victorian urban legend about an iron-clawed, high-jumping demon stalking London.
• Spring-Loaded Corpse
• Stages of Monster Grief
• Staking the Loved One: Being forced to kill someone you care about after they've been turned into a monster.
• Stalker Shot: A character thinks she's alone until the camera reveals she's being stalked without her knowledge.
• The Stars Are Going Out: Stars going out, usually used to indicate an apocalypse.
• Stingy Jack: A figure with a pumpkin head doomed to Walking the Earth.
• Stock Slasher: The archetypal Slasher Movie villain: a nigh-invincible, masked or deformed serial/spree killer.
• Strapped to an Operating Table
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: A (often Japanese) female ghost with long black hair and a white dress.
• Stripped to the Bone: Someone is killed in a way that their skeleton is all that's left of them.
• Suburban Gothic: Horror, madness and decadence in Suburbia.
• Succubi and Incubi: Demons are sensual and seductive, or simply rapists.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: A survivor in the first film is killed off at the start of the film.
• Sugar Apocalypse: An idyllic and saccharine place gets destroyed or conquered by sinister forces.
• Suit with Vested Interests
• Summoning Artifact: An artifact that summons a monster.
• Summoning Ritual
• Summon Magic
• Supernatural Light
• Supernatural-Proof Father
• Super-Persistent Predator: A hunter or monster that will endlessly chase its prey until they've got them.
• Superweapon Suspense Subversion: Superweapons, especially those that are indiscriminately destructive, are nightmarish in their abilities, and authors can thus play up the horror of one by merely pretending to fire them.
• Supporting the Monster Loved One
• Surprisingly Sudden Death
• Surreal Horror: When weird, bizarre, and outright nonsensical things become very frightening.
• Swamp Monster: A monstrous creature that resides in a swamp.
• Swamps Are Evil: It's especially a bad idea to venture too deeply inside forested wetlands.
• Swarm of Rats: A huge, clustered mob of rats.
• Tainted Veins
• Taken During the Ending: A character/object is taken away at the end of the story for a purpose, leaving it ambiguous on what's going to happen next.
• Tarot Motifs: Tarot cards used as symbolism.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: Stuffed animals — or the people who stuff them — are used to disconcerting effect.
• Taxidermy Terror
• Tear Off Your Face
• Tears of Blood
• Technicolor Magic
• Technicolor Toxin
• Television Portal
• Tentacled Terror: Many strange monsters have tentacles for some reason, perfect for grabbing their prey.
• Tentative Light
• Terrifying Pet Store Rat
• Terror at Make-Out Point
• Terror Hero: A heroic character with a frightening disposition who everyone is terrified of.
• Theatre Phantom
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night
• This Was His True Form
• Threatening Shark: A vicious shark.
• Through the Eyes of Madness
• Toilet Horror: Bad things happening while you're in the bathroom.
• Tombstone Teeth
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: A book full of dangerous occult knowledge.
• Tongue Trauma
• Too Many Mouths
• Too Much for Man to Handle
• Torches and Pitchforks
• Torso with a View: Killing someone by shooting a hole through their chest.
• Torture Cellar
• Tortured Monster
• Torture Technician
• To Serve Man: Non-human creatures like to eat human beings.
• Touch of the Monster
• Town with a Dark Secret: The inhabitants of a small town or village are hiding some sort of sinister secrets from outsiders.
• The Tragic Rose
• Transformation Horror: Physical changes that look and feel terrible for whoever experiences them.
• Transhuman Treachery
• Trapped in Containment
• Trapped-with-Monster Plot
• Traumatic C-Section: A pregnant woman has the fetus ripped from their body.
• Tulpa
• Tuneless Song of Madness
• Two-Faced
• Überwald: A location in Eastern Europe filled with supernatural spookiness (especially vampires and werewolves).
• Uncanny Atmosphere
• Uncanny Valley: Characters consider something that isn't alive or real to be disturbing for being too lifelike or realistic in appearance.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: She seems perfect, but there's something... not quite right about this girl.
• Uncanny Valley Makeup: Makeup that makes the wearer look disconcerting.
• Undead Abomination: An eldritch abomination that’s undead.
• Undead Author: A dead person tells the story of how they were killed.
• Undead Child: A dead kid who has returned as a ghost/vampire/zombie/etc.
• Undeath Always Ends
• Undeathly Pallor: The undead have pale skin.
• Unexpectedly Abandoned
• Unfinished Business
• Unholy Ground
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Viewers consider something that isn't alive or real to be disturbing for being too lifelike or realistic in appearance.
• Unnaturally Looping Location
• Unnervingly Heartwarming: An outwardly heartwarming moment made deliberately unsettling or even horrific through undermining elements.
• Unseen Evil
• Up Close with the Monster
• Urban Legends: Modern folktales, which are sometimes also horror stories.
• Vagina Dentata: Vaginas with teeth.
• Vampire Bites Suck
• Vampire Hickey: When a vampire leaves their bite mark on a victim, allowing someone to find it when they examine said victim and/or it staying with the victim after they turn.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods
• Vampires Hate Garlic
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Vampires are depicted sleeping in coffins.
• Vampire Variety Pack
• Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Someone tries to kill monsters who aren't intending to harm or kill anyone.
• Vengeful Abandoned Toy: A sentient toy turns evil after being abandoned or forgotten.
• Vengeful Ghost: The angry spirit of a dead person (especially a murder/suicide victim) who rises from their grave to seek revenge on their enemies.
• Vertical Kidnapping: A character is dragged upwards by the villain and kidnapped/killed.
• Violence Is Disturbing
• Viral Transformation: Some monsters can attack and turn people into more of their kind.
• The Virus: A monster that has the ability to turn others into other monsters.
• Virus-Victim Symptoms: The symptoms after being infected by a monster.
• Voice Changeling: A monster lures in prey by imitating the voice of someone or something that sounds harmless.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot
• Wall Crawl: A character supernaturally crawls on a wall.
• The Walls Have Eyes
• War Is Hell: Violent conflict between opposing armed forces will inevitably result in lots of people (soldiers and civilians alike) dying gruesomely, while the survivors may be badly injured or mentally traumatized for the rest of their lives.
• Was Once a Man: A monster that started off as a mortal human.
• Wax Museum Morgue: A museum where the "dummies" are actually the preserved corpses of people the owner has killed.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties
• Weight Loss Horror: If it results in you starving to the point of death, then yeah losing weight can be very unpleasant.
• Weird Moon
• The Weird Sisters
• Wendigo: A cannibalistic monster from Algonquian mythology.
• What Happened to Mommy?
• White Mask of Doom: Chances are, the man in a white mask is not your friend.
• Who You Gonna Call?: A service dedicated to getting rid of supernatural pests.
• Wicked Witch: An evil witch.
• Wight in a Wedding Dress: A undead creature in a bridal gown.
• Wipe That Smile Off Your Face
• The Witch Hunter
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Supernatural powers take a toll on the psyche of the user.
• Wolf Man: A humanoid wolf.
• Wolves Always Howl at the Moon
• Womb Horror
• Word-Salad Horror: Random words are played for horror.
• World of Chaos
• The Worm That Walks: A person that's really a colony of insects in disguise.
• Would Hurt a Child: A villain who hurts children.
• Xenomorph Xerox
• You Are Who You Eat: A creature or person can absorb features and abilities from its victims.
• You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost
• Your Soul Is Mine!
• Zombie Apocalypse: Dead people have risen from their graves to attack the living, causing the collapse of global civilization.
• Zombie Puke Attack: Zombies can vomit up acidic bile as a weapon.
• Zombify the Living