http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/StarWarsCloneWars
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- Admit it, General Grievous' intro fight scared you when you were a kid
. The deaths of some of the Jedi that Grievous fought were very unsettling. The music playing throughout the fight doesn't help things either. The whole episode was treated like a horror movie, the way Grievous kept vanishing only to pop out and tear someone to bits, the tense music, the way the young Jedi freaks out. It's like watching an animated version of Alien with lightsabers.
- Episode 23 has a short "montage" of Grievous killing clone troopers. At one point, he kicks a clone trooper so hard that said-trooper's helmet cracks, then shatters another's helmet underfoot; others he simply kicks to death, and considering that his kicks are strong enough to fracture duracrete, it's probably for the best we don't see what they look like afterwards. After a while it simply cuts out and we start getting Sound Only Deaths note, heightening the tension and letting the viewer's imagination run wild.
- That Grievous enters the scene by crushing a terrified Sha'Gi to death beneath him certainly aids the terror.
- The aftermath of it all is quite horrifying too. Ki-Adi Mundi, an expert survivor and one of the strongest beings in the Jedi Council, is needing huge efforts only to keep himself calm, with wounds all over his body and clearly in shock after his entire crew, him included, almost got killed by a nigh-unstoppable killing machine.
- Just as the ARC troopers arrive, Grievous knocks away Ki-Adi Mundi's lightsaber and is about to deliver the final blow. If the troopers had arrived even a second later, Ki-Adi would be dead.
- Anakin's venture into the cave on Nelvaan gives us this
rather creepy bit of foreshadowing, as Anakin sees the Story of the Ghost Hand play out before him. It finishes with the helpless hero, his village and family devoured by the Ghost Hand, having an And I Must Scream moment...before the Ghost Hand reforms into the image of Darth Vader.
- On top of that, Anakin is able to hear a pained and horrified Padme screaming for him just before he snaps out of his vision. It's a beautifully creepy bit of Foreshadowing as to what he'll ultimately do to himself and to Padme.
- Among Darth Vader's signature visages are the cold, expressionless lenses of his mask, but this apparition of Vader displays him with actual eyes exhibiting a truly hateful glare.
- Unable to break the shield surrounding the siphon generator's power core, Anakin is forced to thrust his robotic hand into the generator's electric field to grab the crystal. He is screaming in agony the entire time.
- In spite of it being a Pay Evil unto Evil moment, the sequence where Anakin falls into an Unstoppable Rage and slaughters the Skakoan scientists after witnessing the cruel experiments on the Nelvaanian males. The look on his face when he is about to kill them is pure hatred. The reaction of the Nelvaanians towards the slaughter speaks volumes. The death of the lead scientist deserves special mention. According to both canon and other Legends stories, Skakoans come from a planet with a high-pressure atmosphere. If their pressure suits were to get breached, they would explosively decompress. While the scientist doesn't explode, the sight of his neck and pressure suit getting crushed while releasing gas is more visually unsettling than what usually happens to Anakin (and Darth Vader's) other Force Choke victims
.
- The Techno Union's horrific experiments themselves. The Nelvaanian males are taken prisoner, stuffed into vats of green liquid, and the Skakoans do something horrible to them that melts their flesh and turns them into grotesque, morbidly obese Bioweapon Beasts many times larger than their original humanoid forms. These mutants then have their right hands amputated and replaced with Arm Cannons that seem to draw power from somewhere inside their bodies. It's not very pleasant.
- The series' portrayal of Asajj Ventress. It doesn't resemble the loony dark lady from the Star Wars: Republic comics where she debut, not even the poised assassin The Clone Wars would later turn her into. Instead, she is almost a different being, one that is just feral, bizarre and creepy, and her blank white eyes only start to tell it.
- Anakin's rage during his battle with Ventress. The last time he was that angry he slaughtered a village. It's the same rage that would fuel Vader for decades.
- To put it in perspective, the exact moment that Vader - or at least, what will become Vader - takes over is when Anakin catches the would-be Coup de Grâce from Ventress with his bare hands. Duel Of The Fates kicks in, Anakin's face is framed in an eerie red light, and with little effort, he squeezes Ventress' arm so hard she drops one of her sabers and pushes her to the edge of the temple they've been fighting on. There's a single, lingering shot of Anakin picking up the discarded blade with the Force, then he snaps. He roars in anger, charges straight at her, breaks through her defenses and beats her into the ground, with the horrified spectres of Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Yoda appearing between every strike, and then and only then does the ground give way and Ventress fall to her (temporary) doom. He then lets out a feral yell of triumph. Anakin might be years off from properly becoming Vader, but in that moment, the spirit of the Sith Lord that would terrorize a galaxy firmly took root in Anakin's soul.
- The Battle of Coruscant shows that the space battle is so full of ships that one of the Confederacy ships coming out of hyperspace promptly rams into a Republic ship, unable to stop in time.
- Just a few seconds earlier, as Saesee Tiin approaches the battle in his ship, it looks like the white dots in the distance are stars. Zoom in and you'll see that every single one is a massive spaceship. A simple yet effective way to show the scale of the biggest battle in Star Wars history.
- Grievous gives some more Nightmare Fuel during the Battle of Coruscant; heralding his appearance by stomping across the roof of Palpatine's office. Shaak Ti clearly realizes what is happening and urges Palpatine to come with her. Then the footsteps stop... and just as Palpatine claims that it was nothing, Grievous' head pops into view. It's slightly comical, yet also utterly terrifying.
- It's not the first time that he does this either; after dispatching several Magnaguards, Shaak Ti rejoins her fellow Jedi and reminds them that they have to leave - and the train that was behind her finishes passing, revealing Grievous standing right THERE.
- Then he manages to get to Palpatine's bunker ahead of them and lie in wait, appearing out of the darkness when he ignites his sabers.
- The entire experience is quite terrifying for Shaak Ti, as she has already faced Grievous once-at Hypori, the battle where Grievous debuted in the series. She had Grievous wipe out her troops and beat her within an inch of her life... And now she has to fight him again.
Shaak Ti: We have to go! NOW!
- The scariest moment, however, has him as the victim. Grievous prepares to face Mace Windu... Who simply uses the Force to crush his ribcage. In a single instant, with a single move that didn't even physically touch him, the unstoppable Hero Killer has been turned into someone who has to run against Jedi. Grievous' expression of bug-eyed horror and pain really adds to the moment, as does the sickly, wheezing cough he immediately lets out.
- Making this scarier is that Grievous had been warned about this: earlier, Dooku had told him that "If you are to succeed in combat against the best of the Jedi, you must have fear, surprise, and intimidation on your side. But if any element is lacking, it would be best for you to retreat", and Mace Windu demonstrated why - graphically.
- The very fact that the Battle of Coruscant is one giant smokescreen to allow Palpatine to get into position to enact the final stages of his master plan. He orchestrated an untold - but no doubt numerous - number of deaths solely to set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the fall of the Republic and Anakin becoming Darth Vader.
- When the 2 Jedi escort Palpatine to his bunker, he is pretending to be a terrified victim. Then when Grievous attacks the Jedi, Palpatine slinks into the shadows and the facade fades away into a cold, emotionless stare.
- Durge's Evil Laugh when Obi-Wan tries to stab him sounds very otherworldly and demonic.
- During the final assault on the Muunilinst command center, Durge is revealed to not only be hard to kill and capable of regenerating and literally pulling himself back together, his body is made almost entirely out of nerve and muscle. He tries to defeat Obi-Wan by "consuming" him with his entire body, only to be defeated by Obi-Wan using the Force to make him gruesomely explode from inside. And he apparently survived that too, as what's left of him can be seen crawling away. (In fact, it was originally planned for Durge to be the climax villain of Chapter 20 until George Lucas decided to use it as General Grievous' debut.)
- Very subtle, but when Anakin enters the temple on Yavin IV the dripping of water sounds suspiciously similar to the sustained breathing of his future self.
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