Nightmare Fuel / Tarzan - TV Tropes

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

The original novels

• Tarzan's father's death via being brutally murdered by Kerchak.
• Tarzan has a habit of wanting his enemies to suffer before he kills them — not physically, but mentally and emotionally. He is extremely good at finding ways to scare the hell out of people, and he never hesitates to do it when it serves his purpose.
  • In Tarzan of the Apes, he convinces a village of natives that he's a jungle demon, by methodically murdering warriors in increasingly horrifying and apparently supernatural ways. Then he starts slipping into the village at night and stealing arrows and food. After two or three such incidents, they make a habit of leaving out food and weapons for him.
  • In The Return of Tarzan he enlists the Waziri in his efforts to terrify and drive out the Arab slave raiders who attack the Waziri village.
  • In The Beasts of Tarzan, the narrative repeatedly describes how the appearance of his beasts — five great apes and a large leopard — scare his enemies so badly that most of them are incapable of fighting back effectively.
  • In Tarzan the Untamed he imprisons Major Schneider in a small canyon whose walls are unclimbable, while the only exit is through a cave that is the den of a monstrously large lion. Said lion is starving because Tarzan previously blocked up the outer entrance to the cave with the lion inside. Schneider's only refuge is to climb a tree. No food, no water, no way out — Schneider will eventually fall, and then...
  • In Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle he relentlessly harasses a party of Arab raiders and their black slaves, killing them at regular intervals so that they know when one of them is going to die, but not who.

The Disney Film

• The horde of angry baboons that try to kill Jane. Their black color and red eyes makes them feel almost demonic. They also seem to have no problem completely covering their prey.
  • It gets so much worse when you discover how dangerous these animals in Real Life, and how Tarzan and Jane could have literally been torn to screws of muscle and bones.
• The jungle in general is pretty nightmarish in Real Life with every other animal being poisonous, every other plant being thorny, and every other human being some kind of human trafficker. While the film downplays all of those it delivers its own nightmare fuel with its portrayal of the jungle as basically a bottomless pit. Apart from scenes at sea level, most parts of the jungle feel like they go down forever. Then remember that the few dangerous animals we see would be endlessly multiplied by the infinite chasm of vegetation.