Nightmare Fuel / X-Men: First Class

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The film's Big Bad, Sebastian Shaw, provides so much Nightmare Fuel that he gets this entire folder to himself, because literally the entire reason the X-Men even formed in this universe was to stop terrorists like him! He's basically what would happen if you took Magneto, made him a Nazi and removed his more positive traits, such as his — albeit twisted — love for Charles and Raven. While on the outside Shaw is a suave old man offering kids chocolate bars and his adult colleagues champagne, on the inside lies a psychopathic, genocidal, Nigh-Invulnerable Knight Templar with the mutant power to absorb and redirect kinetic energy. Bullets? Grenades? Rockets? Nukes? You could shoot 100 each at him, and all it would do is feed him. Hell, it'd probably even be enough for him to destroy the entire planet if he really wanted to!

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• Thematically, it's highly likely his character was designed to be the mutant version of Satan. Just think about it: even disregarding that he's exceptionally evil, prideful and manipulative, Shaw is borderline immortal and powerful, goes by at least one other alias (Klaus Schmidt), and leads the Hellfire Club, one of whom's members is Azazel. The particular manner in which he corrupts Magneto and Angel can very easily be considered a parallel to the fall of Lucifer, or the Fallen Angels who followed him out of Heaven to rebel against God, and Professor X is clearly the franchise's Messianic Archetype. This whole analysis makes Shaw's character all the more terrifying.
• His inexplicable afterimages after absorbing energy, especially that of a nuclear reactor in the climax. You're seeing what a Voice of the Legion would look like.
  • And that's just in the final product! He actually looked far worse in unused concept art for the film, which you can view for yourself in this here gallery on the Marvel Movies Wiki.
• Kevin Bacon's acting alone completely seals the deal with how intimidating Shaw is. If you've ever seen Sleepers or Hollow Man before the release of this film, you already know just how goddamn terrifying he can be as the main villain, charming on the outside but a sociopath on the inside.
• In the prologue, Shaw's Establishing Character Moment as Dr. Klaus Schmidt, a Nazi Mad Scientist, is cornering Erik and his innocent Jew mother in his office, pulling out a gun, slowly counting to three, and threatening to kill her if he doesn't use his magnetic powers to move a tiny metal coin. Despite Erik's best efforts, he cannot move the coin so Shaw pulls the trigger, killing his poor mother before lowering the gun with a bored look on his face. And he's wearing glasses throughout all of it. Talk Four Eyes, Zero Soul.
  • Overall, Shaw's introductory scene even before that perfectly displays his creep factor even (seemingly at first) without powers. Again, he seems genuinely nice and even fatherly when he offers Erik some chocolate while claiming that he's "not like" the Nazis, but when the camera shows the torture room on the left-hand side of his office, you just know his true intentions are not good. Later on in the film, the memory flashes we see when Emma Frost uses her powers on him only confirm that room was not for show; Shaw did more to Erik than just kill his mother.
  • During this same scene, when young Erik trashes Shaw's lab and kills the guards in a fit of grief due to his mother's murder, the latter starts laughing at the former's chaos and destruction, yelling "wonderful" and "excellent" in German. To say Shaw has a Lack of Empathy is a huge understatement; he enjoys seeing other people's anger and pain, just For Science!
• Later on, Shaw's power is revealed when he calls Colonel Hendry's bluff of using a grenade to kill himself along with the Hellfire Club, calmly walks over to the colonel, gently takes the grenade, and pulls the pin himself with a smirk on his face. At first glance, it appears as though Shaw is leading a suicide cult with other mutants, so he's fine with just blowing everyone up since he's already succeeded in kickstarting a potential nuclear war... but then it's quickly revealed that he's a mutant himself, absorbing the grenade's explosion with his bare hands. He then lightly taps the colonel's shoulder, releasing the blast from the grenade and obliterating him instantaneously. It's probably for the best that the camera quickly cuts away so we viewers don't see the aftermath.
• Midway through the film, Charles reads Emma Frost's mind, seeing Shaw's plan of causing a nuclear apocalypse through which only mutants would survive, culminating in Hellfire Club taking over what's left through a dictatorship, with the image of them standing over the smoking ruins of Washington DC and the White House, with crowds shouting "President Shaw". Then Emma gives us this gem with a smile:
  Emma: Beautiful, isn't it?
• Shaw, Riptide and Azazel's attack on the CIA facility is Nightmare Fuel incarnate. It arguably has the makings of a Slasher Movie: just six helpless young mutants in their 20s, trapped in a room, crying while Forced to Watch the dozens of armed soldiers and agents vainly attempting to defend them with their lives get absolutely brutalized by all three attackers in the span of just three and a half minutes. They even destroy Cerebro so that Professor X can't find the Hellfire Club and stop Shaw's evil plot later.
  • Not once does Shaw display any sort of emotion while slaughtering these men. If anything, he just looks bored, as if he's casually walking through aisles in the grocery store. Best shown while slowly walking up to one agent pointing a gun at him in the main atrium:
    Shaw: Where are the mutants?
    Agent: You take another step, I'm gonna put you down!
    Shaw: Of course you will. But where can I find the more evolved people?
    [The agent shoots Shaw in the chest thrice, only for him to absorb the energy. The agent then speaks into his radio:]
    Agent: Send backup now!
    [The agent backs up and shoots Shaw four more time to no avail before getting a Neck Lift.]
  • After throwing the agent upwards high into the ceiling, Shaw absorbs more bullets and then a bazooka rocket, blowing up the entire atrium of soldiers with but a single Shockwave Stomp. You can actually faintly see a couple of the soldiers trying to fall back once the explosion starts, only to be promptly consumed by the fire while running away.
  • Special mention goes to the Sound-Only Death right before Shaw walks into said room:
    Soldier: You want the mutants? They're right through that door! Just let us normal people go! We're no threa-- *splat*
  • Lastly, Darwin's extremely horrifying death, slowly being burned from the inside out when Shaw forces an energy bomb down his throat. The audience can see his body trying to fight it. The worst part is the end; he reaches out to Alex, face completely calm, and disintegrates. Not only does this scene really raises the stakes for the movie since Darwin's mutation made him almost invincible, it shows that not even fellow mutants are safe from Shaw's wrath.
• The scene immediately following the CIA attack isn't as scary but it still counts. Shaw goes to Russia, threatening the Soviet General Armivolkoff so as to kickstart nuclear war:
  Shaw: Once again, my sympathies for your treatment at the hands of the CIA. These Americans are ruthless. Now they have placed missiles in Turkey... I expect you'll be planning new missile sites of your own. Somewhere you know the American early-warning system won't help. I hear Cuba is lovely this time of year. And so close to Florida.
  Armivolkoff: Missiles in Cuba? [laughs] You're serious? We may as well declare war.
  Shaw: [in English] Maybe I wasn't clear enough. You will make this happen.
  Armivolkoff: [in Russian] Okay. [in English] Let's see what KGB think about this.
  [Armivolkoff walks over to his telephone, speaking back in Russian to call the KGB.]
  Armivolkoff: Hello? General Armivolkoff.
  [Jump Scare: Azazel teleports into the room right in front of the general, alongside Angel and Riptide. The KGB speak to the general over the phone.]
  Armivolkoff: ...It's nothing.
• While fighting Erik in the Hall of Mirrors during the film's climax, Shaw "apologizes" for his actions towards him as a little boy... only to then start brutally beating him and downplaying said actions as Tough Love so that he'd become more powerful against all the bigots of humanity, since Erik has already seen the worst of them firsthand. The fact that Erik then goes on to state that he agrees with Shaw is eerily similar to an Abusive Parent gaslighting their child, with Shaw even calling him "son" at one point. Observe:
  Shaw: Why are you on their side? Why fight for a doomed race who will hunt as down as soon as they realize their reign is coming to an end?
  [Erik punches Shaw in the face, but he absorbs the hit without moving.]
  Shaw: I'm sorry for what happened in the camps. I truly am.
  [Shaw uses a Finger Poke of Doom to send Erik hurling into a glass mirror.]
  Shaw: But everything I did, I did for you. To unlock your power, to make you... embrace it.
  [Shaw grabs Erik by the chin and throws him into another mirror.]
  Shaw: You've come a long way from bending gates. I'm So Proud of You.
  [Erik destroys the rest of the mirrors with his magnetic powers, trying and failing to crush Shaw.]
  Shaw: And you're just starting to scratch the surface. Think how much further we can go, together.
  [Shaw pins Erik to the wall.]
  Shaw: I don't want to hurt you, Erik. I never did. I want to help you. This is our time, our age. We are the future of the human race. You and me, son. This world can be ours.
  Erik: Everything you did made me stronger. Made me the weapon I am today. It's the truth. I've known it all along.
  [Shaw grows a Slasher Smile on his face.]
  • And that's just the tip of an already twisted iceberg; Shaw basically won this fight, even if he didn't live to see the fruits of his victory. He didn't leave the submarine alive nor did he succeed in starting World War III, but instead he won the battle for Erik's soul, corrupting him into becoming the megalomaniacal extremist we all know and love today. Erik actively despises Shaw (and rightfully so) while at the same time fully adopting his visionary, genocidal, misanthropic, dog-eat-dog worldview, and he even takes Shaw's helmet to remember him by before trying to start nuclear war himself. In short, Erik accidentally crippling Charles, as well as every other atrocity he committed in the original trilogy and beyond as Magneto? It all happened because of Shaw.
• And finally, his death. He might have had it coming, but it's still scary to watch Charles screaming in excruciating pain as Erik is slowly and deliberately driving a coin through Shaw's head, who Charles was telepathically connected to at the time. The thing by itself is horrific, and this makes it even worse (it's essentially experiencing death without actually dying). You can also see Shaw's look of horror as the coin gets closer and closer to him, unable to move or even scream in horror due to being frozen.