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[W]hen you get past the age where you’re capable of believing there’s something carnivorous and hairy under the bed, you don't then lose your capacity for fear. The monsters go, and in their place, lucky you, you get to start imagining real calamities: losing your parents in a car wreck, becoming destitute, having someone you love turn on you, or doing something so shocking that the community ostracizes you.
—Alyx Dellamonica, Twilight vs. Flowers in the Attic: Sick Sex Smackdown, Eighties Style
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After one has seen a thousand horror movies, most scary things loses some of their effect. Even Primal Fears get less scary the more exposure you receive. And let's face it: You have to be a little bit crazy to worry about evil clowns, Body Horror, or plain old snakes while you're not watching the film.
Adult Fears are about the things every mature, well-adjusted adult should be concerned about: the safety of their children, is where you live safe to live in, or being able to pay your bills. Rule of Scary is needed to get from concern to real fear, but Willing Suspension of Disbelief must be maintained for effect. To an adult, kids being preyed upon by pedophiles is scarier than kids being preyed upon by velociraptors.
Can have political purposes as well as entertaining ones.
The audience reaction is still to be scared, but Adult Fear is one trope used to get the reaction.
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Other Examples[]
Webcomics[]
- in Tales of the Questor, we have the arc "Hunter of Shadows." Imagine that your child has been suffering from inexplicable night terrors—unable to sleep for fear of monstrous creatures creeping out of the shadows at night to get him. Then one stormy night you come running to his room to find out that his terrors are REAL-- and are crawling up onto his bed after him....
- This is heavily implied to be why Tiger became a superhero and Spinnerette's mentor. His wife demanded he give up crime-fighting out of fear of him dying. He complies... until a gunman opens fire at his daughters' school. His daughters were fine, but the news traveled slowly.
Web Original[]
- Snopes has an entire collection of Urban Legends with this trope in mind under the Parental Nightmares section.
- This Bash quote.
- The Nostalgia Critic's kindergarten drawing of his parents as monsters bloodily tearing him apart has a tendency to affect real life parents more than the teenagers of his fanbase.
- Potter Puppet Pals parodies the whole concept of Adult Fear in "Harry's Nightmares", where, nestled in among the bizarre and occasionally juvenile ("In one dream, I was middle aged! Yuck!") traumas that haunt his noggin, was the dream he had where he gave birth to Ron, and raised him from infancy, but one day, he misplaced him, and that terrified him, because it meant he had failed as a parent.
- In Silver, of the Elcenia series, Ehail and Gyre start adopting shren children—essentially, these children have a disability which is very much looked down upon, which is why the children's parents left them. Ehail and Gyre end up losing their children.