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Quote1I'm afraid. But that doesn't mean I can't fight back!Quote2
Raven[src]

"Fear Itself" is the fifth episode of season two and the overall 18th episode of the Teen Titans series.

Synopsis[]

Raven doesn't fear anything, or that's at least what she wants the others to think. But when Beast Boy rents a scary film for the Titans to watch later in the night, strange things start to happen, and one by one each of the Titans start to disappear. But the main question the remaining Titans, including Raven, are wondering is; Who is behind all of this?

Plot[]

FearItself19

"Check it out; Movie night!"

The episode begins with an attack going down at the video store. The villain responsible is an obese fanboy geek calling himself Control Freak armed with a customized TV remote of his own invention capable of animating anything it's aimed at into a deadly living monster with the push of a button, while holding an innocent female store clerk hostage. Among these monsters include, but are not limited to, a jumbotron armed with electrified cables for tentacles, a flat cardboard Samurai, and even living VHS tapes with elastic tentacles. The Teen Titans arrive and manage to hold their ground against Control Freak's monsters just fine (except for Cyborg who spends the entire second half of the battle vomiting evil living candy into a trash can outside). When the monsters have the Titans surrounded, the situation appears grim until Robin throws his birdarangs at the fire sprinklers, triggering a rainfall that vanquishes them all by shorting them out or crumbling them to mush. With his remote neutralized as well, Robin secures Control Freak and Beast Boy digs out of the mess to find a famously terrifying horror movie, Wicked Scary, and presents it to the team back at the tower. After Robin secures Control Freak's remote in the evidence room and gets back up to the living room, Beast Boy explains the notorious reputation of the movie. Not only is it petrifyingly frightening, but, by legend, its supposed to be "cursed". The Titans take Beast Boy's word for it and watch it with their eyes glued to the TV. Safe to say, Beast Boy's description of the movie's reputation turns out to be 100% accurate, if not, beyond accurate, as the Titans are completely frozen in sheer terror at the extremely frightening film set before them, so much in fact that even a hard-boiled minded person such as Raven finds herself unnerved. But she refuses to admit it to the others.


Later that night, the flash from a thunderstorm outside wakes up Raven, who, oddly enough, finds herself creeped out by her own bedroom's décor. Things get even weirder when she and the others hear a scream coming from the living room. Robin notes that it eerily sounded like the same iconic scream from the movie, but Starfire points out that nobody left the TV on, and the movie is sitting in its box on the coffee table. Suddenly, out of nowhere, all the lights go out, making the situation nowhere better than by raising the bar another notch on the creep factor. Robin remembers the thunderstorm and speculates that it tripped a circuit breaker. At that moment, a creepy tentacle gropes his shoulder and frightens everyone except him, who dismisses it as a good prank from Beast Boy. However, Beast Boy, still in his human form, points to what that tentacle actually belongs to; the, out of nowhere appearing, gruesome monster from the movie unveils itself, ready to devour them all!

Fear Itself b

Terror on the loose

The Titans try to hold their ground, but the beast's strength is in paramount, and things go from bad to worse when Raven's powers suddenly stop working. Things appear grim until all of a sudden, the creature vanishes just as mysteriously as it arrived. The Titans try to comprehend what just happened; Beast Boy immediately concludes that the movie's legend of a curse is as true as its fearsome reputation; watching the movie opened a portal to another plain of existence from which the monster emerged from. Now that it's on the loose in the tower, it will devour them all, starting with Beast Boy, the "good-looking comic relief guy". However, Robin comes up with a more logical conclusion: Control Freak must have escaped from jail and came to the Tower to get his remote back and take his revenge on the team (however, on a side note, this doesn't explain why Raven is powerless all of a sudden). Robin suggests they all split up and search the tower to get to the bottom of the mystery, but Beast Boy follows his common knowledge of any and all concepts regarding the Horror genre and dismisses it as a bad idea, claiming that the monster will hunt them down one at a time.

They follow a husky cry for help coming from Beast Boy's room. When they open the closet to uncover it, they are buried under a mountain of Beast Boy's laundry along with a monkey toy which was calling for help only out of function. Along the course of this grim investigation, Beast Boy keeps jibbing Raven that she is afraid, which she hotly denies. But each time she says so, something grim occurs; just then, the monster reappears and pursues the Titans down the corridor. They jump through a door only to find themselves at the mercy of a bottomless pit. Thankfully, they save themselves with the help of Starfire's flight and Robin's grapnel and make it back to the floor without the monster in sight. Just as Beast Boy tries jibbing at Raven's sense of fear again, he is ensnared and dragged into a dark doorway by shadowy tentacles and vanishes into the dark, confirming that the "funny guy goes first". The Titans try to save Beast Boy, but only pry open the door to the evidence room with no sign of him. Robin notices that Control Freak's remote is exactly where he left it and begins to suspect that Control Freak has nothing to do with what has been happening, and that what they're dealing with may be a supernatural threat. But suddenly, after briefly thinking for a moment and gluing the pieces of everything that has happened up to this point, he comes to a realization of what this whole thing is truly based off of: Fear. At that moment, Robin comes to a conclusion involving the movie, the monster, and Raven's powers. But before he can say who or what is behind it all, he is ensnared by the same shadowy tentacles that took Beast Boy. He is dragged into the wall and vanishes without a trace before Starfire, Raven, and Cyborg can save him. Cyborg frustratingly punches the wall and smashes a giant hole through it, revealing nothing but the hallway on the other side. Cyborg, Starfire and Raven are left in despair from not knowing what Robin was about to say.

FearItself46

Monsters in the basement!

Cyborg and the girls search the living room again, but there's still no trace of Robin or Beast Boy. Cyborg claims they have looked everywhere for them, to which Raven replies "Almost everywhere". Cyborg and Starfire freeze with fear on account of knowing exactly where they still have yet to search: The basement. As the remaining Titans begin searching, Starfire starts blasting at the floor when she sees something scurrying. Raven thinks it is just a few rats, but what Starfire points to on the girders above are not rats. A massive horde of rat-like monsters appear and swarm the whole complex and the remaining Titans race back to the stairs to avoid being attacked and eaten. Starfire almost makes it, but is ambushed by the rat monsters which knock her down and leave her vulnerable. When Cyborg and Raven arrive at the stairs, they see Starfire engulphed in a huge pile of the rat creatures which drag her down into the floor. By the time Cyborg comes for her, she is completely submerged and the pile disappears with her along with it. With only Cyborg and Raven remaining, Cyborg concludes that there is nothing they can do for her now and that they are just as vulnerable as everyone else. Their only remaining course of action is to find a way out of the tower and come back with help. They make it back to the top of the stairs and Raven goes ahead of him, asserting for a final time that she is not afraid. Not a moment later, Cyborg finds himself frozen with fear and Raven asks if he could light the way but turns around to see an empty pitch-black corridor without a trace of Cyborg. All there is in the dark empty corridor in front of her is a huge, black, pterodactyl monster flying straight for her. Raven races to the elevator and manages to narrowly escape the monster's deadly jaws, but her relief is cut short when the elevator fills with black ooze, which spills out into the living room. Now totally alone, she is beset by all the horrifying monsters she has encountered made out of pure darkness, including a wolf-bird like creature emerging from the window. Finally cornered and out of options, she admits that she truly is afraid, but also declares that regardless, it doesn't mean she can't fight back. Raven yells "Azarath Metrion Zinthos" and unleashes an energy wave that absorbs all the creatures. The energy wave forms into the colossal pterodactyl beast that emerges right outside above the tower and lets out a tortured roar just before dissipating, and Raven passes out on the living room floor, with black electricity flickering around her.

Fear Itself c

The end of a long, dark night

She wakes up to see that her friends are all okay. Robin explains that there never was any danger in the first place (to which the others question), because the monsters they were seeing were never real, and he explains why and how the horrific events happened the way they happened throughout the night; Raven knew she was afraid all along after watching the movie, but when she denied the fact she was, as a result, her entire sense of fear gained sentience and physical forms through her powers; her magic transformed into creatures that represented the manifestation of her own deepest fears (this explains why her powers weren't working when she wanted to use them when the tentacled monster first appeared), as in, showing monsters that she was deeply afraid of. But when Raven finally accepted her fear, she regained control of it and her magic returned to where it belonged. So long story short, Raven had accidentally created the monsters out of denying her fear, and she sheepishly apologizes. As the sun rises, the Titans decide to catch some sleep over the night's events. Beast Boy then tells Raven that her own fear was far more terrifying than the horror movie they've watched earlier and asks if she would want to do the same horrific fiasco that happened the previous night over again for Halloween. In a wide shot of Titans Tower from outside as the sun rises, Raven ends the episode by proudly saying "I'm afraid not."

Characters[]

Main character[]

Supporting characters[]

Villains[]

Others[]

  • Horror movie actress (only appearance)
  • Store clerk (only appearance)

Credits[]

Trivia[]

  • Many of the other monsters share a striking resemblance to the monsters in "Nevermore", which is almost a dead giveaway that Raven is somehow responsible for them.
  • The counter girl working at the video store resembles Sarah Simms, Cyborg's love interest from the Teen Titans Go! comics.
  • It is a little impressive how Robin figured out the full extent of Raven's powers even though Raven rarely talks about the true nature of her powers and how they work.
    • Although, in Birthmark, she openly tells him that he knows her better than anyone, indicating that, strictly out of technicality, he is her closest friend and thereby trusts him enough to tell him the most minimal things about her powers, which evidently proved enough for his detective skills to be of use in this situation.
  • Cyborg evidently has an incredibly sensitive stomach when it comes to sweets, considering a couple of handfuls of Control Freak's candy henchmen were enough to send him into a trash can outside the store for the entire second half of the battle.
    • Stranger still, Cyborg has demonstrated in multiple episodes that he has a cast iron stomach without a hint of irony.
  • Innuendo: After the first encounter with the monster, the Titans fall on top of each other. The camera cuts away as Starfire lets out a shriek and complains about claws on her "grebknacks", which causes Beast Boy to stand up and apologize, meaning he possibly grabbed her breasts by accident.
  • Beast Boy explains (with an exaggerated demonstration) that Wicked Scary is cursed, and watching it opened a portal to another dimension, allowing the monster to enter. Though it's not accurate, he's not entirely wrong. The Wicked Scary monster existed due to Raven watching the movie and not admitting that she was afraid (which, essentially, could be considered a curse). If she never watched the movie, the monster would've never become real. Or if she admitted the fact that the movie scared her in the first place, the monster still would've never become real.
  • Robin is dragged into the wall by the Wicked Scary monster at the exact moment he is about to reveal the culprit behind their makeshift house of horrors. It would be reasonable to speculate that Robin was about to conclude that their culprit, while not officially appearing in the show, would be The Scarecrow, an iconic DC Comics supervillain, and formidable adversary to Batman, capable of crafting a chemical poison that forces those infected to hallucinate that which they are most afraid of and putting that toxin to use in the form of hypodermic injection or aerosol bombs called Fear Toxin.
  • This marks the second time Raven has been forced to come to terms with literally losing control of her emotions, making them become dangerous when gaining sentience. 
    • The first time, it was Anger, which took the form of Trigon that she vanquished in hand-to-hand combat with the strength of all her other emotions combined.
    • This time, it was fear, which took the form of millions of black hellions she could only defeat by accepting her fear and being brave in the nightmarish faces of danger, which is exactly what makes her a Teen Titan.

Title[]

  • The episode title is derived from the words in President Franklin Roosevelt's famous speech, "There is nothing to fear but... fear itself." It refers to Raven having to deal with the entities casted by her own fears.

Continuity[]

Cultural references[]

  • As the "evil fanboy" he is, Control Freak makes several obvious references to well-known movie franchises, including:
    • Star Trek, particularly Star Trek V and the TV episode "Trouble with Tribbles". His remote control also uses a sound effect from the transporter from the original series.
    • Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Control Freak quotes a line spoken by Yoda: "You will be... you will be."
    • His personal introduction is reminiscent of the way Darkwing Duck introduces himself.
  • The scenes of the monster attacks are reminiscent of classic horror movies. The Titans themselves play archetypes of horror characters:
    • Beast Boy is the funny knowledgeable movie geek similar to Randy Meeks in the Scream series. He is the first to get taken.
    • Robin is the Detective similar to Arbogast in the movie Psycho. Like Arbogast, he is the second victim, who is taken when he was about to disclose important information.
    • Starfire is the Cheerleader archetype similar to many minor female characters who get scared easily. She is the third to be taken.
    • Cyborg is the Jock archetype, a tough person in his field, but on the same level as the cheerleader in terms of body count. He is the last one to get taken.
    • Raven is the Final Girl, the sole remaining female survivor left to figure out how to defeat the monster. In a surprising twist, she is also the Antagonist, since the monsters were her powers expressing her bottled fear.
  • When Raven gets out of the elevator, the dark liquid that flows out of it as the doors open is a reference to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining.
  • The monsters revealed to be part of Raven's mind is reminiscent of the following horror flicks, The Fiend Without a Face, and The Forbidden Planet. Both monsters were created by a person's mind. This is also a reference to a monster called Hastur, who is actually Cthulhu's half brother, both Cthulhu and Hastur were used by the famous American Horror story author: H.P. Lovecraft; however, Hastur was originally created by another, American Horror story author known as: Ambrose Bierce.
  • The movie that Control Freak rages about not being in stock has a picture that resembles Beast Boy's early portrayal as an alien in a Star Trek knock off film "Space Trek 2020" back in the comics.
  • The Roar Sound Effect where Beast Boy Transforms into a Tyrannosaurus Rex is the same roar sound effect used for Bowser from Super Mario in the Nintendo 64 Games like in Mario Kart 64. The Roar Sound Effect was also used in "Things Change".
  • The Crash Sound Effect from Thomas the Tank Engine where Beast Boy transformed in a Bull when he charges toward the one of Control Freak's Monster was used.

Goofs[]

  • The samurai cardboard standee monster appears to hold its weapon only on its left hand. However, as Robin slices it in half, the weapon switches to its right hand.
  • When Beast Boy turns into a T-Rex and scares the bookshelf, it drops all its books. However, in the next shot, the books have returned to its shelves. This might have been for comedic effect to portray a cartoonish "terrified" expression.
  • After Robin threw and sliced his birdarangs at all the fire sprinkler heads as they sprayed water around the video rental store, Raven was quickly not wearing her hood.
  • As Robin folds his arms in displeasure from Beast Boy's "emergency call", the left portion of his red vest was colored green instead.
  • When Beast Boy is getting all scared about splitting up and is telling the other Titans what the monster does, he pulls Raven's hood off, but she never put it on.
  • The Puppet King's controller is seen in the evidence locker, but it was previously destroyed in "Switched".
  • When Starfire is scared after Raven suggests checking the basement, she is depicted with a belly button.
  • In the scene where Cyborg and Raven are the last two remaining, both of his eyes are human eyes. Although this may be an animation error, it is possibly intentional, as his usually robotic eye's pupil is colored red, so this may be for comedic effect.
  • When Raven was washed out of the elevator by the black liquid, she was covered with it. But at the next scene, she was clean again.
  • When Raven regains control over her powers, her eyes turn black instead of white.
  • Before Control Freak animates the candy, Cyborg is seen fighting the same bookshelf Beast Boy was fighting instead of the drop box.
Black pterodactyl

The black pterodactyl

  • When Raven banishes the monsters from her mind, a gigantic black pterodactyl manifests instead of a giant raven.
  • After Cyborg blasts Control Freak's evil TV, Robin's hair is not spiky like usual.

In popular culture[]

  • In the Justice League Unlimited Season One episode: Wake the Dead, a DVD cover for the movie, Wicked Scary, can be seen in the college kid's room.

Gallery[]

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Transcript[]

ForReal37
Click here to view the episode transcript.

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