15 Creepiest Nightmares DC Heroes Endured in Knight Terrors Event

While trapped in a nightmare world, DC’s greatest characters confront their biggest fears. See 15 of the most perturbing dreams from Knight Terrors.

Warning! Contains spoilers for Knight Terrors!The DC Universe has finally woken up from the twisted nightmares of Knight Terrors. A powerful metahuman named Insomnia cast a sleep spell all across the globe, sending everyone into a horrifying world known as the Nightmare Realm. In this shared unconscious state, heroes and villains alike were trapped in a world plagued by their worst anxieties.

Some nightmares were based on a character's biggest fear. Others brought back a painful or unpleasant memory. Whatever their origin, these nightmares delved into what scared the DCU's best as Insomnia and his Sleepless Knight army searched high and low for a powerful relic known as the Nightmare Stone. Read on to see 15 of the worst nightmares featured in Knight Terrors.

When Joker’s girlfriend Punchline was hit by Insomnia’s Nightmare Wave, she dreamed up a scenario where she managed to kill Batgirl. However, Barbara came back from the dead and pursued Kaye to Batgirl’s headquarters, where she fused with her computer system to become a terrifying amalgamation of technology. Seeing Batgirl become a hulking monstrosity was a creepy sight for both Punchline and the reader.

The Titans shared a collective nightmare, one that turned them all into twisted copies of themselves. Cyborg became a technological monstrosity, Beast Boy turned into a giant rat monster, Donna Troy mutated into a being with multiple faces and limbs, and Starfire was a war-hungry conqueror. During their transformations, each Titan was helpless in their new form, only able to repeat the phrase “All that I am.”.

Joker’s nightmare saw him do the impossible and accidentally kill Batman. But the lack of a Dark Knight robbed the Clown Prince of Crime of all the excitement in his life. Before Joker knew it, he was working a 9 to 5 job at Wayne Enterprises like a regular joe. But in Batman’s absence, Joker developed an alternate persona and became Gotham’s new Batman, something that nearly got him killed by a mob.

Nightwing’s biggest fear saw him locked up in Arkham Asylum with the rest of Batman’s rogues. In this twisted dream, Nightwing killed Batman and was processed into a somehow even worse version of the iconic facility. Not only that, but the Batgirls were with Dick in his dream, including Barbara Gordon, who had been transformed into a horrifying fusion of technology and flesh.

Wonder Woman fell to the Nightmare Wave alongside Justice League Dark. Unfortunately, Diana was separated from them when attacked by a corrupted version of Wonder Woman. The two fought, but the nightmare version got the upper hand and exposed Diana to her greatest fear: abandoning her connections to humanity and becoming a full goddess that lives above the mortals and terrorizes them.

Green Lantern is all about overcoming fear, but even he couldn’t withstand the Nightmare Wave and plunged into a world of bad dreams. Insomnia poked and prodded through Hal Jordan’s history, making him relive all the worst moments of his life. From his father’s death to the Green Lantern’s Parallax phase, Hal fought his worst memories until he was able to break free and wake up.

Similar to Green Lantern, Batman didn’t fall as easily as others did when Insomnia began using the Dark Knight’s worst fears. But that didn’t stop the villain from bringing up Bruce’s most uncomfortable memories. Insomnia even creates a Sleepless Knight foot soldier based on Batman’s fears: A bat with a gun for a head. But Insomnia goes too far when he makes Batman relieve that night in Crime Alley, only with Bruce seeing things from Joe Chill's perspective.

Ravager’s complicated relationship with Deathstroke got a horrifying twist while Rose Wilson was trapped in the Nightmare Realm. The Terminator got a sinister upgrade as the ‘Murder Man’, a bogeyman-like figure that haunts a young Rose. Murder Man is just as lethal as Slade and can travel through blood droplets, meaning Rose had no chance of outrunning the twisted copy of her father.

Superman might be the Man of Steel, but he fell just as easily to the Nightmare Wave as anyone else. In his dream, Clark was attacked by a being known as the Super-Reaper, a grotesque perversion of Superman. The Sleepless Knight destroyed Metropolis over and over and reminded Superman of the dark fate that awaits him: Outliving all the people that Clark has ever loved.

Longtime Batman confidante Jim Gordon got an otherwordly terror when he encountered a creepy collective of beings from the Fifth Dimension. Bestowing Gotham with twisted ‘gifts’, the extradimensional creatures make Gordon fragile as glass. As a twisted version of Gordon’s Batman armor terrorizes Gotham, Gordon begins literally falling apart, chipping in places and losing entire limbs. All for the entertainment of incomprehensibly powerful beings.

Red Hood and Robin had the benefit of sharing a nightmare, but their fortune was not to last. Tim Drake and Jason Todd were separated and tormented by dark reflections of themselves. Tim’s nightmare forced him to relive his father’s death in Identity Crisis repeatedly (with the addition of seeing the Bat-Family die as well). Meanwhile, Jason was taunted about his death by multiple Jokerized versions of the Red Hood.

On the surface, Poison Ivy’s nightmare world seemed somewhat idyllic: A nice house in the suburbs living with her girlfriend, Harley Quinn. But the perfect veneer of this world was just an illusion. Everyone wore pained smiles and repeated senseless dialogue ad nauseam and tried to keep Ivy from changing the world by trapping her in a Stepford-esque hell.

The Flash’s love for the people in his life was used against him in a dream that saw his sidekick Wally West critically injured. Determined to save Kid Flash, Barry Allen repeatedly traveled back in time, even though the Speed Force resisted. Flash’s numerous trips through time began mutating him into a hound-like beast. While Barry managed to wake up, the monster he created in his dream became a reality.

Mary Marvel’s nightmare saw her brother turn into a selfish, evil brute known as the Nightmare Captain. This version of Billy Batson was cruel and determined to hoard the powers of Shazam for himself. The Nightmare Captain even killed his family to be the only magic wielder around. While Mary succeeded in purging the Nightmare Captain from her mind, he managed to escape to the real world, no doubt becoming a future problem for the Shazamily.

The Super Family was having a nice movie night together when the Nightmare Wave struck. Before they knew what hit them, they were the stars of their own horror movie as Cyborg Superman appeared to torment his enemies. Hank Henshaw was more monster than supervillain as he absorbed members of the family into his hive mind. Even Krypto wasn’t safe from the cyborg’s horrifying actions as he stalked the young heroes one by one in a seriously creepy nightmare.

Knight Terrors may be over, but with as many horrifying visions as these characters suffered through, it may be some time before the DC Universe moves on.