When you go to see a scary movie, a part of you is always prepped for something horrifying to happen. You are braced for jump scares, gore, horrific images and troubling depictions of the more disturbing aspects of life. That’s just part of the fun, right?

Well, you don’t always expect that sort of thing when you go to see a film that isn’t a horror movie. It might be a comedy, a kid’s movie or a superhero film that all of a sudden veers off into horror territory when you were least expecting it. This surprise often makes the scene scarier than any you might see in a horror movie. Here are ten of the scariest scenes from movies that weren’t necessarily supposed to be scary.

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10 Riddler’s Behind the mayor - The Batman

     Warner Bros. Pictures

When Matt Reeves agreed to direct the newest Batman adaptation, everyone knew that this one was going to be different. Instead of a fun colorful romp with plenty of gadgets and one-liners like a Schumacher film, The Batman takes more inspiration from disturbing films like Se7en, Saw and Chinatown.

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This is made explicitly clear in the film’s first scene when it features a jump scare that introduces the Reeves take on the Riddler. The scene focuses on Gotham’s mayor watching the news but once he moves away, it’s clear that Riddler has been standing patiently behind him through the entire scene. This shows us that Riddler could be anywhere through the whole movie and boy does he make good on that promise. Jim Carrey never scared us like that in Batman: Forever.

9 The Boat Scene - Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

     Warner Bros.

If there’s one scene from a famous kid’s movie that’s famous for scaring kids everywhere, it’s the boat scene from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. The cute kid fantasy about a bunch of children who get to explore a magical candy factory is interrupted by a horrific detour on a boat with a crazed Gene Wilder. It’s a harrowing scene made all the more frightening by Wilder’s intense delivery of his monologue. Why is it in the film? What was its purpose? No one knows. The movie just continues like it never happened.

If only every kid who saw it could do the same…

8 The Trench Scene - Aquaman

     Warner Bros

Aquaman was a fun throwback adventure film with bold underwater action sequences, a globe-trotting adventure, and plenty of one-liners from Jason Momoa. So no one was prepared when we were introduced to the cannibalistic underwater creatures of the trench. These unwelcome nightmare creatures clawed their way in from a different movie altogether to terrify the audience and then crawl back into the dark hole where they belong. It’s both a blessing and a curse that James Wan’s proposed spin-off about The Trench was shelved for good. Aquaman wouldn’t even have been around to save anyone from that fate.

The only question remaining is whether the Trench monsters from Aquaman are scarier than the sirens from Black Panther Wakanda Forever who sing you into a trance that makes you jump into the water to your doom. Everyone should just be thankful that these two horrors weren’t featured in the same movie.

7 The Dead Marshes - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

     New Line Cinema

People tend to forget that Peter Jackson got his start making horror movies similar to the kinds of b-movies Sam Raimi made in the 90s. That is, until Jackson reminds us all by including a brief moment of sheer terror into his sweeping fantasy adventure. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has several horror movie scenes featuring giant spiders, demon cave monsters, and literal personifications of fiery evil itself.

Arguably the scariest of the trilogy’s horror sequences is featured in The Two Towers. When Frodo, Samwise, and Smeagol travel across the Dead Marshes where the ghosts of fallen soldiers tempt Frodo to fall into the water. He then gapes in horror at the floating images of the dead that seek to pull him under. Smeagol deserves an MVP award for pulling him out of there.

6 Bathilda Bagshot’s House - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.1

The Harry Potter franchise features scary sequences throughout the series with huge snakes that slither through the pipes of Hogwarts, Dementors that float through the skies of Hogwarts, and even Lord Voldemort who routinely checks in on the students of Hogwarts to remind them to be terrified of him. So audiences should’ve been prepared for anything by the time Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.1 came around.

Unfortunately, no one was prepared for the trip to Bathilda Bagshot’s home, even those who read the book beforehand. While most of the scary Harry Potter sequences at least had some questionable CGI to dull the terror, Hazel Douglas’ creepy performance as the snake-turned-old-woman offers no such relief. Aragog’s got nothing on her.

5 The Incinerator - Toy Story 3

     Pixar

Toy Story 3 was supposed to be a fun reunion with Woody, Buzz and all of our Toy Story pals. What it wasn’t supposed to be was a piece of existential terror where we had to watch all of our childhood pals face the inevitability of their fiery doom as they are thrown away like every toy before them. The sequence where all of them clutch each other’s hands as they accept their fate is forever etched upon the minds of the audience members who were just promised a fun Pixar romp. For one brief second, it was easy to forget that this was a kid’s movie and that the gang would be saved at the last minute. It genuinely seemed like this was going to have the darkest ending in all of Disney history.

And for Disney, that’s really saying something.

4 The First Class - Whiplash

     Stage 6 Films

Movie villains like Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, or Freddy Krueger are no doubt horrifying, but there’s a certain comfort knowing that meeting them in real life is impossible. J.K. Simmons from Whiplash, however, is all too real. His horrifying teacher Fletcher is an amalgamation of every harsh teacher the world has ever scene. The more Andrew desperately wants Fletcher’s approval, the more he verbally assaults him with a string of profanity so harsh that it feels like he could look at you through the screen and tear you down as well.

All he needs is a chainsaw for students who aren’t on his time and he would be one of the biggest horror icons of all time.

3 Every Scene With the Cat - The Cat in the Hat

     Universal Pictures

Jim Carrey truly understood how to take a Dr. Seuss character and make it real when he did How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Mike Myers absolutely did not when he played the titular character in The Cat in the Hat. Literally every sequence involving the Cat in this film is unintentionally terrifying. He even has a sequence in which he threatens bodily harm to another version of himself who is trading insults with him. The sequence truly feels like what dropping into insanity must be like.

It’s all pretty harsh for a film that’s essentially about how to stay out of trouble and keep your room clean. Somehow it seems like the moral of this story went over Mike Myers’ head. The Seuss family clearly thought the same thing because after this film premiered they have banned Hollywood from ever making a live action adaptation of his works ever again. Who can blame them?

2 Elsa’s Introduction - Jojo Rabbit

     Fox Searchlight Pictures

There’s something uniquely terrified about the way young Jojo is introduced to the horrors of World War II as a young, impressionable boy living in Germany, for Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit. While he is enthusiastic about joining his country’s fight throughout the first part of the film, he slowly is shown the error of his ways by being directly confronted with the harrowing real-world consequences of his heroes. The horror movie inspired scene where he finds Elsa hiding in the wall is the first real shock he sees that hints that things might not be as fun in this world as he thinks.

This is just the preamble for the final horror though. Once he sees his mother’s shoes as she’s been sentenced to the ultimate punishment by the government, he is forever changed. So was pretty much anyone who had to watch one of the saddest moments in movie history. Both of these scenes are more disturbing than anything that’s ever happened in the Saw franchise.

1 The Winkie’s Scene - Mulholland Drive

There’s literally no David Lynch film that doesn’t feature at least one sequence that would earn a place on this list. In fact, pretty much all of Eraserhead would count. The scariest scene in all of Lynch’s movies that is most often referenced is the infamous Winkie’s scene from Mulholland Drive. The scene begins with a man describing to his friend how he’s had a recurring nightmare about the two of them visiting that very same Winkie’s Diner. His nightmare then culminates with him seeing a disturbing person who lives behind the diner’s dumpster.

His friend agrees to help him confront this fear by accompanying him to the dumpster to see that no one is really back there. Instead, the gruesome figure truly does appear, sliding out like some kind of specter straight out of his nightmare. It sends him sprawling back in terror before it slides back again. It might just be the greatest jump scare in the history of jump scares. If anyone could do that, it would be David Lynch.