Violent delusions. Organ harvesting. A superhero dying in her father’s arms. Just because a show
is animated doesn’t mean writers are afraid to occasionally inject some disturbing moments into
the mix. Let’s take a look at how animated shows can get pretty dark sometimes.
Few animated shows match the widespread appeal and success of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Since its debut in 1999, the show has become Nickelodeon's flagship franchise,
spawning ample merchandise, and even a few feature films.
The inaugural season takes an unexpectedly dark turn in the episode "SB-129."
As is par for the course, the episode begins with
Squidward Tentacles attempting to escape the constant annoyance of SpongeBob and Patrick.
Squidward's efforts lead him into Krusty Krab's walk-in freezer,
where Squidward is frozen for 2,000 years. Eventually, Squidward emerges in an all-chrome
future where SpongeBob's cybertronic successors give him access to a time machine. After a wild
bout of time travel involving a prehistoric SpongeBob and Patrick, Squidward accidentally
breaks the machine--leading to a malfunction that seemingly strands him in a white void.
At first, the notion of prolonged isolation appeals to Squidward,
but he soon begins to panic. After a period of searching, plus a tearful admission that
he misses SpongeBob, he regains control of the time machine and returns home.
It's a classic episode, aided by a variety of unique settings,
topped off with a disturbing yet hilarious depiction of a metaphor for purgatory.
What's more, it provided fans with one of the most well-quoted lines in Spongebob history:
"Future." If ever there was a cartoon that
lives and dies by its own macabre individuality, that would most definitely be Invader Zim.
The notion of hyper-violent indie comic creator Jhonen Vasquez creating a kids' cartoon seemed
like a weird enough idea when the show premiered in 2001. Suffice it to say, the show's nightmarish
mall-goth aesthetic was definitely a bit much for Nickelodeon's typical demographic.
“Too ugly! Too stinky! That one looks good!”
One episode that gained the series some notoriety when it aired
is "Dark Harvest," which is full of childhood trauma fuel.
The time comes for physical check-ups at school. While Zim has managed to appear
human on a purely surface level, this is not the case for his extraterrestrial
innards. In a grotesque attempt to pass for Earthling on the inside,
he harvests the organs of other students and stuffs them within himself. Zim becomes
a sickening sack of pilfered organs, bursting to the point where intestines roll out of his mouth.
It's this absurd level of Cronenberg-style body
horror that makes Invader Zim such a distinct and memorable series.
Over the course of its ten-season run, Adventure Time covers a ton of ground in terms of tone and
visuals. The expansive Land of Ooo isn't afraid to get dark. Case in point: the Season 3 episode
"No One Can Hear You" demonstrates the show's ability to terrify its audience when it wants to.
During an incident with a rather invasive stag,
protagonists Finn and Jake are both injured. After awakening in the hospital with two broken legs,
Finn surveys the Candy Kingdom, only to find it eerily abandoned.
He then discovers Jake digging through trash, inexplicably convinced that everyone is hiding
to surprise him for his birthday. After realizing Jake has gone crazy,
Finn also begins to understand that he's been in a coma for six months.
Finn ventures into the sewer to discover Princess Bubblegum and the rest of the Candy Kingdom
population stuck to the walls with melted sugar. This is all revealed to be the work of the stag,
who removes his hooves to expose a set of creepy fingers.
The whole episode plays like a colorful 28 Days Later, and is superbly uncomfortable.
For as sugary sweet as The Powerpuff Girls looks,
the show doesn't always steer clear of brutal violence and body horror.
Influenced by some darker comic book creatures, creator Craig McCracken and his team used these
creepier elements to help give the show its unique identity. As a result, The Powerpuff Girls managed
to resonate with both boys and girls during its original run in the mid-'90s and early '00s.
The Season 2 episode "Twisted Sister" marks a particularly memorable instance
of the generally bright and sunny series taking a hard turn towards the horrific.
The girls, burnt out from crime fighting and chores, sneak into the Professor's lab to
create a new Powerpuff Girl to pick up the slack. However, due to their scientific inexperience,
what emerges from the concoction is a gigantic and slightly misshapen Powerpuff Girl. The girls
end up calling their new sister "Bunny," and show her how to fight crime in Townsville.
Unfortunately, Bunny is bad at following instructions, and begins freeing criminals
from jail. Bunny eventually fixes her mistakes, but just as she saves the day,
her unstable genetic composition begins to break down. Bunny explodes in a blast of
white light with a pile of the ingredients remaining, much to the Girls' despair.
Any compilation of creepy cartoons worth its salt should include a reference to
Courage the Cowardly Dog. From alien chickens to freaky barbers, the turn of the millennium
Cartoon Network classic is a buffet of mind-bending animated terror. Ironically,
one of the most disturbing sequences of the show might just be one of the most relatable.
In the Season 4 episode "Perfect," Courage's human-antagonist Eustace
grills the show's eponymous canine for his inability to handle certain household tasks.
These comments impact Courage so much that he imagines a strict elderly schoolteacher
who attempts to make him perfect. What follows consists of a series of increasingly bizarre
and disturbing anxiety-induced nightmares. The images include a stop-motion version of
Courage juggling plates, and a deranged blue CG creature who insults Courage.
"You're not perfect."
Eventually, a bathtub dwelling barracuda gives Courage a pep talk,
explaining that there is no such thing as perfect. Following this revelation,
Courage is able to move past his anxieties and embrace his imperfections. For any viewers who
have suffered from anxiety or depression, this episode might hit a little close to home.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the perfect hybrid of mature writing, impeccable humor, and utterly
gorgeous animation. Throughout its run, Avatar confronted more and more serious topics. A major
example of the show's increasing intensity arrives in the Season 3 standout, "The Puppetmaster."
While on their journey through the Fire Nation, Team Avatar encounters an old woman named Hama who
owns an inn in a nearby village. Hama, voiced by American animation icon Tress MacNeille,
soon reveals herself to be a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe.
Having never met another waterbender from her home tribe, Katara forms a fast friendship
with Hama. The two also bond over their shared trauma. Much like how Katara lost her mother
in a fire nation raid, Hama was kidnapped by firebenders and taken from her home.
However, things turn sinister when the group look into a series of disappearances in the village,
all carried out at night. Their search coincides with Hama revealing she escaped her capture
by inventing bloodbending, a twisted form of waterbending which allows the user to
manipulate the human body. Soon enough, Hama has Aang and Sokka at her mercy, forcing Katara to
reluctantly use bloodbending herself to stop Hama. The villain is defeated and carted off,
but can only smile knowing that she has passed on her disturbing legacy to an unwilling student.
As the follow-up to Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra had
some big shoes to fill from its inception. Not only is Avatar a critical darling, its epic,
multi-part finale wrapped up the story perfectly when it aired in 2008.
Set 70 years after the original show, 2012's The Legend of Korra
follows Avatar Aang's hotheaded successor as she journeys into adulthood.
In Season 1, Korra contends with Amon, the sinister leader of the anti-bending
Equalist movement. She must also survive the machinations of Republic City Councilman Tarrlok,
who is eventually outed as a bloodbender. Additionally, we discover that Amon,
whose real name is Noatak, is Tarrlok's brother and shares his ability to bloodbend.
Once Amon is defeated at the hands of Korra, the two brothers appear to escape
in a speedboat. Unfortunately for Noatak, Tarrlok opts to use an Equalist weapon to
ignite the boat's engine and cause a fiery explosion. This unprecedented level of
violence sets a clear tone for the dark series of events to come in the following seasons.
Gravity Falls is a show that dabbles in various subgenres of fantasy,
science fiction, and horror. Preteen heroes Dipper, Mabel, and their Grunkle Stan run into
the likes of love gods, menacing poltergeists, and all kinds of other frightening entities.
However, the episode we're interested in focuses on Soos, the Mystery Shack's lovable handyman.
In 2014's "Soos and the Real Girl," the well-meaning doofus hits a wall in his
search for a legitimate girlfriend. His luck appears to change when he finds a Japanese
dating simulator in a bargain bin, and hits it off with the game's female sim, .GIFfany.
Soon enough, .GIFfany, a sentient artificial intelligence, becomes obsessed with Soos and
aims to make him hers forever. This results in a sequence reminiscent of "Five Nights at Freddy's,"
in which .GIFany possesses a legion of play place mascots. It's a delightfully
disturbing episode that shows the pitfalls of getting caught up in a fantasy world.
Anyone who's seen much Ed, Edd n Eddy might guess that creator Danny Antonucci has a
great appreciation for the horror genre. His affinity for monster movies becomes obvious
through the character of Ed, who is obsessed with science fiction and old splatter flicks.
Ed's fixation takes center stage in the Season 3 episode "The Day the Ed Stood Still."
The Eds plan to scam the other Cul-De-Sac neighborhood kids with a fake carnival,
but their plan falls apart when Ed begins acting up.
"I am just a monster in a boy's body." Eddy attempts to capitalize on Ed's
apparent desire to be a monster by crafting him a costume. Unfortunately,
Ed immediately goes berserk and begins to rampage across the Cul-De-Sac, much to everyone's horror.
Much like many other Ed, Edd n Eddy episodes, this outing is a solid pile of visual gags. However,
"The Day the Ed Stood Still" also boasts some legitimate terror,
when Monster Ed begins sticking the other kids to walls in a fashion very similar to the deleted
cocoon sequence from the original Alien. Batman: The Animated Series is regarded as
one of the best interpretations of the Caped Crusader ever put on screen. The show is a gem,
defined by its angular design style, gorgeous noir imagery, and incomparable voice acting.
“I asked you, Harley: Who’s given more hours of amusement to the Gotham police force than me?”
It also gets unapologetically dark on a much more routine basis than the other programs listed here,
ending plenty of episodes with deaths or somber moments.
However, the 1998 episode "Over the Edge" takes the show's usual darkness to a whole new level.
After Scarecrow lures Batgirl into a trap, he pushes her off the roof of Gotham City Hall.
Batgirl crashes onto a police car, which just so happens to be driven by her father,
Commissioner Jim Gordon. Moments before her death, she reveals her identity.
"Dad."
"Barbara?"
While this moment is later revealed to be part of a fear gas-induced dream Barbara experiences,
it doesn't lessen the impact. This moment serves as a great example
of just how mature the minds behind Batman: The Animated Series were willing to get.
The mid-'00s Teen Titans series can certainly crank up the darkness every so often.
A prime example of this is Season 3's "Haunted," one of the most intense episodes of the series.
In "Haunted," Robin is still struggling to accept that Slade is really dead following
the events of Season 2's fiery finale. Following a late night look at his foe's dusty remnants,
Robin and the team are called into action. Things take a turn when Slade begins appearing to Robin,
while the other Teen Titans can't see him. Bit by bit, Robin begins
to lose his marbles and lash out on his team, making them question their leader's sanity.
Visions of Slade continue to torment Robin, causing him both mental anguish and physical harm.
The true highlight of the episode is Scott Menville's voice work,
which conveys Robin's paranoia and increasing exhaustion immersively.
"Robin, are you sure you really saw Slade?"
"Saw him? I fought him! You think I did this to myself?"
For his part, Ron Perlman cranks up his sinister delivery as Slade,
serving as the specter who taunts Robin from the darkness.
The sight of the usually chipper Boy Wonder slowly losing his mind is genuinely disturbing.
Dating all the way back to 1940, Tom & Jerry stands as one of the best examples of how to
convey brutally painful slapstick in animation. If an animated show entails two characters constantly
walloping each other with heavy objects, chances are it's influenced by this iconic cat-mouse duo.
However, even this classic cartoon can go too far every now and again,
and a 1956 episode in which they apparently attempt suicide lives in infamy.
"Blue Cat Blues" opens with a depressed Tom sitting on the tracks, waiting for the train.
Jerry, serving as the narrator, flashes us back to what preceded this situation.
In the flashback, Tom encounters an attractive female cat. Immediately smitten,
he dedicates every aspect of his life to pleasing her, even though she is clearly
manipulating him. She predictably leaves Tom when a richer cat comes around, breaking his heart.
Jerry laments Tom's situation, and expresses gratitude for his stable relationship with
his girlfriend, who promptly rides off with another mouse. This leads Jerry,
now equally broken, to approach Tom and ask him to make some room on the rails.
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