History YMMV / TalesFromTheDarkside

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The mummy from the episode "The Grave Robbers" is well liked for being a CrazyAwesome AffablyEvil MagnificentBastard. The fact that he's played by WesternAnimation/TopCat also helps.

* CrazyAwesome: The mummy in "The Grave Robbers". [[spoiler: When he challenges the robbers to a game of [[ChessWithDeath poker]] he outsmarts them by ''counting the cards'' the whole time. The mummy is freed after winning the game and [[KarmicTwistEnding places the robber in his position as the cursed guardian of the tomb.]] For extra points the mummy also takes his girlfriend.]]

* MagnificentBastard: Tapok, from season 4's "[[Recap/TalesFromTheDarksideS4E6TheGraveRobber The Grave Robber]]", is the Lord Chamberlain of the Pharaoh. Awakening from his slumber when archaeologist Doctor Harold Gormley and his girlfriend Aileen enter his tomb, he kills their guide Ahmed before revealing himself to be more AffablyEvil enough to engage the two in a series of games. Despite being dismissed as a brainless monster, Tapok proves himself to be [[ObfuscatingStupidity smarter than he looked]] by reading the cards during a round and successfully switches places with Harold as well as taking Aileen, nothing that she reminded him of his lost love.

* MagnificentBastard: Tapok, from season 4's "The Grave Robber", is the Lord Chamberlain of the Pharaoh. Awakening from his slumber when archaeologist Doctor Harold Gormley and his girlfriend Aileen enter his tomb, he kills their guide Ahmed before revealing himself to be more AffablyEvil enough to engage the two in a series of games. Despite being dismissed as a brainless monster, Tapok proves himself to be [[ObfuscatingStupidity smarter than he looked]] by reading the cards during a round and successfully switches places with Harold as well as taking Aileen, nothing that she reminded him of his lost love.

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: "Distant Signals" is a very kind-spirited episode about a bunch of fans who got a long-awaited finale to their favorite show. It won't be the last time [[SamuraiJack/TropesSeason5 it happens]].

* MostAnnoyingSound: In-universe and out, the constant phone rings in "Answer Me." Although, they are only there to create fear in the audience.

--->'''Emily''': (near tears) Did your whore leave?
--->'''David''': What?
--->'''Emily''': (pulls out gun)
--->'''David''': (holds hand out; [[{{Narm}} no emotion]]) Em. (is shot)

* MagnificentBastard: The Mummy in "The Grave Robbers" [[spoiler: successfully pulls a BatmanGambit and traps the DirtyCoward {{Jerkass}} in the tomb forever. [[KarmicTwistEnding Now the robber takes the mummy's place as the cursed guardian of the tomb.]] To make it all the more sweeter, the mummy gets to be free and [[KickTheSonOfABitch takes the robber's girlfriend.]] TheBadGuyWins ending has never been so epic.]]

** "If the Shoe Fits". ''And that's saying something''.
** "Barter", which is essentially half "Tales" goodness and half "Series/ILoveLucy".

*** Many people are starting to compare this episode to 2016's WesternAnimation/SausageParty.

--->'''Emily''': (near tears) Did your whore leave? (pulls out gun)

** The series finale. Seriously, a ''momma's boy wrestler'' (said momma is his manager) fights a ''demon from hell''.
** The monster from "Inside the Closet."...it looked like an aborted Muppet...
** The Cutty Black Sow in ... "The Cutty Black Sow". ...seriously, ''look me in the eye'' and TELL me it doesn't look like a black-furred Series/{{ALF}}.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The mummy from the episode "The Grave Robbers" is well liked for being a CrazyAwesome AffablyEvil MagnificentBastard. The fact that he's played by TopCat also helps.

** "Barter", which is essentially half "Tales" goodness and half "ILoveLucy".

** "The Grave Robbers" is about a mummy fighting against people who stole from his tomb. The mummy would eventually regain his human side, his only cherished memory is that of a girl in his past who he lost, [[spoiler: and he gained an interest in the main protagonists love interest because she resembled the woman he loved.]]. A few years later Film/TheMummy was made and introduced a character with the same story. [[spoiler: However, that mummy was unsuccessful at the end of his story, while the one in ''Tales'' won.]]

** Gale's landlord from "Inside the Closet" passes it when [[spoiler: it was revealed that he took her in his home to ''feed his pet monster''. Throughout the episode she leads for him to help her and argues that there's something inside he closet trying to harm her, but he dismisses her ''intentionally''. After his monster kills her and [[AdultFear her mother calls him out of fear that something has happened to her daughter]], he lies about her whereabouts to cover his tracks. He gets away with murder and it's implied that Gale was not the first or last victim for his monster.]]

* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler:[[BitchInSheepsClothing Linda]]]] in "Parlour Floor Front" crosses it by [[spoiler: Killing her cat, lying that her unborn child was killed by a curse, and causing [[TheWoobie Mars]] to be DrivenToSuicide. This was all to get Mars to move out of her apartment building because she disliked him. She suffers a KarmicTwistEnding for her cruelty.]]

* {{Squick}}: "A Case of the Stubborns" is about a man who refuses to believe he's dead and resumes living a normal life, or ''tries'' to. However, he fails to notice that he's ''decaying'' and starting to fester over time. He finally realizes he's no longer alive when he [[spoiler:''sneezes off his nose''. Then, we're treated to a GrossUpCloseUp of his nose]].

* HilariousInHindsight: "Love Hungry" is about this lady who buys a magic hearing aid and pair of glasses as a weight loss treatment and begins to see and hear her food talking to her, that episode aired in 1988, 21 years later we got WebVideo/TheAnnoyingOrange, even funnier, two of the fruits she made friends with were an apple and a pear making this even funnier.

* NightmareRetardant: The series finale. Seriously, a ''momma's boy wrestler'' (said momma is his manager) fights a ''demon from hell''.

* TheWoobie: Mars Gillis. He's DrivenToSuicide when he thinks that he's killed a baby, when he never did. [[spoiler: He later gets revenge by killing [[BitchInSheepsClothing Linda]] for making him kill himself after she caused his suffering to begin with.]]

* TooDumbToLive: The mother in the closing minute of "Ursa Minor". Yeah, don't bother climbing out of your window and escaping with your daughter. Screaming in the corner, while [[spoiler: Ursa Major is about to break down the door with her arm and enter the room]] is CLEARLY safer! ...sigh...
** The mother in the ending of "The Serpent's Tooth." After she tries to reform and give up the magical item that makes everything she says come true, she retakes it because she is too attached to its power despite being ''warned'' by her family and friends that it is too dangerous. When her daughter gives her a WhatTheHellHero speech [[spoiler: the mother says that she loves her children so much that she would turn into a ''pillar of salt.'' She pretty much made herself suffer a FateWorseThanDeath.]]

* TearJerker
** The ending of "Miss May Dusa". [[spoiler: May catches sight of herself in the mirror and turns into a statue again, her blind boyfriend goes in to find her, only to get shot by the burglar from the opening. He dies, not three feet away from the May-statue, weakly calling out for her.]]
** The ending of "Mary, Mary". [[spoiler: A ShrinkingViolet begins to doubt her abilities of finding love and spends so much time interacting with Creepy Dolls. She ends up transforming into a mannequin at the end because she felt like a waste as a human being.]]
** The ending of "The Spirit Photographer". [[spoiler: When Algernon realizes that he has died, he doesn't feel broken or depressed as most characters would. Instead he ''accepts'' his time has come. After saying his goodbyes to his closest friend, Algernon tells him not to cry over this because it is a natural part of life.]]
** The ending of "Going Native". [[spoiler: An alien trying to study human beings gets caught up in their emotions and begins to feel separate from her species. She [[BreakTheCutie breaks down]] and realizes that she cannot return home to her kind because of her emotions. She's realized the worst human emotion: [[HumansAreBastards solitude]].]]

* NightmareFuel
** "Answer Me" : The malevolent presence in the adjacent room, [[spoiler: a telephone]], was trying to break through the wall, right where the protagonist's bed is...
*** Just the [[spoiler: whole idea of strange, persistent noises coming from a next-door apartment you know is empty and whose occupant recently died violently. And then there's the protagonist's conversation with "the operator"...]]
----> '''[[spoiler: Operator]]''': (CreepyMonotone): She strangled herself.
** "Trick or Treat" : A hated and spiteful old man with an obsession for documenting and exploiting debts owed to him, offers trick-or-treaters the chance to search his house for their parents' mortgages, only to terrify them with animatronic "spirits." Unfortunately for him, the old man finds himself the victim of a particularly frightening trick-or-treater, namely a ''real'' demon.
** "The New Guy": A [[CreepyChild strange boy]] is harassing a recovering alcoholic, claiming to be his son. The alcoholic has no idea who this boy is and desperately tries to find out whether he's real or not and get him out of his life. The boy is actually out there [[KickTheDog ruining the lives of recovering alcoholics]] ForTheEvulz. [[spoiler:In the end, our protagonist has returned to alcoholism and lost his family. The boy is now [[HereWeGoAgain targeting his coworker.]]]]
** "Anniversary Dinner": A girl ditches her {{Jerkass}} boyfriend and runs to an elderly couple for a place to stay since she has no way of returning to town. The couple treat her like their own child and ask her to stay forever, to which she gladly accepts. [[spoiler: Then on their Anniversary, the two kill the unsuspecting young girl by boiling her alive in their "hot tub" and [[ImAHumanitarian prepare to eat her]] for their [[TitleDrop Anniversary dinner]]. The husband later reveals that they never raised children, only ate them. The last shot shows the collection of skulls from all the unsuspecting people they ate.]]
** "Snip, Snip": The VillainProtagonist breaks into a mysterious woman's apartment to take her lottery ticket and get himself out of trouble. However, the woman also has connection to the dark arts [[NotSoDifferent just like him]]. [[spoiler: She proves to be [[EvilerThanThou more powerful than he is]] and kills him. The last shot shows that she [[OffWithHisHead took his head]] and turned it into a model for her hairdressing business, with all the other men who threatened her.]]
** "The False Prophet": Throughout the episode we follow a DumbBlonde who listens to a creepy fortune-telling machine. The episode gets more and more disturbing when the machine comes across as a rapist and a DomesticAbuser that refuses to let the girl to leave. [[spoiler: The machine is soon revealed to be a {{Yandere}} and absorbs the girl inside of it so she will be with him forever. Ironically, she originally came to it so she could search for her true love and the machine tells her that now she has it. Unfortunately, not the way she dreamed of.]]
** "Lifebomb": The protagonist gains a special device so he can't die... [[FateWorseThanDeath ever]]. [[spoiler: It was revealed in the end that his insurance company ''intended'' to prevent him from dying so the could [[EvilIsPetty just save themselves from paying his family]] when he would die.]]
** "Halloween Candy": A misanthropic old man torments trick-or-treating children and is visited by a rather terrifying goblin [[SweetTooth demanding MORE candy]]. Believed by many to be the most disturbing episode, along with "Ursa Minor", and "The Geezenstacks".
** "Madness Room": A sleazy couple trick an old husband into ''having a heart attack'' by playing a Ouija board to lead them to a dark ''hidden'' room, only for the husband to ''drop'' the (only) key to outside into a crack of the room's floorboard... Then a [[FromBadToWorse fire suddenly starts up]]- they're all locked in the hidden room. Cue screaming and coughing.
*** Even better? The '''only''' reason why he did that was that, due to the couple's scam, he was led to believe that getting rid of the key would fix everything. [[WhatAnIdiot Whoops.]]
** "Ursa Minor": A little girl blames her new teddy bear for various pranks in her parent's house. They do not believe her-until giant claw marks on the walls and lumbering sounds at night convince them. The mother destroys the teddy, but forgets one of the most basic rules of the wild -- harm the child, and you must meet [[MamaBear the mother]]...
** "Beetles": The ending has [[spoiler: our protagonist die from being swarmed by the insects and killed. When the police come to check it out, we get a close-up of the beetles all over his face and climbing out of his mouth. Apparently, they're ''still'' eating him.]]
** "The Last Car": A woman who just wants to catch a train for her home boards [[TitleDrop the last car]]. She meets a [[CreepyChild playful child]], a [[StepfordSmiler nice old woman]], and an [[TheQuietOne old man]]. She starts to notice strange things occur on the train car. Her reflection disappears, the people with her are afraid of tunnels, and ''the train hasn't stopped'' since she boarded. [[spoiler: It turns out that she was taken by a ghost train and is [[AndIMustScream forced to ride the rails forever]].]]
** "A New Lease On Life": After ''tons'' of ParanoiaFuel, the protagonist finds out that his new apartment building [[spoiler: is alive. The episode ends with him getting EatenAlive by the building, along with the other tenants who didn't cooperate with the building.]]
** "No Strings": As if making your former partner's corpse into a puppet wasn't bad enough,[[spoiler: the mob don's "old friend" possess a MonsterClown puppet and attacks the don's crew. However, the mob don survives and confronts the puppet master on how he did that ''trick''. Then his friend's corpse rises behind him and ''impales'' him with hooks to make him a puppet too, as the puppet master watches in horror. Fortunately, the puppeteer was spared.]]
** "Love Hungry": Although the episode is about AnthropomorphicFood and a FatGirl trying to stop gaining weight, the episode gets increasingly darker as it continues. First she purchases devices that will prevent her from eating...by imagining the food as people. She hears their screams of pain as they are EatenAlive and begins to talk to them. [[spoiler: Then se starts to die from starvation and almost gives into eating. But she stops herself by sewing her mouth shut with a needle and thread. Her landlord and boyfriend find her corpse and we get a close-up of her disfigured face.]]
** "The Geezenstacks": A father realizes his daughter's dollhouse can change their family's future when the dolls were played with, yet only he believes in it. Things become strained in the household until near the end... [[spoiler:when the dollhouse transports the ''whole'' family into it, like all of its other owners.]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking ... Also, the violin music didn't make things better.]]
** And, of course, "The Cutty Black Sow": On Halloween, a boy is warned by his dying great-grandmother about the Cutty Black Sow, a Celtic demon that steals the souls of those who die on All Hallow's Eve, and tries to prevent it from getting hers.
*** And guess what? [[spoiler: While he saves his grandmother's soul, the creature takes ''his!'' No InfantImmortality here!]]
** The opening introduction music/narration. '''That is all'''.
** "Inside The Closet", featuring a mysterious, child-sized door in a woman's bedroom. A touch of UncannyValley at the reveal, but horrifyingly suspenseful [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SIqxG5lH8 until that point]].
*** Made all the more worse when [[spoiler: her landlord dismisses her death to her parents and reveals that the monster in her room was his pet. Not to mention that the poor girl was not and won't be the last victim.]]
** "The Milkman Cometh": The protagonist and his neighborhood write notes to a man called the milkman, who grants wishes for them at no cost. However, nobody actually sees the milkman and the audience barely gets a look at what he looks like. Unfortunately, if the wisher does not give clarification on what they're wishing for they're met with disastrous results. [[spoiler: The protagonist finally confronts the milkman, asking to provide his family with another child. The milkman complies...by ''raping his wife''. When the baby is born, we get a clue on what [[HumanoidAbomination the milkman might look like.]]]]
** "My Own Place": The episode ends with [[spoiler: the protagonist getting mauled to death by a crowd of angry Indians after inadvertently killing their family member.]]
** "The Swap": [[spoiler: The ending has Bubba raping his wife while possessing [[YourCheatingHeart her lover's]] body. Panning over to the portrait of his mother ''smiling''.]]
---> ''Your gonna play house for the rest of your life. Ha, Ha, Ha.''
** "Hush". A child creates an odd looking mechanism that was programmed to stop all the noise annoying those he loves. [[GoneHorriblyRight It works too well...]] Namely, it takes the life out of the thing that's making the noise! Seeing the machines being robbed of their noise is okay, but what's NOT okay is that horrible nozzle and noise of the machine itself. Also, a parrot and the boy's ''mother'' fall before it! PAINFULLY. The world is certainly a better place when the babysitter makes the machine suck out its own life.
*** [[FromBadToWorse And that's how the]] ''[[SparedByTheAdaptation TV version]]'' [[FromBadToWorse ended.]] [[http://wenku.baidu.com/view/a257bf9851e79b8968022627.html In the original short story by Zenna Henderson]], '''[[spoiler:everyone dies]]''', and [[spoiler:the story ends with [[ApocalypseHow the implication]] that the machine is going to make ''everything'' quiet]].

** "The Swap": [[spoiler: The ending has Bubba raping his wife while possessing [[YourCheatingHeart her lover's]] body. Panning over to the portrait of his mother in law ''smiling''.]]

* EnsembleDarkhorse: The mummy from the episode "The Grave Robbers" is well liked for being a CrazyAwesome AffablyEvil MagnificentBastard. The fact that he's also played by TopCat also helps.

** "Answer Me" : Whatever the malevolent presence in the adjacent room was, [[spoiler: a telephone]], it was trying to break through the wall, right where the protagonist's bed is...

--> '''[[spoiler: Operator]]''': (CreepyMonotone): She strangled herself.

** "The New Guy": A [[CreepyChild strange boy]] is harassing a recovering alcoholic, claiming to be his son. The alcoholic has no idea who this boy is and desperately tries to find out whether he's real or not and get him out of his life. The boy is actually out there [[KickTheDog ruining the lives of recovering alcoholics]] ForTheEvulz. [[spoiler: In the end, our protagonist has returned to alcoholism and lost his family. The boy is now [[HereWeGoAgain targeting his coworker.]]]]

** "Lifebomb": The protagonist gains a special device so he can't die...[[FateWorseThanDeath ever]]. [[spoiler: It was revealed in the end that his insurance company ''intended'' to prevent him from dying so the could [[EvilIsPetty just save themselves from paying his family]] when he would die.]]

* {{Squick}}: "A Case of the Stubborns" is about a man who refuses to believe he's dead and resumes living a normal life, or ''tries'' to. However, he fails to notice that he's ''decaying'' and starting to fester over time. He finally realizes he's no longer alive when he ''sneezes off his nose''. Then, we're treated to a GrossUpCloseUp of his nose.