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High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Invader Zim
The infamous scene in "Bestest Friend" in which Keef has his eyes plucked out by robotic arms. This is all shown in sillhouette, via a shadow cast on a nearby building.
"Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy," which features Zim crippling and then murdering Dib as a child over the course of years. Zim's response is to calmly walk away, drinking a soda. An excellent way to remind us that, deep down, Zim can be a Complete Monster.
Zim throws rubber pigs into Dib's past, replacing seemingly random objects in ways that cause Dib to have horrible accidents, progressively crippling Dib and making him more grotesque in the present, until he dies in the past and his father builds a super-powered robot body to protect him.
The episode was originally planned for Dib to die, as in Killed Off for Real dead.
To add to all the horror, seeing a horribly scarred Dib in that robotic suit coming to horribly kill Zim. Is there any part of that that isn't scary?
At the end of that episode, Zim sends the final piggy into the past, only for it to replace his past self's BRAIN.
It's not really the worst behavior Zim's ever demonstrated, but the rapt, gleefully anticipatory look on his face as he watches the life go out of Dib's eyes — with accompanying flatline beep — is creepy on a personal level that he doesn't often reach.
In the Halloween episode, who remembers that Surprise Screamer Shot of that hideous monster with those big eyes during Dib's 'crazy house' bus ride?
Not to mention that everything in Nightmare World is actually just a spawn of Dib's imagination.
This Troper, like many, was disturbed immensely by the Halloween episode. However, it wasn't Nightmare Bitters that creeped him out (though she didn't help matters), but it was Nightmare Membrane and Nightmare Gaz. Nightmare Membrane, while kinda cool looking, has a terrifying moment of capturing his son while his goggle eyes POP OUT OF HIS SKULL, and his hands are replaced with metal claws. And then there's Nightmare Gaz, who's hunched over, skeletal, has More Teeth than the Osmond Family, and has no bottom jaw.
Some may say the show in general, but there is one episode in particular: Dark Harvest. It isn't that he steals people's organs. It's that he REPLACES them. Here's the list: a liver replaced with a hall pass that Miss Bitters has already specified will explode if the student leaves campus. A brain replaced with a can of soda so the poor receptionist can only foam at the mouth. Kids in the cafeteria have objects in place of their other organs. Gaz's beloved game is implanted into her side (she's still playing it). And Dib? You just have to see the end of the episode to see what happens to HIM.
And then there's how Zim literally stuffs his body with the organs with a few of them spilling out.
The fact that instead of implanting his organs or anything like that...Zim eats them.
"Yes, you're a very healthy child! And such plentiful organs!"
It was the sudden surprise shot of Zim's organs with the X-ray and Dibs Organ-vision that got this Troper, complete with Scare Chord.
Including, in a dark room, when Dib leaves, it gives the room a 'window shutter opening' light effect, twice in a row. The first time, the huge bloated Zim sits there smiling, and half a second later, he's gone.
Dib's drawing Zim being dissected. If that weren't bad enough, Zim's fully conscious and his organs are pooling out of his body and onto the floor. Complete with what looks like blood! http://invaderzimepisodes.com/94/dark-harvest/.
For this Troper, the scariest part of that episode was when Dib decides to stick to a boy named Torque Smacky who hasn't lost any organs yet to prevent Zim from stealing a pair of lungs. They enter a dark room where Dib turns around for one second & Torque disappears. We hear something drop & we see one of the dumbbells he was holding roll out from a corner. Cut to Dib yelling out the kid's name.
It was after watching this episode that this Troper refused to watch Invader Zim for five years.
The moment in Backseat Drivers at the end when the brain parasite escapes and eats Zim's brain. It's even more terrifying when coupled with the fact that Zim explicitly stated that the parasite was capable of causing PAIN UNLIKE ANY KNOWN FORM OF PAIN. Sweet dreams kids!
That would be "Bolognius Maximus". I think one part that might of scared others (but not me) is the scene in which the bologna SLOWLY mixed with Zim's skin.
