As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You have been warned.
If I woke up looking like THAT, I would just run towards the nearest living thing and kill it.
— Master Shake's reaction to Carl's new body after a reconstructive surgery Gone Horribly Wrong
Aqua Teen Hunger Force is known for its surreal (and often dark) humor. However, there's quite a few instances where the absurdity causes the show to go from funny to downright disturbing.
- Santa Claus getting his skin burned off by Eggzilla, not dying, and getting his skin replaced by soccer balls in "T-Shirt of the Dead". Body Horror at its finest, in spite of how ludicrous it is.
- The Dr. Weird cold open for "Super Computer" involves the aftermath of whatever he was doing; him and Steve having been mauled beyond recognition by an unseen creature in the darkness of the shutters he usually opens.
- Even by the standards of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "The Shaving" is utterly horrific.
- The opening scene alone features a really creepy Eye Scream that'll definitely make you wince the first time around; Steve's eyes, for some reason, are spiders, which is incredibly unsettling to think about.
- The actual episode features a seemingly harmless onion monster named Willie Nelson, whom Master Shake tries to help become scarier. It's pretty standard ATHF nonsense until the last minute of the episode, where we see what's in the attic... dozens of bloody corpses and God knows how many innards piled on top of one another like cordwood and hanging from the ceiling. It's so shockingly gruesome that it completely sucks the wind out of the entire rest of the episode.
- That's not even getting into the fact that the "juice" Willie Nelson drinks is HUMAN BLOOD. He demonstrates this by graphically ripping off Carl's arms. The Aqua Teens boarding up the attic in response couldn't have been more appropriate.
- A close second that can be glimpsed in the page image is Master Shake's injuries after touching a live power generator. It fries his skin until it becomes purple, his eyes permanently jut out of their sockets, and his hands just melt.
- "The Cloning" is largely benign, as far as Aqua Teen Hunger Force goes, though there's a moment with the image of Shake on one of the cloned TVs that's very unnerving; an ominous Drone of Dread starts to play, and TV!Shake says this in the creepiest way possible:
- TV!Shake: I'M IN YOUR HOUSE.
- The way TV!Shake's expression suddenly shifts from neutral to ecstatic is extremely disturbing, as well, due to how abrupt and out of nowhere it is. You REALLY can't blame regular Shake or Meatwad for being freaked out by it. Hell, Shake is so unsettled that he stops lying and being arrogant and straight up asks what the hell is going on.
- The fact that the scene is a reference to Lost Highway. It's amusing enough if you catch it, but it does little to take away from how scary it is.
- The closet as seen in "Video Ouija" and "Dickesode" appears to be some kind of sentient pocket dimension full of blood and gore. In the latter episode, Carl was lucky to have exited it alive after it ejected him.
- Frylock: I told you this closet is not to be opened! It is a horrible horrible place in there!
- "Global Grilling." Shake buys a dangerous grill that burns a hole in the ozone layer, brings the temperature up to 242 degrees, melts the icecaps, and leads to the invasion of Mucous Men that conquer the planet in 12 years time. Luckily, that was All Just a Dream that Shake had.
- "Couples Skate" has plenty of scary stuff in it:
- The last few seconds of the episode, after the piñata breaks open. It'll throw any arachnophobe viewer for a loop the first time around.
- Paul is a perpetually screaming abomination that destroys the ATHF's house after they are taken hostage for failing to pay rent for four seasons..and because the landlord does not want to fix a gas leak they caused. Explanation for his anger aside, this is by FAR the most disturbing creature ever depicted on ATHF; a writhing, gigantic amorphous mass of sickly white flesh with flailing tentacles, sharp teeth, and bulging bloodshot yellow eyes. And did we mention the screaming? This thing is a Jump Scare every time it appears onscreen.
- "Super Birthday Snake" as a whole is pretty disturbing, once it reaches the midpoint.
- The ending. After Frylock reveals it was all a computer simulation, Meatwad whips out a shotgun and blows Frylock's head open. He then calls for Nathan, who is revealed to be a hideously deformed zombie-like giant rabbit and then crawls into Frylock's open head to eat Frylock's brains. Which is then revealed to be a computer simulation that Frylock is undergoing as Meatwad complains Frylock needs to listen to him more and that he's going to eat Frylock's brains.
- The part where, while trying to use his eye beams to free Master Shake and Meatwad from the inside of a snake, Frylock accidently kills them in the process. The result is chunks of their body pieces splattered around the room, along with the remains of the snake. Frylock's reaction to this says it all. It's unsurprising that this moment was the basis of a pretty infamous creepypasta in the ATHF fandom.
Frylock: (Echoes) Oh God! What have I done?!- The ending theme
is quite ominous sounding, which is a perfect cap-off to an overall unsettling episode.
- "Fry Legs" is VERY disturbing from beginning to end. First, we see Frylock trying to impress a girl with a mecha-like contraption which walks in a really off-putting way. Then, he starts stalking her. Then he kills her boyfriend when he tells him to back off... and wears his mutilated corpse as a suit before it's revealed that she's a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller.
- The simple fact that Frylock is far more amoral and selfish than normal. It's darkly funny in a vacuum, but it's still pretty horrific if you're used to his usual Only Sane Man nature.
- In "Total Re-Carl," the gang tries rebuilding Carl's body after an unfortunate incident with a turbo-toilet. They try making one from scratch using black market organs, but the only organs the market sent are eyeballs. They try for it anyways, but the...result can be easily summed up by Shake's comment.Shake: If I woke up looking like that, I would just run towards the nearest living thing and kill it.
- In the episode "Hoppy Bunny," Carl plays a flute that sends millions of prehensile wires down his throat, invading his organs and nervous system internally, which force him to dance. Midway through the episode, Frylock tries fixing him, and it seems like Carl has a solution, though he can't easily convey it since he can hardly speak with the flute wedged in his mouth. It eventually turns out that the solution is death, and he somberly begs Frylock to kill him. Worst of all, Frylock refuses and Carl spends the rest of the episode trapped in A Fate Worse Than Death.
- In "Antenna," Carl agrees to have an alien radio tower installed onto his house. The waves' side effects include excessive, unstoppable nosebleeds, an obsessive addiction to watch alien TV, and horrendous brain tumors. The aliens try "helping" Carl by advising him to tilt his head back (which, as any person with common sense would know, is a horrible idea and would only fill your stomach up with your own blood). By the end of the episode, Carl's spine is broken from bending back so far, he's mutated thanks to all the tumors, and his living room is literally ankle-deep in the gallon of blood his nose has shed. Also, Frylock, Meatwad, and George Lowe are victims of the same fate.
- "Handbanana":
- Meatwad clones the titular dog from the DNA of Shake's hand. He enjoys playing fetch, licking himself, baking bread and sexually assaulting Carl each chance he gets. And the rest of the gang has no idea until the end of the episode. Handbanana's oily, grossly textured voice makes things exponentially worse. This is not an episode for those that have suffered similar trauma.
Handbanana: (points at Carl) Tonight...you.- Carl clones his own dog, Spaghetti, from his own DNA, complete with Human feet, to take revenge on Handbanana. Spaghetti has...other ideas.
Spaghetti: You know we got a lot in common here... (beat) I'm gonna rape you! - "Freedom Cobra" definitely qualifies, especially the ending. Shake ends up getting a tattoo that can talk, and the tattoo forces him to consume human flesh to help it grow. By the end of the episode, Frylock takes Shake to a surgeon to have the tattoo removed, only for the surgeon to reveal that the tattoo made him cut off his hands so Shake can eat them. Shake is then seen with the tattoo covering his entire body, along with some plastic surgery that makes him look really uncanny, vowing that he’s going to continue to eat people. And as the icing on the cake, during the credits, the music is replaced with people screaming in terror.
- In "Moonajuana," the Mooninites trick Shake into ripping his own rectal prolapse out with his bare hands, which might sound funny, but it might also make you especially queasy. It sounds like something straight out of Event Horizon.
