Nightmare Fuel / Homestar Runner

I'M AN ABOMINATION! And I'm comin' to your house after schoooooooool!

Gel-Arshie

May not look like it, but still.

While the series runs primarily on Rule of Funny, that isn't to say that it can't also give the audience the jibblies.

Remember, this page is for describing general sources of Nightmare Fuel.

For scary moments from Strong Bad Emails, go here

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• Homestar Runner no doubt intended to capture this intentionally with Marshie. The Homestar Runner Wiki describes Marshie as "the genuinely alarming mascot for Fluffy Puff Marshmallows", and several cartoons have featured fake commercials starring Marshie that are downright creepy, featuring "non-sequitur rantings, disturbing close-ups, inappropriate sound effects, faintly desperate pleas and even a behind-the-scenes nervous breakdown". Strong Bad put it best: "I really think those Marshie commercials ought to be rated NC-17" (Needlessly Creepy Times 17).
  • Then there's Gel-arshie, the mascot for a gelatin dessert made by the Fluffy-Puff company. Gel-arshie is a translucent, bright red version of Marshie with a distorted voice and a floating visible brain in his center.
  Gel-arshie: I'M AN ABOMINATION! And I'm coming to your house after schoooool!
  • Then there's Marshie in the "Later That Night" Easter Egg.
    Marshie: (to Coach Z) Come on bow-legged man! Try a sample pack of new Fluffy-Puff Pumpkin-Spice-Latte-Flavored-Banana-Bread Malloweens! Why, they're so delicious... (ominous music begins playing as the camera zooms in on Marshie, who speaks increasingly creepy) who do you think took this bite out of my head? WHOOOOOOOOOOO!? (The camera zooms in on his mouth, revealing Homestar inside, upside down)
    Homestar: (scared) Hi Coach Z. Please rescue me so I don't die in here.
  • Marshie's counterpart in the "Old-Timey" Alternate Universe, Mr. Shmallow, is slightly less distressing ("Look lively. Look lively!"). At the end of the "Fluffy-Puff Air-Puffed Sugar Delights" commercial, even Homestar comments, "That monster's gonna give me nightmares."
  • "Marxie" (seen on main page 26) is also fairly unsettling, with flashing eyes, a furious expression and a semi-exposed brain. It doesn't help, either, that Marxie explodes soon after his appearance.
  • The off-key singing at the end of the Fluffy-Puff Marshmallows commercials were arguably unnerving even before Marshie was thrown into the mix.
• Since Homestar Runner has such a basis in the creators' childhood, it's not surprising that some within-series examples of this would crop up. A young Strong Sad was apparently terrified of his neighbor, Senor Cardgage ("He was extremely sketchy and gave me nightmares!"), and Strong Bad gets "the jibblies" at the sight of That Horrible Painting That's Been in Strong Mad's Closet Ever Since We Were Little ("Come on in heeeeeeeere....."), as well as The Little Chef Guy. Homsar himself is a rather unnerving character, seeing as he is a mutated, stunted in-universe parody of Homestar Runner. Though really, Homsar's meant to be that. He was made by a misspelling of "Homestar" in Sbemail #2, so it'd make perfect sense that he'd be weird.
  • Speaking of That Horrible Painting, the 2007 Halloween episode, "Jibblies 2" certainly did it for many viewers. The premise is genuinely creepy, what with everyone being hypnotized by the painting, Strong Bad wildly convulsing and bouncing all over the room and up against the ceiling, and finally Homestar entering the Horrible Painting itself - though the fact that the demon finally has a friend and will no longer be evil (and Homestar's adorable Artie The Strongest Man In The World costume) softens the blow a bit.
• Main Page #25 not only features another appearance by Marshie, but also features a somewhat disturbing appearance by a seriously off Homestar Runner puppet called "The Exact Same". There is something strangely frightening about the ensuing exchange, especially how The Exact Same's mouth doesn't move:
  The Exact Same: "The store."
  Homestar: "Who are you?"
  The Exact Same: "Well, I am the exact same."
• The main page shown above features Pom-Pom as a ghost, and Homestar and Strong Bad as zombies. And when you roll your cursor over "Toons," worms come out of Homestar’s mouth.
• The Dongrel torso in Thy Dungeonman III◊ is surprisingly intimidating looking.
• The Powered by the Cheat music video "Crystal Fortress" features some darn creepy imagery including unicorn horns sprouting out of stuff and the Stave It Off Guy’s face melting.
• In Punkin Show, there was the Homestar pumpkin made from a messier punkin. Even Homestar mentions that it may be unsuitable to children.
• Doomy Tales of the Macabre, while mostly a Black Comedy, did cross the line a few times including the King of Town drowning in mutton stew (though he enjoyed it), Pom Pom exploding and releasing a gas that kills the Poopsmith, Bubs' severed head, Homestar gaining too many knees, and Strong Bad’s realistic human hands.
• At the end of "A Decemberween Mackerel", we see Homsar half-dead in a snowbank.
  Homsar: Aaaaah'm yer death's door neighbor! (weakly) Puff, cough, toff...
• The voice actor for Blue Laser Commander is revealed in one cartoon, looking like a pastel green Crypt-Keeper with bloodshot eyes.
• "Let Us Give Tanks" gives us Gunhaver's treatment of the Green Helmets, where he only uses them to make small talk while they're in the midst of battle and begging for help.
  • The Blue Laser Commander bemoans the fact that his henchmen are identical, and proceeds to throw a carving fork in the face of one of them to give him a distinguishing feature. "Now you're the one with a fork stuck in your eye!" At first, it's treated as a Gory Discretion Shot, with the handle of the fork jutting from offscreen as the only acknowledgement of this happening, but later you see the minion's face completely, with the fork's prongs sticking into his bloodshot eyeball and streams of blood pouring from the poor guy's shattered visor.
  Minion #1: I'm thankful I don't have a fork in my eye, sir.
  Minion #2: [Flatly] I'm...thankful for this fork in my eye.
• An Easter egg in "Hremail 2000" shows Strong Bad walking around in what looks like Strong Sad's feet which have torn edges and make a squishy sound as he walks in them. What's more, he refers to them as "foot pelts", thus giving the impression that he's wearing Strong Sad's actual feet. Then again, Strong Sad could have also just grown new feet given everyone’s bizzare physiology.
• Near the end of "Homestarloween Party" Strong Sad just flickers the flashlight on and off, continuously, until the end of the toon, all while spooky music is playing. It's pretty creepy.
• Strong Bad's downright psychotic Joker-esque laughing fit in "A Jorb Well Done".
• There's a DVD Game on Everything Else, Volume 2 that's HONF. You play as Blue Laser, and both the wrong choices kill you. One zaps him to death and you see his skeleton, the other slices him in half and you can see his insides.
• Mancuso's Older Brother from the first 2008 Halloween toon could count; the fact that he has a less-cartoony design than the regulars probably doesn't help matters.
  • The quiet-voiced announcer returns from being fired at the beginning of the commercial to strangle the other guy to death.
    Quiet Announcer: ...I told him not to mess with me.
• In the remake of "Where My Hat is At?", there's a scene where Homestar finds Strong Sad in a pool, and it seems that he was being drowned mafia-style by Strong Bad and The Cheat. Never mind the highly disturbing punishment, which is far more cruel than anything else Strong Bad has ever done to his little brother, but his eyes are also sunken in and bloodshot from being submerged so long.
• Strong Sad keeps a secret blog that was updated from 2002 to 2005, and surprisingly, it's genuinely sad. It's spooky from the moment you enter, with a drab grey color scheme, the depressing title "Strong Sad's Litany of Crushed Hopes and Dreams", and his creepy black-and-white profile picture (currently Bull Shannon from Night Court, with previous pictures including Count Orlok from Nosferatu and a freaky caricature of Edgar Allen Poe). Some of the content is pretty funny, as Strong Sad has a dry sense of humor and leads a very strange life, but most of it is shockingly dark for Homestar: Strong Sad is shown to be pitifully lonely, nearly emotionless, severely abused, obsessed with counting, and prone to wasting hours of his time on pointless tasks, and he has bizarre and eclectic tastes, no talent in anything, and no drive to do anything. Given how, in the main Toons, Strong Sad's depression is usually Played for Laughs, it's very upsetting to see it portrayed as the awful living hell that it really is.
• "Sickly Sam's Big Outing" has a scene after the flower scene where the film "glitches" up. It then cuts to an alternative scene where Old-Timey Strong Bad has The Homestar Runner and Old-Timey Marizpan strapped to a Conveyor Belt of Doom at a sawmill. Thankfully, it cuts right back to Sickly Sam waiting at the boardwalk for his "hot date".
• The Halloween short "I Killed Pom Pom" revolves around Homestar mistakenly believing he killed Pom-Pom. In the end, he accidentally DOES kill Pom-Pom.
• Homestar Runner Goes For The Gold was a mostly harmless 20th anniversary cartoon, but the scene where Dijjery Doo's plan backfires was somewhat unsettling. Dijjery Doo falls from the sky, causing a chunk of Tiny Handed Strong Bad's HEAD to explode and fall off. Not only that, but he also has one of Dijjery Doo's Tusks IMPALED through his head.
  • And then we learn why, aside from a cameo as a silhouette in A Decemberween Mackerel, we haven't seen Dijjery Doo around lately: The Cheat, feeling that there's only room for one animal-like lackey in Strong Bad's life, has been keeping him in a crate for 20 years.
• Strong Bad's Easter egg at the end of "Haunted Photo Booth" has him shouting "How's Annie?" in an increasingly maniacal tone, in reference to his costume (Killer BOB from Twin Peaks). Then it fades to the Black Lounge, where Homsar appears dressed as The Man from Another Place and says "I was raised by a cup of coffee!" in a reversed-backwards-speaking voice, which either makes it more unsettling or less so.
• In Fan Costumes 2018, it is revealed that The Cheat molts. And we get to see him shed his skin in full detail. As Strong Bad says, "That is so much worse than if you were actually skinned alive!"
  • Then there's Vampire!Marshie, who says in a creepy voice if the bite in his head is ever healed, "I'll be unstoppable!"
• Halloween 2018 gave us "Mr. Poofers Must Die!", where the titular dog, who is explicitly said to be fictional, hijacks all the stories told about him to be harmless non-sequiturs instead of his death. While mostly played for laughs, there is a whole new level of horror to be elaborated upon from this. All of these stories are made up on the spot by Homestar. And the fictional Mr. Poofers changes them without Homestar's consent. There's a good reason why many YouTube commenters have compared that dog to something out of the SCP Foundation.
• Halloween 2019's cartoon, "The Homestar Runner Enters The Spooky Woods", starts off with Homestar DYING. And though his first two fears are weaksauce, both Strong Bad's eyeball barf bath (which was barfed up by Strong Mad, raising some questions as to how that happened) and Homestar's third and final fear (A half-decomposed raccoon being carried around by a family of wet pigeons, which Narrator Strong Bad notes is in a children's book) are legitimately creepy, as is the end: Homestar kept his ghost tail, ostensibly because it was so close to the witching hour, and it scared Strong Bad to death. Keep in mind that the witching hour is already OVER, so he's more than likely stuck as a ghost. And it ends with everyone laughing.
• Main Page 28, based on the "Unbelievably Soothing Children's Program" Characters from Yonder Website, has a couple of options that remind you that whole sub-series is a drug trip.
  • Hovering over Games has Character 8 (Strong Sad) chug down expired Smarty Juice until his head suddenly pops and a new face with a deep voice appears on his torso. Narrator Strong Bad calls it the most disturbing thing he's ever seen.
  • Hovering over Characters has Character 3 (Coach Z) appear and immediately melt into a puddle as his gibberish slows to a crawl.