A little glimpse of the school through Adam's eyes note
Though played for laughs most of the time, the premise of the show is about a young human boy forced to go to a school full of anthropomorphic animals due to a technical error, and all the animals have their real life savage instincts in tact. It's actually mentioned in-verse how many times Adam has nearly died just from going to school and it doesn't get any easier for him. Is it any wonder he hasn't gone insane yet?- Charles Darwin Middle School only allows animals that are trained to act like civilized humans. However all the students and faculty are still animals and have a tendency to go absolutely feral when upset. Adam nearly gets mauled or killed multiple times by various students and it's mentioned at one point he's exhausted coming to gym class because he spends much of his energy just trying to survive the day.
- Night School, the period at CDMS when nocturnal students attend classes, is even more terrifying even to the day students as the students are even more bloodthirsty due to their night-hunting instincts.
- Virgil "Bull" Sharkowski. An Anthropomorphic bullshark who relentlessly bullies the students at CDMS. His methods include viciously ripping smaller kids apart and eating them like prey, tearing apart school property that gets in his way, doing things that would kill someone in real life, and is overall, just plain uncivil. Worse is Adam is his favorite bully victim.
- Oh, and then there's Bull's older sister Euripides, the only person that terrifies him. Want to know how much of a bigger bully she was than bull? Her baby teeth are giant!
- Some of the traditions at CDMS are unsettling and follow a horrible Blue-and-Orange Morality system. Want to win the election for class president? Great. Once you're president the other students will try and kill you to assert their dominance due to the position running on Rank Scales with Asskicking. Want to excel and get A's on your report card instead of ridiculous stickers given to students? Good luck surviving, because the other students will deem you a threat for having higher letter grades and hunt you down and anyone else deemed a "smart one."
- In "Inoculation Day", Adam gets shot with a monkey booster syringe and undergoes Transformation Horror into a human-ape hybrid. Complete with a strangely loud and low roar.
- In “Amazon Kevin”, after learning Adam invited Kevin to come to the School, some of the animals make “We’ll maul you” faces at Adam, including the Meerkat, showing his fangs.
- Later on, after Kevin realized everyone in the auditorium is an animal, all the animal students become red with fury, intent on... Well, murdering a tv star who beats up animals.
- a few seconds later, as Jake rallied the students to attack Kevin, most, if not all the animals, with murderous faces, make it look like they’re looking at the viewer, making it all the more nightmare-inducing.
- Later on, after Kevin realized everyone in the auditorium is an animal, all the animal students become red with fury, intent on... Well, murdering a tv star who beats up animals.
- Jake in his more insane moments is not a pretty sight. He becomes violent, psychopathic, loud, and gives off constant monkey screeches before attacking his targets. He's also Lethally Stupid as in "Guano in 60 Seconds", Jake nearly killed himself, and the entire school, by setting a trailer, rolling down a dangerous highway, while everyone was in it, and destroying the breaks.
- Adam actually undergoes notable Sanity Slippage as the show goes on to the point of laughing maniacally for no reason and at one point he goes inexplicably feral. Season 4 episodes like "Human Behavior" and "A Very Special Boy" show even embracing the madness of Charles Darwin Middle School and no longer being able to cope with the outside world.
- In "Where in the World Are Adam's Parents?", people were assuming that Adam has eaten his parents, since they've never been seen and the animal students make jokes about this. This turned out to be a lie, but at the end of the episode, as always, they needed to end it off with a joke. In this case, it would be Adam burping up a human bone, humorously suggesting that he was a cannibal, who may not have eaten his parents, but at least he's eaten someone else.
- In "Ingrid Through the Out Door", Ingrid is forcibly graduated from CDMS and sent to high school due to her growth spurt. The high school is even more dangerous than CDMS as Ingrid gets continually mauled by fellow students during every class and would have died if not for help from her older sister and her friends. According to her sister, without a pack or clique protecting a student, they will be killed very quickly.
- Lola Llama, a social outcast at CDMS, who befriended the equally awkward Ingrid Giraffe, only to slowly steal her identity due to aggressive pack assimilation and turns out to be an emotionally unstable psychopath that seeks out to replace the weakest member of a pack. Worse is she tried to do the same to Adam near the end of her appearance.
- In "A Very Special Boy", Adam finds out he's been given "protected student status" that prevents other students and staff from killing him. The moment he asks for the status to be removed, all the students and staff, even the ones meant to be herbivores, converge to try and eat him alive.
- In the Halloween episode, Old Joe's entire body fall apart, with his head, arms, and legs, becoming detached from his body before his head gives off a pained wail. However, seconds later, it's revealed to be just a costume worn by Principal Pixiefrog, the one thing that does scare Adam and Jake.
- Windsor undergoing Sanity Slippage when he practices to become the first great animal ventriloquist in "Talking Teddy" where his dedication to the craft caused him to develop an aggressive Split Personality in the form of his puppet, driving him insane while aware enough to plead to Adam for help.
