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Nightmare Fuel / My Life as a Teenage Robot

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Not all is cutesy in this life...
  • Jenny's unique robotic body allows her to go through a lot of Body Horror that is squicky even In-Universe. Notably in See No Evil where she gets a new pair of eye upgrades from Wakeman that look like giant eye snakes coming out of her eye sockets or when she's reduced to nothing but a talking brain with eyes. Not to mention the number of times she's been effectively disemboweled.
    • Jenny herself can be terrifying at times when she's not being sweet, being a temperamental teenage girl who also happens to be a walking war machine and has basically non-existent restrictions that prevent her AI from resorting to solve her problems with violence at best or straight-up murder at worst! Three Laws-Compliant Jenny Wakeman is not.
  • At the beginning of the first episode "It Came from Next Door", Tuck walks into Jenny's house to retrieve a baseball. Much of the house looks dilapidated, with what looks like the remains of a robot leaking oil. This is never brought up again.
    • Also in the first episode, Jenny accidentally drags Tuck into space to destroy an asteroid. While Jenny is obviously no worse for wear, Tuck barely survives the experience and comes back suffocating, nearly burned alive and shell-shocked.
  • When Tuck envisions the Planet of the Bikers, there's a sudden art shift in the character design, giving it a more-than-creepy look. The fact that the evil bikers' designs are based on the work of Rob Zombie doesn't help much, either.
    • Although Tammy doesn't have an scary appearance initially, her monstrous mouth and tongue (a Shout-Out to Alien) can catch people off guard in "Ball in Chain". Also, there is the concept of being a slave in marriage; trying to get out of it involves the groom being eaten by the bride. It is said to be the tradition on the Space Bikers' planet.
  • Gigawatt is certainly unsettling...mostly because he's one of the few villains that could effortlessly curbstomp Jenny time and time again.
  • When Vexus has her Villainous Breakdown. Both that and her obsession with Jenny and her various disguises and Evil Plans.
  • Jenny and Brad nearly getting their heads cracked open and brains eaten by rock monsters in Last Action Zero. Jenny in particularly gets her head cut open with a can opener and her robotic brain is visibly shown ready to be eaten.
  • The Exo-Skin. It was designed by Nora Wakeman to allow Jenny to pass as a normal human girl. While the first version was a very unattractive rough prototype, merely being a ragdoll like suit whose appearance was frightening in-universe, the second, more advanced variation turns out to be even worse, essentially being a G-rated version of Venom.
    • The way the second Exo-Skin slithers up to Jenny like a snake in the middle of the night — and its appearance in the moonlight — still gives many fans the shivers. (So much that the scene became the header image for this page.)
    • When Jenny first tries out the second Exo-Skin, it latches itself onto her body and slowly crawls over her face. She tries to tell Nora Wakeman that there's something wrong, but Wakeman ignores her as she crawls back into the shadows, struggling and crying out.
      • The reason Wakeman ignores her is that Jenny claims to be unable to breathe, which she admittedly doesn't need to do since she's a robot, but even a psychosomatic reaction to something should have been cause for alarm since if it causes a mental reaction in someone, it's probably not a good idea to continue using it.
    • And once Jenny is wearing the skin, it starts showing a personality of its own, trying to manipulate Jenny into being a "normal" girl, both physically controlling her actions and attempting (and temporarily succeeding) to warp her mind into what it believes to be "normal" for a girl... Basically trying to have Jenny abandon her crime-fighting career (and, consequentially, her friends) like a disapproving 1950's grandmother mixed with the Venom Symbiote.
    • Worse, unlike most of the show's villains, the Exo-Skin isn't fully defeated. At the end of the episode, after the skin has supposedly been "deactivated" by Jenny pouring milkshake on herself, Brad's cranky old boss at the diner gets attacked. Jenny saves his life, but he bans her from the diner anyway, causing the rest of his customers to leave in disgust. As the old man begs for everyone to come back, the skin's sensors latch onto him and drag him into the shadows, where the exo-skin chomps down on him, laughing menacingly, as the screen goes black.
      • Even worse? The Exo-Skin is never seen or heard from again after that episode; as far as we know, it's still out there. Nothing Is Scarier, indeed. Word of God mentions how there was supposed to be a third "Raggedy Android" episode with the Exo-Skin kidnapping Brad and threatening to kill him unless Jenny merged with it again. It was scrapped because Nickelodeon felt it was too disturbing by even their show standards.
  • This bit from "The Wonderful World of Wizzly":
    Jenny: Go on, little robots! Be free!
    Robot Raccoon: But where are we supposed to go?
    (Jenny twists her head 180 degrees revealing a big, blanked-eyed Death Glare)
    Jenny: (monotone) I said...be free.
  • "Armagedroid". From the robot world standpoint, he's the indestructible World's Strongest Man and the most powerful robot on the planet, built specifically to end wars and tunneled his way out of the Earth's core. The first fight against him and seeing him tear Jenny apart. Plus the fact that, although not explicitly stated, it appears that he came dangerously close to killing her. There's also the fact that he was built by Wakeman long before any of the XJS, essentially making him Jenny's eldest brother and Jenny is basically his little sister. He almost tore his little sister to pieces without any remorse....
    • In a similar sense, "Enclosure of Doom". Just the fact that Jenny managed to talk Armagedroid into destroying himself.
      • How it's done it also unnerving: first you have him tearing into himself, basically causing a robotic disembowelment, and ripping out as much of his insides as possible, and then you have him activating his self-destruct.
      • It's worth pointing out that he was still in town when he did this.
  • The Surreal Horror Scene in Around the World in Eighty Pieces where the gang travels to an island in the Galapagos to collect one of Jenny's missing body parts and are chased by all sorts of land-based animals who start impossibly flying and trying to catch them to attack them. These include Blue-footed boobiesnote , iguanas, and seals. Sheldon's horrified response sums it up.
    Brad: What is this place?!
    Sheldon: It's evolution gone mad!
  • Lil'Acorn. Everything about him, from his backstory as a former aggressive ventriloquist doll that gained sentience to eventually returning in a pissed off damaged state decades later to stalk and force Nora to build him a bride. Not to mention his relationship with Nora reeks of Domestic Abuse and the fact he essentially tried to brainwash and marry her daughter and he almost succeeds with his plan.
  • The fact that Larry-3000 from Time Squad, appears to be dismantled, in his cameo appearance of "It Came from Next Door", as if someone murdered/tortured him.
  • Vexus' plan to convert Jenny in "Hostile Makeover", where a bug she plants in Jenny's system causes her to hideously mutate into a violent, supersized robot. Jenny's fear as the changes escalate is unmistakable. She gets better though.
  • In "Mama Drama" Jenny fears that her mom's new date is actually a villain (Which to be fair, there were ALOT of strong evidence being the case). And the end, she starts chasing him, pins him to a wall and attempts to cut him in half with a buzzsaw to his horror. The only reason she doesn't go through with it is because Dr. Wakeman shuts her down. It turns out that the man is completely innocent, meaning Jenny almost brutally murdered a man in public based on a misunderstanding.
  • In the Christmas special, Jenny spends a year Brainwashed and Crazy so the villain of the special can destroy holidays. When she snaps out of it, she's missing that entire frame of time and was blatantly terrified that all her friends and her own mother want to shut her down permanently over something she doesn't remember doing and didn't even do willingly.
  • Melody's robotic form in her last appearance. Holy shit, she looks so... alien like and of course her enraged screams at Jenny.
    Melody: I'm not evil! I'M A NORMAL GIRL! (goes full blown robotic-demon form) I. AM. NOOOOOOOOORMALLL!!!!!!!
  • The revelation that Jenny has sister robot models from XJ-1 through XJ-8 is as terrifying as it is heartwarming for Jenny, specifically because Nora Wakeman simply decided to shut them down and lock them away to rust because they were basically failed inventions... failed inventions who ironically enough were all as sentient as Jenny is despite their numerous faults. Nora's also shown plans to make an XJ-10 model that will eventually replace Jenny. Does that mean Nora will eventually decide to lock Jenny away and forget her like the rest of her "daughters" one day despite the closeness they've shared in the show?
  • "Escape from Cluster Prime":
    • The first place Jenny finds herself after crossing the portal to Cluster Prime? A landfill full of robotic waste. And if the design of the waste isn't creepy enough, it gets worse when you realize that, from her point-of-view, its almost like she was standing among corpses!
    • The scene showing Vexus' propaganda against Jenny, thanks to its eerily similarities with real-life fascist indoctrination.

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