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Nightmare Fuel / Pingu

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The kid's show Pingu, for a light-hearted show about a little boy penguin, actually has a lot of scary moments to begin with!

Examples:

  • The infamous Pingu Dreams episode features a nightmare sequence where Pingu is being stalked by a giant walrus which plays with him like a toy and eats the mattress from his bed as though it were a chocolate bar. This episode is second only to Pingu's Lavatory Story in terms of its controversy and bans.
    • It's drawn level with or beaten the others in bans now. According to The Other Wiki, Pingu Dreams is banned in almost every country in the world, and probably in any alien civilizations that may have picked it up.
    • Or, if you are lucky enough to buy a copy of the Swiss French/Chinese framebooks.
    • The children's book adaptation of this episode actually manages to make it scarier, by both turning the walrus from a playful Troll to an outright carnivore and by illustrating him to look far meaner than his televised version. Hmmm, wonder if this was the book Pingu's mom was reading to him...
    • The Korean english dub increases the walrus's creepiness by giving him a voice, making his intentions of devouring the little penguin by cooking more clear to the audience, as well as becoming obsessed with his prey as he makes creepy comments about the penguin's appearance and smell. The dub also confirms at the beginning of the episode that the walrus is a villainous character in the book that Pingu's mom was reading to him before he fell asleep.
    • Ironically, one country which does not ban the episode is Malaysia (where the show aired on the Media Prima-owned TV3 terrestrial channel, as well as over the kids-oriented Astro Ceria channel on satellite). According to posts on Reddit, a lot of Malaysian Pingu fans still have nightmares of being stalked by said leopard seal, two decades later.
    • If some rumors are to be believed, this scene might've actually been even more nightmarish. According to said rumors, the walrus laughing wasn't in the original audio. Instead it was the walrus roaring and shrieking like a pig! There's actually a video on YouTube which claims to have the audio. Remember though, it's all still up in the air, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like a good chunk of users in the comments remember it, possibly giving it more leverage. Without further ado, here it is.
  • Pingu Quarrels With His Mother begins like any other hijinks episode, with Pingu repeatedly begging his mother to let him go and play with Pingo, but he has to cut and move wooden logs instead. The humour begins to turn sour when he throws an angry stomping fit when told to move the logs. After walking outside, Pingu blows a raspberry, but then gives an evil Death Glare, complete with a Scare Chord! He then begins moving the logs indoors, getting more and more frustrated as he does so, and tries to sneak away and play with his friend, bringing the humour back for a little while, but his mother orders him to return home after discovering that he's left. The music gets more and more forboding as he continues his task, ferrying another basket of logs inside. Pingu stubs his toe, throws logs everywhere, and then violently kicks the table in the middle of the room, shattering the pottery on top. Pingu's mother slaps Pingu violently across the face for him misbehaving and trashing her hard work. The slap comes completely out of nowhere, and the reaction of Pingu afterwards seals the deal. To make matters worse, the beleaguered parent penguin looks horrified at what they have just done in the first place. A while later, the family is seated around the hastily-tidied room, sans Pingu. When his father enters his son's room to investigate, the window's shutters are ominously ajar. The part where Pingu's mother slaps him is very out of character for her as it's made pretty clear over the course of the series that out of everyone in his family, she's the one who Pingu seems to be closest to. The thought of a normally loving mother lashing out at her child like that is very chilling.
  • Pingu Runs Away. Pingu runs off into the night after his parents spank him for misbehaving and he imagines that he sees scary faces in the ice such as a dragon-like creature, a giant goblin with a claw hand... and what resembles a human skull. The skull's lower jaw even moves in a chomping motion at one moment. This one has been banned too, as much as Dream and Lavatory Story, but doesn't seem to have as much exposition as either.
    • The scene with the ice monsters gets even more terrifying if you pay close attention to the location of them between scenes. When Pingu first encounters the skull ice mound, it's standing on it's own, as are the other two sculptures. But then when Pingu runs to hide, they're now standing next to each othernote . Combine that with the scene of the skull's jaw moving prior and it very much implies that the ice mounds are alive and seem to be intentionally trying to surround and harm Pingu. Jesus Christ, no wonder the little penguin was so frightened.
  • In a particularly dark moment in Pingu Goes Fishing, Pingu yells at Robby while he is lifting up a slab of ice to get to the fish. The slab then falls on his right flipper. Robby raises up the now-limp appendage and begins to weep.
  • The episode where Pingu gets into an accident, where he hurts his beak, so that it begins to bleed. Pingu is shown panicking and in pain as blood drips to the floor.
    • In the same episode, as Pinga is running to the doctor's office to tell him what's happened to Pingu, she runs past other penguin's waiting to be treated. One of whom has a fishhook going through his beak.
  • In one episode, Pingu and his friends get injured and trapped in a hollow in an ice stack after part of it falls down over the entrance. A doctor comes along on his snowmobile to try and help, but he too gets crushed by more falling ice.
  • The episode Pingu Takes Revenge where Pingu's plan to get back at Pingg for throwing snowballs at him backfires when the bridge he sawed breaks underneath him while trying to warn his grandfather and he falls into the cold water beneath and doesn't come back up... cue next scene where Pingu is frozen solid inside a block of ice with a terrified expression, unable to move, but still able to make noises and plead for help as penguins gather round to look at him, before talking among themselves, as there's little they can do. It was probably intended to be more "cartoony" than it came off as.

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