Nightmare Fuel / The Powerpuff Girls (1998)

aka: The Powerpuff Girls

"IT'S YOUR FAULT... YOUR FAULT... YOUR FAULT... YOUR FAULT..."

So once again, the audience has been sleepless, thanks to... The Powerpuff Girls.

The Powerpuff Girls Movie has its own page.

For the 2016 series, see here.

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• As part of the show's animesque style, every time an Earth-Shattering Kaboom is shown, it's done in complete silence, implying that the force from the explosion is so great that it takes a few minutes for the sound to catch up with the image or even that the very film you're watching can't capture, let alone recreate, such an awesome sound. Either way, it's chilling!
• Just the fact that the girls end up mutilating a lot of the giant monsters they regularly fight throughout the show's run is unsettling within itself. Many of them are quite disturbingly graphic for a kids show.
• HIM - a crossdressing, nameless embodiment of all that is evil, whose voice ranges from a cheerful lisp to a raging roar to an insidious whisper, with a constant creepy reverb throughout. His appearance is always accompanied by a Scare Chord. The only recurring villain not obsessed with ruling Townsville or monetary gain, but rather, with utterly breaking the girls' spirit for no reason other than because he's just plain EVIL. He lives in a rundown apartment building. His room is illuminated by an eerie pink light. The walls and the floor are pink. There's no furniture, appliances (except a TV), logic or causality. It's less a bachelor pad and more an entrance into the Eye of Terror.
  • And that was BEFORE it got re-designed. Later seasons show it to be a World Gone Mad/World of Chaos with various pieces of Chaos Architecture swirling randomly through a formless void while random live-action clips inexplicably play against the background. Just like everything else about Him, it really toes the line between silly and absolutely horrifying.
  • Judging by his reaction in their first episode together, even Mojo Jojo feared Him. In later episodes that feature both, Mojo doesn't see Him as a threat and both can be outright hostile towards each other.
    • Forget Mojo, the narrator is terrified of Him. Even after Him went through Badass Decay in later episodes, the narrator still shows hesitance and fear when saying his name. Let that sink in...
    • More than even that, remember that "Him" is not his real name, it's just what the narrator says is the only safe way to refer to him. The Narrator is not only afraid of Him, he's even too scared to speak Him's true name.
• Sedusa. An evil seductress who easily manipulates the will of men and goes out of her way, often horribly abusing the girls to put them out of commission. And coupled with her generally unsettling face whilst in human mode makes for one of the most unique and downright psychologically brutal villanesses yet.
• "Gensundfight". Not just due to the grossout nature of the episode, it's a pretty disturbing vision of what a rampant, accelerated biological attack would look like: first, the sick Amoeba Boys sneeze near some apples, which infects the seller and all the fruit in the cart. When the apple is purchased, the now-sick customer gets on a bus, spreading it to all the passengers, who between them all spread it to the entire town. Worse is that the virus doesn't conform to anything known, meaning they have no way of stopping it without going to the source.
• '"Bubblevicious." Never... NEVER EVER MAKE BUBBLES ANGRY.
  • How badly she beats up those citizens for what they did, whether it be littering or jaywalking.
  • The scene where Bubbles beats up all those monsters has got to be one of the most violent scenes of this show. During this scene, you can even see blood coming from Bubbles's mouth at one point.
  • Hell, Bubbles's Sanity Slippage as a whole was chilling.
  • The scene where Mojo Jojo sneaks up on Bubbles and grabs her, especially since you can only see his shadow, is creepy, not just for the kids but to parents too.
• "Tough Love" is this at full stop after Him mind rapes everyone into hating the girls. Some notable highlights include:
  • The Mayor, Ms. Bellum and a SWAT team pointing rifles at the girls.
  • The Narrator, of all people, turns against the girls.
  • When the girls try to explain the situation to Professor Utonium, he viciously snaps at them for barging into his lab. In doing so, he gives off one of the scariest faces in cartoon history◊. And the way he walks towards the girls to grab them...
  • Don't forget the glowing red eyes that everyone has as well.
  • At one point, the girls' hotline bears an angry expression instead of its normal happy one.
  • The very thought of the girls getting killed by their loved ones is enough to send a chill down your spine.
• In the episode "Divide and Conquer", after the Amoeba Boys and their copies go on their orange heist, there is a scene where the Mayor calls the girls to inform them that thanks to the sudden disappearance of the oranges, Townsville is being hit by the disease known as scurvy. The focus on scurvy in this episode is limited to just this one scene, but it's so detailed ("yellowish flaky skin, spongy purple gums, and painful swollen joints") that you may get uncomfortable from just thinking about it.
• Mojo Jojo's trip through the fifth dimension in "Get Back Jojo". There's also his panicking over the idea that a lying young Utonium might make the Powerpuff Girls, so he proceeds to toss the young boy straight into the mouth of the Townsville volcano to nip that bud before it even sprouts.
• In the episode "Buttercrush", the Gangreen Gang lures Blossom and Bubbles onto a trap that results in them getting immobilized in crushed cars and raised over a lava pit. Had it not been for Buttercup punching down the wall of the shack while rocking with Ace, her sisters would've died an agonizing, fiery death.
• In "Twisted Sister", after the girls scold Bunny and send her away, they are suddenly ambushed by the prisoners Bunny inadvertently set free earlier. The ambush is so big (apparently made up of every non-supervillain criminal in Townsville), the girls can't even fight back, rendering them completely helpless! The Narrator was so freaked out by this, he was basically calling for Bunny to go back and save them!
  • At the beginning of the episode, Ace threatens a man with a knife while attempting to steal the man’s watch.
  • Bunny's death sequence in can be pretty heart-wrenching for children who have experienced death of a loved one. If you've experienced something related to this as a child, the ending sequence of this episode is definitely not for you. The terrified look on Bunny's face does not help matters either.
• "Paste Makes Waste". The sheer grossness of the boy eating glue is only eclipsed by seeing him swallowing a radioactive bug that turned him into a giant glue monster.
• In "Getting Twiggy With It", there's Twiggy, the kindergarten class's hamster that turned into a giant radioactive beast and went on a murderous rampage. In the end the Powerpuff Girls punish their classmate Mitch Mitchelson for not taking care of Twiggy and turning her into a monster by having him be chased nonstop by Twiggy on a giant hamster wheel. Basically, if he stops running, Twiggy will probably maul him, eat him, or both.
  • What about when Twiggy falls into a container of radioactive sewage? That hand (paw) that comes out of it? Creepy.
    • Before Twiggy became a radioactive monster, the way Mitch treated her was rather horrifying. It's disturbing to see such a young child being so abusive toward a poor, innocent animal.
    • Even worse: in real life, abusing animals as a child is an early red flag for a number of psychological disorders, including sociopathy and psychopathy, and can be a sign that the child themselves is being abused by someone else. Draw your own conclusions...
• When the Broccolorian Aliens invade, the children of Townsville find the only way to fight them off is to eat them alive. When Blossom first tries this she squicked her sisters and the alien leader. The bit with the head Broccolorian begging for his life before being devoured and having his scepter smashed is especially creepy.
  Broccoli King: BARBARIANS!
  Bubbles: EW! EW! EW! EW! EW!
  Buttercup: Ugh! That is nasty!
• The girls' nightmare in "Cootie Gras". After hearing one of their classmates has "cooties", they become scared that they'll be infected. It's actually kind of funny, until they have a nightmare about tiny versions of said classmate popping out of their skin… all over their bodies.
  Blossom: [slow motion voice] Bubbles! You've got something on your… AAARRRMMM!! AHHHHGGGHHH!!
  • The end of that sequence shows us the girls trapped in a snowglobe which Harry is holding, and starts to give them a kiss with his gross, slobbery lips! Yuck!
• The episode where we learn about Mojo Jojo's origins and how when the Powerpuff Girls came along his brain started growing through the top of this skull. The same thing happens to various monkeys in The Movie. Only this time, it's slower and you see them convulse as they undergo the process. He also has to live with a brain that is constantly exposed to the world, except when he wears his helmet.
  • The same helmet that the girls crack or break a hole in nearly every time they fight him, if you look at the post-defeat shots of him.
• "Dream Scheme". The Sandman wants everyone in the world to sleep forever so that he can get some sleep. How do the girls beat him? By giving him a nightmare so horrible that he will never want to sleep again. What said nightmare involves is nothing short of the Sandman running through a hallway in slow-motion (accompanied by menacing music that sounds equally slowed down and partly in reverse), trying to escape gigantic Powerpuff Girl chickens that chase him down, and then finding himself stranded in the middle of the ocean before being devoured by a massive Bubbles Jaws style.
• The 'Robbing Leech'… probably because of Fridge Horror and Not-So-Harmless Villain potential. The part where he attacks a security guard and we see what looks like blood fly from the spot (though that was likely to actually be saliva, which is horrifying on a whole 'nother level), and the marks the victims have on their heads resemble vampires. What's even weirder is we never learn anything about the Robbing Leech, not even a backstory. He's just…there. There's also his character's design. While none of the characters on the show look realistic, there's something just incredibly… off about a tiny man in a nice suit who never says a word.
  • Even more frightening is that Blossom was his next victim. If she didn’t get to the Mayor in time and use him to protect herself since his low-intellect proved to be a liability to the leech, just imagine one of the Powerpuff Girls, the most intelligent one no less, being robbed of her brain. Not to mention that she is a child.
• Dick. Hardly. For a one-shot villain from the episode "Knock it Off", he manages to be a walking Nightmare Fuel repository, somehow being scarier than even HIM of all characters. While his greed and sleaziness are both exaggerated in a over-the-top, cartoonish manner, nothing about his behavior is actually played for laughs. Unlike Mojo Jojo and HIM, Dick Hardly has absolutely no empathy and boundaries and is taken completely seriously as a villain. He is abusive towards not just his Powerpuff Girl clones, but also the employees in his factory. When the real Powerpuff Girls confront Professor Dick about the Chemical X he is using to make knockoffs, Dick swallows the Chemical X in an attempt to hide any evidence against him. This results in him turning into a really creepy monster that actually matches his personality. Dick then defeats and traps the girls to start draining them of their Chemical X. Professor Utonium arrives at Dick's lair, but can't do anything to help them, and is forced to watch them slowly die. This makes the clones turning against Dick for never giving them any real love especially satisfying.
  • The clones themselves are pretty horrifying to look at, but then again, it is Dick's fault that they look that way.
  • The concept of mass-producing artificial human beings that only live for about five hours is in and of itself quite scary. The music played during the factory scenes adds even more nightmare fuel. Not to mention the scene where we see a Blossom clone lying in dismembered pieces while a customer makes an angry call to Dick, asking, "What kind of stuff are you trying to push on us?"
  • While supervising the assembly line, Dick comes across one girl that's a perfect clone of Buttercup. He tells the workers to "take it back and melt it down for its Chemical X!"
  • Dick's brief instances of being a womanizer as well as the way he literally objectifies little girls as sellable, profitable merchandise adds extra layers of disturbing to him.
  • The Reality Subtext of Dick's character from the perspective of Professor Utonium is that he gave someone he thought was his long-time friend an opportunity to exploit, take advantage of, and ultimately physically and psychologically abuse (even attempt to murder) his children because the Professor was a Horrible Judge of Character, and his daughters were primarily motivated to hesitantly place their own trust in that "friend" in the first place (initially almost viewing Dick as a benevolent surrogate uncle of sorts) because of the esteem that the Professor openly held him in against all previous evidence to the contrary. It makes the scene in which Dick picks the girls up from school and lures them into his car after Utonium's falling-out with him all the more disturbing.
• "Insect Inside", where the girls fly into a giant swarm of cockroaches. Before that there is a scene with a guy who merrily takes a bite out of a hot dog... and then we hear horrific crunching noise and see a discolored closeup on his distorted face as hundreds of roaches crawl out of his mouth. Gross!
  • When the roaches finally infest the city, not even the Narrator is safe.
    Narrator: Gross! Gross! Gross! Get them off! Oh MAN, this is DISGUSTING! The city of Townsville is covered in ROACHES!!!
• The episode "Speed Demon", where the girls manage to accidentally travel several decades into the future, where they weren't around to protect the town and Him took over and brought it to ruin. Everything is destroyed. The sky is a blood red. The mayor was murdered. Miss Bellum became a shrieking madwoman hiding in ruins. Miss Keane standing in place in the ruined school reciting Madness Mantra. The insane Professor desperately trying to recreate the girls. The girls are so overwhelmed that all they can do is run away so fast that they go back in time and vow to never leave Townsville again.
  • Him in that episode. How dangerous can the jazzercizing diner-running Camp Gay devil man be? Turns out that the only thing in between him and turning the city into a blasted, apocalyptic wasteland was the Powerpuff Girls. Whoops. And then he goes One-Winged Angel & shows just how evil he can be.
  • The thing that makes this episode even more terrifying? The fact that this all happened just as much by the hand of the girls THEMSELVES as it did Him. That, and as opposed to other examples here, this issue wasn't resolved with some fight like usual. Him takes every punch they throw at him. He gets right back up and continues to mock them without so much as a scratch. It was such devastation that even the girls had no choice but to run.
    Him: Beat you? Why, girls, don't you see? I've already WON!!!!!
  • There is a notably disturbing shot, while the Powerpuff Girls fight Him, where the camera pans over a series of dilapidated posters detailing Townsville's descent into hell. First the Powerpuff Girls go missing, then Professor Utonium is accused of fraud, the Mayor is killed, and finally Him comes into the picture. The juxtaposition of the last two posters is particularly creepy as it suggests Him may have been voted into power.
    HIM: All I did was take over. IT WAS EASY!
  • There is another layer of Nightmare Fuel in this episode: The Girls can never leave Townsville. It doesn't matter what their hopes and dreams and desires are, they are essentially forced into a life of servitude, because if they were to ever try to have a life anywhere else, Him, or Mojo Jojo, or any number of villains would simply swoop in and take over, destroying millions of lives in the process. It's one thing for the citizens to deal with natural disasters or monsters on their own, but there is simply no way they could handle Him.
  • Not only that, in the Brazilian dub, Him said that he sent the whole world to Hell, not just Townsville.
  • The episode gets even creepier when you consider a similar trauma would be fallen upon another beloved Cartoon Network hero years later... and there are quite a few hints in that show that it's the future of this one.
• The detailed Animesque Imagine Spots the girls have in "Substitute Creature". One that deserves special mention is the Imagine Spot where a cookie that Blossom gives to a classmate turns her into an Eldritch Abomination. Mr. Green's appearance in the Imagine Spots is also very unsettling.
• The episode "Power-Noia", where Him invades the girls dreams to bring about their worst possible nightmares. The worst of the nightmares isn't Bubbles's or Buttercup's, even though they are both frightening. Blossom's worst nightmare is pretty much saying she believes her self worth is judged by her intelligence, and her intelligence alone. It becomes worse when you realize how young she is.
  • The part where Bubbles saw her demonic toys for the first time. She begs Blossom and Buttercup (who are either still asleep or illusions conjured up by Him) to help her and Blossom simply tells her that "whatever it is, it's not real and if you just tell yourself that it'll go away". So Bubbles closes her eyes and says "It's not real". When she opens them, the toys are still there. She does it again. They're closer now. She does it again. This time, they're right in her face! The fact that it cuts to commercial and then Blossom's nightmare directly after doesn't help at all. To make this even worse, while Bubbles is being asphyxiated by her toy snake, her face goes purple.
    • The dolls essentially threaten to DISMEMBER Bubbles and turn her into a living toy just like them! The way they describe each step (replacing her innards with stuffing, her eyes with buttons) with a sickening glee as Bubbles becomes more and more terrified does not help.
    • Before Him invades the girls' nightmares, Bubbles nervously looks around the darkened room before seeing a toy clown on the chair next to her bed. Presumably it's supposed to be a Non-Ironic Clown in-universe but it's terrifying. Bubbles' nightmare begins when she notices it's vanished from its perch... But an attentive viewer will notice that it had actually vanished much earlier than that. (This might be due to the doll's design being too complicated for the background artists to put in every shot, but either way, its mere presence is the first clue about just how hard this episode will go.)
  • Him's speech prior to the nightmares beginning makes it all the creepier.
  • A lot of the Background Music that plays throughout the nightmares. Some of it is recycled from "Speed Demon" and "Tough Love".
    Him: (Affably Evil laugh) What's this I hear? Tortured by the things you fear? Nighty-night, Girls. Pleasant dreams! Pleasant screams! (demonic laughter)
  • Blossom's dream really amps up the ante with the nightmare factor. The aforementioned self-worth being based solely on her intelligence manifests in the form of Blossom coming to school where everyone, her sisters included, surround her as Ms. Keane talks her down in a hostile, even evil manner (especially evidenced by whenever she smiles). On top of the dark, dull color palette, the entire class speaks in unison with a completely emotionless inflection while Keane accuses Blossom of such things as not communicating and not being cooperative, before handing her the report card (which is full of Fs written in red) and then flashing it for the class to see. As the nightmare progresses, everyone starts to look more and more like Him; as Blossom attempts to escape only to find the door is locked, the class is creeping up on her with bright red irises.
  • Buttercup's nightmare would not be pleasant for arachnophobes. Even though its Played for Laughs her small "I can't." when Blossom tells her she can fight the spiders off is in itself terrifying. For a character that prides themselves on being strong, to see her say that proves how bad the girls' nightmares were.
  • Him going One-Winged Angel at the end.
    Him: I know your deepest, darkest fears. You are afraid YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!!
• Mask Scara from "A Made Up Story" is pretty creepy for a villain that's Played for Laughs.
• On "That's Not My Baby", when the girls try searching for the kid (who's actually the baby of the monster in this episode) in the middle of the night, they see a cute little dog with a pacifier in its mouth. But when they get near it, the dog growls at them in a way so unpleasant that it would make even a Doberman, a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd piss itself on the spot. And the glare it gives them? Looks more like a hellhound than a cute little dog!
• The nanobots in "Nano of the North". For some reason, it's creepy to watch buildings and other things that contain carbon melt from what appears to be acidic rain, especially once these tiny organisms hiding in the rain are revealed.
• Fuzzy Lumpkins flying into an absolutely wild rage and brutalizing citizens for "taking his property" in "Fuzzy Logic." The fact that it causes them to repeat Madness Mantras doesn't help.
  • Fuzzy going absolutely bonkers.
• Mojo Jojo going literally apeshit in prison due to his repeating defeats at the hands of the girls in the beginning of "The Rowdyruff Boys"; his rage is so pure that it reverts him back to his primal state, causing him to bang his fists, jump around, and screech like an actual monkey. You think that is funny? (chuckles) No, it isn't!
  • And let's make one thing clear: when we say "screech like an actual monkey", that's not hyperbole. For contrast, much later in the series in "Forced Kin", Mojo snaps and has a freakout over an alien invader basically stealing the title of "world's greatest supervillain" from him and he starts whooping and waving his arms around like a normal monkey, but it's clearly being done by Roger L. Jackson and comes across much more as being funny. Not here, though—he's making actual chimpanzee sounds and it's harrowing. Watch it here if you still don't believe us.
  • Right after a usual diabolical laugh is released where he devises a plan, which causes someone to say "Hey, shut up in there" the creepy contained laugh in his mind is quite sinister.
  • At the beginning of the episode, Mojo fires a ray gun at a bus. With people in it. And they didn't escape. Let that sink in.
  • The Rowdyruff Boys themselves, they are just as young as the girls, have the same powers, but none of the morality. Case in point, they each grab a bus, a ship, and an airplane filled with people and chuck them at the girls! After saving the people the girls are then promptly sucker punched by the boys.
    Blossom: These guys aren't playing fair!
    Buttercup: They're really out to get us!
    Bubbles: And they don't care who gets in their way!
• Whimsical Willy himself in "Neighbor Hood". The whole kids show shtick feels (somewhat) normal at first glance, but it all goes out the window when a sadness cloud threatens Daydream Lane (in the show's world, obviously). The way he says "happy paper" (actually money) at any point sounds very creepy, since it deviates from his regular voice.
  • Not helping is his Sanity Slippage when Blossom and Buttercup reveal to Bubbles the true nature of the show. When he loses his mind, he still keeps up the kids show charade, and it makes him look like a pedophile due to his exaggerated animation and detailed faces.
  "VERY GOOD!"
  • That disturbing smile Bubbles makes whilst Whimsical Willy shows off his masks. You can see it here.
• The entire episode of "Uh Oh... Dynamo!" Quite possibly the most violent episode in the series, with the entire city being leveled in the most graphic way a cartoon can depict.
• Many of the psychotic and evil expressions the Gnome makes in "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey".
  • His request to the girls in exchange for defeating the villains: their lives. He then specifies he actually meant their superpowers... Because they're such an essential part of what makes the Powerpuff Girls who they are.
• Him at the end of "Octi Evil". After being defeated by the Powerpuff Girls in the form of Bubbles' toy, he yells three Big "NO!"'s, explodes, then gives off a pitiful little "nooooo..." as he fades away. The way he says it is just unnerving.
  • The episode in general counts. Bubbles talking to a stuff animal that responds back and has its voice provided by the show's equivalent of the devil is already pretty disturbing, but the nightmare factor escalades when HIM fully possesses Octi, causing it to grow huge and go on a destruction rampage.
  • Just the fact that HIM has targeted Bubbles in particular during his plans on more than one occasion.
• In "Town and Out", when the girls destroy the Citiesville bridge to catch the robbers, they expect a congratulatory thanks from the police officer they meet. What they instead get is one seriously pissed off cop.
  • Also when the girls are called into the town's mayor's office, the superhero-ish music suddenly turns into a soft silence broken only by the clock on the wall before the mayor yells at them over the property damage they caused.
  • When the girls have to walk all the way back to their crummy apartment after they're told that they're forbidden to use their superpowers, they pass a few scummy looking men on the side of the streets. The comments from those men are creepily pedophilic sounding, and appropriately enough, Bubbles is particularly freaked out by them.
  • The sheer clash between Citiesville, a Wretched Hive on the level of 1970s New York, and the Girls, who have only ever known Townsville, which has its own share of creepiness, but at worst reaches a Sugarbowl feel.
  • The state of the motel room where the girls live in Citiesville is also pretty disturbing, what with all the bugs, green dirt, huge cracks in the wall. This is every germaphobe's nightmare.
• Rainbow after he is covered with bleach and becomes Mr. Mime in "Mime For A Change". He is mute, and is able to make others black and white like him, and freeze them just by touching them. The music that plays in the background when he does this to people doesn't help any.
  • One of the most chilling moments of that episode isn't something that happens so much as the anticipation of it happening: a cop tells him to put his hands on the ground, and he does. Slowly. With a Slasher Smile. In complete silence.
  • How impossible it would have been in real life for Bubbles to turn everyone back to normal, if not the rock-music related Deus ex Machina.
  • The scene where he manages to immobilize Blossom and Buttercup also counts. The way he appears behind them almost seems like he’s a child kidnapper, with the aforementioned PPGs being his current victims.
• The episode "Monkey See, Doggy Do", where Mojo Jojo turns everyone in the world into dogs is just really creepy, especially because it shows some of the challenges a human turned into a dog would have maneuvering a world designed for humans.
  • Not only that, but with only a few exceptions (like the girls and the Professor) he uses the Anubis head to brainwash almost all the transformed citizens. Having your humanity stolen from you is bad enough, but then having your free will removed as well? That's just too frightening to imagine.
  • Especially unnerving is the Mayor's transformation, where he initially appears normal but emerges from his desk with the body of a dog and the head of a human. Worse still is when Ms. Bellum shows up, with the head of a dog and unable to speak. The worst part though has to be when the Mayor tries to name Mojo as the culprit, only for his voice to trail off into a bark before completing his transformation.
• The giant eye monster in the episode "The Mane Event" where Bubbles and Buttercup give Blossom a bad haircut was one of the scariest villains. Despite the simple design it was very scary looking and the fact that it could see all around itself and destroy anything in its path with its laser vision made it nearly unbeatable. It became less frightening when it started laughing at Blossom's haircut, but that didn't last long. In fact, it gets WORSE because it suddenly regresses to its angry stare while everyone else is still laughing.
• When Mojo turns the Girls into cyborgs in "Dance Pantsed". Both the way they look, particularly their unblinking Black Eyes of Evil, and the way they speak are unnerving.
• The Mayor displays his insanity in "Hot Air Buffoon". But the worst comes near the end, when the Girls manage to stop three out of four missiles from destroying Townsville, and while they did stop a fourth one, the Mayor's boxing glove accidentally collides into it, causing a massive explosion that reduces the town to rubble. Despite this, it's all Played for Laughs and the Mayor is told he could go back to his old job of calling the Girls.
• The episode "Boogie Frights", in which the Boogie Man and his minions turn all of Townsville into a giant nightclub, terrorizing its citizens. Especially the mummy hiding in the little boys' racecar bed...
  • There's the beginning of the blackout party. Imagine being a child, waking up in the middle of the night, with the room in twilight darkness, and hearing something whisper "The coast is clear, come on!" from beneath your bed. SUDDENLY every monstrosity imaginable crawls out from underneath. Good luck ever sleeping again...
  • The giant Chiquita-dressed monster who grabs two kids right out of their beds and pulls them out the window. Granted, she was only seen using them as human maracas, but its easy to see that as something else.
  • The giant monster who drinks out of a power plant cooling tower, then burps and sets fire to a building full of people with his breath. This is before the Girls had been alerted too, so its entirely possible all those people got fried to a crisp with no one to save them...
  • The Mayor being woken up in the middle of the night and finding monsters all over his house. And his wife wearing a sleep mask.
  • Earlier in the episode, Buttercup is telling her sisters a scary story about the boogie man not too bad at first but then she warns them that he only comes out after dark. When she says this part she turns out the lights she becomes the silhouette with a menacing evil grin with evil green eyes and spoke in a low tone saying "After dark!" She looks like an evil version of Buttercup about to eat Bubbles. Bubbles screams when this happens and we can't blame her. Just look at Buttercup!◊ Good luck, trying to sleep after seeing this! Thankfully, the professor comes in and chides Buttercup for scaring her sisters before she goes any further, but still!
• In "All Chalked Up," Buttercup breaks Bubbles' chalk, and Bubbles ends up receiving magic chalk from Him, who is disguised as a butterfly. The Nightmare Fuel comes into the picture when Bubbles draws a bunch of monsters out of anger, and they all come to life - and when this happens, for an uncomfortably long time, we just get the students staring at the monsters in horror, with no sound at all save for the monsters' creepy roars and growls.
  • In the aforementioned scene Buttercup destroys Bubbles's chalk. Bubbles' wailing sounds ENTIRELY different then the way she normally cries - it doesn't sound like acting, it sounds real. You can't even see Bubbles' face at all during her bawling fit. To really stick the knife in, Buttercup is smiling when Bubbles is crying. Sure, she gets a chance to redeem herself at the end of the episode (despite being unable to get her apology all out), but still.
• Everything about Lenny Baxter's Sanity Slippage in "Collect Her", but even before then, the episode demonstrated that Lenny's obsession with collecting all Powerpuff Girl merchandise was unsettling, to the point that his apartment came across as a Stalker Shrine. When he realizes he owns all known pieces of Powerpuff toys and merchandise, he's desperate to acquire more because collecting is his entire life. So he resorts to breaking into the girls' home and steals personal belongings, including a framed family photo of the girls and Professor Utonium. But when that's not enough, he lures the girls into his apartment (where Blossom and Buttercup are disturbed by all the stuff with their face on it, while Bubbles thinks it's cool) and traps them inside unbreakable plastic containers with the intent to keep them for all eternity. To clarify, we're talking about a grown man obsessed with collecting toys based on three little girls, and when that isn't enough he breaks into their house while they're there and steals their belongings before abducting them. This isn't even considering what Lenny would've done if having the girls as captives wasn't enough, or if the girls had suffocated or starved to death trapped in those containers.
  • Even though Lenny was the culprit, and a very unpleasant person to boot, it can still be a little unnerving to see how quickly the citizens of Townsville form an angry mob and break in his house, whereas they have no evidence yet (only the fact that he happened to be the only person not present to search for the girls).
    Lenny: Well, paint me green and call me Frankenstein.
• In "Child Fearing", Blarney the Singing Sea Serpent seems just as lovable as any other children's show character...until he starts singing a song about animals. Every time he audibly mimics the actions of the animals he dresses up as, he screams at the top of his lungs while a dissonant chord plays in the background.
  • Come to think of it, why would a fish be screaming (or at least want to)?
• There is also Fuzzy Lumpkins' very painful condition — the result of Buttercup beating him even when he begs her to stop (for once) in "Make Zen to Me". It doesn't matter how bad Fuzzy was; Fuzzy's condition (despite the status quo making him better) looked very horrifying. Fuzzy, as the doctors described, was in so much pain, he had to not only be wheelchair-bound for a while, but he couldn't think or eat during his recovery. In fact, some viewers may have been as disturbed as Buttercup when she saw and heard what happened to Fuzzy.
• The undead Al Lusion from the “Abracadaver” episode, a hideous zombie magician who died in a tragic accident while on stage in front of hundreds of people.
  • The Mayor himself was in the audience as a child and witnessed the disaster, and the theater has been closed ever since. What’s even creepier is that Lusion's corpse was simply left to rot in the spiked coffin he died in. No one bothered to retrieve it.
  • Then there's Abracadaver terrorizing Townsville with his magic, turning harmless illusion tricks into horrible Forced Transformations and painful deaths, such as turning a bus full of children into bunnies, riding a hideous rabbit, turning buildings into trees, and sawing carpenters in half with their own saws.
  • The fact that the girls were watching a zombie movie right before they were called. At NIGHT. No wonder Bubbles and the hotline were scared.
  • Then there's the horrible red tint of the episode, which colors both the sky and the backgrounds. The thing is, the episode is supposed to take place at night, and it’s a regular night sky at the Girls’ home, but in town, it’s disturbingly red.
  • Abracadaver mistaking Blossom for the girl who accidentally caused his death decades before. He hypnotizes her, then traps Bubbles and Buttercup in deadly magician traps. One especially creepy moment is when Buttercup tries to stop his hypnotism by punching him away from Blossom. The result? His ARM detaches and keeps swinging the watch.
    Bubbles: Buttercup, look! IT WON'T STOP!!
  • Everyone thinking Blossom had died. Turns out she’s fine and had disguised herself at the last minute, but it’s still pretty shocking.
• "Sun Scream" really lives up to the "Scream" part of the title.
  • When the girls get sunburned, they move around in the cringe worthiest ways possible. The scene where Blossom tries to crawl across the bed to get to the phone is a pretty big example of this, especially since we get 7 lovely closeups on Blossom's throbbing areas. Thankfully, whilst the other two are trying to walk across, we don't get any closeups on them.
  • While they try to punch the con artists trying to swindle the Mayor, Buttercup at first gets lightly tapped (and there's a sizzling noise to match), Blossom gets slapped on the arm, and Bubbles gets a rubber band to the rump.
  • Not so much Nightmare Fuel, but just try not to wince when a bird accidentally pokes Buttercup in the eye with its beak. Ouch!
  • When the Girls get splashed with Aloe Vera, we get to see their skin getting cracked off, and one of Buttercup's skin flakes start dripping. No wonder the criminals were begging to be sent to jail after viewing that...
• The simply gross methods of the Rowdyruff Boys attack the Girls in "The Boys Are Back In Town", bordering on Nausea Fuel. From throwing a scab at them to snigger-snagging^note A bully tactic where you have a spit globule come out your mouth and act as if you're going to spit on your victim. Simply spitting at their faces is called "snagging". at them, you will be wishing to unsee that. The worst of them all is when the boys stick a slug down Bubbles' shirt. She does her best to not cry while the boys laugh and point at her. That's the final straw for Buttercup.
• Buttercup's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from that minuscule monster in "Cover Up". Also, the monster walking towards her as she's lying on the ground helplessly, plus her Little "No", has some very strange implications without context....
• "Moral Decay" plays with The Tooth Hurts a lot. And boy, is it painful to see.
  • Buttercup's slow loss of sanity doubled with the huge grin on her face is somewhat disturbing.Some◊of◊ the◊ evil smiles Buttercup makes are uncomfortable to sit through.
  • While we're on that subject, consider how Buttercup spends a good chunk of the episode deliberately knocking the teeth out of any criminals she fights so she can get money out of said teeth. Those very criminals find themselves cradling their mouths in agony, indicating these attacks are actually far more painful than the beatdowns the Girls usually give to evil-doers. And when the time came where Townsville is left with no crime going on? Buttercup decides to break into the respective homes of some of Townsville's major villains and knocks their teeth out even though they're not committing any crimes! Buttercup in this episode gives a terrifying glimpse into what might happen if one of the Powerpuff Girls decided to turn bad.
  • At the very end, Buttercup gets the shit beaten out of her by the villains she stole teeth from. Keep in mind, she's only 5. Even if she has powers, it still would hurt a lot more for her than it would for an adult.
  • Although it's mostly played for comedy, Buttercup's bullying of Bubbles is kind of disturbing to watch. She straight up SLAMS her head into a table at one point.
  • When Buttercup is at the dentist's office, she doesn't look too hurt. All she has is messy hair. But that is only to build up to the next moments when she smiles nervously at the Professor, it shows that her teeth are badly jagged and messed up. The gross sound effect that plays in the background when this happens does not help at all.
  • A bit of Fridge Horror for you is the way Blossom and Bubbles act. They pretty much just allowed her sister get beat up by a bunch of fully fledged-villains, and they seem oddly happy about Buttercup getting pummeled. And the creepily large smile on Blossom's face◊ basically solidifies that she's ecstatic that her sister be brutally beaten. Even if Buttercup deserved it, it does not make it any less creepy.
  • Also in this episode, the Professor does not seem concerned at all about how horribly battered Buttercup is and looks more disappointed as he was mostly frowning when they were at the dentist office.
  • Bubbles's tooth was a baby tooth. Everyone else had permanent teeth knocked out. Meaning they’ll never grow back. No wonder they were pissed.
    • Then again, it explains why Ace's teeth look different in some episodes.
    • Lil Arturo is only 14. Having to get dental implants when you’re that young must suck.
• The Professor in "Cat Man Do". Just to name a few instances of how disturbing he can be:
  • The girls rescue the cat, unaware of his evil nature, and beg the Professor to let them keep him. It starts off innocent enough, and then we are treated to this:
    Professor: I remember when I once brought a puppy home to my parents. And do you know what they said?
    Girls: (In unison) They said yes?
    Professor: They said... NO!!!!!! (Cue epic Nightmare Face)
    • Not helping is that he immediately laughs that off and acts like nothing happened, after just scaring the crap out of them.
  • The entire time the Professor is under the cat's sinister mind control, where he assumes yellowish, cat-like eyes and speaks almost completely in monotone as he does his master's bidding.
  • In Ploys R' Us, the Professor actually arranges a shocking plan to teach the girls the consequences of theft when they use his sleepwalking habit to have him steal toys for them. This involves a murder scene where he is shot to death by cops when trying to steal toys in front of them. The guns used are toys, but the cops were real and the girls were literally traumatized into thinking they got their father killed by the police.
  • In one episode, the Professor forces a curfew on the girls even when the city is literally on fire from a villain attack outside their window. When they object, he breaks out a Nightmare Face.
• "Candy is Dandy": Near the end where the girls have found out that Mojo had stolen the candy from the Mayor they get enraged by this and start yelling at the Mayor but that's not a scary part. The scary part is when they go to prison to see Mojo lying on the cot enjoying the candy then they proceed to beat up Mojo Jojo brutally! In the middle of the battle, Buttercup threatens Mojo that if he still wants the candy then they beat him up even more showing no mercy and after a while Mojo lies on the floor all beaten up with black eyes, broken helmet showing his brain, broken fingers, and teeth lost with tears in his eyes. Fortunately, the girls soon realized what they've done and apologized to the Mayor. While the girls normally beats up Mojo during battles, this time they went too far even worse they would've killed Mojo if they hadn't realized what they've done in time!
  • Also lets not forget the fact the girls broke into prison to assault Mojo. He wasn't committing a crime he wasn't even our free he was already incarcerated and the girls still went in to assault him.
• The old Cartoon Network game Pipeline Panic takes place before the girls were created, with you playing as the Professor connecting pipes through a series of rooms to funnel sugar, spice, and everything nice into liquid vats. If you win the game, the Professor successfully creates the girls. If you lose, you get an ending screen of the mixture having exploded in the Professor's face and three puddles of blue, green, and red goop on the floor. Yikes.

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