Nightmare Fuel / Urusei Yatsura

Like its Spiritual Successor Ranma ½, Urusei Yatsura is a comedy series with a lot of dark undertones if you stop and think about it.

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• The basic premise is pretty terrifying if you think about it; the universe is fully of highly advanced alien races, with technology far beyond humanity's own... and they are so oblivious, so indifferent to humanity, that they can wreak all manner of havoc on Earth just by accident. Alien candy can turn once-harmless animals into kaiju, and alien cooking can open up rifts in the space-time continuum. One wrong joke from Ataru, and Lum turns an assemblage of fossils into a deformed nightmarish beast.
• If the aliens aren't scary enough, there's also the fact that the world is full of very real supernatural spooks, specters and spells.
• The Fujinamis' relationship is just all kinds of disturbing despite still having the usual slapstick shenanigans; Ryuunosuke is a girl who identifies as a girl, but her insane father Wanted a Son Instead and so he tries to force her to become one, literally doing his best to beat her into submitting to his will.
  • Shortly after enrolling her in Tomobiki High, Mr. Fujinami insists that Ryuunosuke, as a "boy", should attend the boys Physical Education class. Onsen Mark protests, as the lecherous boys will gang up on Ryuunosuke and attempt to force themselves on her, but the Cloud Cuckoo Lander Principal grants Mr. Fujinami's request. Sure enough, Ryuunosuke finds herself repeatedly fondled and groped by hornballs, with only her sheer strength and fighting skill saving her from who knows what.
  • In one story, Kurama's goons attempt to use a Gender Bender raygun to force Ryuunosuke to become Kurama's boyfriend. Upon discovering what's going on, Mr. Fujinami steals the gun... and starts chasing Ryuunosuke himself, intent on transforming her into a boy for real.
  • In another story, Ryuunosuke's father does it again, making a Deal with the Devil (an alien "bluebird of happiness") for the power to turn girls into boys with his touch, which he attempts to use on Ryuunosuke.
• In one story, Ataru inadvertently makes a Deal with the Devil because his new morning jog route inadvertently traced a specific demon's personal sigil, causing the demon to think he was being invoked and offered Ataru's soul without Ataru even realizing it.
• Episode 75 "And Then There Were None", sends the gang to a desert island (over 20 years before "Remote Island Syndrome") to be graphically killed off one by one. It was just a prank on Ataru, but still. Funnily enough, this episode was ranked #2 in the penultimate episode's Top 10 countdown.
• The department store marching band in Beautiful Dreamer, which is set up to resemble the Hyakki Yagyo.
• Mrs. Moroboshi's A Day in the Limelight Episode 78 is made of pure nightmares — in this case, literally and Tear Jerker.
• For most of the series, we don't see Oyuki as anything but pleasantly neutral. Then, in one story, she genuinely loses her temper, and we see just how terrifying she can really be as her freezing powers run amuck, freezing over her landscape and creating giant ice crystals that threaten to impale or encase those around her. All the while, she never raises her voice or shows her wrath on her face, which just makes it scarier. Ran's afraid of her for a very good reason.
• Ran's mother is established as a short-tempered overly demanding woman who would spank Ran harshly for the slightest misdemeanor. As a little girl, Lum was terrified of her, to the point that she would constantly let Ran take the blame for her own misdeeds out of fear of her wrath. She abused Ran so badly in the name of disciplining her that Ran basically ended up with a borderline split personality.
• Whilst the story plays it for all the Nightmare Retardant it can by revealing that the Red Cloak/Mantle is now a fat, bungling has-been, the concept of the character — a man who dresses up in a spooky costume and hides in the dark corners of Tomobiki High School so he can terrorize the students for his own sick amusement — is legitimately creepy.
• In one occasion Lum thought that she was turning into a cow after being bitten by one. It was all a giant misunderstanding due the wound being infected and Oni horn growing and becoming cow-shaped to help fighting off infections and the growth happening right after she watched a movie where a vampire turned a weird-looking alien into a humanoid vampire through a bite... But she still had literal nightmares about it. And she saw herself turning not just into a cow, but into a cow monster similar to Rei, her stalker.
  • The fact the wound was infected... By something Lum's immune system had no specific counter. Thankfully it was mild enough her immune system resisted long enough to develop antibodies and fought it off, but it could have been a War of the Worlds scenario.
• The various alien-induced love shenaningans are flat-out terrifying when one thinks about it:
  • At the start of the series Ataru was dating Shinobu, no matter Lum apparently misunderstanding his comment that now he could get married for a proposal and accepting it... Then one of the antics of the Stormtroopers lead an alien taxi service to steal all of Earth's oil reserves unless their bill is paid, and Lum declares she'll do it only if Ataru asks her to move in with him. Thus he finds himself living with a rather possessive woman who can chase him anywhere by flying and through her superior technology and will not hesitate to strike him with lightning if he "cheats" on her.
    • To make it worse, there are hints that Lum at the start didn't love Ataru and knew he hadn't proposed to him... She was just forcing herself in her life, ruining his relationship with Shinobu and leading to a situation where the entire neighbourhood was destroyed and a helicopter and a fighter jet disappeared with no trace, just to put someone between herself and her own stalker.
  • Rei, Lum's ex-boyfriend and current stalker. Lum apparently stole him from her childhood friend Ran, only to be eventually put off by his stupidity and breaking up with him... At which point he started stalking her, with Lum being so scared she eventually pulled the stunt above just to have something or someone to keep Rei at bay - and Ataru saving her when she accidentally promised to get back with him being what made her fall for him for real.
  • Princess Kurama's race has a law: if a woman is woken up with a kiss by a man, they have to marry and have children. And to her disgust said man is Ataru, whose lecherousness utterly puts her off. Even when she gets a retry Ataru is the one that wakes her up, and he actually holds that law against her. And why do they have that law? Because an Elder millennia before got married with a girl he met by waking her up with a kiss and enshrined that event into law (at least when this was found out Ataru was disgusted as everyone and didn't try to hold it against her even before the current Elder agreed to strike that law down).
    • Kurama and her assistants have "questionable" antics when it comes to her partners. At the start Kurama thought she could improve Ataru's character, but after finding out how lecherous he was she pulled a ray that would temper it with feminine essence, and a mishap basically turned Ataru into a woman in a man's body (who was still lecherous and attracted to women). Later she starts crushing on Rei (before finding out his true nature), and when Ran interferes she sends her flying away. Even later she finds Ryonosuke is her ideal man, and when the Tengu finds out he's actually a girl they try and forcibly change his gender (fortunately Kurama stopped them when she found out the truth).
  • Ran is in love with Rei, even knowing how stupid he is... But her mother's abuse turned her into a bipolar and violent woman that debuted trying to steal Ataru's youth as revenge for Lum stealing Rei years before and then dumping him, and later reacts to any perceived slight, or Lum being in Rei's general vicinity, by tossing hand grenades galore and straight-up using a rocket launcher.
  • Elle is a beautiful alien princess, who came to Earth to marry Ataru after he made her an Accidental Proposal when they were children... And is willing to start an interstellar war over it. Ataru at first is OK with that... Until he finds out she has a hobby of collecting every man she ever loved and freeze them solid "to keep their love fresh". Ataru was horrified, even knowing he wasn't going to be added to the collection.