Darkest Cartoon Episodes!

Let's discuss Darker and Edgier episodes/movies of cartoon shows.

• Family Guy: "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q." is by far the darkest episode of all, though contenders are "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair", "Seahorse Seashell Party" and "The Splendid Source".
• South Park: The Movie and "Butterballs".
• The Simpsons: "Cape Feare" is dark done right, but "The Boys of Bummer" is dark in a messed up sort of way.
• Sponge Bob Square Pants: The Movie, "One Coarse Meal", "A Pal for Gary" and "Demolition Doofus".
• Phineas And Ferb: "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted". Jesus, that wasn't a dream, that was a nightmare!
• Courage The Cowardly Dog: "The Mask"; for a show about surreal horrors, tackling real horrors was just... weird.
• Adventure Time: "Mortal Folly/Recoil", "The Lich" and "Finn the Human".

edited 23rd Jan '13 2:13:07 PM by Disney23

I disagree that the South Park movie was dark. There are countless episodes that are MUCH darker. "Britney's New Look" is the first to come to mind.

Stop saying the South Park movie was "Dark". Don't forget it had a song about Brian Boitano saving the world.

• Adventure Time: "I Remember You" due to its overall depressing tone, "Finn the Human" and "Jake the Dog" the farmworld segments mostly.
• The Powerpuff Girls: "Speed Demon". Just...."Speed Demon".....
• Teen Titans The "Slade", "Terra", and "Trigon" arcs.
• Lets just say a lot of Batman The Animated Series and Batman Beyond episodes...

Adding to Adventure Time, "No One Can hear You". Jake was a creepy motherfucker in that episode. And the deer.

What was that Courage the Cowardly Dog episode with the moon face?

Yeah. That one. Still gives me the heeby-jeebies.

Avatar The Last Airbender has "Lake Laogai" (Pretty much 1984 animated,the death of Jet,the big turmoil Zuko goes through) and the Season 2 finale (One of the creepier examples of The Bad Guy Wins I'd say). Oh and in a sort of messed up way there's "The Southern Raiders".

Legend Of Korra has the Book 1 finale,...especially the Murder-Suicide part. In fact pretty much every Tarrlok episode counts as this. Between that sick backstory given,...how Yakone messed up Republic City,...and Tarrlok sacrificing himself at Heel Realization.

And then there's Danny Phantom's "The Ultimate Enemy" as well.

Also the first Arcee vs Airachnid episode of Transformers Prime (that said I'm still watching I'm sure it'll get darker soon).

edited 23rd Jan '13 9:01:37 PM by terlwyth

Can people PLEASE Elaborate on WHY all these are episodes "Dark" or whatever. Mods frown on List Threads.

Young Justice Cornered; not only did it bring up that the future is a devastated hell thanks to Evil!Blue Beetle, but a character outright stated that the kids were tortured and experimented on and that there were teenagers who were killed for not producing the correct results- and we don't know how many were killed. Not to mention The Hall of Justice blowing up.

There's definitely darker episodes of South Park. The only dark part of that episode was the Butter's plot. The thing about South Park, no matter how "Dark" the premise gets, there's always something to laugh at. Even with hard hitting topics, it's not completely serious. Avatar: The Last Airbender: (Season 1): The Storm. Definitely a turning point for the whole series it terms of tone and fleshing of the mythology. Possibly my favorite episode until... Season 2: The Crossroads of Destiny. Book 2 is a lot like Empire Strikes Back. Darker, driven by characters, and one hell of a cliffhanger. Then they kept us waiting for 9 months. Honorable Mentions: The Dessert, Lake Laogai. Season 3: While I think Book 3 is the weakest, it had its share of strong episodes. The Puppetmaster? Dear God. That's possibly the darkest the show ever got. Fairly Odd Parents: Channel Chasers, specifically Older Timmy's story, and even the regular Timmy stuff seems to be pretty intense in this one.

edited 24th Jan '13 2:09:32 PM by KaijuXXX

I would like to thank The Freeman for mentioning "No-One Can Hear You", which was truly creepy in a way that most Adventure Time episodes only hint at now and then. The build-up in that one is just exceptional.

Less specific, but just about any episode of Courage The Cowardly Dog involving Katz qualifies in my book, not so much because they were particularly disturbing as that Katz is— well, Katz is. He is a bonafide psychopath.

regular show's "terror tales of the park", "terror tales of the park II", "skunked", and "the christmas special" were dark.

Thanks Kaiju for mentioning "The Puppetmaster", what with it introducing the concept of "blood-bending" and its villain (a Water Tribe escapee from a Fire Nation prison camp whose experiences drove her insane, quite an adult concept for what's seen as a kids show).

I'd like to nominate the Teen Titans episode where Starfire ends up in a Bad Future and sees the tragic fates of her teammates without her. Particularly Raven, who's cut herself off completely from reality, and Beast Boy as a freakshow performer deluding himself into thinking he's achieved his dreams of stardom. There's a bit of a heartwarming moment when they band together to help her in the end though.

Speaking of the Teen Titans, the episode where Robin is convinced he keeps seeing Slade everywhere. Some of the scenes between Robin and Starfire were downright heartbreaking.

The camping episode of Regular Show. Besides the really freaky implications of bestiality, the villain of the episode was disturbing in a way that most of the other baddies in the show aren't. It was basically a slasher film reimagined as a 15 minute children's cartoon.