Line #193 WesternAnimation/GrizzlyTalesForGruesomeKids


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/grizzlytales.jpg]]
2
3	->''"You are welcomed to ''Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids'', a series of cautionary tales for lovers of squeam!"''
4	-->--OpeningNarration
5
6	Based on a [[Literature/GrizzlyTalesForGruesomeKids children's book series of the same name]] by Jamie Rix, ''Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids'' is a British {{Nightmare Fuel}}led SpaceWhaleAesop animated series, narrated by the host Nigel Planer (best known for starring in ''Series/TheYoungOnes''). The series began in 2000 and ended in 2006 but was later revived briefly in 2011 for two seasons. Think ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'' for Creator/{{CITV}}.
7
8	Planer stars as Uncle Grizzly, the caretaker of a rundown cinema (the Squeam Screen) which serves insects for refreshments. He screens short movies into the theatre of stories about children that are punished for their behaviour. The kids in question are usually greedy, [[ThePrankster naughty]], [[MouthyKid rude]], [[AttentionWhore obnoxious]], and [[ItsAllAboutMe selfish]], and are usually taught a "grizzly" lesson by the end of the tale -- often ending with them [[KarmicDeath being]] [[DisproportionateRetribution killed]], [[FelonyMisdemeanor mutilated]], [[KarmicTransformation shape-shifting]] or, if they're lucky, learning the error of their ways and changing for the better.
9
10	In between these stories, Uncle Grizzly will talk to the children watching about the lessons that they'll learn from the movie he's about to broadcast, often with a pet spider called Spindleshanks, that he often enjoys pranking or abusing as the spider acts confused or acts accordingly. These segments later disappeared as the show progressed, most likely because the ArtShift from the stop-motion intros to the 2D animated movies were expensive and time-consuming to deal with.
11
12	When a new series returned after a four-year hiatus (retitled ''Grizzly Tales -- Cautionary Tales for Lovers of Squeam''), the introductions were relocated to the [=HotHell=], a [=3D=] CGI hotel that implied links to the underworld. Although Planer remained as the host, the storyteller was now Uncle Grizzly's half-brother, The Night Night Porter, and the stories were still [=2D=] animated but in an updated art style. For some long-time viewers, this new update wasn't received well, which might have contributed to the show's abrupt end.[[note]]Not helping matters was that the CITV show was constantly [[AdoredByTheNetwork re-aired]] across ''several'' children's channels, thus exposing new viewers to the original and its superior quality...[[/note]]
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14	----
15	!!Tropes
16	* AbominableAuditorium: The Squeam Screen is run down and creepy as Hell especially with Uncle Grizzly running it.
17	* AbsurdlyElderlyFather: In "Prince Noman", King Norman Volga is getting too old and senile to rule, so a young seamstress named Letitia is forced to marry him so he can have an heir. The newborn is made king shortly after his birth when his senile father starts believing he's Florence Nightingale.
18	* AbusiveParents: Chico's parents in "The Stickmen" see no problem in punishing their son for the most minor indiscretions by starving him and beating him. They can't even be bothered to remember his name and actually attempted to trade him for a sandwich on the day he was born.
19	* TheAce: Much of these characters are usually {{arrogant\|KungFuGuy}} and are either the rival to the main character or the VillainProtagonist, who are never spared.
20	* AdaptationalAttractiveness:
21	** Ginger in "Knock Down Ginger" was described as a large, overweight boy with CharlieBrownBaldness red hair as pale as his skin; Eliza even says he looks like a vampire victim. The character model in the cartoon has none of these problems, showing that he's pretty athletic with thick, curly hair.
22	** In "The Giant Who Grew Too Big For His Boots", Huge Hugh was originally written with a face covered in warts, but the cartoon changes this to remove his facial warts, only keeping his tongue warts.
23	** Downplayed with Johnny Bullneck, who was a FatBastard that bullied other kids in "Fat Boy with a Trumpet", but in the cartoon, he looks more like an [[AdaptationalCurves early bloomer]], albeit an [[ButterFace unfortunate-looking]] early bloomer.
24	* AdaptationTitleChange: Some episodes have different titles from the stories they were adapted from.
25	** The short tale of "The Dumb Clucks" is renamed as "The Dumb Klutzes" in the cartoon.
26	** "A Lesson in History" was renamed "The History Lesson".
27	** "The Death Rattle" was renamed "The Spelling Bee".
28	** "Fatal Attraction" was renamed "Nerves of Steel."
29	* AdaptationalNameChange:
30	** The P. E. kit in "Tag" belonged to A. Phantom in the original, instead of the cartoon's phantom judge Jim Spectre.
31	** Nebuchadnezzar from "The Kingdom of Wax" was renamed Nathaniel.
32	** [[invoked]] Tom and Jerry ([[WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry no, not those guys]], but [[ScrewedByTheLawyers possibly for this reason]]) from "The Nuclear Wart" were renamed Jim and Terry.
33	** Mr Frankenstein from "Jack in a Box" is renamed Mr Twigtaylor.
34	* AdaptationalKarma: Interestingly, a lot of the examples are inverted versions.
35	** [[spoiler:Stinker]] getting shot in "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is revealed in the cartoon [[SparedByTheAdaptation to not be fatal]], managing to escape with an injured leg. In the book, it's not so lucky.
36	** In "The Upset Stomach", the stomach's revenge for its ill-treatment is the same, but in the book, [[spoiler:Ethel gets a bit of redemption when the stomach explodes from eating too much, but the acid damages her taste buds and she could never eat plates upon plates of dinner because everything tastes the same.]] Meanwhile, there's no such HopeSpot in the cartoon.
37	* AdaptedOut:
38	** Ollie's rival Anthony in "Athlete's Foot" is seen at home in the original story, furious that he's now got competition, but the episode cuts to the next year when the race is about to start. There's also the passages about Ollie helping his mentor with his dinner to repay for the mentor helping him, which is also cut and compressed.
39	** In the original "Knock Down Ginger", Ginger's friend Milo had a younger sister called Eliza, who had a conspicuous lisp, giving her the nickname "Lizzy the Lizard".
40	** Timothy in "The Spaghetti Man" gets revenge on his mother by turning on the bathwater to make the house flood. In the book, he did this too, as well as break lightbulbs and throw all the food in the house into a bin bag and stuffed it behind his parents' bed. Also, he tried to get rid of his toast by throwing it in the bin and trying to get it mailed away.
41	** The story of "The Cat Burglar" in the original story went further into Fedora's greediness, including her antics at school, such as forcing girls to pay to use the toilets and using mirrors to cheat in exams. The episode in the animated series cuts out schooltime (most likely taking place during the school break) and only gives an example of her making money from people licking mints (the price differs from the original story, however).
42	** We are told in "It's Only a Game, Sport!" that Bruce and Kitty's parents were once a popular athletic power couple in the Australian sporting world and hoped that [[ChildProdigy their children could carry on their legacy]], so if you only saw the cartoon version where this backstory isn't included, Bruce has a [[{{justified\|Trope}} very understandable reason]] to be [[WellDoneSonGuy bad-tempered about sports]]!
43	** The original version of "Death by Chocolate" began with a board meeting in a chocolate factory, in which the [=CEOs=] and their partners go from celebrating their sales to hunting a fly infiltrating their Easter chocolate floor. The TV series shows the chocolate factory but the fly lays eggs and sneaks away before anyone notices.
44	** "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" features more characters in the original story: Ginger and Alice's mother, Sam's mother, Aunt Fanny (who is [[TheGhost mentioned]] in passing in the show), her husband Uncle Herbert, Dick Stick and his mother (both appear in the episode but are footnotes in the story).
45	** Several stories from the books (like "The Black Knight" and "The Matchstick Girl") were never adapted into episodes.
46	** In the original version of "The Kingdom of Wax", Nathaniel (there named Nebuchadnezzar) has a little sister named Ruthie. In the TV adaptation, he's an only child.
47	** The TV series version of "Doctor Moribundus" leaves Loralilee's treatment [[TheUnreveal out of the story]]. This is most likely because her fate in the book would be ''too graphic [[EverybodyHasStandards and frightening]]'' for the [[MediaWatchdog cartoon's target audience]].
48	* AdultsAreUseless: One reason that the kids need such an extreme and often deadly punishment, is because their parents don't even try to discipline them, and when they do, they make a very poor job of it. Special mention goes to Araminta's parents in "Superstitious Nonsense", as they blatantly fall for pretty much every fake superstition she tells them (even though she lies the way most kids her age would - very badly).
49	* AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: "Athlete's Foot" has Oliver given a pair of shoes by an old man who tells him they belong to a man named Tommy Knock. [[spoiler:The old man later arranges for Oliver's rival to get the shoes because the shoes will also cause whoever wears them to die as Tommy Knock did, and after the race is finished and Oliver's rival is dead the old man reveals that he is Tommy Knock before disappearing]].
50	* AllThereInTheManual: Since the episodes are based on short stories from books, many stories are compressed or characters are pushed aside. Some unnamed characters that have bigger parts in the books are occasionally seen interacting with the main characters with no introduction.
51	* AlwaysLate: In "Tom Time", a boy named Tom is always late for everything like school and meal times. The reason why Tom is always late when he was a baby he accidentally sneezed his brain out into the sloth cage in the zoo. His mother mistaken a baby sloth for Tom's brain and puts it back in his head. One day a news report tells everybody that the world will explode and they have to go to a rocket ship by tomorrow with one catch, don't be late. Tom's parents had gotten themselves ready to evacuate but he overslept. He was forced to get ready while his parents went to the rocket. It was too late when Tom arrived at the shuttle station and was stranded on Earth as it explodes.
52	* AndIMustScream:
53	** The fate of Thomas Ratchet in the episode "Sweets." [[spoiler:He gets turned into a paper mache statue at the end of the episode. He can only move his eyes.]]
54	** Even more suited to the fate of the ever-talkative Jack in "Jack In The Box", who -- at the end of his tale -- [[spoiler:is turned by a magician/ventriloquist into a dummy ... with a zipped-shut mouth.]]
55	** The Spaghetti Man kidnaps children who don't eat their dinner [[spoiler:and turns them into spaghetti-based recipes, such as pasta, noodles, and lasagne.]]
56	* AngryItemTapping: In "The Barber of Civil", Peregrine and Tanya are sent to the headmaster's office. The headmaster starts intimidating the kids by tapping a cane in his hand. This scene is reused in the later episodes "Fat Boy with a Trumpet" and "It's Only a Game, Sport".
57	* AssholeVictim:
58	** Much of the kids are subjected to horrific fates that they deserve as punishment for their rotten behaviour.
59	** In “The Stick Men“, Chico’s abusive parents die in a helicopter crash, which was drawn by the Stick Men.
60	** There are aversions however for both the ''asshole'' and the ''victim'' part.
61	*** In "The Wooden Hill", a boy named Jack learns to overcome his childhood fears.
62	*** The Chipper Chums are by far the biggest aversion. Ironically, they get the darkest fate out of all the show's victims, just for stealing a few apples.
63	*** And some kids even learn their lesson. Terry the thief is covered in tags that cannot get taken off, but when he returns the stolen gym bag, the tags vanish and he never steals again.
64	* ArtEvolution
65	** While the first 2 seasons often used gradient shading on the characters, Seasons 3 and later now very rarely uses shading on the characters.
66	** The show began to rely on Flash Animation since the New year's Eve special "The Crystal Eye", making the characters move more like animatronic cutouts and often face only 2 directions (although The aforementioned Special uses a 3D-looking face turn effect and "The Bugaboo Bear" has front faced models for some shots). However, traditional animation is retained for some scenes.
67	** However, in seasons 7 & 8, the show's art style got a more simplistic vector style and much brighter lighting, making the show look less gloomy, the creep factor has also been toned down due to this.
68	* ArtShift
69	** In "The Crystal Eye", the main family were given more geometric looks than many other characters of the show.
70	** The final season has a very different art style to the previous ones with simpler and more vectorized designs, and had CG replacing the stop-motion segments.
71	* BalloonBelly:
72	** Jamie from "Jamie's School Dinners" is continually fed various amounts of junk food, to the point he balloons into an enormous ball of fat, thus making him have to ride a stair chair lift.
73	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor:
74	** Benjamin in "The Top Hat" steals a magician's top hat, which can grant wishes, and he soon abuses its power to get everything he wants, [[spoiler:but when he's cornered by the magician and his parents he wishes that he "wasn't here" ... so a hand pulls him into the hat, and he vanishes inside it (but is hinted to still be in there, somewhere)]].
75	** "Kiss and Make Up" is about a girl who wants to look older so a fairy godmother gives her makeup but she doesn't know how to put it on, scaring people in the street. After being duped, she ends up with a face that looked worse than her makeup-covered one.
76	** As in the book, "Simon Sulk" locks himself in his bedroom so that he can never move out of town with his parents, even if he has to die in there.
77	* BigBrotherBully:
78	** Monty in "Monty's Python", who buys a snake that he makes eat his sister's pets.
79	** Serena in "The Chocolate Fly", especially when she blackmails her sister.
80	** Dorothy May in "The Piranha Sisters", when it comes to her pranking.
81	** Bruce in "It's Only a Game, Sport!" becomes this when he knows that his sister isn't powerful enough to beat him at sports.
82	* BittersweetEnding: "Little Fingers" ends with Daffyd returned home and his parents happy to have him back, the one downside being that the ransom wasn't paid until after Daffyd's kidnapper had lopped all of his fingers off.
83	* BlackComedy: Although it gave kids nightmares, the presentation of the show is clearly to make the audience laugh at the ludicrous stories. Sometimes Nigel Planer's LargeHam delivery is so exaggerated, you can't help [[{{bathos}} but be amused.]]
84	* TheButcher: "The Butcher Boy". It turns out that the three generations are the same person!
85	* CanonForeigner:
86	** Uncle Grizzly, who was created for the show. Ironically, the Night-Night Porter existed in the books created ''after'' the first cartoon series began (most likely to emulate the format of the show so that it wouldn't alienate fans).
87	** In the original version of "The Urban Fox", Lord and Lady Blunderbuss had been a couple and were the ones who chased Elvis the fox throughout the city, only to be hunted by the police for property damage. In the adaptation, they were DemotedToExtra and given two kids, Pierce and Tamara, who committed the crimes.
88	* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" makes it explicitly clear that the Chipper Chums are overall nice kids, but when they decide to steal a few apples, [[spoiler:the farmer shoots their dog (we are led to believe he killed him, but the closing moments of the story show that the dog has just ended up lame as a result of a shot to the leg) and then crushes their bodies into his cider-making machine after they die from insecticide poisoning]].
89	* CaretakingIsFeminine: In "The New Nanny", Twistrum and Candy were getting a new nanny while their old one, Mrs. Mac, was fired because of a lie they told to their parents. They each get a nanny every day and all are female. The kids mistreat their new nannies until they get an alligator one.
90	* TheChewToy: Uncle Grizzly's spider Spindleshanks would usually be abused and mistreated in the stop-motion segments.
91	* ChildHater: "Frank Einstein's Monster" has the Night-Night Porter state that he despises children while comparing them to dogs.
92	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Spindleshanks stopped appearing after the fifth series pared down the stop-motion segments to Uncle Grizzly starting the projector and occasionally ending the stories with stock footage of Uncle Grizzly laughing maniacally, while the seventh and eighth series completely discarded Uncle Grizzly and had the Night-Night Porter take his place to accommodate the retool changing its setting from the Squeam Screen theatre to the [=HotHell=] Darkness.
93	* CouchGag: Not necessarily a gag, though. The boy in the opening titles that goes to the Squeam Screen is given a popcorn bag, but each season changes the contents, usually filled with insects that the boy unsuspectingly bites into in a GoryDiscretionShot of his eyes widening in alarm at the wiggly creature he'd put in his mouth.
94	* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: In "Tom Time", Tom wouldn't always be an hour late for everything if his mum hadn't accidentally replaced his brain with a baby sloth, after Tom accidentally sneezed his brain out at the zoo.
95	* DeadAllAlong: The twist ending to both [[spoiler:"Grandmother's Footsteps"]] and [[spoiler:"Athlete's Foot"]] involve the protagonist discovering that the elderly person they interacted with was a ghost the whole time.
96	* DeadpanSnarker: Uncle Grizzly makes some snide remarks, particularly when commenting on the children's horrid behaviour.
97	* DeathByAdaptation:
98	** In the original version of "The Upset Stomach", Ethel's stomach exploded after eating her, but because it left a bad smell in her nose, she's unable to enjoy the taste of food. The TV adaptation simply ends with the stomach eating Ethel.
99	** In the original version of "The Kingdom of Wax", Nathaniel (there named Nebuchadnezzer) saved himself by using a fire to melt the sculptures before they reached him, but later got melted by the candles on his birthday cake on his fourteenth birthday. In the TV adaptation, he melted along with the sculptures and the museum.
100	** "Goblin Mountain"'s [[AllJustADream twist ending]] was completely removed to use this trope.
101	* DeathByGluttony:
102	** "Jamie's School Dinner" has the title character done in by this, albeit an odd example. He is gluttonous yes, and refuses to eat anything that's even slightly good for him. However, it comes because he ate a transmitter that allowed a witch to control his body while asleep, who then had him walk to her lair [[spoiler:where she force-feed him like a goose until he explodes.]]
103	** "Death By Chocolate" is technically true: Serena, a greedy chocaholic, blackmails her sister into being her slave. Serena decides to eat the chocolate that was gifted to her sister, and even eats one with a maggot in it, ignoring her sister's squirms of disgust. [[spoiler:Days later, Serena has turned into a chocolate fly and tries to intimidate her sister, but her sister kills her with a slap of the fly-swatter.]]
104	* DeathByIrony: A few of the horrible children meet their fate like this.
105	** "It's Only a Game, Sport!" is about Bruce, a sore loser that throws tantrums when he doesn't get his own way. When his sister is beating him at Snakes and Ladders, he decides to change the rules: instead of climbing up ladders and sliding down snakes, they would now fall down ladders and crawl up snakes. [[spoiler:When he eventually decides to cheat and storms off in a huff, he falls ''down'' the ladder of their house and is gobbled ''up'' by a snake.]]
106	** Some of the fates are warned in an unintentional CassandraTruth.
107	*** In an attempt to scare him into not being lazy anymore, Trueman's desperate parents in "The Clothes Pigs" tell him that hungry piglets will come after him. It doesn't work, and Trueman even debunks it, pointing out that pigs would be immediately spotted.
108	*** Garth's father in "Wolf Child" warns that if he keeps acting like a baby to get attention, the wolves will come for his sister.
109	** "The Watermelon Babies" is about two sisters that enjoy wasting water during a nationwide drought. They tease their class during Show and Tell by showing off their freshly-grown watermelon and eat them gleefully in front of the crying children. [[spoiler:The next day, they discovered that they'd turned into watermelons and are consequently sliced up and eaten by their thirsty classmates.]]
110	** The best example is the fate of Dorothy May from "The Piranha Sisters", whose three pranks backfire horribly. Her first is pretending to be a statue [[spoiler:(and then almost ends up getting stabbed by a falling one)]], her second is scaring a retirement home dressed as TheGrimReaper [[spoiler:(and she is then visited by the ''real'' one!)]], and the third is pretending a swimming pool is full of piranhas [[spoiler:(and piranhas end up in her bath). After the final outcome, her parents assume that she's [[CryingWolf pranking them again]] and throw her remains away.]]
111	** In "Well'ard Willard", the titular character acted like a charlatan to prevent his classmates from seeing him as a nerd. [[spoiler:He is roasted alive after he steals the Sun,]] although the irony is thicker in the original book.
112	* DeathOfAChild: The series as a whole is infamous for explicitly featuring child characters dying on the most frequent basis and often in some of the most violent ways of perhaps ''any'' actual [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids "children's"]] series in animation.
113	* DepravedKidsShowHost: Uncle Grizzly is the presenter of the series and is shown to take delight in telling stories of unpleasant children being subjected to horrific fates, to say nothing of his tendency to abuse Spindleshanks the spider.
114	* DisproportionateRetribution: Occasionally, the character of the episode's story is subjected to a gruesome fate that they didn't really deserve. One example that stands out is "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping", where the titular characters get poisoned and ground into cider just for stealing a man's apples.
115	* DoubleEntendre: One episode shows the cover of a magazine about camping holidays. The magazine is called "Got Wood".
116	* EatenAlive: The fate of various kids at the end of various episodes. Some [[spoiler:such as Nobby in "Nobby's Nightmare"]] are clearly shown to be SwallowedWhole.
117	* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
118	** Gilbert in "The Butcher Boy" is first seen in the story pretending to be kidnapped so that his parents would pay him a large ransom. He did this because they refused to pay him more pocket money.
119	** Sam in "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" can pick up a bail of hay that a tractor could carry and punched Dick Stick hard enough to knock him across the field to his house.
120	** Dorothy May in "The Piranha Sisters" is visited by a skeleton spirit who warns her to stop her pranking. She doesn't believe it for a second, [[BrassBalls insults it]], and throws a pillow at it. She's soon spooked out when the pillow goes straight through, but [[FlatEarthAtheist still doesn't believe its omen]].
121	* ExposedExtraterrestrials: "Nobby's Nightmare" has [[spoiler:Nobby's crush and her family]] turn out to be naturist aliens.
122	* EyeScream:
123	** "Mr Peeler's Butterflies" has Alexander [[spoiler: get his eyelids peeled off with a can opener, unable to close his eyes ever again as punishment for not sleeping when he should have.]]
124	** In "Jamie's School Dinners" there’s a brief shot when [[spoiler: the witch is stuffing him with fat and gristle that shows the mush leaking out from around his "eyes" right before he explodes.]]
125	* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling:
126	** Sort of interchangeable with Dorothy May and Petey in "The Piranha Sisters". Although Petey is gullible, she is the nicest and sensible one, whereas Dorothy May knows how to trick her sister but is too conceited to listen to anyone else. Not even ghostly skeleton spirits.
127	** Monty to his little sister in "Monty's Python", once Monty spends too much time bullying his sister with his pet instead of feeding it.
128	** "The Crystal Eye" features twins Fick and Finn; Fick is the selfish bratty twin and Finn the kindhearted and responsible one. Fick demands half of all of Finn’s Christmas gifts even after demanding (and receiving) gifts that are not to be shared with Finn, using a log-saw to cut them in two (except for the puppy). It’s so bad that [[spoiler: he throws a tantrum in the climax of the episode, this sealing his fate to be trapped in a mirror, simply because their mother asked Finn to take out the garbage and not him.]]
129	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Several episodes will tend to have a recurring shot, which lasts for only a second or so, which foreshadows the final fate of the kid in today's story.
130	* FourFingeredHands: The Stop Motion/CGI characters have these while the 2D animated humans often have Five Fingered hands.
131	* FriendlyNeighborhoodSpider: Spindleshanks is an amiable spider, which makes his abuse at Uncle Grizzly's hands much more harrowing.
132	* FunnyBackgroundEvent: There are a few moments (not included in the original stories) that either establish characters or make the audience laugh.
133	** Alice in "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" stops to say Grace at the picnic, but everyone ignores her and starts eating; there's nothing left when she's done and even Stinker has taken the last bone that probably had a bit of meat left.
134	** In "The Butcher Boy", Gilbert pushes the butcher's son out of the way as he rides down the street on a skateboard.
135	* FuzzballSpider:
136	** [[HorrorHost The Narrator's]] pet spider Spindleshanks is a purple ball with six legs, two hands, and two eyes.
137	** ''The New Nanny'': The second nanny the Frightfully-Busyes had hired was a spider who looks like a furry ball with eight legs.
138	** ''A Tangled Web'': The episode depicts the spiders as styled complete with a ball-like body, eight legs, and two eyes.
139	* TheGamblingAddict: In "The Soul Stealer", an old lady is confirmed to have a gambling addiction since it's mentioned that she's going to counseling for it.
140	* GhibliHills: One bit of StockFootage is a pan through many hills, before a dissolve cut to the EstablishingShot or the main character.
141	* GenderFlip: B.S. Brogen of "The Apostrophic Expositor" was male in the book, but female in the cartoon.
142	* GhostlyAnimals: The episode "An Elephant Never Forgets" ends with a shot of an elephant family. The baby elephant, (which had been the source of an elephant's foot utilised in the episode and had been briefly revived), is shown to be transparent, signifying that it is dead. Doubles as a {{Tearjerker}}.
143	** Another episode ended with Spindleshanks (a spider) being killed and reappearing as a ghost, much to Uncle Grizzly's delight. Thankfully for the spider, he's OK by the next episode.
144	* HellHotel: The '''Hot'''H'''el'''l Darkness, which was the Storyteller's setting in the later episodes.
145	* HereWeGoAgain: "Revenge of the Bogeyman" has Dee persuaded by the Bogeyman who lives in her nose to stop picking her nose and playing with her boogers, but at the end she switches to picking wax from her ears and is implied by Uncle Grizzly to soon be at the mercy of the Wax Woman who lives in her ears.
146	* {{Homage}}: "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is a dark parody of Creator/EnidBlyton's works. See ShoutOut for more details.
147	* HorrorHost: Uncle Grizzly serves as the narrator in this horror anthology, each episode presented as a story he tells in his theater while abusing Spindleshanks in the wraparound segments. During the final two series, he is replaced by the Night Night Porter, who runs the [=HotHell=] Darkness (a HellHotel implied to actually be Hell itself) and reads the horror stories from a book containing entries on the naughty children he is holding prisoner.
148	* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted: "The City Fox" is about a rich family moving into a working-class suburb and discover that their neighbours have a fox as a pet. The son and daughter of the family decided to gather their old friends from the country together and hunt the fox, but the fox manages to outsmart them [[spoiler:and the police are called. The gang of rich kids sneak into the sewers to wait out the police stick-up and are still down there to this day]].
149	* ImprobableInfantSurvival:
150	** A literal infant in ''Prince Noman''; nothing bad happens to him at the end due to him not being the AntiRoleModel subject of the episode's ostensible moral at all, and in fact, [[spoiler:the mutilation that ultimately ''does'' befall the story's decidedly adult AssholeVictims is what ends up ''curing'' Noman's ailment]].
151	** Zigzagged in "Wolf Child" as the infant Moira is not taken by the baby-napping wolves, but [[spoiler: Garth, who is actually ten but is supernaturally regressed into a baby, ''is''.]]
152	* JerkAss: Most of the kids are very despicable brats who don't give a fig about the consequences of their deplorable actions or how they affect other people.
153	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Uncle Grizzly. While he's an overall unpleasant person who constantly abuses his pet spider, in the end, his goal is to help kids be better people, even if his methods involve outlandish stories with [[SpaceWhaleAesop ludicrous endings]].
154	* KarmaHoudini: Adults who enact DisproportionateRetribution on kids tend to get away scot-free.
155	* KarmicTransformation: Whether it's being turned into a fly for being greedy, being turned into a mannequin for being rude, or turning into a bug for being lazy, these kids deserve it.
156	* KidsAreCruel: It's justification for having them eaten by trolls, being trapped inside a photo or turning them into a gold statue, or even turning into a [[ItMakesSenseInContext Chocolate-fly]].
157	* LargeHam: Uncle Grizzly isn't afraid to emphasise foreshadowing words or throw in an EvilLaugh at the end of scenes.
158	* LivingShadow: The Spaghetti Man, who goes after children that refuse to eat their dinners.
159	* ManOfAThousandVoices: Nigel Planer voices all of the characters. [[CrossDressingVoices Even the women]].
160	* ModestyBedsheet: "The Princess's Clothes" ends with a non-sexual variant where Felicity is forced to go to school with a bedsheet wrapped around her body because of Miss Shears' enchanted scissors destroying all her clothes.
161	* MoodWhiplash: "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" was intended to be based on stories from the early 20th century about FreerangeChildren on vacation in the countryside, but once the children decide to look for some apples to snack on, they've messed with the wrong orchard.
162	* NakedPeopleAreFunny: In "Nobby's Nightmare", Nobby is embarrassed by his parents being naturists.
163	* NationalStereotypes:
164	** Although set in [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Kent]], "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" has Farmer Tregowan, a [[UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}} Cornish]] stereotype of a bloodthirsty farmer.
165	** What we see of UsefulNotes/{{Wales}} in "The Giant Who Grew Too Big For His Boots" is villages and farmland, whereas England and other places are well-built cities.
166	** Downplayed with UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} in "It's Only a Game, Sport!" Although there are no AwesomeAussie stereotypes, Bruce's family live in the middle of [[LandDownUnder the outback]] surrounded by snakes, kangaroos, and other animals. His mother's named Sheila, too.
167	* NoSympathy: Most of the kids are so full of themselves, they don't care about anyone else.
168	** Trueman "Truffle" Snuffle from "The Clothes Pigs" is lazy and relies on his parents for everything. When his mother trips over his mess, falls down the stairs, breaking her leg, Truffle demands that she gets up and makes him dinner. His mother begs for him to call an ambulance, he ignores her and goes to the fish and chip shop to get his dinner there instead.
169	* NothingIsScarier: "Doctor Moribundus;" whatever it was he did to Lorelei Lee to cure her of "No-School-itis."[[note]]This most likely occurred because the original ending was too scary.[[/note]]
170	-->''"Long into the night, Doctor Moribundus performed a surgical procedure so revolutionary, so secret, and so like eating a soft-boiled egg that I can't possibly tell you what it was..."''
171	* NotWearingPantsDream: "Nobby's Nightmare" starts with Nobby dreaming he is naked in public and the girl he has a crush on turns out to be an alien before eating him. [[spoiler:Every part of this dream comes true.]]
172	* ThePigpen: Dirty Bertie, who's so dirty, he attracts a 900-year-old alien.
173	* ThePrankster: Many children are this, particularly {{prank call}}ers.
174	** Dorothy May is a darker version of this, a borderline {{gaslight\|ing}}er towards her little sister, ruining Petey's life so much, a spirit has to warn her about her behaviour.
175	* RecursiveCanon: Some episodes show ''Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids'' playing on television in-universe.
176	* ReplacedTheThemeTune: The orchestral theme from the original series has a noticeable change once the claymation segments end. Every episode in the final season had a completely different theme from before; compare the opening from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieD7Yzft5XE a season one]] episode to one from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYp5Y_neWBc season six]].
177	* ReusedCharacterDesign: Every episode is guaranteed to have the same character models from another episode. This practice continued even during the [=HotHell=] Darkness retool.
178	* ScareEmStraight: The point of the show is for the horrifying stories to deter children from bad behavior. Viewers were known to have nightmares after watching the series.
179	* SceneryCensor: Nobby's naturist parents in "Nobby's Nightmare" always have something there to conveniently cover up their genitals.
180	* ShoutOut: There is a considerable amount of ParentalBonus references.
181	** The episode about a barber that knows how to deal with rude children is called "[[Theatre/TheBarberOfSeville The Barber of Civil]]".
182	** "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" is a WholePlotReference of this, especially if one's familiar with Creator/EnidBlyton's work.
183	*** Stinker the dog = Scamper from ''The Secret Seven''.
184	*** Sam is introduced as "the girl with a boy's name", which is a reference to George from ''Literature/TheFamousFive'', who was also a {{tomboy}} (Georgina) "with a boy's name". The two of them also hate whenever their gender [[StayInTheKitchen is brought up as a negative]]. There's also Algae the adventure-seeker, who is clearly based on Dick from the same series, as well as Col having an Aunt Fanny (who doesn't appear) like the three siblings.
185	*** There is something telling about the names of two other characters [[TheGhost mentioned]]: Col's aunt Fanny and Sam's bully Dick Stick. Dick and Fanny (although names of many characters in Blyton's works) were two notorious characters from ''Literature/TheFarawayTree'' whose names had to later be {{bowdlerise}}d for later editions because of the [[HaveAGayOldTime modern sexual connotations]]. Only one of them appears (although mentioned in passing): Dick Stick, who Sam beats up for viciously teasing her.
186	*** The group dynamic of four children and a dog, which is subverted when [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling Ginger's sister]] Alice wants to join them. Her insistence may also be a reference to ''The Secret Seven'', which was a group of six children and a dog but one of the boys' little sister wanted to join in, much to her brother's embarrassment.
187	** A boy named Monty buys a snake to bully his sister. The name of the episode? "[[Creator/MontyPython Monty's Python]]".
188	** A StageDad hopes to make his daughter the most famous person in the world, but "[[Film/ChittyChittyBangBang The Childhood Snatcher]]" delivers harsh consequences.
189	** In "The Top Hat", one of Benjamin's birthday presents is a [[Franchise/StarWars TIE Fighter]] toy.
190	** In "The Recyclops" There is a blatent reference to [[Series/TheYoungOnes The Young Ones]] with Mike and Vvyien appearing on a quiz show in a reference to the episode Bambi. It also crosses into ActorAllusion given the narrator, Nigel Planer was cast as one of the shows main characters.
191	* SingleTear: After being turned into a doll in "The Bugaboo Bear", Emily sheds one tear after she realizes her new owner is treating her as horribly as she did her teddy bear.
192	* SpaceWhaleAesop: All of the stories are this. Apparently, if you're mouthy in school, a hairdresser will cut your tongue; if you don't eat fruit, you'll turn into a bat; and if you pressure your child into the adult world prematurely, they'll turn into a pensioner.
193	* SparedByTheAdaptation:
194	** In the original version of "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping", Stinker the dog is gunned down by Farmer Tregowan. In the adaptation, he's revealed to be still alive (but lame).
195	** In the original version of "Frank Einstein's Monster", Frank's monster switches places with him and places him on the rocket. In the adaptation, someone catches on before Frank is put on the rocket, and he's set free.
196	* StockFootage: Frequently the show would repeat the same chunks of animation in a story, and other times whole backgrounds, settings, and character designs would be lifted from other episodes.
197	* StockSoundEffect: In the original intro, the death scream of the Evil Queen from ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' (also recycled as Maleficent's death scream in ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'') can be heard.
198	* StopMotion: The introduction and ending segments featuring Uncle Grizzly are animated in stop-motion whereas the stories themselves are in 2D animation. In later episodes, the stop-motion segments were cut shorter before being scrapped altogether.
199	* TechnicalEuphemism: In "Prince Noman," the narration states that the peasant seamstress Leticia was "invited" to marry King Norman. The actual animation shows the king's men storming her home and dragging her to the castle kicking and screaming all the way to the altar.
200	* ToiletHumour: In "The Fruit Bat," the bat at the end poops on the students and [[BreakingTheFourthWall on the screen.]] In addition, Cherry Stone is said to eat so little fruit that she is perpetually constipated.
201	* TooDumbToLive: Elizabeth in "The History Lesson" is a notable one, especially if she asked a ghost to help her with her exam. She's first seen trying to work out which monarchs have the [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethII same name]] [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI as her]].
202	* TookALevelInKindness: The adaptation of "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" removes any implication of the Chums' prejudice. Like most Enid Blyton children's stories, there is an aura of a conservative, British middle-class fantasy where the world is a SugarBowl and no one is suffering -- specifically, Ginger and Alice's father was a navy captain who was out of the country arresting pirates, so they were most likely the wealthiest kids in the group.
203	** Sam was implied to be the biggest offender. Amusingly, [[FailedASpotCheck she looked past]] Farmer Tregowan's shotgun and threats, and thinks to herself that he looked like the "typical" thuggish criminal that the police were always arresting, as she eyed his working-class clothing, unattractive features and unshaven chin.
204	** It's also pointed out at the very beginning that The Chums were not interested in the fact that Dick Stick came from a struggling family that sold ratskin, as long as "the ginger beer flowed like wine". Although he was deservedly [[CurbStompBattle beaten up]] by Sam for cruel namecalling, one wonders whether she and her friends would've invited him into their gang if he had been a little nicer...
205	* TrappedAtTheDinnerTable: In "The Spaghetti Man", a boy named Timothy King is always throwing fits at the dinner table and refuses to eat his meals. One day Timothy's mother has finally enough of his bad behavior and refusing to eat his toast so she makes him stay at the dinner table until he has eaten it.
206	* VillainProtagonist: Many of the kids and those are the ones who generally become {{Asshole Victim}}s.
207	* WouldHitAGirl: Johnny Bullneck in "Fat Kid with a Trumpet" willingly hits girls.
208	* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler:In "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping", the titular characters are outright murdered by an angry farmer.]]
209	* {{Workaholic}}: Many of the parents are. Often, when their children go missing or die, they don't notice.
210	* YankTheDogsChain: "Goblin Mountain" ends with the ordeal being AllJustADream ... [[spoiler:only for the boy to [[ThatWasNotADream turn into a tree after all]] when he wakes up.]]

Context WesternAnimation / GrizzlyTalesForGruesomeKids