Nightmare Fuel / Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids

If something from the series is here and made you behave yourself as a kid, the series did its job.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

In general

• This series is pretty infamous for its horrible fates for children, even death. Sometimes, by their own parents.
  • The parents don't seem to notice their child is missing.
• Whenever Uncle Grizzly's head shapeshifts.
  • Also, if you pause at the times he begins to transform, you'll get an incredibly disturbing image. For example, at the end of "The Barbour of Civil" when you pause just before and after Grizzly transforms into a giant tongue, you'll see him with pale skin, a big nose, big teeth, a long mouth and bloodshot bug eyes.
• A majority of the closeups, especially the eyes.
  • Sometimes there are instances where close-ups are done on an entirely different and creepier model of Uncle Grizzly◊, like at the end of episodes such as "Dr. Moribundus" and "Mr. Peeler's Butterflies".

Specifics in the books and cartoon

• The plot of "The Stick Man" is a mixture of this and Tear Jerker. Chico's workaholic and abusive parents and his babysitter find his imagination and drawing a nuisance, even though they're the only things to keep him company. When he is sucked into the world, his parents wash the walls, trapping him in the world. It doesn't matter to him because he'll finally live happily with his stick figure friends, but in order to escape abuse, he had to physically go to the land of make-believe to have a better childhood.
  • A bit of Fridge Horror, too. His parents washed the walls full of pictures he'd be living in, wiping him off the face of the earth. They unknowingly killed their child! Not that they'd notice, unfortunately. And if they did, it's unlikely that they'd care.
• Sometimes, the way Uncle Grizzly treats Spindleshanks is creepy, as well, whether it's shoving a vacuum cleaner up him, sabotaging his driving test, and there's even a moment when Spindleshanks dies.
  • One scene has Uncle Grizzly saves him from snakes by getting a pigeon to eat him.
• Dirty Bertie is so dirty, he attracts aliens.
• "Knock Down Ginger" is a good lesson for children about messing with the neighbours.
  • However you feel about Ginger's fate is debatable but getting eaten from the inside by termites isn't a nice fate, no matter the victim.
  • When Mr Thrips threatens vengeance towards Ginger, all the bugs in the house hum in unison as if Thrips has become an honorary insect.
• The idea of a shadow creature like "The Spaghetti Man" having the power it has is enough to scare any kid, Picky Eater or not.
  • What about the ending? Not only don't Timothy's parents miss him, but he's been turned into their dinner!
  • The curly-haired girl that tells Timothy about how the Spaghetti Man had won was a bit too accepting that she was going to be turned into food.
• "The Childhood Snatcher" shows the dangers of being a Stage Mom.
  • Taking out the malicious intent, Amos only wanted the best for his child, making her fate even more tragic.
  • A toddler being elected Prime Minister is creepy as well. It says something about the charisma and capabilities of the other candidates…
  • Special mention goes to Amos' poor wife in the situation, who only wanted to have the best daughter she could, but now only has a pensioner as a three-year-old.
  • In the original story, the witch was an ugly old man who didn't appear to have any powers on the outside. Perhaps this was changed for the cartoon due to the connotations.
  • It's also disturbing how Amos' baby girl seemed to have accepted that a witch has been stalking her every year before her birthday. Despite The Childhood Snatcher hand waving that they were sent by Amos, Amos has no clue who Albert was talking about when he was confronted.
• "Simon Sulk" is decapitated by magical Icelandic trolls that were disguised as his parents.
• How about Terry in "Tag"? He envies a boy in his class so much, he becomes a kleptomaniac, but then he steals the wrong PE kit, which gives him a terrible rash, which turns into name tags all over his body, and he only gets better when he returns the bag to its peg in the cloakroom. Talk about the dangers of jealousy.
  • What about the culprit of Terry's predicament? A poltergeist judge called Jim Spectre/A. Phantom, who crosses dimensions catching out criminals. Does he always target children? Since we only see how he deals with theft, what else is he capable of?
  • Terry's poor mother, who seems to be a decent parent (even more than the typical Grizzly Tales standard), trying to do well by her son but has to deal with his strange, traumatic illness, and only then, she discovers his dark side.
  • In the cartoon, the tags on Terry's body are so powerful, they can't be cut off by bolt-cutters.
• "The Princess's Clothes" - How about when the clothes turned into a tornado and engulfed Felicity as prisoner?
• Thomas Ratchet and six other children get turned into shop window dummies where they are unable to move or speak, only move their eyes forever.
• "Well'ard Willard" is melted by the Sun.
  • The book also references the state of the world after Willard's mission. When he decides to go to school, the pipes have frozen up.
• Some will say that they deserved it, but when "The Barber of Civil" cuts out Peregrin and Tanya's tongues so that they'd behave in school, it didn't stop the idea from being terrifying.
  Uncle Grizzly: So, if a new barber arrives at your school, I suggest you keep your mouth firmly shut!
  • When introduced, it's mentioned that this mysterious barber was popular with parents because after their rude children visit him, they leave different people. That's one way to discipline, sure, but do the parents ever find out what happened to the kids? Would they have the same outlook if they knew what shut their kids up?
  • The strange jar of wiggly things that Peregrin finds on display at the barber's place. After finding out what they are, it makes Peregrin accidentally swallowing one all the more gross.
  • Once the barber finishes his work, he immediately leaves town, leaving no time for the parents to personally thank him.
  • In the original story, to test the sharpness of the knife, the barber licks the blade, leaving a trail of blood, which he immediately wipes off.
• The plot of "Glued to the Telly": Imagine being sucked into the television and having to try and find your way out before your unsuspecting family members turn off the box. But Herbert being burnt into a crisp (a potato chip) and left in the fridge until it's either forgotten about or eventually eaten by your parents, is up there too.
• In "Monty's Python", after Monty flushes the overgrown snake down the toilet, he is terrified to empty his bladder. His sister jokes that the snake will jump out the bowl "and bite you winkie off". When Monty eventually cannot strain himself anymore and goes to the toilet, he is grabbed and pulled in ... but we don't find out how...
• "Bessy O'Messy" is this, as well as bizarre: imagine your room being so messy that leprechauns with metal claw-hands decide to live in it, and you wouldn't even know!
• "An Elephant Never Forgets":
  • The three-legged elephant coming to life deserves a mention, especially since Belinda forgot about how she got the magic elephant foot to begin with.
    • Also, the end of the episode in the cartoon shows a family of elephants; the baby is transparent. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
  • Your children's spirits haunting your house until you're forced to move out/divorce is a special bit of terror that could terrify the parents of the children reading/watching the story.
• Lorelai Lee's fate in "Doctor Moribundus" in the book is so gruesome, it was cut out of the TV show: the strange Dr. Moribundus and his assistant give her brain surgery by cutting open the top of her head with a saw, injecting her with a syringe long enough to poke through her whole body, and eating a part of her brain (which supposedly caused her pranking habit) with a teaspoon! Remember that she was only pretending, by the way. Imagine the treatment she'd have gotten otherwise!
  • Her parents hear every one of her anguished and disturbed cries for help, but do nothing because they're following doctor's orders by keeping away from the procedure.
• "Guilt Ghost" was about a man hiding from accidental manslaughter, and his guilt turned into a shapeshifting ghost that only he could see, hear, and interact with. It never shut up and never leaves his side, destroying his relationships. Then when it shapeshifts for the last time, the ghost is led away by police and the man discovers that he is now the ghost.
• "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping" has a horrible ending, especially since the kids didn't deserve it. Talk about a Mood Whiplash.
  • Special mention goes to when farmer Tregowan shoots Stinker. There's a flicker of hope in the cartoon, which rewrites Stinker's fate as made lame and he limps away (possibly to alert the kids' parents), but not so much in the book: Stinker is deader than dead.
  • The page image for the story's chapter in the book's first edition release. Not necessarily disturbing on its own, depicting happy children representing the characters toasting their picnic with ginger beer as their dog sits next to them happily, but the other stories in the book have weird illustrations that are more cartoonish and creepily exaggerated. Not only does it stick out, but what could possibly happen in a story that has a cute drawing to go with it?
• Bart Thumper from "The Rise and Fall of the Evil Guff" is one of the nastiest characters (if not the nastiest character) ever featured in the series. He is established to have terrorist tendencies in the beginning and this only gets worse when he is tricked into eating a vegetable and discovers how stinky his farts are. It all comes to a head when he tries to hold the world ransom and threatens to destroy the ozone layer and burn everyone on the planet alive unless he gets what he wants. Fittingly, his demise is also one of the nastiest in the series: he is sent through a time loop, thrown into a Medieval midden, and composted to death over three years.
• "Mr. Peeler's Butterflies":
  • Mr. Peeler sneaks into Alexander's room and peels his eyelids off, which join his "butterfly" clan.
  • The fact that the title of the story is also the title of an old nursery rhyme that Alexander's father remembers from childhood. The character of Peeler only visits children that refuse to go to bed, and considering the outcome at the end of the story, it isn't a believable situation if you go to bed when you should. The person who must have invented the rhyme was probably one of his victims...

---