No wonder why Dale has so many problems.
King of the Hill is a pretty laid-back cartoon, but it is made by the same guy who introduced the world to Beavis And Butthead, so there are some moments that come off as nightmarish.
- The last ten seconds of "Plastic White Female". Bobby and some of his peers are playing Spin the Bottle in the Gribbles' basement. However, Nancy walks in while trying to convince Dale that having a boy/girl party isn't a bad thing. The bottle points towards her, and Bobby lunges. The episode closes on a slow-motion shot of Nancy screaming as Bobby flies towards her, before cutting to black.
- During the episode itself, Bobby begins using Luanne's practice female dummy head (the titular "Plastic White Female") as a practice tool, and while it does wonders for his self-esteem, it's still a little creepy to watch. On a stormy night, Bobby breaks the lock on the cupboard that Hank stowed the head in. We see Hank becoming increasingly angry, and his immediate response is to take the head by force and saw it in half, despite Bobby and Luanne's protests to stop.
- Peggy's hellish nightmare in "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Hill". In the episode, Peggy pretends to be a nun at a Catholic school in order to become a full-time teacher, only to find out how she may have inadvertently damned her students to Hell by failing to teach them properly. In her nightmare, a demonic version of Monsignor Martinez breaks into the classroom and opens a portal to Hell. He pushes two or three children into the fire before Peggy pleads with him to stop, confessing her lies. There is a Hope Spot when the flames extinguish... before Hank steps in and fixes the propane tanks being used to make the heat. Hank's Evil Laugh (with flames reflected in his eyes) is the topper.Hank: That's a clean burning Hell, I tell you what!
- Hank's nightmare in "The Man Who Shot Cane Skretteberg". The Deranged Animation in that scene is icing on the cake.
- The animation was so scary with people laughing and the nightmarish visuals.
- "Hilloween" features Bobby's Imagine Spot of his father as Satan laughing demonically at the screen.
- When Bill becomes interested in a dog-dancing contest in "Dances With Dogs", he attempts to train a savage Rottweiler that attacks him almost instantly. Even when the dog is sedated, we see its dream of mauling Bill.
- Hank sawing off one of Dale's fingers in "The Texas Skillsaw Massacre"!
- The death of his anger management classmate Big Jim, especially when he starts yelling at Dale before barking and frothing at the mouth like a dog, freaking everyone (including Hank) out, which causes him to suffer a stroke and die. He died angry, indeed.
- Later at Jim's funeral, Hank remembers all the times he's gotten angry throughout the show and realizes the inevitable outcome if no progress is made."That could be me lying there..."
- The cliffhanger at the end of "As Old as the Hills", where Peggy opts at the last minute to skydive after her reservations previously once she feels jealousy from Didi having a child. Then her parachute fails to deploy. The episode ends with Hank watching her, screaming at the top of her lungs, slamming into a field in the distance before he turns to the screen in horror. Thankfully the beginning of the next episode reveals she landed in soft mud, but this still broke her back and it actually takes her several episodes to recover.
- In the recovery that follows, however, Peggy goes into a sharp depression with time thanks to being almost entirely immobilized and helpless, besides her toes. It elicits a very real fear that a completely unforeseen consequence could potentially ruin your life, and she's damn lucky she gets to recover in the first place.
- Near the end, everyone is hit with a moment when G.H. stops crying. This causes Hank and Cotton to panic and run inside, but the moment ends when it's revealed G.H. stopped crying because Peggy rocked him to sleep with her toes.
- The ending of "Fun with Jane and Jane" where Buck Strickland is attacked by the emus he tried to have Hank kill.
- The Omega House cult of the same episode is also really Nightmare Fuel-inducing. A Manipulative Bitch takes in young women seeking a place to be among others and effectively brainwashes them into becoming complacent slaves for a jam-making farm. Seeing a starved Luanne trying to ask Hank for help is both depressing and disturbing. And what's more, as Dale notes, they've been doing it for some time now. And while Hank and the guys manage to save Luanne, Peggy, and the latest group from being enslaved, the leader Jane isn't arrested or detained. She is royally pissed off, however.
- "Pigmalion": the Halloween Episode, in which pork and pork-product mogul Trip Larsen (voiced by Michael Keaton) falls in love with Luanne, tries to turn her into the product's mascot and tries to turn them into pork products on a Conveyor Belt o' Doom, all because of his schizophrenia. Luanne gets out okay. Trip, however, ended up hacked to pieces after an electric shock clears his schizophrenic mind — and makes him realize too late that he's on the kill line.Luanne: Well, at least Trip seemed happy, and now he's in a better place.Peggy: Honey, Trip had a mental breakdown and is now a sausage. That's not a better place.
- The scene when Luanne hears noises behind one of the doors in Trip's house, and a crazed pig comes at her and scares Luanne out of her mind.
- And the pork-product company is shown to still be in business in later episodes, with Bill ordering ribs for a barbeque.
- In the episode "Texas City Twister", as Hank is stopped by some workers investigating a poison spill on his way to rescue his family, a lightning flash briefly causes him to imagine a worker as the Grim Reaper.
- Two deleted scenes for the episode featured a crazed religious fundamentalist who yelled ominous passages at the characters, terrifying Hank and Bill in his second appearance.
- The Propane explosion at Mega-lo-mart at the end of season 2 is played absolutely straight as a fatal catastrophe, bypassing the normal end credits and ending on a cliffhanger.
- In Megalo Dale, Dale is hired to do some exterminating at the Mega-lo-mart on Hank's good word, but as he starts looking into the supposed infestation, he becomes convinced it's actually Chuck Mangione living in the store. Hank, Bill, and Boomhauer end up going to the Mega-lo-mart at night to help Dale deal with the actual rat problem at the store. Hank eventually gets tired of trying to talk sense into Dale and tries to call his rivals into doing the job he was supposed to do. Then, suddenly, the music stops, and Hank doesn't notice that something has just severely scared the guys into a state of shock. Hank says the phone isn't working, and then he sees what the guys have: someone has just blocked off all the exits with vending machines. Then they start to hear flugelhorn music and the lights systematically go out.Bill: Chuck don't want us to leave...
- Chip Block the ventriloquist dummy can be nightmare fuel to those who have a fear of said dolls, as it looks genuinely creepy. Bobby spinning its head around while introducing it to Dale doesn't help. Not to mention Dale's (exaggerated) flashback shows him as a kid receiving the same dummy as a birthday present, with everyone (including the dummy) laughing evilly is rather disturbing. And the Bobby(!)dummy is rather creepy too, if not just for the uncanny valley.
- Bobby's subplot in "King of the Ant Hill" and its climax.
- He collects a queen ant in a jar, smells her pheromones and is compelled to obey her commands to bring her sugar. Later she orders him to return her to the lawn, and when he initially refuses she says something that makes him back down. When he does return her to the lawn she orders the entire colony to swarm him. They cover him completely (even running over his eyes, as seen in a POV shot) and he begs Hank and Dale to help, terrified to move and risk getting stung.
- And in order to save Bobby, Dale, the exterminator, swoops in, and lets the ants swarm on him instead. Sure enough, they all sting him at once and leave him writhing on the ground in agony before he passes out.
- Hank's Big "NO!" in "Luanne's Saga" on seeing Luanne kiss Boomhauer on the cheek, due to the way it abruptly cuts to a very unflattering close-up of Hank's face, contorted in utter horror as he holds an operatic note on his "No!"
- "Pretty, Pretty Dresses" is one of the most disturbing episodes of the series, particularly with heightened concerns over people with suicidal depression. Bill's depression hits its apex and he starts trying to take his own life. After his bungled attempts do nothing other than annoy the others, Hank tells Bill that Lenore is never coming back and smashes all of the "presents" he had gotten for her, causing Bill to snap and lose all feeling. The next day, Hank returns to Bill's house and finds Bill dressed in drag and adopting Lenore's personality. He keeps up the act until the Christmas party, in which Peggy tried to invite the real Lenore to the party, who declined the invitation over the phone. Once the disturbed guests start heckling Bill, Hank puts on a dress to try and ease the tension, causing Bill to run outside in tears. Hank pretends to be Lenore and tells Bill why "she" left him, allowing Bill to get his closure. Everything ends on a good note, but it still doesn't ease the creepiness in the middle.
- In "Hillenium", Hank comes very close to dying when he doesn't ventilate his garage while putting varnish on a grandfather clock he'd bought. We see him progressively inhale more and more, until he is basically drunk on the fumes, giving a babbled "Oooops..." when he brushes varnish over the entire face of the clock, before falling to the floor of the garage (and thankfully not apparently getting a head injury from that), drooling and swiftly slipping into unconsciousness. It gets worse though, when Peggy announces she's taking Bobby and Luanne Christmas shopping, completely unaware her husband is in danger. Hank thankfully just has a messed up dream involving Whack-A-Mole and his fears over Y2K that led to all this, then manages to regain consciousness and drive his mower out through the garage door, just as the family arrive home. Still, imagine if Hank hadn't done that and the family didn't check on him until it was too late...
- There is a triple-dose of high-octane nightmare fuel in "Return to La Grunta"
- Hank is Sexually Assaulted by a dolphin (and the trauma triggers that follow)
- Luanne's treatment by the golfers.
- Hank's revenge on the golfer at the end - rarely do we see him being so cold-blooded and sadistic.
- Cotton's hallucination while in the sweat lodge in "Returning Japanese". He sees all the Japanese soldiers he killed during World War II come into the sweat lodge, all of them full of bullet holes and stab wounds. No wonder he ran out screaming.
- couples with fridge horror when you realise the soldiers in question are all bandaged wounded. Cotton comitted a war crime.
- "Enrique-incilable Differences" sees Hank's coworker Enrique constantly (one could say obsessively) hanging out with the Hills to take his mind off of his crumbling marriage. Hank hates it, but tentatively puts up with it at Peggy's urging. Eventually, one night, Enrique desperately knocks on their door in the middle of the night, and Hank has had enough and prevents anyone from answering him. Cut to Enrique knocking on their door, then the garage door, then calling, then knocking on their back door, then wearing out their doorbell... now, imagine someone doing that at your house at 3:00 in the morning.
- For animal lovers, Dale and the animal control workers beating Bobby's pet python to death in "SERPUNt" is pretty nightmarish to watch, even with the Gory Discretion Shot. Also doubles as a Tearjerker.
