The King of Pigs has no shortage of disturbing moments, especially when paired with the personalities and ideals of our protagonists.
- Chul. From his complete willingness to physically assault his bullies to his perceived need to become a monster at 13, Chul is perhaps one of the most disturbed characters in the world of animation.
- The first thing we see is the image of a woman’s corpse, having been strangled by her husband. From this shot alone, you know it’s not going to be an easy watch.
- Moments later, Kyung-Min hallucinates seeing a deformed, pig-like monster arriving out of the shadows
- After meeting Kyung-min and Jong-suk, Chul takes them to his house, where he presents a scared, hissing cat restrained by it’s leash. To help them be desensitized to violence, he pulls out a knife and orders them to stab the cat to death.
- The reveal of Chul’s father’s deceased body, which is stiff and sickly green in color. Paired with Tearjerker as we see Chul’s mother, who was holding onto hope that her husband would return with money, and her son snap out of shock and/or anger at his absent father
- Chul hallucinates seeing his fathers corpse sit up and mock him, complete with uncannily stiff movements and the sound of bones cracking.
- The brutal beating of Kyung-min and Jong-suk on the rooftop. They’re outnumbered 10-1, and without Chul, they can’t fight back.
- Seeing Chul pull out a knife during he rooftop fight. Luckily, he only uses it to cut someone’s hand, but it’s not hard to imagine what else he would have done if a teacher hadn’t intervened.
- After getting expelled, Chul encourages Kyung-min and Jong-suk to huff paint, causing Jong-suk to hallucinate Chul literally turning into a shadowy monster, with bone-white eyes and teeth. In this form, he rips apart the cat from earlier with his bare hands. All while Chul goes on about the class system and how cruel the world is.
