The Weirdest Episodes of a Cartoon IYO?

I'm going to mention that the first incarnation of Johnny Bravo was no less weirder than the retool; neither was Dexters Lab or The Powerpuff Girls. (In some respects it was less weirder. The trope page mentions that the retool didn't feature talking animals, like the Van Partible seasons did.)

No episode of a TV cartoon has ever been more surreal than "Minnie The Moocher" or "Quasi At The Quackadero". They are true art; masterful examples of Daliesque surrealism.

edited 18th Jul '15 7:55:42 PM by Aldo930

I can sorta agree, at least with Dexter's labrotory and maybe Johnny Bravo. Their isn't really any episodes that really stick out to me as truly surreal from the pre-retool seasons of PPG.

The episode of Chowder when he gets so smart he realizes they're in a cartoon and he decides to change it to be "educational" always sticks out in my mind when I think of that show.

Back at the Barnyard got really weird after a while. It progressively got farther away from it's premise(Barn animals partying) and became so strange. One episode that sticks out is where the animals wonder where Bessie(the cow voiced by Wanda Sykes) goes after she snarks at them. It turns out she's a secret shopper for Weird Al Yanknovich. And that Weird Al is a horse in disguise. [[{{"Not Making This Up"Disclaimer]] I shit you not.]] Their was another episode that was even self aware just how weird it was where the pig creatively named Pig is the king of the mole people. I could go on for awhile on just how weird this show got.

The Christmas Carol episode of Real Ghostbusters is pretty weird not just cause the fact that the Ghostbuster bust the ghosts of Past, Present, and Future, but also because of the fact that somehow due to a snowstorm, the Ghostbusters not only went back in time but also into the Christmas Carol. Which the episode tries to imply is actually a part of the past considering that because Scrooge doesn't learn his lesson, people in present day are all greedy pricks and Scrooge is famous in the sense that he was a actual real life celebrity.

The Powerpuff Girls was really only about as weird as most superhero shows tend to get.

(Incidentally, nice Coleman Francis reference in the sig...)

Woke Up Drunk is bizarre even for Perfect Hair Forever. The two episodes made after season 1(Return to Balding Victory and Muscular Distraction) to a lesser extent.

Ever since it's premire, Every episode of Pig Goat Banana Cricket is this.

Yeah, the early seasons are weird too.

Who could ever forget the Twilight Zone episode of Johnny Bravo or that time he did online dating and dates a deer (who's ex-boyfriend is a crab).

Though I find the later seasons of those cartoons to be weirder for the increase in mind screws. Funny Animals I can understand given its a cartoon; endings that creates more question instead of resolving them . . . what.

Or the time he dated a werewolf that could also turn into a male schlub who collects stamps.

Was going to add that, but the deer one seems more out there compare to the female werewolf (who we can all pretend is a furry instead of a literal monster).

Ed's story in "Once Upon a Ed" is so weird that Eddy lampshades it.

I'm trying to think of a weird pre-movie Spongebob episode but nothings coming to my mind.

"I Had An Accident" springs to mind, if only for the ending.

I don't know if I'd really count episodes that were intentionally weird, it just doesn't seem the same, you know? "Weird" generally implies something is wrong, not normal, and writers choosing to make an episode strange is totally normal.

Some episodes come out weirder than they were meant to be, though, or are a product of desperation, like a lot of later Simpsons episodes.

The episode "The Bob Next Door" certainly felt that way to me. The second half of that episode felt like they just made it up as they went along, and that is very rarely a good sign.

I'm sure that everyone who watched Pingu as a toddler will remember the infamous walrus episode.

I think it was a dream sequence or something, but when you're three years old you don't quite get that kind of nuance yet.

Oh Jesus Christ I remember that episode. That was so freaky. And even worse was I watched that one at night time.

I think "Hand Me Down Ed" is pretty weird. Namely there is a personality altering boomerang that affects numerous characters:

• Jimmy goes from a complete wimp to a muscle man
• Sarah goes from Ed's main bully to a nice little sister
• Rolf becomes an opera singer
• Ed goes from a dumbass to a genius
• Eddy becomes a mother
• Edd becomes a nudist

I don't get why Rolf sung opera when he was hit with the boomerang. The boomerang seemed to make who ever was hit by it the opposite of themselves so I don't understand why Rolf was singing opera.

I say Rule of Funny. Rolf also was the only one aware of the boomerang's affects.

edited 25th Jul '15 4:39:25 PM by powerpuffbats

That episode of King of the Hill where Luanne falls in love with that insane pork mogul. Fun with Jane and Jane was pretty crazy too.

I liked that one line from it. :) "Now I've got to explain to Peggy why I bought all this beef. It's not even a three-day weekend."

"Porky in Wackyland" is pretty good so far as surreal visuals go.

For some reason, this puts me in mind of a scene that got cut from the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy" (Paul Dini scripts are apparently notorious for the stuff that has to get cut from them just for the sake of time). There was supposed to be a scene where the Joker shows up, intent on pulling his most over the top crime ever, and Batman walks by, cradling the Wonder Pig, and saying stuff like "It'll be all right, I promise..." The Joker pulls a take and orders his mooks to pack it all up and go home, because, he says, "no way am I gonna follow that."

Which is too bad, because he'd already made such an effective appearance in Wild Cards. I'd actually heard that one reason given for his failure to appear in Justice League Unlimited was that he was still supposed to be suffering from the effects of 10's attack.

edited 1st Aug '15 10:05:11 AM by Robbery

Apparently that scene had to be cut because of the infamous 'Bat-Embargo'. At that time Joker and most of the Batman villains were appearing in The Batman and couldn't be shown in JLU.

Nobody would've liked the crossover appeal between shows?

I think execs at Warner Bros thought that kids would think The Batman would be in the same continuity as JLU if they include any Batman characters sans Bats himself.

What's wrong with thinking they're in the same continuity?

They weren't. Execs probably thought that kids would be confused.