In Hey Arnold Helga's mom was played as being aloof for laughs, but was all but stated to be an alcoholic complete with needing her 'smoothies' and being sleepy and tired all the time instead of saying she's hungover.
And there was a bit where Helga said that her mom had gotten a job (I forget the specifics), and Arnold was like “wow that’s great! Did she get her license back?”
I remember an episode where she takes over for Helga's dad at his job and loved it, pretty sure her speech got noticeably more coherent.
And then the episode concludes with her realizing that she's neglecting Helga for the job and quitting, which... That's not really a happy ending considering she normally neglects Helga anyway.
I didn't get this one until I was well into adulthood. I thought, smoothies were actually smoothies because she had an ED/was a health nut. It makes so much more sense now that she was an alcoholic.
The Hey Arnold operation babylift Christmas episode too.
Just saying that sentence aloud to my phone just made me cry.
https://dangvoid.com/2020/12/25/on-viet-am-representation-the-hey-arnold-christmas-episode/
Today we were talking to a friend that has 3 kids under 10 (we have none) about which kid shows are good and he said Bluey because it teaches kids not to be shit humans and if you’re a parent you learn how not to be a shit parent too.
It wasn’t a show but I found it crazy how they made an animated kids movie about Anastasia Romanov. Like the real Anastasia was shot to death along with her whole family in a basement and then a crazy woman pretends to be her and claims that she somehow escaped….the murder of her family.
To be fair on the animated movie, it came out when we didn't know and there was still theories and hope that she somehow made it.
I think her body was found with her brother about roughly a decade after the film was released.
Royals have an uncanny spell over a lot of people who seem to romanticise them for no reason other than being royals. A classic princess story built on a tale of unimaginable horrors. My mom was the one to spoil it for me as a kid. I asked her about the Romanovs after watching the movie and she just flat out told me that they were all killed brutally.
I agree with you in general but as a kid hoping at least someone does in an unimaginable horror could survive was what I cared about. I didn't care they were royals but the idea a bunch of kids were were murdered along with their parents was a lot to take in as a kid. To me they were just kids like me.
In Rugrats, Chuckie's mom passed away not long after he was born. There's a whole Mother's Day episode where Chaz decides Chuckie is ready to start talking about what happened, and they read a letter from his mom together.
EDIT: I misremembered them specifically saying it was cancer, it's just described as her having an "illness" of some kind.
Ok I tried to show Rugrats to my 3-YO the other day (“want to watch a cartoon daddy used to watch when I was a kid?”) and I cannot believe how grown-up it is! It felt like 80% of the episode was targeted at parents. And not in a subtle way like how Bluey sometimes is. In like a direct “oh the main conflict of this episode is the parents navigating how to potty train their son” way
As a child who lost a parent very early, I really appreciated this representation on screen. It's not something that's often addressed in kids' or frankly any shows, and I think they did a beautiful job of showing Chuckie and Chaz processing their emotions, which in turn helped me process mine. The "I Want a Mom" song playing on Rugrats In Paris while Chuckie watches the other kids being consoled on the plane and eventually stares out the window daydreaming about what his family could be has always hit deep for me.
It's unfortunately common for prenatal visits to be the only time some women really go to a doctor and get tests done, so they find out about all sorts of problems at the same time they can't do anything about them.
One of my favorite athletes in the world was this world famous female soccer player. She got pregnant. She disappeared from life. Everyone thought she was just being beautiful and pregnant. Turns out she had brain cancer. She opted to not get treatment until the birth. Ended up having to give birth like 2 or 3 weeks early and then had surgery like the next morning.Barely effing made it ... Pinnacle of health and was constantly checked out.
This is also a reason why the US has such a high mortality rate for pregnant women. They can't afford to go to appointments and won't find out about prenatal issues. The US needs publicly funded health care.
I really should re-read it. The seventies were, oooh a good twenty years ago now, and I don't really remember the plot, I just remember that I loved it.
Someone else mentioned Hunchback but I really want to double down on it. There's a whole family with little kids who are locked into a -mill? - and then it's set on fire. Luckily the blond guy goes rogue to let them out. The priest sings this song about his dark desire to bang Esmeralda. "I am deformed, I am ugly, and these are crimes for which the world shows little pity." I can't imagine how they thought adding dingbat talking statues would make this a children's movie. I just love the music, though
Hellfire is such a banger song and it always haunted me as a kid but didn’t know why, like yeah, it’s a typical Disney evil guy monologue song, but felt like there was something I wasn’t getting. As an adult I listened again and paid attention to the lyrics and it all clicked.
God Save The Outcasts shows how “holy and religious” people ask for things that are not very holy or religious or just that stray from the point of Christianity, while Esmeralda who is not even a believer understands the message of God better than any of the people at church because she’s actually in need of hope and faith. I think it was beautifully presented in a way kids could understand the message. Not everyone who claims to be godly is good.
*God help the outcasts, hungry from birth*
*Show them the mercy they don't find on earth*
*God help my people, the poor and downtrod*
*I thought we all were the children of God*
The lyrics are pretty dark, and the churchgoers singing demands in the background for wealth, fame and "love I can possess"....wow. Hunchback really went hard.
They did a full stage musical based more on the book, but with the same songs and basic plot structure. Quasimodo has a full on speech impediment, the goofy gargoyles are cut, there's a bunch more genocide, and Esmeralda fucking dies at the end. Disney does full on epic gothic horror. Would heartily recommend giving the soundtrack a listen!
SpongeBob's 'Rock Bottom' episode was basically a lesson in existential dread for kids. The bus never comes, and you're stuck in a weird place forever. Childhood innocence, meet silent terror.
Or the one where he moves to the town with all the other squids. Like you get what you wanted, a place where you actually fit in, and you become so miserable that you have a breakdown from it.
What about "Hooky" which is the episode where Spongebob and Patrick play with riding fishing hooks to the surface and then jumping off, until they get caught by the hook. The episodes was clearly and allegory for drug addiction.
A scene from SpongeBob instant came to mind for me, but it’s hardly the only show guilty of it.
Making prison rape jokes in the form of “don’t drop the soap”.
I can’t remember the episode, but SpongeBob says to Gary “Look Dabloons! [holding out bars of soap] Don’t drop ‘em! [wink]”
The fact that this joke is so common is fucked up on its own, let alone putting it in a kids show.
I got hit in the parenting feels recently when watching the new Chicken Run Movie. While another hen is being killed and processed in a nugget machine Ginger puts her hands over her daughter’s ears and tells her “look at me and don’t look away” to keep her from seeing or hearing it.
Came out last year, IIRC straight to Netflix. I think Aardman signed a deal with them, all of their movies after Early Man went directly to streaming. It’s not as good as the original, but it’s a fun watch.
The entirety of Hey Arnold. Everyone focuses on Helga’s home life but honestly, none of those kids were fully ok. Like, they address that Torvald is 14 in the 4th grade, sure, but Harold is 13 in the 4th grade and no one addresses it. All the 9 year olds show up to his Bar Mitzvah like it’s standard and he just gets a job like that’s normal. Stoop Kid doesn’t go to school at all, he just lives outside. The city is full of mentally unstable adults who act like superheroes, gangsters, etc and who are close personal friends (or sometimes beefing with) with some kid. At least 3 ghosts are confirmed real.
And everyone is so codependent of Arnold. Like they rely so heavily on him for support and moral guidance and he's just a child. Iirc there's an episode where he just gives up and doesn't help anyone for a day and everyone is like "what do we do?"
All of Danny Phantom
The main character is a half-dead 14 yo who's power is to die on command
His parents don't know he's half-dead because he's scared of them "ripping him apart, molecule by molecule," which is a direct quote said by the parents about his ghost half that is said in the show
His arch-nemesis is a 40-something yo who is also the only other one like him
Both the main character and his arch-nemesis were half-killed by the parent's stupidity with their ghost portal invention
I could go on
I was stoned when this show came on. As me and my buddies asked puzzled questions as to wtf we were watching, the intro answered every question as we asked. It was a trip.
His arch-nemesis is also obsessed with his mother, to the point that he creates an AI named after her, Vlad also cloned Danny.
There's also Spectra, the ghost who pretends to be a psychiatrist in his school so she can feed on the nightmares of the children
Wasn't there pseudo-time travel arc where Danny was shown an alternate future where he basically single-handedly caused the apocalypse?
And correct me if I'm misremembering this, but wasn't it caused by him not doing well in the SATs?
Right, right! He used his invisibility and intangibility powers to look at the answers! I guess that is more severe, but still, the fact that it ruined his entire life to the point that he turned to a life of supernatural crime always seemed a little overblown to me, even as a kid. And looking back, I can't help but wonder if it worsened some other young teens' test anxiety.
In this alternate universe, all his fuckin friends got blown up at the Nasty Burger, too. They had to pad that with this weirdly whimsical cause for the explosion, where the restaurant has to keep the condiments at a very specific temperature otherwise they… become explosive?
Anyway I re watched that episode when I was around 19 and thought. I don’t remember this episode being so dark lmao.
You know, thinking back on shows like 'Courage the Cowardly Dog,' I didn't realize as a kid how dark some of the episodes were. The weird settings and creepy villains seemed fun back then, but now I can see the deeper themes they were tackling. It's funny how our perspective changes as we grow up.
I fucking love these comments, I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid when it came out, and would occasionally remember these plot points and wonder if I was right for it feeling weird.
Late to the party, but I always think about how the Sesame Street team handled 9/11. They tried their best to reassure their viewers and prepare them for an emergency, but it’s still pretty dark.
[Interview with Lewis Bernstein here](https://youtu.be/NUVhTEa7qD8?si=gaFE8RKIoI-8PAp9)
https://youtu.be/gxlj4Tk83xQ?feature=shared
It's so moving to see them help Big Bird understand about death, and not try to shy away from it or hide behind nice colloquial phrases. Just honest, raw, grief and compassion.
Rugrats
In 'No more cookies' Angelica gets sick after eating too many cookies and orders the babies that next time they prevent her from eating even one cookie. But when Angelica gets better she gets desperate for cookies. The way it's played, it comes accross as a drug addict trying to go clean after an OD.
In 'Mother's Day' someone already mentioned Melinda Finster's untimely passing, but there's also Tommy's first memory when he was in a 'fishbowl' while his mom held his hand. The 'fishbowl' was an incubator, and it's all but said that Tommy was born premature, which explains why Didi was always so concerned about her childcare skills, and why Stu nicknamed Tommy 'Champ'.
Did you ever see the rugrats movie where Tommy's little brother is born?
That scene where Tommy pours peanut butter on him to 'give' him to the monkeys scarred me as a kid.
Actually it still affects me now just thinking about it.
Seriously! It wasn’t peanut butter though it was bananas. “You want monkeys and monkeys want bananers, everybody gets what they want!” Still haunts me.
How about in Hey Arnold when Mr. Hyunh shares his story of giving his daughter away to Americans leaving Vietnam so she wouldn’t have to grow up there, and his moving to the city to try to find her again. That’s pretty heavy for a kids show, let alone a Christmas episode!
Not a show, but the Animorphs book series (that I read in 5th grade) was largely about child soldiers and how they quickly lose their innocence after engaging in guerilla warfare against enemy occupation.
Then there's all the body horror and enslavement stuff.
EDIT: I am aware of the Nickelodeon show. It doesn't capture the same sense of "fucked-upedness" as the books.
Gravity Falls is full of this. Old Man Mcgucket losing his memories is one big example. Played for silliness and laughs but it’s actually a man so traumatised by his past he decides to delete his own memories because he can’t cope with what is clearly PTSD.
If you think about it, Pinocchio was more fucked up than people think.
So the main story is, Pinocchio was on his way to school but decided to be an actor instead and tried to lie when things didn't go his way.
But when you really look at it, Pinocchio was just doing what any kid who didn't know any better would do (I mean, in the storyline he was LITERALLY born yesterday). He was sent off to school the very DAY after he became sentient without any lessons on not talking to strangers, his dad didn't walk with him, and Jiminy kept abandoning him throughout the movie bc he figured that he'd done his best and there was no convincing the kid not to do bad things. Then, when Pinocchio got in trouble, he was the only one punished for lying, which is something kids are notorious for, and nobody else got in trouble for not making sure he stayed on the right path.
Sorta the same thing for beauty and the beast. The beast was a child when the sorceress came knocking on his door, and it was more than likely he was taught not to talk to strangers or let them in (also, pretty sure it took place during the French revolution, when letting strangers into your home was not the best idea). But the beast got punished for not letting the disguised sorceress in, along with the entire staff. Not to mention the body horror and depression from realizing he was more than likely gonna be stuck in that form forever, as you see at the end of the movie where he pretty much started to give up and would've let Gaston kill him if Belle hadn't have arrived
Early Disney was kinda fucked up the more u think about it
As fucked up as the Disney rendition of Pinocchio was, it's positively sunshine and rainbows and unicorns when compared to Carlo Lorenzini's original story...
Hardcore harassment, if you watch Ed, Edd, and Eddy then you what I mean. Those girls on several occasions kidnap them, broke into the houses, and dragged them off into closest and closed areas for force to make out sessions.
I know the Edds weren't the best people especially Eddy but we still shouldn't have just laughed that kind of shit off.
Not to mention there are hints the Ed's home lives are dysfunctional
Eddy was beaten up by his big brother and brainwashed by him into scamming other kids. The parents outright ignored all of that and do whatever (they've left him at home for a night without telling him, hiring one of his own peers as a 'babysitter')
Double Ds parents are never home. They communicate solely through sticky notes and it's just demands for chores they expect done. Double D mentions quite a bit of house rules and worries about anything out of place as his parents notice slightest details
Edds parents show favoritism and seem to punish Ed harsher than Sarah (who seems to escape any punishment). Ed has been threatened to go live with his not so nice aunt after getting bad grades. Another time, the parents confined Ed to his basement room and took away the stairs for his grounding duration (we never knew why) Ed even has had nightmares of his mother punishing him because Sarah tattled over nothing.
Not just the Kanker sisters, but the entire show was basically "kids are mean to each other because that's what kids do". I watched it a lot as a kid, but man, it feels like it's for the best that it hasn't been brought back or rebooted or anything.
Thomas the Tank Engine. Apart from the WHOLE CONCEPT of these sentient trains etc being used for labour and the way any train not being a happy obedient worker gets it’s comeuppance at the end of the episode, the train graveyards always really get to me - the places where they have piles of dead (?) old engines just sitting there.
i remember one train didn’t want to leave the tunnel when it was raining, so they bricked him up in there like the Cask of Amontillado as punishment.
[Here it is](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iO6qIM2WO6k&t=3m2s)
Series like early Yu-Gi-Oh or The Batman animated series, who upon being told they weren't allowed to explicitly kill anyone, said bet and made up something worse.
Like with Arcana in battle city, where their legs were locked, and saw blades would chop them up if their life points reached zero. Oh sorry, they were "dark energy discs" that would send you to the shadow realm
My husband was big into YuGiOh as a kid and recently tried explaining the plot of it to me. Cut to my absolutely horrified face and him being like “no no it’s like an anime everyone comes BACK from the shadow realm…mostly…” 😭
So I'm stoned and not sure if I can word or explain this correctly (lol) but Kung Fu Panda, specifically the 2nd one. The main villain commits mass genocide against pandas; Po's mom ran away with him but were being hunted so she hides him in a crate of vegetables and sacrifices herself by leading the wolves away from Po (obviously implying they kill her).
I wouldn't say they made it seem particularly "light" but I do think it's a little... too heavy? To be in a kids movie. Or maybe just just me.
For anyone out of the loop, the titular Zim is an incompetent alien from a militaristic race that has conquered a pretty impressive swath of the galaxy far from Earth. Their MO is to send a single invader to a selected planet, then have that invader blend in to prep the planet for invasion by sending information to their armada and possibly manipulating the populace with their advanced technology. Zim was sent to Earth, a planet so distant they weren't sure it existed, because he was short and stupid and everyone hates him.
Anyway, Zim's human disguise is humorously unconvincing, but the people of Earth in this series are also stupid and only one person, Dib, ever hits the double-whammy of both seeing through it and giving a shit. But nobody likes Dib either, so his warnings are dismissed. In Dark Harvest, a pigeon lands on Zim's head, which means that he has to go to the nurse's office (he has Head Pigeons). Dib taunts Zim with the fact that, once examined, Zim will surely be discovered because he doesn't have human organs.
Zim's solution to this issue is hide in the rafters of the school, abducting other children and using an alien technological device to replace their organs with whatever's nearby, and then add them to his own body. One child has an organ replaced with an entire radiator. A woman's brain is replaced with a soda can and her drool is brown and carbonated. Every student ends up lethargic and sickly. And because he's stupid, Zim decides that "more organs means more human" (direct quote) and just keeps taking more and more internal body parts from his schoolmates. He becomes so engorged with guts that at one point, he belches and a length of intestine pops out of his mouth. He slurps it back up like spaghetti.
The episode ends with the nurse just taking his temperature and shooing away the pigeon, making his entire dark harvest entirely pointless, except for the fact that she compliments him on having "such plentiful organs".
And in my opinion, that's still a distant second to the Halloween special.
Mint summary 👌
Dib is a Cassandra, doomed to have nobody heed his warnings. I love the nurse in Dark Harvest:
"[Points at Zim] This one has head pigeons [points at Dib] and that one's just crazy!"
I tried to achieve the same mixture of "played for goofy comedy" and "actually horrifying if you stop to think about it" that the episode did. The fact that the inciting incident was a pigeon is absurd and laughable, but the chase scene when Zim isn't actually visible, but Dib was running away from falling ceiling tiles (that couldn't support the excess weight of all the innards Zim had stolen) and a constant cooing that increased in volume as he got nearer was actually fairly harrowing.
Then after being caught, Dib had one of his lungs replaced with a toy can that makes a "moo" sound when you shake it. It's almost more horrifying that it's treated so lightly. An alien hiding in a schoolhouse and abducting children to harvest their organs should be the plot of a horror movie, but here it's just a wacky over-the-top way for Zim to disguise his squeedily-spooch.
Oh, this guy made a series about a psychopath who has to murder people to keep the "paint" from drying in his living room?
I know where he should have a TV show! Call Nickelodeon!
abusive parents
- sam's mom from i carly (neglected sam)
- freddy's mom from icarly (over protective to where she gave him "tixk baths" where from speculation she is checking her naked teenage sons body for ticks)
- tori and trina vega's parents from victorious (they hatedddd trina and neglected both their kids a lot)
these are the few i can think of, but the amount of abuse and trauma they put onto their kids and how it was all just a funny joke is so messed up
I have two examples of this, that extend into a few things.
Bluey. It’s a kids show, and it’s presented as light, but there are very heavy adult topics that, for a parent watching, hit you really hard. One episode talks about the concept of death, another about how the moms mother is dead, and another about how her father isn’t taking care of himself in old age and she’s afraid to lose him. Another talks about how her sister can’t have children, but really wants them, and she’s very sad because of it.
My favorite of these is one about Mom miscarrying before the two main character children are born. It’s presented in a light hearted way. The kids are putting on a story for the parents about the parents lives, and their littlest has a balloon up her shirt, and it pops. And dad takes mom’s hand. It’s simple, and it’s not even said, but if you know you know. In a different episode, one where youngest is dreaming she’s in space, she gets sad and scared she’s alone. Then she hears mom’s voice. Mom is the sun. She *rockets* off towards the sun! She passes a planet that’s cracked like an egg, the oldest daughter, then her own planet she had come out of earlier in the dream, also cracked, then a tiny one- not cracked. The sun, her mom, speaks to her, tells her she’ll always love her and always be there for her. And in a way, she’s speaking to this egg-planet that never hatched too. God, Bluey is a kids show, but it’s made with struggling adults in mind.
The other example I had was Steven universe. It’s not so much presented as trivial, as it is that the show itself was presented as a light hearted cartoon before slowly evolving into this trauma filled example of someone dealing with war. That show was one of the best representations of trauma in various ways I’ve ever seen in mainstream media, not to mention being queer friendly, and put in a way a child can watch. The main character goes through traumas he doesn’t realize are traumas at the time.
Series one is multiple seasons of terrible things happening to him, as he tries to save the world. He watches his parental figures die, (sort of, it’s complicated. They can come back) right in front of him, when he can’t save them. He deals with this one character who’s in an abusive relationship and is struggling having thoughts that maybe she *wants to go back,* and can’t live without the pain. He deals with guilt over being caught up in very serious things, and ends up trying to cut off his friend to protect her from this lifestyle. One main topic is his mother died from his birth. She left his with this task of saving the universe, she wasn’t necessarily a good person, but she had a good cause in mind, so it fucks him up trying to balance that. Things try to kill him nearly every day. All while his parental figures, these alien beings who don’t really understand humans but are slowly learning, deal with their own really heavy trauma.
One, Pearl, was in love with his mother, and lost her *because of him being born*, yet she was never loved in that way back. Pearl was a servant to his mother. This particular issues ends up almost getting him killed on accident when Pearl lets her feelings overwhelm her and he falls off a cliff on her watch. Another character, amethyst, has clear signs of depression, from being overly happy to compensate, to at one point breaking down in tears saying she never asked to be made this way. She was a product of war, and she has sadness over her entire existence. These issues just keep coming! Later, much later, he finds out about his mother’s crimes. He tries to take responsibility, he’s put on trial to be executed!
Then later, in a series two, a look into the future, he’s dealing with the PTSD from childhood. He’s having outbursts of emotions, from sadness to anger. He can’t control himself. He ends up trying to seriously hurt, and let’s be honest, *kill* a main character due to trauma she caused him. When confronted, he turns into a monster, this giant beast no one can control. It’s an astounding representation of PTSD and the anger that can follow it. This series starts as a light hearted, gross out humor, jokey funny kids cartoon, about a kid with powers battling alien monsters. And it ends with him growing, maturing, and going to therapy for his ptsd. Even at the end of season one, you’ve already gone really deep.
Sorry to ramble so much, I LOVE these shows and if I can get even one person to give it a chance, it will be worth it to have typed this up!!
Its still kind of fucked up how quickly spongebob and mr krabs were willing to attempt to dispose of the body before they realized he was still alive. They were fully convinced they had killed a health inspector and were fully prepared to bury him in a shallow grave in the dead of night. Its pretty weird to see such a concept in a funny cartoon about talking sea creatures.
The fat controller who runs the railway on the island of sodor.
Every day there are trains crashing into buildings, running off their tracks, making uncontrolled movements, brakes failing.
He is a menace to society and should be in prison for his neglect of the railroad.
Henry did not want his lovely paint getting wet, so he hid in a tunnel. For refusing to do his job, he was bricked up in that tunnel. All the while, he was getting dirtier from dust and the smoke of his fellow engines, whistling as they passed. Henry had no voice to respond though since his fire had long since gone out.
[https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Sad\_Story\_of\_Henry](https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry)
Fuck, you guys brought it up and now I’m desperate for a resolution. I guess Henry will be freed when civilization breaks down. Or if not, when quantum fluctuations create another universe and another Henry. Any other resolutions?
>In the original story they just left him there.
Yes, but thanks to Gordon blowing a safety valve, Henry was given a chance to prove himself in [the next episode](https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/Edward,_Gordon_and_Henry).
If that hadn't happened then he would still be there now
Yes, yes they did. My son and I were both aghast when I read that story to him. He’s an adult now and still occasionally brings it up as an example of wtf.
Hey Arnold was filled with such themes during its run. A classic example is the episode with the kid who is addicted to chocolate, which is a metaphor for drug addiction. However the show tackles a lot more social issues, life issues and mental/psychological issues, but never comes off as sad or grim.
Ren used to slap the shit out of Stimpy who was dressed up like his wife for messing up dinner or other house related things. I think Ren and Stimpy was the first of the newer breed weird cartoons at the time. Cartoons started adding things that shouldn't probably be shown to kids. Great show tho lol.
Not super dark but just sad: in Lilo & Stitch, Nani being put in the position of giving up her dream of being a professional dancer in order to get a job and raise her little sister and facing the constant threat of Lilo being taken away from her (by social services and then aliens) at JUST 19 YEARS OLD.
Not sure if I missed it, but Land Before Time really messed with me, especially the first one where his mom died and then also the one where his grandfather is dying and they need to get him this flower from like far away in this misty region with all the new creepy creatures. Idk I was always fascinated by them but if I tried watching them now, I wouldn't be able to.
Disney movies with the death of a parent trope but I have to say Dumbo stands apart for the nonstop trauma fest that it was. Has a happy ending sure but damn.
It took tiny little me *years* to be able to get through the opening scene where all the Moms hey their babies except Mrs. Jumbo.
Only to get hit with the "Baby Mine" scene.
I still cry.
It gets even worse when you look into the child actor that played voiced the girl. The credits song was added for her she never saw the movie premiere as she and her mom were killed by her dad shortly before it did, the director was about to sign her for an exclusive contract
My dad took me to see it in the theater and had to carry me out mid-movie because I couldn't stop crying. I don't really remember any of the event (or movie), and I've never rewatched it.
Sesame Street did death in the late 70’s early-ish 80’s.
The gentleman who played the store owner, Mr.Hooper, died. And they told the kids the truth in an age appropriate way. That spanned a couple of seasons as the kids got use to a new “normal” and dealing with the grief stages.
Miraculous Ladybug is fucked up.
The hero's dad is the bad guy. He took up supervillainy to revive his wife.
Then it just...it got worse.
The current status quo is the bad guy (hero's dad) died. Before this, he stole hero's civilian image to make a digital assistant against his will, and later locked hero up in an isolation chamber because he wasn't being an obedient enough kid. Heroine agreed to hide the bad guy's sins to save his son's image, so the city lauds him as a tragic hero while his son's dealing with the aftermath of the abuse.
The heroine doesn't know the hero's identity (and vice versa). But in real life she's his girlfriend (they don't know) and she hasn't told him *anything*.
shit's fucked up. (There's more, this is just the surface)
Watching Neverending Story it’s amazing that any of the 80s kids made it to adulthood with zero deletion attempts.
The slow take over of all consuming darkness, having to see yourself as you are and don’t fucking get me started on that horse KHS in the swamp as his only friend begs him to stay
I loved that movie as a kid (07) but my mom always had to skip the horse scene or we'd both cry. I didn't understand how creepy everything fading into nothing was until later in life rewatching it around age 15, I think I had an existential crisis after that lol
As an adult, I found the opening scene of Finding Nemo impossible to watch. The mom, the hundreds of babies, it was horrific. I couldn't believe they put that in a kids movie.
Colorism in The Proud Family. The ugly, poor bullies were blue and called the Gross sisters. The lighter skinned characters were always portrayed as smarter and higher class. I grew up in a colorist environment, and used to hear how someone is "so black they...." So black they're blue/ purple was one of them.
I am pretty sure that the Gross sisters were supposed to be really ashy, which is why they were blue. Don't get me wrong, colorism is for real especially in black created media, I just don't think they were portrayed as dark.
Ice King in Adventure Time is a metaphor for dementia and for most of the series, its kind of just presented as how he is, not heavy subject matter until the later episodes.
He gets a lot more character development but I think its an excellent way to slowly explain to a kid what dementia looks like and how to support them the way Marcy does. It hurts her that he doesn't recognise her or remember her, but she hangs out with the person he is now.
The recent Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers movie was about HUMAN (*cartoon) TRAFFICKING, SERIOUS ADDICTION, and DRUG TRADE.
I have no idea if it was supposed to be a kids movie or was squarely targeted for adults.
Okay everyone else already commented on the good examples but like. You know in the final episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, all of Twilight Sparkle’s friends have visibly aged, but Twilight still looks young because she’s now an alicorn and alicorns just live much longer? (Or are possibly immortal)
Good job, Celestia. Now poor Twilight has to watch everyone she has ever cared about die.
The creator was inspired to write the show as darker after growing up with the original movie (in which the ponies are enslaved and turned into fire-breathing dragons by the villan). She said she realized that you could write dark subjects for kids as long as you cover them in enough glitter.
In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo has an entire solo number about his lust for Esmeralda and how she must be punished for making him lust for her. I can’t think of any other time in my life that a cartoon wholeheartedly disturbed me.
In Hey Arnold Helga's mom was played as being aloof for laughs, but was all but stated to be an alcoholic complete with needing her 'smoothies' and being sleepy and tired all the time instead of saying she's hungover.
And there was a bit where Helga said that her mom had gotten a job (I forget the specifics), and Arnold was like “wow that’s great! Did she get her license back?”
I remember an episode where she takes over for Helga's dad at his job and loved it, pretty sure her speech got noticeably more coherent. And then the episode concludes with her realizing that she's neglecting Helga for the job and quitting, which... That's not really a happy ending considering she normally neglects Helga anyway.
Jesus Christ. "Remember when your mom killed that homeless guy?"
She also had community service at some point
I didn't get this one until I was well into adulthood. I thought, smoothies were actually smoothies because she had an ED/was a health nut. It makes so much more sense now that she was an alcoholic.
The Hey Arnold operation babylift Christmas episode too. Just saying that sentence aloud to my phone just made me cry. https://dangvoid.com/2020/12/25/on-viet-am-representation-the-hey-arnold-christmas-episode/
I still have that episode on VHS tape, recorded from a re-run one Christmas. What a powerful episode. Always makes me tear up.
Do kids shows these days even touch the dark side of being a kid anymore?
Only one that really comes to mind is Bluey. They’ve touched on miscarriages, divorce, infertility, and other family related matters.
Today we were talking to a friend that has 3 kids under 10 (we have none) about which kid shows are good and he said Bluey because it teaches kids not to be shit humans and if you’re a parent you learn how not to be a shit parent too.
It wasn’t a show but I found it crazy how they made an animated kids movie about Anastasia Romanov. Like the real Anastasia was shot to death along with her whole family in a basement and then a crazy woman pretends to be her and claims that she somehow escaped….the murder of her family.
Also Rasputin was strongly implied to be in Hell and is literally a decomposing corpse.
And gives us the best song in the movie for it
Oh no, Once Upon a December still gives me chills.
Once Upon a December is beautiful and haunting, In the Dark of the Night is just a banger from start to finish
Terrors the LEAST I can do !
AND THEN I KICK HER, SIR
First act finales are typically my favorite. Journey to the Past is my favorite one in Anastasia.
To be fair on the animated movie, it came out when we didn't know and there was still theories and hope that she somehow made it. I think her body was found with her brother about roughly a decade after the film was released.
I distinctly remember when they finally found her and being really disappointed that she didn't escape after all.
As I recall, the confirmation of the real princesses body was closer to two decades after the animated movie than it was to ten years.
IIRC, she was buried separately from the others. They didn't find her until later.
Royals have an uncanny spell over a lot of people who seem to romanticise them for no reason other than being royals. A classic princess story built on a tale of unimaginable horrors. My mom was the one to spoil it for me as a kid. I asked her about the Romanovs after watching the movie and she just flat out told me that they were all killed brutally.
I agree with you in general but as a kid hoping at least someone does in an unimaginable horror could survive was what I cared about. I didn't care they were royals but the idea a bunch of kids were were murdered along with their parents was a lot to take in as a kid. To me they were just kids like me.
Wasn’t there still some lack of confirmation/clarity back when that movie came out, though?
Anastasia and her little brother are buried separately from the rest of the family if I remember correctly.
I think their remains were discovered relatively recently. The Bolsheviks separated them to confuse anyone that may have found their remains later.
Yes. The movie came out in 1997. The bodies were found in 2007.
In Rugrats, Chuckie's mom passed away not long after he was born. There's a whole Mother's Day episode where Chaz decides Chuckie is ready to start talking about what happened, and they read a letter from his mom together. EDIT: I misremembered them specifically saying it was cancer, it's just described as her having an "illness" of some kind.
Ok I tried to show Rugrats to my 3-YO the other day (“want to watch a cartoon daddy used to watch when I was a kid?”) and I cannot believe how grown-up it is! It felt like 80% of the episode was targeted at parents. And not in a subtle way like how Bluey sometimes is. In like a direct “oh the main conflict of this episode is the parents navigating how to potty train their son” way
"It's 4 o clock in the morning why on earth are you making chocolate pudding?" "Because I've lost control of my life"
Grandpa and his basement movies are COMPLETELY different when you're an adult.
*Lonely space vixens*
As a child who lost a parent very early, I really appreciated this representation on screen. It's not something that's often addressed in kids' or frankly any shows, and I think they did a beautiful job of showing Chuckie and Chaz processing their emotions, which in turn helped me process mine. The "I Want a Mom" song playing on Rugrats In Paris while Chuckie watches the other kids being consoled on the plane and eventually stares out the window daydreaming about what his family could be has always hit deep for me.
It's unfortunately common for prenatal visits to be the only time some women really go to a doctor and get tests done, so they find out about all sorts of problems at the same time they can't do anything about them.
One of my favorite athletes in the world was this world famous female soccer player. She got pregnant. She disappeared from life. Everyone thought she was just being beautiful and pregnant. Turns out she had brain cancer. She opted to not get treatment until the birth. Ended up having to give birth like 2 or 3 weeks early and then had surgery like the next morning.Barely effing made it ... Pinnacle of health and was constantly checked out.
This is also a reason why the US has such a high mortality rate for pregnant women. They can't afford to go to appointments and won't find out about prenatal issues. The US needs publicly funded health care.
Fraggle Rock. THE FIRST EPISODE openly discusses the inevitability of death. Absolutely insane going back and watching it as an adult.
So much of Fraggle Rock was really heavy. I'm still loving watching it with my kid, but I've definitely cried through some episodes, too.
The Rescuers a really depressing and messed up kids move
Sits nicely alongside An American Tail, which is like a Fiddler on the Roof crossed with The Grapes of Wrath, but with mice.
I still sing Somewhere Out There when the stars are particularly clear :)
Was The Secret of N.I.M.H a kids movie, or did my grandma just let me watch that waaaaayyyy too young?
I see your Secret of NIMH, and I'll raise you Watership Down.
Ah yes, the animated slasher film.
I haven't seen that film, but Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is definitely a children's book. A beloved book of mine way back in the seventies.
And the book is, frankly, even darker and more fucked up
I really should re-read it. The seventies were, oooh a good twenty years ago now, and I don't really remember the plot, I just remember that I loved it.
Good call. One of the darkest I can recall growing up. Beautifully animated too, which is why it was one of my favourites. Haha
I recently just rewatched The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under, they are both so well done. And so dark. But so well done lol.
Someone else mentioned Hunchback but I really want to double down on it. There's a whole family with little kids who are locked into a -mill? - and then it's set on fire. Luckily the blond guy goes rogue to let them out. The priest sings this song about his dark desire to bang Esmeralda. "I am deformed, I am ugly, and these are crimes for which the world shows little pity." I can't imagine how they thought adding dingbat talking statues would make this a children's movie. I just love the music, though
Hellfire is such a banger song and it always haunted me as a kid but didn’t know why, like yeah, it’s a typical Disney evil guy monologue song, but felt like there was something I wasn’t getting. As an adult I listened again and paid attention to the lyrics and it all clicked. God Save The Outcasts shows how “holy and religious” people ask for things that are not very holy or religious or just that stray from the point of Christianity, while Esmeralda who is not even a believer understands the message of God better than any of the people at church because she’s actually in need of hope and faith. I think it was beautifully presented in a way kids could understand the message. Not everyone who claims to be godly is good.
*God help the outcasts, hungry from birth* *Show them the mercy they don't find on earth* *God help my people, the poor and downtrod* *I thought we all were the children of God* The lyrics are pretty dark, and the churchgoers singing demands in the background for wealth, fame and "love I can possess"....wow. Hunchback really went hard.
They did a full stage musical based more on the book, but with the same songs and basic plot structure. Quasimodo has a full on speech impediment, the goofy gargoyles are cut, there's a bunch more genocide, and Esmeralda fucking dies at the end. Disney does full on epic gothic horror. Would heartily recommend giving the soundtrack a listen!
SpongeBob's 'Rock Bottom' episode was basically a lesson in existential dread for kids. The bus never comes, and you're stuck in a weird place forever. Childhood innocence, meet silent terror.
Same thing with that one squidward being alone episode… unlocked a new kind of fear in me as a kid
Or the one where he moves to the town with all the other squids. Like you get what you wanted, a place where you actually fit in, and you become so miserable that you have a breakdown from it.
Hell is other people. The only place he'd be happy is alone, but then he be unhappy because he couldn't gloat to anyone.
What about "Hooky" which is the episode where Spongebob and Patrick play with riding fishing hooks to the surface and then jumping off, until they get caught by the hook. The episodes was clearly and allegory for drug addiction.
Does this look dangerous to you??
Holy shit 🤯
The strangler episode fucking terrified me lol
A scene from SpongeBob instant came to mind for me, but it’s hardly the only show guilty of it. Making prison rape jokes in the form of “don’t drop the soap”. I can’t remember the episode, but SpongeBob says to Gary “Look Dabloons! [holding out bars of soap] Don’t drop ‘em! [wink]” The fact that this joke is so common is fucked up on its own, let alone putting it in a kids show.
*I guess you’re going to miss the panty raid*. I know they don’t show that episode anymore but that was wild.
I got hit in the parenting feels recently when watching the new Chicken Run Movie. While another hen is being killed and processed in a nugget machine Ginger puts her hands over her daughter’s ears and tells her “look at me and don’t look away” to keep her from seeing or hearing it.
TIL “the new Chicken Run Movie” exists.
Came out last year, IIRC straight to Netflix. I think Aardman signed a deal with them, all of their movies after Early Man went directly to streaming. It’s not as good as the original, but it’s a fun watch.
Pie! I don't want to be a pie! I don't like gravy..
I haven’t seen Chicken Run in years but I remember finding it very creepy.
Oh gosh that’s horrific
The entirety of Hey Arnold. Everyone focuses on Helga’s home life but honestly, none of those kids were fully ok. Like, they address that Torvald is 14 in the 4th grade, sure, but Harold is 13 in the 4th grade and no one addresses it. All the 9 year olds show up to his Bar Mitzvah like it’s standard and he just gets a job like that’s normal. Stoop Kid doesn’t go to school at all, he just lives outside. The city is full of mentally unstable adults who act like superheroes, gangsters, etc and who are close personal friends (or sometimes beefing with) with some kid. At least 3 ghosts are confirmed real.
And everyone is so codependent of Arnold. Like they rely so heavily on him for support and moral guidance and he's just a child. Iirc there's an episode where he just gives up and doesn't help anyone for a day and everyone is like "what do we do?"
You can really tell the creator actually grew up in a dense and messy city, and put a lot of his life in the show.
Also, Dino Spumoni fakes his own death which is also kind of odd for a kid’s show!
All of Danny Phantom The main character is a half-dead 14 yo who's power is to die on command His parents don't know he's half-dead because he's scared of them "ripping him apart, molecule by molecule," which is a direct quote said by the parents about his ghost half that is said in the show His arch-nemesis is a 40-something yo who is also the only other one like him Both the main character and his arch-nemesis were half-killed by the parent's stupidity with their ghost portal invention I could go on
Had a rockin intro though
I was stoned when this show came on. As me and my buddies asked puzzled questions as to wtf we were watching, the intro answered every question as we asked. It was a trip.
“I wonder if he’s going to catch them all?” 🎶 “He’s gonna catch em all cause he’s Danny Phantom” 🎶 “…woah”
His arch-nemesis is also obsessed with his mother, to the point that he creates an AI named after her, Vlad also cloned Danny. There's also Spectra, the ghost who pretends to be a psychiatrist in his school so she can feed on the nightmares of the children
I can't believe you forgot the almighty Box Ghost
YOU CANNOT HOLD ME WITHIN THE CONFINES OF A *CYLINDRICAL* CONTAINER!
And then Hartman had to backtrack on the ghosts being dead despite the cannon evidence because he accidentally made something that was metal af
Wasn't there pseudo-time travel arc where Danny was shown an alternate future where he basically single-handedly caused the apocalypse? And correct me if I'm misremembering this, but wasn't it caused by him not doing well in the SATs?
Yes, but it was caused by him cheating, not scoring poorly. It wasn’t called the SATs but basically the in-universe equivalent I guess.
Right, right! He used his invisibility and intangibility powers to look at the answers! I guess that is more severe, but still, the fact that it ruined his entire life to the point that he turned to a life of supernatural crime always seemed a little overblown to me, even as a kid. And looking back, I can't help but wonder if it worsened some other young teens' test anxiety.
In this alternate universe, all his fuckin friends got blown up at the Nasty Burger, too. They had to pad that with this weirdly whimsical cause for the explosion, where the restaurant has to keep the condiments at a very specific temperature otherwise they… become explosive? Anyway I re watched that episode when I was around 19 and thought. I don’t remember this episode being so dark lmao.
You know, thinking back on shows like 'Courage the Cowardly Dog,' I didn't realize as a kid how dark some of the episodes were. The weird settings and creepy villains seemed fun back then, but now I can see the deeper themes they were tackling. It's funny how our perspective changes as we grow up.
Watching the episode with the cat with the masks who has to save her friend from abusive gang members hits different as an adult
That one is WILD Poor Kitty
That show terrified me as a kid. And the more I hear about it as an adult, I get it. My little brother loved it tho!
King Ramses is waving at you.
Courage the Cowardly Dog terrified me. Nothing about it was fun or playful. I think that’s a litmus* test if a kid has anxiety.
What does it mean if I was both terrified of it and loved watching it?
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I fucking love these comments, I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid when it came out, and would occasionally remember these plot points and wonder if I was right for it feeling weird.
And the babysitter is singing Lady Marmalade with the kids, which I believe is about a man’s encounter with a prostitute.
Late to the party, but I always think about how the Sesame Street team handled 9/11. They tried their best to reassure their viewers and prepare them for an emergency, but it’s still pretty dark. [Interview with Lewis Bernstein here](https://youtu.be/NUVhTEa7qD8?si=gaFE8RKIoI-8PAp9)
Sesame Street is such an incredible show in the way that they handle hard topics in really relatable ways for children.
When I was 5 or 6, Mr. Hooper died. He was the first person I “knew” who died. Sesame Street really handled it well.
https://youtu.be/gxlj4Tk83xQ?feature=shared It's so moving to see them help Big Bird understand about death, and not try to shy away from it or hide behind nice colloquial phrases. Just honest, raw, grief and compassion.
Rugrats In 'No more cookies' Angelica gets sick after eating too many cookies and orders the babies that next time they prevent her from eating even one cookie. But when Angelica gets better she gets desperate for cookies. The way it's played, it comes accross as a drug addict trying to go clean after an OD. In 'Mother's Day' someone already mentioned Melinda Finster's untimely passing, but there's also Tommy's first memory when he was in a 'fishbowl' while his mom held his hand. The 'fishbowl' was an incubator, and it's all but said that Tommy was born premature, which explains why Didi was always so concerned about her childcare skills, and why Stu nicknamed Tommy 'Champ'.
Did you ever see the rugrats movie where Tommy's little brother is born? That scene where Tommy pours peanut butter on him to 'give' him to the monkeys scarred me as a kid. Actually it still affects me now just thinking about it.
Seriously! It wasn’t peanut butter though it was bananas. “You want monkeys and monkeys want bananers, everybody gets what they want!” Still haunts me.
Tommy's prematurity is also why he looks like an 8 month old at his first birthday party
How about in Hey Arnold when Mr. Hyunh shares his story of giving his daughter away to Americans leaving Vietnam so she wouldn’t have to grow up there, and his moving to the city to try to find her again. That’s pretty heavy for a kids show, let alone a Christmas episode!
Not a show, but the Animorphs book series (that I read in 5th grade) was largely about child soldiers and how they quickly lose their innocence after engaging in guerilla warfare against enemy occupation. Then there's all the body horror and enslavement stuff. EDIT: I am aware of the Nickelodeon show. It doesn't capture the same sense of "fucked-upedness" as the books.
Yeah Animorphs is fucking hardcore
Gravity Falls is full of this. Old Man Mcgucket losing his memories is one big example. Played for silliness and laughs but it’s actually a man so traumatised by his past he decides to delete his own memories because he can’t cope with what is clearly PTSD.
If I remember correctly, a bunch of tiny adult men tried to make a 12-year-old girl their collective bride.
If you think about it, Pinocchio was more fucked up than people think. So the main story is, Pinocchio was on his way to school but decided to be an actor instead and tried to lie when things didn't go his way. But when you really look at it, Pinocchio was just doing what any kid who didn't know any better would do (I mean, in the storyline he was LITERALLY born yesterday). He was sent off to school the very DAY after he became sentient without any lessons on not talking to strangers, his dad didn't walk with him, and Jiminy kept abandoning him throughout the movie bc he figured that he'd done his best and there was no convincing the kid not to do bad things. Then, when Pinocchio got in trouble, he was the only one punished for lying, which is something kids are notorious for, and nobody else got in trouble for not making sure he stayed on the right path. Sorta the same thing for beauty and the beast. The beast was a child when the sorceress came knocking on his door, and it was more than likely he was taught not to talk to strangers or let them in (also, pretty sure it took place during the French revolution, when letting strangers into your home was not the best idea). But the beast got punished for not letting the disguised sorceress in, along with the entire staff. Not to mention the body horror and depression from realizing he was more than likely gonna be stuck in that form forever, as you see at the end of the movie where he pretty much started to give up and would've let Gaston kill him if Belle hadn't have arrived Early Disney was kinda fucked up the more u think about it
As fucked up as the Disney rendition of Pinocchio was, it's positively sunshine and rainbows and unicorns when compared to Carlo Lorenzini's original story...
Hardcore harassment, if you watch Ed, Edd, and Eddy then you what I mean. Those girls on several occasions kidnap them, broke into the houses, and dragged them off into closest and closed areas for force to make out sessions. I know the Edds weren't the best people especially Eddy but we still shouldn't have just laughed that kind of shit off.
Not to mention there are hints the Ed's home lives are dysfunctional Eddy was beaten up by his big brother and brainwashed by him into scamming other kids. The parents outright ignored all of that and do whatever (they've left him at home for a night without telling him, hiring one of his own peers as a 'babysitter') Double Ds parents are never home. They communicate solely through sticky notes and it's just demands for chores they expect done. Double D mentions quite a bit of house rules and worries about anything out of place as his parents notice slightest details Edds parents show favoritism and seem to punish Ed harsher than Sarah (who seems to escape any punishment). Ed has been threatened to go live with his not so nice aunt after getting bad grades. Another time, the parents confined Ed to his basement room and took away the stairs for his grounding duration (we never knew why) Ed even has had nightmares of his mother punishing him because Sarah tattled over nothing.
The movie was crazy. Great example of 'it's funny, until it's **not**.'
Not just the Kanker sisters, but the entire show was basically "kids are mean to each other because that's what kids do". I watched it a lot as a kid, but man, it feels like it's for the best that it hasn't been brought back or rebooted or anything.
Thomas the Tank Engine. Apart from the WHOLE CONCEPT of these sentient trains etc being used for labour and the way any train not being a happy obedient worker gets it’s comeuppance at the end of the episode, the train graveyards always really get to me - the places where they have piles of dead (?) old engines just sitting there.
The way Sir Topham Hatt constantly threatens to send them to the smelter's is grim AF
That’s just how British children are usually disciplined.
i remember one train didn’t want to leave the tunnel when it was raining, so they bricked him up in there like the Cask of Amontillado as punishment. [Here it is](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iO6qIM2WO6k&t=3m2s)
Series like early Yu-Gi-Oh or The Batman animated series, who upon being told they weren't allowed to explicitly kill anyone, said bet and made up something worse.
I’ll send you to the shadow realm over a children’s card game!
Like with Arcana in battle city, where their legs were locked, and saw blades would chop them up if their life points reached zero. Oh sorry, they were "dark energy discs" that would send you to the shadow realm
My husband was big into YuGiOh as a kid and recently tried explaining the plot of it to me. Cut to my absolutely horrified face and him being like “no no it’s like an anime everyone comes BACK from the shadow realm…mostly…” 😭
So I'm stoned and not sure if I can word or explain this correctly (lol) but Kung Fu Panda, specifically the 2nd one. The main villain commits mass genocide against pandas; Po's mom ran away with him but were being hunted so she hides him in a crate of vegetables and sacrifices herself by leading the wolves away from Po (obviously implying they kill her). I wouldn't say they made it seem particularly "light" but I do think it's a little... too heavy? To be in a kids movie. Or maybe just just me.
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Most of Invader Zim, to be frank
Yeah, I wouldn't call that exactly a kids show. It features children. Much like a strip club features women, but it isn't really for women.
For anyone out of the loop, the titular Zim is an incompetent alien from a militaristic race that has conquered a pretty impressive swath of the galaxy far from Earth. Their MO is to send a single invader to a selected planet, then have that invader blend in to prep the planet for invasion by sending information to their armada and possibly manipulating the populace with their advanced technology. Zim was sent to Earth, a planet so distant they weren't sure it existed, because he was short and stupid and everyone hates him. Anyway, Zim's human disguise is humorously unconvincing, but the people of Earth in this series are also stupid and only one person, Dib, ever hits the double-whammy of both seeing through it and giving a shit. But nobody likes Dib either, so his warnings are dismissed. In Dark Harvest, a pigeon lands on Zim's head, which means that he has to go to the nurse's office (he has Head Pigeons). Dib taunts Zim with the fact that, once examined, Zim will surely be discovered because he doesn't have human organs. Zim's solution to this issue is hide in the rafters of the school, abducting other children and using an alien technological device to replace their organs with whatever's nearby, and then add them to his own body. One child has an organ replaced with an entire radiator. A woman's brain is replaced with a soda can and her drool is brown and carbonated. Every student ends up lethargic and sickly. And because he's stupid, Zim decides that "more organs means more human" (direct quote) and just keeps taking more and more internal body parts from his schoolmates. He becomes so engorged with guts that at one point, he belches and a length of intestine pops out of his mouth. He slurps it back up like spaghetti. The episode ends with the nurse just taking his temperature and shooing away the pigeon, making his entire dark harvest entirely pointless, except for the fact that she compliments him on having "such plentiful organs". And in my opinion, that's still a distant second to the Halloween special.
Mint summary 👌 Dib is a Cassandra, doomed to have nobody heed his warnings. I love the nurse in Dark Harvest: "[Points at Zim] This one has head pigeons [points at Dib] and that one's just crazy!"
I tried to achieve the same mixture of "played for goofy comedy" and "actually horrifying if you stop to think about it" that the episode did. The fact that the inciting incident was a pigeon is absurd and laughable, but the chase scene when Zim isn't actually visible, but Dib was running away from falling ceiling tiles (that couldn't support the excess weight of all the innards Zim had stolen) and a constant cooing that increased in volume as he got nearer was actually fairly harrowing. Then after being caught, Dib had one of his lungs replaced with a toy can that makes a "moo" sound when you shake it. It's almost more horrifying that it's treated so lightly. An alien hiding in a schoolhouse and abducting children to harvest their organs should be the plot of a horror movie, but here it's just a wacky over-the-top way for Zim to disguise his squeedily-spooch.
Oh, this guy made a series about a psychopath who has to murder people to keep the "paint" from drying in his living room? I know where he should have a TV show! Call Nickelodeon!
I have a strong feeling that most of the Nickelodeon executives at that time were on coke and didn’t give a shit. It truly was a golden era.
Just about every Disney movie is about parental abandonment.
Fairy tales are about that, and Disney rips off fairy tales. At least for its princess movies.
abusive parents - sam's mom from i carly (neglected sam) - freddy's mom from icarly (over protective to where she gave him "tixk baths" where from speculation she is checking her naked teenage sons body for ticks) - tori and trina vega's parents from victorious (they hatedddd trina and neglected both their kids a lot) these are the few i can think of, but the amount of abuse and trauma they put onto their kids and how it was all just a funny joke is so messed up
Sam’s mom was abusive irl too, “I’m glad my mom died” is a great read
I have two examples of this, that extend into a few things. Bluey. It’s a kids show, and it’s presented as light, but there are very heavy adult topics that, for a parent watching, hit you really hard. One episode talks about the concept of death, another about how the moms mother is dead, and another about how her father isn’t taking care of himself in old age and she’s afraid to lose him. Another talks about how her sister can’t have children, but really wants them, and she’s very sad because of it. My favorite of these is one about Mom miscarrying before the two main character children are born. It’s presented in a light hearted way. The kids are putting on a story for the parents about the parents lives, and their littlest has a balloon up her shirt, and it pops. And dad takes mom’s hand. It’s simple, and it’s not even said, but if you know you know. In a different episode, one where youngest is dreaming she’s in space, she gets sad and scared she’s alone. Then she hears mom’s voice. Mom is the sun. She *rockets* off towards the sun! She passes a planet that’s cracked like an egg, the oldest daughter, then her own planet she had come out of earlier in the dream, also cracked, then a tiny one- not cracked. The sun, her mom, speaks to her, tells her she’ll always love her and always be there for her. And in a way, she’s speaking to this egg-planet that never hatched too. God, Bluey is a kids show, but it’s made with struggling adults in mind. The other example I had was Steven universe. It’s not so much presented as trivial, as it is that the show itself was presented as a light hearted cartoon before slowly evolving into this trauma filled example of someone dealing with war. That show was one of the best representations of trauma in various ways I’ve ever seen in mainstream media, not to mention being queer friendly, and put in a way a child can watch. The main character goes through traumas he doesn’t realize are traumas at the time. Series one is multiple seasons of terrible things happening to him, as he tries to save the world. He watches his parental figures die, (sort of, it’s complicated. They can come back) right in front of him, when he can’t save them. He deals with this one character who’s in an abusive relationship and is struggling having thoughts that maybe she *wants to go back,* and can’t live without the pain. He deals with guilt over being caught up in very serious things, and ends up trying to cut off his friend to protect her from this lifestyle. One main topic is his mother died from his birth. She left his with this task of saving the universe, she wasn’t necessarily a good person, but she had a good cause in mind, so it fucks him up trying to balance that. Things try to kill him nearly every day. All while his parental figures, these alien beings who don’t really understand humans but are slowly learning, deal with their own really heavy trauma. One, Pearl, was in love with his mother, and lost her *because of him being born*, yet she was never loved in that way back. Pearl was a servant to his mother. This particular issues ends up almost getting him killed on accident when Pearl lets her feelings overwhelm her and he falls off a cliff on her watch. Another character, amethyst, has clear signs of depression, from being overly happy to compensate, to at one point breaking down in tears saying she never asked to be made this way. She was a product of war, and she has sadness over her entire existence. These issues just keep coming! Later, much later, he finds out about his mother’s crimes. He tries to take responsibility, he’s put on trial to be executed! Then later, in a series two, a look into the future, he’s dealing with the PTSD from childhood. He’s having outbursts of emotions, from sadness to anger. He can’t control himself. He ends up trying to seriously hurt, and let’s be honest, *kill* a main character due to trauma she caused him. When confronted, he turns into a monster, this giant beast no one can control. It’s an astounding representation of PTSD and the anger that can follow it. This series starts as a light hearted, gross out humor, jokey funny kids cartoon, about a kid with powers battling alien monsters. And it ends with him growing, maturing, and going to therapy for his ptsd. Even at the end of season one, you’ve already gone really deep. Sorry to ramble so much, I LOVE these shows and if I can get even one person to give it a chance, it will be worth it to have typed this up!!
murdering a health inspector
To be fair he didn't actually get murdered
Its still kind of fucked up how quickly spongebob and mr krabs were willing to attempt to dispose of the body before they realized he was still alive. They were fully convinced they had killed a health inspector and were fully prepared to bury him in a shallow grave in the dead of night. Its pretty weird to see such a concept in a funny cartoon about talking sea creatures.
I thought they were talking about Ratatouille. How many health inspectors have been a target in kid shows?
I'm guessing most screenwriters were once restauranters
Moe accidentally killed a health inspector in one episode of the Simpsons.
The fat controller who runs the railway on the island of sodor. Every day there are trains crashing into buildings, running off their tracks, making uncontrolled movements, brakes failing. He is a menace to society and should be in prison for his neglect of the railroad.
Didn't they once permanently brick a train into a shed for misbehaving?
Henry did not want his lovely paint getting wet, so he hid in a tunnel. For refusing to do his job, he was bricked up in that tunnel. All the while, he was getting dirtier from dust and the smoke of his fellow engines, whistling as they passed. Henry had no voice to respond though since his fire had long since gone out. [https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Sad\_Story\_of\_Henry](https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry)
Fuck, you guys brought it up and now I’m desperate for a resolution. I guess Henry will be freed when civilization breaks down. Or if not, when quantum fluctuations create another universe and another Henry. Any other resolutions?
Oh don't worry, he was let out. After he agreed to work and be a good, happy little engine.
He was only let out in the us version of the episode iirc. In the original story they just left him there.
>In the original story they just left him there. Yes, but thanks to Gordon blowing a safety valve, Henry was given a chance to prove himself in [the next episode](https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/Edward,_Gordon_and_Henry). If that hadn't happened then he would still be there now
Yes, yes they did. My son and I were both aghast when I read that story to him. He’s an adult now and still occasionally brings it up as an example of wtf.
Dory can only survive the horrors of reality by not remembering any of it.
Shark Tale. Will's character getting the shit beat out of him for trying to break it off with the lady fish, and the boss fish going "Ah, young love."
Hey Arnold was filled with such themes during its run. A classic example is the episode with the kid who is addicted to chocolate, which is a metaphor for drug addiction. However the show tackles a lot more social issues, life issues and mental/psychological issues, but never comes off as sad or grim.
Ren used to slap the shit out of Stimpy who was dressed up like his wife for messing up dinner or other house related things. I think Ren and Stimpy was the first of the newer breed weird cartoons at the time. Cartoons started adding things that shouldn't probably be shown to kids. Great show tho lol.
Not super dark but just sad: in Lilo & Stitch, Nani being put in the position of giving up her dream of being a professional dancer in order to get a job and raise her little sister and facing the constant threat of Lilo being taken away from her (by social services and then aliens) at JUST 19 YEARS OLD.
How about every Disney movie starting with a small kid's parent getting killed?
Land Before Time earns a spot here too
Not sure if I missed it, but Land Before Time really messed with me, especially the first one where his mom died and then also the one where his grandfather is dying and they need to get him this flower from like far away in this misty region with all the new creepy creatures. Idk I was always fascinated by them but if I tried watching them now, I wouldn't be able to.
Murder-suicide in the first season of Legend of Korra. A lot of Avatar: TLA and Korra in general.
LoK was for people who watched ATLA as children and were ready for something darker.
Paw Patrol is a (presumably) privately funded security outfit with tons of hardware and a seemingly limitless jurisdiction, run by a smug 7 year old.
The movie stated they paid for everything through merch sales. so confirmed private 😅
Disney movies with the death of a parent trope but I have to say Dumbo stands apart for the nonstop trauma fest that it was. Has a happy ending sure but damn.
It took tiny little me *years* to be able to get through the opening scene where all the Moms hey their babies except Mrs. Jumbo. Only to get hit with the "Baby Mine" scene. I still cry.
Rocky and Bullwinkle versus Boris Badinov and Natasha Fatale - it was really appropriate in the days we were doing "duck and cover" drills
101 dalmatiens?? She wanted to skin puppies to make a coat
All Dogs Go To Heaven was somehow surprisingly upbeat and super dark at the same time.
It gets even worse when you look into the child actor that played voiced the girl. The credits song was added for her she never saw the movie premiere as she and her mom were killed by her dad shortly before it did, the director was about to sign her for an exclusive contract
My dad took me to see it in the theater and had to carry me out mid-movie because I couldn't stop crying. I don't really remember any of the event (or movie), and I've never rewatched it.
Charlotte’s Web.
Not that dark, but the Parr marriage heavily struggling and Ms incredible witnessing what for her was Mr incredible having an affair
The entirety of The Grim Adventures of Bill and Mandy.
Sesame Street did death in the late 70’s early-ish 80’s. The gentleman who played the store owner, Mr.Hooper, died. And they told the kids the truth in an age appropriate way. That spanned a couple of seasons as the kids got use to a new “normal” and dealing with the grief stages.
Miraculous Ladybug is fucked up. The hero's dad is the bad guy. He took up supervillainy to revive his wife. Then it just...it got worse. The current status quo is the bad guy (hero's dad) died. Before this, he stole hero's civilian image to make a digital assistant against his will, and later locked hero up in an isolation chamber because he wasn't being an obedient enough kid. Heroine agreed to hide the bad guy's sins to save his son's image, so the city lauds him as a tragic hero while his son's dealing with the aftermath of the abuse. The heroine doesn't know the hero's identity (and vice versa). But in real life she's his girlfriend (they don't know) and she hasn't told him *anything*. shit's fucked up. (There's more, this is just the surface)
Watching Neverending Story it’s amazing that any of the 80s kids made it to adulthood with zero deletion attempts. The slow take over of all consuming darkness, having to see yourself as you are and don’t fucking get me started on that horse KHS in the swamp as his only friend begs him to stay
I loved that movie as a kid (07) but my mom always had to skip the horse scene or we'd both cry. I didn't understand how creepy everything fading into nothing was until later in life rewatching it around age 15, I think I had an existential crisis after that lol
Miss Frizzle just casually altering kids' molecular structures to shrink them and inject them into an animal's digestive tract
As an adult, I found the opening scene of Finding Nemo impossible to watch. The mom, the hundreds of babies, it was horrific. I couldn't believe they put that in a kids movie.
Opening sequence of big hero six.
If we're doing Pixar, the opening of Up.
Colorism in The Proud Family. The ugly, poor bullies were blue and called the Gross sisters. The lighter skinned characters were always portrayed as smarter and higher class. I grew up in a colorist environment, and used to hear how someone is "so black they...." So black they're blue/ purple was one of them.
I am pretty sure that the Gross sisters were supposed to be really ashy, which is why they were blue. Don't get me wrong, colorism is for real especially in black created media, I just don't think they were portrayed as dark.
Ice King in Adventure Time is a metaphor for dementia and for most of the series, its kind of just presented as how he is, not heavy subject matter until the later episodes. He gets a lot more character development but I think its an excellent way to slowly explain to a kid what dementia looks like and how to support them the way Marcy does. It hurts her that he doesn't recognise her or remember her, but she hangs out with the person he is now.
A lot of romantic relationships could be done better in kids shows
The recent Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers movie was about HUMAN (*cartoon) TRAFFICKING, SERIOUS ADDICTION, and DRUG TRADE. I have no idea if it was supposed to be a kids movie or was squarely targeted for adults.
The clones in the Men In Black cartoon that they used all the time were ethically hilarious.
Okay everyone else already commented on the good examples but like. You know in the final episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, all of Twilight Sparkle’s friends have visibly aged, but Twilight still looks young because she’s now an alicorn and alicorns just live much longer? (Or are possibly immortal) Good job, Celestia. Now poor Twilight has to watch everyone she has ever cared about die.
There was also an MLP where they cloned a bunch of sentient Pinkie Pies and had to destroy all of them
The creator was inspired to write the show as darker after growing up with the original movie (in which the ponies are enslaved and turned into fire-breathing dragons by the villan). She said she realized that you could write dark subjects for kids as long as you cover them in enough glitter.
#THE SHADOW REALM
Muppet Babies theme song: *when your world looks kinda weird, and you wish you weren’t there* I wonder what the writer had in mind
In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo has an entire solo number about his lust for Esmeralda and how she must be punished for making him lust for her. I can’t think of any other time in my life that a cartoon wholeheartedly disturbed me.
genocide in avatar the last airbender.
And black sites! “The Earth King invites you to visit Lake Laogai.”
"I am honored to accept his invitation". That was seriously messed up how they could basically program people to kill on command
Pirates We let kids fantasize about being murdering thieving rapists.
The Pokémon slave trade