The Powerpuff Girls/Nightmare Fuel



""I just stood there, waving goodbye. I just stood there, waving goodbye. I just stood there, waving goodbye, and they raced off. Just stood there.""

"Broccoli King: BARBARIANS!
 * HIM - a crossdressing, nameless embodiment of all that is evil, whose voice ranges from a cheerful lisp to a raging roar to an insidious whisper, with a constant creepy reverb throughout. His appearance is always accompanied by a Scare Chord. The only recurring villain not obsessed with ruling Townsville or monetary gain, but rather, with utterly breaking the girls' spirit for no reason other than because he's just plain EVIL. He lives in a rundown apartment building. His room is illuminated by an eerie pink light. The walls and the floor are pink. There's no furniture, appliances (except a TV), logic or causality. It's less a bachelor pad and more an entrance into the Eye of Terror.
 * "Tough Love" in which Him discharges some odd red gas that causes everyone in town to hate them and the place overall has a much more menacing look. It's pretty creepy seeing it for the first time.
 * In the episode "Divide and Conquer", after the Amoeba Boys and their copies go on their orange heist, there is a scene where the Mayor calls the girls to inform them that thanks to the sudden disappearance of the oranges, Townsville is being hit by the disease known as scurvy. The focus on scurvy in this episode is limited to just this one scene, but it's so detailed ("yellowish flaky skin, spongy purple gums, and painful swollen joints") that you may get uncomfortable from just thinking about it.
 * Mojo Jojo's trip through the fifth dimension in "Get Back Jojo".
 * In "Twisted Sister", after the girls scold Bunny and send her away, they are suddenly ambushed by the prisoners Bunny inadvertently set free earlier. The ambush is so big (apparently made up of every non-supervillain criminal in Townsville), the girls can't even fight back, rendering them completely helpless! The Narrator was so freaked out by this, he was basically calling for Bunny to go back and save them!
 * "Paste Makes a Waste". The sheer grossness of the boy eating glue is only eclipsed by seeing him swallowing a radioactive bug that turned him into a giant glue monster.
 * Twiggy - a giant radioactive hamster on a rampage. In the end the Powerpuff Girls punish their classmate Mitch Mitchelson for not taking care of Twiggy and turning her into a monster by having him be chased nonstop by Twiggy on a giant hamster wheel. Basically, if he stops running, Twiggy will probably maul him, eat him, or both.
 * When the Broccolorian Aliens invade, the children of Townsville find the only way to fight them off is to eat them alive. When Blossom first tries this she Squicked her sisters and the alien leader. The bit with the head Broccolorian begging for his life before being devoured and having his scepter smashed is especially creepy.

Bubbles: EW! EW! EW! EW! EW!

Buttercup: Ugh! That is nasty!"

"Bubbles! You've got something on your... aaarrrmmm... aaaarrrgghhhhhh!"
 * The girls' nightmare in the cooties episode. After hearing one of their classmates has "cooties", they become scared that they'll be infected. It's actually kind of funny, until they have a nightmare about tiny versions of said classmate popping out of their skin... all over their bodies.

"HIM: (Affably Evil laugh) What's this I hear? Tortured by the things you fear? Nighty-night, Girls. Pleasant dreams! Pleasant screams! (demonic laughter)"
 * Not to mention it can be interpreted as an STD scare knowing that the kid gives the "cooties" from a kiss, and the fact he was the only kid who is labeled having cooties among other children of the Pokey Oaks.
 * The episode where we learn about about Mojo Jojo's origins and how when the Power Puff Girls came along his brain started growing through the top of this skull. The same thing happens to various monkeys in The Movie. Only this time, it's slower.
 * "Dream Scheme". The Sandman wants everyone in the world to sleep forever so that he can get some sleep. How do the girls beat him? By giving him a nightmare so horrible that he will never want to sleep again.
 * The 'Robbing Leech'... probably because of Fridge Horror and Not So Harmless potential. The part where he attacks a security guard and we see what looks like blood fly from the spot (though that was likely to actually be saliva, which is horrifying on a whole 'nother level), and the marks the victims have on their heads resemble vampires. What's even weirder is we never learn anything about the Robbing Leech, not even a backstory. He's just...there.
 * The climax of "Knock it Off". As the Powerpuff Girls are confronting Professor Dick about the Chemical X he's using to make knockoffs, Dick swallows the Chemical X in an attempt to hide any evidence against him. This results in him turning into a really creepy monster complete with a fake out and a horrible transformation sequence of course. As the girls are trying to fight Professor Dick off, Professor Utonium arrives at Dick's lair and challenges Dick to fight him instead of the girls. As the Professor gets beaten up to near-death, he tells the girls that he loves them. At this point, all the Powerpuff Girl clones turn to Professor Dick and say in complete Creepy Monotone that he never said that he loved them. Utonium and the Powerpuff Girls escape as the clones both take down Professor Dick and burn down his evil hideout with all of them still inside.
 * There is also that the last line of the episode (not counting the narrator's ending Catch Phrase) is Hardly's anguished scream as he slowly burns to death.
 * The clones themselves are pretty horrifying. Creepy Monotone, Uncanny Valley... One of the Blossom clones had Red Eyes, Take Warning and monstrous teeth (the same one that Professor saw at first. Her turning around was scary as well...), and some of the clones had one HUGE EYE for a head. Those designs were very, very unsettling.
 * Dick Hardly himself. He's regarded as a Complete Monster (and he even turns into a literal monster! His One-Winged Angel was scary, and the transformation itself? Even worse...), his treatment of the clones is downright despicable (murdering a perfect Buttercup clone for more Chemical X). He treated Professor Utonium badly in college and took advantage of him. He tried to absorb the power of the real Powerpuff Girls right in front of the Professor who watched them suffer! He's entirely selfish, greedy and only thinks of himself, doing whatever it takes (be it lying to the girls, or seeing the clones as simple tools to make more money) for personal gain. Dick is far beyond the Moral Event Horizon. Everything he did was solely for himself and for money, he had no redeeming qualities. He's more evil than Him, and that's saying something (considering that Him is considered the devil). Truly one of the scariest and truly evil villains in the Powerpuff Girls... he's the only villain to be Killed Off for Real, and thankfully he gets his comeuppance.
 * The Roach Coach episode, where the girls fly into a giant swarm of cockroaches. Before that there is a scene with a guy who merrily takes a bite out of a hot dog... and then we hear horrific crunching noise and see a discolored closeup on his distorted face as hundreds of roaches crawl out of his mouth.
 * The episode "Speed Demon", where the girls manage to travel several decades into the future, where they weren't around to protect the town. Everything is destroyed. The mayor was murdered. Miss Bellum became a shrieking madwoman hiding in ruins. Miss Keane standing in place in the ruined school reciting Madness Mantra. The insane Professor desperately trying to recreate the girls. The girls are so overwhelmed that all they can do is run away so fast that they go back in time and vow to never leave Townsville again.
 * HIM in that episode. How dangerous can the jazzercizing Camp Gay devil man be? Turns out that the only thing in between him and turning the city into a blasted, apocalyptic wasteland was the Powerpuff Girls. Whoops. And then he goes One-Winged Angel.
 * The thing that makes this episode even more terrifying? The fact that this all happened just as much by the hand of the girls THEMSELVES as it did HIM.. That, and as opposed to other examples here, this issue wasn't resolved with some fight like usual. It was such devestation that even the girls had no choice but to run.
 * The detailed Imagine Spots the girls have in "Substitute Creature".
 * "Abracadaver" involves an old-timey magician called Al Lusion who comes back from the dead as a zombie. He was killed during an accident on stage when he fell into an iron maiden. What Do You Mean It's for Kids? And then it happens to Blossom. (Of course she survives, but the image is still unnerving)
 * The episode where Him invades the girls dreams to bring about their worst possible nightmares. The worst of the nightmares isn't Bubbles's or Buttercup's, even though they are both frightening. The worst is Blossom's, where she is in Mrs. Keane's classroom, answering questions for a quiz, in which she is getting everything wrong. That, at first, doesn't sound like much, but think about it. Blossom's worst nightmare is pretty much saying she believes her self worth is judged by her intelligence, and her intelligence alone. This comes into Nightmare Fuel territory when you realize that most people who think like that on that extreme level are SUICIDAL. The LEADER of our heroes being SUICIDAL deep down? That hits a whole new level of HONF.
 * The part where Bubbles saw her demonic toys for the first time. She begs Blossom and Buttercup (who are either still asleep or illusions conjured up by HIM) to help her and Blossom simply tells her that "whatever it is, it's not real and if you just tell yourself that it'll go away". So Bubbles closes her eyes and says "It's not real". When she opens them, the toys are still there. She does it again. They're closer now. She does it again. This time, they're right in her face!!!!!! The fact that it cuts to commercial and then Blossom's nightmare directly after doesn't help at all.
 * HIM's speech prior to the nightmares beginning makes it all the creepier.


 * And as Blossom's dream progresses, everyone starts to look more and more like HIM.
 * Bubbles going BATSHIT INSANE in "Bubblevicious".
 * Mascarea (sic) is pretty creepy for a villain that's Played for Laughs.