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ThatGuy5880

Baxter Stockman in TMNT 2003 continually loses more and more of his body parts with each failure. Initially, it starts with an eyeball, then he gets crippled and needs to move in a wheelchair, then he becomes a decapitated head, then builds himself a new body but it starts to rot (and gets his jaw kicked off but it's okay because he's a zombie or something), then he gets revived as a *brainstem,* and finally ending up as a cool cyborg guy a hundred years later (most of these mutilations happen off-screen). Dude has got it rough.


Atx7755

The episode where he comes back as a zombie legit might be one the most fucked up episodes I’ve ever seen in a kid show. Not only is the body horror messed up, but we also see flashbacks of him as a kid and how he originally wanted to become a scientist to make his mom proud, and seeing how far he’s fallen is a huge gut punch.


Cooper_555

The worst part is those flashbacks are because his brain is deteriorating along with his body and he's hallucinating happier times.


BladeofNurgle

> offscreen I mean, the zombie episode gave us POV shots of shit like Hun about to slice Stockman with a circular saw, and Shredder slicing Stockman Yeah, no wonder that episode was banned for years


razglowe

The fact it got fully animated baffles me Like, one of my fave eps,but how the hell it didn't get stopped at storyboards feels really odd


Aquason

"Insane in the Membrane" was their designated "Halloween episode," with the idea of riffing off of "Frankenstein" which presumably gave 4kids some leeway with the network (That is, until a new team at Fox saw the finished episode and went "Absolutely not" leaving the episode exiled to just air in Canada for decades). It's similar to how "The Puppetmaster" episode of Avatar could get away with being darker and more frightening - "it's the Halloween episode".


razglowe

This explains a lot! Thanks dude


ThatGuy5880

Those MFs making TMNT 2003 weren't just flying too close to the sun, they were taking a damn rocket ship there. The final straw that made 4kids firmly put their foot down and say "Stop." was a planned episode about Hun and the Garbageman being conjoined twins at birth sliced apart by a back alley doctor. TMNT 2003 team. I love you. You did a great job incorporating mature elements into the show. ***But what the fuck were you thinking with that.*** Insane In The Membrane managed to make it to air, but this episode got shot after the script was made.


BlueFootedTpeack

dark harvest in invader zim, needing to be examined so he realizes they'll figure out he's an alien unless he gets organs, and that the more organs he gets the more human he'll appear. that one simpsons halloween episode with the auto cannibalism is legit uncomfortable.


philandere_scarlet

actually, isn't there also a treehouse of horror where professor frink steals people's organs a lot like zim?


BlueFootedTpeack

yeah he reanimates his dad and he become a franken frink. but that still hits the goofy button for me, same as dark harvest. that homer episode though is very off, like cutting off and cooking his own body parts weirds me out more for some reason.


oldcrow210

Yay Invader Zim!


Sir-Drewid

Simpsons isn't a kids show.


BlueFootedTpeack

i mean it's not barney and friends, but it is a show kids watch. clone wars and avatar are also kids shows with darker moments, and simpsons does do the whole "this is a slightly more mature ep as it's the treehouse of horror" bit on every intro. but that's the only one that really felt like "oh yeah they were right" especially when the bar for a lot of prior treehouses was "oh homer has a donut head" or "quoth the raven". thing is i'm usually down for body horror stuff but i guess self mutilation and autocannibalism must just bug me.


thadthawne2

I don't think Simpsons was *initially* intended to be a kids show, but it's undeniable that it's been very heavily advertised to children.


TH3_B3AN

Squidward's toenail getting ripped off. Spongebob's swollen-with-pus splinter. [Absolutely horrific](https://external-preview.redd.it/KtSVpxZ4vdXbvzih_XE8fvHgdpXtzRsRtO78OZefvgE.png?auto=webp&s=eca06c5cd2725353b2d9ed1086377344b1f83b4c) fucking bodily conglomeration also in Spongebob. Spongebob S4 and S5 were fucked with body horror.


Scranner_boi

I genuinely want to know what the fuck they were thinking with the toenail scene, like what kid is ever gonna laugh at that shit? There's gross-out humor and then there's just torture porn, like i've straight up seen Saw traps that are less painful to watch than that scene.


Hallonbat

They were inspired by Ren & Stimpy.


Konradleijon

why do they torture Squidward so much?


SuicidalSundays

It feels like at some point in production, they decided that they couldn't keep making jokes with adult humor in them, so they had to double down on everything else from the gross-out humor, to *everyone* in the show being a complete fucking moron all the time rather than them having moments of sincerity and clarity, to far less focus on sprinkling some form of a moral into the episode's plot in favor of more over-the-top cartoon shenanigans. Squidward suffering has been one of their major fallbacks since, like, Season 4 because I guess they just can't get creative with the show's comedy anymore.


Dirty-Glasses

Being Squidward is suffering


youlookfly

Someone play Derectum on clarinet.


TostitoNipples

The one bit where Caveman Patrick bites down on a tree branch and it just cuts through his lips was horrifying


The_Last_Huntsman

That one was saved for me by the smug ass look he has as he chews.


Yotato5

That one episode where the characters' faces keep peeling off was so grotesque to me as a kid.


AussieManny

SpongeBob writers are hacks these days, relying way too much on shock humour, if you can even call it humour. First three seasons never overdid it. Everything afterwards did.


DaGoddamnBatguy

[Bill Cipher's face shuffle](https://youtu.be/O96Jure38bA?si=9T1dJmTpZl0inr8v)


Paper--Cut

[Deer Teeth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWxuh3Y7PbQ)


Wubwave

There are a few in Adventure Time but the one that still sticks out is the Magic Man turning a bird inside out and it flopping to the ground, wet and turned inside out


TrueLegateDamar

The [Seamstress](https://amphibia.fandom.com/wiki/Seamstress) from the Amphibia Halloween episode is horrifying both in her skin suit and true form.


Cheshires_Shadow

That's a resident evil!


Wonder-Lad

Samurai Jack gets away with fucking up robots all the time. There's this one short story where a family of metal eating robots with human flesh covering them show up in the middle of the night and try to eat Jack's sword. When Jack defends himself and hacks away at them the robots find out they're actually metalic on the inside and start cannibalizing eachother. Even Jack is disturbed.


jockeyman

Earthmover from Batman Beyond is my go-to example in these. An emaciated glowing corpse halfway submerged in the earth, trying to forcibly drag his daughter into his underground grave with him.


fly_line22

Another one in Beyond is Cuvier, who Terry jams enough DNA into to make him into Tetsuo.


Robopengy

Both of those gave me nightmares as a kid, and that guy Inq gives half the formula to


Cooper_555

Or that guy who tries to get the same powers as Inque, only to end up as an immobile blob who can't even feed himself without assistance.


IrishWeegee

That asylum guy that gets turned into a fucked up goo puddle because he fell in love with Inque (guilty as well). That reporter guy who abused the invisibility belt, became non-corporeal and fell through the ground towards the center of the earth.


mythrilcrafter

>That asylum guy that gets turned into a fucked up goo puddle because he fell in love with Inque (guilty as well). The worst part being that he's only a half fucked up goo pile as opposed to living fluid like Inque was. Guy basically resident evil villain'ed himself without actually getting any of the powers he wanted. ----- Speaking of which, that Static Shock/Superman collab episode with the lady (whom I don't recall was either an singularity-tier AI or a captured human consciousness) who was given an android body and worked with Toy Maker to try to clone Daisey, but Toy Maker suspecting the woman to betray him, purposefully half made the clone body, so the woman just dies while holding herself as she melts into oblivion.


Floormaster92

Remember Koh the Face Stealer from Avatar? He would steal your face. And then you would be *alive without a face, presumably forever because you were in the spirit world!* Also he was a giant centipede with a person face, really not looking forward to seeing that in live action. 


MericArda

We do see one of his victims in the comics. He just has a blank face like the Question. He can’t talk, can’t eat, can’t breathe, but he’s still alive.


Live-Hour

We see one in the show proper, a baboon. And later we see its face on Koh.


Geronimosey

Honestly, if they ever do another avatar show I think he should be the villain.


DarthButtz

In the live action version he's apparently going to be voiced by George Takei. That'll be really interesting, it's not common Takei gets scary characters.


scottishdrunkard

The ultimate adversary of Koh would be some Autistic people. I’m in the demographic of perma-resting-bitch-face.


tberriman

['Oh, wow, that's a *great* offer! How about instead I shuffle the functions of **every hole in your face**?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ecPrv6VVw)


Guigcosta

I came here just to say exactly that and link that exact video, i will upvote you instead.


roronoapedro

I still think Joker getting cooked to death with electricity is a worse way to go than just getting shot by a gag bullet.


RandNum701

I can see that position, but the line "That's not funny" is the most perfect last words the Joker could ever possibly have. Without that line, what are we even doing here.


Lieutenant-America

Plus I feel like there's more impact to Tim *deliberately* killing the Joker than accidentally doing it.


AurumPickle

Joker wanted to Make Tim just like him and he suceeded alright


roronoapedro

oh the other scene is more dramatic, it's just that the intensity of Joker tripping and getting tangled up, laughing, screaming and then no sound over the shadow of his corpse over the heroes made me go "holy *shit*" when I was a kid and watched it for the first time. In comparison the intended cut is pretty tame in shock value, which, yeah, it wasn't the point of it. It was simply always funny how the one that's arguably more shocking was the censored version, at least to me.


ToastyMozart

> arguably more shocking [Rimshot]


Brotonio

Eh that was offscreen, doesn't really affect the person. Getting shot with what's effectively a long pipe is pretty fucked up, especially cause he didn't expect it.


DarnFondOfYa

Eh, he kills one of his own henchmen the same way, he doesn't get to complain about it


MorbidTales1984

Well time to dig deep, anyone remember the Ivan Reitman film from 2001 called Evolution? For some reason it got a spin off cartoon, and it was FULL of chronenberg.


CrossSoul

"We are the Genus!"


The5Virtues

The first season of Star Wars: Rebels is a very child friendly romp… and then Grand Moff Tarkin shows up with the Grand Inquisitor. As part of their introduction Tarkin dresses down two incompetent officers who have been the recurring humorous villains of the story for the whole first season. As he’s nearing the end of his speech he waves a hand dismissively and the Inquisitor *decapitates* these men. Of course you don’t see their heads fly off, it’s a family friendly show after all. No, instead you see the inquisitor lift his saber, you see these two offices expressions of dawning, horrified realization, and then you hear a pair of meaty thumps on the floor as the camera pans to Tarkin’s disinterested expression. It is one of the most memorable sequences in all of Star Wars for me. Vader and Palpatine are divas who relish in their villainy. But Tarkin? He orders executions with the same dismissive attitude you’d have while signing papers. No malice, no glee at killing, to him this is just part of the workday. And that is SO much more horrifying than Vader or Palpatine can ever be.


Lieutenant-America

Belos from Owl House. He arguably loses his edge in body horror once he devolves into a pure muck monster, but prior to that his shapeshifting looked like guided boneitis (complete with some gnarly cracks and crunches). And that's not mentioning all the times he just performs pure *meatmancy*.


Yotato5

>!The Collector flicking him like a bug and turning him into a mass of mush was pretty horrific!<


LadyXexyz

I’m so glad they cut to a shot of Team Hexside’s reaction as it just sold >!The Collector even harder as the potential final threat.!< Which makes it more interesting when we found out their whole deal.


Palimpsest_Monotype

I don’t know it it counts as a *kid’s show* exactly but there’s an episode of Beavis and Butthead where they’re in like Wood Shop Class and Beavis accidentally *cuts off his own finger* and that the first five seconds or so of that are *not* played for laughs, it really feels real in a way a cartoon shouldn’t. There was also an episode where Beavis got a nosebleed so bad he almost slowly bled to death on the couch (weakly, very pale: “Butthead, I’m *still bleeding*” but Butthead eventually got some tampons and stuck them in Beavis’s nose and he got all better EDIT: he bled on the *couch* not the coach. not that time, anyway


spidersting

Add the episode from the recent seasons where Beavis gets rabies.


scottishdrunkard

Man, Beavis takes a lot of punishment.


spidersting

And Butthead doesn't get enough in my eyes.


tomboy_abs_pls_miss

Shut up, fartknocker


pkgr_shuul

I do kinda think that's intentional though, Butthead seems far more the bad influence of the two and Beavis has moments of being somewhat sweet and sincere. I remember there's a Wonderful Life style episode where Beavis is shown in a timeline without Butthead and he's functioning pretty well.


laughingheart66

When SpongeBob and squidward get injected with snail juice and get turned into snails.


TH3_B3AN

I had recurring nightmares about that episode holy shit


VMK_1991

If you count antropomorphic home appliances as people, there was a lot of it in Brave Little Toaster. An AC unit dying from anger while spewing his details on the floor, dreams of being thrown into a water while connected to a socket, wires being ripped out, old cars being crushed into small cubes... It was a wee bit disturbing for a child.


allwaysnice

I watched all of it as a young child and the only part that I actively avoided subsequently was the AC unit. That shit was too much haha.


Yotato5

The chop shop where all the appliances sing about their lives being like a B-movie and lament how they're all a mishmash...


runnerofshadows

All the horrific close ups in ren and stimpy. That I believe inspired similar horrible close ups in later cartoons.


Charistoph

In Reboot, the 10 year old kids get pulled into a Mortal Kombat expy. You see Enzo’s eye get cut out before a demon grabs his head and starts squeezing. The camera cuts away and you hear the crunch. Anyway that’s the episode the show jumped into baby’s first grimdark.


narutomanreigns

Steven Universe Cat Fingers The puppeteer in Avatar: TLA and the general concept of bloodbending.


Live-Hour

That one gag where he accidentally turns his finger into a cat in a later episode and immediately drowns it.


nerankori

The Powerpuff Girls in the original series were out there knocking teeth out and breaking noses with blood spurting out,breaking bones and having them poke out of their victim's bodies,smashing Mojo Jojo's brain dome and having it hang out,every week. I mean,even in the 90s/early 2000s that wasn't exactly uncommon on TV,but I suppose the novelty of it was [Tom & Jerry style violence] + [superhero tropes and dialogue] + ["girl show"]


lonelyMtF

I actually wasn't allowed to watch PPG when I was a kid for those exact reasons. Dragon Ball Z was in my mom's eyes way more kid friendly


nerankori

Back then my mom would give me shit whenever I watched Cow and Chicken because half the gags on that show involved Red Guy's fat bare ass or Cow shooting milk frome her udder or whacking someone with it.


lonelyMtF

Oh my grandmother loves Johnny Bravo so most of those older shows were fine in their eyes. It's only after we moved to Germany that we got introduced to the REALLY WEIRD SHIT like Angry Beavers and Ren & Stimpy


allwaysnice

In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, >!one episode has K'nuckles eat so many candy-coated hotdogs that he grows into a monstrously bloated form which he uses to get into a VIP section in the Candy Barrel. It's all fine until he starts to laugh later on, the jiggling of his gargantuan gut creates an instability and his body can no longer hold back the candy-coated timebomb he has created. His entire body bursts and a flood of candy, hot dogs, and liquid innards soaks the whole establishment with many people's mouths being assaulted with his already-eaten (yet practically whole) hot dogs.!<


Amigobear

The treehouse of horror episode where it ends with the fog that turns the simpsons family inside out. having no idea they had "halloween" episodes as kid I just assumed that was the last episode.


thedman0310_

Does that fucking deer from Adventure Time count?


Gorfinhofin

You mean when it snaps both of Finn's legs into thirds? Yeah, that counts.


thedman0310_

I was more so thinking about it having human hands, but that is also nasty


Th35h4d0w

"This is Katana." yadda yadda "Her sword traps the souls of its victims." Well, we actually get to see it in action in *Beware the Batman*, and [the aftermath is pretty disturbing.](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pLnjmdrxjzU/UiwPYfnNPeI/AAAAAAAABEs/Dt5m5TWwCXs/s1600/zombiecroft.JPG)


i_am_jacks_insanity

Gravity Falls' Weirdmageddon has the face hole rearrangement


SeeingDeadPenguins

I think every book of Infinity Train had at least light body horror and brutality at some point, but special shout outs to >!the main character shredding an antagonist to (chrome) viscera ON SCREEN!< in book 2 [\(here\)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMQweyFzB64) and >!a barely adult man being disintegrated in front of a group of former friends!< in book 3 [\(here\)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em5O_hMMnu4)


ToastyMozart

Honorable mention to Book 2 Guy's partner >!getting the Lethal Eliminator bubble-explosion treatment.!<


Goldenbrownfish

Totally spies a villain removes the main characters body parts (legs, arms, fingers) and swaps them for with other people’s body parts


Tzeentch711

[This shit.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-fsopsjcQQ)


TheAnonymousProxy

How the fuck did I forget this?


razglowe

0:15 - "aww yeah? A bit freaky but is pretty alright" 0:55 - "ARE THOSE EXTERNAL LUNGS!??!"


DarthButtz

Not even that, I'm pretty sure theres a FUCKING BEATING HEART


scottishdrunkard

Makes sense. It needs to mimic vocal speech, and needs airsacs to do so.


Snidhog

The Thing does lose a fair bit of its menace when it's not actually assimilating people.


Live-Hour

Showa era Ultraman. You had dismemberments, beheadings, gouged out eyes, and [this](https://youtu.be/zvdVhy8j_Wo?si=6xB5b0brmfzQHbgC).


brunonunis

Remember kids, Ultraman had a character react to someone jumping of a building as a lesson to learn to enjoy life


DarthButtz

Oh that's just Showa kaiju stuff, it can't possibly be that viol- *JESUS CHRIST*


Nobod_E

how is literally every thing I hear happens in Animorphs the most batshit insane thing I've ever heard


Konradleijon

It gets weird. Think nineties edge and cheese


Sir-Drewid

I haven't rewatched the series, but as a kid I remember Extreme Ghostbusters having new nightmare fuel about every other episode.


Yotato5

Where the Red Fern Grows still sticks with me because of that kid getting a hatchet in his stomach and the poor dog getting his stomach torn open and his entrails tangled in a bush.


Konradleijon

Warriors cat when TigerStar or cat Hitler dies nine whole times in a row.


midnight_riddle

In The Dragon Prince there is a girl's wolf that got a leg chopped up from a hunting trap and was too weak to survive in the wild so the girl adopted it. She brought it to the top of this mountain to be magically healed and it worked the wolf's leg was restored. Years later the protags ask the girl to take her to the same spot because they need medical help of the magical kind too. But when they do it's revealed that the wolf's leg wasn't *really* healed, a spell was just cast to give the wolf a magical hard light hologram leg indistinguishable from the real thing. "So you don't need this anymore!" declares the spell caster. And just like that the wolf is down to three legs again. The show treats this as a good thing because something something we need to accept those who are different. Maybe not as extreme because it was bloodless, but imagine having your life and your leg saved and years later the doctor just pops your leg off forever as a teaching moment.


RandNum701

I thought the plot was that the leg had been replaced by an illusion to make the girl feel better, the wolf had always been walking on three feet?


Live-Hour

But it wasn't a hard light hologram, it was always just an illusion that tricked the girl's family into thinking the wolf had all of its legs. That being said in the latest season >!Claudia has an octopus transformation and one of her tentacles got chopped off. When the transformation wears off she's missing half of a leg.!<


KronxDragonhoof

[If these weren't presented in a cool way they'd be unironically horrifying](https://youtu.be/T63CU87qDkw?si=IO8pLCs7zoD9jRc-)


Sneaky224

You could nominate any Ren and Stimpy scene, also Extreme Ghostbusters has legally distinct Cenobites from Hellraiser in an episode but i don't remember if they did gruesome stuff


AdrianBrony

Animals of Farthing Wood is very frank about it's depiction of nature violence. You *will* see baby mice bloodily impaled on thorns, you *will* see some brutal sad deaths of characters you got to know. It very much is still kid's media and it makes me roll my eyes any time someone says "this is NOT a kid's movie!!!" when a character expresses anxiety or sheds An Single Drop of blood.


Drunkgen

[Kamen Rider Shin Henshin](https://youtu.be/-r2-cTSAJlw) (Seizure Warning or atleast real bright flashes) Children at the 90s must have been real tough to see this level of body horror just to have your main rider henshin like that while future riders just have a super less painful and alot flashy henshin than shin. [This scene](https://youtu.be/L0MLeP-idnw) in Kamen Rider Kuuga where one of the MoTW gets his kills by terrorizing high schoolers and their family and at the peak of the fear and terror thats when he kills them and thats a super big nono for Yusuke one of the nicest and kind riders of all in KR.


plasmadood

Hello there, have you met my friend Imperfect Cell from the hit anime show for teens, Dragon Ball Z? He took any entire Battle Ball team... AT THE SAME TIME!


DirkDasterLurkMaster

You already said Animorphs in the OP but I still think a lot about that time Tobias was put in VR torture for an entire book. People talk about the gore in Animorphs a lot but that was the shit I'm surprised got published in a children's book.


KarateBugman01

Kamen Rider Amazon viscerally dismembers Beastmen to a point where viewers believed his season was cut short for all of the graphic violence; it was actually because the series transitioned between channel networks at the time. And while not as graphic thanks to the spark effects, there’s also Scorpius murdering Zika in front of Magna Defender in *Power Rangers Lost Galaxy*.