Top 5

Cartoons so scary they used to make us cry

Mike Pollitt | Thursday 10 February, 2011 12:09

Some childhood cartoons linger in the memory with a warm fuzzy glow. Not these. These are five of the most stomach turningly terrifying moments in cartoon history. Whatever you do, don’t watch them. Unless you’re absolutely sure you can handle it…

Tom knocks on heaven’s door. Denied

There’s a sequence from about 2.30 which engendered in my six-year-old self such a fear of missing out on heaven that for a few weeks I begged to go to Sunday school. The message is: sinners get punished, and it makes the Book of Revelations look like a picnic on the beach.

Horrific Heffalumps and wicked Woozles

This is just plain terrifying. There’s not more to say than that really. How anyone ever thought this could be shown to children without causing lifelong psychological scarring and a pathological phobia of honey (or “hunny”) is beyond me.

Mad Madam Mimm being maleficently mad

An underrated Disney (click here for Archimedes the owl’s finest hour, you won’t regret it), with a villainous witch who manages to be hilarious and terrifying in equal measure. Particular kudos to the animators for making a cartoon hen seem scary.

A squirrel dies in Moominland

Yeah yeah not a cartoon blah blah blah. The point is a squirrel (a cute little squirrel, a red one), freezes to death. My god. I’ll let one commenter on the YouTube video explain further. “I always cried when I read about the poor silly squirrel’s death as a child. The ice lady bent down and “scratched him behind an ear, smiling absent-mindedly”, and he looked at her beauty and froze to death.” Good grief.

Krang, the brain on a footstool
I can’t embed this because of intellectual property laws. But click through if you want to see a pink, mucus moulting brain slithering around on a little stool, and at 0.52s rubbing its flaps of excess brain together like hands. Just gross.

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