Nightmare Fuel / Bottersnikes and Gumbles

It is "the horror" indeed...

So, Bottersnikes And Gumbles is a children's series revolving around cartoonish heroes and villains engaging in conflict. It's bound to have a sense of ridiculousness and cute cartoon character designs along with stories telling about their daily skirmishes. Gumbles playing, having fun and outsmarting the villains, and the dim-witted Bottersnikes indulging in Toilet Humor, consumption of all things inedible and messing with our heroes, it's all there to convey that this show prides itself in being silly.
...But is it immune to also being scary at times?

• Toot's backstory, which is revealed in "Toot On Duty" and on the official website. In contrast to the rest of the work which is quite lighthearted, the tale behind Toot is major Backstory Horror that involves an incident with King Snike putting him through a legitimately disturbing experience - to elaborate, King Snike swallowed him whole and Toot was then forced to take the "back passage" to escape, after which the poor guy spent the rest of his life in fear of the Bottersnikes. And worst of all, we're never told how he even wound up captured in the first place before being eaten. In more detail:
  • In the aforementioned episode, Toot still talks in Pokémon Speak but can be heard thinking very coherently... and when he does, he's not cheerful in the slightest and even utters some of the bleakest lines you could hear in an unashamedly silly cartoon show, along with a few moments of a flat, somewhat emotionally detached voice when he "speaks". In the accompanying flashback, he's first shown being abused by Bottersnikes before King Snike takes him out of the tin can and puts him in his mouth, and Toot clearly struggles to escape before King Snike just gulps him down with no effort and the camera ominously zooms in on his belly afterwards. Toot's narration during the scene does NOTHING to alleviate the atmosphere, instead sounding like something coming from a victim of PTSD retelling their horrors. And after that, another flashback shows him getting rid of a bag of mattress stuffing the Gumbles had on hand (which just so happened to be the cure for Snike Flu that the Gumbles catch in the episode) after having mentioned that mattress stuffing reminds him of what happened to him that day and saying that he could not rest with it around, cementing the idea that he was horribly scarred by the experience. Long story short, the show just revealed a cute and adorable critter is shy and fearful because they went through hell and survived.
    Toot: Any mention of mattress stuffing brings me back to that darkest of dark nights. [...] A truly dark night, for nothing is darker than the inside of a Bottersnike... In there with a belly full of mattress stuffing... And the only way out... was down... and darker...
  • Even the very beginning of the episode is its own kind of unnerving. First, it opens up with Toot "talking" in an unusual tone as seemingly bright Background Music plays, except for the fact it sounds like it's missing some instruments. Bounce then comes up and talks to Toot with the mood appropriately brightening up and music becoming cheerful - but then shortly after Toot declines the offer to go play with the other Gumbles and Bounce tells him he doesn't know what he's missing, in his head he tells her that he does know what he's missing, followed by the bouncy Background Music suddenly turning ominous as the scene ends. Even when you know Toot's backstory and rewatch the episode knowing what will happen, this one scene simply stands out as jarring and signals that something just isn't quite right.
  • On the website, the text describing his story adds a statement at the end that goes "Ever since, Toot has only been able to make 'toot' sounds instead of speaking", basically telling us that he was once able to actually talk and that his Pokémon Speak was caused by psychological trauma. You heard that right - they just confirmed that he's been traumatized to the point of becoming mute. Just think about that for a moment.
  • His trauma crops up again in "The Pied Tooter"; when one of his friends merely mentions a Bottersnike eating him, Toot instantly snaps back to being eaten by King Snike and becomes extremely frightened and paranoid, this time with a flashback featuring a shot from King Snike's mouth just as Toot is lowered into it. It's not helped by the fact that King Snike tries to eat him again later in the episode, even commenting how Toot being covered in grub saliva should make him "digestible", alluding to the fact that not being easy to digest helped Toot to escape last time without physical injuries. Had the kazoo Toot accidentally swallowed earlier not fallen into King Snike's mouth as the latter tried to eat him, Toot would not only re-experience his trauma for real but also likely die this time around.
  • Finally, it comes full circle in "Where's Willi?"; when he's asked about an unnamed Gumble who made a daring plan to befriend the Bottersnikes before being captured (with the story ending there), Toot is strangely apprehensive and says he can't talk about it. And then at the very end, Toot makes a quick implication that he's the unnamed Gumble. Now consider the Toot we know, and the unnamed Gumble being described as brave and begging King Snike for harmony and peace - it subtly confirms that the incident broke Toot even worse than it was first shown because now we know Toot was possibly a lot more outgoing before the incident, and also confirms he used to be able to speak without outright telling the same thing the website did.
• In "Toot On Duty", Smiggles gets sick and accidentally spreads his sickness to Bounce. The end result? Bounce suddenly turns aggressive and begins demanding mattress stuffing, along with her eyes looking uncanny and disgusting slime hanging from her nostrils. And then it spreads to the other Gumbles. The absolute highlight would be Bounce crawling on the floor like a zombie while demanding the stuffing, and Happi trying to tell Toot to go to Snike Hill while fighting off the strong urge caused by the illness.
• In "The Pied Tooter", Toot accidentally summons giant black grubs which then promptly try to eat the Gumbles (and they do, sort of). At first it's nothing grim as the grubs end up just holding the Gumbles in their mouths... until Happi mentions that they're being slowly dissolved, in a quite nonchalant tone. The grubs don't look pleasant, either; as opposed to the regular grubs which are tiny and cute, the giant black grubs are hideous and have disturbingly large black eyes.
• In "The King's Seat", as an attempt to coerce the Gumbles to surrender an item believed to have great power, Chank ties up and then swallows Toot before taking several seconds to regurgitate him back up when Tink agrees to hand the item over, telling him that it was a "wise decision". Bear in mind that just two episodes ago Toot revealed that he met this fate and that he considered it to be the "darkest of dark nights", along with him getting flashbacks if he so much as just hears the word "Bottersnike" - upon closer inspection he seems to stare blankly while tooting uncontrollably (which can be heard even as he's in Chank's belly, no less) inbetween being eaten and then released. In other words, Toot froze in horror before having a panic attack.
• "Blue Grub Moon" presents us with the abomination that is a Gumble becoming a Weregumble. It starts with Happi forbidding the other Gumbles from eating blue grubs on the night that the episode takes place, but Merri and Jolli decide to go off on their own and look for them anyway. Merri then accidentally eats one and is fine for a moment, and what follows is him coughing violently before he transforms while making horrifying animal sounds. Then he goes to Snike Hill and begins terrorizing the Bottersnikes who are all utterly terrified of him. And on top of that, Were-Merri looks pretty scary especially given the general tone of the work. What?!
• In "Monster in the Moat", the Bottersnikes hatch and carry out a plan to kidnap the Gumbles. In the middle of the night, when they're sleeping soundly. So even if they were high up in a tree surrounded by water that repels Bottersnikes, the Gumbles weren't completely safe...
• "Where's Willi?":
  • The part where King Snike attempts to eat Toot again, and he almost does, on-screen. The first time it happened, it traumatized the poor Gumble - there's no telling what kind of outcome would've resulted this time had Willi not interfered.
  • When Willi tries to ask Toot about "the unnamed Gumble", the latter is quick to become mildly agitated. That's not the creepy part; the creepy part is the brief moment where he puts his hand on Willi's cards and pushes them down, without taking his wide, unblinking gaze off of Willi. This shows that when Toot doesn't want to talk about something, he means it.