Yes, even a normally lighthearted show like Care Bears has frightening moments.
General
- The Care Bears don't just use their Care-Bear Stare on villains. They sometimes use it on other people when desperate, but some people think of it as Mind Rape. Now, in the earlier incarnations the Stare was generally treated as a last resort (in one comic Professor Coldheart taunts and dares them to use the stare on him, and they use a few panels to rationalize that "well, he did ask for it, and it's never hurt anyone..."), but in later incarnations they became far more lax about it.
- Professor Coldheart's first appearance had him luring runaway children and then mutating them into pathetic, voiceless creatures he kept as his slaves. His second appearance had him using a device to have every child in town frozen solid (and he took some time away from that plot to kidnap the Care Bear cubs, encase them in ice, and then kick them while singing about his plot). Later appearances had him keep it up - draining abducted children of energy to power a weapon, torturing a little girl by freezing her arm...
Films and Specials
- In the second movie:
- Dark Heart can turn into anything, and at the beginning he attacks the Care Bears' ship in his sea serpent form. Consider a horrifying possibility- he probably would have killed them had the Great Wishing Star not found them at that exact moment.
- The scene when he captures the Care Bears is terrible. Their prison is in crystals. To make it worse, the Bears and Cousins are fully conscious in there and they are visibly frightened. Thankfully, Dark Heart reforms at the end of the movie.
- Also from the second movie, this moment between the bears and Dark Heart:Tenderheart: We're terribly sorry.Share: Can we give you a hand?Harmony: Let's give him a big hug!Dark Heart: No. [eyes redden] Get AWAY from meeee!
- In The Care Bears: Adventure in Wonderland, there is one scene when the villainous wizard makes an incredibly horrifying face, as seen above. It's a blink and you'll miss it moment that comes out of nowhere; at the very climax of the Villain Song, which is a soothing, sinister-yet-sweet tune set to the gentle tones of a pair of ukuleles, of all things, there is a sudden flash of lightning, which causes two things to first flicker across the screen. The first is the human girl screaming in horror, and then there's what she's screaming at: the wizard's mouth has gaped out into an impossibly distended set of jaws that barely seem connected, with a mass of twisted fangs framing the gaping space, sitting underneath a huge, bugged out, almost insectile pair of blank white eyes. Then the lightning flashes again and the Wizard visibly reshapes his face back into its original human appearance, hastily spitting out the final line of the song. It makes quite a sight, especially when it's a Jump Scare.
TV Series
- Hugs Bear shedding a solitary tear after being stuck in an ice block in "Battle The Freeze Machine". Doubles as a huge tearjerker as well.
- It's all Played for Laughs, but the death traps (yes, death traps) in Grams' story in the Nelvana episode "The Perils of the Pyramid" are creepy in their own right. They include being shot by a giant arrow, falling into a pit and getting buried in sand, crushed by a falling ceiling and winding up trapped in a pit with a giant cobra. Fortunately, The Professor in the story (Brave Heart Lion) manages to evade all of the traps due to the two young helpers (Hugs and Tugs) and through dumb luck (with Beastly being on the receiving end of the traps, but even he wasn't really hurt.)
- In Care Bears Family, No Heart is just an evil, horrifying wizard who is obsessed with making the world lacking of caring. His appearance is creepy, and his motives aren't any better.
- In one episode of Care Bears Family, No Heart teams up with Dr. Fright (who looks, sounds and acts like a vampire and enjoys putting people into death traps to scare them) to get rid of the Care Bears. Throughout the episode, No Heart intimidates Dr. Fright, particularly when he promises furiously to show the doctor "what the word fright really means!" should he fail. Naturally, the Care Bears escape... which is when No Heart, now in the shape of a writhing tornado of blackness with his glowing red eyes shining out of it, envelops a shrieking Dr. Fright and carries him away into the sky.
- The Bubbles of Uncaring, in their infection with crazed hatred, somewhat anticipate Mood Slime. When No Heart throws Beastly into an abyss full of the things, the Bubble-held Beastly is reduced to a crazed, snarling maniac. The usually malicious Shreeky is openly horrified.Beastly: I'm sooo baaaad!!Shreeky: Oh, no, Uncle No Heart! Beastly's turned into an animal!
- In "Lotsa Heart's Wish," Lotsa Heart, in return for untangling a unicorn, is granted several wishes - in one of which, as an astronaut, he crash lands on a barren, desolate planet. A fifty foot green space monster, with a huge mouth and booming laugh, decides to have him for lunch. After crushing the rocket, it lifts Lotsa Heart towards its mouth...
- Welcome to Care-a-lot:
- The scene in the first episode when Beastly thinks he saw a monster in a storm is terrifying.
- The episode when Wonderheart gets impatient for her powers to work. When she is blasted away to another place, her belly badge is now grey.
- The episode when all the Care Bears have nightmares is... kind of disturbing. Grumpy's dream is funny, it has him being bothered by singing flowers and cute animals. But Wonderheart's dream is just terrifying. She dreams she is shrunken to a small size, and birds swoop above her. It finally reaches its peak when a humongous Floppy Bunny appears onscreen, smiling frighteningly cheerfully. Funshine's dream is even worse, as he is being chased by his motorcycle, and it is moving by itself. Sweet dreams.
- The first episode of "Care Bears and Cousins" has the Care Bears plus the Cousins almost disappearing from existence due to the Share Cloud not getting any Care Hearts.
