Aren’t they delicious?
For being a spin-off of a lighthearted gacha game about sentient cookies running for the hills, Cookie Run Kingdom can get immensely dark.
Unmarked spoilers ahead!
- Near the end of Stage 10-1, Gingerbrave’s band encounters two Vanilla Kingdom’s soldiers, one of them was screaming in pain because of their non-stop crumbling legs. When the battle is over, it’s revealed that you can’t help them since this is just a lingering recreation of the events in the castle during the Dark Flour War. In other words, you just see what is likely the last moment of these loyal soldiers, repeated over and over again. And this is only at the entrance, who knows how many of these agonizing scenarios are scattering all over the castle ground...
- Some statues in the background of stages in Map 10 are smothered in strawberry jam. With strawberry jam being the equivalent of blood in Cookie’s world, this leads to some disturbing implications.
- When he is reminiscing in his own chamber after a long time away from it, Pure Vanilla Cookie gets caught off guard by the four servants of Darkness: Pomegranate, Poison Mushroom, Licorice, and Dark Choco. Poison Mushroom Cookie subjects him to their shroomies, which gives him a vision of his four friends in The Five being tied up and hanged like puppets in a dark space, with no signs of life detected. As much as he tries to dismiss it as a hallucination, Pomegranate Cookie’s words about how his usage of Crescent Moon magic is the reason for their state cause him to breakdown and render him vulnerable at their mercy. The Darkness’ Mind Rape techniques surely have gotten more dangerous than ever.
- The Tower of Sweet Chaos. Unlike previous events which are bright and optimistic, this one is just the station for some of the most terrifying Nightmare Fuel in the game.
- Let’s just get it out of the way: the Tower was never a holy place for any Cookie other than those in the Holy Pastry Order. It was the food stand in the meeting place for the Night of The Witches held every thousand years, where the Witches would show off their creations and eat Cookies. Now this may not sound so bad to people unfamiliar to the story, but this is being seen through the eyes of White Lily Cookie, a member of The Five who decided to have a look at the Night of The Witches herself in her quest to find out why the Cookies were made. She is effectively made to watch the figures she and the rest of Cookiekind saw as gods eat members of her own species (and given that the eaten cookies were likely baked a few days ago specifically for the Night of the Witches, White Lily was essentially watching toddlers get eaten).
- We then get the scene the page image comes from, where White Lily Cookie desperately tries to rouse the Banquet Cookies to run and flee from their inevitable devouring. But the Banquet Cookies don’t respond to her either time she does it, raising the very chilling implication that they’re either already dead or are in shock and still trying to process what’s happening around them. It doesn’t help that all of them are still placidly smiling while having horrible injuries like massive chunks ripped off their heads or having missing arms or legs (or even their entire lower halves).
- When a cookie is frozen by Frost Queen Cookie or Sherbet Cookie’s skill, their skill icon is encased in ice. It’s unnerving, to say the least.
- A sad and tragic moment between Dark Cacao Cookie and his son Dark Choco Cookie takes a turn for the terrifying when Pomegranate Cookie steps in to break up the "touching family reunion", using her dark magic to try and subjugate Dark Cacao and take his Soul Jam, which is unnerving on its own. But then it becomes utterly terrifying when Dark Cacao starts making downright monstrous growls and completely loses control of himself, mercilessly attacking every Cookie in the vicinity, including his own subordinates, something that terrifies even the Cookies of Darkness themselves, forcing GingerBrave and his party to subdue him.
- Hell, just about any time Dark Cacao Cookie gets very angry, where his voice becomes a very bloodcurdling and booming growl.
- Custard Cookie's true colors. For the first half of the Cookie Odyssey event, he comes off as an arrogant Jerkass who constantly puts down Clotted Cream and the rest of the Council regardless of their accomplishments, but its not until the final act that we see just how far he's willing to go in the name of increasing his own power. Out of pure selfishness, he tries to steal the Soul Jam, despite them being the key to defeating Dark Enchantress, even willing to attack Gingerbrave and his friends to do so, purely out of selfish greed. And then, when Dark Enchantress attacks the Republic, his response is to steal a blimp and abandon the city entirely, leaving his own people to die.
- Black Pearl Cookie, introduced in the Legend of the Duskgloom Sea update, is a truly fearsome beast. She's absolutely massive
, towering over just about every other creature ever featured in the series (One TikToker even speculated that her true form is about as big as an adult human, making her borderline Eldritch Abomination-sized compared to the otherwise accurately sized Gingebread cookie cast), and actively hunts down ships to wreck them. And unlike the series' traditional monsters, she's explicitly shown as being sentient, indicating she does this for fun. Is it any wonder she's The Dreaded?- Even her gacha pull animation is terrifying. It's depicted from a diver's (possibly Candy Diver's) point of view as they explore a sunken wreckage. Then, all of a sudden, Black Pearl Cookie's towering figure rushes towards the screen.
- Even her gacha pull animation
- While most of the dreams in the "Crunchy Dreams" event are hilarious or heartwarming, two of these are quite horrifying:
- Devil Cookie is stuck in an endless corridor with no way out...except for Angel Cookie advising them to do a "good deed". Naturally, Devil Cookie isn't inclined to be a goodie-two-shoes, but when the corridor keeps extending and a red filter flashes, they start freaking out as Angel Cookie keeps repeating "Good deed" with their infamous stare.
Angel Cookie: Unless you do a good deed...you will not be able to escape this place...- Pumpkin Pie Cookie decides to do a ritual for her doll, Pompom...who is implied to actually be housing the spirit of her older sister. However, something is clearly amiss, to the point that Devil Cookie is freaking out at whatever is possessing that doll of Pumpkin Pie's.
- The loading screen before the Legend of the Red Dragon update is just a giant dragon's eye glaring at the player.
- On the night before the big dragon hunt, just after a heartwarming scene of Pitaya Dragon Cookie telling a drunken Royal Margarine Cookie what it means to be a hero, we cut to a scene of a young girl Cookie sobbing her eyes out as the entire village around her has literally gone straight to hell, fire and brimstone included. By the time the fires are out and dawn comes, only half of the Dragon Raid party survived. And the rest...
- The Reveal of World 17 in having the entire Golden Cheese Kingdom actually being in a digital world with Golden Cheese Cookie even transplanting her mind inside so she can be with her kingdom forever. All those cheese wheels those cute little birds were keeping an eye on? They contain souls! It's like a morbid version of "San Junipero" from Black Mirror but with Cookies!
- The end of Beast-Yeast Chapter 1 has the grinning face of Shadow Milk Cookie staring down at the heroes, ready to enact chaos upon the land.
