The world of Earthworm Jim manages to blend the farcical with the downright grotesque and proves that comedy and horror are opposite sides of the same coin.
Videogames:
- The music for the Intestinal Distress
and Big Bruty stages are infamously creepy, especially compared to the upbeat music from the rest of the game.- Even the gameplay in the latter is slower and tenser, with Jim needing to outmaneuver and outsmart the titular unstoppable dinosaur.
- Queen-Slug-For-A-Butt's death after you defeat her in the first game - instead of simply cartoonish exploding like the other bosses, she swells up like a grotesque balloon before graphically exploding, leaving behind a set of alien organs.
- The background during the boss battle with Evil the Cat features a legion of creepy, malicious stone faces. In some versions of the game, however, there's just a regular pitch black background.
- The HUGE pair of eyes that chases Jim at the end of "Who Turned Out the Lights?" Just what the hell could those things be attached to?! Considering that thing is invincible and instantly kills you, it is definitely a horror beyond even Jim's capabilities.
- Peter Puppy's monster transformation animation milks the process for all the creepy Body Horror it's worth. The fact that he turns evil as well while in this form doesn't help.
- Jim's Family-Unfriendly Death after being bitten in half by the Mucus Phlegm Brain from "Snot A Problem" or the giant pincer worms from "Buttville". He screams in pain as his body halves fall off the bottom of the screen in both cases.
- At the end of every level in the second game, a cow tells the player "Well done". While intended to be humorous, it's still a rather realistic image of a cow, and seeing it talk can be quite a jarring slip into Unintentional Uncanny Valley for some. The eerily quiet scenery during the cutscene and the other realistic cow slowly giving a cartoony smile does not help any matters. It is somewhat lessened in the Saturn and PlayStation ports when the cows are on the beach with surfboards and sunglasses, however.
