Nightmare Fuel / Samurai Jack

Nothing Is Scarier indeed.

If you can watch the whole series without a little tension or terror, then you are just as brave as Jack himself. Some episodes were entirely built around Nightmare Fuel; even the episodes not revolving around horror have scenes that are traumatic, especially if you saw the series as a kid.

The frequent robot carnage that the censors let pass in every episode occasionally goes way beyond the borders of "not too bad"; once you reach dismembered robots impaled on spikes, things have gotten bad.

Nightmare Fuel subpages, being Moments subpages, are Spoilers Off pages. You Have Been Warned.

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General

• Don't let his comedic facade fool you, Aku is quite literally the living embodiment of Nightmare Fuel. He's a fragment of an Eldritch Abomination who has demolished thousands of cities and towns, massacred and enslaved millions of people, and turned the Earth and many other planets beyond into a living hell, all For the Evulz. He could easily be considered one of the darkest characters in cartoon history, if you can get past his hammy moments.
  • Aku is especially scary in the three-part series premiere. His hissy Creepy Monotone, his lack of humor and absolute sadism and cruelty... (of course, this was before his Villain Decay from "Aku's Fairy Tales" onward.)
  • Just the very image of Aku in the promotional image for Season 5. There is something deeply unsettling about the blank, Thousand-Yard Stare that Aku is giving. There's none of the over-the-top personality that the villain typically displays. And with the knowledge that the episodes would be significantly darker...
  • What passes for Aku's Leitmotif cements this. It's just a deep, droning noise. It's absolutely not music, but it's perfect for a heartless, soulless monster who is essentially the embodiment of all the evil in the world.
• Aku's world is this in general. It's a severely polluted wasteland that is almost completely drained of food and water and infested with dictators (such as the Chritchellites and the Dominator), gangsters, soul-eating demons (such as Demongo and the Demonic Spirit from "Jack and the Haunted House"), bounty hunters, and interplanetary bandits, all of whom are given complete free rein under Aku's rule. Atrocites are a daily occurrence, as all the previously mentioned thugs often massacre and pillage populated villages and cities for their own personal gain. Aku is also more than willing to have his henchmen turn innocent civilians into slaves against their will, deprive them of food and water, and force them to make statues in his likeness. To call it a Crapsack World would be an understatement.
• Jack himself can be pretty scary sometimes. In fact, this is main reason why Mad Jack (his Inner-Self) exists.
  • This◊ poster for Season 5. There's something incredibly unnerving about it. From Jack's menacing Kubrick Stare, his unrecognizable appearance, all topped off with him being covered in blood. Being the first thing we really saw out of Season 5, it truly cemented that Samurai Jack ain't for kids anymore.
• "Jack and the Haunted House" in general. Fans aren't kidding when they say that this is the most unsettling episode of the entire show. The episode's atmosphere is akin to that of a Lovecraftian horror story rather than being another episode with some comic relief. For more information, go to the entry of the episode.
• The Cult of Aku. An all-female cult completely dedicated to the worship of Aku. The fact that we know so little about the cult makes it even scarier. Are they brainwashed? Do they genuinely believe Aku is a benevolent god? We will never know.
• The High Priestess from Season 5 is living, walking Nightmare Fuel. Beneath that classy, refined, aristocratic personality lies a robotic, emotionless psychopath creepily obsessed with Aku. She's just as twisted and cruel as her dark god, and that's saying a lot.
  • Worse, unlike most of the villains in the series, the High Priestess is completely devoid of comedic features (not even a single gag), which is quite rare when Aku himself has his comedic moments.
  • Even worse? Unlike Aku and his servants, this woman is an actual human.
• The Dominator (from "XCVI") is easily one of the scariest characters in the show. Imagine the worst features of Aku's henchmen: a slaver, a torturer, and a mass murderer. That is exactly what this man is. A repulsive psychopath who slaughtered a defenseless town, kidnapped its children, killed its parents and forced them into a violent frenzy. Just like the High Priestess, he's an actual human doing dark things to people, and a nightmarish example to demonstrate how Aku's corrupt regime has allowed people like him to prosper in this Bad Future.
• Although he could give Aku a run for his money in terms of pure hamminess, Scaramouche the Merciless can be this. The first thing he does in his first appearance is murder an entire village, no children spared, all without a hint of remorse.
• THE OMEN. Good god, the Omen.
  • The Omen's theme is pretty chilling too.
• It has been confirmed that Jack had never taken a human life before Season 5... but he did destroy countless robots. That would have been fine and well, except robots in this series can and sometimes do have emotions. And Jack has killed at least two fully sapient robots: X-49 and the one in The Aku Infection. Admittedly, the latter was not his fault, and the former was due to him being unaware of X-49's emotions, but in both cases, their deaths were pretty much equivalent to human deaths, minus the blood. And who knows how many of Jack's other robotic victims had their own lives, minds, and perhaps even motives beyond just evil and greed.
• In the online game "Desert Quest", Aku and his minions attack a village and injure many people, including a little girl. She will die unless Jack can retrieve a sacred crystal that can be used to heal her.

Season 1

The Beginning

• The very start of the episode is really ominous, when a solar eclipse out of nowhere that makes demonic buzzing noises allowed Aku to revive because the darkness prevailed in that one moment, and reinvigorated his petrified body back into its original state. If only Jack's father had known this would happen through star charts. Unfortunately, it seemed fate just decided to unleash Aku back on the world then and there.
  • Aku's mannerisms are much more restrained throughout the three-parter. He's not the Laughably Evil Large Ham of later seasons; he's just plain evil. His first line is nothing more than a hoarse whisper, yet it serves as a positively spine-chilling Establishing Character Moment:
  Aku: "Once again, I am free to smite the world as I did in days long past."
• Aku's assault on young Jack's home city soon afterwards. He shows up looking bored, the garrison attacks him, and finally he smiles entertained as he wipes them out with the very arrows they shot at him, and then he starts attacking half-seriously.
  • To make matters worse, Jack's father (the Emperor), the only person who knows how to defeat Aku, is immediately stopped before he could do so; Aku grabs the Emperor before he could take his sword (the only thing that can harm Aku), allowing Aku to conquer Japan. Jack and his mother escape in tears.
  • For more tragedy, when a now-grown-up Jack returns to his home country, he finds everyone has been enslaved. His father got the worst of it; he has become a weak and decrepit old man, and is denied adequate food and water. Aku sure knows how to destroy even the strongest of spirits.
  • Imagine being in Jack's shoes (or geta if you want to be more accurate) during Aku's attack. He's the beloved only child (we never hear mention of any siblings) of the Emperor and Empress. He's heard the story of how his father defeated Aku many years before and plays with his toy sword. Everything seems happy and sunny until the shadow arrives and Jack can only stare up in shock and horror as it envelops the sky. Before his father can get the sword, he's grabbed by Aku and dragged away from his family while screaming. Before Jack can even reach for his father, his mother stops him with a heartbroken expression. Jack can only watch, tears in his eyes as he's taken away from the only home he's ever known, smuggled out to the bay as his home burns. He's then put on a ship...but sails away as his mother watches sadly. He's a frightened child, lost, alone, scared and in the company of strangers while beginning a rigorous training regimen that has been put into place by his parents when he was just a baby. For extra Fridge Horror? Jack reveals in Season Five that he was eight when this all happened.
• When Jack is flung into the future by Aku's spell, his whole body, especially his limbs, warp and contort like they were a pile of soggy noodles being tossed down a drain. All while Jack screams in confused terror as he falls down the time portal.

The Samurai Called Jack

• Aku punishes a young alien for openly disrespecting him by shooting Eye Beams, seemingly disintegrating him. The grieving father is then told by Aku that the boy was teleported to the Pit of Hate, where he would eventually learn to respect Aku.
• Jack witnesses◊ the aftermath of the talking dogs' persecution by Aku; he sees silhouettes of crucified dogs, and it's implied that they are dead. Aku has been committing so many atrocities like this since Jack's original time period to the present day, to many races throughout many planets. For thousands of years.

The First Fight

• An angry Jack is a terrifying Jack. He becomes a raging, screaming warrior amidst all of the injuries and the beatings he takes from Aku's Beetle Drones, as he is practically covered in oil. Even the Drones look terrified of him, before he promptly slaughters them all.
  • Even worse, there's this long hold on his face. And he's covered in oil, his entire head and eyes. And his head just sloooowly turns to stare at the Drones in complete silence. It's downright spooky and ominous as all get out.
  • After the fight is over, Jack still seems to be in his berserker mindset, giving a Death Glare to Sir Rotchild shortly before calming down.
• At the end of the episode when Jack declares his goal to find a way to return to the past and destroy Aku before his reign of evil ever begins, it is revealed Aku was watching the entire fight and this declaration. Though disappointed over this failure, Aku gives his own Badass Boast, stating that the world Jack is in belong to him and he will always be watching him until he chooses to strike. It is clear that Aku has the advantage in this war.
  Aku: He is stronger than I remember. But no matter. For you see, little samurai, the world is mine! My eyes and ears are everywhere, nothing you do will go unseen! Quest as you may, but we will meet again when I see fit, in a time and place of my choosing! And it is I who shall put an end to the war started in that age long past, Samurai Jack! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Jack and the Lava Monster

• Jack is traveling through the scorched countryside that was once the Lava Monster's home, implied to be in Scandinavia. It's bleak, cold, and littered with ash and corpses. On top of that, there's an ominous voice constantly beckoning Jack to follow it.
  Voice: "Come... Come...!"
• As Jack comes closer and closer to reaching the end of an increasingly lethal series of traps placed by a cursed warrior, you see dozens of skeletons strewn about his labyrinth of death, all killed in brutally horrific fashion when they each made a lethal mistake on the way in.
• After Jack breaks the curse on the warrior, he returns to human form; but the entire time he was locked away in that demonic prison, he was separated and left untouched from the natural flow of time. He rapidly ages into a frail old man in an instant and dies. Fortunately, he's carried off to the afterlife paradise of Valhalla to live in eternal bliss.

Aku's Fairy Tales

• Even one of the most hilarious episodes where Aku is involved merely paints him horrific in a different light. He rounds up kids from within the capital city, with no reason given to them or their parents. The room they're led to is large, red, and spiky as always, but has monitors of adorable, yet... off animals, which eventually switch off. The camera focuses on a large red throne in the room. And Aku just appears. No fanfare, no flashy effects, no booming monologue. He's just there. This is how he starts reading propaganda stories to children. It's just fortunate that Aku really sucks at brainwashing.
  • Imagine if you were a child forced to go into that arena; the moment Aku appeared, you'd piss yourself in terror.
• One of his stories shows an Evil Jack inside the Three Bears' home, hung over. Bleary, blood-shot eyes are never a pretty sight.

Season 2

Jack Tales

• Jack encounters a seemingly-human family who turn out to be metal-eating robots. The robots, in a fit of hunger, rip each other to shreds, and the insides of the robots look just graphically enough like human flesh to creep you out.
  • The family were unaware that they're actually Mechanical Lifeforms, only feasting on "the mother" when her face was revealed to be robotic. As there's no real backstory regarding them, Nothing Is Scarier is in full effect.
  • When the "mother's" true nature is revealed, the others, who seem to have humanlike personalities, almost immediately turn on her, then each other. How long must they have been starving?

Jack and the Ultra-Robots

• The carnage and devastation caused by the Ultra-Robots is worth mentioning, especially the ruins of the second city. Mutilated innocent robots with horrific faces strewn about, some of them on pikes, and oil EVERYWHERE.
  • Also note that they didn't just attack other robots, they destroyed two other towns, one with little cat-like creatures and another with a population that bore a resemblance to the Sand People. The latter of which is notable in that Jack encounters no survivors.
  • Even worse is the utter Curb-Stomp Battle the Ultra-Bots put Jack through. No matter what he tries, Jack cannot harm them, is steadily beaten down, and forced to flee by their ferocity and even gives up at one point trying to beat them. It requires nothing short of some outside help and straight up Divine Intervention to defeat them.

Jack vs. Demongo, the Soul Collector

• Demongo, dear God. Not only is he a demon, he steals the souls and keeps the skulls of all the warriors he's slain. Skulls that he wears on his chest. Skulls that he can toss out to summon the ghosts of the fallen warriors to do his bidding, all of whom have creepy blue mind-controlled eyes.

Jack and the Spartans

• The Mechanical Beast is absolutely frightening to behold. First, it sneaks up on Jack and the king of the Spartans out of a pipe, its malicious red eyes lighting up in the dark and glowering down at them. Then out comes a giant ball with huge fangs and toothy tentacles that makes the Omnidroid look like a dust bunny. And all the gravelly SCREECHING it does when it's angry or injured is like hearing the bloodlust of an angry vampire bat!!

Season 3

Chicken Jack

• The creatures that the chickenized Jack battles in the animal-fighting arena ranged from downright creepy to outrageously grotesque. And this was a lighter episode!
  • Jack previously showed a real distaste for being forced to fight for entertainment, back in the Dome of Doom. Here in a cockfighting pit that's decidedly less guarded, he makes all of one attempt to escape; then just applies himself to fighting opponents, and moping when the man who caught him won't feed him. Combined with how the episode stops showing POV shots where he speaks, even if his words are just chicken sounds to onlookers, it seems like The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body, and he became just a clever rooster.

Jack and the Zombies

• Some of those zombies were just plain freaky, like the long-armed zombie, and the one that steals Jack's sword. And when he falls into the crypt... that wail.
  • The banshee that possesses Jack's sword seems to be something different, like a ghostly witch serving as a direct minion of Aku, and possibly even the one whose magic is being used to reanimate the dead, who is surrounded in blue flames and actively levitating, then transforms into a fanged monster as she charges Jack. Somehow, she's able to force Jack's sword forged to destroy everything evil into moving under her own power. Then, her light around Jack's sword recedes when Aku grabs hold of it, indicating she has merged with him, and that she was worse than a zombie- she was born directly from Aku's essence itself. She also speaks, unlike the rest of the undead warriors. And the one thing she says is mortifying:
  Banshee: (shrieking every word) I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!!!
• The look on Jack's face when Aku starts to use his own sword against him. Sure, Jack is still able to fight back, but a good chunk of that fight is Jack trying to run away or dodge Aku's attacks. Unfortunately, Aku doesn't let Jack escape that easily...
  Aku: "Oh, Samurai? Where are you, Samurai? You can run, but you cannot hide, 'cause I can smell your blood!"
  • The way Aku's voice changes for those last five words just really pushes his creepy-meter to the red.
  • The entire sequence after Aku seizes the sword. Jack can't hurt him at all. All he can do is run and block Aku's attacks, and while Aku starts with the sword he pulls out all the stops - eyebeams, fire, shapeshifting on a scale not otherwise seen on this show. There's a part where Aku is just a spreading mass of tendrils, and the camera pulls back to show just how big that mass is. It really emphasizes how screwed Jack, or anyone else, is when trying to oppose Aku without the sword.
  • And then Aku's close-up as he's about to stab Jack, his eyes look creepier than normal◊. Fortunately, Aku is surprised to learn that the sword can't even hurt Jack.

Jack in Egypt

• The Minions of Set: a trio of bestial, demonic warriors who were created by the evil god Set to wreak chaos and destruction upon Ancient Egypt, until they were imprisoned in a tomb. What makes them scary is that they never talk, are immortal and invincible, and nearly unstoppable to just about any mortal opponent they come across.
  • When Aku and an entire unit of his robotic soldiers locate the Minions' tomb in the Egyptian desert, Aku removes the lid from their prison, and he watches with amazement as the Minions immediately jump out and obliterate all the robots, tearing each of them into shreds within a few minutes (it would be much worse if those machines were humans). Impressed with their skills, Aku orders them to find and kill Jack.
  • After Jack realizes they are loose, they just open up wailing on him. They outright smash Jack in such a brutal way, that if it was aired on [adult swim]? Jack would be outright bleeding from the wounds he got.
    Jack: "These creatures are more powerful than anything I have ever encountered..."
    • But these are creatures that Jack himself cannot stop. Whenever he cuts off their limbs, they grow back instantly, and the Minions continue the chase. Jack is forced to run and go on the defensive for the rest of the episode, as he tries to locate artifact pieces that will help defeat the Minions, nearly getting killed in the process. To say it's tense is an understatement.
    • Jack had to rely on the power of a god to destroy them. The god himself, Ra^note The very same Ra that, along with Odin and Rama, destroyed the evil entity that would later spawn Aku, was pretty creepy as well due to how he killed all the Minions with very little effort; as well as the fact that he towers over Jack, and that he does nothing but stare at Jack, not even speaking when Jack asks him if he knows a way to return to his own time.
  • Unique among Jack's enemies, the MOS don't react to the Sword. At all. Even a weapon made out of divine power made for the purpose of destroying evil can't defeat them. The implication seems to be that they're made out of the same stuff as the literal god Set, which means that this is not a setting where Jack could deal with him if that deity ever came up again.

Jack and the Traveling Creatures

• As Jack tries to fight off the Guardian of the Time Portal, he finds that he is outmatched by a far more powerful opponent. The Guardian has slayed many more would-be time-travelers before Jack, and (correctly) declares that our hero will not be successful either.
  • The fight ends with the Guardian delivering a very one-sided and brutal beating that knocks Jack into unconsciousness, and then the Guardian is about to finish off Jack by dropping a boulder on him; but he only relents and spares Jack after the time portal shows him a vision that Jack is indeed The Chosen One of prophesy, who may (eventually) go back in time.

Jack and the Creature

• When the greaser robots attack Jack and knock him unconscious, the normally goofy and friendly Creature believes that Jack died, and now it's pissed. The Creature transforms into a horrifying monster and chases after the robots, mauling each of them to death. The last robot is absolutely terrified, hiding behind a rock and futilely praying that he'll make it. By the end, the Creature has left nobody alive... (well, except for Jack).

Jack and the Haunted House

• Basically the entire episode? Here, Jack follows a scared little girl named Kuni to an old, decrepit house. He receives several nightmarish visions about what happened to Kuni's family (her brother, mother, and father) who used to live there, all of them appearing to have been attacked and taken away by some faceless horror. Not even Aku, just some nameless demonic being with a sadistic streak. And that's only the first half.
  • The creepiest part is when Jack walks into the eerily tranquil, fake tea room. Kuni's family are seemingly okay and invite Jack to drink tea and chat with them, in a room that looks bright and pristine (unlike the rest of the house). Jack is (correctly) suspicious of this situation, but he soon gets lulled into a false sense of security. Kuni looks at Jack nervously, while her family pretend that everything's alright. Then the ruse is dropped when the brother, mom, and dad start convulsing violently, finally revealing the demon who casted the illusion. Then the demon captures Jack and takes him to another dimension where the family's souls are also held captive.
  • The Demonic Spirit (pictured right on this page, and for a very good reason) is easily the most frightening character ever put in the show. In any scenes with the Demon Spirit present, the animation shifts to "sketchy" black and white, where every line is visibly chattering, and the sound is distorted into a cacophonous noise. It's as if the sheer otherworldly force of whatever this thing is is overpowering the physical cartoon, blowing out both the colors and your speakers like it's going to burst forth from your television at and second (similar to Tyler's scene in Fight Club where he talks to the audience as the celluloid starts quaking in the projector).
    • Then check out the creature's appearance. Unlike Aku, who has a simplistic design, this creature is drawn in a disturbingly realistic way◊, almost resembling a certain creature.
    • Unlike most villains who appear on the show who all either work for Aku or are involved with him some way, this Demonic Spirit has nothing to do with Aku... or at least, that seems at first glance, since we know nothing of what it is, except that it wants to steal human souls. All we know is that it randomly came down from the sky one day and started attacking Kuni's family. No rhyme, no reason, just sheer terror.

The Birth of Evil

• As the title would suggest, this episode reveals the origin of Aku. Millions of years ago, he was originally some sort of giant, shapeless, featureless entity that roamed around outer space, attempting to destroy everything around it. The gods Odin, Ra, and Rama fought this terrible thing and almost destroyed it, except for a smaller fragment that got cut off and drifted away to Earth...
  • When this primordial monster crash-landed on prehistoric Earth, it took the form of a meteor that burned nearly all of the dinosaurs down to charred skeletons, then proceeded to swallow whole the few remaining survivors. The carnage is abominable.
    • Particularly, we're treated to a shot of a triceratops—one of the most formidable dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth and which is believed to have fought and even killed apex predators like Tyrannosaurus rex—screaming in abject terror as it's eaten alive by the primordial soup that will one day become Aku.
  • Soon, proto-Aku became a giant puddle of living black goo inside the earth that would send large, deep cracks through the ground. The cracks were filled with a black tar-like substance, and it would then absorb living creatures to get stronger. This includes an unlucky group of cave-people. At one point, a man calls out for his dog, goes to the back of his house, and sees one of the cracks filled with black goop, and half the dog's leash sticking out. Doubles as a Tear Jerker when we hear the man's anguished and horrified screams.
  • Worse, every time the goo swallows up a living creature, a giant black tree springs out of the sludge with violent crackling sounds. Pretty soon, so many creatures have been devoured it has grown into a veritable forest encroaching upon civilization and threatening to engulf Japan. Not helping is that when it absorbed the dinosaurs, it grew enough black trees to kickstart a small forest of these black trees from the biomass of the dinosaurs alone, and the forest only grows from here, and it's implied that the impact site where the Black Mass landed must've been at least a few dozen to a few hundred miles away. Just how many creatures did the then-animalistic and predatory Aku had eaten to make a forest that vast!?
• Later, the Emperor (the soon-to-be father of Jack) goes on a mission to try and destroy the monster, charging into the forest of black spiky trees, along with an army of samurai in tow. As they get closer and closer, more trees burst up from the ground, and we hear samurai start screaming as their horses (now riderless) run by the Emperor.
  • The scene where the blob monster gains sapience and evolves into Aku. After the Emperor tried to kill it, the magic arrow he used instead has the opposite effect. At first, it seems like it worked, but then we're shown the two red flames that would become Aku's signature flaming eyebrows. Then, we see all the trees in the pool recede... only to be replaced by one singular towering mass that gushes out of the pool. Its appendages creak, groan, snap, and contort into place until they form that all-too-familiar shape of the Shogun of Sorrow from behind, just like in the first episode. Then we see the flaming eyebrows ignite atop his head, and his eyes snap open for the first time. And then come his first words.
  Aku: (groaning and wondering how he came to life) "Oh..." (spies Jack's father) "OH! YOU!! THANK YOU!!!"
  Emperor: "NO! My intention was to destroy you!"
  • And then immediately afterwards, the Emperor futilely tries to attack Aku again. So Aku has him sent into the source puddle from which he spawned... but instead of being absorbed like so many were by proto-Aku, The Emperor is quickly willed back out by the newborn Aku... tied up to a giant black tree. Aku then flies to the village and begins to set it on fire. The poor Emperor who is expecting a child soon, now finds himself bound in a Crucified Hero Shot and Forced to Watch while screaming in horror as Aku wreaks havoc upon his kingdom, which seems bad enough... but just imagine how terrified the citizens of the city were to see a monster emerging from the forest of black trees, bent on destroying everything.
    • Remember that, in his introductory scene, the Emperor comforts his heavily pregnant wife before going off to fight the spreading evil. No doubt he was thinking about the safety of his wife and unborn child in that moment and feeling like he had failed to protect the ones he held most dear.
  • During the final battle between the Emperor and Aku, Aku slips into the armor of fallen soldiers and makes clones of himself to surround him. They all promptly laugh at him and then just... stop. It's surprisingly unnerving.
• Think of how powerful Aku is. Now mull over the fact that as horrifically mighty as Aku is, he is nothing but a tiny, infantile fragment of an infinitely more powerful Eldritch Abomination that took the heads of three pantheons working together to kill... and even then they failed to finish the job. It's a bona fide Cosmic Horror Story, in a cartoon for kids.

Season 4

Samurai vs. Ninja

• It gets downright hectic and overall a bit eerie, since you have two of the deadliest warriors in the art of ninjutsu hunting one another. All the while, they're both clad for the appropriate elements. One fights in the shadows, while the other fights in pure blinding light. The whole fight in the very wooden tower is both a respectful mix of Nightmare Fuel and Paranoia Fuel. And to add even more fuel to an already deadly, adrenaline-rushing encounter? The soundtrack throughout the whole fight! ... Horror chords and all. Here is the fight in its entirety.

Samurai vs. Samurai

• This is a mostly a goofy episode involving Jack dealing with the Da Samurai, until the last few minutes. Suddenly, an army of Aku's assassin robots from earlier in the episode show up, but these ones are Dual Wielding swords and opening the panels in their heads to reveal creepy long faces with razor-sharp teeth. That alone is scary enough, but after Jack finally defeats the entire army, they all combine into what can only be described as a Mechanical Abomination. Thankfully, it goes down easier than the army did, but it's still freaky to watch.

The Aku Infection

• Aku unwittingly infects Jack with a small piece of himself, and soon Jack starts to look scarier and scarier as time goes on as the infection gets worse.
  Jack: "I... I feel so..."
  (Lifts up cloak to reveal Jack is looking and sounding more like Aku)
  Jack: "...STRONGER."
• The Aku-possessed Jack carves up an innocent robot bystander's face for bumping into him on the street. We get a very close, slow shot of this happening; never before has the Machine Blood looked so terrifying.
• Jack disguises his changed features with a makeshift cloak, and goes to the adorable Lizard Monks; Jack wants help, Aku wants to find and eliminate them. By the time he meets them, it's deliberately ambiguous who's in control, and how far the changes have spread. All that's visible by that point is his eye, which cries when he tries to talk to the avuncular leader of the monks — and then he tears the cloak off and reveals the eye is all that's left, the rest of him is Aku.
  Jack: (completely possessed by Aku except for a bit of his face left) I seek to foil the samurai! To destroy his dream of going home! And to destroy all who stand in my way!
  • None of the monks he attacks in the ensuing fight are cut in half by the sword, but they're sure knocked around and don't stand a chance until their leader throws a potion in his face.
    • Just imagine if Jack had been wielding any other sword. The goodness of his weapon is the only thing that saved the monks from being torn to shreds by Aku.
  • Even then, a restrained Jack with many patches of the infection scattered across his skin is told that all the monks can do is slow the progression, but it's up to him to fight it off. He says he cannot and begs for help, sounding broken when they can't give it to him. At that point his body transforms completely, and Aku bellows that he'll eat them all.
    • Aku himself sounds absolutely furious as he takes over Jack, every word dripping with rage as his essence begins to truly eat Jack whole, and then letting out a truly chilling laugh as he seems to take complete control:
  Jack: "(struggling for breath) You...must...you-(camera pans around to reveal Jack almost completely consumed by Aku) YOU WORTHLESS WRINKLED GRUB! I'LL HAVE YOU FOR DINNER YOU WORM! (the infection begins to spread again) I'LL EAT EVERY LAST MONK IN THIS HOLE! I'LL DEVOUR YOU ALL JUST AS I HAVE CONSUMED THE SAMURAI!"

The Princess and the Bounty Hunters

• A group of bounty hunters team up to capture and/or kill Jack once and for all, by attempting to attack him all at once. Unfortunately, it backfires and Jack defeats them all, with the Princess being the last member of the group standing. Jack seems to have killed living beings, flesh and blood (or not)^note Genndy Tartakovsky gave a very unclear answer about this in an interview, as opposed to robots or demons.

Tale of X9

• X9's flashback of when he "lost control" upon seeing his fellow X-Models killed.
• X9 receiving a call from Lulu when she's held hostage by Aku. From her end, it's Played for Laughs. From his end, it's Played for Drama. It's scary on two levels, one where your pet goes missing, and one where someone you loved wanders off and gets taken hostage.
  • Left with no other choice, X9 accepts Aku's latest (and last) mission for him: to find and kill Samurai Jack. X9 chases down Jack in an abandoned building, and to say it's tense is an understatement. The encounter ends with Jack slicing down X9 from behind, making his efforts to save Lulu worthless.
  • Lulu disappearing. Especially if you take the scene the way it's depicted (with her fading away right in front of X-9) as a literal depiction of the events, rather than a metaphor (something that is entirely possible with Aku's omnipotent magic). It drives home just how horrible Aku's dystopia is. It doesn't matter where you hide or where you run. If Aku wants you, Aku will have you. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Jack and the Baby

• Your (surrogate) infant getting sick.
  • Your baby's been kidnapped by monsters, who may eat the poor child.
  • The ending touches upon the fear that your young child (very young, in the Baby's case) has witnessed something not appropriate for kids to see. And it may have ended an aspect of their innocence prematurely.
• The fact that it was the last episode of the first 4 seasons. Horrifyingly enough, the series' abrupt cancellation left Aku completely undefeated until the release of Season 5!

Season 5

Season 5 raises the horror to new levels; now that the show has moved to [adult swim], it gets to have a little more freedom with its violence, leading to some very dark and disturbing scenes that provide new waves of terror even veteran fans of the series weren't prepared for.

---

XCII

• The very first scene opens with Aku's Beetle Drones destroying a village and chasing after the sole survivors: a mother, her young daughter, and her baby. They try to escape, but the Beetle Drones encircle them. All they can do is use their antennae to communicate their love for each other and await their inevitable and brutal demise. Granted, Jack saves them just in time, but still, it really sets the tone for the rest of the season.
• Throughout this episode, we see that Jack has been suffering from a hell lot of post-traumatic stress, in the form of guilt, depression, and nightmarish hallucinations:
  • In each of the visions Jack sees... someone on horseback◊. We're never told or fully shown who it is... but whoever it is? It's something that terrifies Jack. Yes, Jack is terrified of something.
  • Jack's first vision. While drinking from a stream, he starts to imagine the leaves falling from a nearby tree are his parents and the tortured forms of his people. At the end of the vision, we get to see hordes of zombie-like people floating downstream, screaming and reaching out for Jack to save them. Jesus Christ, Tartakovsky.
    Mother: "You left us all... to... DIIIIIIE!!!!"
  • The second vision starts with Jack sitting by the fire while eating a dead rat, when he sees a vision of his father in the fire, asking why he never came back. As Jack desperately tries to explain himself, the vision gets bigger and the fire spreads out of control as his father gets angrier. It ends with Jack's father screaming at his son, accusing him of abandoning his destiny and people while making the mother of all nightmare faces.
    Father: "HE DESTROYED EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING IS BURNING! YOU'VE FORGOTTEN YOUR PURPOSE! YOU'VE FORSAKEN US!"
  • The third and final vision shows Jack imagining small children (the kids from the village who were murdered by Scaramouche) futilely pleading for his help. But what makes it frightening, is not so much what it contains, but when it happens: during the middle of the fight with Scaramouche. Jack is still in danger when he has this vision! Scaramouche even uses his distress to land a shot on him! While the attack wasn't lethal, next time he might not be so lucky. It really does paint a picture that Jack is a broken man, and that these visions (much like in real life) aren't just limited to when he's alone. They could happen anywhere, at any time no matter what he's doing or what kind of danger he's in, making Jack his own worst enemy.
• Jack finding the dead bodies of the slaughtered townsfolk (by Scaramouche). Unlike previous seasons, this is the first time we witness a very graphic image of dead people (including men, women, and children), setting the gritty tone of the season. For obvious reasons, Jack is visibly horrified.
• Scaramouche, despite being a silly villain, slaughtered an entire village just to draw Jack out. The fact that Scaramouche was able to wipe out the whole settlement by himself is also unsettling, indicating that he is a One-Man Army. No mooks needed, just himself.
  • What makes the above even scarier is that Jack allowed it to happen. He was in the area when Scaramouche attacked the village, he saw the smoke rising from the village, but he chose to ignore it and go about his business. It takes a severe attack on his guilt to get him to go back... days later. By then, Scaramouche has massacred everyone in the village. To summarize: Jack's inaction allowed Scaramouche to slaughter an entire village of innocents, which really sets the tone for the season and shows just how broken Jack is. You know things have gone bad when The Hero of the series stops helping people in need.
    • It's even harder to stomach knowing the Ultra-Robots destroyed settlements for the exact same reason — to draw Jack out — and he was unable to get to these places in time to save their victims. This time, he did have time to make a difference, but chose not to because he's used to these kinds of outcomes, and the result ended up being the same. Talk about a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
  • At some point during the fight, Scaramouche pulls out his Vibro Weapon. After destroying one of Jack's daggers with it, he casually throws it into his other hand and hits a pillar with it saying that no one is better than him at bladework. Scaramouche, who throughout the entire fight has been nothing but jovial, fun loving, and even downright polite suddenly screams ''NO ONE'' at Jack as the pillar explodes. He then goes right back to jovially scatting and trying to kill Jack. The rage just comes so quickly and leaves just as quickly, perfectly showing how frustrated he is that he hasn't killed Jack yet and how unhinged he is beneath the facade.
  • The way that Scaramouche dies is pretty gruesome. First, Jack slices him in half with his own dao, causing a horrific amount of oil to spill out of him. His body then explodes after he is killed, but his head goes flying and lands in front of the foreground. His face is etched with pain, and his lifeless eyes stare straight at the viewer while a Scare Chord plays.
• The Reveal that JACK LOST HIS SWORD, the only weapon on Earth that can harm Aku. And while he's managed to keep that fact hidden so far, it's only a matter of time before Aku himself finds out about it. Good luck, Jack. You'll need it.
• Every single scene with the Daughters of Aku. They are the seven daughters of a crazy female cult leader who worships Aku, and she has been raising and training them since birth to become assassins with one goal: to kill Samurai Jack. All the while, these girls are deprived of a normal childhood.
  • The first scene showing their birth was rather disturbing. We are basically watching a woman give birth to septuplets in a dark room without any anesthesia or any proper medical aid. Most real-life mothers wouldn't survive such an ordeal in such conditions. Her screams of pain combined with the rhythmic chimes of the gong made the whole ritual look like a Human Sacrifice, though without any killing.
  • The worst part of it all is how even as little girls, their own mother puts them through extremely harsh non-stop training. Any time they fail a test or get distracted, she throws them over to older women to give them a brutal beating. She even discourages her daughters from helping out their own sisters when they're down or wounded, believing them to be too weak to live.
  • The sisters' graduation test is an impressive showcase of their talents and abilities, and they complete the whole scene without breaking stride... even the part where one of them (Ashi) brains one of her instructors with an arrow. It quickly becomes clear that this isn't just another exercise, it's actual mortal combat, and all the trainers that guided them from birth are dropping like flies. After four seasons of having every casualty restricted to robotic lifeforms, it was quite a shock to see actual flesh-and-blood deaths introduced with such nonchalance and ruthlessness. It honestly made one fear for Jack's well being. There's also the implications that the High Priestess willingly wiped out her own cult as sacrificial pawns who served their ultimate purpose (even the giant woman) in the wake of training seven daughters to fight for Aku, and that the best fate that one could have in the cult, or perhaps the only fate that awaited them was to die, and that they willingly died seeing themselves as martyrs for an impeccably misguided cause.
• And most of all, this season establishes that Jack, thanks to some side effect of Aku sending him into the future, no longer ages. While that might sound like a good deal, it means he's spent half a century in Aku's future- maybe twice as long as he spent in his own time- fighting for his life and trying to find a way back home. And he definitely has the mental baggage that comes with it.

XCIII

• The way that Aku and his "therapist" yell "DIE!" at the beginning of the episode. It's hammy and over-the-top, but in a chilling way that shows that, much like Jack, the 50 years appear to be taking a toll on his mind as well.
  • Not to mention the empty Thousand-Yard Stare they give straight into the camera while saying "Yes, one can hope" in a single voice. It's like they're staring straight into the viewer's soul.
• The Daughters of Aku hunting Jack. The whole scene felt like the "Jack in Egypt" episode. They're systematic, thorough, and well-trained. When they lose track of Jack, they don't panic. They hide in the shadows at various vantage points in the ruins they've chased him into to lull him into a false sense of security, then strike from the darkness, letting the others know his location. After that, it's not even really a fight. It's an escape. Jack is forced to hide in a coffin at one point, looking more terrified than we'd ever seen with only a firefly to give him light, as if silently begging for them to go away... which they obviously won't. The light is slowly snuffed out... and the next thing we see out of the darkness is all seven Daughters shattering the coffin he's in, Jack springing out of it through desperation. It's the worst trial Jack's been through for the entire series, bar none.
  • At one point during the chase, while hiding from the Daughters, Jack is confronted by another vision of himself, which tries to talk him into committing "honorable" suicide. If his enemies can't end him, Jack may as well try to do it himself...
  • Stripped of his weapons, beaten, bruised, and forced to constantly evade the Daughters of Aku given their numerical advantage and constant ambushes, Jack is forced to hide amongst a vast amount of coffins all centered around the skeleton of an ancient king. The episode already highlighted it earlier to some degree, but the sheer terror Jack has is unlike anything else he's ever shown before during this. He's absolutely shaking, uncertain, and desperately, silently begging for a firefly to go away before he's exposed to a threat he cannot beat like this. And his bedfellow is the skeleton of one of the king's followers, who is glimpsed by the light of the firefly. The fact that Jack has been forced to lie down with the bones of the departed to find refuge is so macabre it hurts.
  • At one point, Jack is forced to flat out run from the Daughters of Aku, racing down twisting, turning passages in the dark, then we get a Jump Scare when Jack actually runs into one of the girls, who has managed to outmaneuver and get ahead of him. It's only fortunate for Jack that, separated from her fellow sisters, proved to be a fatal mistake for her. Leading to...
    • We actually get to see Jack killing a human being up-close for the first time. He spent the episode believing that the Daughters were just another one of Aku's machines, and after being confronted by one of them, he slices her neck. That is genuine blood Jack's seeing. While it was undeniably in self-defense, his reaction is one of genuine guilt and horror.
    • The sound made during the Slashed Throat is probably one of the most brutal noises in the entire series up to this point. It isn't just skin being penetrated with a blade and blood splashing out, there's almost a bone-like sound adding a disgusting edge to the strike. Odds are, Jack was inches away from dealing out a full-on decapitation.
  • The music that plays throughout the Daughters' hunt for Jack is terrifying. It is a cover of Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold", from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Now what does that say to this conflict?
• The side-plot with the lone white wolf fighting against a pack of tiger-like alien beasts. While the blood from the Daughter was more subdued, the animal fight is a total bloodbath where everyone involved seems to die gruesomely, quite a bad omen for Jack and the Daughters.
  • Just the appearance of the alien tigers. Think of the Ultimate Chimera from Mother 3, but painted green with stripes and covered in fur. Not to mention the demonic roaring...

XCIV

• After watching an entire series of Jack only getting scratched, beaten, and broken down, the first portion of this episode shows him bleeding gallons of blood from his stab wound.
  • Worse, we see Jack pass out over and over from this bleeding for what seems like days on end. Then he encounters a seemingly normal frog Suddenly Shouting, "THEY'RE COMING!" and it becomes unclear if that is just a hallucination or an actual sapient frog that can talk trying to warn him of danger, either way being very disturbing.
  • While Jack is still bleeding out and retreats for shelter, he starts to see the green spectral samurai again. Only now, with Jack on the verge of death, the Omen starts following him like some sort of Grim Reaper.
  • Especially when Jack and the White Wolf meet personally, as they both are covered from head to toe in symbolic lines of blood across their bodies. It's quite a miracle that Jack and the Wolf somehow survived these near-mortal wounds. And the tension beforehand where Jack is forced to pick up the dagger used to wound him as his only means of defending himself is proof of how backed into a corner Jack is and that this is his only option left if he wants to live.
  • Jack seems to have reached a newfound level of pain, if not a plateau threshold, in this one episode alone. Never before and never again do we see him in such physical turmoil, because for the first and only time, a weapon is stuck in him like glue and the only way to be rid of it is to pry it loose by force.
  • What is probably the most difficult part of the episode to get through is watching Jack finally force himself to extricate the dagger from his chest. It is not pretty - he has to slowly work it out of his body as it's wedged in VERY tightly, during which time he squeezes his eyes shut, sweats bullets, and grits his teeth, steeling himself for the pain of ripping it out. Then, as he does pry it loose, darker-colored blood from his insides begins to ooze out and he groans very weakly, having grown extremely tired. Finally, he yanks the blade out and screams with INCREDIBLE pain... then promptly passes out one more time from the agony. Keep in mind this is the kind of pain that is so excruciating that a person would risk biting their tongue from gnashing their teeth and would have to have a stick or something else sturdy to bite on!
• At one point, Jack is taunted by another apparition of his past self... only now the apparition is twisting and contorting in strange poses with fanged teeth, and bears a constant cruel expression on his face. The animators are taking a character design we know and love, and making it look... so wrong. This apparition appears inhumanly tall and slender, like a Humanoid Abomination. His face is more narrow. He moves inhumanly fast. He has sharp, jagged teeth like a shark, and his expressions showcase them quite well, being the very embodiment of Nightmare Face: cruel scowls, Psychotic Smirks, and Slasher Smiles galore. Lastly, he speaks in a much more malicious and psychotic tone, getting very creepily excited over the thought of more killing and mocking Jack, trying to goad him into embracing Blood Lust. Not to mention he resembles Mad Jack, or how Aku portrayed Jack in his fairy tales. The brutal speech combined with the pained "no" Jack gives in response made the whole scene feel like he was tortured.
  Inner Jack: Look at you. You've survived worse. This isn't about your pathetic little cut, it's about that girl you killed. We've never killed a human before, have we? Sure, mountains of robot corpses. But this... This was the first human being. Real flesh and blood. What happens when the others find you? You'll have to kill them too. Can you? Will you be able to when the time comes? Maybe they will kill you? (Beat) Or is that what you want?
  Jack: (pained) ...No...
  • That entire statement where Inner Jack mentions the scores of robots Jack slew compared to one human life and throws it back in his face for thinking one is lesser than the other in this universe. It's almost as though the writers are throwing the fact they are releasing the handbrake on the violence from past seasons in our faces as well.
• In Jack's childhood flashback: the way that his father dispatched the assassins coming after them, while awesome, could also be terrifying due to how swift and brutal it is. At one point he cuts a guy in half, with his blood splattering through the carriage window into poor Jack's eyes. Needless to say, little Jack is scared to see all this raw carnage up-close, even if those thugs had it coming. No wonder Jack doesn't like killing.
• Jack's wound continues to bleed out relentlessly, and it forces him to stitch it up by improvising a thread and needle with an animal bone fragment and some wood fibers. We see his silhouette in the dark cave wincing in pain as he seals up his own wound in a crude manner. It leaves a remarkable scar on his chest, his first lasting wound from his time in the future.
  • Heaven only knows if the way he administers self-surgery is even sanitary- he's had an open wound for who knows how long and the means he's closing up his injury can't be sterile (he didn't even cauterize them with fire at the very least)- the only thing we can count on is his unbreakable willpower to stave off death, and that includes infection; he fought off Aku's pure evil infecting him, for pity's sake! If he can fight off that, he can fight off any infection, really!
  • It's implied that Jack's recovery is a very slow and painful one with the passage of time. At the start of this season, it was clearly fall in the region of the world he was in. By the time he reaches shelter, fall is giving way to winter, and then by the time he has fully healed, winter has come entirely. And that gives plenty of time for his enemies to dig themselves out of oblivion and catch up to him. Worse, he has been caught Exposed to the Elements in the dead of winter considering all his clothing has been stripped from him but the tatters of his underclothes. For a normal person, this kind of bleak survival situation would probably be their downfall.
• We see the true extent of the Daughters of Aku's abusive upbringing, and how it affects their interactions with each other and the outside world.
  • When the Daughters escape the destroyed temple, they comment on their deceased sister that "Death is failure", and proceed to leave her corpse to rot without batting an eye.
    • They actually took the effort to get her out of the temple, which doubles as a tomb, only to leave her unburied. It would have arguably been better to just leave her in the temple, but instead, they dragged her corpse out. And given their comment, it's very likely that they intentionally left her body out in the open to be picked apart by scavengers instead of giving her a proper burial as a punishment for her death/failure.
  • They believe that a simple male deer must be a minion of Aku's due to sporting antlers similar to his own. And when the buck kisses a doe, they are all baffled by this display of affection. One of them even says "I don't like it" in a mix of disgust and naivety. It's actually quite sad. Heck, before the kiss, they expected the buck to show his dominance by brutalizing the doe.
• Upon coming to terms with his guilt and that, like his father, he'd have to take lives if he wanted to complete his mission, Jack's first act is to attempt to prevent a fight. The Daughters of Aku reject this notion.
  • Not even seconds later, he pops out from beneath their feet in the snow and harpoons two of the sisters before they can even react.
  • After Jack kills one of the Daughters with a thrown sword through the chest, her sister just pulls it out to fight Jack with it, without even looking at her.
  • One of the Daughters spears a crow through the neck with her sai and pins it to a tree so efficiently it doesn't even bleed. It gets killed so fast its eyes stay open. Scarier still, because the snowdrifts are obscuring the trees, it looks as though the crow has been pinned to the air itself. Through process of elimination, it appears Ashi was the one who made the kill, being the one to wield the kusarigana (chain with a sickle attached to one end and a spiked weight to the other.)
  • When Jack decides to drop the Daughter's weapon and resort to using his bare hands, he kills a Daughter by punching her in the face hard enough to make her neck snap instantly and her body spin out and fall to the depths.
  • Jack willingly lets Ashi attack him with the bladed weight on the end of her kusarigana so he can drag her over to attack her, which bites into his arm with a fresh gush of blood. After having been stabbed and cut up several times, Jack probably is unfazed by this pain.
  • In the end, the defeated Ashi starts fanatically ranting about killing Jack, even after having seen all of her sisters die at his hand, and likely being seconds away from death herself.

XCV

• When he first wakes from his fall into the snow, Jack's mind quickly flashes back to the fight with the Daughters of Aku, only he imagines one of them with the real Aku's face in place of the mask, distorted into a more violent looking sneer with the same humanoid proportions of one of the Daughters, kind of like a mix between a Jump Scare and a Freeze-Frame Bonus. It just goes to show in Jack's eyes, the fight isn't over even when the enemies have fallen, and that the Daughters of Aku were not so different from the genuine article. As Jack recollects himself after his most recent battle when several Daughters of Aku met their end at his hands, he gradually gets surrounded by droves of crows, perhaps drawn by the carnage that just took place, and maybe angered by the fact one of the crows died in the crossfire. When he discovers a blood trail, he follows it to find Ashi lying seemingly dead on the ground. Then, the crows start mocking him.

  Crow: "MURDERERRR!!"

  Another Crow: "KILLERRRRR!!!"

  Jack: "No... no... NO! THEY CHOSE THE PATH...! THEY CHOSE!!!"

• Just how huge the gigantic monster that swallows Jack and Ashi is really rather terrifying. As the two explore and try to escape from it, they find other scary creatures inside this enormous body.
  • It's so incomprehensibly massive, that even when a portion the size of a small city breaks the surface, we still can't see it in its entirety. A creature of that scale wouldn't be out of place in a Cosmic Horror Story.
  • Even worse; it's implied that Aku has been deliberately creating (or spreading) these things, which further provides some disturbing implications regarding just how screwed up the world has become under Aku's rule.
• Ashi's relentless fanatical ranting and borderline psychotic raving for about a minute straight after being saddled to Jack shows how deeply poisoned with hate she's been. It's a wonder he didn't just muzzle her. Worse, she shows absolutely zero concern about the loss of all her siblings and being the only apparent survivor, now alone and the only child. She instead stays steadfast and unfeeling anything but hate like she was conditioned, only showing self-preservation toward fulfilling the one purpose that she was born for — killing Jack.
  • For nearly the entire episode, Ashi demonstrates the corrupted version of a Large Ham; just about everything that comes out of Ashi's mouth is I'll Kill You!, and she won't shut up. Heck, every single thing she says and does is basically a death threat, be it thinly-veiled or over-the-top, and a never-ending tirade. Her hate for Jack makes her so blind that she's nothing but an obstacle to their survival (when monsters attack them, she still has her sights set on Jack first), and when she hasn't the means to hurt Jack, she just hurls insult after insult at him in a way that would make the Scotsman blush. Yet Ashi fails to take the hint that nothing she's saying is demoralizing Jack in the slightest, so she starts telling Jack to die passively, and claiming that Jack is (as good as) dead when they've both been swallowed just to spite him in her misery. And yet at one point, Jack actually snaps at her — and this is the man who took all of the Scotsman's and Da Samurai's badmouthing without batting an eye.
  • Yet somehow, Jack's time spent with Ashi gets him to be the most chatty he's been so far at this point in time, which eventually puts a damper on his hallucinations (the ghostly figure on the horse appeared back-to-back in each of the episodes of this season until now, when it was nowhere to be seen and the ones that do appear are not morbidly psychotic or frightening). It's very sad to know a deranged Tyke Bomb is the one thing causing Jack to recover his grip on reality, and that because he had no one to talk to in all this time, his mind really, really crumpled, so that may explain why he didn't shut her up: because he wanted someone to talk to and probably pitied her own mental twisting, too.
• The various smaller monsters that all live inside the larger monster; for example, the blue insectoid creatures with huge rodent-like buck teeth. And there's a very large swarm of them, so Jack and Ashi can only flee instead of killing them all. Worse, while Jack is fighting them off, Ashi keeps trying to interfere and get him killed. Her fanaticism drives her to not even care that Jack wants to save both their lives.
• Ashi remembering her mother's task for her.
  High Priestess: "Ashi... Ashi... Ashi... KILL THE SAMURAI!!!"
• The way that crab creature abducts Ashi, without so much as a gasp. The idea that this creature is smart enough to so easily and silently snatch its prey is kind of creepy. Imagine if Jack's hallucination had decided not to speak up.
  • The fact that a vision has to be at the wheel of Jack's senses for Jack to pick up on danger is just as bad, if not worse.
• As Jack is trying to climb his way out of the creature, Ashi deliberately kicks out to disrupt his balance and send them plummeting down. Needless to say, Jack is not amused and forces her to dangle from her chains beneath him like The Load she has chosen to be.
• That... flying fish-like creature. It has six eyes that can cover all its blind spots like the Red Death, and transparent bioluminescent skin that makes its bones see-through. When bathed in light, it looks like an even more ghoulish version of Kingfin is chasing after Jack and Ashi.
• Even after all they've been through, Ashi picks up what's left of her broken sickle, and tries to kill Jack while he's sitting in meditation. Jack has a resigned look on his face, like he's well aware of what she's doing, even though she's trying to sneak up on him, and like he's finally decided to just let Ashi have it her way. Fortunately, a passing ladybug causes Ashi to have a change of heart when she sees Jack is a Friend to All Living Things — while remembering her mother was a bloodthirsty tyrant.

XCVI

• The episode begins with a human army launching an attack on Aku's lair. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't have chosen a worse time, as Aku decides the best way to break himself out of his funk... is to annihilate them all. Making matters worse, the leader of the army is the Scotsman. He's become very elderly and is now stuck in a wheelchair, making his chances of survival look very bleak.
  • This also makes one wonder just how desperate (or foolish) anyone would have to be to attack a mighty demon who's well known for being Nigh-Invulnerable, without even trying to use Jack's holy sword on him.
  • We've seen Aku take on the forms of everything from an army to a mass of darkness. Here, Aku merely shapeshifts into a giant ball and steamrolls over all the attacking tanks. After all this time, this is probably the simplest form he's ever assumed (possibly out of sheer laziness or lack of imagination), but never has something so simple worked so effectively, and it shows how little effort he has to put into killing enemies. The resulting "battle" (or more accurately, near-total massacre of almost all the troops) is so bleak and purely one-sided that the Scotsman, everybody's favorite badass, immediately turns tail because he wants to save his brood of many daughters from getting killed. Aku watches them fleeing and has this to say:
    Aku: "Oh? Better make it a complete annihilation!"
  • The Scotsman's death. In order to buy his daughters enough time to escape, the Scotsman fearlessly puts himself and a few hard-hitting insults between Aku and their retreat, which ends with the Scotsman getting incinerated by Aku's heat vision, leaving behind a skeleton that crumbles into black ashes. Though the horror is lessened somewhat when the Scotsman immediately returns as a jovial spirit. Perhaps the worst of it all is that in the Scotsman's last stand, the ultimate warrior of the future who was effectively Jack's one equal in all the world, accomplished nothing. Aku wasn't even vaguely entertained. He just slipped back to his depressed boredom and buggered off to his tower. The Scotsman's passing wasn't even given the slightest fanfare, and again, this was the definitive, most powerful individual opposing Aku after Jack himself. Granted, he was an old, wheelchair-bound man and nowhere near his prime from 50 years ago, but how quickly it happened is rather chilling.
• Jack shows Ashi the destruction and devastation that Aku's forces cause on a daily basis, even without his direct involvement.
  • Perhaps the most chilling example is when they sneak into the City of Aku and witness a ship carrying exiled alien criminals who were banished from their homeworlds arriving. They are subsequently welcomed and referred to move into peaceful towns, with a video screen placing emphasis on two children; and when a confused criminal points out that the area is already occupied, the disbelieving clerk scoffs and asks him if that's an issue. Cue the penny dropping as the criminal realizes what they're getting at. As noted by Jack, this sort of thing happens on a routine basis under Aku's rule.
  • Jack also explains to Ashi why Aku doesn't micromanage to destroy all the good in the world. He explains Aku only allows anything good, peaceful, and decent among people or nature to exist under his reign just so he can have it brutalized and destroyed later either by himself or his minions later to demoralize the population, showcasing just how utterly monstrous Aku is and how hopelessly bleak the future is with him in charge.
• The entire climax when Jack and Ashi go off to rescue the kidnapped alien children from the Dominator, a sadistic Psycho for Hire who gets his kicks from torturing and manipulating children.
  • He activates mind-control chips that turn the kids into crazy berserkers. They now look like savage monsters with red eyes who swarm Jack, biting and clawing at him. The Dominator did this to exploit Jack's reluctance to attack innocent children.
    • At one point, Jack manages to break free and duck into one of the abandoned buildings in the factory, getting a chance to catch his breath... except the door on the other side opens, and we're treated to this lovely image.
    • The Dominator later captures Ashi and traps in her in a torture machine. He creepily compliments her pretty face, before repeatedly zapping her with several thousand volts of electricity.
    • The way Dominator pushes Jack up against the wall and catches Ashi is creepy. There's no pomp and circumstance to it, he just sees them with fairly standard security systems, then silently and cautiously turns dials and flips switches with the bare minimum amount of sound needed. It all really drives home how easily someone, anyone could've caught and killed Jack by now. You get the feeling that even with his sword Jack may have had trouble with this guy due to his methods.
  • After Ashi breaks the mind control, the kids get electrified and incapacitated, which made it seem like they died. Jack believes that he's failed to save the day again and finally snaps, so he decides to willingly follow the Omen (the ominous spirit that's been haunting him) to an unknown place.
    • Unlike all those other times when the Omen has appeared, this time he speaks. And the one thing he says? "It is time." Almost like he was simply waiting for Jack to just give up his journey...
    • The lighting of the scene just makes it all the worse, it goes from an absolutely intense red and black to pale whites and acid greens that make Jack look like a corpse as the Omen arrives.
    • In addition to this, remember the previous circumstances where the Omen appeared; Jack was either feeling immense guilt, was contemplating suicide, or on the verge of dying. The implication here is that Jack now wants the Grim Reaper itself to take him away to his final fate.
    • Then you realize Ashi has suddenly been abandoned by the only person who's ever been like a father to her in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, and she starts calling out for him in desperation, much like a lost child crying out for a parent who willingly ran out on them.

XCVII

• It turns out that Scaramouche's head is still alive, and he is trying to contact Aku to tell him that Jack has lost his sword. While the whole subplot is mostly Played for Laughs due to his ineffectiveness (due to him being reduced to only his head), it's only a matter of time before he succeeds in informing Aku. Better hope Jack can find his sword in time...
• Jack later gets his sword back in the next episode. Scaramouche and Aku are in for a rude surprise... yet Scaramouche telling Aku that bit of news is still not something to be taken lightly, because even with Jack's sword back in his hand, he was still in for a much bigger nightmare...
• The reveal that Ashi, along with her sisters, were only children when they were stripped naked and forcibly dropped into a symbiotic-type substance covering their nude bodies. Topped off with the image of a young Ashi screaming◊.
  • To further expand on this, when Ashi finally decides to remove the old burnt skin and soot, she had to use rocks to scrub it off, and it still took her an entire night. It was that heavily bonded to her skin.
  • Mildly (very mildly) mitigated, if one considers that since Ashi had perfectly-healthy skin beneath the black layer, it might not have been a layer of charred skin, so much as soot and ash that had bonded with her skin. But none of that changes how agonizing the whole process was for Ashi, and how horrific her childhood was.
• When Ashi visits Da Samurai's pub, she encounters many old villains that have faced Jack in the past. One of them is a robot who wears tin armor because his body was reduced to a bundle of wires (which look a lot like nerves and blood vessels), and the armor is the only thing holding him together. Behold and sweet dreams◊. It's a very minor example compared to the other events in the episode, but still a testament on how brutal Jack can be against evildoers.
• While it's played for a quick gag, consider that Demongo has somehow returned, and he is still searching for warriors to steal their souls. The only thing that saves the bar patrons (and potentially Ashi, who would've been worthy of capture) from being enslaved by him, is because he thinks all of them are pathetic losers, so he decides to go look elsewhere.
• The dark specter that is The Omen is real. And he will kill anyone that tries to interrupt Jack's suicide attempt. When Ashi tries to interfere, he comes after her with a drawn sword, throwing her through tombstones, and growing increasingly vicious as Ashi gets closer and closer to breaking Jack away from his Despair Event Horizon.
  • Speaking of which, Jack doesn't even look up when Ashi's trying to get through to him. He just holds the short sword that the Omen gave him, holding it above his abdomen for the killing blow. That's how close he was to giving up completely.
  • The mere fact that Jack, our beloved childhood hero, the ultimate paragon, the best Friend to All Living Things, the greatest Nice Guy to have ever lived, was on the verge of committing seppuku. Not just any kind of suicide, it's seppuku (or hara-kiri): a ritual suicide that would have him disembowel his own stomach before getting beheaded by the Omen himself, while Ashi is forced to watch. The sheer horror of such a scene makes the whole fight between Ashi and the Omen that much more intense given what is at stake.

XCVIII

• The flashback to circa 50 years ago. After Aku destroyed the last time portal in front of poor Jack, Aku transformed three cute little goats that tried to help Jack into vicious giant monsters, and tricked Jack (who was blinded by his intense rage) into killing them all. What makes it even more distressing is that Jack had killed innocent life after losing control. It's no wonder that after finding their remains in the present day, Jack is still haunted by his deeds. Aku has THIS◊ facial expression just before turning the little goats into monsters. Why his irises are swirls is anybodies' guess, but it looks incredibly unsettling.
• Ashi absolutely demolishes an entire army of orc mercenaries who were going after Jack. And despite how over-the-top the whole scene is, the violence is still very graphic instead of cartoony; for instance, she spears several soldiers and some through the head. She also causes several of them to fall onto their own spears, and mangles one guy's arm so badly it splinters apart near the elbow with a gush of blood. By the end of it all, she's drenched in blood and standing among a field of broken bodies, some impaled with their own blades, some even dismembered, and those who aren't yet dead are otherwise lying and dying in complete agony. It just goes to show that despite joining the side of good, she's still very deadly and ferocious.
• During her fight with Ashi, the High Priestess comes dangerously close to killing Jack several times while the latter is meditating and thus completely defenseless. To say nothing of the fact that she is fully willing to kill her only remaining family member to do so.
  • Never mind the fact that the High Priestess is far from the Zero-Effort Boss that one might reasonably have expected her to be; from the moment she sheds her cloak, and is revealed to be wearing the same black ash coating on her skin like her daughters had, it's obvious that she's more than capable of killing Ashi and Jack, even without her bow or sacrificial dagger.
  • Ashi's ability to throw an arrow barehanded is so potent that she doesn't need a bow to launch it hard enough to maim someone. Her mother gets impaled through the waist and falls down the mountain.
• Jack's inner-self (AKA Mad Jack) freaking out during his metaphysical journey to regain the sword, and he starts actively fighting with his host. Worse, in his previous appearances, he was blue; this time, he's red. Each time he reappears, he gets even meaner and scarier.
• Inner Jack, period. As Jack begins to come to terms with the fact that his own rage and frustration were what caused him to lose his sword in the first place, Mad Jack (being the manifestation of these dark emotions) becomes increasingly unhinged, his appearance turning absolutely monstrous. To say nothing of what he says when Jack purges him from his mind:
  Mad Jack: "YOU NEED ME!!!"

XCIX

• When Jack and Ashi are visiting a Bazaar of the Bizarre, Jack eats a weird and still-living worm creature which he thinks tastes delicious... but then his face suddenly turns into a colorful fish. It creeps out Ashi so much she decides not to eat it. Even though the effect is temporary and Played for Laughs, it's still a little bit freaky.
• While inside an animal-driven transport, Jack and Ashi are surrounded by a large group of green tiger men all wearing black shirts with big red letters printed on them. As the tension builds up, it doesn't take long before Jack realizes they're yet another gang of bounty hunters, as they assemble in such a manner that their shirts spell out words like "DIE" and "DEATH", and finally stop at "DIE SAMURAI JACK" before they make their move.
• Lazarus-92, an alien monster composed of many carnivorous leech-like critters that pursues Jack and Ashi for most of the episode. No matter how many of the leeches they cut down, they never stop coming back.
  • The crashed prison spaceship containing Lazarus-92 is empty of all life except for the creature, but the presence of other cells (and scratches on the walls marking the passage of time) indicates that there were other prisoners. Did the inmates escape, or were killed by the initial crash-landing, or did Lazarus devour them all (along with all the guards and crew members)? Exactly how everyone else died is up to your imagination.
  • The Lazarus leeches can bite and infect their victims with a deadly green poison. Ashi gets bitten in the leg, and it's clear she's in intense pain. Jack has to suck and spit out the venom to save her leg, and that was only from one worm.
  • In the climax, Lazarus comes very close to killing the heroes when they both get covered head-to-toe with the worms, attempting to eat them alive. They're only saved when Jack finally manages to activate the weapon he found to kill Lazarus, which electrifies every single worm to death, while also shocking Jack and Ashi as they scream out in agony.

C

• Jack wanders off and discovers that long ago, Aku probably murdered the Guardian and destroyed the time portal that he was guarding. All that's left is a ruined obelisk and a pair of broken red shades, but no corpse can be seen. What the heck happened??
  • As shown way back in his own episode, the Guardian was so tough and badass that missiles can't even scratch him, and he was able to easily defeat Samurai Jack. Unfortunately, the Guardian seemed to have ironically fallen victim to a one-sided fight himself. Whatever Aku did to the Guardian, it could not have been pretty.
• The way that Aku suddenly appears. A Heartwarming Moment between Jack and Ashi is interrupted when we hear Aku bellowing Jack's name. They turn around and he's just there right next to them, and we're treated to a chilling image of his massive silhouette staring down at them◊.
• Scaramouche's second death is as brutal as it is hilarious. Aku angrily shoots a laser beam and blows up his head, to punish Scaramouche for (unwittingly) misinforming him about Jack's sword. If Scaramouche was human, it would be a lot worse.
• The Reveal that the Daughters of Aku are literally Aku's daughters.
  • Aku smells his own scent on Ashi, and soon realizes that she is merely a piece of himself. He explains that a long time ago, he visited the Cult of Aku's temple and dispensed a cup full of his own bodily fluids; which the High Priestess then drank down, making her pregnant with seven hybrid offspring. The origins of Ashi and her sisters sounds a hell of a lot like a Lovecraftian horror story. And just to make it worse, his visit appears to have been involuntary. The Cult of Aku raised enough power through prayer, devotion and self-sacrifice to summon Aku.
    • Now, think back to “The Aku Infection”. Jack swallowed only a small portion of Aku, and it slowly mutated him into an Aku clone. The High Priestess drank way more than that, and it didn’t mutate her like Jack. That’s only a testament to not only how psychotically devoted she was, but how she was already so corrupt that even Aku’s evil essence can’t corrupt her any further. She didn’t get any of Aku’s powers, but being endowed with his essence would certainly explain how she was able survive her pregnancy.
  • The moment Jack tries to strike down Aku after this revelation, Aku just... stands there, with the absolute most contented smile on his face. Then, as listed below, Ashi moves to intercept Jack, not even being aware of it until it's happened. As she stammers out that she didn't do this, Aku's uncharacteristic response tells the whole story: "Yes, you did." Note the tone here. There's none of Aku's usual ham whatsoever, only a chillingly calm, straightforward statement. That isn't a "proud papa" smile, that's satisfaction. In that instant, Aku knew he had finally won.
    • Exploiting his newfound "fatherhood", Aku decides to take control of Ashi, gleefully forcing her to fight Jack against her own will. He then forcefully and painfully turns Ashi into a twisted demonic version of herself; the new Ashi looks like a tall and slender black figure with no facial features, except for glowing white eyes with flaming red eyebrows. Who then begins bending around with an inhuman range of limberness and gains a black sword lit ablaze with Aku's fire and starts rapidly punching her sword into the metal of a junked robot like a needle of a sewing machine in an attempt to slay Jack, then causes a massive explosion just by flexing.
    • Ashi is fully conscious of her actions, even after her transformation into a Humanoid Abomination. If that wasn't enough, Jack accidentally cuts her demonized body, which burns like Aku's would. It causes some of the darkness covering her to recede for a brief moment, and she begs for Jack to kill her.
    • But finding himself unwilling to kill another brainwashed innocent, and someone he deeply loves no less, Jack just gives up all hope again, personally surrenders before Aku, and allows his sword to be taken away. Obviously, Aku can't use the sword on Jack, but he can still deprive him of it. In the end, Aku has won, Ashi is under his thrall as his newest and most powerful minion, and Jack is left at their mercy for whatever fate Aku has planned for him. To say that this is Jack's Darkest Hour before the final episode would be a massive understatement.
  • Aku managing to take away Ashi's physical control and bend it to evil and only allowing forces of evil to freely manipulate weapons is exactly the kind of thing in his standard repertoire of villainy. He took control away from the man who became the Rock Monster by imprisoning him, he got a banshee to control Jack's sword, Scaramouche could control a sword through magical scatting, he let the Dominator implant chips into alien children to force them to do evil, and so on.
  • There's the horrific implication that if Jack had spared Ashi's siblings, he would have had to face all seven Daughters of Aku in demonic form.
• Just let it sink in. After dozens of episodes of trying, Aku finally got that sword and defeated Jack; Aku, the embodiment of evil, had his one good day and basically won. Which would've rendered Jack's fifty-year-long struggle meaningless... It there wasn't still one more episode left in the series. Still, things aren't looking good for Jack at this point.

CI

• Aku's gleeful ranting as he boasts to the world that he has captured Jack. Yet another reminder that this silly jokester is still a monstrous dictator.
  Aku: To all those who dare oppose me, YOUR HERO IS DEAD! YOUR HOPE IS DEAD! I AM THE ONE TRUE MASTER! Let this be a lesson to all! TIME TO DIE, SAMURAI JACK!
  • Not only that, but he uses the intro from the past four seasons as a prelude. That means the intro we used to hear was a propaganda piece by Aku all along. And just to twist the knife deeper, he tacks "NOT!!" onto the end of the intro.
• Aku planning to have Ashi, who is suffering from And I Must Scream under his control, kill Jack, the man she loves, while the whole world watches.
  • Heck, when Ashi is about to kill Jack is perhaps the most tense and distressing scene of the entire series, because we are about to witness the murder of our beloved hero while Aku shows pure excitement and joy in his face... until the awesome rescue!
• The way that Ashi assails Jack when he tries to recover his sword; she begins swiping at him with deformed arms like a distorted mantis before scuttling towards him like a blade-legged spider. She also causes another fiery explosion just by flexing again. It's even worse knowing that there's a young girl trapped somewhere in that black mass, being forced to contort herself in ways her body was never meant to bend...
  • We can see the last remnants of Ashi almost drowning in Aku's overwhelming darkness. The imagery is very reminiscent of what had happened to Jack himself in The Aku Infection, except somehow even worse.
• Aku corrupting several of Jack's old allies just by touching them. And how Aku goes about corrupting them:
  Aku: (cackling) You're nothing but insignificant insects to Aku! (raises his hand) And insects get... (slams his hand down on a group of archers mounted on Woolies) SQUASHED...! And... (lifts his hand up to reveal all of the beings he crushed have been turned into miniature versions of himself wielding pitchforks) EXTERMINATED!
• Aku's quiet, despair-laden reaction after Ashi invokes her 11th-Hour Superpower to help Jack return to the past and finally destroy him for good is rather chilling, even if he fully deserves it. Just imagine how you would feel if you realised you are going to die very shortly and can't do anything about it, being left only with a horrific, sad realisation; that even after at least fifty years of trying to stop your eventual killer from doing so and undoing all your successes with everything you had, you completely and utterly failed.
  Aku: (quietly, in absolute horror) ...oh, no...
  • Further adding to this is how Aku doesn't just die, Jack completely erases him from existence.
• Ashi fading away, leaving only her bridal gown, because Aku's demise means he never gave the High Priestess the essence she used to make her.
  • Ashi lives on only in Jack's memory — which is exactly what he feared might happen.

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