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This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

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Nightmare Fuel / South Park

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Holy shit, it's real!
South Park has been running since 1997 and is still going, so it's bound to have a good deal of disturbing moments amidst all the Black Comedy. In America, it's rated TV-MA and makes it explicitly clear with every episode that it shouldn't be watched by anyone, some of these scenes make it easy to understand why.

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    General 
  • Cartman is generally frightening when he shows his psychotic and extremely sadistic behavior.
    • In perhaps the most infamous example, "Scott Tenorman Must Die" (season 5), Cartman ground up a kid's parents into chili and tricked the kid into eating them. And, to top it off, sang "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah! I made you eat your parents!"
      • That's not to mention that Scott liked the chili before finding out what was in it.
      • "Do you like it? Do you like it, Scott? I call it: Mr. and Mrs. Tenorman chili." The look on his face seals the deal.
      "Let me taste your tears Scott. Mmmm, your tears are so yummy and sweet!"
    • A lot of Cartman's angry expressions throughout this episode are a little unsettling.
    • This is more of a Fridge Horror, but certainly qualifies. While Cartman almost always proves somewhat immoral and sociopathic behavior, is somewhat frightening if you think how he will be when he grows up and becomes an adult. If he has made one of the most cruelest acts in a TV series ever done in "Scott Tenorman Must Die", imagine how inhumane he could be as an adult. Though if you've seen the end of "My Future Self 'n Me", you'll know you have nothing to worry about.
    • In "T.M.I." (season 15), in response to an anger management counselor calling him "fat", he whips out his phone, seemingly nonplussed by the insults.
      Counselor: Huh. Well, I just don't see it, Ms. Cartman. Your son doesn't seem to be triggered by anger at all. In fact, I'd say he's one of the more even-tempered children I've ever seen.
      • The counselor is then interrupted by a phone call from his wife, which is then cut off when she shoots herself due to a "fourteen year old girl" and "an official police record", brought to light by a "Mitch Connor". After this, the counselor stares at Cartman in dawning realization, and Cartman just fixes him with a Death Glare and says "I'm not fat. I'm big-boned."
    • In the episode "Tonsil Trouble", one of Eric's most evil deeds shocked audiences around the world. (Read below in Season 12 section)
    • Several episodes have shown how easy it is for someone like Cartman to legally purchase a gun.
    • Cartman has been shown numerous times being close to Nay-theistic, yet goes full throttle offending characters with religious views. It even gets worse when he outright tries to curse God out for not getting his abominable human-centipede only for the Almighty to put him in the hospital. Some theories goes as far as to suggest Cartman may have Satan's literal soul in him and is unleashing his evil on the world!
  • The early seasons used to have ear-splitting synth music play at dramatic moments.
  • Stephen and Linda Stotch (Butters' parents) themselves are pretty scary now that you think about it. On the outside, they look like your average, normal, everyday citizens but on the inside, they're abusive parents who physically and emotionally abuse him. There's a reason why lots of fans don't like them.
  • Ms. Crabtree's character design and abrasive personality sometimes crossed into this territory for the first three seasons, to the point it even, in-universe, scared the living bejesus out of characters like Mr. Garrison, Chef and even Cartman!
  • Kenny's deaths. It may be played as a running gag, but there are quite a few of them not for the faint of heart. "Mysterion Rises" makes it even worse combining Nightmare Fuel with Fridge Horror, Kenny states that he is unable to die:
    Kenny: I can't die. I've experienced death countless times. Sometimes, I see a bright light. Sometimes, I see Heaven or Hell. But eventually, no matter what, I wake up in my bed wearing my same old clothes. The worst part? No one even remembers me dying. I go to school the next day and everyone is just like "Oh, hey Kenny," even if they had seen me get decapitated with their own eyes.
    • Just to give you an idea, some of his deaths include Being torn apart and decapitated ("Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride"), Impaled through the Skull ("Weight Gain 4000", "Cow Days", "The Gauntlet", "The Biggest Douche in the Universe"), Being run over ("Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut", Chef Aid: Behind the Menu), Beaten to death ("Hooked on Monkey Phonics"), Drowning ("The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000", "Super Best Friends") vomiting up his organs ("It Hits the Fan") disembowling himself ("A Mother's Courage") being shot to death ("Merry Christmas Charlie Manson") and even DROWNING IN URINE! ("Pee").
  • Much of Shelly's over-the-top abuse of Stan, like electrocuting him with a TV, running over his face with a lawnmower, burning and dousing him (though that was a Deleted Scene), and crushing him (and Kyle) with a piano. DO NOT piss her off.
    • Also, when Cartman once badmouthed her behind her back, he reacted with absolute fear when she addressed him. Not to mention she's based on Trey's sister (though the worst she did to Trey was push him down some stairs, lock him out of the house, and punch him in the face. Compared to what Shelly does to Stan on the show, it's nothing).
  • The Woodland Christmas Critters?
    Jason: Man, I do not want to meet the kid that dreamt those things up. [jump cuts to Cartman]
  • Tweek Tweak has on multiple occasions offered other kids coffee as a host, which they tend to refuse. You know what's in his coffee? Meth. It's not entirely clear whether Tweak has no idea or thinks what's sprinkled in there is a harmless special ingredient, but can you imagine kids drinking that coffee? You know, kids who haven't built up Tweek's special tolerance.
  • The original version of the theme song that aired during the initial airing of the pilot. The music just sounds wrong when slowed down that much. Not helping is the boys' singing, which is completely void of emotion, coupled with the trippy visual of Primus walking slowly through the town as he sings with an incredibly unnatural-looking walk cycle and his long bendy legs. Long-time fans may recognize that down-tempo version as being the ending credits theme, but the "singing" does make it sound a lot creepier.
  • The Halloween intro used in early seasons. From the scream that kicks the intro off to things such as the undead Les Claypool, just... brrr...

    Episodes 
Season 1
  • In "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", the "dream" that Cartman insists he had about aliens probing him doubles as an in-universe example.
  • The Grim Reaper chasing the boys in "Death".
  • "Pinkeye":
    • Whenever Kenny attacks someone, for a split second you can see his teeth. It's jarring as hell.
    • When zombie Clyde attacks Bebe while she's bobbing for apples, almost drowning her while he does so. It's disturbingly realistic.
    • When the boys are cornered by the zombies, Chef is revealed to have been turned offscreen.
    • In the end when all the zombies revert back to their normal selves, we see a TON of dead bodies scattered around the field.
  • Originally, "Starvin' Marvin" was going to end with Sally Struthers being killed and the Ethiopians feasting on the fat from her belly for Thanksgiving. However, Comedy Central Could not allow the episode to end in such a way. So it ended with Struthers being tied up as the Ethiopians feasted on Dr. Mephesto's cloned turkeys.
  • In "Tom's Rhinoplasty", Wendy gets poor Ms. Ellen captured by Iraqis and sends her into the goddamn sun at the very end, all because Stan developed a crush on her. Even worse, Ms. Ellen just wanted to be a good teacher to the kids, and shows absolutely no ill will towards Wendy.
    Wendy: Bye-bye, Miss Ellen.
    Kyle: Wendy, you didn't!
    Wendy: I warned her. (her eyes change) Don't. Fuck. With Wendy. TESTABURGER!
    Kyle: (Shown to be shocked)
    • Wendy is shown to be extremely obsessive over her keeping her relationship with Stan intact in this episode. Sure, she's just a kid, but what's horrifying about it is that she copes through it by antagonizing the people around her, to the point of snapping and orchestrating their murders if she feels like it.
    • Take this part where she threatens Ms. Ellen not to get close to Stan.
      Wendy: Can I tell you something, Ms. Ellen?
      Ms. Ellen: Of course, Wendy!
      Wendy: (Stands on her chair and points at Ms. Ellen) Don't FUCK with me.
      Ms. Ellen: What?
      Wendy: You heard me. Stay away from my man, BITCH! Or I'll whoop your sorry ho ass back to last year!

Season 2

  • Seeing the remains of the people everybody was forced to kill and eat in "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" could definitely give some kids nightmares.
  • Stan's hellish vision of Kyle's parents in "Ike's Wee Wee".
    "Let us cut off your pee-pee, Stan!"
  • "City on the Edge of Forever", in which the children are trapped on a school bus teetering off the edge of a cliff. One of the students, an actual Red Shirt, decided to take his chances outside even after Mrs. Crabtree said there was a big, black, monster outside. He seems alright at first but then the monster attacks, grabbing him and pulling him into a tree. As the students watch on to learn of his fate, WHAM! His eviscerated body hits the window. The children think they're safe until the monster rips the top off the bus and steals Kenny. Yes, it was All Just a Dream from Stan but the fact remains. That monster was something that comes from the bowels of your worst nightmares◊.
    • The whole sequence turns out to just be a dream that Cartman had, then he and his mother start eating beetles and savouring the flavour. It's not until the reveal that this was all part of Stan's dream that we get any confirmation that the Cartmans aren't whatever your imagination is heading towards.
  • Mr Garrison's Sanity Slippage in "Summer Sucks". As he's watching Lambchop's Play-Along, Mr Garrison fantasizes about burning lambchop on a barbecue, which causes her to come to life and cry out in pain. Topping it all off is that Mr Garrison sports a wide, dreamy smile on his face just like Stan does when he's gazing at Wendy.
  • Seeing the remains of Tom and Mary at the end of "Cow Days". Granted, they were just extras with little significance to the episode's plot. But still...
  • Sharon's Sanity Slippage and the satanic pets in "Spookyfish".
    • The fish itself. It doesn't swim, just stays in one spot staring at Stan with a creepy grin, sends creepy messages to Stan and can kill people (particularly Flo Kimble and, of course, Kenny) in gruesome ways. Then again, the pet shop was built on top of an ancient burial ground where the corpses were violated, so what did you expect?
    • Evil!Stan and Evil!Kyle coming to take the oddly benevolent Evil!Cartman home. Later, it shows that they got the wrong Cartman.
    • It's played for laughs, but the Barbra Streisand jumpscare where her face fills up the screen while a scream plays can make a few viewers startled.

Season 3

  • The scene in "Rainforest Schmainforest" where the tour guide is killed by a snake, then swallowed whole and crapped out seconds later.
  • Veronica's transformation in "Succubus". It comes out of nowhere and causes the entire plot to turn from a "bros before hoes" storyline into a quest to save Chef's very soul. It is quite possible that Archie Comics characters Jughead and Veronica are the inspiration for this episode.
  • Mr Adler's memories in "Tweek vs Craig" are a little unnerving just because of how unnaturally happy they are, which makes the backlash where his fiancee dies a violent death all the more shocking. It goes up an extra level in terror when Mr Adler imagines his fiancee coming back from the dead at her own funeral.
  • "Sexual Harassment Panda":
    • Kenny's death involves him holding a magnet which is pulled into a fan that then chops him into many bloody pieces.
    • Mr. Morse, the actor who plays Sexual Harassment Panda, is so deeply into character that he barely responds to his real name and thinks he IS a panda. While Tuong Lu Kim aka Dr. Janus is played for laughs, this situation comes off as a little disturbing.

Season 4

  • "Cartman Joins NAMBLA": Cartman decides he wants to find some more mature friends and joins a chat room where everyone is an adult male. Yep, Cartman joins a chat room full of pedophiles. Worse, Stan and Kyle decide they want to appear more mature and also become friends with a couple of creeps. At the meeting of organisation that they're all members of, it's revealed that Butters has also been groomed into being "friends" with one of the pedos. After that we learn that even the very handicapped Timmy was preyed upon. Not only that but when his groomer describes him as being "sexy, sassy and full of spunk" Timmy actually shows discomfort. This is the first time Timmy showed any sign of self awareness so you can really tell what a creepy situation it is.
  • "Cherokee Hair Tampons" has Kyle nearly dying from kidney disease. If you didn't already think Sheila was a bad mother, you will now. Also there’s the fact that Cartman was about to have his kidney sawed out in his sleep.
  • In "Helen Keller: The Musical", Cartman's blindfolded and has headphones put over his ears in an attempt to understand how it'd feel to be Helen Keller to get inspiration for lyrics, every time he closes his eyes, he sees horrible stuff, like a body being opened up, a rotting corpse, war, an atomic bomb going off, a rat eating a dead rat, a man on fire, a mime and other stuff. Cartman mentions that he sees that everytime he closes his eyes. What makes this scene even worse is the fact that all the aforementioned footage is shown in live-action.
  • In "Fat Camp", the manatee dissection scene. They use actual photographs of various muscular structures. Then the ridiculous amount of peer pressure Kenny receives regarding the manatee spleen. First, Stan and Kyle make him dissect, then the other kids get him $41 to eat manatee spleen, then an additional $19 to eat the regurgitated spleen. This leads to Kenny's rise to fame as a gross out stuntman. The whole thing is really frightening because it all started with his friends egging him on.
  • "The Wacky Molestation Adventure" shows the dystopia that the town will descend into when the kids get rid of all the adults within a matter of days. As the town's adult population are shown to be varying degrees of incompetent, it's pretty disturbing when you realize the future of their town depends entirely on them being responsible role models.
    • Kenny's corpse is surprisingly gruesome looking for Early South Park.

Season 5

  • People vomiting up their intestines in "It Hits the Fan".
    • The entire episode can be seen as a message to not blindly follow Television. Practically all of New York is in Times Square to watch the HBC series "Cop Drama", which kicks off the entire mess in the episode. In addition, the network has a night of a million shits which is saying the "S" word live a million times. A lizard-like monster attacks everybody attending the live performance of The Drew Carey Show.
  • The pedophilic scout master replacing Big Gay Al in "Cripple Fight" is played surprisingly seriously in general, but this moment when the boys try to tell Big Gay Al himself about it is particularly dark:
    Cartman: But you have to come back! We hate our new scoutmaster!
    Big Gay Al: Really? Why?
    Butters: We can't tell you.
    Big Gay Al: Why not?
    Butters: (mimes beating someone)
    (Big Gay Al is visibly horrified)
  • When Butters' mom learns about her husband’s horrible secret in "Butters' Very Own Episode", she starts to paint the walls while slowly losing sanity. She even goes far to try to kill her own son! She does not even get arrested!
  • Butters' parents confession, and the rant that Butters' dad goes on is really disturbing, Gary Condit's deranged grin doesn't help matters.

Season 6

  • The ending of "Asspen" is also a little... troubling, to say the least. To wit, the scene where the nerdy girl lifts up her shirt to reveal two grotesque creatures in place of her breasts, and it appears out of nowhere as well without any indication that it's going to happen.
  • In "Freak Strike", when the freaks tell Butters about the time they killed a freak impostor ("Lobster-boy", who actually was just a normal lobster) by boiling him alive, and we see Butter's imagination of the lobster cooking in a scalding metal cauldron, complete with eerie piano music and the sound of the lobster crying in slow agony.

Season 7

  • In "Lil' Crime Stoppers", the boys continually want to solve crimes in South Park. Despite the simplistic nature of the incidents (stolen pie, lost doll) they essentially screw Occam's Razor and come up with insanely brutal motives. Some of the details include having a older gentleman beat his wife with a hammer, decapitate her and dissolve her body in acid. Another has a pedophile looking into a girl's room and cutting himself in pleasure.
  • In "Casa Bonita", upon hearing that Kyle is going to Casa Bonita for his birthday, Cartman stops at nothing in an attempt to go there once he hears that he can go if Butters can't, so Cartman lies to Butters about a meteor crashing into South Park, traps him inside a bomb shelter for three days, sending the town into a search for him and upon hearing that the police are going to check bomb shelters, moves him into an abandoned gas station and traps him inside a fridge... only for it to get sent to the dump and he gets convinced that the meteor really did hit it. If not for a worker at the dump finding him, he would have likely remained missing for much longer than a week.

Season 8

  • "Good Times With Weapons": The basic plot is that the boys get martial arts weapons and pretend they're ninjas, compete with an Art Shift to that of an average anime. Butters wants to play with them but the boys refuse him, so he later encounters them as Professor Chaos and fight him in a typical anime fight sequence... only for Kenny to throw a shuriken directly into his left eye, revealing his true self and ending the sequence. His anguished screams and how the boys cover the scene up in an attempt to heal him don't help matters much. Talk about the Designated Monkey.
    • The worst of it probably comes close to the end with him (still dressed in the slap-dash dog disguise, covered in not only his own blood, but dirt and his own tears) finally making it to the veterinarian hospital. He's so traumatized that he continues to pretend to be a dog, pitifully whimpering out "woof woof", and all the hospital staff looks horrified. Right up until they deliver the Wham Line that they would help him, but since he's a "dog", he needs a vet.
    • "We can't do anything to help him, we'll have to put him down. [...] Let's just murder one of these other dogs." This line was said by the town veterinarian.
  • In "Up the Down Steroid", Jimmy takes illegal steroids he acquired from Nathan to cheat at the Special Olympics. Eventually, his roid rage gets the best of him and he threatens and attacks his girlfriend with his crutches when she threatens to leave him. Jimmy's mother tries to intervene, but Jimmy beats her as well. He then puts a dent in a wall with his crutches before breaking down in a fit of agony. The effects of drug abuse could not have be made any more clearer in this episode.
  • In "The Passion of the Jew", Kyle has an EXTREMELY DETAILED nightmare where Jesus is crucified. Kyle is the one poking Christ with the spear at the end of the nightmare. Eeesh.
  • The scene in "You Got F'd in the A" where a traumatized Butters is looking through the box containing his old tap-shoes. The music starts off sad and sentimental as he looks through the articles about his winning performances, then turns darker and creepier, as do the articles. Later, we get a flashback to the trauma: during his last performance, his tap shoe flew off and knocked down one of the stage lights, setting off a small-scale massacre as people were cut in half by wires, crushed by falling objects and trampling one another. Oh, and Butters gets splattered with their blood as he watches in horror. Only South Park could turn a tap-dance competition into that. And when Stan and some other kids finally convince Butters to tap dance again as part of a dance squad competing against a rival squad, he ends his performance by having his shoe fly off again, disconnecting some stage lighting and killing the opposing squad. Which makes the South Park squad the winners by default. Which results in Butters yelling out in horror as his inadvertent killing of six people is celebrated.
  • "The Jeffersons" has a creepy atmosphere, but the worst part has to be the end when parts of Michael Jackson's face fell off, starting with the nose. Special props go to the impromptu sleepover at Stan's place, complete with his nightmare about Michael Jackson and Cartman starting to make out.
    • It's also creepy when Michael’s face is completely mangled, giving him a zombie-like look, and he comes into the dark room wearing his "Thriller" outfit, scaring the kids. He then picks up Kenny (disguised as Michael's son Blanket) and hurls him into the ceiling, killing him. Imagine if that were the real Blanket, and it gets worse.
  • "Pre-School":
    • First, we have the horrible fate of Miss Claridge the preschool teacher. Burned nearly beyond recognition, confined to an electric wheelchair, and her only method of communication is beeping once for "yes" and twice for "no".
    • Then we have Trent Boyett, who was wrongly imprisoned because he was believed to be responsible for Miss Claridge's fate (in reality, the four main characters talked him into it). In his crazy drive for revenge, he hospitalizes Butters and a whole gang of older boys with a series of stereotypical bully attack moves (wedgies, Indian burns, noogies, etc.), but also a lot of nastier ones, like one which involves "tabasco sauce, a telephone pole, and the anus."
    • The boys' complete apathy when it comes to the situation, both Miss Claridge's fate and Trent's wrongful imprisonment. They do try to tell Miss Claridge that they caused the accident, but only because Stan's older sister made them do it in exchange for protection from Trent.
  • "Woodland Critter Christmas": Cartman tells a story about Stan meeting some cute-looking forest animals. Then Stan is tricked into killing a mother mountain lion, the animals turn out to be devil worshippers, and Rabbity is killed for a blood orgy. Santa defeats the animals by killing the Antichrist, and Kyle dies of AIDS two weeks later.

Season 9

  • "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina". All of it, including the opening scene, Gerald as a dolphin (understandably upsetting Ike), and Kyle breaking his legs in his tall black kid body. Said opening is about Mr. Garrison getting a sex change, cutting between Mr. Garrison with live-action footage of a real sex-change operation!
  • In "Ginger Kids", when the ginger kids swarmed and kidnapped all the non-ginger kids, it was pretty horrific. That and Cartman came really close to succeeding in his plan to wipe out all non-gingers.

Season 10

Season 11

  • In "Cartman Sucks", the boys committing suicide in the conversion therapy camp already falls under this, but the sheer lack of care that the counselors express when they do happen is even worse. Even when one kid blows his brains out in an assembly, the counselors just stand there, straight-faced.
  • Almost all the lice getting wiped out in "Lice Capades".
  • In "Night of the Living Homeless", a parody of the Zombie Apocalypse where the large group of homeless that overruns the town are the "zombies". And both are in the same few minutes. When the kids traveled to Evergreen, Colorado, the last place these "zombies" were, there's only 3 guys left in the entire town, carrying shotguns and wearing filthy, plant-covered clothing. They tell the kids of how the homeless flooded their town, moaning about "change" (as opposed to brains). Eventually though, the homeless got enough to rent apartments... soon, it was impossible to tell who was "homeless" and who was not. The Wall Banger, of course, was that if you could rent an apartment, you weren't homeless anymore. But everyone treated it like it was an actual, incurable affliction, like most zombies are. So, the "leader" of the three guys "found out" that his wife was "homeless". He was shocked at that "information" and wondered how could he have possibly missed this after 20 years of marriage! So, he had to kill her...with a flamethrower. The Nightmare Fuel comes in when the rubble behind the "survivors" starts shaking... and this gray, vaguely-human shaped thing rises from the rubble, moaning. That's his wife, still somehow alive despite having maybe about 75% of her flesh burned away. After some rather useless dialogue "You nurned ny ips ough! (You burned my lips off), she shoots all three dead, after sustaining several bullet wounds herself.
    • A scientist tries to shoot himself to death...and fails. He then proceeds to keep shooting himself all over his body, with many shots to the head and heart and still doesn't die. When he finally does, there's a huge puddle of blood underneath him. Just think about living in all of that pain. It makes you shudder, doesn't it?
  • The sheer amount of Gorn throughout the "Imagination Land Trilogy" puts the rest of the series to shame. The fact that most of the victims of such brutality are iconic and beloved fictional characters makes it even worse. The ones that truly stand out are the Raggedy Ann and Andy scene with Andy graphically bloodied amd dying of his wounds following the terrorist attack (who are depicted as real human beings here rather than being stuffed dolls as they are in canon), the McDonald's mascot losing an arm, the deaths of Dorothy and Toto in the uncensored version (making it harder to watch is that they look very similar to their iconic film counterparts), the brutal death and beheading of a Care Bear, and the brutal torture and death of Strawberry Shortcake and then there's the Final Battle that ultimately ends with all of Imaginationland getting nuked out of existence. Thankfully it ends on a happy note with Butters reviving everyone, but sheesh.
Season 12
  • In the episode "Tonsil Trouble, Cartman does the most horrific thing he's done throughout the series since the Scott Tenorman revenge. After Cartman accidentally contracts HIV, Kyle finds it absolutely hilarious, because of how well it's deserved for a HUGE and evil asshole like him. Cartman is so psychotically irate about this, he sneaks into Kyle's room while he's asleep, and with a needle, he FEEDS KYLE HIS HIV-INFECTED BLOOD. The fact that Cartman would deliberately infect somebody with an INCURABLE disease that would eventually lead to a slow, agonizing death just because someone laughed at him, shows how much of a public menace to society he is.
  • "Britney's New Look", also known as the entire episode devoted to Britney Spears, doing a graphically-animated impression of Mike the Headless Chicken. Very little humor, lots of gore and lots of biting, truly unsettling social commentary. For those too afraid to tune in, Britney shoots herself in the face after being tricked into thinking the South Park kids are her sons, but fails to kill herself and is left instead without most of the top of her head. She appears to be unaware of anything that's going on, but is still paraded around on stage as-is to do a concert. Being as in her current state all she's capable of doing is making a horrible gurgling sound she proceeds to get shot down by fans and media, and a frighteningly literal comparison is drawn between human sacrifice and the way society sets up celebrities, then viciously tears them down. The entire episode is both nausea fuel and nightmare fuel.
  • The scenes in "The China Probrem" with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raping Indiana Jones. Those scenes were supposed to be played for laughs, but are nothing short of disturbing.
  • Wendy giving Cartman a brutal but extremely well-deserved beatdown in "Breast Cancer Show Ever".
    • This made so much worse in the aftermath when Cartman deliberately takes the jeers of everyone who watched him get his ass kicked as praise. Because in his mind? Only true friends would tell you they never cared about you…
  • Michael Chertoff in "Pandemic" revealing his true nature by attacking Chief Aide Davis with a long, alien tongue, impaling his eye causing him to convulse until he eventually dies. And while The Reveal that Chertoff is a "guinea pirate" isn't scary (since he's still a live action guinea pig in a costume), the transformation into said state looks legitimately monstrous.

Season 13

  • The deleted ending of "Fishsticks" is rather disturbing. In it, the Coast Guard finds Kanye West's body in the water, apparently drowned. He has a rather disturbing expression on his face.
  • Gordon Stoltski's horrifying murder over the school intercom at the start of "Dances With Smurfs". We get to hear an armed psychopath burst in, shoot a faculty member, then kill Gordon while forcing the confused and terrified 8-year-old boy to fellate the barrel of his gun. That the psycho apparently confused the kid with a similarly-named trucker who cheated on his wife strongly suggests the whole thing was Played for Laughs, which makes it so very much worse.
    • And then, there's the horrific slaughter of the beloved titular Smurfs that ends the episode by Cartman's tractor steamroller that crushes their village and wipes them all out (making matters worse, the deaths were directly caused by Cartman betraying them himself to frame Wendy all to prove a point that she wasn't fit to be the student body president), not even Baby Smurf and Smurfette were spared of the carnage. In fact, Smurfette's death was arguably the worst, seeing as we graphically see her head and skull pop like a gory balloon as she's being crushed to death by the steamroller. It makes the infamous UNICEF ad featuring the Smurfs look tamer by comparison.
  • Doubles as Nausea Fuel: The idea of drowning in urine in "Pee".

Season 14

  • In "201", Scott Tenorman's return as a Joker-like supervillain gets pretty unsettling. There's something about the bags under his eyes and slightly messed-up state of his hair that goes into Uncanny Valley territory. He also takes a little too much pleasure getting right up in Cartman's face, which even Cartman seems creeped out by throughout that scene.
    • Also, what's in the chili he was going to feed Cartman? Given what's revealed immediately beforehand, it might be the same chili Cartman gave him back then!
    • Cartman actually seems scared when he sees that his mother's been captured by Scott. For all we know, had he not been interrupted, Scott might have tried to kill her in front of Cartman to make things perfectly even.
  • In "Insheeption", Stan, a sheep hearder and Mackey go into Mackey's therapy dream to reveal a field trip where Mackey runs from bullies, hides in a building and is molested by Woodsy Owl only to reveal Freddy Krueger piercing Woodsy Owl's chest open and Mackey waking up so Stan doesn't want his therapy and Kyle asks how he knows that wasn't his.

Season 15

  • Kyle being hunted down by Apple so they can make him part of the "HUMANCENTiPAD" in HumancentiPad.
    • The sight of Kyle being the middle of a human sandwich is jarring at best.
  • In "City Sushi", Dr. Janus and his multiple personalities were quite scary. Mainly the part parodying Paranormal Activity where he comes into Butters' bedroom, stares at him for three hours, urinates on his face, then beats him and leaves before he wakes up.
  • All the "shit" imagery in "You're Getting Old". Also counts as serious Nausea Fuel.
  • The end scene of "1%" with Polly Prissy Pants. Cartman is more fucked up than anyone thought.
  • In "The Poor Kid", the police remark on how it's supposed to feel safe. However when they show the soft room surrounded by pictures of creepy looking clowns...

Season 16

Season 17

  • "Let Go, Let Gov". Where the NSA gets all their information from: hooking up Santa Claus to a machine. And nobody cares!
  • Aaron Hagen's dead mother being wheeled out by paramedics in "Informative Murder Porn". Her face is horribly disfigured with a knife being lodged in her eye.
  • The Black Friday shoppers brutally killing each other in "Titties and Dragons". What makes it worse is that those scenes are mixed in with actual Black Friday footage to make you realize what's happening in the cartoon is no different from real life.
    • Towards the finale, when the kids go through the mall to buy a video game console, they go through a literal lake of blood to get there. The carnage was caused by the usual Black Friday human greed chaos.

Season 18

Season 19

  • PC Principal in "Stunning and Brave". The trait of Comically Missing the Point hasn't been this violent in a long time, as Cartman found out the hard way.
    • Hell, Cartman getting beaten to a bloody pulp by PC Principal (as opposed to kids beating his ass) is cringe-inducing, especially as it is tense as fuck! He probably didn't know about the correct term of "spokesperson" (as well as the fact that using words such as "capiche" implies that he associates it with the Italian community, which is un-PC), which explains why it is so hard to watch, despite being a Jerkass himself.
    • Cartman plans to frame PC Principal for pedophilia by showing him Butters' underwear to prove his point, and then gives it a loud sniff, stating that is indeed Butters' underwear. Used, that is. As if he couldn't get any more disturbing.
    • And to top it off, the kids watch the beatdown from the bathroom window.
  • From "Where My Country Gone?", we have Mr. Garrison raping a Donald Trump Expy. It's pretty funny in theory, but the actual scene looks like something from a horror film. Given that it came out immediately after the episode that lampooned Political Correctness, it's possible that Matt and Trey were trying to mentally prepare their audience for this.
    • Before that, we had a scene showing that PC Principal practically has Mr. Mackey as his slave (woo-woo!) servant. Him shuddering in fear in PC Principal's presence is what really sells it.
  • The realization that the events from "The City Part of Town" have been slowly killing South Park as we know it, as overpricing is driving the locals closer and closer to bankruptcy. This is all a conspiracy by the ads so that they can wipe out the human race.
  • "Safe Space": Butters is tasked with removing any negative comments from the online profiles of Cartman, Steven Seagal, Demi Lovato and several other people who are sensitive about their bodies. The overwhelming negativity he has to endure breaks his mind and causes him to run through the school completely naked before leaping out of a window and badly injuring himself. It's even more horrifying when you take a look back at the beggining of the episode in which Butters says that should PC Princpal give him detention, his Abusive Parents will ground him at home. Take into account that he only jumps out of the window after Kyle tells him to simply take the detention. Yes, he fears getting grounded that much that he'd rather die!
  • "Tweek x Craig": This episode shows why you should never put 10 year-old boys in yaoi.
  • "Naughty Ninjas": The police are called in to the school, bringing with them near military-grade equipment. You'd expect there to be a school shooter, instead it's just PC Principal trying to get Leslie to shut up again. The guy's gone from being a bully to a full-blown fascist.
    • The town's attitude towards the cops starts out moderate, then swings from one extreme ("Fuck the Police" mentality) to another (creating a police state).
    • Barbrady shooting David, one of the kids. Luckily, David didn't die.
    • And at the end, we find out that PC and Leslie might be part of a greater conspiracy.
  • "Sponsored Content": A GEICO executive comes over to Jimmy's house and offers $28 million for an ad placement in the school newspaper, which Jimmy refused. After some failed word manipulation, he pulls out a gun and explains about the adaptability of Ads. Had Barbrady not have been there, Jimmy might have been shot.
  • "Truth and Advertising": Leslie and Jimmy continue to converse and Jimmy is slowly beginning to fall for her wiles. The boys similarly get sidetracked from the big conspiracy by random ads which slowly turn Stan and Kyle against each other. Then Leslie takes advantage of Kyle. No, not in the way we associate that term with.
    • Right before Stan and Kyle fight, Kyle compares Stan to Cartman, Stan gets angry and shouts a very Cartman-esque "FUCK YOU, KYLE!". It’s friggin’ disturbing. Props to Trey Parker for mixing his Stan and Cartman voice in that moment while sounding frighteningly livid.
  • "PC Principal Final Justice": Remember all those times PC Principal beat up one of his students? It turns out he's been holding back.
    "Remember: If the safety's on, you're as good as gone!"

Season 20

  • "Member Berries" has the sentient berries, who constantly want you to remember what was in the past. Randy is freaked out however, and stops eating them .
    • SkankHunt42, a troll who terrorizes women. Nobody knows who this person is, yet the other boys think Cartman is the one behind this.
    • It turns out that Gerald, of all people, is skankhunt42.
  • "Skank Hunt":
    • What the boys are going to do with Cartman. The way they're saying it, it's possible that they're going to murder him. They don't really do it, they just destroy his electronics.
    • But, however, the above manages to be scary as Cartman is screaming throughout the aforementioned scene. It's made even worse in the teaser, in which there's absolutely no implication of what's happening. It cuts off when Cartman discovers the hole and shovel next to the cabin and we can only hear him screaming bloody murder.
  • "The Damned":
  • "Wieners Out":
  • "Douche and a Danish":
    • After Mr. Garrison manages to torpedo his own campaign, he's chased throughout town by his aides and supporters. Garrison tries going back to teaching, but his aides find him and drag him out as he screams "They're going to kill me!".
  • "Fort Collins":
    • The consequences of everyone's internet history being revealed turns the quiet town of Fort Collins into a firey hellhole filled with nothing but chaos, and the local troll is burned alive by one of his victims for insulting his daughter.
      • In the next episode, we see the aftermath. Fort Collins has turned into a hell-hole where people are afraid to go outside. The area has been quarantined off and anyone brave enough to try and escape is shot on sight. But that's not the worst of it. The real nightmare fuel is the knowledge that this is what TrollTrace has planned for the whole world!
    • Gerald's reaction to the chaos caused by TrollTrace: what he thought was just a harmless internet hobby he did for a few laughs could wind up endangering not only himself, but his family as well.
  • "Oh, Jeez":
    • The Member Berries reach a new level of terror. After being ingested by Caitlyn Jenner, they use her as a plague dog to brainwash anyone who has stopped eating them by vomiting in their faces. The way her jaw dislocates is pretty unsettling.
      • They infect Randy, who in turn infects Sharon and Shelly.
      • Even worse? This was never touched upon again!.
  • "Members Only":
    • The Member Berries swarm the White House!
    • Lennart Bedrager reveals that he's fully aware of the consequences of TrollTrace and that the incoming holocaust will be used to establish a new world order.
    • When Mr. Garrison visits PC Principal and reminds him that it was being called an intolerant asshole by the new principal that spurred him to become president. Now he's back and he's going to abuse his authority by forcing all the townspeople to suck his dick, starting with PC Principal.
  • "Not Funny":
    • Bedrager intends to cause a world war for a simple laugh. He's not doing this to avenge anyone, and the calm with which he tells Gerald this is... unsettling.
    • Sheila spends the entire episode steadily going more and more ape-shit toward her sons, to the point of threatening to kill them at the end when they trap her in the kitchen cupboard.
  • "The End of Serialization As We Know It":
    • Trolltrace is online. Not only that, but it was online for at least fifteen minutes. Given what happened to Fort Collins, who knows how much damage has already been done?
    • Sheila is pissed off after escaping from the pantry. And not only that, she acts like a wild animal, screaming and growling, and scaring Ike.
    • Cartman's visions of Mars, which have been progressing throughout the season, finally culminate with men being reduced to semen-and-joke-producing farm animals.
  • By the end, Gerald's trolling has gotten multiple people killed in two separate countries and ruined lives, including nearly causing the death of his sons. While faking an epiphany at gunpoint, Gerald reveals that he feels no remorse from his actions because he still thinks it was all pretty funny, and then goes back home to his wife (who still doesn't know anything), not having learned a single thing from the entire experience. The only mitigation we have is that Kyle and Ike (as well as the other trolls) still know and given their complete loss of respect for their dad, they could expose him if they so choose.

Season 21

  • "Put It Down" has a little kid brutally murdered◊ by a guy driving and looking at his phone at the same time.
    • Further, North Korea fired on him because President Garrison goaded them into it over Twitter, mentioning Tweek by name. That the President almost killed a ten-year-old boy is cause for alarm and should lead to conviction at a trial. Then again, this is the series that ended an episode by having a main character kill off a kid's parents, grind them, and serve them to the victim as chili.
  • In "Doubling Down", Heidi starts falling for a whole new level of Cartman's manipulations, with him tricking her into changing her food choices and starting to buy into his racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. The end of the episode was even worse, where Heidi was manipulated by Cartman to reconcile with him, by telling him that Kyle is a Jew, and hence, not to be trusted. At this point, Heidi may have reached the point of no return...
    • The episode features Cartman and Heidi breaking up and Cartman basically going off the deep-end when he discovers that Kyle caused the break-up during dinner with Token and his family. We even get the live action footage of dancing Jews during Cartman's tantrum. Even Kyle looks momentarily terrified when Cartman confronts him at school, which is saying something considering their usual interactions.
    • Let's not forget the President Garrison parts. When McConnell, Pence and Ryan confront President Garrison, he locks them in the room with them after they threaten to try and impeach him, with the intent of raping them.
    President Garrison: Hope y'all brought some condoms.
  • "Moss Piglets" answers a question nobody dared ask: What if there were two Eric Cartmans/Cartmen? And what if Cartman 2 was arguably even more of a threat than the original? One's scary enough, but now there's a second Cartman who also shares most of his beliefs! Worst of all, it's Heidi, who has been corrupted by Cartman into what he views as the perfect girlfriend, but may have unwittingly created a monster...
    • PC Principal is scared of Heidi! He's dealt with Cartman before, but here he yields to her before she can do anything! And by the end of the episode, Eric himself fears his girlfriend and is unwilling to even try to fight her! There is nobody Cartman can't deal with... except himself!
    • Throughout the episode, we see the development of water bears into an intelligent species of NFL fans. Then Heidi drinks them.
  • With the events of "Super Hard PCness", Kyle causes Mr. Garrison to deploy a nuke to Canada. His mortified reaction speaks volumes about it.

Season 22

  • In "Dead Kids", school shootings have become so commonplace that Stan doesn't express any shock the day it happens at his school.
  • In "The Scoots", while it has its awesome moment as usual, this episode is strangely eerie. Between the eerieness of the e-scooters and the hostility between the kids (which causes the adults to be as well), this episode definitely will make you think differently about e-scooters.
  • "Time To Get Cereal" reveals that Manbearpig was Real After All by showing it maim Ned, with the rest of the episode showing us the rather awful carnage from other attacks, many of which include children. The episode also reveals that it's a demon summoned by somebody in the town making some sort of deal for money. By the end of the episode, the boys try to warn everybody that Manbearpig is real, but they get arrested as school shooters instead after the chief of police frames them so he can close the case and get back to his video games, meaning the monster is still roaming free to slaughter more people. The ending also heavily implies that it was Marvin Marsh who summoned the monster, leaving the episode on a frightening cliffhanger.
  • The carnage continues into the sequel episode "Nobody Got Cereal?" which also reveals that the elderly made a deal years ago for Manbearpig to wreak havoc years later in return for fancy cars and ice cream. Eventually Manbearpig fights Satan and wins, killing Satan himself. The only way to defeat the monster is a contract that doesn't even stop Manbearpig's attacks for good, allowing him to attack third-world countries and to come back to town in five years.
  • "Unfulfilled" parodies Amazon's policies of poor employee treatment gruesomely. It shows an Amazon fulfillment center worker named Josh get mangled by wayward machines, leaving him trapped inside an Amazon box. It's said he can't escape the box because his organs would all spill out and kill him instantly. And Amazon blames this all on Josh.
    • There's also their eerie portrayal of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who communicates telepathically and remains constantly stoic, as well as his rather off animation. The next episode also shows him listening in on people's homes through their Alexas and killing at least two people.
    • Online shopping has dealt such a blow to the retail industry that the mall has fallen into disrepair, the plants have grown wild and the staff have all regressed into troglodytes desperate for patronage.
  • Bezos uses the above-mentioned fact regarding Josh's organs being held together by the box to his own advantage: he tricks a bunch of children into opening the box by promising them tools for their bikes, causing Jeff's organs to explode on a kid's face. Bezos later nonchalantly orders Alexa to kill the newly-socialist Kenny, and we later see that the attempt was successful. One can only imagine how Alexa carried out the orders...

Season 23

  • "Mexican Joker":
    • Cartman calls ICE on the Broflovskis and gets them sent to a detainment camp quickly and easily. The parents are separated from the children, and Kyle separated from Ike. We still have no idea exactly where Ike is by the end of the episode. The realism of it, with everybody freaking out and Ike bawling, is what really sells the horror.
    • A poor detained Mexican child being strapped down and electrocuted in an attempt to rid him of potential traumatic memories that could haunt him as an adult. The fact this experience could just traumatize him further is lampshaded.
    • Randy blows up the backyards of several homes in South Park whose inhabitants were growing their own weed. The first act of terror we see is gruesomely bloody and comes practically out of left field, and may quite be the most horrifying thing Randy has ever done, with the implication that his journey off the deep end will continue in the season ahead.
  • If you thought seeing the Gorn from the Imaginationland trilogy was awful, then Randy's brutal murder of Winnie the Pooh is this. He graphically kills Pooh by choking him in order to prove himself to the strictly authoritative Chinese government, and returns home covered in honey and blood. Again, he's incredibly nonchalant about his murder. Making it worse, thus far, Pooh had been behaving just like the lovable bear from the source material (much like some of the characters from said trilogy). Sleep well, kiddos.
    • Making matters even worse is that after he kills Pooh, he stares right at Piglet who's completely terrified of what just happened to his best friend, its implied Randy killed him too to eliminate a potential witness should the authorities arrest him (though seeing as he's not seen amongst the hallucinating zombies as seen in the Halloween Special, it's likely Piglet got away or Randy let him go).
    • Gets a rather double meaning when Randy himself cameos in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers sitting in a sauna with a bunch of animated pigs, who are absolutely terrified to be in the same room with him (implying that he's still off the deep end), meaning that the Walt Disney company knows what Randy did to one of their beloved stars and aren't taking him lightly.
  • Randy and Towelie murder a bunch of cows, which we see in all its bloody glory.
  • "Tegridy Farms Halloween Special" has horror in both its plots:
    • After Shelly poisons Randy's "Halloween Special" strand of weed, Randy notices that people who smoke it turn into horrifying face-decaying zombies. He also becomes haunted by both the decaying corpses of Winnie the Pooh and the cows he killed, and over the phone we hear him apparently being raped by Harvey Weinstein. Thankfully it turns out to just be a really bad trip on Randy's part (though the Weinstein part may have been real, given the used condom Randy finds afterwards).
    • Butters inadvertently awakens a mummy and becomes cursed to have the mummy essentially fall in love with him. Said mummy quickly becomes horribly toxic towards Butters, attacking the town because it gave Butters a gift that he already had and thought he was ungrateful, and later attacking the school as well. The horror comes less from the mummy itself and more from how everyone is so set on blaming Butters for the mummy's actions, which leads to him believing he was wrong all along by the end. The mummy leaves at the end of the episode, but there's no indication that it can't return to either wreak havoc on the town or emotionally abuse Butters again...
  • "Season Finale"'s subplot starts off when Jason White is run over by a cop car and killed, so Cartman helps the grieving White family to the detention center to fill the void in their family. The children in the detention center are so badly dehumanized that they can be adopted out to parents as easily as dogs. The children fearfully ask over and over where their parents are, and nobody listens. The Whites adopt one child, Alejandro, and we watch him slowly become angrier as his adoptive parents mentally abuse him and refuse to listen to his Spanish arguments that they are not his real parents, berating him for trying to call Mexico. Eventually, Alejandro goes on a terrorist spree, having become an actual Mexican Joker. He then gets shot in the shoulder by the police, but still managed to escape which just makes you wonder what's going to happen to him. But did we mention the White family had adopted another, much younger child from the camps, who is disrespected just as badly?

Season 24

Season 25

  • The Streaming Wars special doesn't shy away from its aesop. Steve ventures up the mountain to view the source of Denver's water supply and finds out that the cashed-up suburbanites all plan to move there, squandering the water on frivolous things like cars and lawns despite the consequences this would have on farmers (even if it means Randy takes a hit).
    • When Steve confronts Pi Pi about this, he's attacked by none other than ManBearPig himself. The beast stabs Steve and throws his body down a windy water slide, leaving him for dead and his family worried.
    • The ending is a montage of suburbanites using excessive amounts of water, confirming that the bad guys won.

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