Note that this is the least horrifying scene you'll see in this show.
If anyone thought this was a lighthearted series about a team of alien heroes fighting monsters, they were wrong. The series is one of Genndy's darker works and actually set the tone for how dark the fifth season of Samurai Jack would become.
- For every moment Lance, Ilana, and Octus spend on Earth, the Galalunian resistance on their homeworld is getting weaker, more people are dying, and the King, Ilana's father, is being tortured endlessly by General Modula to get more information on how to kill off the team for good.
- The Mutraddi themselves are a smorgasbord of Eldritch Abominations of all diverse shapes, abilities, and sizes, ranging from vaguely humanoid to gigantic and horrifyingly proportioned.
- The very first minutes of the first episode has Ilana stop Lance from killing the American soldiers that show up to their landing site to arrest them once she finds out that they're humanoid. However, Lance was already shown blowing up a number of tanks that fired at him, so, unless they were unmanned military tanks, it's pretty clear he killed at least a few humans already.
- Ilana is the last successor to the Galalunian throne. Assuming their monarchy is like most on Earth, the princess is just first in line and many other relatives are in line for the throne. Given Modula's personality, it's not hard to guess what's become of the others. Lance himself lampshades that Galaluna was already lost by the time they left and that everyone they knew may have been dead already despite any resistance fighters being present. Becomes even more jarring as "Shadows of Youth" showed how Modula was once a cherished friend of the royal family acting as a Cool Uncle figure to Ilana and helped Lance become a soldier to begin with.
- The first fight with the Mutraddi Fire Beast is a firm aversion of the No Endor Holocaust and Conveniently Empty Building tropes as dozens of occupied skyscrapers are immediately reduced to ash by the monster as a huge crater is formed in the middle of the city and billions of property damage is estimated from the attack alone.
- There's neck snapping in the second episode, starting with a Neck Lift by Modula after he beat a team of Galulunan resistance fighters and ending with a Gory Discretion Shot of their leader. Furthermore, the shot does not omit the wet, crunchy sound of a neck getting wrung like a sponge and the dead body dropping to the ground. Modula's Slasher Smile before act makes the whole thing worse.
- Xeexi, a Mutraddi that looks like a Cthulhumanoid who likes to force his entire body down people's throats to probe their minds. And it's not even implied or offscreen, we get a front row seat for this. Twice. For Ilana's father and Lance respectively. Take into account the fact that Xishi is slightly taller than a full grown man and you've got a recipe for a moment that can make even a seasoned Adult Swim addict cringe. Worse is how a person's veins darken and convulse and their body spasms horribly if they try to resist Xeexi's mental control.
- Lance had to break his own wrist in order to get out Xishi's prison hold. A visible crack is heard.
- Shaman of Fear. The entire episode is basically a ghostly Mutraddi sent to use the worse fears of the team to eventually break them. They suffer a slew of horrible hallucinations surrounding their worst fears, Ilana watching her kingdom and father die and Lance watching his father die while being chased by monsters, while a cloaked monster stalks and hunts them. If not for Octus grounding the two, both Ilana and Lance would have been killed.
- Ilana gets the worst of it. She has horrible visions of her people crying out to her and blaming her for leaving them behind to die on Galaluna, one of which is seen in the page image as the hands of her people grabbing at her, as well as a horrible scene of her father being carried by hooded black ooze spewing pallbearers and cremated before her eyes before he hops up to attack her and blame her for not coming back to help her people. It bears great resemblance to the PTSD visions of Samurai Jack in Genndy's later work where Jack would experience visions of his people blaming him for not saving them from Aku.
- Watching a young Lance get brutalized in "Shadows of Youth" by bullies, one scene showing him beaten and left in the rain, is true worries for any parent that worries about what will happen to their child while absent, even worse when one bully tries to murder Lance because Lance beat him in the war games. And gets off scot free for the attempt!
- In "Scary Mary," there's a legend concerning a girl who disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again. It's said that her ghost still haunts the woods, but in the end of the episode we flash back and see that she actually got a ride with a Danny Zuko lookalike shortly after getting lost. But that doesn't change the fact that she was never heard from again!
- After being humiliated like that, its reasonable that she switched schools.
- Again in "Scary Mary", the boy who was supposed to play Scary Mary, "Toad", is knocked out and replaced by the assassin. Later, the assassin crashes into the farmhouse where Toad was lying. The lot is evacuated, but did anyone remember to get Toad?
- The Mutraddi Chameleon Monster is also pretty creepy since it takes the form of a love interest before it strikes and nearly destroyed the team by taking the form of a giant Kimmy to confuse Octus. Not to mention it's unnaturally fast, strong, and skilled for its size.
- Ilana's transformation in "The Demon Within" into a Mutraddi is horrifying especially in how she becomes more feral and reptilian due to an injury gained from a Mutraddi creature that effectively lacerated her leg. Ilana pre-transformation snaps a mutated alligator's jaw, especially jarring for an animal lover like herself. No shadowy discretion shot, no offscreen shot. When her transformation is complete, her brain was exposed and she became a feral bloodthirsty animal with two sets of eyes and an exposed chest cavity.
- The amount of on-screen death in Escape from Galaluna is pretty unsettling for the viewer as it is for Ilana as one moment she's doing a charity opening for a poor tribe and the next she comes home and her castle is in flames with bodies strewn around the area while being surrounded by vicious monsters. Lance has to see his comrades die and take weapons from their bodies before eventually stabbing the traitor behind his troubles in the gut in full view.
- In episode "I Am Octus", when everyone in the entire world becomes paralyzed]] by the Monster of the Week except Octus who is struggling to find a way to save his friends. Yes, everyone. Which would therefore include every person in any flying anything (a crashed helicopter is even shown), doctors in the middle of surgery, and buses full of people careening off the road or off bridges. Quite possibly the most horrific day in human history.
- Think all those people were aware of what was happening?
- It may be worse if the ultrasonic waves could reach underwater as well. Sharks, for example, have to keep moving in order to breathe.
- Think all those people were aware of what was happening?
- Octus' death by impalement and feeding from the energy creature in A Family Crisis is as nightmarish as it is a tearjerker as it's already established he can't heal himself from being attacked by the thing but risks his life anyway to save Lance and gets impaled and delivers an uncharacteristic scream in the process before he flickers out.
- Solomon nearly suffocating the death from his electronic-controlled oxygen support in his suit being turned off by the creature.
- In "Steel Foe", Kimmy depressingly notes that Newton has been "absent" from school for several weeks after "A Family Crisis". Just before the episode in question, Kimmy had dumped Newton (who obviously loved her). If you dumped somebody who obviously loved you, only for the person to suddenly go missing for several weeks, what would you think happened to him/her? And wouldn't you blame yourself for it?
- The way General Steel goes from a Harmless Villain to a Beware the Silly Ones maniac when he gets his own mecha and nearly kills Lance and Ilana with it. Not to mention his access to nearly endless amounts of army mooks and artillery which he uses liberally. He also gets more physically grotesque the more malicious he becomes.
- The final episode though ending on a uplifting note leaves a rather Bittersweet Ending that leaves some nightmarish implications. For one, Octus is alive and the team is back together willingly working with G3 to protect the Earth, but Galaluna is still under Modula's control and he's now resorting to sending more and more monsters to Earth (a whopping three instead of one for instance) to kill the heroes. Eventually he might send a whole army and it's unknown if the heroes can take that kind of assault. With the series discontinued, Modula probably gets off scot free.
