Nightmare Fuel / The Berenstain Bears

While this series of books are wholesome family entertainment, it certainly doesn't stop them from having scary moments.

Books

• Whenever the bears got angry in the books, their expressions could be quite terrifying. An example would be Papa yelling at Brother and Sister and slamming his fist on a table◊ in Forget their Manners.
• "The Bad Dream"
  • The Space Grizzlies toys according to Sister Bear, who needs to be bribed into playing with Brother.
  • From what we see of the Space Grizzlies movie, it is pretty action-packed and violent. Brother Bear admits that he enjoyed it, but was scared at certain points.
  • Also an In-Universe example, as they were enough to give Brother and Sister actual nightmares.
• Two-Ton Grizzly. Now we know where Too-Tall gets it from, and the only thing that can actually scare him.
• Sister coming home crying in pain, covered in bruises with her clothes disheveled. Mama and Papa immediately fear the worst, with Brother correctly suspecting that another cub beat her up. When Sister explains that a cub named Tuffy did so for no reason, Brother Bear understandably goes to school and wants to find the bully who hurt his little sister. He only doesn't because he won't hurt a girl, and Tuffy mocks him.
• The bully Tuffy revealing to Sister after being hit that she has Abusive Parents and is terrified of what they'll do to her when they find out what she's been doing at school. Just the idea that anyone in Bear Country could be capable of bringing up their cubs this badly is an unsettling notion.
• "Visit the Dentist" involves Sister worrying about the dentist while simultaneously wondering why her freshly loose tooth isn't coming out. She's afraid that he'll yank it, but when they get to the dentist, rather than assuring her that it will come out all on its own when the time is right, he grabs it with a piece of gauze and yanks it.
• The slightly eerie feel of Bears in the Night, accentuated by the simple narration, can be unsettling to some. See some for yourself.
• The narration (with or without the audio) of ''The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree'' where Brother, Sister and a third bear cub (presumably Cousin Fred) explore a spooky forest and the inside of a tree (which looks like a mansion in its interior) in the dark of the night unaccompanied. They go through a hole, go up a "twisty old stair) where some alligators in a moat attack and just miss Fred, walk on a broad ledge, go through a hall with suits of armor where one's ax lands on Sister's walking stick just missing her, and end up getting chased by a giant sleeping bear. They make it home safe....only for adult readers to pick up...the spooky old tree is conveniently close by!
• "The Trouble With Strangers"
  • With Brother's encouragement, Sister goes to Papa Bear to ask why talking to strangers is bad. He then tells her bad things can happen when you trust someone you don't know. To prove his point, he shows her a newspaper article that reveals a cub was kidnapped and recently found, with a suspect being questioned. There may be a cubnapper still out there in Bear County!
  • The fairy tale he reads her, about Wily Fox leading Silly Goose to his lair. All it takes is a few snaps of his jaws, and Silly Goose is gone except for a few feathers floating in the air. No wonder Sister lies awake at night, thinking about the newspaper and the story.
• "The Berenstain Bears’ Mad, Mad, Mad Toy Craze": The book with the Beary Bubbies mentions that at a giant sale event for them, two parents got into a fight. It is so bad that the police have to break them up. You can see it in the illustrations.
• "Too Much Internet"
  • The way that Teacher Bob describes Internet predators. He says that they lure you and your friends into a trap to cubnap you. Lizzie is shaken, even as she says that her dad would protect her. Her classmates are similarly scared.
  • Queenie's sister setting her up with a random guy online, and helping her get dressed for a date. Fortunately, she goes along to serve as a chaperone and it turned out the date was Too-Tall, but imagine if it had been a random older guy.
  • If you read the title, you'd probably think it's probably just a boring old "don't spend too much time online" book, or maybe a slightly-unnerving "don't give out your personal info online" book. Actually, it's kind of the latter, but moreso. One of the cubs spends a lot of time (but not so much so that it's an Obsessive Hobby Episode) on a kids' poetry website, but then it turns out that criminals have been using the site to transmit secret codes about bombing Squire Grizzly. That's right— Squire Grizzly would've died if not for the cubs' discovery. Even worse, the codes were in rhyme, giving off a "creepy nursery rhyme" vibe, and the girl who found the scary poem? Lizzie Bruin, who warns Bonnie, Squire Grizzly's niece.
• "The Freaky Funhouse": The circus people knocking out Ralph, tying him up, and tossing him into the nearby lake. All while the cubs are watching and convinced Ralph drowned. They feel sorry for him, even if he was a con artist.

The specials

• The animals in "The Christmas Tree", who attack Papa for attempting to cut down trees.
  • Hell, Papa risking his own cubs' lives just to find the best Christmas tree is terrifying itself.
  • And all of this could've been easily avoided if Papa just bought a tree locally!
• "Meet Bigpaw" does a good job of building up the menace and dread until Bigpaw properly appears on-screen. The Scare Chord when Mama foresees Bigpaw's impending arrival, followed by Papa laughing it off, only to cut to a P.O.V. Cam of Bigpaw arriving at the border of Bear Country, is particularly chilling as it reveals Bigpaw is indeed Real After All.
  • The narrator retells the prophecy of Bigpaw's arrival, noting that he is Gaia's Vengeance for if the bears become selfish and greedy. As we see from the pumpkin patch and Papa's attitude, this is indeed Judgment Day. The music builds up as the narrator admits that some legends are real, and the scene cuts to the animals of the forest fleeing in terror as they hear of Bigpaw's approach. With each successive animal that gets the message, they imagine a scarier, more monstrous figure and run for their lives.
  • The end of the first act, when Papa and the townsfolk learn that Bigpaw is nearby in Sinister Bog. The narrator and the music again collaborate to leave things on a highly ominous note as Brother and Sister, blissfully unaware of the apparent coming danger, go about their business.
  • His Villain Song has some notable moments where it gets freaky, particularly the scene where he explains that one of the things he likes to do is chew; and explains it with a tree. There's also the "grind and tear and rip it all" lyric— he explains this by using said tree and snapping it in half with his two bear hands.

The Southern Star series

• Elliot Lawrence's score for the cartoon can get dramatic at times. Notable instances include "The Messy Room" (Mama stomping up the stairs and pounding on the door, the reveal of her pissed off face when she sees her cubs dirty room, and when she throws away the cubs' toys), "In The Dark" (Brother making spooky noises and Mama and Papa running up the stairs) and "Forget Their Manners" (Papa going insane from having to conform to the Politeness Plan, more on that below).
• In "Get In a Fight" Brother and Sister are yelling at each other on top of their treehouse as a violent thunderstorm starts, with neither of them noticing. As they keep fighting several lightning strikes hit, which visibly frightens them, and given that lightning generally hits the highest thing in its path (which is the treehouse in this case) the scene can actually make you afraid that one of them could be struck and seriously injured or worse. Since Mama resorts to yelling at them to come inside, she likely had the same fear.
• Sister's fear of strangers in "The Trouble With Strangers". The worst of it actually comes early when Papa reads several newspaper articles to Sister regarding stranger danger. Among them is a headline reading Stranger Bothers Cub. Suddenly Bear Country doesn't look much safer than real life — if anything, it seems particularly riddled with kidnappers (“Missing Cub Found”) and sex offenders.
  • The book it’s based on isn’t any better — Papa tells Sister a story about a goose who was lured into a fox’s cave and ends up getting eaten.
• Mama, full stop, in "The Messy Room". If her stomping up the stairs and pounding on her cubs door doesn't terrify you, the pissed-off look on her face when she opens the door, combined with her menacing growl, will scare you. There's also the climactic moment when she throws the cubs toys in the trash after they failed to clean up their room in time, coupled with Brother and Sister crying for help and Lawrence's tense score makes for a rather unnerving scene.
  • Ruth Buzzi's performance in this episode deserves a mention: you can hear her anger during the scene when Mama scolds the cubs for their messy room. For better or for worse, it's Buzzi's best performance in the entire series because of how chilling it is.
• "Forget Their Manners" has Papa being driven to rage and intending to tear the Politeness Plan to pieces, with a maddened look on his face. The psychopathic music that plays during this helps surprisingly little.
  Papa: WHERE'S THAT CONFOUNDED CHART!?
• In "The Wicked Weasel Spell", Weasel McGreed hypnotizes Bigpaw into thinking everyone is a mosquito and trying to smash them, including the cubs!

The Nelvana series

• Brother's nightmare in "Trouble at School".
  Brother's Teacher: Didn't you do the worksheets?
  Sister: You didn't even do the worksheet I brought home on Monday. Boy, are you behind.
• The evil, green version of Sister in "The Green-Eyed Monster" can be disturbing.
  • How it appears in Sister's dream is particularly unnerving. Sister hears it calling out for her, and she turns over in bed to see a copy of herself across the room, only this Sister has green fur and a devious smile that tells you she's bad news. Sister herself is scared and hides under the sheets, but the Green-Eyed Sister comes up from the foot of the bed, telling her to go outside and coaxes her into taking Brother's new bike for a ride for herself. While Sister has her vices like everyone else, the Green-Eyed Sister has a clear nasty aura to her that would clearly be out-of-character for the real Sister to have, making for an unsettling and just plain off appearance.

Other

• The ghosts in the Haunted Forest level of Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure. If you leave them around on the screen too long, they will moan with their fur standing on end as they attack you. They also do this in the second bonus level although they can't hurt you.