NEXT UP: THIS IS HELL, AND YOU ARE THE DEVIL.
Really, some Onion articles go a little further than you'd expect.
- "Blood...Blood Everywhere
" is an article about some unspecified disaster that killed nearly everyone in a town. Nothing Is Scarier is in full effect, thanks to the vagueness of the article. The images are all horrific Gorn, but the real capper is the ending, saying "Oh god, what's that?"
- "CDC Officials Announce Free Ice Cream For Everyone, Delicious Tasty Ice Cream, And Also There Is An Ebola Outbreak". Body Horror, and Mood Whiplash and Gorn are the least you can say about it. And in unrelated news, about 90 to 95% of you will die.
- "Children Of All Ages Delighted By Enslavement Of Topsy The Elephant" combines this with Tear Jerker elements, given that this actually happens to actual circus elephants in real life. Also And I Must Scream.
- The Fetus Terrible mentioned in "Kate Middleton: Cut This Monster Out of Me". Closely followed by "Royal Family Releases Kate Middleton Ultrasound Image". The Royal Baby coverage gets more gory and horrific as it goes along, culminating in the baby's birth, covered in a completely-normal sounding article... turned horrifying by the abomination pictured above it, as well as the bloody, ripped-apart Kate Middleton. Tokophobia is indeed real, and this is proof.
- "World Now Down To 5 Stories That Are Inspirational", written in the immediate wake of Real Life double amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius murdering his girlfriend, is drenched in horrific cynicism about human nature — anything good anyone does will inevitably be negated by their failings or turn out to mask a horrible truth.
- The Onion Reviews 'Gravity.' Peter Rosenthal praises the film for its acting, cinematography, special effects and how it drove him violently and incurably insane.
- "Grisly Remains of 15 Hobbits Discovered in Peter Jackson's Attic""Furthermore, sources said the body of one hobbit, who investigators have yet to identify, was discovered skinned from head to toe and hung by the ankles from a 4-foot-high ceiling beam."
- "New Marijuana Study Says Everyone Knows You're High And You'll Likely Be Stoned Forever" is an innocuous, decent satire the first time through, but on subsequent replays, the video deliberately invokes Mushroom Samba for various effects. (The original page no longer seems to work, showing only the innocuous version of the clip. See here for a compilation of all the alternate versions.) Some of the effects include:
- The one where the reporter and the doctor suddenly scream at you, and the reporter ends the video abruptly by staring at the camera, accompanied by this headline:WAKE UP. YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP.
- The one with the blood.THE BLOOD HAS YOU
- The one where both the reporter and the doctor suddenly lack any facial features, a clip of rotting flesh is shown, and the headlines indicate that you're in Hell.WELCOME TO ETERNITYNEXT UP: THIS IS HELL, AND YOU ARE THE DEVIL
- The one where the reporter and the doctor suddenly scream at you, and the reporter ends the video abruptly by staring at the camera, accompanied by this headline:
- In the Onion book Our Dumb World the page for the Democratic Republic of the Congo is pretty much the book's own Despair Event Horizon given how nightmarish everything about its recent history and current status is, and the few jokes made are exceedingly bleak and depressed, but this line in particular is just horrifying...(marking a point on a map of the country) Defenceless 9 year old girl who never thought her first, second, and third time would be like this.
- One story from the IFC series had a Jerk Jock shooting innocent students and previously having written about skinning another student and wearing the skin as a pelt. He essentially was Ax-Crazy and A God Am I. One of his quotes? "I feel as powerful as a god. I am the Flesh Master. My thirst must be slaked with blood."
- "Little Boy Heroically Shoots, Mutilates Burglar". It's a great combination of Ax Craziness, Enfant Terrible, He Who Fights Monsters, Disproportionate Retribution, and Kick the Dog. Even one of the anchors start to get nervous.
- The original German fairy tale seen in their review of Toy Story 4. The freakish woodcut illustrations, creepy folk song, and the gruesome parables, such as “Gerta” being force fed plums by her toys, or the puppet chest that sucks out the souls of children to make them into strangely lifelike marionettes.
- "U.S. Forest Service Kills Off Smokey Bear To Get People Serious About Fire Safety." The sample print ad with Smokey's face melting off his skull with "RUN" over and over in the background is especially grisly.
- "New SeaWorld Show Just Elephant Drowning In Large Tank Of Water With No Explanation", which graphically describes an elephant's Cruel and Unusual Death via Drowning Pit. The animal spends 30 agonizing minutes struggling and desperately trying to find a way to escape, as the cheering crowd turns silent while looking at the horrific spectacle. In the end, the elephant runs out of energy and sinks to the bottom of the pool, where its body is described as appearing to still be moving due to the turbulence its struggle created in the water. The description is so detailed that one can easily imagine the disturbing scene. It's also mentioned that one version of the show has a mother elephant drowned alongside her calf."Eventually, the elephant started making these crazy sorts of gurgling, trumpeting noises that got quieter and quieter before they stopped completely."
- "‘We Get The Food And Then We Eat The Food Until All The Food Is Gone,' City Of Chicago Announces Unprompted", nothing outright violent occurs, but the thought of everyone dropping what they're doing and beginning to mutter nonsensically in perfect unison is very eerie in a dream-like way.
