Top Ten Classic Examples of Nightmare Fuel from the Rugrats Franchise
In this episode, Angelica learns that her mom is going to have another baby, and the thought of adults diverting their attention from her spoiled little self for one second sends her into a straight anxiety.
She has a nightmare in which her parents have forgotten all about her and focus entirely on her baby brother, who is actually huge and threatens Angelica with a terrifying, Godfather voice. He and his horrible lips chase Angelica through the house until he catches up to her and EATS HER, exclaiming, "Now you're num-nums! " I can tell you that from an oldest child's point of view, this episode is truly horror.
Truly terrifying as Angelica has a nightmare where she imagines her possible new baby brother who's out to get her as he gets bigger and bigger until he's a giant and then proceeds to eat her before finally waking up.
"Hi, I'm Boppo," repeats the ugly clown toy that terrorizes the Rugrats in this episode. Chuckie is obsessed with Boppo until, of course, Angelica makes him realize Boppo's just a creepy, demonic clown; then Boppo becomes instantly terrifying. And let's just say deflating giant inflatable clowns doesn't make them less scary on this show
"Chuckie should be outside playing with friends not inside bopping his Boppo."
Phil... you're making weird observations man.
Stu Pickles' crazy scientist/inventor ways led to many creepy creations throughout the course of the show, but none so overtly, horrifically evil as Mr. Friend. From the Frankenstein reference of the episode to the Rugrats' misunderstanding of the robot clown's name (Mr. Fiend) to the army of them that go after the Rugrats at the end, this episode is nightmarish as his full potential.
I remember him on The Search for Reptar game too.
But that game was based on different episodes.
This scene terrifiyef me as a kid after Angelica tricks Phil and Lil into trading their favorite toys for presents to give to one another Phil trades his Reptar doll for crayons for Lil's favorite coloring book and Lil trading her coloring book for a Reptar space helmet to give to Phil for his Reptar doll, later Angelica dreams of waking up on Christmas day to a whole bunch of presents for her only to find nothing but coal as Santa shows up saying because of her tricking Phil and Lil he replaced both of their favorite things that she swinddled from them as she now gets nothing but coal as Santa laughs maniacly as he showers her with coal as she wakes up.
Parenting 101: If you want a kid to learn to use the potty, don't put a horrific clown face on it. Also, don't let your child be routinely tortured and traumatized by an evil, blonde girl. It will lead to scary nightmares equating the potty with the electric chair (heavy stuff for kids).
Less than a minute into this episode, Chuckie is surrounded by Alice in Wonderland - trippy scenes, like a snake made out of a hose, giant flowers, and a terrifying naked man only wearing leaves around his...genitals. Shortly after, the most freaky thing imaginable happens. Chuckie asks Tommy what's going on, and Tommy turns around and exclaims in a shocking clown voice, "I'm not Tommy! "
Chuckie awakes from his nightmare, relieved to find it was just a dream. But then the dream within a dream continues with I'm not Stu.
Spring cleaning is terrible enough to make any adult run crying, let alone kids. This episode has Angelica scaring Chuckie and Tommy with false tales of dust bunnies, evil bunnies that only come out when the furniture is moved. They're pictured as monster things with long serpentine ears that wrap around Chuckie and drag him to his death. You know, classic kid stuff! not even close. Terrifying even to this day.
This episode was very traumatizing, due, in part, to the kidnapping, but mostly due to the crazy old ladies. Tommy accidentally ends up in a car that makes its way to the grotesque world of Emma and Clarice Pendragon, two sisters who have way too many cats and live in the shadow, dank and decrepit old mansion.
They take a liking to Tommy because they think he resembles their father (he doesn't). Emma and Clarice dress him in awful doll clothes and start calling him "Bostwick," and they stop the butler from calling the authorities because they believe Tommy was sent to them to be the heir to their family riches.
Though Tommy is returned relatively unharmed (physically at least) at the end of the episode, we were scarred for old ladies.
Grandpa needs a new mattress but he's really stubborn about it. Never mind that it's the disgusting mattress on planet earth, frightening in and of itself, and looks like Norman Bates's mother's bed from the 1960 movie Psycho. That was surely imprinted on the minds of all of the kids that watched this episode. Oh, and also the dream sequence when the mattress comes to life and chases after them was totally freaky.
Chuckie goes through a lot of changes throughout the show, being the older of the Rugrats. In this episode, he gets his very first big boy bed, and there's obviously a monster with terrifying, sharp teeth living under it that offers him candy to join him in the dark side. Monsters may not exist, but they're still scary, and more in this episode.
In the most darkest episode, based on It's a Wonderful Life, Chuckie decides to run away. But before he does, his "gardening" angel appears and shows him what life would be like if he didn't exist.
In this bizarre world, Chuckie's dad is 100% lunatic; his house is covered in greasy pizza boxes and he talks to a sock puppet. Phil and Lil are demonic children who run around breaking things, most of all their cowardly parents' hearts.Tommy is left starving and dirty while his parents slave away to serve all the food they can find to a disgusting, greedy Angelica who's too fat to get a life.
It's very dark, people. We watched this as kids
You know you ate inches around the watermelon seeds when you were a kid because of this episode. If one evil blonde little witch could scare us all into thinking watermelons would grow inside of us, it was Angelica
Ah, the classic "Adults tells the kids an inappropriately horror story and they freak out at everything that moves" episode. Grandpa takes the kids camping in the backyard and tell the troop of babies the legend of the Sasquatch. The Rugrats hear "Satchmo" and spend the episode running and screaming from branches swaying in the wind and shadows of Stu. Even though you knew they were safe, the creepy darkness of the episode was fairly scary.
After a night of partying, Grandpa lies to Stu and Didi, says he's got a "bug," and goes to sleep it off. Of course, the Rugrats think an actual bug is inside of him and they spend the whole episode trying to get it out. Thinking his poor delicate uvula is the bug, they reach toy pliers right in there and yank while he's sleeping!
In case that isn't a filler episode for the audience, the kids also fill sleeping Grandpa's bed with "good bugs" that will help get the bad bug out of him. If you've ever gotten an itch while in bed and become convinced you're entirely covered in creepy insects, maybe skip this episode, right now.
The classic horror movies start with a babysitter home alone with the kids, mysterious phone pranks, blackouts, creepy noises and a monster in the basement. That is also what happens in this super-freaky episode of Rugrats. Although it turns out not to be a real monster in the end, there are enough scary shadows and door slamming to scare even the hardest horror fans in history.
This episode of Rugrats explores the terrifying story everyone has where you change something about your appearance and you don't even recognize yourself anymore. All the adults say they can "hardly recognize you! " and you lose your sense of identity and die alone, like a cockroach.
Okay, so maybe that doesn't happen, but it's a real fear! Change is hard. and bad. And no one should ever do it, ever. That's definitely more healthy.
This episode, like all spooky moments as a child, begins with Tommy and Chuckie watching a movie that's way too scary for them. A mad robotic scientist with an evil chuckle takes over the world by changing all the dads into robots. Though Stu turns off the movie, it still rattles Tommy's mind as he tries to sleep, and they decide they have to find out if Tommy's dad is real or a robot.
Of course their investigation coincides with Stu's problems with sleepwalking and the kids find themselves chased by a dad zombie all over the house, very disturbing.
We all remember Dr. Lipschitz, the child psychologist Didi is obsessed with in Rugrats. Well, in this episode, he actually comes to the Pickles house for dinner. He's a vaguely European Dr. Phil slash mad terapist type, and he might be Chuckie's new "mommy" (disturbing).
Lipschitz is left with the kids in the Pickles house, so naturally he decides to take a bubble bath, roll on the floor in a robe crying and give the kids horse back rides. You probably don't remember this episode because it's extremely creepy and controversial in every way imaginable.
When Tommy sneaks his way into the mailman's bag, he ends up at the post office, where he goes through a satanic maze and ends up getting thrown down a shoot with "cancelled" boxes. He almost ends up in this bin with a skeleton visible at the bottom, suggesting that this happened to a person once before and that that person, actually a person died down there, hell of a episode.
In "Regarding Stuie," Tommy's dad hits his head and wakes up as a baby. This is all fun and games for the Rugrats until Tommy realizes with "Stuie the baby" around, his dad, Stu, is gone forever. That's some hard stuff for a kid in diapers. It's heartbreaking and terrifying and Stu doesn't even go to the hospital for the concussion he most certainly experienced in his head.