Top 10 Classic Examples of Nightmare Fuel from The Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror' Segments

The Top Ten
1 Nightmare Cafeteria Segment

Nightmare cafeteria is my favorite treehouse of horror story. After the detention room fills up to much they decide to move the kids into the cafeteria after Jimbo trips lunchlady Doris and ruins his outfit, principal skinner says he should "assist" lunchaldy Doris in the lunchroom they eventually turn him into sloppy jimbo's that is terrifying! Then they cook Uter and turn him into German grub. The classrooms become one big classroom containing Wendell, Ralph, milhouse, Bart, and Lisa. And after a slight pencil drop Wendell gets detention. Poor Wendell. Then a fat mrs krabappel reads a book about the joy of cooking milhouse so milhouse thinks they should leave. After they get chased by teachers and Willie gets killed by skinner. They fall into a giant blender but it was all a dream. This one was terrifying. From the teachers being cannibals to all the build up that lead to it. Best treehouse of horror story ever.

2 The Gremlin from the bus holding Ned's severed-head

While the Simpsons got a lot of ideas out of their parodies of The Twilight Zone, they usually did so by undercutting the horror of those scenarios in some way, downplaying things with jokes or references that made things a little more lighter. But ya know what's not lighter? The gremlin that was destroying the schoolbus (which only Bart noticed) taunting him on his way to the mental institution by holding up Ned Flanders's severed-head, which is screaming "HIDILLY-HO, BART! " (TERRIFYING).

3 Hybrids of the Island of Dr. Hibbert

There's a lot of outright disturbing scenes in Treehouse of Horror segments, but seeing Turkey-Frink about to be eaten and Cow-Ned pleading with Homer to milk him are pretty nightmare fuel even by this show's standards.

4 Homer trying to kill his family in The Shinning

The premise of the Shining is something quite terrifying, particularly from the perspective of the wife and son that are the main characters, all of a sudden, the husband/father has inexplicably gone insane and is attempting to kill them both, and no amount of reasoning or begging will stop him. Of course, there's implications that he may have had abusive tendencies prior to their stay at the Overlook Hotel, but it's there that some kind of supernatural presence takes over his mind and convinces him to murder his family. And that same premise is pretty equally disturbing in The Shinning, Homer stalking through the snow, axe in hand, preparing to brutally murder his entire family. That's is very dark, especially when you consider that Homer also had abusive tendencies prior to this: he would choke Bart, neglect Maggie, and was a barely-functioning alcoholic. In other words, this isn't that implausible enough?
Well, at least Grandpa was able to get back from that gas station alive, I think.

5 Bart's Long-Lost Twin

Every family has secrets, which is why Hugo is such a scary tragic figure: he is a family secret given flesh and life, and the implication that he has endured a lifetime of sorrow and yearning. That's thing is dark, dark stuff, but so is his stalking and attempted surgical procedure on Bart, at least, until we find out it was Bart who was the evil twin and not Hugo, Bart's confused and afraid, there's a duplicate of him he never knew about who has been obsessing over him for his entire life, and now is deluded into performing a home-surgery on him that will likely take them both out. Although, honestly, the pigeon-rat seemed pretty damn funny.

6 Ned Flanders' Future Utopia in Time and Punishment

Homer inadvertently creates a number of terrible alternate-universes in his time travel adventures, and also his own alternate utopia, but none are as terrifying as the dystopian society centered around Ned Flanders, as they refer to him as lord and master of the world. While this bit plays out quickly, its damn effective: subjects are forced to dress like Ned and Maude, have hooks placed in their mouths to force smiles, and get lobotomies if they or any member of their family acts out. Marges dead-eyed "BLISSS" and Moe's sadly adorable ogling of his own brain actually hit this harden than any horror movie. At least the episode don't end with cruelty.

7 Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace Segment
8 Mr. Burns' head is sewn onto Homer's body

I'll be honest: this episode still gives me nightmares, when I saw it for the first time I was an imaginable kid, and seeing Homer awaken to see an elderly man's head sewed onto his body hit me hard nightmare fuel. Could that happen to me too? When I was asleep, would someone attach their head to my body?! There would be times when I had nightmares of this very thing happenin to me, and would rush to the bathroom mirror when waking up to make sure it hadn't happened to me too.
Also, the ending, which previewed a future where Homer and Burns' head had to share a body, made me genuinely think all episodes would be like this I was extremely confused, but relieved, when the next episode aired and Homer still only had one head, for god sake. In short, I was a dumber.

9 Goldilocks Gets Murdered by the Three Bears from Scary Tales Can Come True

Just reminds me that we need more Itchy and Scratchy...

10 Fog that turns The Simpsons inside out

The animation of the family's entire bodies being morphed so that their skin explodes off their bodies and their organs and muscles are exposed is just far too nightmarish for what was mostly a kids' cartoon, especially the fact that Marge's hair is composed of muscles and veins,. They even tear off Maggie's skin, A baby's skin is ripped of his body

But Homer's transformation gets the real deal, look at it in slo-motion on YouTube

The animators wanted to traumatize me in my childhood.

This was nightmare fuel as well...

The Contenders
11 Homer runs into the Third Dimension

Homer's journey in Homer3 is the type of horror that really scares me the most, creepy as hell. Homer finds himself in a baffling and dark situation, he's accidentally trapped into a new dimension, where nothing makes sense and everything seems foreign - and he has no idea of how to get out of it. Totally confused, no way out, the mysterious unknown and inexplicable are genuinely scary, especially when Homer quickly finds himself in a situation where the world is literally ending before his own eyes.
...has anyone here seen the movie Tron?

12 The clown bed scene
13 The ending music
14 “Now how ‘bout a hug?!”
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