Top 10 Classic Examples of Nightmare Fuel from The Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror' Segments
"Nightmare Cafeteria" plays on a lot of our childhood fears - fear of your teachers, fear of your parents not taking you seriously, and fear of being eaten by a group of cannibalistic professors. Well, maybe not that last one, but the segment proves very effective in its horror. It remains one of the few "Treehouse of Horror" segments that ends on a properly horrifying scene, with Bart and Lisa unable to find a way out of their situation and getting liquefied by the enormous blender the teachers have set up.
The segment even manages to include some silent terror. There's the tension of the quiet, near-empty classroom...until a single pencil rolls off a desk and hits the floor, causing a hefty Mrs. Krabappel to smile and placidly say, "Detention." We all know what that means - say goodbye to Wendell.
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 lighter.
But you know what's not lighter? The gremlin that was destroying the school bus (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.
There are 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 is pretty nightmare fuel even by this show's standards.
The premise of The Shining is quite terrifying, particularly from the perspective of the wife and son who 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 are implications that he may have had abusive tendencies prior to their stay at the Overlook Hotel. However, it is there that some kind of supernatural presence takes over his mind and convinces him to murder his family.
That same premise is equally disturbing in The Shinning. Homer stalks through the snow, axe in hand, preparing to brutally murder his entire family. This 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, right? Well, at least Grandpa was able to get back from that gas station alive, I think.
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 is that he has endured a lifetime of sorrow and yearning.
That 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 is now deluded into performing home surgery on him that will likely take them both out.
Although, honestly, the pigeon-rat seemed pretty funny.
Homer inadvertently creates a number of terrible alternate universes in his time travel adventures, including his own alternate utopia. However, none are as terrifying as the dystopian society centered around Ned Flanders, where they refer to him as lord and master of the world.
While this bit plays out quickly, it's 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. Marge's dead-eyed "BLISSS" and Moe's sadly adorable ogling of his own brain actually hit harder than any horror movie.
At least the episode doesn't end with cruelty.
I'll be honest: this episode still gives me nightmares. When I saw it for the first time, I was a very imaginative kid, and seeing Homer awaken to find an elderly man's head sewn onto his body hit me hard. Could that happen to me too? When I was asleep, would someone attach their head to my body?!
There were times when I had nightmares of this very thing happening to me, and I 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's sake, I was young and impressionable.
Just reminds me that we need more Itchy and Scratchy.
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 off his body.
But Homer's transformation gets the real deal. Look at it in slow-motion on YouTube.
The animators wanted to traumatize me in my childhood.
This was nightmare fuel as well.
The Newcomers
Homer's journey in Homer3 is the type of horror that really scares me the most. Homer finds himself in a baffling and dark situation. He's accidentally trapped in a new dimension where nothing makes sense, everything seems foreign, and he has no idea how to get out of it.
Totally confused and with 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 eyes.
Has anyone here seen the movie Tron?
