Top 5 Darkest Children’s Cartoons

During the recent Halloween season, I did pretty much what I do every year which is re-watch horror movies and anime. Well, while watching the horror anime it got me thinking about the darkest children’s cartoons from the Western world. This came into my head on the basis of watching Higurashi, which is one of the most deceptively dark series in anime history. Well, that got me originally thinking about surprisingly dark anime, but I found that list to be massive. I mean you can go to my WTF Moments in Anime list to find several and that list isn’t all-inclusive. So that got me thinking in the more Western direction, specifically, for children’s cartoons. So I decided to make a list of the Top 5 darkest children’s cartoons. As far as what my criteria for inclusion of this list they are as follows: 1.) Must not be anime. Again the list of dark anime is nearly endless and most anime is not really for younger children anyway. 2.) The show’s main demographic or who it was marketed to must be younger children. Shows with an older demographic I will mention in the honorable mentions, but will not be on the official list. Now that the criteria is out-of-the-way onto my list of the Top 5 Darkest Children’s Cartoons. Oh and if it wasn’t obvious, opinions are my own and spoilers forthcoming.

Honorable Mentions

Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Star Wars Rebels, The Legend of Korra, & Trollhunters

All of these series share the same problem: Their demographic is older children. Now this is by no means a shot at these series quality (in fact they are all amazing), just a commentary that they don’t really meet my criteria of being a dark CHILDREN’S cartoon. Most of their demographics are closer to teenage children and not younger ones. In fact, Star Wars Rebels was not even allowed to be broadcast before 9 pm during its original airing due to being too dark for younger audiences. Now if anyone wants me to make a list which includes older demographics I will happily do so.

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Alright this show does meet the criteria to be on this list and almost was. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was an amazing show. The entire concept if you’ve never seen it is that two children force the Grim Reaper (Grim) to be their friend forever. The three use Grim’s evil powers to go through several adventures. The series is full of satire and black humor. The thing that kept the series off this list was that for a series that has so many allegedly evil characters it’s surprisingly lighthearted. They really downplay a lot of dark aspects of their world. I mean you could argue the only truly evil character is actually Mandy and that’s not even consistent. So the overall lightheartedness of the series barely kept it off this list. Still pretty dark for kid’s show though.

Over the Garden Wall

I omitted this from the list on a very simple basis: Over the Garden Wall is basically a 2 hour movie. As I said in my review of Over the Garden Wall, it is one of the best yet darkest shows I have ever personally seen. The problem I see trying to include it in this list is that 5 episodes of any of these shows equal the entire Over the Garden Wall series. I realize that’s not necessarily fair, but it is my list.

5.) Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated

Alright, so I know what you’re thinking “How can a Scooby-Doo show be one of the darkest children’s cartoons?” Well, simply put Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (henceforth known as Mystery Inc.) is not your mother’s Scooby-Doo show.

First, I will admit that the series does kinda start very prototypical. You know the whole the strange one-off character is the one that behind the mask thing. The biggest difference being that there is continuity between episodes. This continuity is really where you start diving into the darker aspects of the series at least in the beginning. The continuity initially starts with the gang being assisted by the strange Mr. E. Over the course of the series you start to get the connection between our gang and the original Mystery Incorporated, which Mr. E was a member of. This brings upon the introduction to one of the darkest characters in Scooby-Doo history, Professor Pericles. Professor Pericles is a parrot that was the mascot of the previous version of the Mystery Incorporated. He’s also completely sadistic, psychotic, and a criminal genius. He begins showing his darker side early in series when he appears to help Scooby-Doo when the entire town is immobilized by a love potion by coming up with an antidote. Well the truth was that he gave the one-off villain the love potion and helped Scooby-Doo so that he could gather materials to get a lost treasure. Basically, he completely manipulated Scooby for his own benefit. Next, you see him being a bit more sinister by torturing Fred’s “dad” to get his piece of a Planispheric Disk. Now that we are on to Fred’s “dad”, Fred Jones Sr., you find out at the end of the first season not only is he not Fred’s real dad, but he tricked and blackmailed the original Mystery Incorporated. He cast Fred’s real parents out of town and when they came back he took Fred as his own. At this point in the series, the entire team breaks up with Fred effectively broken. That’s how season one ended.

Well, season two starts with the team fractured and they don’t really come back together until after the third episode. No sooner does the gang get back together, that Fred’s parents show up and Professor Pericles gets the original gang together for his nefarious plan. From there the series is mostly an overarching story with the original gang doing everything in their power to get the disks from the new gang. During these events Professor Pericles has an army of Nazi robots built, he blows up Cassidy Williams (a member of his own gang), oh and finally puts venom into the spine of Mr. E, his best friend. He also has Fred’s parents get plastic surgery to look like Daphne and Fred to aid in his plan. The worst thing that Professor Pericles does is genetically engineer skull cattle. Skull cattle are basically a genetic hybrid of piranha, cattle, and bees. Basically they are a hive mind with sharp teeth and unending appetites. Well by trying to get rid of them the gang inadvertently introduces the skull cattle to the ocean. This would not be a problem had their piranha side not allow them to survive in water. Which basically means the gang releases a species that can destroy the entire world. Yes, ladies and gentlemen this series literally introduced something that can destroy the entire world. Note: this was well before the finale.

The final dark straw of the entire series is the Evil Entity and its effect on all history. Basically, this cross-dimensional being helped create every “mystery group” since 16th century as a means to try to get himself out of his sarcophagus prison. In the grand scheme, everything Professor Pericles does can be attributed to this Evil Entity. The Evil Entity’s entire existence is to cause destruction. Obviously, part of this includes an attempt to destroy Earth. Thankfully, Scooby does stop him in the end.

With the number of deaths, disturbing imagery, and destruction on a global scale Mystery Inc. is by far the darkest Scooby-Doo show. It’s also the best Scooby-Doo show, by the way.

4.) Courage the Cowardly Dog

This one probably comes as much less of a surprise. Courage the Cowardly Dog is probably the darkest show to ever come from Cartoon Network. Now note: Cartoon Network is the same network that produced Billy & Mandy, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, and Adventure Time. All of which are extremely dark, but all of which pale in comparison to Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Let’s just start with very first episode of Courage as a full show. The first segment of Courage featured Katz running a motel in order to feed his man-eating spiders. Let that sink in for a moment. The very first segment has a crazed psychotic villain trying to feed our main characters to his man-eating spiders and he should’ve succeeded. One of the most memorable scenes from the entire series is Katz holding one of his spiders over Courage trying to feed him to it. That’s in the first segment. Second segment is not nearly as memorable. However, it is still pretty dark. The entire segment is Cajun Fox trying to cook Muriel with the inevitable ending of him being the one in the pot at the end. Aside from the attempt to eat Muriel, she herself at the end was going to eat delicious smelling Cajun Fox stew. Yes ladies and gentlemen, they were going to eat the antagonist of the episode.

Now that we’re passed the first episode, I’ll just talk about other disturbing imagery from this show. First, you have King Ramses. For his appearance the way they used the 3D animation just made him so creepy looking. Additionally, his slow phrase of “return the slab” is just eerie. Not to mention he literally puts Eustace on the slab as punishment for not returning the slab. Another very disturbing antagonist is Freaky Fred. Now note, Fred does not attempt to kill anyone, but that doesn’t make him any less disturbing. His entire episode is him explaining when he was “naughty.” “Naughty” being giving in to his compulsion to shave all the hair off animals and people. The episode is even creepier on the basis that he explains this all in rhyme and with a huge disturbing grin on his face. Well both myself and the series,, save the most disturbing for last. The very last episode of the series has the single most disturbing imagery I’ve seen in a children’s show. The entire episode has Courage attempt to perform different tasks ‘perfectly’. Well obviously no one’s perfect so Courage struggles through the tasks. The truly disturbing aspect of the episode comes when Courage tries to sleep ‘perfectly’. He then goes on to have five nightmare sequences. The first of these nightmare sequences is the most disturbing. This 3D creepy looking blue humanoid thing is just floating in void and says “You’re not perfect.” I had to re-watch this episode to recall how utterly disturbing that imagery is. The other nightmare sequences are somewhat disturbing themselves, but pale in comparison to that creepy blue figure.

The overall imagery of this series is what puts it in the top 5 of darkest children’s cartoons. Really, the only thing holding it back is that there are no ramifications for the things that happen in individual episodes. If there was any continuity beyond the two episodes that reference the pilot short or the villains assemble episode that actually doesn’t really reference the previous episodes beyond that all of their failures were Courage’s fault then this show would either be #1 or 2.

3.) Avatar: The Last Airbender

Ok, so the question I’m going to get is “Why can you rank Avatar: The Last Airbender and not The Legend of Korra?” Well, simply put, The Last Airbender was heavily marketed to children and Legend of Korra was not. Now, I don’t personally think that Nickelodeon really looked past Aang’s early series personality to really evaluate who they should’ve been marketing the series to, but, that’s neither here nor there.

Now, I’ll point out that The Last Airbender does start off somewhat lighthearted, however, there are still dark undertones present throughout. I mean the series literally starts off with the world caught up in a war over a century old. Even if you just look at the one hour series premiere, Zuko attempts to burn the Southern Water Village to the ground just to get the Avatar. The series really starts on its dark path in episode 3 where you see Aang’s reaction to finding out that the he is the last airbender. From that point on, most of the first season shows the effects of the war on different people. Specifically speaking, you see broken spirits, broken homes, and broken families throughout. The series truly takes off in the 12th episode. In that episode, you get the dueling backstories of Aang and Zuko. For Aang, basically due to the war his Avatar status was revealed to him at 12 instead of the normal 16. By doing so, Aang becomes completely alienated by both his peers and the elder airbenders. So much so that he was going to be sent away from the only person that treated him like a human. This led Aang to running away from home. Shortly after this, he ends up getting caught in storm and has to freeze himself to survive. During the hundred years after, the war escalates and the firebenders destroy the airbenders. Basically, Aang blames himself for both the current status of the world and for his friends’ destruction. Well on Zuko’s side, you see how he got his burn marks. Basically, Zuko spoke up during a meeting between his father and his generals. Lord Ozai saw this as nothing short of insubordination. Zuko’s punishment was an Angi Kai. Unbeknownst to him the Angi Kai would be against Lord Ozai. Zuko felt to his knees and begged his father’s forgiveness. Ozai basically called his refusal to fight a sign of cowardice and continued attacking Zuko leaving him with his signature burn mark.  Additionally, he stripped Zuko of his birthright, exiled him, and sent him on an effective wild goose chase to bring back the Avatar. Look at it this way, Zuko spoke up for his people and had his life, as he knew it, destroyed. That’s a pretty deep dark stuff for a “kid’s” show. The rest of season one basically has a few dark moments here and there. Specific examples are finding out that an inventor has been using the Northern Air Temple to develop weapons for the Fire Nation. Some of these weapons end up coming back in a very destructive way later. Additionally, you have an assassination attempt on Zuko’s life. Oh and finally, a massive war scene. During the two episodes of the war, you have the on-screen death of the Moon spirit which sets off Aang’s Avatar State. Aang and the Ocean spirit then destroy the entire fleet of Fire Nation ships. Finally, the Moon spirit resurrects which in turn caused another on-screen death of Princess Yue.

Season two basically brings upon one of the most insane characters of all time in Azula. I will point out that she was a gross omission on my list of the Most Psychotic Characters of All Time. Mostly, I sorta forgot how insane she was. After re-watching the series recently I realized her omission. Azula is cold, calculating, strong, and extremely terrifying. She has no problem burning anything and anyone in her way, innocent or otherwise. Her typical tactic was to use her opponent’s weaknesses against them. She also not averse to using scare tactics to get want she wants. The worse part is she’s already one of the strongest people on the show. Technically, if not for her losing control of her sanity, she may have never lost. Additionally, family means absolutely nothing to her. I mean she literally allowed Zuko to take the credit for killing the Avatar, so that during the likely scenario that the Avatar was still alive Zuko would face Ozai’s wrath. Yeah, she basically gave him credit to potentially have him killed. But on the bright side she at least admits that she’s a monster.

For the remainder of the series, for the most part, plot-heavy episodes are extremely dark. You get everything from trying to induce Aang’s Avatar state by faking Katara’s death to the remainder of Zuko’s backstory where he was the excuse for his mother’s banishment and his grandfather’s death. Additionally, you get Sandbenders stealing Appa and the subsequent horrors he has to go through. Along with that you get to see Aang basically break after losing Appa. I mean the end of series even dives into the mental struggle Aang has to go through on his decision of whether to let Ozai live or not. It’s extremely rare for a children’s show to fully dive into the psychological effects these tough decisions have on the characters. All that commentary ignores the massive scale battles throughout the last two seasons. Now note: we don’t see too many deaths on-screen from these battles but you know they happen.

The darkest of episode of the series is actually filler. There is an episode where one of the former members of the Southern Water Tribe tries to teach Katara bloodbending. Bloodbending is basically a form of bending where waterbender can bend the blood from within another individual. The individual whose blood is being bent is effectively a slave in their own body. It’s really the darkest form of bending. You are quite literally bending someone’s life against their will. The episode itself basically brings Katara to her lowest most painful moment. She ends up having to bloodbend the other waterbender in order to save her friends. Well once you bloodbend you are effectively opening yourself to its madness. And truthfully it’s not something you can ever truly come back from. Katara ends up breaking down at the end of the this episode. Her personality does become somewhat darker after this episode too. So much so that she actually uses bloodbending again later in the series to get revenge for her mother’s death. It was a somewhat disturbing turn for her character. Appreciated, but disturbing nonetheless.

Overall, Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. Part of what made it so great is that the storytelling was allowed to go into darker territory. Stuff on a much grander and deeper scale. The only thing holding it back from being #1 or 2 on this list is just the number of lighthearted filler episodes. Again there are some dark ones, but most of the filler episodes are a bit lighter in tone. Nothing wrong with this, just keeps it from being #1 or 2 for a list of darkest children’s cartoons.

2.) Gravity Falls

So yes, Gravity Falls makes another one of my lists. Let’s be honest though it was pretty much made for this list. I guess the question that could be asked is why I can include Gravity Falls, but can’t include shows like Star vs. The Forces of Evil? Well, Star vs. The Forces of Evil’s audience is clearly more of a teenage audience. You can clearly tell this by the sheer amount of relationship drama over the course of the series and the occasional Game of Thrones level inner-political conflict. Whereas Gravity Falls’s audience is a bit more debatable. This is particularly evident with characters like Mabel and Soos whose personalities are generally there to cater to younger audiences. So I’m willing to include it.

Where to begin on Gravity Falls…well let’s just start with series’ concept itself. Dipper and Mabel are literally going up against mythical creatures on a daily basis. These go from the only slightly scary things like gnomes and golf ball people to the absolutely terrifying like the Summerween Trickster and an evil shapeshifter. These are just base examples. I mean they pretty much go up against anything and everything including zombies, ghosts, living wax figures, etc. So from a base concept standpoint the early part of the series is mostly about solving the mysteries of Gravity Falls. It’s actually similar to Mystery Incorporated in this regard. The difference is that at no point are the monsters not real in Gravity Falls. This adds to our level of concern for the main characters, because anything can and will try to kill them.

Now that we’ve discussed the basic concept let’s move on to the plot-line itself. The majority of the first season follows the initial base concept laid out above. Specifically speaking, almost every episode is a monster of the week episode with a couple things tying the overall plot-line together. The main overall plot in season one is about Gideon and his attempt to destroy the Pines’ family. While Gideon for the most part seems harmless enough, he does have moments that are pretty dark. Let’s just look at his first appearance. Throughout the episode, he manipulates everyone in town not only for his show, but also as a way to continue to date Mabel, who was not interested. Now part of this is Mabel’s fault not being forthright with him to start, but still. Dipper trying to be the nice brother helps dump him for Mabel. After this you basic see him go off the deep end. He shows that his bolo tie is actually a mystic amulet that gives him telekinetic powers. He then uses these powers to try to kill Dipper. There was absolutely no sugarcoating his attempt to kill Dipper. After that he vows his revenge and plans out his next course of action. Said courses of action include attempting to destroy the Mystery Shack, actively trying to kill Dipper on multiple occasions, and bringing out the most psychotic character I’ve ever seen on a children’s show, but more on that character later. Basically, Gideon goes from a manipulative annoyance to a near monster himself by the end of season one.

Now season two basically has two prevailing plot-lines. The first half of season two is all about the finding the author of the Journals and the second half just leads to the finale. The first half of season two is dark more on a basis of what finding the Author unravels about Gravity Falls. First, there is entire organization dedicated to hiding the weird stuff that happens at Gravity Falls. This organization was started by Old Man McGucket years ago, because he figured it was better for people’s sanity to not know everything crazy about Gravity Falls. It’s basic ignorance is bliss. Turns out McGucket was at one point a genius engineer. He invented a machine to remove bad memories. Which the organization uses to erase people’s memories. The series reveals that because of all horrible things he saw during his work, McGucket kept having to erase his memories. This basically eventually drained most of his intelligence and his sanity. In this regard, McGucket is one of the saddest characters in the show. The other major reveal during the search for the Author is the stuff going on in the background with Stan. Basically, Stan has been rebuilding an Inter-dimensional Portal for 30 years. His reasoning is not explained until around the midpoint of season two. For the entire season up to that point all you see is Stan doing shady stuff downstairs. The episode that finally reveals the Author spends most the episode not only discrediting Stan, but adding to his list of lies. This is goes to a point where Dipper has to question whether he can trust anything Stan has ever told him. Well, when the Author finally surfaces you find out that Stan’s been trying to save his brother from another dimension. The following episode adds to the depth of this attempt to save Ford. Basically, Stan was willing to sacrifice the world to bring his brother back. Now you might call that lighthearted, but it doesn’t dismiss the potential to destroy everyone and everything. Ford even calls Stan on such. Obviously, throughout the first half of season two there are other deep moments. Specifically, Soos’s backstory is a complete gut-punch and there’s also Pacifica’s parents horrible treatment and manipulation of her. Pretty much anything plot-wise that was a slow build in season two, became either extremely dark or a gut-punch.

Well, for the second of season two there’s really only one thing to talk about and that’s Bill Cipher.  As I have said before Bill is my favorite male cartoon character of all time. I’m not going to really beleaguer that point too much. What we are talking about here is just how dark he is. Just to backtrack, let’s look at his introduction. He pulls teeth out of deer and gives them to Gideon. Gideon then freaks out and calls him insane which he agrees with. That’s within his first minute on-screen. But we’re talking about season two here. First half of season two, his only real appearance is when he tricks Dipper and then turns him into his ‘puppet’. He steals Dipper’s body and attempts to destroy the Journal. While in Dipper’s body he obviously has to take it for a test spin so he stabs himself and then throws himself down the stairs. Alright enough of the small potatoes. The event that entire series was leading towards is Weirdmageddon. Weirdmageddon is basically planned out from the beginning of time.  It’s the way that Bill, an omnipotent 2-dimensional being crosses over into the 3rd dimension. He has to do this because he already destroyed his home 2nd dimension and the Nightmare Realm that he was living in is destined to collapse upon itself.  The only way for his continued existence is merge the Nightmare Realm and the 3rd dimension. Just to rehash, he destroys dimensions and then moves to the next one. Well, in order to cause Weirdmageddon he takes over Blendin Blandin’s body and tricks Mabel to break the inter-dimensional rift. This allows Bill and his friends to come to Gravity Falls. Immediately, Bill completely destroys the town. In actuality, what he did was turn Gravity Falls into a mini Nightmare Realm, but same-difference. Which by-the-way features the one of the most disgusting scenes ever where Bill swaps every orifice on Pacifica’s dad’s face. Really the entirety of Weirdmageddon is just one disturbing scene after another. I’d say the single most disturbing aspect of Weirdmageddon is actually Mabel’s prison. Mabel’s prison is a trap that gives you everything you want. It actually reminds me a lot of The Other World from Coraline. Basically, the world caters to your desires so that you will stay there forever. Once you are shown its true face you see just how horrible of an existence it is. In Coraline, The Other World becomes a spider web in Gravity Falls the world becomes basically a nightmare. Once Mabel figures out just how disgusting her prison is it turns against her and tries to kill everyone.

I will point a simple fact out. Weirdmageddon is the single darkest story arc I have ever seen from any Western cartoon. This actually includes adult shows. The biggest difference between #1 and #2 in this case is actually the base concept of the series at #1 and just how cynical it is. Additionally, the slightly more lighthearted season one from Gravity Falls brings the ranking just barely below #1.

1.) Invader Zim

Ok, this pick really goes without saying, but I’ll explain it anyway. First, I am not 100% convinced that this was not supposed to be an adult show. With that said, it was marketed as a children’s show on Nickelodeon.  Now let’s look at the creator of the show for just a moment. Prior to Invader Zim, he was most known for a comic book series called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Amazingly, that series is exactly what it sounds like. Now with that knowledge, I’ll add a point that the design (both for characters and the world) and the characterizations of Invader Zim’s characters are extremely similar to ones of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. The only thing they could not get away with in Invader Zim was violent on-screen murders. But with all that said let’s get to Invader Zim itself.

Let’s start with a basic overview of Invader Zim. Your protagonist of the series is an alien invader. His mission to subjugate and eliminate the human race. Now he is completely inept at his mission, but let’s think about this for a second. The series’ protagonist is quite literally trying to destroy humanity. Oh and he was member of the invasion force before he just happened to start the invasion on his home planet. That goes back to his complete incompetence. Let’s backtrack to his current mission. The Earth we see in the series is an extremely dark and satirical version of it. Basically, the world is shown as being so dumb that the only person who initially recognizes that Zim is an alien is the deuteragonist, Dib. This would be understandable if Zim’s disguise was even somewhat good, but no it’s literally just contacts and a cheap hairpiece. As a note, Dib is not really that intelligent either. Zim and Dib’s intelligence levels are basically conformable. Really that only means that they’re slightly more intelligent than the complete idiotic masses of the rest of Earth. If we’re being completely honest the only truly intelligent person is Gaz and she cares more about pizza and video games than any else. As a note from an imagery standpoint: Gaz’s favorite pizza place is Bloaty’s Pizza Hog. Bloaty’s Pizza Hog is extremely popular and obvious parody of Chuck E. Cheese’s. The mascot is a morbidly obese pig that has children play on his fat folds and eats disgusting greasy pizza. The guy wears the Bloaty outfit is an even more morbidly obese permanently greasy man. It is an absolutely disgusting image.

Well now that we’ve talked about the overview of Invader Zim let’s look at individual episodes. There is an episode where Zim gets a hideous zit. It turns out this zit has hypnotic powers and Zim ends up hypnotizing the entire school to get information from Dib on a flaw in Zim’s security. Basically Zim uses his zit to get a large group of slaves to do his bidding. Finally, the zit grows to a monsterly huge size and then explodes. The zit blowing up is just beyond gross. Another episode has Zim use a time machine to kill Dib as a small child. Turns out the only thing that could go through the portal were rubber pigs. Basically the rubber pigs replace something in the past. Well from that point on Zim basically sends several rubber pigs to systematically destroy Dib’s life. Eventually, Dib’s father builds him a robot exoskeleton that keeps getting more powerful so Zim sends the last piggy to stop himself from sending the first one. Well that works except the thing that the piggy replaces is Zim’s brain. In the grand scheme basically every episode is cynical, violent, or disgusting. Even the Christmas episode shows just how dumb and easily manipulated the masses are. Literally, all Zim had to do was dress up like Santa and he was able to basically conquer the world (for a brief period of time). The single darkest episode in the series is one of the early ones called Dark Harvest. The episode starts fairly simple. Zim is sent to nurse with ‘head pidgeons’. Dib points out that Zim will be outed as an alien when the nurse examines him. At this point, Zim figures if he has human organs, he’ll appear human. Basically, Zim goes around stealing people’s organs are replacing them with random objects. He doesn’t stop at a basic body compliment he gets as many as he can. I mean more is better, right? Dib then tries to stop Zim and fails miserably. Zim’s given a clean bill of health and the nurse calls Dib not human, because Zim replaces his lungs with a cow mooing toy. It’s just a disturbing episode. The image I think of when I think of this episode is Zim sitting there cocky talking to Dib while just spitting up excess organs. It’s actually pretty disgusting. However the most disturbing aspect is that this particular episode actually came up during a murder trial. Basically, the prosecution said that defendant had a fascination with images of body parts after he made a comment about it from watching this episode. Now his witnesses did say that he made the comment in jest, but still very disturbing.

With all the above said there’s an additional very simple reason Invader Zim is my pick for the darkest children’s cartoon. Simply put, there are no lighthearted episodes in the entire series. No other series on this list can make that claim, not even Courage. This is not to say the series is all doom and gloom, just that every episode features dark moments. That’s the nature of the show though. That’s where its humor is derived from, just how dark and twisted their world is.

Conclusions

I’ll point out that all of these shows are some of my personal favorites. The simple fact is that children’s shows do not all have to be stories that are just sunshine and rainbows. If every show was just about a socially awkward bunny making friends, children would never figure out how to face their fears or stand up for what is right. There is a place for a darker story-line in children’s entertainment. I wouldn’t say to make every show as dark as Invader Zim, but there does have to be a balance. I appreciate everyone reading. Hope you enjoyed my list of the Top 5 Darkest Children’s Cartoons.