I saw a meme about American cartoons having that one weird episode, and the comments was just people listing off their horror stories.
They seem to come from the 90s-2010. I looked into some from Courage the Cowardly Dog, Marvelous misadventures of Flapjack, Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, Regular Show(the only one in my country also), and honestly so many more. What’s this obsession with weird or downright scary themes?
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So, it’s worth nothing that those shows are exceptions to the rule, and the majority of American cartoons aren’t like those. People talk about the scary ones because they are different than the norm.
We have hundreds of cartoon shows with a wide range of styles. Some are scary, some are funny. You may have just stumbled on a small subset. Is SpongeBob scary?
As for weird… we’re talking about cartoons. Animated illustrations of characters. A certain level of absurdity goes with the territory.
We already have 8+ decades of milquetoast cartoons that are re-aired constantly, it’s not really surprising that some of the new stuff is a little more out there.
Considering how many cartoons are made in the U.S., some are bound to be scary. Note though that you’re specifically talking about episodes and shows that were a little weird – it’s like watching a video list of romantic moments in cartoons and wondering why cartoons in the U.S. are so romantic.
FWIW I’ve never heard of any of these shows, so I don’t think they’re the most mainstream. I’m not really into cartoons myself so I couldn’t tell you how common weird and scary episodes are across the whole genre.
These shows are aimed at teenagers and young adults who can handle a more mature subject matter. Also, the shows you listed are all very small shows with a niche audience at best, not even close to being mainstream or well known.
I have only heard of one of those shows.
Sometimes artists want to flex their muscle and don’t want to do the same song and dance over and over again. A punk rock band might slip in a ballad on an album, [a newspaper comic strip might get unusually dark](https://www.gocomics.com/comics/lists/1720856/garfield-loneliness-denial-weird-storyline-1989), a TV show might change their format or shake up the genre in a unique plot or setting.
Because it’s exciting without drama it’s constant adventure
My Little Pony is an absolute horror show.
If you were at all familiar with Jhonen Vasquez’s work, Invader Zim would seem very tame. His most famous comic is about a serial killer haunted by Lovecraftian monstrosities.
That’s such a small selection of shows.
Sometimes that makes it more interesting. I quite liked a couple of the ones you listed.
They’re not actually scary, generally, just absurd and occasionally play with things that are typically scary along the way.
One might even call them degenerate
I mean, have you seen some of the shit that comes out of Japan?
The 90s were a strange time for media in general. Everything was gross-out humor. Then came the 2000s which was the edgy decade, so cartoons either went full-on dark or tried to be creepy with a thin layer of color and fun on the surface.
From the very beginning, animation has been a way to express things that can’t be done with in real life. Naturally people are going to make them weird. As for “scary”, they really aren’t.
Ren and Stimpy was a huge hit for Nickelodeon. After its success other cartoons tried to capitalize on that. None of them ever matched the original Ren and Stimpy though. That show is still nuts 30 years later.