The Ren and Stimpy Show/Nightmare Fuel



The Ren and Stimpy Show is a... strange cartoon to say the least. It's also known to be one of the most controversial cartoons of the 90's, with all of it's disgusting and terrifying imagery. Sometimes, the show intended to use these terrifying imagery or plotlines in most episodes, and we end up getting these.

The deranged duo's antics were intended to amuse us. Sometimes they frighten us, purposefully or not.

""REN, IT'S HOT AND STINKY, I DON'T LIKE IT." Of COURSE it's hot and stinky. It's a CARCASS rotting in the SUUUUN!"
 * ..."Ren's Retirement". Basically it goes like this. Ren turns 10 years old, 70 in dog years. He's convinced he's gonna die. He manages to get a high-end coffin and is buried, alive, with Stimpy. A large worm comes over to visit...and promptly eats all the meat from their bodies, leaving nothing but torn-up skin hanging on their skeletons. AND THEY ARE STILL ALIVE. This troper was once a Ren and Stimpy fan. Now...no more.
 * The scene where they are living on an island, inside a dead whale and the maggots inside the whale are rising in such number that they are almost overwhelming Ren and Stimpy... vomit-inducingly horrific.


 * Ren's Brain, nonstop. Stimpy removes Ren's brain as part of a random science experiment... but Ren's brain leaves the house and goes off to work. Not too bad- gross, but pretty silly. The nightmare fuel comes in when Stimpy approaches Ren's brainless body, and replaces Ren's brain with a telephone. We see Ren acting like a retarded mental patient, completely limp, with a horribly vacant expression as Stimpy plays with him like a ragdoll, his head covered in stitches.
 * Earlier in the episode, in a manner similar to the infamous "Keef's Eyes" scene of Invader Zim, we are treated to a scene of Stimpy removing Ren's brain, entirely in silhouette. Who knew shadows could be so graphic?!
 * The episode "Who's Stupid Now," from Ren's perspective, is an extremely disturbing, unsettling episode. Basically, Ren is feeling unloved, so he and Stimpy switch places. Stimpy becomes the skinny jerk, and Ren becomes the fat idiot. Ren has more obligatory nervous breakdowns and his self-esteem is crushed.
 * The bizarre, freaky, Mind Screw ending of the Girl Scout Cookies episode... It was revealed that all of the girl scouts were old men in disguise as little girls- as was Stimpy. Stimpy urges Ren to take off his disguise, only to reveal Ren's skeleton and heart. Everybody laughs.
 * "Hermit Ren". Oh sweet, merciful Buddha, "Hermit Ren". Even ignoring the squicktacular visuals (for example the delightful image of the flesh melting off of Ren's hands, leaving only bone, done entirely in first person), the incredibly detailed portrayal of Ren becoming slowly insane due to his self-inflicted isolation, to the point where he begins having conversations with a mummified corpse.
 * Hoek's 'father' pointing out ticks and chiggers to eat, giving a nice view of the ones embedded in his armpit in the progress. Ulk. Gag.
 * From "Double Header." Ren's boss is horribly burned, the flesh has melted off of his skeletal finger, and his nose fell off. Also, the "Salve" guy returns as the manager of a freak show, and it's revealed that he has the lower half of a baby protruding from his chest.
 * A great many of the "freaks" from that episode were horrifying, too. There's also Ren's short "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the people watching his and Stimpy's freak show- they were forced to eat chicken heads.
 * There was a clip of an episode from the Ren And Stimpy Adult Party cartoon ("Ren Seeks Help") where Ren was getting therapy from Mr. Horse and tried to find out why he is behaving the way he always does. When Mr. Horse angrily said that he (Ren) is insane because of his acts, Ren was horrified by the fact he turned on him. Mr. Horse then started to beat the mess out of him. Unfortunately for him, Ren hits him with the phone and scratches him viciously. When Mr. Horse reaches for the gun, Ren grabs it and pistol whips him mercilessly until he's dead. When the authorities (or animal control, been a while) came, they saw Mr. Horse dead on the ground and Ren, whose face resembled something like a demonic dog at the time. Ren was then carried away while he was wriggling rabidly. The ending was rather dark, even by the show's standards.
 * Before being hauled away, Ren actually   That wasn't even the most horrifying thing about that episode.
 * The most frightening part of the episode was the exploration of Ren's twisted childhood. The origin of Ren's anger comes from memories of his birth- being in the "dark... and stinky" womb, and receiving a slap from a nurse, which leaves a bright red mark and leaves the baby stunned. Sound funny? It wasn't played for laughs, surprisingly. It was played completely straight. "My first memory was of unspeakable pain... and from that moment on, I wanted to inflict the pain on others." We see Ren age from a baby to an adolescent, and we see that he grew up torturing little animals. The audience is treated to several long scenes such as baby Ren gleefully plucking the legs off of a screaming caterpillar, burning ants with firecrackers, and a young child Ren torturing a frog in multiple, horrific ways.
 * Ren's voice is even creepier in this cartoon. John K lowered Ren's voice and made him sound very emotional and unhinged, even while speaking calmly. This episode has some of John K's best acting. Not only can you hear the genuine pain in Ren's voice at the beginning while he's talking to Stimpy, but his calm narration of his entire life story is downright horrifying. It's like something out of a horror movie. Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal has NOTHING on John K's Ren from "Ren Seeks Help."
 * Ren made plenty of Nightmare Faces in the episode. Actually he makes a lot of nightmare faces in general throughout the series.
 * Another example would be Ren's Up to Eleven Wild Take in the army episode. Ren is badmouthing the domineering sargeant, not noticing he's rising up out of the mud behind him. Not only do his eyes bug out in shock, his face melts off and his skull and brain pop out as he screams.
 * Oh my lord, BLACK HOLE. The Body Horror-ridden transformations are just terrifying.
 * The ending. Ren and Stimpy implode. After that, we see the Ren and Stimpy title card... but with Ren and Stimpy's faces SHOVED INSIDE OF THEMSELVES, with asterisk- like indentations where their faces should be, accompanied by a creepy buzzing sound...
 * In the episode 'The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen', we first learn that the aforementioned group is sent to find a barren wasteland and always die as soon as they get out there. In the middle of the episode, one of their Yaks gets tired of Stimpy singing the Canadian Kilted Yaksmen song. We are treated to an almost one-minute-long sequence of him going completely bonkers in front of the camera, foaming at the mouth, developing neck veins, screaming and bugging out. (You can see it at about 4.30 here)
 * In the episode To Salve or Not to Salve, Stimpy buys a giant vacuum from a door-to-door salesmen and demonstrates it to Ren. Ren gets sucked in, fur-first. We then see a skeletal Ren having his internal organs sucked out one by one, then trying to keep his brain from being sucked in. He later would scream, and his heart would fly out, a la Courage the Cowardly Dog.
 * The nightmare fuel of the brain scene was softened a bit by Ren's utterly hammy scream of "Must... Save... THE BRAIN!!!" That was a healthy dose of Nightmare Retardant right there.
 * The salve guy was pretty damn creepy just by himself. Although he was hilarious, the way he kept appearing out of nowhere was pretty disturbing. You do NOT want that creep in your house.
 * Stimpy's Fan Club where Ren is jealous of all the attention Stimpy is getting, so he plots to kill him in his sleep. All of the lights go out and all you see is Ren's face and his hands. And as if that wasn't bad enough, toward the end of the scene, you see his brain pulsating from his skull as he screams and what could be described as fires of hell engulf him.
 * "Just one quick... TWIST!" *crack* "...and it's over."
 * "And with these hands, I hold the fate of millions...
 * The end of "Svën Höek" where Ren Goes Mad from the Revelation upon finding out what a mess Stimpy and Sven made in his house. What made it Nightmare Fuel of the highest degree was when Ren went from genuinely angry and raving to eerily pleasant at the drop of a hat while he described how he would get his revenge by miming "gouging out their eyes", "tearing off their lips", beating them up, and wrenching their arms out of their sockets. He imagines committing said acts by demonstrating with his hands, and we hear what each horrible act of violence would sound like. Made worse when Sven and Stimpy are shown to be terrified out of their wits and Ren expresses his happiness at seeing how scared they are by giving them a huge Slasher Smile and continuing on with his Psycho Rant. The worst part is that when he says "tear your arms out of the sockets" and we hear the sound, you can see a brief splash of blood as we hear the snapping.
 * And then he whizzes on the electric fence and they all die and go to Hell.
 * Poor Sven and Stimpy are crying and hugging each other, shaking in pure terror, during the whole thing. It can remind some people of how little kids react when they are abused by their parents. Their reactions just sell the scene and make it even more disturbing.
 * Stimpy: "W-we don't like this, Ren!"
 * Sven: "Yeah- you're scaring us!"
 * "Oh, what I'm gonna do to﻿ youuuuu."
 * In Haunted House, the ghost's last resort to scaring Ren and Stimpy was to approach them wearing a mask and wielding a chainsaw. His eyes, while wearing the mask, look realistic and when he approaches the sleeping duo, his eyes widen and turn red.
 * "Stimpy's Invention". Stimpy invents a Happy Helmet and sticks it on Ren's head, forcing him to smile against his will. In one scene, Ren is cleaning Stimpy's cat box. "See how I love to clean filthy cat boxes!" he yells, then lets out the most horrifying laugh you've ever heard. Fortunately, some Nightmare Retardant comes in the form of the "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" song.