5 Cartoons Whose Worlds Are Pretty Terrifying When You Think About It

Have you ever actually sat down and thought about the shows we loved watching as a kid? Maybe it's just the gift of hindsight talking, but it's pretty hard to do so without going "Man, how did I never notice how weird that was?"

Even if we kinda noticed it, we definitely never thought hard enough about these shows to realize that the worlds they take place in can be pretty messed up. In particular, these 5 are especially weird.

The Flintstones

You're probably confused right now, as The Flintstones have been a kid's TV staple for decades now, always with wholesome fun and telling kids to take their vitamins. What could be dark about this?

Think about this; have you noticed something in common about just about all the appliances and construction vehicles in this world? Yeah, they're alive, and can usually talk. In this Stone Age world, almost all of our manual labor is done by dinosaurs and early mammals.

Not only that, but we see some of them going through some pretty horrendous conditions, usually with a comment of "Enh, it's a living." It's basically animal cruelty that everyone's completely fine with.

Hey Arnold!

Okay real talk for a second here; the world of Hey Arnold! is so freaking haunted it's insane. Almost every week the kids have a new story about some weird urban legend that may or may not be true. Things like The Pigeon Man.

Sure, Pigeon Man just turned out to be a misunderstood guy who looked after his pigeons and lived on a roof, but a bunch of times these episodes end with straight up assurances that the ghosts are in fact VERY real.

Like when Four-Eyed Jack turned out to be a legitimate thing.

Or the ghost train

If you thought those were messed up, wait 'til you see the rest...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Seriously, how would you react if you stepped outside your house and saw four giant, green, humanoid turtles walking around in the worst trenchcoat disguises ever? I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be to yell "cowabunga, dude!" and offer them some pizza; it'd actually probably be screaming and running away.

Even aside from all the mutants that constantly pop up in the show, remember Krang and his army of Rock Soldiers from Dimension X?

There is literally an evil talking brain in a giant robot body from another dimension, who has an entire freaking ARMY at the ready to spill over into our world and wipe us all out. This is some scary stuff!

Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?

So for starters, there are more monster and ghost sightings in a single season of Scooby-Doo than there have been in the history of the world.

Sure, all of them turn out to be bogus, but could you imagine if there was a story about a massive haunting in the news every single day?

Not only that, but the monsters are always revealed to be these super-genius master criminals who are trying to get ahold of some kind of wealth. Are jobs really that few in the universe? Can none of these guys even get a design job or something?

Every superhero cartoon ever

Whether it's Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men, Spider-Man, or even The Tick, the 90s were absolutely filled to the brim with awesome superhero cartoons that we couldn't get enough of.

Y'know what's not so awesome though? Being someone in these cartoons who doesn't have superpowers.

Think about it. Every episode you see the heroes fighting off some awful, world-ending supervillain who probably have body counts the size of Texas. Characters like Apocalypse, The Joker, and Dormammu are all some of the scariest mofos around, and sure, if you have quick healing, super strength or thousands of gadgets, maybe you'll stand a chance against them.

For the rest of us? Well, better hope you never get in their way at any time ever, because otherwise you're pretty much guaranteed to just flat-out die. If you're LUCKY.

Share with anyone you know who loves old cartoons!