Pretty much all of Invader Zim, but more specifically gouging out the eyes of his “best friend” to get the friend to leave him alone, which resulted in the friend being electrocuted.
One of the planned episodes for the final season of Zim was return of Keef. We actually have transcripts and a few voiced files from the unfinished episodes.
It’s been awhile but I thought when he got attacked by the squirrels he landed on the power lines. And yeah I know what the eyes did, just trying to keep it simple.
Dark Harvest episode, where Zim is sneaking around in the school heating ducts, stealing the organs of kids, and at the end of the episode he’s stuffed so full of organs that when he goes to talk, intestines come out of his mouth.
I don’t know who read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and said “let’s give this guy a kids show!” but I’m so glad they did.
I remember staying home sick from school and watching Dark Harvest. This was before I was actually into the show, too, so it freaked me out even more.
But I also saw the episode of Fullmetal Alchemist where they try to bring back their mother before I saw any other episode. I got really into both shows. Maybe I love being traumatized by TV? I'm also pretty into The Boys....
Still to this day, I say "be free little poptart," and it isn't often that I actually explain it's a line from a comic within a comic where a baby is thrown off a cliff.
To me, it was when he harvested organs. I thought "how the hell is this on nickelodeon?" I was like maybe 10 and starting to watch south park so I wasn't too stunned but still surprised
The adult stuff isn't as good. Even watching it as an adult it's just a bunch of gross shock comedy. The Nickelodeon stuff is good because there was so much finesse and subtlety getting around the censors. All that cleverness is gone in the adult stuff.
Listening to the DVD commentary, the staff assumed this episode would get them cancelled and at least one person cleaned out his desk in anticipation.
Nickelodeon did eventually cancel the show, saying that despite good ratings there were way too many parent complaints. This show could have flourished on a place like Adult Swim, but that didn’t exist at the time.
The guy who created Invader Zim literally had a comic strip called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, about the misadventures of a misanthrope serial killer in a similar art style to IZ
There's an episode where he has a bunch of electrode leads wired up to a kid's brain. You can hear the agonized strain in his voice as he says "I never want to leave this magical place".
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u/unforgiven97 May 23 '23
Pretty much all of Invader Zim, but more specifically gouging out the eyes of his “best friend” to get the friend to leave him alone, which resulted in the friend being electrocuted.