Top 10 Most Disturbing Don't Hug Me I'm Scared Moments

This series is known for its characters appearing out of nowhere - even the protagonists don’t know where to look. The unnerving twins Lily and Todney are no exception as they appear in the window in episode 3 and invite the trio to their home to teach them about family values. From the cadaverous family members with a horrific “family scent” to the blood-sucking family tree, everything is devoid of life in their dimly-lit home. When the twins take Yellow Guy hostage and dress him up like their absent mother at the dinner table, their true motives are revealed. They devour their discounted chicken with monstrous teeth, and we’re left questioning what their “family values” really are.

At number 9, we have the introduction of King Malcolm’s Cult from Episode 3. In classic “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” fashion, the episode starts with a childlike dream sequence in which Yellow Guy meets a butterfly who wants to teach him the importance of love. However, the mood abruptly changes when the friendly group of characters introduce him to a giant stone head named Malcolm which they call their king. Their singing morphs into a cult-like chant as Yellow Guy is strapped to a chair and forced to join them, before abruptly waking up. The end credits show a live action burning of the Malcolm statue, so was it all really just a dream?

“Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” is most disturbing when the characters come close to breaking the illusion, but are ultimately powerless. By Episode 5 of the new series, Red Guy is tired of their imprisoned lives and craves excitement, prompting an old train called Choo Choo to take them on a trip. The old train fails to survive the musical journey, but Red Guy drives the corpse through the wall of the house he has come to despise in search of a new life for the trio. When their efforts are thwarted by Choo Choo waking up and transporting them to a junkyard, they can only wait to be returned to their old lives while using Choo Choo’s parts to build a fire.

At number 7 is a scene from the final episode of the original web series, showing how hard it is for the characters to differentiate between nightmares and reality. From the get go, Yellow Guy is already anticipating the potential horrors around him that have taken his friends away and left him sad and lonely. As he tries to sleep and forget his woes, a lamp drags him into a hallucination more disturbed and off-key than those before, singing that he could “have a dream about drowning in oil”. After waking up with a start, the nightmare only continues as Yellow Guy’s bed turns into a bath of oil, and he slowly drowns while helplessly gasping and gurgling for help.

The new TV series attempts to give both the characters and the audience answers about the origins of this disturbing world, and Lesley acts as a puppet master and overall controller of the characters. Lesley is first spotted at the end of Episode 5, as a human hand rolls a toy car back to a doll’s house. In the final Episode, Yellow Guy is more intelligent thanks to fresh batteries, and ventures up to the top floor, where he meets Lesley. Yellow Guy helps her “tidy up” in return for an old book, potentially the secrets of their world. But after the other characters steal his batteries, he loses his intelligence and shreds the book, leaving them back where they started once again.

Number 5 is dedicated to the cruelty of the clock villain from the second-ever YouTube episode. This story begins with a seemingly harmless, if a bit fishy, song about the importance of time. When Duck seems close to breaking the illusion by saying ‘time’s just a construct of human perception’, the sentient singing clock becomes aggravated and begins screeching, causing the characters’ ears to bleed. They then undergo a cycle of rapid aging, with the protagonists calling out in agony as their flesh starts to decay and fall off their bodies. Upon returning them to their original state in their chairs looking youthful once again, it all seems like a cruel and endless game as the metronome relentlessly ticks.

What isn’t creepy about a talking coffin who helps you plan your funeral? After Duck reads in the newspaper that he’s dead, his heart falls out of his body and the blood shapes the floorboards into a coffin. The trio then sing a happy song about getting ready for the “big day”, and it’s obvious they don’t fully understand death. Duck is excited to be in his coffin with his insides removed, and the coffin lowers itself into the ground. It’s surreal that by this point, Duck still doesn’t understand what’s happening, finding the maggots that chew on his decomposing body ticklish. Just in case you have a fear of being buried alive, it might be wise to avoid the obituaries.

Taking the third spot is Yellow Guy’s Dad, Roy, who might be the most mysterious character, and one of the most recurring throughout the franchise. In the final episode of the web series, Red Guy reveals Roy to be the main antagonist by discovering a control panel which programs the appearance of the teachers seen in the show. Roy is as much an enigma to Yellow Guy as the audience, and he still believes in a father-son relationship, but Roy ignores his son and instead watches him suffer from the sidelines. In the new series, instead of saving his son from the rabid twins, he closes the door on him and violently eats the entire family, making him the most deranged of the lot.

Taking the second spot is the overall disturbing nature of the character’s infinite cycle of existence, trapped in the same house and waiting mindlessly for something interesting to happen. Although each character becomes self-aware at various points, it is always temporary and never at the same time. In the web series, Red Guy broke out of the simulation, discovering a production set, and when he unplugged the control panel in the final episode, the characters were reset in a similar but slightly altered universe, where the notebook from episode 1 appears again. Much like the shredding of Lesley’s book, there are many frustrating moments where the cycle seems unbreakable, and escape is futile.

Considered by fans as one of the most disturbing episodes, it is no surprise that Episode 5 of the web series is the source of our number 1 moment. This time, the hallucinations have become overpowering, the song is complete nonsense, and multiple characters surround Yellow Guy as he is the only one left in the room. Meanwhile, Red Guy has escaped somewhere, and Duck’s fate is far worse. The moment that leaves us shocked to silence is the abrupt ending of the horrifying song, and an ending scene that leaves you wishing you could save them from this world.