Thread by @NonsenseIsland

THREAD: What’s the most bizarre entry in your favorite cartoon series? I thought I’d highlight shorts with popular characters that stand out as particularly weird.

For Bugs Bunny, it’s 1946’s THE BIG SNOOZE, where Bugs hops into Elmer Fudd's head to give him a surreal nightmare.

For Daffy Duck, it’s hard to get more nuts than this early entry - 1938’s THE DAFFY DOC - where Daffy goes ballistic at a hospital and chases Porky with a saw to perform surgery. The dialogue that doesn’t match with the mouth movements only strengthens the oddness.

Porky Pig starred in one of the wildest cartoons ever - 1938's PORKY IN WACKYLAND - where he chases a reality-bending do-do bird. This is director Bob Clampett at his most dizzyingly bonkers, and it was even preserved by the National Film Registry.

Mickey Mouse took a turn for the nightmarish in the offbeat THE MAD DOCTOR (1933), where a twisted scientist kidnaps Pluto to perform perverse animal hybrid experiments on him. Disney wasn't afraid to get creepy back then.

The strangest Donald Duck cartoon is, without a doubt, 1945's DUCK PIMPLES, where Donald is haunted by pulp crime novels. I love the organ soundtrack and stream-of-consciousness gags from cartoonist Virgil Partch.

The Goofy series got more aggressively insane as it progressed, with sports cartoons featuring entire stadiums of Goofys. The pinnacle of this is 1945's HOCKEY HOMICIDE, which gets so demented at the end that it randomly tosses in footage of Monstro from PINOCCHIO!

In the Pluto series, the standout oddball is the incredibly twisted PLUTOPIA (1951), where Pluto has a dream about a masochistic cat who seems to get perverted orgasmic glee out of getting hurt. No idea what anyone was thinking when they made this, but it's great.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an entry in the Betty Boop series that wasn't totally bizarre, but for me, 1932's BETTY BOOD M.D. takes the cake. Betty sells a miracle drug that causes all sorts of rubbery transformations. Keep watching for the most insane ending in film history.

The Popeye series rarely got more strange than 1939's WOTTA NITEMARE, where Popeye has a dream of the afterlife. Animator Willard Bowsky seemed to have a fondness for the nightmarish, and this was one of his last hurrahs (he died in combat during WWII).

I loved Tom & Jerry as a kid, but was always weirded out by the later Gene Deitch cartoons, which were animated in Czechoslovakia. I remember 1962's DICKIE MOE being particularly odd, with its jerky animation, echoey sound effects, and meandering story. Observe:

The Pink Panther cartoons, produced during the psychedelic '60s, often had offbeat elements. 1967's THE HAND IS PINKER THAN THE EYE, where PP wanders into a magician's house, has some particularly mind-bending gags.

The Woody Woodpecker cartoons of the '40s were deliciously wild, but this 1952 entry TERMITES FROM MARS sticks out as being highly unusual. Woody's screams, which sound nothing like his normal voice, always crack me up.

The first cartoon superstar Felix the Cat was a sensation back in the silent era. 1927's FELIX DINES AND PINES contains some crazy transformations and a terrifying Santa Claus. As you can see, cartoons were insane even from the very beginning.

The trippiest episode of THE SIMPSONS is probably EL VIAJE MISTERIOSO DE NUESTRO JOMER, where Homer eats some "insanity peppers" and has a head trip. The hallucination was unusually animated in-house by the great David Silverman.

Possibly the most twisted episode of the always-twisted REN & STIMPY is the brilliant STIMPY'S FAN CLUB, where Ren becomes jealous that Stimpy is the more popular character on the show and fantasizes about snapping his neck. It's a miracle that this show ever made it on the air.

Nicktoons back in the day were insane. AAAHH!! REAL MONSTERS, one of my favorite shows as a kid, had lots of crazy concepts, particularly JOINED AT THE HIP, where Krumm and Ickis are combined into beastly monstrosity "Krickis."

'90s Nicktoon classic ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE was so consistently deranged that the only way it could get weirder was to have the characters make a cartoon themselves, which they did in WACKY DELLY. I love how they're really testing the audience's patience with this:

The '90s Cartoon Network classic DEXTER'S LABORATORY probably had any number of strange episodes, but one that sticks out in my memory is THE LAUGHING, where Dexter gets bitten by clown dentures and transforms into a clown. This feels like a predecessor to that JOKER movie:

Probably the most unusual episode of THE POWERPUFF GIRLS was SPEED DEMON, where the girls run so fast they shoot forward in time. Beautiful art direction in this one, along with the creepy tone. Kudos to @CrackMcCraigen and the crew for this one.

COW & CHICKEN was always hilariously off-kilter. The episode where Cow's tongue escapes and goes on a wild adventure might be the weirdest ever. Wonderfully unhinged voicework from @charlie_adler here.

The consistently disturbing COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG went out on a high note with the series finale PERFECT, which is full of nightmarish visuals depicted in unique art styles. That weird CGI thing that says "you're not perfect" is legitimately horrifying.

The most surreal episode of ED EDD N EDDY, and also the best (in my opinion), is ONE + ONE = ED, where the three "Ed boys" break down their entire reality. So wonderfully creative and strange!

I usually associate SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS with cheerful, lighthearted nonsense, but the peculiar ROCK BOTTOM explores the eeriness of being lost in an unfamiliar place. Great designs and gags in this one.

I almost thought I dreamed the episode of TEEN TITANS where Beast Boy finds out about an alien conspiracy run by an evil soy cube, but it exists and it's called EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH. Apparently, the writers' explanation for the strange episode is "maybe we were tired."

CHOWDER was always pretty weird, but "The Thrice Cream Man" is particularly bizarre, especially the stop-motion nightmare sequence by the amazing artists at Screen Novelties. Love this:

I need to watch more of THE MARVELOUS MISADVENTURES OF FLAPJACK, but it's hard to imagine it getting stranger than "Tee Hee Tummy Tums," which includes a horrifying Santa Claus-esque puppet.

ADVENTURE TIME is another show that's routinely offbeat, but FOOD CHAIN - guest-directed by the brilliant anime director Masaaki Yuasa - takes things a step farther. Amazing animation here: