Can't believe no one has said it... Looney tunes.
You have a point. In this thread, we're biased towards relatively more obscure cartoons, yet Looney Tunes practically invented the hyperactive uber-crazy cartoon.
Ren & Stimpy
Did anyone watch Liquid Television?
Danger Mouse - I think the consistent 4th wall breaking, kidnapping narrators, and sense of humour as a whole had an effect on my from a formative age.
Monkey Dust - the cartoon that made it clear to me that cartoons weren't not at all nesseccarily safe for kids. I was too young to appreciate it at the time, it was too disturbing for tween me.
Sealab 2021 and Excel Saga both crazy animations that I found easier to digest about that time, too.
Watership Down, other folks have already mentioned.
I thing Dutch people from my generation have you all beat:
Purno de Purno (porn pun very much intended)
A psychedelic cartoon about a funny guy in spandex that has a shitload of nudity (tits, penisses etc) to the point of him even crawling in the vagina of a giant lady in space. It has references to litaral drug use. Have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o6MIJ7Iq1U doesn't matter if you know the language, just browse through. That episode is called 'In het hol van de kietelaar' which translates to 'In the clitoris' hole'
This was on kids tv. Nobody got seriously harmed by it. It was funny and weird, but you don't really register exactltyy how weird it is untill you hear about sensitivities on US TV (nipplegate lol)
looks like it was animated on an Amiga
Yup it was made on a Amiga 2000
I think for me it was Robot Chicken that would play late at night
I have no idea when I first saw it but I loved it right away! I definitely loved it when Family guy would do anything claymation or with action figures like Dwayne Johnson showing Peter and Lois "having sex"
Grave of fireflies
For me it was probably The Head.
I really liked Duckman as well.
Also, the early Beavis and Butt-Head
True classics, haha.
Rocko’s Modern Life was a helluva ride
I was amazed at the shit they were allowed to play in the after school block on Nick/CN sometimes. Rocco might take the cake with the ~~masterbation~~ milking episode
Watership Down.
Was visiting relatives and we rented movies from a tiny video store that didn't have a lot of options or kids, so we got that and Crocodile Dundee.
Dundee was fun. The bunnies were less so.
cow and chicken
One of the shows that taught me English. And Dexter's Lab taught me French.
Catdog is quite similar in terms of "aesthetics" and craziness.
Duckman, though that was not for kids.
Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life both had stuff that was bizarre and only allowed in a kid's show because it was over their heads.
Batman TAS and Gargoyles both had some heavy shit. The latter also had a guy die by having fire erupt from behind his eyeballs, and a scene where a surgeon explains a gunshot wound in visceral detail. God I love that show.
When I was like, 2? My parents were like "Hey! What's this new cartoon? Let's take the kid to the drive-in!"
Fritz the Cat:
That was the maybe original. Always loved how the cops were actual pigs
I was a kid in the 90's. It'd probably be easier to list the normalest cartoons. Like Doug.
Freakazoid, possibly. Or Toxic Avenger. Though the latter is more insane that they turned the original concept into something for kids in the first place.
I'm still not sure whether "Angela Anaconda" was real or a collective fever dream.
"hey what if we made a cartoon entirely about the revenge fantasies of a 12 year old girl?"
"Sounds great, make it papercraft too, just to make it extra unsettling"
"How about everything is in color except the peoples skin."
"Brilliant."
Invader Zim
In my mid-teens, after Saturday Night Live they showed Fantastic Planet on Night Flight. That was an experience.
The oblongs, ripping friends, Ren n Stimpy, I r baboon were some of the best. Drawn together was a gem too that came out when i was a teen
If we're counting highschool as still a kid, the old Chinese cartoon Calabash Brothers. Still looking for ENG subs for the newer version that released in the 2010s, though.
It's a cartoon where a snake and scorpion demon escape from a mountain and an elderly man has to grow a magic calabash seed that turns into 7 different calabashes that turn into little dieties when ripe in order to stop the demons.
The lord of the rings cartoon. I still don't know wtf it is.
The Brave Little Toaster. It's a bit endearing until the LSD trip goes bad.
The old Nintendo cartoons, things like the Mario Super Show and the classic Sonic show. If you thought live action Mario and Luigi arguing with fungus people was weird, sometimes the people behind the cartoons would get so lazy that they wouldn't fully draw some of the frames or throw in a lazy scenario for the main characters like "what if Yoshi had a secret family he was hiding off-screen". Of note, people often ask me "why are you so relatively soft on the Zelda CDi games" and the answer relates to the deal of effort.
If puppet shows count, objectively it's Mr. Meaty.
Well there's many mentions so I'll add one I have yet to see listed, The Adventures of Mark Twain is always an unsettling classic.
Oh, man, when I was a kid around 1990 I was in France (maybe? Pretty sure it was somewhere in Europe), and they had this subtitled cartoon (I didn't know either language) that "starred" a villain named something like Amin Tumani ("I'm in to money", but made into a name) that was a stereotypical middle easterner. And to add to the crazy I'm 99.9% sure he died at the end of every episode.
If anyone knows anything about this cartoon, LMK.
The crazy stuff on Liquid Television
Aeon Flux is still super weird 30 years later
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