It's that time of year again, where people hide away from the monsters of the outside for the monsters in the television box, as people everywhere scrounge around for their favorite Halloween specials and horror movies. A great cultivator of this tradition is the Halloween specials of childhoods past, where stations like Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon would dedicate more than a few of their shows to celebrating the Hallow's Eve. However, some shows didn't need a specific date to be spooky.
Some were just frightening year-round; while the aesthetics of cartoons like Invader Zim and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters were certainly freaky within their own right, none can ever surpass the genuine, abject terror of the monsters from every kid's favorite black comedy Courage the Cowardly Dog. In celebration of the month of monsters, this list will be running down the scariest ones from Courage the Cowardly Dog.
10 10. The Windmill Vandals
Starting off the scares here, the Windmill Vandals are one of the more traditional kinds of curses and haunting seen in the series. Wanting to seek revenge on the windmill that put waterwheels out of business, a group of Vikings have dedicated their lives (and afterlives) to trying to destroy it.
From that comes an incredibly tense episode, as Courage and co. try to protect and fix their windmill before the rustling dust clouds of the incoming undead come closer. There's a lot working here in terms of the supernatural, brutality, and even home invasion, where even the slight mystique of the vandals always appearing in the distance adds to the suspense of the vandals.
9 9. The Queen of the Black Puddle
There's an absolutely incredible fantasy element to the Queen of the Black Puddle that just adds to her sense of power and danger on top of her already foreboding, siren-ish charms.
Appearing in her titular episode, the Queen appears in the aftermath of a storm, seemingly able to make any puddle/body of water connect to her underwater lair, where there's no escape once the puddles dry up. Not only is fighting her underwater with her razor-sharp teeth scary, but there's a claustro-/aqua-phobic tension to seeing one's only escape routes dry away.
8 8. Freaky Fred
Proving that not all monsters are supernatural, other beings, Freaky Fred is a terror within the human form. His episode plays off his anxious charm as cute as it dilutes his actions to just shaving people's hair, but there's just something unnerving about his character as a whole.
His sharp smile, reserved posture, and hypnotic, low tones all add to a character that one feels must have a knife behind their back. Fred as a whole is a lesson in the different red alerts that the uncanny can send us, and it's a little amazing that the subtlety of it could even be understood in childhood.
7 7. Elisa and Eliza Stitch
The design of the Stitch sisters is already unnerving enough. Victorian, macabre style conjoined twins that speak simultaneously already screams headaches to the unnatural, but what really sells them as a threat is their appeal to the insecurity and tribalism of lonely people.
The Stitch Sisters want to trap people's souls within their ever-growing quilt and do so by tricking lonely quilters to wanting to belong to their "quilt club." Hearing them chant "belong" is already anxiety-inducing on a Freaks level, but hearing their victims chanting it too is just heartbreaking.
6 6. Kitty
By the end of the two-part episode "The Mask," Kitty really isn't the monster that the viewer once thought she was, as she reconnects with her saved best friend, Bunny. Throughout most of the arc, however, she's absolutely terrifying.
Arriving out of the blue as this white adorned figure in an uncanny, white mask is enough to freak anyone out, but it is her dog-hating speeches and deliberately violent actions towards Courage just adds so much to her emotional tension and history.
A lot can already be said about the immediately understandable danger of the abusive dogs in this episode, but her entry here celebrates the indirect and indescribable tension of passive hatred hiding beneath a facade.
5 5. Katz
Katz is the direct foil to Courage and the main, recurring antagonist of the entire show. Directly contrasting the timid nature and small statue of everyone's favorite farm dog, Katz is cold and calculating with an intimidating height and graceful posture, to boot.
Beyond his various schemes to try and kill and hurt people just for the sake of sadism, there's a coldness in his stare and speech that just pokes shards at the heart upon his entrances. Just in the hidden nature of his face and how hard it is to read—emotionally or otherwise—Katz has become the childhood figure of terrifying indifference.
4 4. Spirit of the Harvest Moon
There are a few uses of live-action in this series. Whether it's the violinist's jump scare in "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City" or the talking tree in "The Magic Tree of Nowhere," live-action just adds an interesting layer of the uncanny, as the series creator knew how distonic seeing it within a cartoon can feel.
However, the best use of this in the series' history has to be the Spirit of the Harvest Moon in "The House of Discontent." It is a disembodied head dressed in an ethereal, monochrome glow that just appears out of the ether, cursing the Bagge family for not taking good care of their farmland. If there was ever a way to get someone to work harder, bringing in the Spirit of the Harvest Moon may be a good way to go.
3 3. The Ulcer
It's weird to think about; but at some point in kid's cartoon history, there was an entire episode dedicated to body horror. That's what the episode "Cabaret Courage," and its main villain, The Ulcer, is a gross testament to the vulnerability and pain of the human form.
Overcome by the excess and greed of "Hollowood," the Ulcer is the manifestation of the literal growing ulcer of his own body that spreads across his own night club. The abnormal movements of body parts, the constant allusions to living, bile-infested flesh, and the massive size of it all just add to one of the most genuinely scary sights within the series.
2 2. Eustace's Bugle
There's a lot to remember out of the episode "Perfect." There's the harsh nature of the perfectionist, Courage's insecure strive to be better, and the heartwarming message of being coming out of a bathtub fish. However, what creeps people's minds even to this is the barrage of surreal imagery that came out of Courage's head out of all of this with the worst and most frightening of it all being the brutal, visual metaphor of Eustace's Bugle.
Viewers might call it the "Blue Thing," the floating head, a monstrosity of CGI. Above all else, however, the Bugle is an appeal to the slight imperfections and deformities that one's own mind can dis-morph, tying into Courage's own insecurities and the poor bugle skills of Eustace Bagge.
1 1. King Ramses
What reigns supreme on this list is the king of all Courage the Cowardly Dog monsters. He's appeared in various memes. He's appeared in various reruns. However, most of all, he's appeared in various nightmares since his episode's premiere. King Ramses is a fusion of a variety of visual terror.
He has a ghostly figure, a haunting voice, and uncanny CGI treating his depth and movements. Plus, he always appears at a distance, creating a slight nod to an arriving, mysterious tension. Everything about King Ramses is screaming at little kids' heads to run away and hide. Or, better yet, they better give him back his slab.