5 Movie And TV Questions That Are (Almost) Too Dark To Ask
If there's anything we love on this site, it's overthinking pop culture to an almost pathological level. But every once in a blood moon, we come across questions so utterly bleak that (for the benefit of our psyche) they should probably be left alone. Questions that don't simply shatter your image of beloved characters, but possibly also your mind. Questions no sane website would dare to publish.
Fortunately for you, Cracked is no sane website. Gird your loins, for we are treading down the footpath of eternal darkness.
Does Scooby-Doo Still Have His Balls?
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If you've been homesick, unemployed, or a grandma looking to rub one out at any point during the past 40 years, you've seen Bob Barker and Drew Carey asking you to get your pets fixed. It's good advice. It helps keep the pet population healthy, leaves couches un-humped, and any lingering guilt gets washed away by the comedy of your furry little buddy in the cone of shame. But that's in the real world. And because it's the real world, we don't have this:
That is a talking animal with the intelligence, self-awareness, and emotional capability of a young child and/or adult YouTube commenter. OK, fine, we can leave his Scooby-snacks alone ... except that, have you ever seen a full blown horndog on a rampage? They develop an aggressive streak and lose interest in anything but getting their rocks off. Bear in mind, this isn't some dinky ass Yorkie waddling around with a red rocket. Scooby is a sentient Great Dane.
That's up to seven feet and over 200 pounds of uncontrollable, animalistic sexual thirst and destruction paired with a human-like brain. We have a word for someone with that behavior, and like most of Scooby's vocabulary, it begins with "R."
So yes, Scooby-Doo is more or less a werewolf sex offender with the IQ of a shoe. Can you neuter him? And how the fuck do you even broach that topic of conversation with him? And it's not like you can trick him into going to the vet and hope he forgets after a couple of weeks of g-g-ghost chasing. He knows. He knows.
Best case scenario, you have a neutered Scoob breathing through a hose connected to the Mystery Machine's exhaust pipe. Worst, you have a canine Varys (with way more hair and a way lower vocabulary) silently plotting to strangle his "friends" one by one with Fred's ascot.
With either option, the only reasonable survival method would be to keep him too sedated to be danger- YOINKS. It all makes sense now.
Submarine sandwiches are to Scooby-Doo, as Maseratis are to shitty middle-aged dads.
In Inside Out, What Does A Serial Killer's Mind Look Like?
Pixar's Inside Out reimagines that short where Woody Allen plays a sperm as a heartwarming family movie. The audience is told that in every "normal" person's head there's a healthy balance between Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear. They are the driving force behind your brain, making your life choices. The important stuff becomes the "Core Memories" of your personality, while the generic stuff (boring routine, DreamWorks movies, etc.) simply gets tossed away.
Outside of the emotional HQ are the "Islands of Personality" -- literal islands full of all the shit you give a shit about. The tween protagonist loves hockey, hence "Hockey Island." When she starts to have troubles at home, "Family Island" begins to fall apart. When she gets into YA stuff, "Tragic Vampire Romance Island" sparkles into existence.
That's what it's like inside the head of a normal 12-year-old girl and her family. But what about people that are off-kilter? What about people like this?
In the above clip, Eric Trump Batman point blank says the only major emotion he feels is disgust. Meaning all his memory orbs are going to be hateful glowing green balls filled with god-awful shit. What about their "Islands of Personality?" Norman Bates would have "Mother Island," with a waterpark filled with naked, showering women to stab. The concession stands on islands for culinary cannibals like Hannibal Lecter would be expertly plated corpses as far as the eye could see.
Child abusers would have Dream Productions consisting solely of holy-crap-you-guys. Instead of Bing Bong (Inside Out's pink elephant imaginary friend), Son of Sam would have his damn neighbor's dog giving him happy reminders about ending innocent people's lives. What about John Wayne Gacy? What about the minds of goddamn murder clowns?
N-No! It's too twisted! Make it stop!
In Superhero Movies, Is Everyone In Manhattan And Metropolis Going To Die Of Cancer?
And now, let's tackle three topics that could bum out even the most cheerful person: 9/11, cancer, and DC superhero movies. As we've mentioned before, 9/11's damage wasn't only confined to that date -- over 6,000 cases of cancers have been reported among survivors, because that's what happens when you're inhaling "construction materials, soot, paint (leaded and unleaded), and glass fibers (mineral wool and fiberglass)" by the lung-full. Worse yet, the CDC estimates somewhere near 400,000 people were exposed to the worst contact high in recorded history. And that's all from two buildings.
In The Avengers, Cap gets emergency personnel to set-up about a ten block perimeter around Stark Tower while this happens ...
By professional estimates, the damage from the "Battle of New York" is over double that of 9/11. Which sounds like a huge number until you put it up against these douchebags:
Whereas the Avengers try to keep things contained in a set area, Superman and Zod are crashing through buildings all over Metropolis like meth-addled Kool-Aid men. And this is after a Kryptonian warship decided to teabag the entire skyline. According to similar professional estimates as The Avengers one, the physical harm done to Metropolis in Man Of Steel is over 12 times the damage done by the World Trade Center attack. We can say, without hyperbole, that Zack Snyder is worth 12 bin Ladens.
And we're not done. The 9/11 attacks were done by Earth assholes using Earth planes. The Chitauri and Kryptonians are space assholes. As we see when Lois and Superman enter Zod's ship, what's good for Kryptonian physiology is deadly for us. Who knows what space pathogens and STDs these intergalactic Typhoid Marys are dirty bombing the Marvel and DC Earths with? Basically, everyone in Manhattan and Metropolis gets to have a short-lived future consisting of "guess that tumor" and astro-herpes to look forward to.
Is Freddy Kruger Still A Pedophile?
Out of all the slashers out there, one stands out from those boring, mute stalkers and carves a bloody hole right into our hearts: Freddy Krueger. With his horrific charm and witticisms, Freddy has worked his way onto novelty albums ...
Kids' games ...
And even toast.
It's almost enough to make you forget he's a goddamn murderous pedophile.
Unlike Jason or Leatherface, who love disemboweling mouth-breathing high schoolers for being too stupid to read "No Trespassing" signs, Freddy's war on teens is merely a revenge side-plan against the parents that killed him. His true (ugh) loves, and the whole reason he was Kentucky fried in the first place, is either diddling or killing young children. Pretty sure they left that verse out of his rap video.
So, when he's not busy turning some 17-year-old's wet dream into a snuffmare, what, exactly, is he doing?
Well, little kids basically need to spend half the day sleeping. They need sleep so much, in fact, that we have a class specifically for it in school. Naptimes in homes and schools nationwide are essentially a dream-pedophile's Golden Corral. In the movies, it takes groups of teens days of classmates dying and close calls before they realize what they're dealing with. Meanwhile, kindergarteners are busy struggling with the concept of tying their shoes. They're completely defenseless to him. It's not like Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T are going to bust in and shut shit down. Anything a 5-year-old tells their parents or teachers is likely going to be written off as a nightmare.
And that's when he's not straight up killing them. Medical conditions like SIDS kill thousands of kids every year. They go to sleep and never wake up. No one knows what causes it. Theories range from improper sleeping positions to secondhand smoke. No doctors are out there investigating the possibility of a bad-touch Edward Scissorhands dream-dispatching them. Way to drop the ball, science.
Did Arrival's "Happy" Ending Destroy Human Civilization?
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ARRIVAL. BY READING THIS, YOU FORFEIT YOUR RIGHT TO CRY ABOUT IT IN THE COMMENTS.
In the Oscar-nominated film Arrival, 12 alien ships, uh, arrive on locations all over Earth. Due to some wacky sitcom miscommunication and hijinks, we end up with a Chinese general about to go full Independence Day on the peaceful aliens' hentai monster-looking asses.
Fortunately, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist, finally deciphers the aliens' language. Which allows those that know it to experience time in a non-linear manner -- like Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen, but without the screaming blue genitals. Using glimpses of her and the general's shared future, Banks is able to convince him not to go full Pullman and saves the day.
Except that, not every vision she has is a good one. Among her future snapshots are:
- Getting married and having a daughter (that's good).
- Her husband leaving her, and the kid, because she tells him about her vision of their daughter dying young from cancer (that's bad).
- Her writing a book about the alien language, thus teaching others how to see their futures (oh, shit).
We're talking about billions of people now having future visions of horrifying personal events, from murder to walking in on their grandma "watching" The Price Is Right. We can't even treat post-traumatic stress disorder effectively. How do we handle pre-traumatic stress disorder? And that's only with events that are universally looked upon as bad. How about things which are subjectively bad? Thanks to the aliens' "gift," it looks like Earth is headed toward a more unified global existence. What's stopping racists and jingoists worldwide from saying, "Fuck that noise," and creating mini-Holocausts all over the place? They may not succeed, but they sure as hell can try.
And what about free choice? Hell, we had to put a spoiler in front of this entry so people that haven't seen the movie wouldn't scream bloody murder. What happens when someone spoils your whole fucking life? This isn't some "Jon Snow is Rey's dad" bullshit. It would be the biggest possible invasion of privacy imaginable. The argument on either side is the type of divide that would tear the fabric of civilized humanity as we know it. On second thought, maybe blowing the shit out of them was the right idea.
Next time just get us an iTunes card, assholes.
Logan Trent is Senior Editor at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter.
We aren't done throwing you off your good day yet, read 5 Absurd (But Mind-Blowing) Pop Culture Conspiracy Theories and 6 Disturbing Questions About Sex In The Disney Universe.
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