The Top 10 Most Terrifying Bunnies In Pop Culture History
It's Easter time, which means people all across America are hitting the drug store to get their Paas on in time for Sunday. It's also a time where kids all over the nation head to their local shopping mall to get in some quality time with the Easter bunny, a practice that seems to excite and terrify children in equal measure. In fact, we count ourselves among the frightened lot, as this is the time of year when giant, anthropomorphized rabbits tend to haunt our nightmares. It seems that other pop culture icons feel similarly about bunnies, creatures that seem "cute and fuzzy" (to quote One Crazy Summer) on the outside but we all know they harbor an evil, ravenous thirst for human blood on the inside (or so we fear). To wit, here is Best Week Ever's countdown of the Top 10 Most Terrifying Bunnies In Pop Culture History.
10. The Cadbury Bunny
Now, we don't mean to look a gift horse rabbit in the mouth. After all, who doesn't love them some Cadbury eggs? Still, there's something a little bit creepy about a bunny who not only clucks like a chicken, but also lays chocolate eggs with yolky, caramelish insides that come wrapped in a glitterly, colorful tin foil shell. AMIRITE?!?
9. Roger Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
It can't be just us, can it? If you tested his blood, you'd no doubt find that dude is even more tweaked out than Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad. His voice is wicked annoying, he's a crappy husband to Jessica Rabbit, and when he drinks? WATCH OUT, BRO.
8. Bunny Lebowski from The Big Lebowski
Bunny, herself, is not so terrifying on the surface. Sure, she's a gold digger that's dating a Nihilist, but if you've seen one of them, you've seen them all. However, what will truly chill you to your bones is that this one-minute cameo represents the high water mark of Tara Reid's career.
7. The Cute And Fuzzy Bunnies From One Crazy Summer
Writer/director "Savage" Steve Holland is one of the most underappreciated auteurs of the 1980s. The pair of films that he made with John Cusack, Better Off Dead (1985) and One Crazy Summer (1986), remain cinematic touchstones to this day for Generation X thanks to being endlessly repeated on HBO when cable television proliferated throughout the country. His most sinister creation were the Cute And Fuzzy Bunnies, who mercilessly mock Cusack's animated elephantine alter ego throughout the course of the film with the refrain "Roses are red / Violets are blue / Love will have nothing to do with you."
6. The sub-machine gun toting rabbit from Sexy Beast
Between this guy and Frank from Donnie Darko (more on him in a bit), few things will give you nightmares faster than anthromorphosized rabbit men. Particularly when they're bearing automatic weaponry.
5. Bunnicula from Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale Of Mystery
In the series of books penned by James Howe, Bunnicula is a mostly harmless rabbit, one who only uses his fangs to suck the life out of vegetables (mmmm, carrots). However, in the animated ABC Weekend Special version of the tale from the early 80s, Bunnicula definitely possesses some otherworldly, vampiric qualities that will make you think twice about inviting the Easter bunny into your home. (Unless you're the Cullen family, natch...)
4. General Woundwort from Watership Down
Rabbits are supposed to be pretty harmless, right? WRONG! In Richard Adams' allegorical novel Watership Down, the concept of tyranny is personified by the downright freakish General Woundwort. As scary as he is in the books, you truly do not understand the concept of terror until you have seen how Woundwort is portrayed the 1978 film adaptation. He is not technically rabid, but damn, does he ever look it!
3. Frank from Donnie Darko
This dude is definitely not going to be leaving any Cadbury eggs around your house while you sleep, that much is certain! Visions of this horrifying rabbit man plague the troubled Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) throughout Richard Kelly's 2001 film, which reveal Frank to be some sort of conduit between interconnected realities (or something). All we know for sure is that we'd never want to have this member of the Leporidae family sitting next to us in a dark movie theater.
2. This insanely scary hell rabbit from Twilight Zone: The Movie
Thanks to Vic Morrow's beheading in a helicopter accident, the real-life set of the Twilight Zone movie was an infinitely scarier place than what ended up on screen. Still, nary an Easter goes by where we don't think of this jack-in-the-box hare produced by a straight-up terrified Uncle Walt (portrayed by the late, great character actor Kevin McCarthy). You've never seen a rabbit pulled out of a hat quite like this before (and we sincerely hope you never will)!
1. The boiled bunny from Fatal Attraction
Technically, the only thing this rabbit did wrong was allow himself (herself?) to be brutally murdered and then turned into a stew by Glenn Close. Still, this is far and away the most iconic appearance by a rabbit in cinematic history (sorry Harvey). Congrats, boiled harmless bunny rabbit, you're officially the Most Terrifying Bunny In Pop Culture History!