Cletus Kasady was already a serial killer before bonding with the Carnage symbiote—and that unholy fusion didn’t just make him stronger, it made him limitless. Where Venom walks the line between monster and antihero, Carnage tears that line to shreds and paints the walls with it. He is the embodiment of mayhem—no morals, no mercy, and no desire for redemption.
Throughout his bloody journey across Marvel Comics, Carnage has left a trail of corpses, psychological torment, and mass destruction. Unlike many villains who kill to achieve a goal, Carnage kills for pleasure. And when writers unleash him fully, readers are guaranteed a journey into the darkest corners of the Marvel Universe.
These are not just violent fights or villainous plots—they’re nightmares on the page. These ten horrific moments show exactly why Carnage isn’t just feared—he’s remembered. Here are the
#10: Killing His Own Family – Carnage: Mind Bomb (1996)
In this psychologically disturbing one-shot, Carnage: Mind Bomb, Marvel delves into the twisted mind of Cletus Kasady in a way that few comics have ever dared. When a psychiatrist at Ravencroft Institute attempts to understand Carnage by psychoanalyzing him, things quickly spiral into madness.
Cletus recounts his childhood abuse and reveals the full extent of his homicidal history—including the brutal murder of his own grandmother and abuse of his mother. These aren’t action scenes—they’re revelations, peeled back like flesh from bone. Through graphic art and deeply unsettling narration, readers are dragged into Carnage’s psychosis, culminating in the doctor’s mental breakdown after just one session.
This issue isn’t about gore—it’s about pure horror. It leaves you unsettled long after the final page and proves that Carnage doesn’t just kill bodies—he breaks minds. The most terrifying part? There’s no motive. Just carnage for carnage’s sake.
#9: Slaughtering at Madison Square Garden – Maximum Carnage (1993)
Maximum Carnage is the arc that cemented Carnage as a Marvel horror icon. Alongside a twisted symbiote “family” that includes Shriek, Doppelganger, Carrion, and Demogoblin, Carnage turns New York City into a war zone. At the center of the chaos is Madison Square Garden, where Carnage and his allies host a mass slaughter disguised as a “performance.”
The scenes are brutal. Civilians are massacred with glee, blood floods the aisles, and the symbiotes revel in the chaos like a punk-rock death cult. Heroes like Spider-Man, Captain America, and Venom struggle to even contain the violence, let alone stop it.
What makes this moment horrific isn’t just the body count—it’s the tone. Carnage is smiling. Laughing. He believes he’s an artist, and the blood is his paint. This blend of theatricality and psychopathy turned Maximum Carnage into a benchmark for comic book horror and marked the beginning of Carnage’s reign of terror in mainstream Marvel canon.
#8: Ripping Through a Church of Symbiote Worshippers – Carnage Vol. 2 #3 (2016)
When Marvel launched Gerry Conway’s Carnage solo series, it was clear from the start that horror was the centerpiece. In one of the earliest issues, Carnage infiltrates a church filled with a cult that worships him as a living god. Rather than feel flattered, Carnage reacts the only way he knows how—by butchering every last one of them.
In Carnage #3, Cletus walks the blood-soaked halls of a faux-sacred site, tearing cultists limb from limb in a frenzy of carnage. There’s no strategic gain. No revenge plot. Just raw instinct and hatred. The art by Mike Perkins transforms the scene into a symphony of entrails and torment.
This moment is significant because it highlights Carnage’s existential rejection of being understood. Even those who worship him are beneath his contempt. He doesn’t want followers. He wants fear. And he reminds everyone that calling him a god doesn’t mean he won’t tear you in half.
#7: Possessing Norman Osborn – Go Down Swinging (2018)
If Carnage wasn’t horrifying enough on his own, bonding him with one of Marvel’s most unhinged villains was a recipe for chaos. In Go Down Swinging, Cletus is absent—but his symbiote is far from idle. It bonds with Norman Osborn, creating the monstrous Red Goblin.
The result is a hybrid of two of Spider-Man’s most sadistic enemies. Norman retains his intellect and tactical prowess, while gaining Carnage’s sheer destructive power. He kills multiple people in broad daylight, torments Peter’s loved ones, and even targets Spider-Man’s allies like Miles Morales and Silk with brutal efficiency.
This storyline feels like watching a slow-motion trainwreck. Peter is pushed to his emotional and physical limits, and the fear among heroes is palpable. The Red Goblin doesn’t want to defeat Spider-Man—he wants to erase him. And for a while, it looks like he might succeed. The fusion of Carnage’s horror with Osborn’s cunning is one of the most terrifying threats Spidey has ever faced.
#6: Killing a Subway Car Full of Commuters – Carnage USA #1 (2012)
In the opening issue of Carnage USA, Cletus Kasady stages his dominance in the most terrifying way possible. Aboard a crowded New York City subway train, Carnage reveals himself and unleashes chaos. He massacres everyone on board—men, women, and children—with zero hesitation. No grand speech. No setup. Just death.
The scene is raw, fast, and merciless. The symbiote twists and stretches through the train car, impaling passengers and splattering blood across every surface. The scene ends with the train derailed and the city thrown into panic as Carnage disappears into the night.
This moment set the tone for the series: Carnage isn’t back for a rematch—he’s back for an apocalypse. It’s horror at its most distilled form—an unprovoked act of terror in an everyday setting. And it reminds us that Carnage doesn’t need a master plan to be terrifying. All he needs is a room full of people… and time.
#5: Taking Over Doverton – Carnage USA #2–5 (2012)
While the subway slaughter in Carnage USA #1 was horrific, what followed was even more disturbing. Cletus Kasady doesn’t just cause chaos—he takes over an entire town. The town of Doverton, Colorado becomes his testing ground, as Carnage uses his symbiote to possess every man, woman, and child within city limits. That’s right full symbiote mind control of an entire population.
This isn’t just mass hysteria—it’s body horror on a community scale. Carnage turns ordinary people into grotesque extensions of his will. Cops, teachers, parents, kids—no one is safe. Families are torn apart from the inside, as loved ones are forced to attack each other under Carnage’s control. And worse, the townspeople are aware of what’s happening but are powerless to stop it.
The series escalates with the arrival of heroes like Captain America, Wolverine, and the Thing, but even they struggle to break Carnage’s grip. It takes a literal military operation and a sacrificial play from Venom to even begin dismantling the nightmare.
This storyline is terrifying because it taps into something primal: the loss of autonomy. It’s one thing to be attacked by a monster. It’s another to become the monster—and still be conscious enough to scream on the inside. Doverton was a town that was swallowed whole by Carnage’s madness—and that’s a horror that lingers far beyond the blood.
#4: Becoming a Cosmic-Level Threat – Absolute Carnage (2019)
For most of his career, Carnage operated as a street-level horror. But in Absolute Carnage, he goes cosmic—and it’s worse than anyone imagined. After learning about the symbiote god Knull and the concept of “codices” (residual symbiote matter left in hosts), Cletus returns from the dead and begins harvesting these codices from every person who ever wore a symbiote.
The horror begins with desecration—digging up graves, including Peter Parker’s, to extract codices. Then it spreads into widespread slaughter, as Carnage begins murdering former symbiote hosts and ripping the codices from their spines. His physical form mutates into a skeletal, God-tier monstrosity, resembling a symbiote priest of death, and he rallies hordes of symbiote-controlled minions across New York City.
What makes this storyline terrifying isn’t just the scale—it’s the intentionality. Carnage isn’t acting randomly. He’s following a divine mission from Knull. And that kind of religious zeal, fused with unfiltered brutality, makes him a walking apocalypse. The visuals, the body count, and the sheer psychological terror of watching loved ones become mind-controlled killers made this one of Marvel’s darkest epics.
#3: Massacring Ravencroft – Web of Carnage / Carnage: Unleashed (1995–1996)
Ravencroft Institute, Marvel’s stand-in for Arkham Asylum, has always been a house of horrors—but when Carnage gets loose inside, it becomes a slaughterhouse. In both Web of Carnage and Carnage: Unleashed, he turns the facility into his personal playground of pain.
One of the most disturbing things Carnage ever does is attack not just guards and orderlies—but fellow inmates. This isn’t some villain-on-hero battle. It’s a bloodbath among the already broken. Cletus unleashes his tendrils in a frenzy, ripping apart the mentally ill, taunting them with twisted nursery rhymes, and even faking compassion before delivering killing blows.
The walls of Ravencroft run red, and there’s no hope for rescue. Not from Spider-Man, not from the staff, not even from Venom. Carnage’s ability to twist a place meant for healing into one of maximum suffering is what makes this arc so harrowing. Ravencroft wasn’t just a setting—it was his stage for pure, unfiltered slaughter. And it became one of the most disturbing set pieces in Marvel history.
#2: Slaying a God in Cold Blood – King in Black: Carnage (2021)
During the King in Black event, Carnage isn’t just part of Knull’s army—he becomes one of its deadliest agents. In King in Black: Carnage, Cletus, reanimated by Knull’s influence, sets his sights on a surprising target: an ancient godling trapped on Earth. Rather than fight for dominance, Carnage simply butchers the celestial entity with cruel efficiency.
The comic’s tone is relentless and bleak. Carnage doesn’t fight this god in an epic battle. He stalks, tortures, and tears it apart, reveling in the power vacuum he leaves behind. He isn’t doing this for Knull. He’s doing it because he wants to feel what it’s like to murder a god.
The horror here is existential. What kind of creature takes joy not just in death—but in the destruction of divinity? Carnage crosses a line most villains fear to approach. And in doing so, he cements his place not just as a killer—but as a blasphemous force of anti-life. It’s horror on a mythological scale.
#1: Killing His Own Child – Venom vs. Carnage #4 (2005)
Carnage’s most horrifying act isn’t his body count, or his massacres—it’s the moment he attempts to murder his own offspring. In Venom vs. Carnage, the birth of Toxin—a new symbiote—is treated with awe by Venom and disgust by Carnage. Rather than mentor or raise the newborn symbiote, Carnage seeks to kill it instantly.
The idea of patricide or infanticide is chilling enough—but Carnage’s reasoning makes it worse. He believes Toxin may one day become stronger than him, and that’s all the motivation he needs to strike. No love. No empathy. Just fear that he may not be the apex predator forever.
Carnage stalks Toxin across New York, trying to murder the symbiote before it can bond to anyone. Even when it finds a host in Patrick Mulligan, a good-hearted cop, Carnage won’t stop. He nearly tears Mulligan in two in the process. That obsession with killing his own “child” takes Carnage from evil to unholy.
It’s one of the darkest, most unsettling moments in Marvel history—not just because of the violence, but because of what it says about Cletus Kasady. No one is safe. Not even the beings he creates. That is the definition of true horror.
Carnage isn’t just a villain—he’s a walking nightmare. While other symbiotes wrestle with morality or flirt with redemption, Cletus Kasady fully embraces the chaos. These horrific moments don’t just showcase blood and violence—they expose a philosophy of pure destruction, where empathy is absent and suffering is the point.
Whether he’s slaughtering innocents, controlling entire towns, or attempting to murder his own offspring, Carnage turns every appearance into a descent into madness. He doesn’t just kill—he violates the very idea of safety in the Marvel Universe. And that’s what makes him unforgettable. No matter who he faces, or how many times he’s defeated, Carnage leaves a scar—not just on the page, but in the minds of readers. He isn’t the stuff of nightmares. He is the nightmare.
