It was Genecyst that had the bloody menus.
Back in the day, we didn't really worry about software like this being malicious just because of the author's gruesome sense of humor. It was all part of the fun. Back in the 90s, people were edgy like that. It's not like today where you're suspected of cryptofascism for not properly reciting the right nostrums. If it were malicious, someone would've found out, word would have spread around the scene, and the author would be branded the worst of lamers. People had reputations to uphold and good will to farm out of the community, even when running quasi-legal programs to play pirated ROMs.
There's a certain irony in the fact this is exactly how it works today.
I guess the difference is back then you were in on "the right nostrums", some people likely weren't and felt just as alienated by that scene as you do by today's...
There was a lot less incentive to be malicious. No crypto-mining on compromised devices, no ransomware, and limited Internet banking
Source: I made a lot of money between the ages of 12-15 running HijackThis and Spybot Search and Destroy on neighbors' machines.
Other source: circumvented my school's firewall with "anonymous proxies" on lists of what, in hindsight, were absolutely compromised machines.