When I was about 8 years old (2016) I woke up early while my parents were still asleep and turned on the TV to see what to watch. Superjail was on and I cried due to so much gore being on the TV, even if it was cartoon gore. I was 8.
That mummy episode of courage the cowardly dog. Scared the piss outta me.
American Gothic.
“Someone’s at the door.”
i forgot this show existed.
was the sheriff supposed to be the devil?
I barely remember the details, but yeah something like that. But I was just a little kid, and that repeated mantra of “Someone’s at the door” fucked me right up.
Dr Who !!!
The X Files inbred family episode almost feels like too easy of an answer.
Mine’s also x-files, but the cockroach wall one. I think it’s a much later season episode, scully may have been pregnant? But I have no interest in finding it. It gave me a roach phobia. And then when I was an adult, I learned in the south they are MUCH bigger than up north here, and they can fly, and I learned this because one flew into my apartment through the porch door and just crawled around on my wall by the lamp, and was extra horrified.
The one that always bothered me was like some insect alien creature. That was invisible. But it made insect noises.
I can’t remember the details except that the noise really disturbed me.
Chittery sound.
I’m hongry.
The one that gets my wife is the Tooms episodes.
I didn’t see that until I was an adult and my stomach still turns upside down whenever I think of it. The mother… Horrifying.
the way that she defended the way that her family “loved” each other rings in my ears when i hear a maga person.
Twin Peaks. Way too young to see it, when I did.
MacGyver.
Yeah yeah, that one episode with the fire ants (S01E05) and the other one with the fast aging scientist (S03E11) gave me nightmares as a kid.
I should try to watch them today just to see how cool was the young O’Neill with two L.
“The Animals of Farthing Wood”. It’s a cartoon about a group of animals who try to find a new home after humans destroy their forest. Many of them die horrible deaths along the way. Still vividly remember the hedgehog family being run over on the motorway. And yes, it was a kids show!
I loved that show as a kid. No idea why I connected with it so strongly but I always appreciated that it wouldn’t shy away from darker themes.
Yeah, parts of it may have traumatized me, but I ultimately also quite liked the show as a child. I’m sure it helped me empathize with the suffering of wild animals and gave me an early idea of why we should protect the environment.
It definitely wouldn’t fly as a kids show today, but I think it’s an interesting discussion to have when and how much kids’ media should explore darker topics. Ultimately the show was still very tame compared to some of the books my parents got to read as kids though, which included things like kids getting ground up in a mill for playing a prank or getting their thumbs cut off for sucking on them.
kids getting ground up in a mill for playing a prank or getting their thumbs cut off for sucking on them.
That sounds like Struwelpeter. Yeah, quality entertainment there.
Yeah it’s one of the shows I look forward to showing my kid one day. That and Avatar the Last Airbender. I don’t know if they’ll appreciate it the way I did but who knows, they might show me something contemporary that they feels same sort of connection to.
Goofy from Disney
deleted by creator
LOLLL
Happy tree friends. No idea how they got the broadcast rights and why they showed it at 8pm.
Happy Tree Friends on TV? You sure? Omg imagine if they were tricked by the cover and broadcasted it without reviewing 😆
That scared the shit out of me as a kid
Yup. It was after something else little me was actually trying to watch. Couldn’t unsee.
Oh man I loved happy tree friends, but I definitely never saw it on tv, only their website and YouTube, and I was in highchool when it came out.
This is embarrassing but Goosebumps. I think I watched an episode that just caught me off guard while I was in a strange place (first sleepover at a friend’s house) and the super campy episode freaked me right out.
Runner up was poltergeist. My older sister thought it was very funny that it was rated PG and so I saw it when I was maybe 7 or 8. 😂
Unsolved Mysteries made me terrified of being abducted by aliens. I had night terrors a few times from it and anytime a weird light flashed through my bedroom at night I screamed my head off.
Watership Down… The old one, not the newer remake. Just so much fucked up imagery and awful themes in that. Legitimately have me nightmares as a kid.
Not really a kid’s movie, but I remember seeing Darkman on TV when I was pretty young and having the image of his horribly burned, disfigured face burned into my memory.
Watership permanently affected my personality.
100 ways to die
The Julekalender
This is a Danish advent calendar that was released in the early 90s and making fun of different Danish dialects and especially making fun of Danes who were splicing more and more English words into their Danish vocabulary at the time.
The story is basically about three gnomes or nisser, who crash their airplane in Jutland, Denmark and they are stranded there until they fix the plane. They have to get back home because their old papa is dying and needs to read from a very special book to get better. This book is wanted by a copenhagener stereotype by the name of Benny who turns into a goofy vampire when he drinks alcohol. He’s stuck with a couple of jutlandic farmers who are completely oblivious about everything going on.
I was 2 years old when this show first aired on TV and I remember we were watching it together as a family when Benny turned into the goofy vampire and I started screaming. The scariest part was the fact that my family was laughing at the TV. I guess the adult version of that would be to witness a horrific car crash or a violent crime and everybody around you is just laughing. It was such a surreal and terrifying experience and I was way too little to understand the context of why this scene was so funny and why my family was laughing. All I knew was that I had seen danger and evil and that those who were supposed to protect me weren’t reacting the right way and that made it so much worse.
I had to sleep with the lights on for a long time after that because I was so scared the goofy vampire would come and hiss at me and kill me in the dark.
This is the exact scene that sent me into a fit of fear all those years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D1Cnf5OFdc
And yes, I probably shouldn’t be able to remember stuff like this from the age of 2, but I have several verified memories from my earliest childhood that I can’t really explain. I guess the trade-off is that my short term memory is shit and I cannot remember verbal instructions without visual aid.
The Julekalender is great, but it is impossible for non-Danes to fully appreciate since it’s so specifically making fun of Danish language and the differnet stereotypes attached to differnet dialects.
this will be a deep cut because I’m talking early 80s in Hungary, but
Futrinka utca and Varjúdombi mesék let’s see how many others are sharing this trauma :)
