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.
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.
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.
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.
So I’m not particularly proud of this, but the emergency broadcasting tests used to scare the bejebus out of me when I was a little kid. Like run into another room and hide scared. I don’t even really know what they were or were for, but they just seemed scary.
Courage the Cowardly Dog. I know it’s a kids’ show, but I was terrified of entering the basement for months after seeing the episode with the floating white head
Also: Return the slab!
you… are not perfect.
The theme song to Unsolved Mysteries. My mom would be watching it just when Id goto bed and that song had me pissing myself.
Invader Zim. The animation and shock humor was a little much for younger me, particularly the organ stealing episode.
Not a TV show specifically, but another thing I remember was there were these anti smoking ads with claymation figures that had creepy music and they ate dead birds and things.
The Are You Afraid of the Dark episode with the drain monster. Couldn’t stand on the drain in the shower for about 8 years afterward.
I was four and I caught a rerun of the Transformers movie where Optimus Prime dies. I was not okay for a few weeks.
My granddad had also died right about the same time, so it was a double whammy.
Not to mention the unceremonious murder of several other characters throughout, that part with the guys being dropped into the acid with a close up of them melting, the court with the “innocent” declaration followed up by throwing the innocent bot into a pool of shark(ticon)s and the “judge” laughing in evil delight about it, the world-devouring monster planet … That movie did not mess around
(And it was friggin awesome)
Watership Down… The old one, not the newer remake. Just so much fucked up imagery and awful themes in that. Legitimately gave 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.
“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!
Wouldn’t go as far as to say it “traumatised” me but In the Night Garden was a surreal, creepy fever dream of a show that still lives rent free in my head. The thing kid me found most weird was that I first saw it in Canada, but when we went back to China to visit family they were airing it there too in the imported shows segment right next to Spongebob and Doraemon. At that point I was really confused because I assumed for a show to be imported it would have to be really well written and acclaimed, but In the Night Garden was such a nonsensical cacophony that it left me wondering what it is about it my stupid kid brain had missed. Still don’t know what was up with that show.
The show that really did traumatise me though was this ghost hunting show on Animal Planet about people’s pets acting weird because they were “detecting” ghosts in their home. Freaked me the hell out because I assumed anything that aired on a documentary channel was real. Took until I was an adult to realize that ghost hunting shows are all fake. This was right at the start of documentary channels deciding to sell out to pseudoscience bullshit AFAIK, so they still had a significant air of authority especially for kids.
In The Night Garden is designed specifically to get kids to chill the fuck out and it works so well. I remember having to babysit my nephew once and he was getting worked up by a show called Yo Gabba Gabba which seems to be specifically designed to cause seizures. The next day, oh, that’s weird, that channel is broken and, well, damn, I guess we’ll have to watch In The Night Garden on CBBC instead. It was like a totally different kid.
Gollum from the animated Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings…freaked me the fuck out. My father would torment me with _my precious. while rubbing his hands.
Check out the Rankin/Bass Hobbit, that Gollum is a whole other monster.
PeeWees big adventure. Large Marge.
Happy tree friends. No idea how they got the broadcast rights and why they showed it at 8pm.
Not a tv show, I wasn’t necessarily a kid but I remember stumbling on LiveLeak…
For those who want to know what it was.
Tap for spoiler
It was a video of a guy getting dragged behind a car down the highway.
In my days the equivalent was rotten.com
Some of the images are charged into my brain
I also have two from 4chan.
Spoiler
A cage with IS prisoners left down in a pool. A prisoner set on fire in a cage.
As much as I love it, that first Batman: TAS Clayface episode.
Gleefully tormenting a clearly desperate man with the thing he wanted most left me mortified.
The Bone Chillers episode where their lunchlady gets replace by someone feeding them food with larvae that can be thrown up if they consume mustard also left a mark but only for a matter of days; I remember foregoing ketchup and getting mustard on my school lunch, the next day. I think I was in elementary school, at the time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscureMedia/comments/mdsdbi/bone_chillers_1996_abc_saturday_morning_kids_show/, for those curious.
