What's a moment from a piece of media that probably wasn't supposed to, but scared you shitless as a kid?
What's a moment from a piece of media that probably wasn't supposed to, but scared you shitless as a kid?
Back when I was very young, like still in elementary school, I started playing Super Metroid for the first time. I was running around Norfair, generally having a good time, when I opened an innocuous-looking super missile door and encountered... Crocomire.
If you're familiar with that game, you might be thinking "Oh, you got scared when Crocomire's skeleton popped out of the lava, right?" No, I never even made it that far. Instead, on finding myself suddenly confronted by this huge, grotesque monster to a background of intense, blaring music, I freaked out. I didn't even think of aiming for his mouth, instead just firing all my missile and super missiles in a blind panic as he slowly pushed me toward the spiked wall at the far end of the room. At the time, I didn't know you could hurt bosses with the charge beam, so once I was out of missiles, I used the only other weapon I thought might work: a power bomb. Turns out that's the worst possible thing you can do. Power bombs make Crocomire go apeshit, charging at you and quickly smashing you into the rear wall, at which point you're basically guaranteed to die. Sure enough, I did.
I didn't quit the game forever, but I did put it give up on progressing further until I was older, wiser, and generally better at video games. And even then, for years afterward, I played the Crocomire fight with the volume off.
I dunno if "it wasn't supposed to", but the Bilbo/Galadriel ring scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring lived rent-free in my head and continued to haunt me throughout childhood
Courage the cowardly dog scared the shit out of me, but specifically there was an episode where anthropomorphic eggplant try to take over the world. I couldn’t eat eggplant for years after that, and I still mostly avoid it
Return the slab was my one. Would scare me to tears lol.
The monsters in Minecraft. They always freaked me out but they're manageable with sound off. So, I listen to podcast and stuff instead of the sounds of the game
There were multiple times when a younger me got spooked by cave noises enough to put the game down. I still turn cave ambience down to zero lol
In Ocarina of Time, the scene after you get the Master Sword and walk out of the Temple of Time and see the ruins of Castle Town infested with ReDeads scared me so much, I didn't play the game for 4 more years.
Oh yeah, that was terrifying. ReDeads were the absolute worst.
My sibling and I ran screaming from the room when my family was watching a presidential debate in 1992. We were about five and were convinced that Ross Perot was an extraterrestrial. Which, to be fair, he was.
There was a commercial for funding for PBS that ran when I was a kid, and in the middle it said something like, "If we run out of funding, the channel will go" and then the screen just went black. It freaked me out so much as a kid that, in front of my whole family, I stood up and turned off the tv before it got to that part. I just stood there and glared down my fam for about a minute before I turned the tv back on.
Motherfucking ET that was one disgusting looking creature
I'm 35 and still haven't finished the movie
The ending of Assassin's Creed 2 where
spoiler
the camera zooms in on the goddess and she breaks the 3.5th wall and stares right into your soul
I was spared that by being really bad at assassins creed I never managed the tutorial mission where you have to race someone to learn the parkour mechanics I just kept losing the race and gave up in frustration. I wish there was an option to say "yeah I get the mechanic I'm bad at it though can I please move on with the game"
That really annoyed me as I had saved up to buy the game and hate racing games because I've never been any good at them - comically so I was once playing need for speed at a friends house and I managed to be so bad at it I escaped the racetrack and got into the open world without finishing the race
Oh my god, I had the exact same problem on the parkour tutorial lol. Ironically all you have to do is keep holding the "run" and "sprint" buttons at the same time forever, and you will just automatically parkour up anything at max speed. Don't know if you have unlocked it at that point in the game, but you should be able to just ignore the "race track" and climb up the church wall immediately. 10/10 game, def recommend giving it another shot
That 3 eyed monkey from the production company logo at the end of Jimmy Neutron credits gave me nightmares for some reason.
my parents told me that creepy james and the giant peach movie from 1996 have me nightmares as a kid, to be fair all of roald dhal media is pretty terrifying (and sketchy as heck)
please dont let this thread be the cia gathering info on how to torture children lol
I never watched it but I always saw the trailers and felt something unsettling about it
That was creepy.
If you've managed to catch The play that goes wrong they mention that their previous productions was, due to budget cuts...James and the Peach, and after an unfortunate accident in previews James...wheres your...peach?
Oh, also, something seemed really off about Danny, Champion of the world as a kid that only became apparent to me after. I'd brushed it off as Danny being Traveller or Roma and then when I read it again as an adult realising, no, Danny's dad is just kind of an asshole.
I still remember getting so freaked out by the music in the Ocarina of Time Forest Temple that I had to put the game down. The ghosts and spiders didn't bother me, but those ceiling hands did.
I was going to leave the game running overnight to save my progress but the music made me so scared I had to turn it off, but I was too scared to touch the controller so I just ran up and shut the GameCube off
Same, the sounds of the hands falling and the increasing shadows is horrifying to the young mind.
There was a TV skits show for kids on Fox I watched as a kid in the 90's, God knows what the fuck it was called, but I remember there was one scene with puppet animals playing poker in a dark room and I don't remember the point of the scene nor why but as the different characters spoke it was very tense—probably for comedic effect that was lost on me—and then it just cut to the next scene/skit, but that bit remains stuck in my head as High Horror.
Also, many old timey black and white cartoons creeped me the fuck out.
The Weeping Willow screen from the NES version of Kings Quest V. Something about the face and the music terrified me.
A lot of the discordant music in the original Metroid freaked me out too. The series has an amazing soundtrack.
There's a lot of good unsettling music and triumphant music from Metroid
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The final part of when Luke was fighting Vader in the cave in Empire Strikes Back and the head explodes and Luke's face is in Vader's helmet
PBS had this program called Nova when I was a kid and it had an episode about epidemics and the black death and the hantavirus. Gave me a panic attack or something close to it. The music was super ominous.
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If you watch this ancient video from 12:47 on you'll either get to enjoy some catharsis or you'll be able to relive your worst childhood nightmares, one or the other
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He was freaky looking i used to cringe when the kids hugged him lol
Bro ET scared the fuck out of me as a kid too. He looks so creepy and gross
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It makes a great alarm, I wake up panicky and sweating, but I definitely wake up.
Everyone was freaked out by that music. That also reminds me that as a kid I thought Dopefish from Commander Keen was scary
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I remember when I was a little kid, maybe 3? My babysitter took me to see the iron giant. I thought the iron giant was scary and started crying. We left the theater within the first 5 minutes of the movie.
The opening scenes from Beauty and The Beast. The music is so creepy.
The dianogas in Dark Forces. I went back and played the Anoat City level when I was like twenty and it's so silly to say but I was still scared. Like the memories of being afraid got ingrained really deeply in my brain.
Edit: I just started watching a youtube playthrough of that level and my blood pressure is going through the roof.
Half the scenes from Body Troopers (Jakten på nyresteinen / Chasing the Kidney Stone), including even just the trailer for it at the start of my family's Grinch video cassette. You'll probably get the most results searching for the original Norwegian title.
A imax movie of ocean life where a jellyfish was the whole theater screen. 5yo me literally ran out of the theater crying.
the opening disaster sequence in star trek generations, 1994. i was just too young, it jumpscared me and i had to leave
Sluggy the Unshaven from Yoshi's Island for almost identical reasons. "Crush you against the wall" bosses are pretty spooky until you figure them out.
Sluggy got me every time. I'm not sure I ever beat them.
PS1 game called Heart of Darkness freaked me the fuck out. I could never get passed like the 3rd or 4th screen because I didn't understand how to play and despite the cartoon art style the death animations were disturbingly violent
Classic, although I'm not convinced this wasn't meant to be scary.
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Sesame Street monsters trying to teach me the alphabet.
Chaos in Sonic Adventure 1. Seeing this weird water ghost slowly creep towards you at the exact moment you gain control freaked me out as a kid.
Also a lot of early 2000 music videos on MTV were weirdly creepy for me, though I can't remember specific examples rn
Tool had some pretty freaky ones
The yeti from SkiFree as well as Dopefish from Commander Keen.
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There was this sketch on All That about a character called Pizza Face. It was a joke about a guy with acne I think? I don't remember, but the kids would chase him down the hall and try to eat his face and it terrified me.
Also, there was an episode of this show on Nickelodeon where this guy got sucked into a hand dryer in a public restroom and for years I thought it was going to happen to me.
The short vids with the sawtooth bear Radiohead advertised Kid A with. I was 7 and had no idea what a radio head is but that bear looked creepy af.
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine- The big roaring scary ice monster boss beneath the (really quite beautiful) abandoned temple in Khazakstan.
Jedi Outcast: The dark crystal caves full of chompy bug things and slave corpses in the Imperial prison mine, where you need to use night vision but the batteries are limited and did I get turned around in that last tunnel oh god the clock is ticking oh fuck I can hear them scuttling
In both cases young me was too spooked and had to call in reinforcements (my dad) to get me through those sections
i was just a perpetually terrified child, but it really started when i started trying to read my elementary school library and started with the nonfiction, and in the 000s (i think the 040's) you find all the books on werewolves and curses and vampires and stuff. scared me so bad as a little 5 year old
Maybe this doesn't count because it's a horror/thriller and not for kids, but when I was like 9 I saw the horse scene from The Cell, and yeah it was really weird and liminal and scary in a way that I wasnt sure if I had dreamed or imagined it. But the real story is that this scene and maybe that whole film is apparently an SCP, because it turns out fucking everyone who knows about this movie first encountered it in the exact same way.
it turns out fucking everyone who knows about this movie first encountered it in the exact same way.
It happened to come up on the family TV one afternoon and they watched it despite being way too young? That's how I encountered it.
YES!
I had a great fear of social awkwardness growing up, so a shitton of rom coms were far more nerve wracking to me than any horror film, where at least the social expectations were clear (Stab Jack the Ripper with the hatpin) Like literally the scenes in The Worst Witch where she gets sent to the headmaster were scarier.
Oh, also, Cow and Chicken has always left me with an indescribable sense of unease.
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As I remember it, the concept of the pink ink drinker from one of Dr. Seuss's books scared me a lot. I thought about it drinking all the pink ink and then it being gone forever. A sort of baby's first understanding of the march of entropy.
The zombies in half-life scared the ever loving hell out of me. I used to noclip through areas if the zombies were there and physically closed the game if I ever got caught by them.
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