Looking back, I probably shouldn't have been watching/playing that

Look at you. A grown adult, with a job, bills, and other big responsibilities.
One day nostalgia hits you "I used to love *media* when I was a kid!" so you go find an old recording or worn installation disc and get ready for a fun trip down memory lane.
Then you get hit again "Oh god, this was not appropriate for children... Is this where *weird personal habit* comes from?"

It was briefly mentioned on the latest episode of the podcast [04/20/22] but I'm interested in hearing more!
What weird or wildly inappropriate media did you intentionally or accidentally consume as a child influences you interests today?

Let's please try to keep it light-hearted and not dig into actual personal trauma if we can help it.

For me, it was the anime Guyver: Biobooster Armor!

I still have nostalgia for that show, but I was maybe five or six years old. If you've never seen or heard of it before, it's a very super hero vs monster of the week anime, but all of the trope transformation sequences are people graphically ripping muscles and breaking bones as they mutate and transform. There was a fair bit of alien eldritch technology and a lot of gore. Have I mentioned that Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of all time?

That's mine, what have y'all got?

I was probably 8 when a couple of older cousins showed me John Carpenter’s The Thing.

My sisters and I all found Leisuresuit Larry game disks in a shoebox under my uncle's desk and I think that's where we first learned about sex

A commercial that still haunts me where they cut away just before a lady is hit by a train. They were selling one of those to extreme to exist videos of real people that died on camera. Then another thing that still haunts me is I was watching a talk show that was talking about child molesters. They decide to show one of the pictures that blocked out some of what was going on but not enough to not scar me for life. I have no idea how that was even legal to do on public television. It was that one POS guy that was searching for some gangster's lost vault.

South Park. The cynical nihilism endemic to the show was catnip to my teenage / early 20s angsty brain, but now I quite literally cringe every time it's mentioned. The social commentary is as flimsy and lazy as the animation.

Seth wrote:

South Park. The cynical nihilism endemic to the show was catnip to my teenage / early 20s angsty brain, but now I quite literally cringe every time it's mentioned. The social commentary is as flimsy and lazy as the animation.

This! My friends and I watched the Southpark Movie more times than I can remember - probably because we weren't usually sober

I would add Family Guy to that list, but I always found that series to be a lazy Simpsons copy.

I watched some Game of Thrones episodes with my wife. When Oberon got his head squashed by The Mountain, I started laughing hysterically. My wife wasn't amused. Also True Blood, when the dramatic death scene of the lead vampire guy ended with him bursting like a water balloon full of red Kool Aid, I kaughed so hard I almost wet myself. My wife wasn't amused.

I saw South Park Bigger Longer Uncut, and I started laughing like a hyena when Uncle f*cker scene was going on. I couldn't catch my breath after it ended I missed the next few minutes because my humor region of my brain derailed. Not to mention the AIDS song in Team America, that one was the worst, I'm surprised I didn't get tossed out of the theater.

In American History X, the curb stomp scene, my friend and I were watching and audibly saying "please no, please don't." And when it happened ... hysterical laughing for two minutes. I know something's wrong with me.

My parents let us watch Alien on HBO when I was 8 or 9, and I snuck watching Poltergeist when nobody was home as a kid. The meat scene still bothers me to this day, along with the Alien scene with the cat. Damn cat..

... or did I completely miss the point of this thread..?

Halloween 2 at age 11 wasn't a good idea. Michael Meyers haunted my dreams so much that I actually learned to control them in order to not be afraid to sleep. Turns out it's called Lucid Dreaming. Oddly enough, Halloween is still my favorite horror franchise.

Jaws at age 4.....

I don't know what the right age to watch The Secret of NIMH is, but it was not the age I saw it.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

I don't know what the right age to watch The Secret of NIMH is, but it was not the age I saw it.

I would add "The Time Machine (1977)" and "The Lord of the Rings (1978)" to that list.

Morlocks and rotoscope orcs haunted my dreams for a few years.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

A commercial that still haunts me where they cut away just before a lady is hit by a train. They were selling one of those to extreme to exist videos of real people that died on camera. Then another thing that still haunts me is I was watching a talk show that was talking about child molesters. They decide to show one of the pictures that blocked out some of what was going on but not enough to not scar me for life. I have no idea how that was even legal to do on public television. It was that one POS guy that was searching for some gangster's lost vault.

Giroldo Riveria?

For me Nightmare on elm street as a 11 year old. Wasn't allowed to watch it but snuck out of my room and watched from the hallway while my Mom was watching it. Hate creepy unfinished basements and industrial boilers to this day.

tundra wrote:

For me Nightmare on elm street as a 11 year old. Wasn't allowed to watch it but snuck out of my room and watched from the hallway while my Mom was watching it. Hate creepy unfinished basements and industrial boilers to this day.

That's just sensible taste.

Rezzy wrote:
UpToIsomorphism wrote:

I don't know what the right age to watch The Secret of NIMH is, but it was not the age I saw it.

I would add "The Time Machine (1977)" and "The Lord of the Rings (1978)" to that list.

Morlocks and rotoscope orcs haunted my dreams for a few years.

Double feature night: The Secret of NIMH and Watership Down.

Set a timer on the VCR to tape Total Recall late at night, a task way beyond my parents technological capabilities at the time. The bit where Arnie uses a (admittedly already dead) person as a human bullet shield probably doesn't have an intended audience of 13 year olds

Rainsmercy wrote:

Jaws at age 4.....

Yeah, doing the mental math I was 6 when Jaws theatrically released.

Even better my dad took us to see it at a drive-in theater. So when the disembodied head jump-scared out of the hole in the hull of the sunken boat, I jumped into the back seat of the car.

I know it's cliché at this point, but that damn movie really did ruin any chance of me going into the water for decades.

Aaron D. wrote:
Rainsmercy wrote:

Jaws at age 4.....

Yeah, doing the mental math I was 6 when Jaws theatrically released.

Even better my dad took us to see it at a drive-in theater. So when the disembodied head jump-scared out of the hole in the hull of the sunken boat, I jumped into the back seat of the car.

I know it's cliché at this point, but that damn movie really did ruin any chance of me going into the water for decades.

Jeez. I was 14 when I saw it in the cinema and it scared the crap out of me (in the best way.) I wouldn’t go in the sea for many, many years after that even though any great white foolish enough to hang out off the coast of the UK would probably die of hypothermia.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

I don't know what the right age to watch The Secret of NIMH is, but it was not the age I saw it.

I taught myself to use the fast forward function on a VCR to get past the animal experiments scene in the movie. I loved that movie but hated that part.

Also, if we can talk books, I read Bridge to Terabithia in second or third grade and was devastated by the ending. I was not mature enough for that level of character death.

When I was a kid we went to the drive in theater all the time.

1981 TARZAN, THE APE MAN Bo Derek and Richard Harris - there were scenes in that movie that my parents were not expecting.

Higgledy wrote:
Aaron D. wrote:
Rainsmercy wrote:

Jaws at age 4.....

Yeah, doing the mental math I was 6 when Jaws theatrically released.

Even better my dad took us to see it at a drive-in theater. So when the disembodied head jump-scared out of the hole in the hull of the sunken boat, I jumped into the back seat of the car.

I know it's cliché at this point, but that damn movie really did ruin any chance of me going into the water for decades.

Jeez. I was 14 when I saw it in the cinema and it scared the crap out of me (in the best way.) I wouldn’t go in the sea for many, many years after that even though any great white foolish enough to hang out off the coast of the UK would probably die of hypothermia.

My parents watched Jaws on TV when I was about Aaron D's age, and I distinctly remember fantasizing about Jaws emerging from our dark blue carpet at home.

Another one: around the same time, on TV at my grandma where my parents probably fell asleep in her super comfy sofa (of the they-don't-make-em-like-that-anymore type) during an episode of Columbo. Most likely my first experience with the concept of "murder", and I had a few nightmares the days/weeks after.

Amoebic wrote:

My sisters and I all found Leisuresuit Larry game disks in a shoebox under my uncle's desk and I think that's where we first learned about sex :lol:

It was pretty funny for me to hear Amoebic mention Leisure Suit Larry on the Conference Call today because that's also my response to this thread. I have an older brother so he had some of those games installed on our PC and I started playing it because I liked point and click adventures. I remember a specific scene in one of the games where you go to your hotel room and there is a courtesy condom on your pillow. It turns out my mom was in the room at that specific time so I asked her what a condom was. My mom was always very conservative and never really talked to me about sex so my brother ended up getting in trouble for that one.

Bambi at 6.

For context, my dad died when i was 5.

Maybe not the best choice, Mum.

My dad had a big Stephen King collection, and neither of my parents had any problem with me reading those books in 6th grade (maybe earlier?).

Piers Anthony should not be read by children.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Piers Anthony should not be read by children.

I missed most of it the first time. Same with Fred Pohl.

Honestly, nearly everything Hollywood put out from the beginning until relatively recently has super unhealthy views on masculinity, femininity, relationships, body image, etc. I love movies and have watched so many. It took me getting into my 30s to figure out a lot of sh*t regarding relationships and coming to terms with my expectations of myself and others. You could teach years of courses using old movies as examples of what not to do as a human being (particularly on the male side).

I saw Amityville Horror at the drive-in as a 7 year old.

And for my 9th birthday, my mother took me (and a friend!) to see Ghost Story. Totally inappropriate, including a pretty revealing sex scene early in the movie.

I mean, that only continued as I got older. One of my favorite movies as a teenager was Re-Animator, a campy-but-creepy-sort-of-Lovecraft-with-sex movie.

I distinctly remember watching Moonraker with my mom and then playing with my little Lego spacemen set (the one with the big puffy helmets). Amazed she brought me to that.

Also, watching Poltergeist at 11 messed me up despite it being edited for TV.

I was home sick and flipping channels when I was probably single digits or 10. HBO had a show on during the day called The Great American Pleasure Hunt. I was young and I saw boobies. Too young for something like that, but it started a life long love affair.

Bible Black? Well, this should be good, Christian entertainment for me, a 13-year-old.

EDIT: Huh, Wikipedia says Bible Black dropped in 2000. So there was some other anime I'm remembering that I absolutely, positively should not have been able to watch that I unknowingly rented from the video store. Might've been Guyver.

i just have fleeting memories of a lot of violence and nudity.