Tier Ranking My Dumb Childhood Fears 

As a kid I was terrified of atom bombs and thought I could cause an atomic reaction by accidentally splitting an atom. So I was terrified every time I used scissors or cut my nails.

i can’t believe you had like legitimate trauma about toilets flushing and overflowing meanwhile i was afraid of automatic toilets because loud noise hurty

When I was 8 I was terrified of Ozzy Osbourne; I was so hesitant to even say his name that I called him "Evil Joe". I've also had a longstanding fear of accidentally shape-shifting into the form of a character I hate, namely Wario.

when i was 9 i was literally afraid of the color brown like i’d literally have nightmares as a kid where i would just run around my house and everything would turn brown and i’d wake up crying 😭

i'm so glad i'm not the only one who was deeply frightened by the hypothetical death of the sun 😭

I remember being terrified of Hot Topic in the mid-2000s because my cousins who went there a lot convinced me it was a store for vampires. Whenever we'd go to the mall I would refuse to go near it because I was so scared.

As a kid I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the book "the bad case of the stripes" Like, real existential dread. Every time my kindergarten teacher would read it I would have a full on meltdown and I'd have to sit in the office till it was over. It was so bad that I remember after I took a nap at home after school, I woke up in a panic and was running around the house trying to get it out of my head. My mom and dad tried to help, but I was inconsolable. Some of my classmates used to blackmail me with it because they knew I was scared of it. When I was in the second grade this one kid brought it out because he knew it would bother me and I think I just started hysterically sobbing. It was really bad. Even nowadays looking at the cover of the book disturbs me, but it's not as bad as before.

When I was a kid I had a fear of escalators that went down. I was always nervous to fall when getting on one, and I always had the idea in my head of me falling down on one and getting my hair caught in between the steps, unable to move as it kept going down. I still pause before getting on an escalator because of this.

Also we had that Smeagol doll when I was a kid and would hide it around the house to surprise each other. We also told my aunt we got a kitten and wrapped Smeagol in a blanket and then acted like we were going to show her the cat, but she got Smeagol'd instead. You would have hated my house. Edit: the Kidpix "oh no" is the ultimate jumpscare, change my mind.

As a kid I was terrified of the concept of hell (a fairly reasonable fear tbh for a 6 year old growing up in Sunday school) but the cherry on top was the fact that I was scared because I believed, vehemently, at six years old, that I was already damned to hell. Needless to say; not a Christian now

Watching this does help to remind me I'm not the only one that is scared of things that aren't supposed to be scary.

As a kid I was terrified of the X-Files theme song. I'm pretty sure the reason why is because it would air sometime around my bedtime, and all I knew about it was that it was a scary show about monsters and aliens, so it became the literal soundtrack to my nightmares. For YEARS randomly hearing the music would trigger a panic response, including a time only a couple years ago when I happened to be walking down the hallays in my house with the lights off, not knowing that my perents were having an X-Files marathon, and when it suddenly started blasting through the house I immediately dropped into a defensive stance. Now, after having watched several seasons of the show myself I've gotten over it through exposure, but I'll never forget the pants-shitting terror that gripped me that night, lmao

When you spoke about fear of being out of control with electronic devices, blue screens ect. I realized this makes sense for my fear of gaming glitches. I have a terrible, unrelated fear of in-game water and the void, but any sort of camera glitch, getting out of the map/playable area/ losing control over a game makes me freak out so badly to this day. I am legit scared to play The Sims 3 because of that.

automatic toilets were truly the bane of my existence as a child

i don’t know how this idea started or even why tbh but as a child i was terrified of… the doodlebops watching me use the bathroom. the doodlebops were totally fine (i even had a toy! like a keyboard or keytar i think the girl had?) but specifically when i used the bathroom i had to pause/mute the TV so i couldn’t hear them or think abt them and sometimes i even cracked the door a little to make sure no one was out there. i have literally never said this out loud to anyone but i feel like if anyone gets this they would be in this comment section.

Talking about Angela Anaconda has unlocked a deeply hidden trauma I had regarding how horrifying that show looked.

I had a fear of "part of your world" from The Little Mermaid. I always thought Ursula would suddenly appear. It took me years to get over that fear.

i distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by this video of a cgi hippo singing the lions sleep tonight with a dog dancing next to him as a kid,, like legit that shit made me cry it was so scary

As a young teen I was terrified of the Gorillaz. I would sometimes watch Adult Swim when my parents were asleep and one day they played the music video “Clint Eastwood” and my young mind was terrified of the artstyle and visuals. I was raised on Disney so i guess I wasn’t used to such a style at the time. It’s silly to think about today since they’re now one of my favorite bands now. 😂

For some reason, even worse than the Dark Harvest episode for me was the *meat* one. Called Rise of Meatboy or something. Zim and Dib get infected with some kind of microbe that slowly turns them into edible meat, like salami. Their skin changes color, their features swell and distort, and dogs start trying to bite them. The episode ends with the two of them turned into giant, inanimate sausage links wearing clothes, sitting in an alley as dogs bark in the distance. It disturbed me so horribly as a child. I remember hiding on the stairs leading to the basement, secretly watching as my brothers laughed at the episode, terrified but unable to look away. Nightmares for years.

the Angela anaconda fear is SO real I made my dad go into my room and turn the TV off for me idk why it was so visceral for me as a child

This reminded me... I was weirdly afraid of styling heads when I was a kid???? Like the kind that would look like a giant barbie head or something that you'd style the hair of, they freaked me out to no end. If a friend of mine as a kid had one in their room, I wasn't going in there. I even had nightmares about them where I would be turned into a styling head against my will lmao 😭

My massive fear as a child was when cds would skip! I started sobbing the first time I had it happen

Angela Anaconda is so scary back then to me. I was so terrified, and it was understandable to me because it had incorporated realistic faces that were grey. The illusion of it being seemingly realistic but also unrealistic at the same time just made me scared.

About spontaneous human combustion, I vividly remember seeing that on TV, maybe Discovery or History Channel. It was also a huge fear of mine. Nowadays i am mature enough to know that it's still scary but there is nothing we can do about it. Growth!

Discovering your channel was almost eerie, you're the first youtuber that seems to have had the exact same cultural upbringing as me. It's like tailor-made nostalgia for zillennials Edit: totally forgot to mention I was also unreasonably unsettled by Austin Powers as a child. I didn't watch the movies until my mid 20's.

THANK YOU for mentioning Angela Anaconda... how on EARTH did they think that character design was ok, they freaked me out too. Never watched it, didn't want to see it

My weirdest fear when I was a kiddo was me being scared of butterflys. I saw the sponge bob episode about wormy, and I got absoulty terrified from the close up realistic footage of a realistic butterfly, I honestly think it was more so the loud noise in the show that scared me.

I had an intense fear of the undead as a small child, which was understandable but manifested in a number of specific ways. There was a golf course by my house that I would get confused with a nearby cemetery, and when we drove past either one I would go into a panic. We had a Veggietales VHS that I refused to watch when I realized the logo on the tape were “skeleton” versions of Bob and Larry. I cried when my godmother gave me a pirate-themed I Spy book because it had a Jolly Roger flag on the cover, which I proceeded to keep covered with a taped piece of paper for several years.

I fully understand being afraid of Dark Harvest. It’s a wonder to me that Zim was allowed to air on Nickelodeon at all, let alone that episode. I’ve enjoyed that episode as an adult but if I’d watched it as a kid it would have been traumatic

I was terrified by the song “the sweet escape” by Gwen Stefani (now one of my favorite songs) and the Space Cows from Spyro Enter the Dragonfly - these lasted for years too beyond my childhood for no reason

The dying birthday card one is valid. I personally don't think I've ever been scared of them cause the only one I was ever given was a Hoops and Yoyo Hamster Dance card. BUT the idea of hearing a distorted version of a song you know play from a thing you thought was safe from that IS pretty unsettling imo

Bugaboo creek was a themed restaurant near where I lived that had this absolutely chilling animatronic pine tree. It had this huge gaping mouth and I was convinced it ate children. I would edge around it as far away as a I could never turning my back on it. Sometimes my dad would kind of nudge me towards it which did not help.

this reminded me of my fear of the stairs at my elementary school. super old catholic school, very long stairways that you could see all the way down. now that i think about it i was afraid of a lot of things at my dusty old catholic school lol

i completely relate to all of these fears, especially the glitch/crash screens, for some reason i have still not gotten over it and they terrify me to this day. also it’s comforting to know so many kids simultaneously felt the terror of the sun possibly exploding in our lifetime

I was also scared of Angela Anaconda! My sister told me that the characters on the show were the stolen faces of bad kids, and if I didn’t do what she wanted, she’d call the show and they’d come steal my face 😅

as someone who grew up with their dad being in law enforcement, i was told a lot of scary stuff about drugs a lot throughout my childhood. i'd say the topic as a whole was less of a fear and more of a morbid fascination (i feel that morbid fascinations can often connect to childhood trauma), but at night i was always scared someone was gonna like, break into my room and try to give me pills in my sleep to get me addicted. think i stopped worrying about this by the time i was in middle school. sidenote, this weird fascination with drugs as a kid was so intense that i remember making a "movie" with my zhu zhu pets where the baby of the family gets addicted to drugs and has an overdose (don't worry the doctors gave her a magical cure), and in the next part, the dad buys the mom a car to apologize for the whole incident, and then while driving her new car the mom hits one of her own kids. was i okay in 2009

You have actually reasonable fears as a child. I was scared of the LaLaLoopsy movie and Mr Noddle from Elmo’s World.

You were honestly a really smart kid for being worried about getting burned using this sort of toys. I remember wanting a children’s oven so bad ever since I saw it on curious George even though I have accidentally burned myself on the stove at least twice before

I was horrified of the Mr. Burns as an alien episode of the Simpsons. I remember coming home and turning on Fox to see it was that episode and I began to sob like crazy

I also stopped playing my Tamagotchi after it died 💀 I was scared by the death screen too. Unlocked a memory for me.

It's funny that you used The Mask as your example. I was TERRIFIED of this movie as a kid, like my parents had to block the TV when a commercial for it came on cuz it freaked me out to the point of tears. I still have not seen it almost 30 years later because it activates a fight of flight mode in me.

One weird childhood “fear” I had for a while was 80’s-related content, particularly live action movies. I never had any problems with animated content (in fact, I adored Muppet Babies, Garfield, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Heathcliff, etc,.), the games were either fun or boring at worst, and the music just sounded weird to me. The live action movies, however, always gave me this really creepy and weird vibe. It was almost like everything felt icky and foreboding, not helped by the grainy and smoky look of them. It was like everything had this feeling unlike what I was experiencing as a 2000’s child, and not in a fun way. I think it might’ve stemmed from watching Goonies and Ghostbusters as my earliest 80’s movie experiences, especially the first one. Sloth and the idea of a kidnapped kid’s hand being pulverized in a blender by some greasy ass crooks terrified me, and the ghosts in Ghostbusters (especially the gargoyles and the ghost librarian) freaked me out so bad that I actually would get anxiety by either being left alone in a large basement or in a maze of shelves similar to the NY library’s basement. I don’t have this problem anymore (and in fact, the grimy look of them can especially be effective in 80’s horror movies of that era, or even dreary stuff like “Come and See” where a “cleaner” look would look off putting given the context). However, I’m not sure if I 100% blame myself for little me’s apprehension to 80’s movies here. 😂

I vividly remember watching a movie with my parents where a couple wakes up in bed to see the entire house lit up with spectral goo and I was terrified to open my eyes while sleeping for many years after that. Nowadays I kind of wish I could figure out what that movie was.

I slammed the like button at the Austin Powers fear. Kids minds are so fun! The weirdest fears I had were the 6 Flags Guy and Mrs. Doubtfire. I Unfortunately, took a bit of that into adulthood lol. Lovely video!

I had the complete expansion pack of the first Sims on our Windows XP desktop computer. Over time the computer got old and slow and all that stuff and a lot of times when I'd play the game it completely froze to the point the whole computer had to be restarted. I always had a big sense of dread for the whole day/evening after it. Not to mention that the Sims 1 in itself is creepy anyway, with the damn burglar sound effect, cockroaches, the monster potion, phone call pranks, the clown painting and general uncanny gameplay. Also I feared going out of bounds of my lots and having my screen be just one whole grey square.

man i had a toilet related fear too... it started when i was fairly young, maybe 5ish years old. for the next solid 5 years, i was terrified of the sound the toilet made after flushing. not the flush itself, but the minute of hissing that comes after. for a while i was convinced that there was a creature of some sort inside that could grab me and pull me into it. i would always look at the toilet while washing my hands so as to be sure that there was nothing there. at some point though i stopped believing in the creature, but the sound still scared me until i was like 10. now i realise how absurd this fear truly was lol

Things I was scared of as a kid: 1. Art Attack - i used to love this show but then they did a skit where a bust talked and the concept of an all-white decapitated head talking terrified the shit out of me to the point where i just stopped watching it altogether. 2. The sun exploding and/or engulfing the Earth is a fear I can relate to. I remember once at school there was a lunar eclipse so the sun looked huge ans i was convinced that we were all going to die. This was in the year 2012 also so I thought the world was gonna end. Also, whenever i heard a loud plane overhead, I thought i was hearing the sun move closer to the Earth. 3. Dying in Super Mario 64. There would be a blackout screen where bowser laughs and idk something about it scared me so much. 4. When Toad says "foul" in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. I forgot what minigame this was but the voice sounded nothing like Toad and it was really loud so I thought Toad got possessed (?????) 5. Michael Jackson. I just thought he looked terrifying. And after he died i was scared that he was going to haunt me. 6. The song 'I wish it could be Christmas everyday'. I hated when the singer yelled "ITS CHRIIISTMASSSSSSS" towards the end. I hated loud noises and yelling and something about his raspy old man voice shook me.

Oh my god. I had the exact same problem with dying battery voices. Especially in birthday related items. I had the exact same Hopps & Yoyo (?) card!!!! And encountered the same horrifying death of it!!!!! Freaked me out so bad, this brought back so many memories of those instances.

I too was extremely afraid of automatic toilets and it’s something I still think about to this day. When I was young my local library was renovating and had one put in. I had never used it before and I guess I had been sitting on it for too long. Needed my mom to come in with me for a while, and I remember a librarian getting involved because I would scream bloody murder. Good times.

I cannot BELIEVE someone else was terrified of what would happen after neglecting their pixel chix. I thought I was entirely alone on that front. We got mine second hand from a flea market, so mine came pre-neglected. I had to get my dad to reset it while I cried I’m pretty sure.

The rollercoaster fear is so valid, I'm still terrified of them tbh

Top 3 irrational childhood fears: 1. Woody from Toy Story. I saw some DVD bonus features where there were animation bloopers where Woody came detached from his animation skeleton and it was so scary I couldn't sleep. 2. The Sims... but in Spanish. I was over at a friends house and she installed The Sims for the first time and it was unexpectedly in Spanish rather than in English. I was very very young at the time so I have to think just that it was something I didn't expect that freaked me out moreso than the fact that it was specifically Spanish. I studied Spanish later and it was fine. 3. The Windows 95 startup jingle. Dommmmm ding... ding... ding... I used to have to run down to the other end of my house every time I turned the computer on so I wouldn't have to hear it.

when I was kid I was terrified of stop motion movies like Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit movies, usually I'd just be extremely uncomfortable when I saw them playing and change the channel asap but I still remember one or two times where I just straight up left the room bc I didn't want to be there with them playing LMAO. tbh I'm not sure where this fear comes from and I'm not afraid of them anymore but I still think they're just hard to watch so to this day I have not seen the movies mentioned above even though a lot of people love them. I also think its kind of curious how it didn't apply to every stop motion movie, for example Coraline is part stop motion but the animation didn't make me uncomfortable, I really don't know why

One of my weirdest, most irrational fears was the opening song of ‘The Sopranos’, of all things. My parents used to watch it but I was absolutely not allowed to even see it (for good reason I guess) but they would watch it in a room close enough to my bedroom that I could HEAR it, and I would always feel really panicked by the opening song, like I was listening to something forbidden. The song still makes me feel unsettled by listening to it! 😅

It makes me happy to know what my fear of toilet flushing by the loud noises and overflowing a toilet isn't just by me lmao

There legitimately wasn't a lot that truly scared me, only one thing persisted until today. But regarding the toilets: I personally loved automatic toilets, but was deathly afraid of these stupid loud blow dryers for your hands, no thank you! Also Hasslehoff with beard and white suit, because in Knight Rider he played a guy like that and was an asshole. A crazy asshole I still carry an irrational fear of, the guy activates my fight or flight. Also blue eyes. I don't know, I always thought people with them looked as though they were wanting to kill me X'D

I had a fear of that one scene from "A Christmas Story" where the kid got his tongue stuck to the flag pole. I thought they had to rip his tongue off to free him! So every year I would hide behind the couch or run out of the room and start crying as soon as the scene started. A couple years ago my mom sent me a Christmas card....with a screenshot of that scene on it. 🤦‍♀

I became insanely scared of the inclement weather warnings broadcasted on the radio as a kid because I was listening to my shower radio on Radio Disney and all of a sudden, the loud "EERRRRRRR" sound pierced the air and made me drop to my knees in the shower, tuck and cover and everything bc I was convinced my radio was haunted or smth.

Oh, I love Invader Zim! Such a fun show. Dark Harvest is actually one of my favourite episodes, but I can absolutely 100% understand why it unsettles people.

Was anyone else absolutely terrified of the Numberjacks?? The music that they played when they introduced the villains would send me running from the room screaming

this unlocked my own childhood fears i forgot about, while i wasnt afraid of automatic toilets i have vivid memories of being in first grade and thinking the bathroom was haunted because the automatic sinks would go off when no one was there so i refused to use that restroom at school

I had several of these as a kid, but two that immediately come to mind are the early 2000s honeycomb cereal commercials (I thought it would actually turn you into a bee, and the cgi/ mascot were so freaky) and the gremlins. Really any older movie where the monsters/creatures were done with puppets, like labyrinth, gremlins, the never ending story, etc. Freaked me tf OUT.

my most prominent dumb childhood fear was definitely the thx sound. i was so terrified of it as a kid that i would refuse to go to the theater even if i was assured said sound would not be appearing and i would force my mom to mute the beginning of any movie with the symbol on the case AND would leave the room just in case it messed up somehow. i understand why it would be scary to a kid but i still have no idea how this took precedent over any other loud uncomfortable sound

I always thought quicksand was going to be a bigger problem in my life than it turned out to be, also tv shows like mr. meaty, robot chicken and Naruto freaked me out

I used to be terrified of cows. I had like a ZhuZhu pet thing, one of those mouse toys that Rolled around and made silly little noises and shit. Well one of my favorites made a cow noise, but man did I love that mouse so instead of not playing with it, I memorized the pattern of the sounds so I knew that after the cat sound, it moo’d so as soon as it meowed i would crawl out of the room, hide in a corner with my ears covered for exactly 6 seconds before going back to the playroom and continuing

those sound strips on roads were my ultimate favorite thing as a kid. my dad called them "mooing strips" and would sometimes drive through them on purpose just for the moo

I love how so many of these just read as "I was a neurodivergent child" to me, who was also a neurodivergent child.

OMG as someone who grew up with life size Star Trek cardboard cutouts around the house, I'm SO glad to see someone else's family did the same thing haha!!! I was personally afraid of mummies because of how decomposed they looked (either from a museum visit or from a documentary) and combine that with having watched CSI all my life (aka probably too young) I like, regularly had nightmares of my parents getting murdered by a rotting mummy corpse?? I remember crawling out of bed at night when someone used the bathroom to see if the mummy was about and my mom being like,,, ok kid calm down LMAO

my fear as a child was the dragon/lion dance--im chinese so every year we'd celebrate chinese new year and we'd see the performance but i was smol and dragon was big and loud so i'd just cry. the fear lingered until high school and while im not afraid of it now, i'd still rather not see it (even tho it's hecking cool and i love it in theory lol)

very specific but I could not STAND second hand embarrassment. Like whenever I would see a character in a movie/cartoon do something embarrassing/humiliating I would get so uncomfortable that I needed to leave the room whenever it happened.

One thing I recently found was this bootleg Disney DVD that had a loud song that came on as the intro and as a kid I was absolutely terrified of it and would beg my mum to turn it off. I only recently just found it in my house and uploaded it and turns out others were looking for it for so long too

I've always loved halloween because my birthday is in october, so when I was like 4 or 5 I watched Beetlejuice with my dad. The scene where Beetlejuice spins his head around and snakes pop out of him scared me so bad it legitimately made me afraid of the dark. I had never been afraid of the dark until I had to go to bed that night. I remember that I lined all my stuffed animals along the edges of my bed to protect me and I barely slept. My mom bought me a nightlight the next day.

the fear of sun exploding is a classic. i was really into reading encyclopedias as a kid so i had it too! as well as some other ones. three of the most notable include being afraid of a volcano spontaneously forming right at our doorstep, spontaneous beginning of a new ice age and being trapped in my room by a glacier (i thought that the glacier would enter the building through the entrance like a distinguished being it is, then fill all the rooms up with ice, and block all the ways out of the house. i practiced gnawing on the wooden frame of my bed in case i would have to survive this event without food stashes), and a fear of breaking the earth's crust and unleashing the burning magma hell upon my hometown. this one was caused by a diagram showcasing earth's cross-section, on which the crust (of course) appeared to be paper thin. i was SO disturbed by other kids digging holes in the ground

god yeah the dying sun thing is spot on, i remember watching an episode of doctor who about it and had nightmares for a week. another thing that scares me for some reason is just a singular giant eyeball staring at me (just the thought of it makes me nauseous)

I don't know when it started, but I became super scared of the the scene in Tangled where Mother Gothel fell out of the tower. Every time we watched the movie I'd get up and either go to the toilet or the kitchen and act like I wasn't scared. I have one very clear memory of walking into the little broom closet (which I was also afraid of after it got dark outside), reaching for my hello kitty lego set and bringing it into the living room when the scene was over, starting to build like nothing happened. I was probably around 10 years old already. I actually have a lot of movie fears. I was scared of every version of A Christmas Carol, the original one, the Mickey Mouse one, the Timmy Turner episode, I really don't know why. Maybe it was too much existential dread for me or it was the ghosts, but I was always super uncomfortable and scared. This is more niche, but there's a german kids show called Woozle Goozle, and it's about Beni and Woozle doing experiments and teaching world facts. Woozle is a blue dog looking kind of puppet and in one episode he confesses that he has a brother / cousin who's name was something similar like Zoozle or Moozle or whatever. But the Woozlings are wild animals, Woozle is just a very civilized Woozling. So he warns that his relative could be a little wild. They made his puppet a weird muddy green and he was gurgling and growling like a zombie and he had a super deep voice. I was very scared or that thing. xP I don't even really remember what this was from but I watched something where the characters ate or were fed so much that they became big and round and almost mindless, just wanting more food.... the loss of control fear seems to be a major fear for most of us. I was and still am scared of the dark, but the most scary thing is my imagination. I used to be terrified of our walkway after it got dark because it went around the corner of our house and I was convinced that if we get to our door, a bear will unexpectedly pop out and attack us. I had always been scared of bears (my mom thinks it's because we always watched a family channel on TV that showed movies in the evening and I was there when the part in Merida came up where the Mom is the bear and being violent or something idk, I've never actually watched it until this day 😅)

It's always nice to see someone whose many childhood fears are equally bizarre and incomprehensible as your own. I share a few on this list and empathize with most of the ones I don't. As a kid, I had a friend who was terrified of escalators, and I always thought it was really funny. Then I learned that escalators can kill people in gruesome ways and it became my own phobia. Wonderful! 💀

I was absolutely TERRIFIED of Fantastic Mr. Fox as a child, and I have no idea why because I love that movie now 😅

I was a very anxious child. A short list of my odd fears include: any odd toilets - especially on planes or boats, boats in general (I lived on an island), the sea (again, I lived on an island), our kitchen because I once saw a rotting potato under the counter, our basement because it was messy, holes because I was afraid to fall into them, vomiting, escalators, elevator doors, spinny doors, and so much more

GIRL I WAS SCAREARED OF AUSTIN POWERS TOO 😭😭 his presence truly was strong

there was an episodes of martha speaks (which i was obsessed with as a kid) where they tell each other scary stories on a rainy evening and one of them involved artichokes. i was absolutely terrified of artichokes because of that

Li I can’t believe you’re only 10 videos in to your channel. The professionalism! The quality! Your personality! I can’t stop watching!!

audio uncanny valley is a HUGE thing for me, even to this day. text to speech still fucks me up pretty bad, dunno what it is. i think i know the origin, but knowing that doesn't help lmao i'm pretty sure my first exposure to TTS-like/glitchy audio was the 90's cartoon ReBoot. it's not common in the show, but in an early episode one of the characters gets a magnet stuck to their face and their voice starts glitching out + they turn transparent and glitchy (like the sims examples). pretty sure i just watched the episode at much too young of an age or something because i don't think it's supposed to be scary? still got me pretty bad! it's a frustrating fear i have because i love weird internet themed stuff + TTS can be used to give an amazing vibe. the mind electric is an incredible song, but the TTS in it freaks me out for example.

Angela Anaconda was absolutely a terrifying show. As for Teddy Ruxpin, can confirm that he was scary for me at least. Something about opening up his shirt in the back and seeing a flat piece of plastic and shoving a tape into a slot was uncomfortable, I always felt guilty swapping stories, not to mention when his speaker started to degrade.

A bit less of a metaphorical fear, more of a physical, but as a kid was i utterly convinced that if i went ice skating and happened to fall someone was going to come along and slide right over my hands, slicing through my fingers... it was always specifically my fingers too... ugh... hate the weird stuff the brain chooses to hyper focus on as a fear... did this happen in a movie? Why was I so convinced of this???

I would repeatedly try and convince my parents that Invader Zim wasn't terrible and bad. The episode that would always be playing when I convinced them to give it a try... was Dark Harvest. Every. Time.

i have a list of “childhood trauma.” i feel like this video taps into so many unspoken discussions about our childhood. -the loading sound from mario kart 7 -when the 3DS would exit out of the system settings and the double screens turning black as it returned to the home menu -the 3DS error screen from not being able to connect to the internet -the lion’s gate lion. especially when paired with a pink panther cartoon that would air on boomerang. -robot chicken. just robot chicken. -THE GODDAMN THX LOGO -this one live action video on youtube of the “smurfs” where gargamel eats two smurfs and then the ending credits of that video scared me even more -the ending credits to “jacks big music show.” my BIGGEST reason for childhood trauma. -the few times a virus infected the old family computer and a loud alarm sound with a voice warning me of said virus -this stylized statue of some old man that stood inside the entrance of a diner i would go to often -the very loud alarm sound that would play on the tv to announce something important -“hi, i’m paul!” if you know, you know. -the “abc_123_ogg” and “mus_smile” audio files that you could find in the file directory of undertale

I was (and still am) disturbed by the loud THX intro but I feel like that's valid tbh (I'm autistic and don't handle loud sounds well) my brother on the other hand used to be scared of animatronics, specifically dancing Santas. My mom couldn't even drive by a Krogers that had a Santa there that's how bad it was (he's improved since then obviously)

Your videos always manage to bring out some of my deepest forgotten childhood memories, for better or for worse, and I love it. I had the exact same fear of those pixel girls, and I had just completely shoved that memory of the ghost so far out that I forgot the pixel girls existence entirely until this video

Can I just say when I subscribed I had no idea your channel was so new?? I don't think I've ever come across a channel that discusses lost flash game media like you do, so keep it up!! Your Sue video really sparked an interest within me, I forgot how much I loved those games as a kid. With all of your videos I'm rememebring bits of my childhood I forgot I experienced, thank you so much for covering this type of content!!

"Spontaneous human combustion" got me LOL. It reminded me how I'm afraid of heads exploding

i think the irrational fear of random inanimate objects is probably linked to fear of lack of control, the unknown/unfamiliar, and getting in trouble for breaking something because you don't know how to use it. I used to be scared of the microwave because ours has always been a bit broken and I still have stress dreams where I can't get it to turn off

I was really scared of the starting science of Aladdin with the glowing lion tunnel, I always had to close my eyes at that scene. I was super scared of of the sound toilets made when filling up, also automatic toilets their just too loud I still hate them. I also alway had a irrational fear illness, everyone I saw a scene of a an illness being explained I would stay all night listening to my rapid heart rate, I wasn't even scared of getting the illness it just triggered anxiety for me.I did ended up like almost dieing and getting diagnosed with an chronic illness 16 so not really that irrational.

I was also one of those kids who was extremely emotionally connected to music and audio (i still am but more rationally of course.) I used to be super unnerved and scared of the music and sfx that would play during these ooooold Sesame Street browser flash games. It was only the dress-up style games afair, but i revisited them a few years ago and i realize why: The music in one was this kinda slow surfer rock track played in a minor key. It was actually pretty groovy but I still get the vibe of it, and its not really a "happy" sounding song. The other game's sfx were loud and sudden over either quiet or no music. Also an Elmo fire safety game. I was scared elmo wasn't gonna make it lmaoo I also think i would think too hard about what was happening in a game and then scare myself after thinking that something scary would happen, even if there were no signs of anything like that happening in the game. I was a weird kid.

I had a toy planetarium that came with an educational cd that taught you about space that I thought was incredibly cool, but also scared the shit out of me because one of the final lessons explained black holes and the heat death of the sun. I spent years as a child afraid that the sun would go out AND that a black hole would develop close enough to Earth to such us all in. Recently I was reminiscing over my childhood with my parents and told them about this, and they were horrified because they gave me that planetarium as a Christmas gift and had no idea it caused me so much anxiety.

10:53 the ddlc soundtrack for the section about not being in control of computers is a nice touch

I was deathly afraid of the weeping angels in Doctor Who as a kid. And now I still don't feel safe around statues in general-

My bathroom related childhood fear was that I could fall through the sinkhole on the bathtub. As an adult, the plumbing and engineering that's made toilets work still grosses me out though.

My biggest fear until I was like 6 was the opening sequence to Toy Story 2. I was OBSESSED with Buzz Lightyear, and Toy Story 2 was my favorite movie, so my parents had to deal with this on an almost daily occasion for YEARS. Every time Rex dies in the video game and Buzz gets blasted in half, I would go into a full blown meltdown and be completely inconsolable for like an hour. My parents started skipping it every time I watched, but if a babysitter put it on, or if they were busy and forgot to fast forward… there was hell to pay 😅

your fear of vents is perfectly understandable. i was also very scared of dark harvest as a kid. my dad and i used to Absolut LOVE space and aliens and sometimes me and him would watch invader zim together. i remeber being geunily terrified to the point where i became very paranoid for a short period of time, that any time i was walking the halls at my school alone id be so paranoid that something would start chaising after me, or was spying on me through the vents. for years i had a huge fear of vents in general and my peers did NOT make it better by teasing me about movies like "IT" and telling me false storys of peranormal activity at the addic of the church at out school. weirdly enough that fear was resloved when one night we had a school sleepover, and the teacher invited us to go to the "haunted" parts of the church. to my supprise nothing happened but i thankfully helped me get over my fears. now im somehow the opposit, i love creepy paranormal stuff and (as u can see by my pfp) still a huge IZ fan. thank for brining me this funny memory i would have otherwise forgotten XD