You can't tell what a show or movie will be like based on title alone. Sure, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 15: The New Blood" probably won't make it through your parent filters, but what about those shows with confusing names? You know, the ones you hear in the back of your mind and don't even give a second thought to the mind-melting it's about to inflict on your child? Well, it happens, and we're all here for it.
Reddit user, u/Sylvizard, wanted to hear the saddest screenings you've had when they asked:
Parents of Reddit, when was your worst case of not checking a show before showing it to your kids?
Maybe Skip The First 15 Minutes For Younger Viewers...
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Shazam. For my 11 year old autistic son who is a big fan of superheroes. Everyone kept talk about how heartwarming and family oriented it was. I thought I was in the clear... until... a woman was incinerated and her flesh melted off and turned to charcoal dust... and then we were introduced to 7 demons which represented the 7 deadly sins. One of the demons bit the head off a man in a boardroom.
My son freaked the ever loving freak out.
You Grow And You Learn. Hopefully.
My Dad to me and my brother to see Wayne's World in the theater. I was 10, my brother was maybe 14.
Upon rewatch as an adult I actually understood the jokes. Not really appropriate for a 10 year old, IMO.
Edited to add: My husband totally thought it was fine to let the 5 year old and 3 year old watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, because "it's not that scary!" I then had to remind him of the part where THE NAZI DUDE'S FACE MELTS OFF.
And Then They Remade It!?
When I was a kid, it was Watership Down. I still remember the horror. Cute bunnies on the cover, but an absolute bloodbath filled with disturbing imagery awaits.
As a parent myself, YouTube! You really never know what you're getting on YouTube. There's plenty of great content for kids, but they're always just a few clicks away from a Holocaust documentary or true crime footage.
When You Can't Trust Anyone
I checked, but the response was misleading. A South American friend highly recommended this art film; the title was "Black God, White Devil". I asked if it were suitable for young children. She said that it was totally suitable; no problem. So I took my wife and kids, aged 5 and 6.
Just as they were preparing to hack a baby to death with a machete on screen, I yelled at my wife and kids and we ran out.
"How did anyone think that was appropriate for young kids?" I wondered. Still wondering.
Come On Now, It's Just...The Devil...
I have a much younger sister and let her watch "Rosemary's Baby" with me when she was five and I was old enough that I should have known to read the plot summary beforehand.
Emilio!
I played the Mighty Ducks to a group of first graders I was subbing for.
There's quite a few bad words I had forgotten about.
Freddy's Gonna Get You...
When I was about 6 or so my mom and dad had company over and were all sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and talking.
My sister and I kept running around and being loud and interrupting the adults, and after many repeated warnings to be quieter my dad escorted us into the living room, assigned us each a seat, and told us to be quiet and not to get up, and that the next time we interrupted them we'd get spanked. Then he turned on the TV and left.
We preceded to see some sort of sex scene where a woman pulled out a guy's tongue and used it to tie him to his bed. Then the BBEG appeared.... It was Freddy Krueger!
NSFW: The Scene.
We cried for him and he came in mad, but then saw what was on TV and apologized lol.
But, Chimichangas?
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My kids insisted I take them to Deadpool because their friends saw it.
Being the nice why not you're only a kid once kind of dad I am, I sat through too many awkward gratuitous sex scenes and made them promise we wouldn't say anything to mom but they were cool about the whole thing.
Watching Someone Else Goof Up
I worked at a movie theatre once upon a time. I was working as an usher this particular night, so once the run of showings started, things got quiet for me.
Until some dad came storming out of a theatre with his wife and kids in tow, ranting about how he thought they were seeing a cowboy movie.
Brokeback Mountain ain't for everyone.
You REALLY Messed Up There....
Happy Tree Friends
Was hoping for this comment, thank you for traumatising your children for our entertainment.
Oh this ain't SO bad...
Blazing Saddles.
Anything by Mel Brooks! Spaceballs is also not appropriate for children. Woops.
I adored spaceballs growing up but as a little kid i just would say "I wanna see balls". Lot of embaressment on my moms part
Roger is the best.
Well My friend told me once that his parents didn't know what American Dad was and they let him watch it downstairs while they were upstairs one time (He was About 7 years old at the time )and then about 3 days later his mom told him she was doing the dishes and he said: "Yeah you do that bitch." He didn't know what curse words were until he watched American Dad. His mom got pisssssed.
Oh God
Sausage Party.
That's the worst one possible in this situation.
Wurst?
Grisly
My parents let me watch Robocop when I was about 6.
Funny enough, it wasn't the massive gun fights, or the dude turning into toxic waste when hit by a car, or the blood, but when Robocop took off his mask thing. That freaked me out horribly and gave me nightmares.
I didn't know Robocop wasn't a family-friendly movie until about 2 years ago. I still haven't seen it, but when I was a toddler my slightly older cousins were obsessed with it.
Frank n beans, hair gel
When I was a kid, we were taken to watch Something about Mary. HAHA then quickly left to watch cats vs dogs.
I first saw parts of that movie (Something about Mary) when I was younger (around 10 y/o) and always wondered why her hair was standing up like that... only just realized a few years ago after re watching it as an adult what it was (0.0)
Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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