22 Creepy Things From The ’90s That Are Responsible For The Paranoid Mess You Are Today

All the memories you've been trying to suppress.

1. Everything about Unsolved Mysteries...

Buena Vista Television

The intro music was chilling, but Robert Stack was the perfect host and made the show that much scarier. With a voice like his, he could've been narrating a cartoon about puppies and ice cream, and it still would've been scary.

2. The artwork from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books...

Harper & Row

If your worst nightmares had hands, a sketchbook, and a charcoal pencil, this would be the result.

3. Rescue 911...

CBS

The intro was pretty intense, but what was scariest was that this show wasn't paranormal, monsters under the bed, or fictional stuff — it was IRL scary. Home invasions, house fires, car accidents, search and rescues, all of the super feasible stuff that anxiety is made out of.

4. Judge Doom's death scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit...

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.

The eerily high-pitched voice, the human eyeballs popping out, the cartoon eyeballs being revealed and promptly turning into daggers. This scene was flat-out frightening.

5. The Blair Witch Project ads coming on during commercial breaks...

Artisan Entertainment

It just looked so freakin' real. You didn't even have to watch the actual movie. Many folks spent months in fear of commercial breaks knowing a Blair Witch Project ad might come on.

6. The "Zeke the Plumber" episode of Salute Your Shorts...

Nickelodeon

Salute Your Shorts was hilarious and entertaining for the most part, but the second episode of the series stands out for featuring a terrifying ghost custodian, the thought of whom still terrifies a lot of people.

7. The Living Forest level on Mortal Kombat II...

Midway Games

The blood and guts spewing everywhere after gruesome fatalities wasn't an issue, but those living trees roaring and making scary faces in the background? Those were a problem. They alone made kids not even want to fight on this level.

8. Worrying that Gushers might turn your head into a large fruit...

Surely there was a better way to convey the fruitiness of these candies to young imaginations, right? These creepy transformed faces left skeptical kids wondering if a sugary snack was worth having a large fruit dome.

9. Don't Look Under the Bed...

Disney

This is hands down the scariest Disney Channel Original Movie of them all. Somehow this sleep-ruining-ass film was rated PG.

10. The Resident Evil games...

Capcom

Hey, the graphics might not look like much right now, but these games delivered so much horror once upon a time.

11. Edgar the Bug from Men in Black...

Columbia Pictures

This alien who snatched a human's body is hilarious when he's requesting sugar water, but he was also pretty disturbing, particularly when he casually pulled his dangling skin back around his face.

12. Angelica's nightmare about a baby brother who terrorizes her...

Nickelodeon

Rugrats was truly trippy sometimes. On the episode "Angelica's Nightmare," her baby brother spoke threateningly, grew freakishly large, ate Angelica's slice of cheese, used the phrase "nom noms," and eventually consumed her and her toy car, mercifully ending this scary-ass nightmare sequence.

13. When Chuckie and Chas have terrifying moments in their respective nightmares...

Nickelodeon

Chuckie says something to Tommy, but when he turns around he's got that horrifying face and says, "I'm not Tommy!" The same thing happens with Chas later, though it's Stu who is making the disturbing face that proves children's animation can be horrifying.

14. The X-Files theme...

20th Television

This music is still so eerie, and even if you were too young or scared to watch the show, hearing it from another room where your siblings or parents were watching was enough to give you chills.

15. The Are You Afraid of the Dark? opening credits...

Nickelodeon

This creepy intro included the following: a creepy shot of a boat on a lake, a creepy unoccupied swing set, the creepy sound of children laughing, a creepy heartbeat sound, a creepy attic, all with extremely creepy music playing in the background. And that's just the opening credits — the episodes themselves caused us all a great deal of discomfort.

16. The Goosebumps opening credits...

20th Television

Obviously the Goosebumps franchise had scary book covers, scary stories, and scary episodes, but yo, that dog with the glowing yellow eyes had folks sleeping with the lights on.

17. Ernest Scared Stupid...

Buena Vista Pictures

Yes, Ernest movies were usually harmless and fun, but the troll in this movie was legitimately frightening.

18. Pennywise killing Georgie in the sewer...

Warner Bros. Television

It as a whole was incredibly unsettling, but the sewer scene stood out as a real good-night's-rest saboteur. Pennywise kills a kid named Georgie pretty casually in horrifying fashion — and it's like, wait, the children in movies aren't supposed to get killed off!

19. The Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory boat scene...

Paramount Pictures

Yeah, technically this movie came out in 1971, but it wasn't a huge success then and and it had super successful rerelease in 1996, so the ’90s have some custody rights. Anyway, this entire scene — the words he was singing, the way he was singing the images — we were right there with the rest of the characters having a meltdown.

20. HIM from The Powerpuff Girls...

Warner Bros. Television Distribution

HIM was such a peculiar, disturbing antagonist, in large part because he was so Satan-esque.

21. Little Nemo...

Hemdale Pictures

Nightmare Land + Nightmare King = nightmares for you IRL.

22. The Sixth Sense...

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

And of course, yet another horror movie that forced its trailers on us during commercial breaks. It was always frustrating — like, just because you see dead people, Haley Joel Osment, doesn't mean we should have to as well.