beth (defunct)

this is such a normie answer, I assume, but the williams street logo at the end of space ghost would literally keep me up at night.

Oh god that last part EXACTLY. Even now, any time I see like plain text on a stark background sternly narrated, I feel like I'm about to be lead to the gallows for some reason.

Whenever the intro sequence to Animorphs came on the TV, I was convinced that it was a direct action by aliens to abduct me. Id leave the room screaming if it came on and wouldnt return until the channel was changed

Theres also the credit/exit sequence to Learning Land, an old edutainment series of CDroms, that would terrify me as a kid. The way they all say goodbye dissonantly, stacking the dB of thier sound clips together, the slow pixel fadeout of the screen. Hated every second of it and id dread closing the game for this reason best example I could find

Also just remembered, probably a common one but the THX rising tone. Parents had ppl over watching titanic and i was on mums lap, the THX stinger played and for some reason they had the TV over double its typical volume, and I tried to leave but she held me in place no matter how much I squirmed and being forced to listen to that stinger and not being able to leave was hell

idk if it counts but when watching the flintstones movie I got scared of when betty rubble's credit card expired and the clerk said "it's NO DAMN GOOD" and smashed it (it was made of stone because of course). In a Flinststones movie, about the flintstones, a modern stone-age family.

then I rewound it and watched it several times again and again because once the fear went away, I realized there was a CUSS! On a video movie tv that I could watch!

i was convinced that there was a man made of static who would kidnap me and bring me into the TV when i was young. couldn't be near a turned off tube TV for fear of hearing it turn on by itself when i had my guard down. fun times 🥰

for Some reason, this Paramount intro that was on a few of our VHSes scared the shit out of me lmao. something about the combination of the beginning part followed by the really long silent stern warning text https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHqYYbf1ldI

Shoutout to Today's Special, the opening of which would send little me fleeing from the tv room.

these were actually intended to be at least, like, kinda upsetting? but in like a very palatable "we're just doing pretend it's not actually scary" way? but Super Mario Bros. 1's castle theme and also the "hey hurry up and finish the level" stinger scared the absolute piss out of me as a kid and to this day i have to mute the TV if i want to play some Mario Maker levels lol.

worst video game jumpscare was getting Mario items in Animal Crossing New Leaf and finding out the fire bar plays the castle music dslfkgjhfdsjk

edited to add: definitely the weirder thing i was afraid of was digital clocks in the dark whenever they had a 00 on there. all the digital clocks we had were red displays and my brain was like IT'S EYES I'M SCARED and i had to put paper over part of the clock in my room at night until i was like 8 lol

You should hear the PBS bumper from the 70s; it had this really harsh synth riff, as a lot of things from that time did, not unlike the bit from the Protect and Survive videos...

actually here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_JCzZAqqQg

i'm too embarrassed to make this a full post but as a kid i was so scared and sad any time my parents watched MST3K cuz the silhouettes scared me, but more importantly i thought they were actually trapped on a ship and didnt understand why no one was helping them.

the part of the song where they say "just repeat to yourself 'it's just a show' " apparently went unheard by 7 year old sheri

LITERALLY GONNA POST THIS AS SECOND LMAO

It's so goddamn terrifying as a kid!!

1000% same on the x-files intro, not helped by my mom being a huge nerd and like taking me to sci-fi cons n shit. I actually saw it for the first time since childhood recently and was like "oh uh,, this is not nearly as mortifying as I remember it being..."