Also, because it irritated the inner grammar Nazi in all of us. Are we Trekking into darkness? What about the stars? Or are we just boldly going into darkness, free of the colon dominion that has wracked our universe? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

Agreed! Though that said, I have an alternate list I recommend to people who aren't certainly they'd like comics, or are just testing out the waters and don't really feel "into superheros" (regardless of gender too!).

That was pretty much my experience (though I was your brother's age, and it was on television). Nightmares for years. I legitimately watched for the first time in my late teens and was finally able to cope.

I was startled at how engaging and immersive the music was. I haven't experienced that so consistently in an MMO since...actually, ever. I've liked music in them, of course, but if anything really stood out it was usually a single zone, or something dramatic in a cutscene.

Alien. Reason: terror. Specifically, the scene where Dallas is crawling through the air shafts, the music is rising, they see the alien dot approaching his on the monitor, they're screaming at him, he has to go up or down, up or down! and then suddenly, he's devoured.

Riker was my immediate thought when I saw the episode as well, with the same reaction as you. And then it just did everything right that could have gone wrong.

Yeah, it's a bit different from the topic, I think, but it definitely changed things (just maybe not the whole game in the same way as some of the other pics here).

First thing I thought of!

It's a bit of a different game changer, but I think Buffy's "The Body" definitely impacted the entire feel of the show for quite a while for me—and not just that, but shows in general. Seeing something where death was treated much more in the way that most of us will experience it in in our lives, in the middle of…

I think it was more impressive for the fact that the other John was not simply a one-off episode "clone" character, designed to manipulate some extra sad from the audience. Rather, they really made him into enough of his own character that they got all the sad they wanted and more.

Fun until you go deaf, anyway.

I disliked ET with a passion, specially because I saw it young and the part that really terrified me was when they find him all pale and white and dying. It creeped me out on a very visceral level.

No self-hate, I think it's a fun story! Just one of those things where I watched it as an adult and went "Huh."

A highly underrated animated movie, but there are a lot of terrifying child moments in there.

To be honest, I remember very little about the rest of the film aside from the weird hobo clown with his cigars, but the nightmare-darkness-ooze is forever burnt in my memory.

Definitely the first time you see that the Skeksis are so held up by clothing, in terms of how small and frail their bodies are. It was definitely...emotionally sickening.

I don't remember what I watched recently—I think an Honest Trailers video for something?—where I was focused on the other screen and heard the nnnMMMmmmMMm noise and said out loud "Wait, was that fucking Chamberlain?" right as the announcer said the same thing.

Fun story:

That was terrifying, but for some reason, the scene when Chamberlain gets stripped was just...whoo whoo whoo panic alarms going off for me forevermore. It just gripped me right in the chest.

Little Nemo's Adventures in Slumberland.