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Sesame Street may be the only kids' show in history to be sold on DVDs (specifically, the "Old School" sets featuring classic episodes from the '70s and '80s) that actually warn you that they may not be appropriate for children. After watching some of the clips on this page, you'll probably see why. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to a child psychiatrist?!


  • This is so prevalent that there's a huge forum thread on a Muppet forum over what sketches scared posters the most.
  • Look at most videos featuring Placido Flamingo on Youtube. Half the comments are on how he terrified children.
    • It was heavily rumored this was why the character is no longer used on the show, but it apparently was due to the puppeteer's death, which brings up a lot of questions entirely.
  • In the classic "Monster in the Mirror" song, there's a surprisingly scary sequence in which Grover is walking down a street with his crudely drawn reflection in the store windows. At one point, the reflection begins to grow and grin in a manner befitting a slasher villain.
  • A frequently cited example of this is the sketch where Bert and Ernie are exploring a pyramid. In it, there's a really creepy looking statue that looks almost identical to Ernie that moves and talks in a severely creepy voice when Bert's not in the room.
    • Somewhat defused when Ernie discovers it knows "Rubber Ducky".
      • In the 90's, the sketch was trimmed a bit and music was added during the more frightening parts.
    • Here's the sketch with Inspector Gadget music.
  • Kermit's lecture on the "Sound of B". The ending has Beautiful Day Monster screaming the "B" sound while the screen turns white (apparently to simulate the effect of the camera lens fogging up from the sound.) Nightmare Retardant if you remember one thing... FUS RO DAH!!
  • "Count to Ten with Nobody". An odd little sketch from the early years of Sesame Street, where a floating face that looks like it's made of rubber bands, with quite possibly one of the scariest voices ever heard on the show, counts to ten while weird animations and sound effects (done by Raymond Scott, yes, the guy who made "Powerhouse") play continuously in the background. What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?, indeed.
    • Which was actually based off THIS early Jim Henson film.
  • The infamous "Geometry of Circles" segments. As mystical as they are, they simply aren't suited very well to an easily frightened young audience.
  • The classic segment "Daddy Dear" scared quite a few children back in the day. Of particular mention is the roaring dandelion.
  • The beginning of the song "Be My D" has the loud voice of a radio DJ Anything Muppet named Bushman Bill (who introduced the song). Although Bushman Bill is a bit creepy, the song itself is nice and catchy.
  • The Monsterpiece Theatre segment "Twin Beaks". Sure, it's a hilarious segment, but the double-beaked birds just look plain wrong.
  • A commonly mentioned one is the "I Beam" film. The highly suspenseful music in the background is just plain unsettling.
  • In the classic segment "Disco Frog", a really freaky-looking ghostly silhouette of Kermit is featured. And in case you were born just a bit too late to catch it when it was still being used on the show, it made a return on an episode of Shalom Sesame (a miniseries about Israeli culture that aired in 1986 and 1990), this time partly dubbed into Hebrew. If anything, the dubbing made it even freakier.
  • This creepy as hell segment. Whoever designed that bird must've been having one hell of a trip. The music is fire, though, and sounds like a video game stage select screen.
  • "Annie and Arthur Look for an A". You know what else begins with "A"? Aneurysm, and the announcer apparently drops dead from one at the end of the segment. And no, it's not the funny kind.
  • There was also the Mysterious Theater sketches from the early 1990s. Though the stories about Sherlock Hemlock and his sidekick dog, Watson weren't so scary, the opening title card (featuring a sad woman in mourning clothes next to a gravestone with the title on it, taken directly from the real Mystery! intro), the music, and the host Vincent Twice (a Muppet parody of former Mystery! host Vincent Price) scared many viewers during its run. It could be a reason why the segments have never been released on home video or rerun since 1999.
  • Kermit's W lecture. The first part is unsettling with Cookie Monster trying to eat Kermit. And in the second part, the W becomes sentient and attacks a struggling Kermit.
  • The ending of Kermit's More-and-Less lecture. After Kermit scolds Cookie Monster and lightly threatens to "teach a lesson", a gang of creepy monsters start surrounding poor Kermit in a threatening manner. The scary music does not help.
  • This short skit about the letter G certainly qualifies. "G" words were recited by a girl (that resembled a black version of PC-98 Alice Margatroid) on a stage with short cutscenes demonstrating the meaning of that word. It would have been completely forgettable if not for the last word spoken: "Gone", with a camera cut-back to the stage to show the black Alice gone. Sure, she could have just left, it being the end of her role... but why are her clothes still on the chair!? And why does that giant "G" that comes up right after that look so menacing?
  • Another unsettling G skit has Grover next to a foam-rubber G as he talks about the various G words and how important they are. As he talks, the G begins move back and forth, and more so, groan in a rather alarming way, all unnoticed by Grover of course. By the time he gets to the word "grow" at 1:40 the G begins to grow at an alarming rate as well as constantly growling; Grover finally runs offstage before the letter explodes. Like the Ernie and Bert pyramid sketch above, music was added later on to make the skit less scary.
  • The Count, especially in early skits, with his power of hypnosis to get people to do what he wanted or to get them to stay out of his way. Two examples included:
    • In one of his earliest appearances, Ernie was building a pyramid of blocks and wanted to take a picture of his creation, asking Bert to make sure nobody disturbs it while retrieving the camera. However, the Count walks in and begins moving the blocks; when Bert tries to stop Count, he is whammied. Later, when Ernie returns and scolds Count, he, too, gets zapped, while Count finishes his counting.
    • A Charlie's Restaurant skit from early 1973 where, after admitting to waiter Grover that he had no intent to eat his hot dogs and that he simply wanted to count them (the skit was about simple addition), Grover balks at getting him more. Before Grover can ask the bouncer to have the Count thrown out and asked not to return, the Count zaps Grover, telling him "Go, go and bring me another hot dog." In a trance, Grover says, "Yes ... sir!" before fast-action music (similar to that of Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, which was also composed by Joe Raposo) and film show Grover bringing out more and more hot dogs and the Count having the time of his life, before an exhausted Grover succumbs to delirium. Although intended to be comedy (due to the fast-action sequence of Grover getting hot dogs), the Count's hypnotic power proved so scary for kids that CTW removed it. The skit can be viewed here.
    • Another sketch has the Count sleeping over at Ernie and Bert's place, and keeping Ernie awake by counting sheep. In the morning, an extremely haggard, zombie-like Ernie emerges, in a daze and still counting, implying that the Count used his hypnotic power on him. ("Forty-three thousand...eight hundred and ninety-one...forty-three thousand...eight-hundred and ninety-two...") Though the way Ernie randomly interjects "Sheep" in the same dazed monotone when Bert tries to get his attention might be funny enough to be Nightmare Retardant. Plus, if you're an insomniac, this sketch might bring back some unpleasant memories.
  • The Vishnu Sketch showed a four-armed Hindu god or some such counting to twenty on his fingers while a female voice-over sang the numbers to a vaguely Indian-sounding tune. When you're 2, there is something indefinably creepy about that.
    • A short from the same period, with a similar vibe, featured Northern Calloway ("David") dressed in some sort of Orientalist garb. He played a shehnai and "charmed" a floating number 12 out of a snake-basket, while sitar music played. The whole thing was rather eerie and unsettling, but especially the end: David folded his arms, intoned "twellllve" and slowly vanished.
      • His real life mental condition and later death only made this worse.
  • In the "Big Bird's Birthday or Let Me Eat Cake" special, Cookie Monster resists his temptation to eat Big Bird's birthday cake...by eating everything else on Sesame Street. Not all the food. Everything. At one point, he was shown actively eating a lamp post. The show cut back from one of the skits, and the camera panned over Sesame Street, which looked more like a war zone.
  • There was a standalone Elmo sketch where British comedian Ricky Gervais appears at Elmo's bedtime to sing him a "celebrity lullaby". After some funny Parental Bonuses, Ricky then begins the song, centered on the letter N--which begins by gently singing about nighttime and nightgown... to SCREAMING "NAHNAHNAHNAHNAH" at the top of his lungs at a traumatized Elmo, who responds with a theme-appropriate "No!" and ends up too terrified to sleep.
  • This short that tried to teach kids about pattern completion. The sound that plays when the missing space is revealed is horrifying.
  • The first Snuffleupagus puppet. Just... what were they thinking?!
  • Here is an orange with a face made out of random stuff. She sings opera. And then her face explodes. But if you look at it in a more positive light, you'll notice that in the first half, almost every action in the skit makes a sound (e.g. the orange jumping out of the basket, the bottles making their caps her earrings), and all the actions sync with the sounds they make, predating Rez by 40 years.
  • It's coming right at us!
  • The ending to this cartoon about the letter "Y", where after a talkative yak is called a "yakity yakity yak" by the narrator, the yak goes nuts and charges toward the screen with wild eyes (resembling Rocko's after he touched "the green button"), shattering the screen.
    • And on Episode 3012, the already-startling Sesame Street News Flash intro zoomed up out of the darkness after the screen shattered, making it a certified Jump Scare (the intro had zoomed up before, mostly in Seasons 16-18, but this one was rapid.) Wileyk209zback loves to remind viewers of this fact.
  • The Wegman Dogs. For some, their first introduction to Uncanny Valley – either a dog's head on a human's body, or human hands on a dog that's walking erect for some reason, all wearing clothes and wigs and speaking in creepy monotone. Some people look back fondly on these sketches, especially those who are autistic. Still, just as many admit to shuddering upon viewing the shorts today.
  • "Wet Paint" by How Now Brown and the Moo Wave. The trippy background visuals alone would be off-putting enough to most young viewers. However, towards the end of the sketch, they suddenly infiltrate the foreground, followed by How Now Brown screaming like a maniac while the screen literally melts away, but while some viewers note that How Now Brown's screaming sounds more like... something else, it doesn't help matters much. The YouTube comments speak for themselves.
    • The band's other song, "Danger's No Stranger", wasn't much better. Same musical style, but now it's about things that can hurt you. What fun!
  • Two cosplayers showed up to Dragoncon 2012 dressed up as a realistic-looking Ernie and Bert. Unfortunately, it ended up looking very uncanny, to the point where the article calls them "Childhood Ruining Nightmare Fuel". See the horrifying, terrifying photos here and here...if you dare!
  • The "Teeny Little Super Guy". Sure, he dispenses good, down-to-earth advice... but damn it if he isn't creepy. The way he rises up and down from solid surfaces like a ghost, his gravely smoker voice and the choppy, awkward animation make him very unsettling to watch.
  • This particular sketch, which was first transmitted circa 1986, is pure NightmareFuel. It features creepy wind-up toys doing things of their own accord and a mechanical arm that plays piano and spells out "SESAME STREET", intercut with footage of satellites. To top it off, it's all set to Janko Nilovic's "Portrait d'Un Robot", a creepy-as-heck piece of music (for any Australian fans playing at home, it was also the "Rocket Clock" theme from Play School). It's implied that its purpose is to somehow teach kids about machines and mechanics, but it just smacks of What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs?. And to make it even creepier, it's reminiscent of the freaky music video for "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock.
  • The classic 1970s Bert and Ernie song, "Imagination", was originally a longer storyline, in which we actually see Ernie having nightmares about "Dark shadows, spooky things, and spooky scary monsters that creep up at you and go, 'Wubba-wubba!'." Ernie's nightmare ended up being too scary for the kids watching at the test screening, so instead of the whole storyline being used for an episode of the show, just the part where Bert helps Ernie calm his fears by imagining balloons with the song "Imagination" was used as an insert.
  • Rosita originally had wing flaps, as she was a fruit bat. After several seasons, they removed the flaps, and she became a monster. The in-series reason is that she was gliding through a cave with her family and it was so windy that they blew off. Let that sink in for a moment. The fact she said it wasn't painful despite all this, and that she hates to think about it, makes you think it was such a bad injury that her body blocked out the pain, the same way you do when you get a large injury.
  • This is a big letter V. Not bad until the very end. Ow. Ow. Ow. (And did I mention ow?)
  • These kids are seen running and hiding from a giant fucking mutant rabbit. Even worse is when the funky BGM stops dead in its tracks when the kids hide behind trees and the rabbit passes by without seeing them, and then continues on as if nothing happened once it passes (and the kids run off).
  • The 1976 episode where Margaret Hamilton reprised her role as The Wicked Witch of the West was lost for 46 years. According to the Urban Legends, the one time it aired, numerous parents sent hate mail saying it was too frightening for their children, and at least one Wiccan mother complained that the episode represented negative stereotypes of witches. It was banned due to the heaps of nightmare-inducing terror it featured according to those parents. When it was found in June 2022, it's easy to see why kids were freaked by it: the white Scanimate outlines when the Witch electrocutes David (as much as they are reminiscent of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park) and the Witch's echoey cackle at the end of the sponsors. There's also the fact that the episode really didn't seem to teach anything, according to Sesame Workshop.
  • Telly Monster's original design and characterization with his swirling eyes, antennae head, and druggie-like addiction to television. It's easy to see why Mr. Hooper is so frightened.
  • The "Cracks" animated segment, in which a black girl imagines the cracks on the walls of her house as various animals, culminating in the monstrous "Crack Master." Once the Sesame Workshop stopped playing it, it was not seen anywhere until Christmas Eve 2013, when it was finally uncovered by The Lost Media Wiki. However, Dorothy Moskowitz's voice is very calming, and aside from the Crack Master's part being a little creepy, it's not really that scary. Plus, the girl was made into LMW-tan, the Lost Media Wiki's mascot.
  • This seemingly-pointless cartoon from the 70s that features a woman in profile's features randomly morphing, accompanied by loud whizzing Moog synthesizer sound effects.
    • Even worse is the male version with its deeper synth sounds and more horrific facial distortions. At least one of them resembles Rocky Dennis... or Bob Saget.
  • The Martians (or Yip-Yips, as they're known to some tropers) have frightened many children over the years. Here is a typical Martian segment. It may have to do with their protruding lower jaws, their spastic shivering movements, their tenuous grasp on the English language and unsettling way of speaking, or the implication that they can teleport in from anywhere at any time they please, or even turn invisible. The creepy music and sound effects that play throughout the skits made things worse. And of course, it doesn't help that Kermit is terrified of them. However, if you were a kid in the early '00s who loved Martian Manhunter, then you obviously loved the Yip-Yips.
  • The Christmas special "Elmo Saves Christmas" has the Easter Bunny, who's surprisingly pretty creepy with the uncanny appearance: he's a guy in a bunny suit with a creepy smoker's voice (portrayed by Harvey Fierstein.) It kind of makes you wonder how many kids were traumatized by this guy. Of course, there is some Nightmare Retardant, if you consider his "smoker's voice" and his actor's name being Harvey and remember one thing...
    • Not to mention the dark turn the special's "be careful what you wish for" message takes.
  • "The Ten Commandments of Health" Think about it. You have a slow, mellow doo-wop tune, a bunch of doctors standing around humming it, and what appears to be a blue corpse lying on a table. Then all of a sudden, the guy pops up and recites the commandments in a deep voice, as if saying, "Kids, if you don't do these ten things, this could happen to YOU!"
    • Averted for some, since the blue guy is a recognizable character ("Mr. Johnson") and that you can hear his heart monitor operating before and after the song.
  • There's something a little bit unsettling about these carnival masks.
  • Grover's "Health Minute" featuring Kermit the Frog. Grover wants to tell the kids all about oral hygiene using Kermit as a volunteer, but frogs don't have teeth. Grover says, "Excuse us a moment," and wrestles Kermit off-screen. When Kermit comes back on, he looks extremely uncomfortable. Grover gets him to open his mouth and we see Kermit with a full set of teeth. While Grover is explaining the basics of dental care, Kermit looks straight at the camera, bares his teeth and makes a hissing sound, which stuns Grover for a second. When Grover asks if he can have his teeth back, Kermit chases after him, jaws snapping madly.
  • Don Music losing his temper can be unsettling. It's no wonder his character didn't last long. In 1998, the skits were suspended from airing because parents sent in complaints to Children's Television Workshop about their kids hitting their heads from home.
  • The Bigger Than the World! animated sketch which involves a frog trying to prove to a giant ox that she can be much bigger than the ox. So, the frog starts to constantly puff herself up until she is as huge as a beach ball and when she finally states that she has become bigger than the world, the frog suddenly explodes. It's directly inspired by one of Aesop's Fables, which were originally never intended for children.
  • SAM the Machine scared a few kids back in the day, especially with its appearance and its pretty creepy robotic voice. However, he actually appeared in a Spider-Man comic book, so he's not all that scary.
  • Bird and Toothbrush not only features a freaky-looking claymation bird, but the hands that come out of the mountain are pretty creepy as well.
  • "Number Twelve Rocks". It's like a bad peyote trip in the desert. Hell of a way to teach kids to count, Henson.
  • The entire "Rocket Countdown" series. Between the Yellow Submarine animation style, and all that guy's freaking teeth...
  • "I'm lost. I know it, I'm really lost..." However, it's Nightmare Retardant when you realize the wizard dude sounds like Chef, more specifically, when he sings in the cafeteria giving the kids advice.
  • The pointless violence of "Number Elimination" was always unnerving to sit through.
  • The ending of the "Indian U Call" skit has a talking letter U turning to viewers with wild eyes and a creepy voiced remark of "UNBELIEVABLE!"
  • Whatever the frig is going on here.
  • MAKE IT STOP!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!
    • Made even creepier on Episode 4135 when it leads into the "AT" cartoon mentioned below.
  • That creepy thing that Oscar buys for Ernie in this segment where he can’t find his rubber duck. The noise it makes when Ernie squeezes it is terrifying. Ernie quivers with fear as he squeezes it. Poor guy, first he lost his favorite toy, and now THIS??!?
  • The King of 8. While the unnatural animation automatically makes this a little odd, there's the tiny matter of the fact that it ends with the jester dying by being crushed the giant 8 on the castle. And this happens immediately after he announces the birth of a ninth princess.
    • It gets worse if you think about it. The king's obsession with everything numbering eight suggests that he might have had the ninth daughter aborted if he'd known she was going to be a girl. Or that he wanted a boy, which in its own way is just as disturbing.
  • This creepy animated segment that features the letter “E” as it shows an animated piece of clay morphing into all kinds of things that begin with the letter “E,” all against a white background and bizarre music…
  • The Ogre Head on a Hill skit. The creepy bagpipe music doesn't help matters. This sketch, however, was made Nightmare Retardant when it appeared in wileyk209zback's YouTube Poop of A Muppet Family Christmas, where Sam the Eagle watched it and said, "Is nothing sacred?"
  • "And Now... The Octopus!" The music just makes it more creepy and unsettling (at least, if you don't recognize it from the SpongeBob SquarePants "Hall Monitor" episode.) Seeing this as a 4-year old is rather jarring. The Kermit part at the end might help, though, because after all, "we learned something from the octopus today." Yeah, just not in the way you'd expect...
  • There's a really creepy cartoon called "Beware of the Box," featuring creepy, Pink Floyd type synthesized sitar music. And anything that goes in the box doesn't come out!
  • This creepy cartoon, "Cat in the Jungle", can give some viewers an unsettling feeling. The weird music doesn't help.
  • In the Box. Kermit and a green Grover demonstrate the word "in", and the ending (with an extreme close-up on a green dragon-like monster, whose name is Fred) is really creepy.
    • The same dragon-like monster appeared in a skit where Ernie is rock hunting. The creepy early synthesizer music at the end makes matters worse.
  • The original Big Bird model has no head feathers, making it look like he'd suffered a traumatic head injury for people only familiar with his modern look.
  • Although it wasn't intended to be scary, there's just something about this segment, a stop-motion beach movie, that's creepy.
  • The Typewriter segment where he types the word "nose" and a huge nose appears. Then it sneezes, and its sneeze is huge, scary, and sudden. Muppet Central user Janice & Mokey's Man described it as "the Anti-Christ."
  • Five Purple Conkers and Ten Little Greeblies were dark ways to teach kids about subtraction, because the Conkers and Greeblies get killed in violent ways.
    • Five Purple Conkers. The first two purple conkers get eaten by a fish and a bird. The third conker jumps into the can of glue with the worker not knowing, then the worker uses his brush to glue up the wallpaper with the Conker in the wallpaper, causing the Conker to suffocate to death! The last two luckily survive, get married, and have a little yellow Honker. The honk it makes sounds a little weird.
    • Ten Little Greeblies was arguably even scarier. The first one chases a fly off a limb and falls down to his doom, the second one tries the trick on his skate but gets crushed by a skate instead, the third one commits suicide by driving his plane down to the ground to take a shortcut to heaven! The fourth one gets eaten by a fish, the fifth one tries to get honey out of a hive but gets stung to death by bees, the sixth one teases a mouse then gets eaten by it, the seventh one drowns in the sea because he forgot to swim, the eighth one jumps in a shoe and gets crushed by someone's foot, and the ninth one gets eaten on a hamburger! The last one is alone but makes a wish on a star and there are more greeblies in the end, which is actually a happy ending. But still, who knew that learning to subtract can be so dark?! Of course, when you know who the narrator is...[1]
  • The "Milo Counting" skits featured a rather unfriendly looking man clad in a suit and tie presenting numbers. The creepy stop motion effects & the way he comes out of the lake at the beginning of the sketch with the number 1 are very unsettling. No wonder the skits were retired in the mid-2000s.
  • "Psychedelic Alphabet" will make you wonder if the people who made this cartoon were on some serious drugs.
  • The skit with the "four dragons". The evil prime minister, who had some noticeable eyebrows, probably scared a few children, even if he sounds like Bert.
  • This skit that debuted in Season 27, featuring a Beatnik bat, has stiff, Deranged Animation resulting in Off-Model facial expressions. And the period of silence at the beginning.[2] The abrupt ending ("And that was that") is pretty eerie too. However, there are some who find it hilarious (given a certain space superhero's evil twin acts like this), and not to mention, the narrator (Scott Getchell)'s voice is pretty hot.
  • There were a few skits featuring a kid saying "I wonder what will happen if everything was in slow motion", and proceeding to imagine it. In one of the skits, the kid is watching a football game, sees the slow-motion replay, and says the above line, and imagines the entire game in slow-mo. In the other skit, the same kid is playing in the snow with other kids. The unsettling, slow-sounding music and the people moving slowly is pretty eerie. However, it's Nightmare Retardant if you remember one thing... "SAAAAAAAVE... YOUUUUUUU... GO... WARN... SLOOOOOTHS!"
  • This skit was a bit freaky, the Scanimate animation was really strange. Maria in Scanimate animation was a bit freaky, too.
  • This skit from the mid 1990's. We've got a night light that produces the sound of electricity crackling, a thunderstorm, a creepy robot, and a creepy cat. The lighting when dad brings his kid back into the room and sets him back into bed is creepy because of the bright light and the shadow it casts. Midway through the skit is a Jaws-like riff followed by the sound of the robot and the skit ends (seemingly) with every toy coming to life and producing a creepy melody.
  • King Minus was a play on the story of King Midas, but instead of turning everything to gold, everything he touched disappeared. It ends with him accidentally making the princess he was trying to rescue vanish. And then he makes himself vanish. Of course, if you know who the narrator is voiced by, it's Nightmare Retardant.
    • Not to mention that eight seconds in, he flips off the audience (he only has three fingers, but raises the middle one). That may catch you completely off-guard.
  • One vintage sketch, "10 Clowns", features an extremely misguided clown character. It's bad enough that a clown car tears around wildly in the parking lot while raucous circus music plays, and when the car screeches to a stop and the ten clowns pour out, each saying their number in progressively deeper voices. But the low point is the tenth and final clown: he is more ape than human, moving right at the camera on all fours and bellowing in a voice that reminds one of demonic possession. You don't have to be afraid of clowns to be terrified of this gorilla-like bozo.
  • In this video, Big & Little, Kermit has 2 monsters demonstrating the differences between big and little. It ends with a big monster name Splurge scaring Kermit away. However, it does end as a crowning moment of funny when Splurge and the 2 monsters wave bye at Kermit.
  • Due to the Mood Whiplash nature of the music and Cookie's already deep voice, the "Six Cookies" segment can be this.
  • Although the video is in an Arabic dub, it does add to the creepiness.
  • There was at one time a series of segments that showed a puzzle of pieces to an image being put together. Each piece of the puzzle would one at a time come flying in spinning at a very fast speed while a very freaky synthesizer sound (that sounds like the Hall of Justice's computer) plays, then it would make a very loud "BOING!" when the piece was placed. When there was only one piece left, the pieces of the puzzle would one by one slide like a slider puzzle to their rightful spots, then the final piece would come into place, and a group of kids would shout out what the puzzle shows a picture of. If the fast-spinning flying pieces aren't enough to scare the hell out of you, the sound effects will surely do the trick!
  • The 40 Dots one is definitely unsettling. It features dots appearing one at a time with a guy counting them melodically with his voice getting progressively higher as he counts. It gets really scary when he gets to the 39th one, bellowing it out three times and sounding like he's almost out of breath!
  • One live action sketch called Milk Crisis could qualify. Some people who watch this may feel uneasy watching it considering it depicts a more realistic situation. The woman singing "Milk" over and over again is kind of annoying, and we see a rather disturbing close up of a crying baby. The worst part about it is it's four and a half minutes long! (For a Sesame Street sketch, that's ludicrous!)
    • One person made it even scarier by showing it in G Major!
  • Sesame Street's first movie, Follow That Bird, has a pretty good example. The movie's main antagonist, Miss Finch, had a pretty terrifying appearance, and Big Bird gets locked up!!
  • Pretty much all sketches on Sesame Street come up at random every single episode, so viewers watching it would just hope in vain a certain sketch would play or not play. However, one thing that nobody can ever avoid are the funding credits at the end of the show! A very infamous example of nightmare fuel on Sesame Street is the music that played during the funding credits from 1972 until 1992. This music, sometimes referred to as the "Funky Chimes," spooked a lot of kids back in the day! However, the fact that the music fits Black Vulcan and Luke Cage helps reduce the scariness.
    • The 1992-1995 funding credits music is worse, at least to this troper. There is something extremely creepy about that music that, by all means, should not be heard in the dark.
  • In this Sesame Street Newsflash, Kermit is interviewing the Magic Mirror. Many of the comments for the video are about how the face in the Magic Mirror scared them... until YouTube disabled comments on Sesame Street's uploads with the addition of their COPPA laws in 2020.
  • One animated segment from circa 1995 called "Felines" could fit this. It features a mouse singing a blues song about cats with different emotions, which is a parody of Nina Simone's song "Feelings." The creepy animation makes it extremely unsettling! Not to mention the loud horn used a few times can also be a scare. Plus, the animation looks like it's by John R. Dilworth, best known for Courage the Cowardly Dog. (It wasn't him, but it sure damn looks like him!)
  • A segment from the 70's demonstrating big, bigger, and biggest with the Sesame Street monsters was really scary. The little monster grows and becomes bigger than the two other monsters and bellows the word "biggest!" in a really loud echo.
  • From one of their Numberosity segments, 5 creepy looking monsters appeared. No wonder that part was edited out in the 80s.
    • The beginning of the skits with the numbers shooting right at the screen can be scary to little kids, and the fact that the baker falls down the stairs, possibly resulting in a serious injury, and lets perfectly good food go to waste.
  • One of the creepiest monsters from the 1st season to not be seen again was Beautiful Day Monster. Perhaps the most creepiest moments with him was from this skit, with Bert and Ernie.
  • There's something off-putting about where the witches are.
  • One vintage animated sketch called "M Choir" is quite unsettling. The sketch features a maestro conducting a choir. He has each individual part of the choir hum in their vocal range giving off a pretty haunting tune, and as they hum, a letter M comes from them and flies up into the maestro's face. As the voices get deeper, the M's become larger. However, the low point is at the end when he has all the vocal parts hum together unleashing a gimongous letter M, which ends up giving chase to the maestro! Scary music and getting chased by something big? As if one or the other isn't bad enough!
  • This sketch features Smokey Robinson singing "You Really Got a Hold On Me" as a letter U keeps trying to latch onto him, an example of Getting Crap Past the Radar on a children's puppet show. If that doesn't scream "wrong", then what does?
  • The first ending to the Number Three Ball Film had the ball getting ground up into a fine powder. It was so tragic to kids, according to various stories, that they made an alternate ending where it (the ball) instead becomes 3 cherries that drop onto 3 ice cream sundaes on a conveyor belt.
  • This Ernie & Bert sketch about the Letter H is innocent enough, but the humming sound coming from the TV and the monotone voice saying "H" and later "I" is very unsettling. In fact, so is the look of the whole TV.
  • "Excuse Me Chair": The dark lighting, the weird sound effects, and the extreme close-up when the chair finally finds its glasses help make this one of the more disturbing sketches in the Sesame Street repertoire.
  • This sketch features bad 80s computer animation, which makes it Uncanny Valley (at least if you're the kind to be scared of old computer animation.) The music's a bit depressing too, at least until you remember the intro to The Nostalgia Critic's review of the Blues Brothers SNES game.
  • These skits with Gordon and Linda making sign language words seem rather tame, until you get to the one where they say the word "disappear". After Gordon does indeed disappear, he manages to say the word one last time and you could swear he says it from the bounds of Hell! For that matter the look of Linda after being hit by the pie is also rather unnerving.
  • 8 Bats is not for chiroptophobes. It features creepy organ music, weird-looking bats, Maria's creepy voiceover, and at the end, they fly at the camera!
  • Neither is the Pinball Number Count 2 segment, where the ball goes into a clown's mouth and enters a haunted house full of ghosts and whatnot, ending with a bat with angry, swirling eyes FLYING AT THE CAMERA! What the FUCK were you thinking, Jeff Hale?!
  • This troper finds the VHS The Great Numbers Game hard to watch. First of all, before you get to see the actual content, you have to suffer through the Sony Wonder promo at the beginning, with its creepy, off-key calypso music and unsettling narrator. Then comes the psychedelic "Stay Tuned After the Feature" bumper with its creepy MIDI music (actually an instrumental of the "Elmocise" song from the VHS of the same name.) The actual feature isn't that bad, though it is a Bizarro Episode. But the end is where it gets worse. You're treated to one nightmare after another: first, the credits, with its dark red background and the already-creepy main theme of the video; then, the "Thanks for Helping" screen with its black background and pink text, which suddenly cuts into the infamous Sesame Street website bumper with the evil doodle and just-as-evil voiceover (again, courtesy of Maria.) And THEN, as if that wasn't enough, you get the "Look for These Great Products from Sesame Street" bumper, with its creepy appearing effect. Then, to finish it off, you have the psychedelic "Only from Sony Wonder" bumper with its creepy music (that comes from "Count with Me" from the VHS 1-2-3 Count with Me), which ends with a horrific disappearing effect, accompanied by a Last-Note Nightmare. And it's not just that video either, every Sesame video from 1998-2001 ended this way, but this has to be the worst because of the additional nightmare fuel.
  • Something that also used to scare this troper (and a lot of other children as well) was the way the credits of The Best of Elmo ends. The credits stop on a drawing of Elmo at his piano, and a god-awful sparkle effect wipes over the image, causing Elmo to turn to the viewer and do his trademark laugh. This actually made this troper scared of the 1992-2007 Sesame Street ending theme. That, Kids' Favorite Songs 2, and the nightmare-fest that is The Great Numbers Game prove that Sesame Street videos were straight-up Nightmare Fuel until 2002.
  • This promo from the very first episode is supremely creepy. You've got weird claymation animation of two unrecognizable characters[3] and creepy, EarthBound-type synthesized music. Way to scare kids from watching the show, Henson. However, there is Nightmare Retardant when you realize the music sounds similar to another PBS show's opening theme.
  • The "D" commercial from the first test pilot could unintentionally be this. While Gary Owens' voice is usually an indicator of incoming awesome (especially if you're a Hanna-Barbera fan), having him suddenly say "It's the letter D" off-screen is a bit startling, almost like hearing the voice of God for the first time.
  • Yuri The Yak is a rather disturbing example of What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?
    • However, the scariness is defused when you realize the voiceover sounds like Face.
  • There was a sketch from the early '90s with fish counting down from 10 to 1. Most of the sketch seemed innocent enough... until the end, when a giant shark with red eyes zoomed into the screen and says "ONE" in a deep voice reminiscent of Emperor Zurg. If that can't make a 4 year old soil their pants, then I dunno what will.
  • Okay, the Factory Countdown segment is supremely creepy. You've got eerie synthesized music, a weird electronic voice reciting numbers, and menacing mechanical noises. All this creates an environment that, by all means, should not be viewed in the dark.
  • The god-awful, Conspicuous CG segments of TJ, first airing circa 2004. They make ReBoot seem like it's cutting-edge. View them here and here.
  • The sketch where cut-out animation popcorn kernels are counted is a little freaky, mainly due to the quite tense music.
  • Really, almost any time Eat the Camera happens (which is, to say, a fair bit). Almost.
  • As a misophonic, I always hated any time someone would sneeze, because they would hit this screeching high note that made them sound unbridled. I actually discovered my hatred of sneezing in the media from an episode of this show. It's not just Sesame Street either -- Sid the Science Kid has this problem too.
  1. Gary Owens
  2. If you can believe it, the original version of it had a longer period of silence at the beginning and end. It was thankfully truncated in episode 4135 to make room for Elmo's World.
  3. though, they reportedly appeared in two separate segments from the first season
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