10 Upsetting Children's TV Show Episodes That Gave You Nightmares

There are scarier visuals in the Rugrats canon (Stu as a clown comes to mind, as does Angelica's imagined baby brother) but this episode was so hard to watch.

Stu basically gets a traumatic brain injury after falling from the roof and reverts to the mentality of a baby. At first Tommy is excited to have a big baby around to help him get all of the things around the house that he's too little to reach, but it eventually dawns on him that his daddy is never coming back.

Losing a parent is one of the scariest things imaginable to a kid (or anyone, really) and the image of Tommy sitting on the end of his parents' bed, quietly crying as he looks at photos of him and his father, is really hard to shake.

This is a perfect example of one of those storylines that highlights the difference between scary and upsetting. Kids love to be scared - goblins, ghosts, vampires, etc. But this episode stirs up unsettling emotions that kids don't know how to deal with, which sticks with you much longer.