S/D: Scary episodes of dumb sitcoms

they also had the episode where their house burned down!

Also remember some spooky shenanigans in the Diff'rent Strokes episode that involved Knight Rider

I remember every single one of these and they were scary as fuck.

The Soap one, Good God. What I remember is the screen going green, the baby shouting something demonic, and the door slamming open and closed. It's like the only episode of Soap I remember.

I was even scared of the one Treehouse of Horrors where Homer's head was sewn onto Burns's body.

kind of amazing that I turned out the way I did given what a wuss I was w/ scary imagery growing up

Eh I don't think there's much carry-over for a lot of people. I was scared of everything (Thriller gave me nightmares. I had to move my bed away from the window after watching Twilight Zone movie. There was a Darth Vader sticker on my wastepaper basket so I had to turn it so sticker wouldn't face me as I slept. Etc Etc) that had to do with "horror". Plus I was a wuss wrt amusement park rides. None of that has phased me whatsoever since I was 15 or so.

The Willie-as-a-giant-argyle-spider in the ToH Nightmare on Elm St. spoof still kinda freaks me out.

My wife couldn’t watch Jack Nicholson in films til college bc when she was 8 her babysitter showed her The Shining.

It was part of the series as it went on, but there are a handful of MASH episodes that are pretty much full bummers. That one went Hawkeye thought (or was) going nuts and is dreaming of sailing with no arms in a canoe in a canal filled with mannequin arms was pretty damn trippy for a sitcom.

I also had Sesame Street nightmares

I feel like beloved sitcom Benson had at least one of these

Benson also had the episode where they were doing a test run of their actions in a bunker during a nuclear war, and realised that they would all die horribly.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0789851/

I must speak up for the refrigerator episode of Punky Brewster and the episode of Webster where he burns the apartment down.

When Ailsa started hallucinating dead Bobby's head coming through the fridge door in "Home and Away". Genuinely frightening.

wasn't there a Halloween episode of Roseanne that would fit this thread

The giant spider in a cave on Gilligan's Island scared the shit out of me as a child.

OH....there was that one episode of Alf where there was a giant spider that was threatening the family and it tore down the kitchen door.....

oh no even worse...IT WAS A COCKROACH

This one's REALLY dumb and not very scary, but the Father Knows Best episode "The Great Anderson Murder Mystery" is actually pretty atmospheric and suspenseful, considering. (The Anderson family must solve a who-done-it murder mystery when the television goes out during a storm.)

I also had Sesame Street nightmares

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Monday, July 9, 2018 9:02 PM (yesterday)

the pickle candy machine segment seriously creeped me out when I was 3-4 years old:

Meanwhile, in the city, a salesman tries to sell Prairie Dawn a candy-making machine, but she's turned off by the vicious amount of smoke it creates. Old Yuckdonald happens upon it and, seeing the smoke and how it can even create pickle candy, buys it for his farm. As the Grouches load their pickles into the machine, the farm becomes polluted with smoke. The smoke drives away all of Yuckdonald's neighbors, livestock and all his vegetation, including their precious cucumbers. The Grouches realize their mistake and shut off the machine.

https://i.imgur.com/XUbqwl8.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/D8hYa7O.jpg