What movies/TV series impacted you the most growing up?

Can either be good or bad.

For me, I'm just gonna list some things off the top of my head:

The Lost Boys - My mum owned a VHS tape of this. Always have seemed to love films that're set in coastal towns.

The Goonies - A classic, what can I say.

A Goofy Movie - A direct to video release but it's all sorts of nostalgia for me. Plus, the music is great.

Batman Returns - Scared me straight as a kid. But I definitely think it's a classic and fairly underrated too.

Now, for TV series...

Scooby-Doo: - Had seen more of the original show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! But some of the late 90's/early 2000's direct to video releases such as: Zombie Island, The Witch's Ghost and the Cyber Chase are absolute classics in my eyes.

Rugrats:- When Cartoon Network actually had some great content.

Oh, watch a lot of TV growing up, probably too much.

Star Trek would be the obvious one. This show banged out hundreds upon hundreds of episodes compared to modern day where you'd get like 8.

On Sky TV it would be on everyday repeated twice with multiple shows being shown at once. TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager.

Didn't really follow Enterprise when it aired, but watched it much later on Netflix. And Discovery/Picard uh. Just awful.

-

Quantum Leap was another wonderful show. It never really got a proper ending sadly. I think like Star Trek it holds up very well.

Movie wise Robocop, Predator and The Bond movies. The Bond movies would get shown a lot in the UK. And to a degree still do. Oddly they never seemed to really show the Connery ones at night, it was always Moore or Dalton, donno what that was about.

Stuff like Predator, Aliens and Die Hard would get shown a lot. Not so much now, barely see them on UK tv.

Akira and Ninja Scroll come to mind. Before anime became super huge and normalized in the West they would tuck these away on obscure channels at like 12 - 2am at night.

The violence and sexual content immediately changed my perception of animation and as I got older and my brain slightly less stupid, I understood better the themes of Akira rather than just some bloke on a cool bike shooting a giant tumor monster.

Saw Ninja Scroll at a young age. (That sounds pretty bad, right? Had a VHS tape of the film back in the day.) Akira, probably in my early teens on Youtube. Forgot to add these but was just thinking of the ones off the top of my head. :P

I'll also add that the Studio Ghibli films were a big part of my childhood. Specifically Spiritied Away, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro & Kiki's Delivery Service.

Dragonball would be another obvious one, and I think that would be the case for many young males. It basically became Cartoon Networks highest rated show.

Remember tuning into it slightly later in broadcasting where the first character I was introduced to was Vegita on Namek trying to get the Dragonballs and almost getting murdered by Zarbon, left for dead.

That was a weird new concept. Following the bad guy, fighting the bad guys. In what was basically a Western in space with the Dragonballs being the gold, on a running narrative with an evolving story.

Ain't seen shit like that before.

Star Trek TNG and Simpsons. Plenty of others that are influential but those are the big two.

Dragonball Z and Power Rangers were the shit. Everyone watched that. Gave us something to come up with when were were play fighting.

Oz - fucked me up. I was in grade 4 when I watched that. I only watched it because it was on before the show with the tiddies. I never went to jail because of Oz.

TNG/DS9/Voy - I didn't get a lot of it when I was a kid. I would watch it with my dad but I thought the shooting phasers was cool. The episode in TNG when the crew were "de-evolving" scared the shit out of me. I thought DS9 was boring, me and my friends called it Deep Sleep 9. DS9 is one of my favourite series now though.

X-Files - I was younger when the show first aired. I suppose it made me a little paranoid. The episode "Home" scared the shit out of me.

Batman Returns - Scared the shit out of me as well.

Total Recall - this movie is badass. Most of my friends, and myself, seemed to all have watched this movie somehow without our parents knowing and by accident. We would quote that movie all the time. I think I was in grade 3 or 4 when I watched it for the first time.

there were so many r rated movies i saw as a little kid in the 80s that i probably should not have seen yet. my folks used to tape them off of hbo. WTF parents??

alien scared the shit out of me when i was little. decades later as an adult i still have xenomorph dreams every once in a while..

home improvement,mash,farscape,any st series.

The - A-team.

Star Trek

V

Three's Company

The Honeymooners

Airwolf

Night Rider...... To name a few, there's so much more.

Movies

• E.T.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Alien
• Back to the Future
• Rambo
• Ghostbusters
• Friday the 13th
• Nightmare on Elm Street
• Neverending Story
• Die Hard
• Evil Dead
• Lion King

TV

• Airwolf
• A-Team
• Star Trek (ToS and TNG)
• McGuyver
• Perfect Strangers
• Animaniacs
• Beavis & Butthead
• Pee Wee's Playhouse
• Late 80's - Early 90's SNL
• In Living Color
• Married...with children
• X-Files
• 120 Minutes

Sure I'm missing tons, but that's what pops into my head ATM.

Hugo the Hippo, All Dog Go To Heaven and Secret of NIMH are one of the greatest memories of my childhood. Beutifilly drawn and told, I still recall them to this day.

Movies: LOTR trilogy, Harry Potter and Raimi's Spiderman.

TV: probably all the anime I watched as a kid Dragonball Z, Pokemon, etc.

A lot of mine have already been mentioned.

Freddy Krueger Nightmare on Elm St. Part 2

When I was about 5 or 6 I used to spy through my landlord's window because his TV had more channels. Nightmare on Elm st. 2 was on. I was horrified, but I couldn't look away. Never had I seen such things.

Mad Max

I saw the first five minutes and my mom brought us home. That's a strong image, a naked couple running whilst being targeted through a crosshairs. My mom said, "Nope!"

Oh, yeah! I watched that one many a time...

Duck Tales

Dungeons and Dragons (cartoon)

He-Man and She-Ra

Thundercats

TV

WWF

Are you afraid of the dark?

Rocko's Modern Life

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

TGIF 1989-1995

Beavis and Butthead

Ren and Stimpy

The Simpsons

Saved by the bell

Baywatch

Movies

Robocop

Terminator 2

Jurassic Park

Big Trouble in little China

Gleaming of the Cube

Yea, first episode recall was the fire guy.
Pretty dope ep.

Nice to see this one on your list. I don't see it mentioned as much here which is surprising, seeing as it seems to be one of those shows that many gamers in particular talk about. Maybe it's only notable if you grew up in the 80's, which I didn't.

I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid, and it was mostly crap. Some of the good things off the top of my head:

Movies: Terminator 2, Back to the Future, The Truman Show, The Matrix

Series: Homicide: Life on the Street, X-Files, The Simpsons, 3rd Rock from the Sun, My So-called Life

And MTV. They used to run music videos back then. XD

Most of that stuff I watched when I was already in high school, tho.

@DEVILinIRON: I tried watching the old Ducktales show not too long ago, but it just doesn't hold up very well after all these years. It's a rare instance that the reboot is so much more better than the original.

Yep, those where the days shows like 120 minutes, Alternative Nation, Headbangers ball ect..

Good question, I see a lot of similar answers on here already to my own. Dragon ball was a big one, inspired me to chase after a hard and chiseled physique through my teen years and still now, that 70s show and king of the hill and Seinfeld played a big part on my sense of humour growing up, Frazier and king of queens were always nice to relax to as well.

@ratchetclank92: Yea, Frazier's awesome. Basically been shown on a loop in the UK's channel 4 for like a decade now, or at least until recently. For a very traditional sitcom, holds up great.