The six most childishly upsetting scenes I saw as a kid...

Earthquake ruthlessly “Pearl Harboring” Hulk Hogan on the Brother Love Show

The ‘Quake gave Hogan about a million avalanche splashes. Hogan was severely injured. While he was away recuperating, Tugboat led the get-well-Hulk campaign, encouraging Hulkamaniacs to send Hogan cards and well-wishes.

Clark Kent getting the piss beaten out of him in the diner in Superman II after he’s given up his powers

I’ve gotten over this one by now, but when I was a kid, this scene would always inordinately upset me. It didn’t help that, as Lois is helping a bloodied and battered Clark to his feet, General Zod is on the TV calling out Superman and proclaiming to the world that he’s basically taken over. And there’s nothing that Clark can do about it...

Andre the Giant tearing Hulk Hogan’s necklace off on the Brother Love Show, as Hogan stares back at him with desperate and pained confusion

This led to one of the most famous matches ever: Hogan-Giant, Wrestlemania III, The Body Slam.

Goose dying

This one’s pretty self-explanatory. I hated watching this Top Gun scene when I was a kid. I’m thirty years old, and I still don’t like watching it.

Macho Man Randy Savage abandoning Hulk Hogan in the ring during a Mega Powers tag-team match on Saturday Night Main Event against the Twin Towers (Big Boss Man and Akeem the African Dream (who used to be the One-Man Gang))

Savage left the match in anger, because he was paranoid that his manager — the Lady Elizabeth, who strangely kept getting better looking as she aged — and Hogan had something secretly going on. Hogan was forced to improbably (i.e., predictably) pull out the victory by himself. Immediately after the match, he set off to work things out with Savage. As Hogan desperately — again with that pained confusion he was so good at — searched the backstage area for Savage, the show went off the air.

Optimus Prime dying

This was completely unnecessary. I never understood it for two main reasons. First, it doesn’t make sense from the perspective of the show’s creators. Transformers had been on TV for, what, two seasons when the movie came out? Doesn’t that seem a little early to make as drastic a change as killing off one of the greatest cartoon characters ever? And it’s not like they had a great replacement. Hot Rod? Or, sorry, Rodimus Prime? He wasn’t even a prominent character before the Transformers movie. Ultra Magnus would have been a much better choice to assume Autobot leadership, but alas, as he said himself, he wasn’t worthy.

One of the more prominent characters from the first two seasons would have been a less perplexing choice. I’d even go so far as to say that Bumblebee would have been a better choice than Hot Rod — at the very least people knew Bumblebee well and liked him, and his transition from likable sidekick to Autobot leader could have been compelling. They could even have written stories about Bumblebee’s (Beedimus Prime? Bumdimus Prime?) lighthearted relationship with Spike suffering because of the new and stressful duties of leading the Autobots.

Second, killing Optimus Prime doesn’t make sense within the framework of the show. In the Transformers series, characters would get shot all the time. It would hurt them, but they’d be okay. But in the movie, all of a sudden all the characters who are getting shot are dying. It isn’t a shot from Magatron’s arm-gun nor is it even a shot from Megatron in gun form that leads to Optimus’ death. Megatron shoots him with a random gun that’s lying around! This is how you kill off one of your flagship characters? At least give me some kind of super-powerful gun or something…

They brought Optimus Prime back later, but from what I remember it was bizarre. Wasn’t he insane or something like that? I think I’d lost interest by then. As I said, none of this ever made sense to me.