Tissues At The Ready: The Ten Most Traumatising Kids’ Movie Moments

Just because a film is animated doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a feel-good film…

This is a cruel stereotype many of us have fallen victim to in the past or still do now. Be it the times we snuggled up on the couch with our siblings to enjoy a Disney film (how were we to know The Land Before Time would haunt us for weeks to come?) or the time we may have treated our own little ones to an innocent cinema trip (again, we weren’t to know the multi-coloured balloon poster for Up could have signalled such a depressing start to a movie…).  

We’re reliving all those moments right here, those harrowing times when we realised the world wasn’t all balloons and roses outside, the ten most traumatic kids’ animated film moments ever…

In no particular order…

1. Bambi

At least Disney spared us the visual for this desperate moment, but really the gunshot sound was enough…

2. Lion King

A movie moment no kid will ever be able to forget. Scar will forever be up there with film’s biggest “baddies”. If you feel brave enough to put yourself through it again…

3. Toy Story

We get emotional enough thinking about the time we finally put our bears, Barbies and toy cars to rest, so imagine the trauma when we see Andy do the same… and we can see how it makes the toys feel. It’s just too much.

4. Finding Nemo

We don’t know why kids’ movies need to give us the emotional hit at the beginning, but Finding Nemo started off with us turning to each other in the cinema questioning each other as to how it got so depressing, so fast…

5. Watership Down

The moment Hazel leaves us on this world… and they hit us with Bright Eyes. How did they expect us to cope?

6. Up

It’s been described as the best love story to ever be told in a few minutes. And it’s so, so true.

7. All Dogs Go To Heaven

We know it was only a dream sequence, but it scarred us for life. And we learnt that dogs can go to hell too…

8. Dumbo  

We've come to the conclusion that it isn't the look of despair on Dumbo's mum's face, or even Dumbo's upset, it's not even the touching moment between the two that gets us going here... It's that old-school Disney choir music.

9. Land Before Time

When Littlefoot's mother dies... enough said.

10. Snow White

We would now consider ourselves confident, self-assured adults, but that witch still scares the living daylights out of us.