As many millions of people in this world I'm a 90's kid, another "victim" of that

decade's awful clothing, boy bands, pop music and cartoons that today are still on
today, and those cartoons were what made my childhood really special.
As any kid I saw a bunch of cartoons but it was in 1994 that they became my own
escape world. I was 6 and my brother was 11 and that very year my parents
divorced, which made me use cartoons as my "happy pill", I was pretty much all day
(or what was left of it after school) watching tv and loosing myself into the world of
my favorite characters.
About a year after the divorce things changed again, my dad moved to some place in
Michigan while we remained in Norwalk (California) and my mom introduced us to
her new boyfriend Matt, as any kids from divorced parents, my brother and I saw him
as the enemy. Looking back then and still until this day, Matt was and is a great step-
dad, he genuinely cared about my mom and didn't mind at all she had 2 kids, he was
always nice to us and tried to made us accept him to our own rhythm, my brother got
over the hate towards him pretty quickly; after all not only Matt was a great guy but
he had the coolest job ever, he worked at Cartoon Network.
He wasn't an animator or worked at all in any design department, he was actually on
the administrative department, still he had access to the "kingdom", but not even that
made me feel sympathy towards him; it was until my dad got re-married a few
months after that eventually I became closer to Matt because I began seeing him as
my friend.
It was until then that I visited Cartoon Network's headquarters for the frst time, and
I'll never forget that day since it marked my childhood in so many ways. That frst day
I pretty much spent the whole time at Matt's ofce in the administrative department,
however on a break he took me on a little tour and I still get excited remembering
how happy I was walking through the aisles with posters of all the cartoons I loved. I
began visiting Cartoon Network a lot, and as days went by Matt would allow me to
take my walks further and further from his ofce.
After a few months of being there a lot I began to snook around the animation
department and I actually made some friends, no one "important" in terms of
animators or writers or anything like that, actually the biggest star I got to meet was
Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of Dexter's Laboratory who gave me an autograph
with a little doodle that I still keep as a treasure.
Mostly I spent time with some of the interns and assistants that saw me as a funny
kid that thought that ofces and studios were the greatest place on earth, the only
people I remember well are Amy, Clay and Ryan, who were interns and Cindy and
Jason who were assistants.
So I consider myself extremely lucky as I got to spend a big part of my childhood at
Cartoon Network's headquarters thinking of myself as one more in the team.
Whenever my friends weren't busy (and mostly the days we were there late at night
because Matt had a ton of work) they would take me to one of the screening rooms
and we would watch episodes of the cartoons that were produced there, episodes
that had already been aired, I never got to see new episodes, well only one time and
I wish I hadn't
One day I arrived and greeted everyone as always but the environment felt tense, it
was very weird since all the time that ofces were full of people talking and joking
around. I remember the frst person I ran into was Clay who was nervous, he told me
I should better go with Matt to his ofce, I asked why a couple of times but got no
answer, a few minutes later Amy appeared, she looked nervous as well but she
greeted me and grabbed me by the hand, a few minutes later we were walking
towards the administrative department. I kept asking what was going on but she just
told me they were really busy and it was better that I went over to Matt's ofce.
I was very hurt and angry about what had happened, so I stopped going to the ofce
with Matt, I even stopped watching Cartoon Network on tv and switched to
Nickelodeon. However after about 4 months I was curious about how everyone at the
ofce were doing and I wanted to go back to having fun with them, so I asked Matt to
take me to work with him again. When I went back I was surprised because it
seemed like I had been gone for 4 years instead of 4 months, almost all the faces I
saw were new and they kept looking at me as a stranger (after all I was a stranger to
them) so it made me feel very uncomfortable, but as I walked out I saw Cindy and I
ran to hug her, we talked a bit of what I had been doing and I found out that Amy,
Clay and Jason were gone and that Ryan was working in the administrative ofces. I
couldn't forget the last day I had been rushed out of there so I asked Cindy what had
them so busy that day, she started to get nervous and just told me "the ofce had
gone crazy about some tapes". The frst thing that came to my mind was that they
were working on a new cartoon and I begged her to tell me more about it, after about
30 minutes of begging she told me they had found some tapes with bad stuf that got
them scared. Since I had been watching Nickelodeon those months I thought the
tapes she was talking about were something like that show "Are you afraid of the
dark?", so all the time I was there I asked her about the tapes but she kept telling
me I was very young to watch them. I really thought those tapes were a new show
and she was trying to hide it from me, so I became determined to see that new show
before anyone else.
By my 12th birthday Cindy was no longer an assistant and she had a "real job" in
Cartoon Network, she was the only friend I had left since Ryan was gone like the
others. The tapes didn't left my mind and I became more and more intrigued on why
that new spooky show wasn't released, one night Cindy fnally accepted on showing
me one of the tapes, the only one left according to her. She told me however no one
else could see it and that the supervisors had ordered that those tapes were
destroyed so they didn't had a clue there was one remaining.
I was even more intrigued about this mysterious tape but there was no opportunity to
watch it since since Matt fnished his work early. It was until Cartoon Network
decided to launch Adult Swim that I got the chance to watch it, Matt told me he was
going to be working late those days because they had some budget adjustments to
work on, so it was probably best for me to stay at home. I cried and begged for him
to take me along but my mom didn't let me go because I had to sleep early since I
was still in school, one friday night she fnally let me go along with Matt.
When I got there that friday I was even more excited than the frst time I visited those
ofces, Cindy was not as cheerful as she always used to be and by the time there
were a few people left she pulled a tape out of one of her desk drawers and we went
to one of the screening rooms. Before she played the tape Cindy told me she knew
this was going to be a huge shock for me but that she knew the only way to stop my
curiosity was by showing me the tape.
The tape had 3 segments with 3 diferent cartoons in which the animations had very
low quality and didn't sound like the original voices, also they didn't started with their
original intros, they started with just the cartoon's name in bold black letters.
*Cow and chicken*
Apart from the intro missing the episode started quite normally, Cow was jumping
rope outside the house when Mom called her in, she went inside the house and sat
in the couch next to Chicken, Mom then told them: "I'm tired of this fucking losers
hanging around here", and she threw at them the heads of Flem and Earl that were
dripping blood and had terrifed expressions. Both Cow and Chicken were shocked
and asked where was their dad at, an evil scary laughter played for like 2 minutes
and then the legs of dad were thrown at Cow and Chicken, the legs were also
dripping in blood and out of the pant's zipper there was a penis hanging. I was
extremely shocked at what I was seeing and it was about to get worst, Mom yelled at
Cow "eat it!" while Cow sat there terrifed and crying so Mom yelled again "you
fucking eat it or I'm going to kill you too!" so I felt horrifed when Cow started to eat
the penis hanging out of the dad's pants while crying like crazy, after the camera
pointed to a very horrifed and scared Chicken and then a real life video of two
people horribly killing a chicken started, frst they kicked the chicken around while
laughing and then they threw it into what seemed like burning oil, the poor chicken
began making a horrifying sound.
At this point I was crying and shaking, I saw Cindy and she was covering her eyes
and saying something to herself.
Then the screen went white and some letters appeared again
*Johnny Bravo*
The cartoon started pretty normally with the mom at the supermarket buying some
groceries and greeting Carl who trips over a pyramid of cans (however this happened
in a normal goofy cartoon style), then the mom pays and gets into her car while
whistling along a cheerful tune. Even tough I was still shocked and confused about
what I had just seen I was relieved that this was a Johnny Bravo normal episode, but
I was wrong after that, Johnny's house appeared on screen and then the camera
went inside and the living room appeared for a while in silence, until some screams
ended the silence, they were "no please, it hurts, please, stop" screams
accompanied by crying, my heart began racing and I was shocked again when the
scene turned into Johnny's bedroom with Johnny pretty much raping Suzie "doggie
style" while she cried and begged and had blood running through her legs, she cried
more and more and after a while Johnny grabbed her and threw her into the foor,
then he combed his hair as he did on the normal cartoon and said something like
"you are horrible anyways"
The screen then turned white again and this time it said "Ed, Edd n Eddy" but I
couldn't watch anymore of this and told Cindy to turn it of, and I started crying my
ass of. After a while I fnally calmed down and left towards Matt's ofce without
saying a word, since I was still scared and crying when we left I remembered telling
Matt I had tripped down the stairs.
I obviously refused to go back to the ofce again and stopped watching Cartoon
Network and pretty much all cartoons, the horrible images I saw came back to my
mind very often and I was scared all the time. A few weeks after I saw those horrible
animations, Matt came home with a letter for me from Cindy , I never opened it and
just threw it into my closet buried in boxes of old stuf, clothes and shoes.
Time passed by and I began forgetting about those awful images, I even forgot about
Cindy's letter. I still remembered some parts of the animations every now and then
but I stopped caring about them.
However exactly 6 years ago Matt got a better job ofer in Illinois and we moved with
him, and while packing and throwing away stuf I came across the letter and decided
to read it. It pretty much said Cindy was very sorry about showing me the tape, that
she knew how curious I was about it but it had been a huge mistake letting me see it,
she kept apologizing and said that she would love to keep in touch with me since she
pretty much saw me grow up and wrote her e-mail address.
We moved to Illinois and I was very hesitant about contacting her but I decided I
should do it for closure, I thought I needed to know who made those horrible things
and why and maybe that way I could let it go forever, so I wrote her an e-mail hoping
she still had that address and waited for a few days until she answered. She greeted
me and told me she just recently noticed Matt wasn't working at the ofce anymore,
she asked were was I living, she told me she had recently seen Ryan and she
apologized again. I wrote back telling her about my life recently and I asked her
about the tapes.
We e-mailed back and forth for some time and I found out some information about
the tapes. Everything began the day I had been kicked out the animation
department, the tapes had been seen for the frst time by the animators, the
producers, the assistants and the interns. She told me that morning the tapes were
found by two producers in a conference room, after they saw them they called
everyone on the animation department to see them and investigate who had made
that disgusting joke but no one was found guilty. At frst they blamed the interns and
the people who cleaned the ofces since the tapes were left there at night to be
found in the morning, there was an intense investigation that remained secret and
Cindy, Amy and other guy (she said I didn't know him) were ordered to destroy the
tapes, the other guy said they should keep one of the tapes to investigate on their
own so that's why the tape I saw remained while the others were destroyed.
I also found out the content of the other tapes, one of them had other 3 episodes like
the ones I had seen but this time featuring Dexter's laboratory, Courage the cowardly
dog and The powerpuf girls; and the other tape had only really grotesque images of
bleeding bodies, horrible wounds, animals without heads and at the end a wall that
had written "fuck Hanna-Barbera, fuck CN" on it with what seemed like black marker.
Also she told me that because of those tapes lots of people that were suspects of
making them were fred and others just decided to quit.
Even tough the images I saw no longer terrify me I still think about the whole
situation every once in a while, I mostly wonder who did it and why but I guess I'll
never fnd out.
So that's how Cartoon Network made a huge part of my childhood happy, but also
ruined another part of it.