America’s Funniest Home Videos - The Other Banned Episode

At some point in time, you’ve probably seen America’s Funniest Home Videos, often abbreviated to AFV, playing on various television networks including ABC and WGN. The show began back in the 1990s, originally being hosted by the late Bob Saget. Later down the line, the show would famously be hosted by Tom Bergeron and once he left the show in 2015, Carlton Banks himself Alfonso Ribeiro took over as host. If you’ve never seen the show before, here’s what happens in a nutshell. It’s basically a game show where people send in videos of themselves or whoever else of note doing whatever they idiotic thing they can think of. The majority of the time, you’re just gonna be watching people fall on their ass, getting hit the balls, or some kid or pet doing something goofy. The mid 2000’s era of this show was when the show truly reached it’s peak.
Particularly during the Tom Bergeron era, the show had a bit more of an edge as with anything else that’s older than 2010. The clips on the show would range from a baby farting and powder flying out of its ass to the What’s Wrong With This Picture screamer video being shown to the audience, then a compilation of people being scared by the aforementioned screamer. Anymore, the show has mostly lost its edge, only appeals to a family friendly audience and the show has kinda lost the appeal it once had as now we have viral video websites like YouTube. Now, with that being said, me and a couple other people got to witness a recent episode of the show which had us all on the edge of our seats.
==The Episode (first viewing)==
So, one night I had 3 of my friends over. We got together to drink beer and watch TV. I found this episode playing on a satellite TV channel while searching through the satellite guide in the hopes of finding wrestlemania.
Once we found the channel that was playing wrestlemania, we discovered it would be an extra hour before the show actually started. So I looked for something else for us to watch in the meantime. Sure enough, I found “America’s Funniest Videos” playing on channel 1002.
We decided that would entertain us for awhile until the PPV began.
After a few commercials and our local news banner, the show started. This episode started off with Alfonso walking and dancing down the stairs. The audience was very small. It looked as if there were less than 100 people, and all of those people sat in the third and fourth row of chairs, continuing in a straight line across until there were no more viewers. The set was lit up with the usual vibrant Alfonso colors, but some of the lights were shut off and the lighting and atmosphere was a bit dim. The best thing I can compare it to is someone’s living room in the middle of the night with a lamp on.
As for Alfonso, he greeted the small audience and started opening up the show. The audio was choppy and hard to understand, similar to a video chat with a poor internet connection. The entire video suddenly came to a hault, and lost signal. I started to get up to fix it, but before I could even touch it, it straightened itself out.
It resumed on the shot where Alfonso wrapped up whatever he was saying (which was inaudible due to the glitch), and it cuts to a montage of funny videos. Coming up next was a montage of about 5 videos, and rather than being funny, they progressively got more disturbing as they went down the line. The ones shown as part of the montage included:
# Two young women, one brown hair, one black hair, are doing a stunt on top of a building near the edge of the rooftop. In the background we see tons of buildings from a distance, showing that they’re pretty high up. The ladies are doing back flips, one at a time. They do this about 4 times each, and on the 5th, the brown haired one does a back flip off of the building, presumably falling several feet below to her death offscreen. The black haired one starts freaking out and quickly shuts the video off. Initially, we thought this may have been staged, but then the next 4 videos followed.
# A young man is standing on his roof, with a skateboard in his hand. 2 stories underneath him is a ramp, sitting in the driveway. The guy starts rolling down the roof, with his friends cheering him on. He lands headfirst on the ground, breaking his neck. Onscreen this time. The cameraman goes over and investigates, and we see that the skater died on impact.
# An asian man is outside with a machete. He showboats in a foreign language to his friends who are offscreen, and then he tosses the machete a few feet in the air. The first two times, he catches it and does some tricks with it. The third time, however, it completely misses his hands and lands right on his head. He screams his head off as blood gushes everywhere. 
# A family is enjoying a sunny day at a lake. The mother tells her daughter, who looks to be about 8, to stand by the edge of the river so that they can get her picture. For a few seconds, it’s just the mother taking a few pictures of her daughter. Suddenly, a large alligator jumps out of the water and grabs that little kid before quickly returning under the sea.
# A deranged old man is sitting in his kitchen. He couldn’t have been any younger than 90. Over the course of 2 minutes, the old man pulls all of his teeth out. Then, in a scene which was excruciatingly painful to watch, he removes both of his eyeballs out of their sockets. Then, the blind and toothless old man starts singing the lyrics to “I feel good”.
After that last clip ended, we cut to a group of people with their hands over their mouths. Some were even laughing, shockingly, but most of the audience appeared to be wondering what in the hell they just watched.
At this point, the audience had shrunken to about 10 people, mostly adults. Maybe one or two kids.
Then, we cut back to Alfonso, who seems reasonably shaken up from what he had just witnessed. He looks at the live audience, then he turns around and gives us, the audience, an extremely worried look.
Jesus. It gave all of us chills.
Suddenly, the screen cuts to black. A few seconds later, the 6th and final clip begins to play. This time, however, it did not appear to be part of the regular montage of videos. This… this was something else. It was a man in a suit, in a room that was lit bright red, wearing what appeared to be a modified Bart Simpson mask. The eyes were inverted, and a sinister smile was painted on the mask. The nose was also swapped out for a pig nose.
For about 15 seconds straight, this masked goon is just bouncing around, bopping his head. Then, he freezes and says something but it was in a very fast speaking accent so I couldn’t catch all of what he was saying. The intro music from AFV begins to play, and the masked man dances to it. He dances the night away until we eventually cut to black, and back to Alfonso.
The episode ended abruptly after that. None of the usual contest where the three nominees are picked and the best video wins ten grand. Likely due to the rapidly declining studio audience. By the time the episode ended, only 5 people were left.
The four of us sat there, wondering what the hell we just watched. It was unlike anything we’d ever seen before on public television. This had to be an independent broadcaster trying to pull a sick joke on people tuning in to watch AFV. Fortunately, Wrestlemania came on a few minutes later. We spent the rest of the night watching that, and we tried to take our minds off the whole thing.
==Further Investigation==
The next morning, I got on my laptop and checked online to see if anyone else had seen this strange episode of AFV. I didn’t find anything… yet, however things took a turn when I brought it up to one of my friends who I met online awhile ago.
I mentioned the episode to her, and she asked me if I had any footage of the episode. I didn't, yet. According to my friend, this would not be the only disturbing episode of AFV to exist. She claims to have seen an episode of AFV on “a satellite channel that seemed to work randomly that one night, only to immediately vanish the next day”. This episode featured Tom Bergeron, and it was a Christmas themed episode. Much like the episode I had witnessed, the clips featured on the episode progressively got more and more disturbing.
She found this playing nearly 10 years ago, and captured it on her cell phone. She also mentioned that she sent it to another friend of hers, but he was so astonished that he asked her not to send anymore of what was discovered.
My friend couldn’t share any of the footage with me as it was recorded on her old phone from around 10 years ago, and that was likely the case for that other friend who had received the video. I wouldn’t doubt he deleted the video, either. However, she did mention that she might have it backed up somewhere and that she would be looking for it that night.
Later that night, I was still waiting for her to find it. While I was killing time, I decided to turn on the TV and see if this channel was still active. I flipped to 1002, and it was still up and running and the episode was playing again. I decided that this would be the time to take screenshots of the episode on my phone.
I landed on the part where Alfonso gives the audience a worried expression. This time, however, I saw part of the episode which we didn’t see before. Alfonso continued looking at the audience, trying to make a goofy face through his nervous, horrified expression. The people in the audience, all 5 of them, had awkward smiles.
Alfonso turned around back and forth, multiple times, looking at the stage audience and us the audience. He was completely lost for words. You could tell by his voice that he was trembling.
“I got nothing.” He said. “Goodnight, everybody.”
The episode ended and then cut to black. I sat and waited for a moment, and sure enough, there was that pig nosed Bart Simpson masked goon, once again, dancing to the tune of the show. He danced around until the tune ended. I got my phone out and started recording the video footage.
The masked goon sat down and picked up a wooden box off the ground and showed it to the audience. Numbers were painted on the side of the box. The contents inside were not yet visible. He put the box down and started digging around inside.
As he dug around in the box, he began talking to the viewer. Again, I didn’t really understand what he was saying as he was talking in a fast foreign accent. Something about his favorite TV Show… I think? Maybe his favorite video game too? While he was talking, he was putting something together. Some sort of control panel that looked like numbers on an old telephone. Eventually, I understood something he said:
“Well it’s been fun, but I’m afraid I have to go. Things are about to go with a big bang. Good luck, get rich, get lucky… goodnight everybody.”
Right after he said this, a loud crashing sound, as if someone broke through a wooden wall or a door, could be heard in the background. But before I could even have time to process that, the screen cut to black.
After that, something else started playing. It cut to footage of a naked man, slowly making his way to sitting on a glass jar and shoving it up his ass, breaking it. It was the infamous 1 guy 1 jar video, and I’ve already seen that once and didn’t need to see it again, so I quickly flipped the channel over to Adult Swim and decided to watch that instead.
Seconds later, I heard a noise in the distance. A big bang. I took note of it, but in that moment, I ignored it and spent the rest of the night watching some Adult Swim and YouTube.
==News Spread / Aftermath==
Tuesday. She’s still looking. I got up, and decided to have a bowl of lucky charms. I turned on the TV. Nothing was on that caught my interest up until I got to the local news channel. On the news was that episode, as seen on channel 1002. There was a report on a satalite tv channel which was illegally broadcasting inappropriate content. The content ranged from the episode of AFV to other episodes of other American TV shows to straight up gore. One of the videos showcased on the channel was of a man, shoving a glass jar up his ass.
The channel seemed to only be active at night, between 4:00 PM to 3:00 AM. When it wasn’t showing anything, all that was onscreen was a huge, glitchy mess of colors and an ear piercing noise, similar to the Wii crash sound. Channel 1002 was decommissioned that morning.
A police investigation had taken place the night before, as someone had called the strange footage in. However, those cops eventually rendered unresponsive, so backup was sent in only for the police to find the remains of not only 4 police officers, but also the remains of the hijacker. Upon a second investigation, it was determined that the hijacker committed a murder suicide. If you were to have driven by the building being investigated, a huge gaping hole would have been spotted in the wall.
I took screenshots on my phone of the episode, from the news report and second viewing, and sent them to my friend. Finally, she got back to me, and she found the video she was looking for. Sure enough, it was that Christmas themed episode of AFV featuring Tom Bergeron, with the disturbing clips and no contest winner. Very similar to the one I saw with Alfonso. One of the clips was of this woman eating a glass ornament and laughing hysterically. That was some scary shit.
This one was even worse than the one I saw. So many kids… so many innocent children. Killed for the sake of a cheap laugh. What kind of twisted individual would make this?
We compared the video and the screenshots back to back, and we decided that we’d continue digging deeper into this. She was pretty sure that this was the one behind everything all those years ago, and the recent incident.
The case had finally been cracked.
Category:Banned Episodes
Category:Lost Episodes
Category:Television
Category:Broadcast signal intrusion
Category:TV Shows