Rugrats: Dream

One day while watching TV late at night, Rugrats came on. (Older shows come on late at night on Nicktoons sometimes.) I was instantly nostalgic and I remembered when I was younger, I always loved watching Rugrats. It was one of my favourites shows since as long as I could remember.

As I watched these few old episodes that came on, I remembered my mom had told me about how I had stopped watching Rugrats for a month or two when I was about 3 or 4 years old. She said that during this time I avoided watching any Rugrats episodes. She told me that when she would ask me why I didn't like it anymore, I would mumble something about Chuckie and then I wouldn't say anything else about it. She just assumed one of the episodes frightened me somehow, and dropped the subject.

She was right about an episode scaring me. Quite a few had scared me when I was little (like the one with the dream scene that involved Tommy's leg getting cut open and stuffing coming out). What my mom didn't understand was that it was an episode that never aired on TV (or at least not that I know of), and that I still remember quite a bit of the episode. Now just to warn you, you may not find this episode I am about to describe "scary" or "creepy", but think about how a little 3 or 4 year old watching this feels.

I remember when I was about 3 or 4, we went to the video rental store to rent some VHS tapes. I don't remember how many tapes I got, but I know that I picked out a tape that had a few episodes of Rugrats on it. When we got home, my mom popped in a tape that she rented for my dad and herself in the living room TV and told me to go watch mine in my older half-brother's room. (I think my half-brother was like 16 or 17 at the time.) So I walked into my brother's room, put the tape in the VCR, and began watching Rugrats. I remember my brother wasn't there when I was watching (I think he was either at school or with his mom).

The first episode or two must have been normal, because I can't recall what it was about. All I know is that the next episode came on shortly after. The opening was normal, the sound was normal, and the quality was normal. There was honestly nothing different that I can remember.

The episode started out with Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil talking about the dreams that they had the night before as they rolled that ball with a star on it to each other. Since this was so long ago, I don't remember what Tommy, Phil, or Lil dreamed about, but I remember them asking Chuckie about his dream.

Chuckie said something like, "Last night I had a dream that my toys were real, and we were building a castle out of blocks." The scene changed to dream Chuckie standing on a plastic chair in Tommy's backyard in front of an already quite large wall of wooden colorful blocks. On the ground next to the chair was his little training potty that he had in those few episodes that he was being potty trained in. Chuckie was being handed more blocks by living teddy bears and toy soldiers. Everyone was smiling and having a great time.

Dream Chuckie was seen stepping of the chair as he narrated "Then my leg got stuck in my potty." Chuckie is seen accedentally putting his foot into the training potty and stuggling to pull it out as a few of the toy soldiers helped him. Then without any warning, his whole leg popped off! There was no blood or anything. It just popped off just like a doll's leg! I was getting really scared at this point. Chuckie said, "Then my leg came off..."

It showed all the living toys as the dream Chuckie started laughing creepy-like in his normal voice, but the toys looked scared. A shadow of Chuckie, that was on the ground in front of the toys began to warp. Chuckie's laugh then began to get more high-pitched and raspy, like an old women's voice. Chuckie continued to tell the story, "...And I turned into a witch!" As he said this, it showed the dream Chuckie with a cartoonish, warty, green, witch face. He continued laughing in an old woman's voice, and I was so scared at this point that I covered my eyes and looked away from the screen. I could still hear the laugh though.

I don't know what happened after this. I might have just left the room, but I can't remember. All I know is that this one episode scared me so much at that age, I couldn't watch a single Rugrats episode for quite some time.

I know I returned the tape, so other people probably have seen this same episode. So far I have told a few people (mostly close friends) this story, but they insist that I either dreamt it (which I almost believe since my dreams are a bit weird) or that it never existed. I haven't seen the episode on TV so far. It was just that tape. I also haven't been able to find it online anywhere. (It probably doesn't help that I was too young to be able to read the title card.) I have tried various different searches, it's just that nothing ever came up. I'm still slightly creeped out by that episode to this day.