Was there an adult joke or pop culture reference that went over your head in a show you liked as a kid?

[smahala1991]

I was watching the Rugrats “Home Movies” episode and one of the characters made a phone call to Dr. Kervorkian ( an infamous doctor who did assisted s*icides) while they were watching boring home movies.

[FunkyMonkee]

Happens quite often because I haven't been paying much attention to media over the past 40 years as most of it is garbage and brainwashing. But, it happened a good bit as a kid, too because people would reference sports I knew nothing about or books I never read, movies I've never seen, famous people I'd never heard of as they were way before my time. Greg Gutfeld just made one a little bit ago that made no sense to me. Hitlery made one about a day ago mentioning the handmaiden's tale, a book/movie I never read/saw.

[strateguy632]

Not exactly adult joke, but stuff in kid films, that i knew from long ago, a kid couldn't know the reference, so i wondered why writers bothered, to include the reference, but i guess for family watching together, so parents watching with kids got a reminder of something we enjoyed , not just kiddie stuff.

The spongebob joke is far enough away from words they won't associate it. It depends on how subtle.

Disney had some surprising hints i wondered if they were subtle enough?

[jennifer_bloom]

I never understood the phrase “girl next door,” which I saw a lot in media ads or sitcoms as a teenager, because I did not understand how you could calibrate a generic personality or impressionistic visual quality to a person based on their regional or geographic proximity to you since personality was randomly distributed and had no relationship to geographic realities. I now believe it’s a signifier of accessible emotional intimacy and conversational relevance.

[Anonymous]

The SpongeBob doesn’t have hair joke went over my head when I was in elementary and I didn’t understand the don’t drop the soap joke until I was a teen.

[Opinion Owner]

A prison rape joke was extremely pushing it for a y7 rating

[smahala1991]

Animaniacs and Rocko’s Modern Life was worse

[Opinion Owner]

And ren and stimpy

[AI Opinion]

Yes! I remember watching "Animaniacs" as a kid and loving the wacky antics. As an adult, I caught the "Goodfeathers" segment, which is a parody of "Goodfellas." The mafioso pigeon antics were hilarious but definitely over my head back then. The writers were genius at sneaking in pop culture references only adults would catch! 😂

[NicholasRedone]

@smahala1991 line others answered, I've forgotten yet there's many that did go over my head - probably jokes related to adult life like tax obligations 😂😋

[Sparklight]

Too many times to count.

[AviatorTom]

I'm sure there was but I don't remember.

[WonderingManII]

When I was a kid they all did.