History Main / ScareEmStraight

** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo "Grim Reaper" ad]] was a famous 1987 ad in Australia credited with successfully informing the public -- through the use of terrifying imagery -- not only the dangers of the AIDS virus, but also that its transmission was not limited to gay men. In some quarters, though, it backfired, as people just associated gays with the Grim Reaper.

* ''Film/ThePedestrian'' has an InUniverse example of the drivers' ed video. The protagonist, who's had his license suspended after an accident in which his son was killed, has to attend a traffic class and watch the typical gory drivers' ed video, with shattered bodies strewn all over the highway. This is ironic as the film eventually reveals that the reason the man had the accident was that his son grabbed the wheel and yanked them into the back of a truck on purpose.

* In an episode of ''Series/TheConnors'', Becky claims that she was scared straight into quitting alcohol forever by going to rehab and seeing how badly some people's lives were destroyed that had hit rock bottom, as she was talked into going to get help early before it spiralled out of control. Subverted, in that she wasn't being entirely truthful with herself and others and wouldn't really find the root of her problem until a family therapy session [[spoilers: which turned out to be deep-seated resentment that Mark uprooted her plans when they were young]].

Can lead to DoNotDoThisCoolThing, if the audience ''likes'' looking at gruesome pictures. May be used in a SexMiseducationClass. Oh, and it doesn't necessarily entail [[CureYourGays scaring gay people into being straight]] (though that certainly has happened, though not as commonly anymore). Compare UsefulNotes/HarmReduction, which is the usual end goal of these programs. If someone tries to scare someone else straight in-universe, they'll often tell a ScarilySpecificStory.

** The Red-Legged Scissor Man, along with several creatures like him, appear in ''The Fourth Bear'', a novel by Creator/JasperFforde. There's a village where these monsters ''actually exist'', and the children are downright ''creepily'' obedient, in order to avoid the possibility of thumbs being snipped off and suchlike. While definitely both Nightmare Fuel and ParanoiaFuel for the children, the effect this has on them, the UncannyValley creepiness, is also Nightmare Fuel in the books (both in-universe, for people who haven't grown up in the village, and for the reader). For decades the parents had decided that UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, but eventually the parents rebel, demanding normal things like teenage arguments and untidy bedrooms (things they never got a chance to experience as children either ...).

** This was also parodied in a cutaway gag on ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''.
** This character has gained a sort of tongue-in-cheek fame in Finland. There is a famous children's song named after him that's basically 'stop telling boring stories!'
** The Red-Legged Scissor Man, along with several creatures like him, appear in ''The Fourth Bear'', a novel by Creator/JasperFforde. There's a village where these monsters ''actually exist'', and the children are downright ''creepily'' obedient, in order to avoid the possibility of thumbs being snipped off and suchlike. While definitely both Nightmare Fuel and ParanoiaFuel for the children, the effect this has on them, the UncannyValley creepiness, is also Nightmare Fuel in the books (both in-universe, for people who haven't grown up in the village, and for the reader). For decades the parents had decided that UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, but eventually the parents rebel, demanding normal things like teenage arguments and untidy bedrooms (things they never got a chance to experience as children either ...).

** Some schools have stage a drunk driving "accident" at the school entrance, complete with smashed up cars, bloody victims, and emergency responders.

* In a similar vein, most legends of HornyDevils and VaginaDentata were initially warnings against sex with strangers.

* In the Care Bears episode “A Rhyme In Time”, Gram reads Hugs and Tugs a story about safety after they get into danger. The book scares them, as they imagine things like smoke being full of monstrous creatures, hot liquids as lava, a bathtub as an ocean, and being chased by bottles of poison. Fortunately, Gram calms them down, and the twins are happily talking before bed.

* In the ''Series/{{Angel}}'' fic "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2212137/1/Tacos-And-Tea-Parties Tacos and Tea Parties]]", Angel and Darla are initially concerned to realise that Fred- here their [[HappilyAdopted seven-year-old adopted daughter]]- is genuinely scared of the Groosalug, as while Angel doesn't like Groo he doesn't see Groo as the type to hurt a child. Eventually Lorne is able to read Fred while she's singing to Connor and confirm that Fred's Pylean masters just used the Groosalug as a threat to keep her in line rather than him doing anything to her himself, and Fred's just taking time to get over those fears even though she knows Angel in particular would kill anyone who genuinely tried to threaten her.

* In criminology and studies of delinquent rehabilitation, Scared Straight programs are infamous for being, well, bullshit. Almost no credible scientific evidence has ever backed up that these programs reduce rates of delinquent re-offending (recidivism), and in fact many studies demonstrate the exact opposite trend occurring, as noted in the blurb above. For example, delinquent teens sent off to boot camp-style rehab programs often come out of them having learned new techniques for running faster, climbing higher, and building up their muscles. Basically, they're being ''trained'' to be better criminals.
** Scare tactics that involve showing criminals that they will get caught are pretty efficient, though. How scary the punishment itself is turns out to be largely irrelevant; it is the danger of being caught that scares them away from criminal behaviour.
* Any anti-drug PSA inevitably backfires for the same reason as above. The biggest risks are TheAggressiveDrugDealer, and many, many of the commercials use either imagery or just outright say that you'll waste away to a hollow the skeleton on the first drink/puff. However, since the ads are aimed at teenagers who are already in the state of distrusting or outright disliking "the man", if they decide to try a drug and like it, they come to conclusion that ''all'' the negative things they've been told about drugs are untrue, which, unfortunately, can cause a feedback loop that could cause them to go into abuse of harder drugs.
** Before anti-drug [=PSAs=], the U.S. had "scientific temperance instruction" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was lurid DryCrusader propaganda pushed on the public schools by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The material trafficked in pseudoscientific hysteria about the dangers of alcohol and was explicitly aimed at [[PoliticallyMotivatedTeacher recruiting children into the temperance movement]].
* The old flour sack baby assignment you would be given in health class. With more advanced technology, this assignment has been upgraded. It now includes a realistic, electronic baby doll that cries at more or less random intervals, even in the middle of the night, needing to be "fed," "changed," or "rocked." Included with some sets of dolls is a "crack baby," which, once switched on, cries almost all the time in a far more high-pitched and desperate tone than the other dolls.
* Students at a school in Oceanside, California were told that some of their classmates had been killed in drunk driving accidents. Most of them were sad, some cried hysterically. Hours later, it was revealed that their friends were alive, and [[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25123570 the whole thing was a hoax to scare 'em straight.]]
** This must have "inspired" a few schools, because this also happened in Marysville, Washington in 2008. Complete with candle light vigil and tearful speeches given by the students' mothers, and no indication that it was false during the assembly.
** OlderThanTheyThink: This has been going on since the 90's at least.
** There's a less extreme version of this at many schools. They have a person dressed as the grim reaper to come get you. For the rest of the day, you aren't allowed to talk at all or be called on in class. Then, at the end of the day, there is an assembly with all the kids selected laying down pretending to be dead while someone talks about the dangers of drunk driving.
* Anyone who lived in Ontario around 1998-2000 while in grades one and two was probably scared shitless by the Ontario Hydro Diorama. Essentially, it was a little model town filled with kids doing various stupid things with electricity, such as flying kites too close to hydro lines or jamming forks in toasters. The presenter explained the obvious danger in the below situation before pressing a button that caused the kid to light up like a Christmas tree, spew sparks, and let out an indescribably horrific zapping sound. There was also a similar version brought to 3-5th graders by a electrical company in Maine, depicting things like kids being killed via electrocution when trying to retrieve a soccer ball from a power plant.
** They also had a similar one about house fires, including a kid lighting matches in a closet full of clothes and someone falling asleep with a lit cigarette; after the presenter explained the danger, the rooms would light up like they were in flames and the presenter would tell you a gruesome story about dying in a fire.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQRVnKdme0k Florrie Fisher]] was the inspiration for [[Series/StrangersWithCandy Jerri Blank]].

* Hell and similar concepts in many religions are examples of this.
** This gets parodied in ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'': apparently, there's a whole realm that deals with little stuff that Hell ignores, like drinking bad milk and stealing extra ketchup packets. It's called "[[GoshDangItToHeck Heck]]," and it's ruled by the pitchspork-wielding Prince of Insufficient Light. Scott Adams came up with this idea when ExecutiveMeddling kept him from making a strip involving Satan.
** Mick Stevens' ''Poodles From Hell'' (1984) goes into detail about Purgatory: who goes there (people who drink right out of the bottle or eat from the second layer of chocolates before finishing the top) and what happens (you are put on the staff of Heaven, chauffeurs, waitresses, etc., and are subjected to a wide range of petty annoyances).
* In the US, tobacco companies have begun to put images on the outsides of cigarette boxes, depicting things such as rotting teeth, bleeding brains, and other things.
** Australia's recently gone a step further — in addition to the photos of what smoking can do to the human body (and yes, we're talking full-blown photos of the real deal for those who weren't sure), tobacco companies are now limited to plain packaging, meaning no colourful logos or eye-catching boxes.
* Creator/AlfredHitchcock detailed a story from his youth about how his father sent him to the police station with a note that told the desk sergeant to lock him in a cell for ten minutes. When he was let out, the sergeant told him, "This is what we do to naughty boys." It instilled in him a lifelong fear of the Man, as evidenced by its use as a recurring theme in several of his movies.
** Creator/HarlanEllison tells this same story on himself. He was opening boxes of cereal in a grocery store to see if any of them had the one premium of a collect-'em-all set he did not have.
* Dentists may often have pictures of their worst cases or pictures of people who didn't take care of their teeth at ''all'' on their walls, or charts showing signs of periodontitis or gingivitis. Packs of cigarettes sometimes have similar photos involving mouth cancer.
* "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment) The Third Wave]]." Originating as a high school experiment to teach students how German citizens were blinded to the Jewish Holocaust of WWII, also a book and a couple of movie adaptations. Seriously freaky stuff; some people have said, on watching accounts of it, that they could see themselves most likely joining in the Wave right from the start. It started in a classroom, and spread to the entire school, evolving a prejudice against non-members and basically turning said school into a small scale version of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, [[{{Dissimile}} with less killing]].
* Many sex-ed programs — regardless of whether they preach safe sex or abstinence — will show pictures of STD-ridden genitals to drive the point home.
* The Drivers Ed films "Red Asphalt I, II, III, IV, V" is basically just a compilation of video footage shot at the scene of particularly grisly car wrecks.
** Driver's Ed in general tends to trend this way in most Western countries. This is not entirely without reason, as most major cities gain a few new gruesome examples of the results of bad driving every ''week''. And the victims are, almost ''invariably'', the ones who didn't listen to the warnings from their elders/teachers/what have you. Scare 'Em Straight is tolerated far more for driver's education than in other places because it's proven over and over again to be the most effective way of teaching the consequences of unsafe driving.
* A lot of British children have been to "Firm foundations", a day out set specifically for this trope. The one which sticks in people's memory is when the site stages a kidnapping of the children, with up to the two members of staff staring evilly at a group of terrified 10-11 year olds before finally letting them know that it was all a test on stranger danger.
* Some of the more radical churches in the USA will host what are essentially 'Scare 'Em Straight fests' called "Hell House", often on Halloween. These are sort-of like your typical carnival haunted house. The notable difference being: instead of zombies popping out at you or what not, each of the rooms/scenes you're lead through will feature 'immoral acts' — such as gay marriage, under-aged sex, etc. — or terrible things happening to people who participate in said 'immoral acts.' It often ends in hell. As in, a recreation of the commonly-held Western image of hell ([[FireAndBrimstoneHell fire, lots of red, etc., etc.]]). A man dressed as Satan will usually be screaming at you at this point. One fictional depiction occurs [[https://www.somethingpositive.net/sp10042006.shtml in this series of]] ''WebComic/SomethingPositive'' strips, during which [[https://www.somethingpositive.net/sp10192006.shtml he learned that some even have]] "9/11 rooms".
-->'''Randy''': Secondly, the "Holy Ghost Stories" storyline upset some people — including my father. I made a promise to my dad long ago to avoid certain topics. Sadly, when I was researching the Hell Houses and learned some did incorporate a 9/11 room (one even centered around an entire terrorist attack)... well, I sort of lost it. Normally my storylines are about exaggeration. In regards to hell houses [[RealityIsUnrealistic I found myself trying to understate things and omit some acts that occur]] that filled me with WAY too much rage.
* Some High Schools like to put wrecked cars near the entrance around prom time to show kids "This is what happens when you drink at prom!"
* Heck, some schools have a whole assembly based around this. There are plenty of "rehabilitated" drunk drivers who travel around and speak at high schools about how it ruined their lives. Unlike most of the examples on this page, though, the effects of the accident are not exaggerated.
* The US military does a similar thing, except that the "rehabilitated" drunk driver is an actual driver who survived who also provides pictures of how she or he looked before the accident, when the medics arrived (severed limbs optional), and, if they were lucky, after several sessions of reconstructive surgery.
* This is actually a custom in several cultures. There's a (North) American Indian tribe where parents told their kids if they didn't behave, some fantasy beings (actually disguised relatives or friends) would come and take them away. So the kids will be actually scared if these beings appear, only to be saved by the caring family. (And later, there's even a ceremony where the {{Masquerade}} is unveiled, so to speak.)
** Actually, SantaClaus or his sidekick TheKrampus also supposedly take naughty children with them, too... actually, what exactly they do with the kids is rarely if ever said...
* Some US high schools now have a component of their sex ed classes for the younger grades, if this is a school that has sex ed taught by older students. One of the students will come in crying on the last day and explain how she [[AlwaysFemale (it's always a girl)]] went to some foreign country and got AIDS and the various horrible things that have happened to her since. Her boyfriend dumped her, she's dying, she can't go to college and so on. Eventually she'll run out of the room in tears and then the others will explain that this is a true story, or it could be, but it's not hers and the girl doesn't have AIDS. Basic emotional manipulation.
** Sex ed classes taught by guest speakers sometimes have a guest speaker that's quite obviously pregnant, and they're sometimes quite young (sometimes even in high school). However, instead of the intended "That could be me!", it tends to become "why is this hypocrite telling ''me'' not to have sex?" Perhaps the most infamous case of this in the US was the Bristol Palin abstinence campaign.
* On a more adult level, the famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo 1987 "Grim Reaper" ad]] to raise AIDS awareness in Australia has been credited with successfully informing the public about the very real risks of the virus, and that transmission was not limited to gay men through its terrifying imagery. It backfired somewhat in that some interpreted the reapers in the commercial to symbolise gay men and not the AIDS virus, however.
** On an even more [[{{Pun}} adult]] level, an infamous French AIDS campaign showing a woman [[BestialityIsDepraved having sex with a human-sized spider]] (resp. man/scorpion).
* Traffic safety films before the 1970s used to feature the gruesome results of actual car accidents and the people involved in them who were often horrifically injured and even ''died'' on camera. In the 1970s onward, this was replaced with slow motion footage of crash test dummies in collision tests; it drove home the point of how accidents happen without getting into the gore.
* Operation Lifesaver is this with railroad safety.

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo. The entire popular culture from the end of TheFifties to TheNineties had been imbued with the sense of a nuclear apocalypse coming TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, enough to burn off the human species altogether and leave the cockroaches ruling the Earth. In practice, the hundreds of open air nuclear test detonations show the effects were not going to be ''that'' destructive. Which was the true danger from the start: people will think longer and maybe give up before launching the DoomsdayDevice; while treating the nuke as just a very big bomb not inherently different than any other ordinance [[NukeEm is tempting enough for those in power to use them]].
* The PARTY program in Canada is a form of this. High school students are taken to a hospital to see how the staff there try to save drunk driving victims. It's not pretty, and can involve police officers showing up to talk about drunk driving accidents.
* Healthy-eating videos don't skimp on showing how harmful unhealthy food can be to the body, from clogged arteries, to heart attacks, to damaged liver. Several older ones seem to ignore the idea of eating junkfood in moderation, either you eat all healthy (fruits, veggies, grains, etc.) or all junk (Burgers, fried foods, chips, cake). That unhealthy foods can be safely eaten if you eat them sparingly, with plenty of healthier foods in between, is rarely mentioned in older videos.
* The essay "And Sudden Death," which ran in Reader's Digest in 1935, offered an extremely graphic (even by modern standards) account of all the horrible things that can happen to you in a car accident. Near the beginning of the essay, the author suggests that "If ghosts could be put to a useful purpose, every bad stretch of road in the United States would greet the oncoming motorist with groans and screams and the educational spectacle of ten or a dozen corpses, all sizes, sexes and ages, lying horribly still on the bloody grass." It's pretty much downhill from there (although remembering that [[TechnologyMarchesOn cars in 1935 had very few safety features]] — even seat belts were rare back then — can serve as mild NightmareRetardant).
* Animal rights activists also love this trope, with many of them showing footage from slaughterhouses, animal testing labs, and factory farms to win people over to the cause of vegetarianism and veganism.
* Your mind will often do this to itself, the term "l'appel du vide" means "the call of the void" and it's when your mind creates an intrusive, self-destructive, or life-threatening scenario in your head that either frightens or depresses you. This is done to keep you in control of your actions and prevent you from making a decision that affects your well-being or someone else's.
* Quite possibly the best (YMMV) known program in the USA and Canada is the D.A.R.E. program, a drug abuse education program that has the hilarious distinction of being completely ineffective and actually causing more kids and teens to try drugs as they learn about them through the program. Their main tactic is 'educating' students on the horrors of drug use. Every few years, after a new study comes out showing how totally useless the program is, they try to reinvent themselves, falling into the same tired "scare em straight' tactics with a new coat of paint on.
* Woodshop classes are required to do this, especially when teaching teenagers. Woodshop classes are a very dangerous place if the students refuse to listen to their instructors or mess with things they shouldn't be playing with in the first place.
** A few junior high students in Nova Scotia wound up partially scalped or with severed fingers due to not paying attention to the machinery.
* Vaccination is a very [[{{Pun}} pricky theme]]. A study tested whether presenting scientific results (statistics, more numbers...) or invoking this trope (by telling some gruesome real cases) could convert an anti-vaxxer. To the surprise of the researchers, both were equal in being completely ineffective.
** Given the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, it's a lot more serious.

** His goal of scaring you into believing in God occasionally veers in a creepy direction. In one tract, a father sexually abuses his daughter and gives her gonorrhea. He then accepts Jesus and all is forgiven. His daughter magically isn't traumatized, and he suffers no legal consequences for the abuse. There's a reason that tract is [[OldShame no longer in circulation.]]

* In an episde of ''Seires/TheConnors'', Becky claims that she was scared straight into quitting alcohol forever by going to rehab and seeing how badly some people's lives were destroyed that had hit rock bottom, as she was talked into going to get help early before it spiraled out of control. Subverted, in that she wasn't being entirely truthful with herself and others and wouldn't really find the root of her problem until a family therapy session [[spoilers: which turned out to be deep-seated resentment that Mark uprooted her plans when they were young]].

* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'' used this to [[Awesome/ToyStory epic]] ([[NightmareFuel/ToyStory and horrifying]]) effect. In order to save Buzz from [[BigBad Sid]] (a kid who loves to mutilate and blow up his toys), [[TheHero Woody]] decides to reveal to him that all toys are alive, and aware of what happens to them. He does this alongside [[TheDogBitesBack every single toy that Sid mutilated]]. As a result, Sid becomes terrified of toys, which his little sister instantly takes advantage of.

** ''Film/XMarksTheSpot'', produced by the New Jersey DMV and eventually featured on an episode of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', shows that you [[spoiler:will die on your way home]] if you so much as run a stop sign. [[note]]The main character's other driving habits are exaggerated UpToEleven as well.[[/note]]

* ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'': The episode "Busted" is one of the best animated Scare 'Em Straight episodes. Series host Bill Cosby warns at the beginning of the episode that some graphic language is used, and indeed it is: When Albert and his buddies are given the prison tour by a police officer, they hear lots of hooting and lurid comments from the inmates. Even without the use of strong profanity, the remarks that various inmates make about wanting the kids to join them in their cell ([[PrisonRape so they can have sex with them]] ([[HarsherInHindsight which was made worse with Bill Cosby's rape scandal]])) – not to mention the strong commentary from two of the other inmates about not having any rights or freedoms, and the strong probability of lost opportunities once released – is enough to convince the gang to stay out of trouble and the hell away from people like Rudy's buddy, who got them in trouble in the first place.

* Anders' personal quest in the second chapter of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' ends with him losing control and menacing a young female escaped mage while glowing blue. If Hawke stops him from killing her, you run into her again outside, where she asks you what happened; Silly!Hawke's response is that it was all a demonstration to scare her away from the idea of ever summoning a demon.

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* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in the Creator/NoraEphron film ''This Is My Life.'' A teenage girl is caught having sex with her boyfriend. Instead of scolding them, the boyfriend's mother, who happens to be a doctor, gives them a [[FetishRetardant calm and informative lesson in human reproduction complete with anatomically correct models]]. They don't feel too eager to experiment afterwards.