History NightmareFuel / PSAsAndPIFs

[[quoteright:240:[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noFCekWiUGE http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/safetyad_1472.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:240:"... [[ItsAllMyFault but really]], ''I'' [[ItMakesSenseInContext should have cleaned up the grease over there.]]"]]

->''"I was scared of death before I saw that. Now I'm scared of life!"''
-->-- '''Russell Brand''', ''on old British government PIF's''

Attentive readers may notice that on this page the [[NightmareFuel NF]] examples that come from {{Public Service Announcement}}s vastly outnumber those that come from normal commercials. This is [[ScareEmStraight no accident]].

Talk about {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Animals]]
* Hello RSPCA [=PIF=]s! This [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytb7X845GMI How much is that doggy in the window ad]] starts off with a dark, slow zoom in on a dog with an instrumental "How much is that doggy in the window?" song being played over it. After a while though, the dog looks to his right and sees a gun pointed at his face with a voice over telling us to give us (the RSPCA) a pound, or otherwise, they'll have to pull the trigger, either giving us the message that if they don't get enough funds, they might as well stop what they're doing or have to kill off animals they can no longer take care of (due to over breeding). Still though, scary advertisement, to say the least.
** Possibly a TearJerker as well, particularly due to the [[TheWoobie sad look]] in the dog's eyes.
** [[NightmareRetardant It comes off as funny]], if you live in the US and remember this [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c1/Natlamp73.jpg/220px-Natlamp73.jpg strangely similar National Lampoon magazine cover]]
** Another RSPCA ad entitled [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68HUSjvteo ''Sam'']] involves a dog being placed in an oven whimpering as the announcer compares the heat in the oven to the heat in a locked car on a hot day. It ends not telling you of the dog's fate as you hear one last whimper...oh, and did I mention that the BBFC rated it 'U', meaning they found it suitable for '''4-year-olds''' and above?
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAeNIUMgius ''Kitten'']]. A longer spot than those named so far; close-up of a ginger kitten's face, apparently sleeping peacefully, while a hand strokes its head and the narrator placidly wonders what "they" dream about. Cut to RSPCA officer Mike rushing to a scene while the dispatcher warns that she's "got a nasty one" for him. A tearful woman indicates some unnamed male in her household has thrown the kitten against the wall, and it is no longer moving. A moment later officer Mike leaves the house with a sober expression, carrying a small cloth bundle; fellow officer peers beneath and remarks "poor little mite". Cut back to opening scene where the narrator observes that animals are [[HumansAreBastards not toys or punching bags]], and that in a better world "we'd be looking for a new home for you." Pull back to see the person stroking the kitten was the vet who [[TearJerker could not save her]]. The kitten lies on a steel table, a [[GutPunch tiny RSPCA body-bag]] and zip-tie waiting nearby.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GwVZwbbhgM ''My Little Puppy'']]. Done in the style of a [[TastesLikeDiabetes really saccharine]] toy commercial, it is actually a scathing commentary on people who buy pets with no thought that pet ownership comes with responsibility — training, housebreaking, regular feeding, actually paying attention to them. The anvilicious ending [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped pulls no punches]] in condemning the attitude that pets are as disposable as an unwanted toy.
* There was an anti-fox hunting film in Britain shot from the perspective of the fox being chased, with a lovely shot of the shredded carcass at the end.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUwib-rGis This PSA]] for the PETA. [[spoiler:It actually compares preparing fish for cooking to domestic violence, school bullying and mugging.]]... ''seriously''. If those don't scare you, the [[UncannyValley silently screaming CGI fish]] might.
** On the other hand, such a ridiculous comparison could be a source of {{Narm}}.
** Speaking of PETA, PETA UK has a PIF titled ''Fur is Dead'' which is just a collage of animals dying with text backgrounds reading things like "foxes are dead", "dogs are dead", "rabbits are dead", etc. Sweet dreams!
* A British theatrical PIF called "Smile" produced by the British Union Against Vivisection shows the face of a young woman becoming scarred as she applies makeup (mirroring the injuries experienced by animals used for cosmetics testing). She lets out a horrifying, electronic scream with her head close up and the screen fading to black. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMqKdQiQsWs It will scar you for life.]] Narrated by Dame Judi Dench.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCuAo1TUPg This]] horrifying PIF compares the sale and wearing of fur to [[spoiler: flies and maggots swarming around a dead animal's corpse]]. Pure, unadulterated {{Squick}}.
* There exists an 18-rated [[http://youtu.be/8FX-VnhX24Q PIF]] from the UK called ''Catwalk'' in which a group of supermodels walk down the catwalk in their fancy new dresses, while the audience is cheering and taking photos, when the dresses suddenly seem to explode in animal blood, as the women continue to walk down the catwalk as if nothing is happening while the audience is screaming and covered in blood, complete with some quite creepy music in the background. The PIF ends with the slogan: ''It takes 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat. But only one to wear it.''
* An organization called Compassion in World Farming created a PIF for theatres called "Welcome to the Battery" encouraging people to buy free range eggs by giving audiences a glimpse into the lives of battery farm chickens. It starts with a polite bespectacled man informing the audience that they will soon be confined into cages "for your protection", and that their teeth and nails will be surgically removed ("This greatly reduces incidents of cannibalism."). Why? Because they are about to become part of "one of the world's most cost-effective production systems." Cue footage of chickens in rows of cramped cages in a battery farm. "This system has been tested on 45 million specimens. [[YouBastard With, I might add, your approval.]]" We close on one sickly looking chicken which seems to be having trouble breathing as CIWF implores you to buy free range eggs. ("They don't cost this much.") [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LcoClM-tQk Watch it here.]] [[BlatantLies "You have nothing to worry about."]]
* A [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlV8HKi2-4Q 1980s PIF]] by the League Against Cruel Sports starts with a man mounting his horse for a fox hunt, as a child sings the old song "A Hunting We Will Go". As the man rides, the child's voice is drowned out by an ominous choir singing something resembling "O Fortuna" from ''Music/CarminaBurana''. The sky turns dark and the hunter's face changes to a crazed expression as text refutes the notion that fox hunting controls the fox population, but rather encourages them to breed for the purpose of being hunted. These foxes, says the ad, are chased to exhaustion and then torn apart by dogs bred specifically to move slower and prolong the chase. As the ad ends, we see the hunter has become a PsychopathicManchild riding an adult-sized rocking horse in an eerily lit room. The children's song plays again, not sounding nearly as cute.
* [[http://www.afterthesemessages.com/_ss_keepout/_modules/atmrg/campaigns/40/media/124/1159997294_659361.jpg This ASPCA ad]] is certainly short and not at all sweet.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Environmental]]
* Greenpeace had a delightful banner ad at one point which was intended to highlight the nuclear waste problems of the Mayak power plant in Russia. For some reason, they thought that it'd be a fantastic idea to advertise it with a large, black and white, disturbingly lit image of a deformed baby in a jar. And put it on the front page of their website. It didn't make some people want to find out more about the issues, it made them suffer for months and have nightmares. Anyone insane enough to want to see it [[http://archive.greenpeace.org/mayak is welcome to do so]].
** Also by Greenpeace: Here's their [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI7pQFyjso response to Dove's famous "Onslaught" campaign.]] Just for comparison, here's the original [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I Dove campaign]], the imagery in which is scary in and of itself... and is even scarier when you know that Dove Chocolate is owned by Unilever, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDEF-w4rJk which also owns Axe Body Spray]]. Hypocrisy at its worst, ladies and gentlemen. Especially nasty are the very disturbing and utterly gratuitous images of ''actual dead orangutans'', often obviously decomposing or mouths fixed in unsettling grins. Which, naturally, ended up being paused on because it's not immediately obvious what the relevance is. Protip: '''don't do that'''.
** Greenpeace ran a cinema ad protesting the Nestlé company, known for using palm oil, which contributes to deforestation and the loss of orangutan habitats. In the ad a man unwraps a Kit Kat bar (they're manufactured by Nestlé in the United Kingdom but Hershey's in America), which turns out to contain severed orangutan fingers, and he bites into them with blood dripping from his mouth. The SickeningCrunch as he bites through the bone will make you cringe. It's so unsettling that Website/YouTube pulled the official upload of the ad and Greenpeace had to host it on Vimeo instead. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaJjPRwExO8 It did make it back to YouTube, however.]]
** Greenpeace did a commercial purporting to be home-video footage shot on a handheld camcorder, of a family playing by the seaside. A plane then comes in to land above them and as they scream and panic, the camera shows that the plane is crashing into a nuclear power station next to the beach. There is then an end line asking, "Do we really want more nuclear power stations?" Watch it in all of its horror [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZreEBnqlZlk here.]]
*** Correction: This was made by a former member of Greenpeace. Greenpeace distanced itself from the video and the former member because (i) he is an hysterical sensationalist and (ii) the "commercial" is such blatant, ill-informed scaremongering. A passenger jet crashing into a nuclear power station will not cause a meltdown. Given the thickness that the dome on that power station has, a crashing jet would barely crack it. These things are made from concrete, lead, more concrete and more lead. So, not nightmare fuel. Ignorance fuel, maybe.
** Another anti-nuclear Greenpeace ad set right after Chernobyl. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibeb4atX4Qc The music makes the nuclear cemetery look even more creepy.]]
* In 1991, Greenpeace made a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIIP5vpDOfo PIF]] entitled ''Antarctica'' about Antarctica's freedom from violation...seems like it could be played innocently if done right, right? NOPE! It not only contains graphic images of seals getting clubbed, but it also contains a ''pile of dead and dying dolphins in which their blood flows into the ocean''. All real. Did I mention that it's rated 'U' by the BBFC as well (see the entry for ''Sam'' for the meaning)?
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjVW6roRs-w "No pressure!"]] A failed attempt at BlackComedy, this short advertisment film for reducing carbon is just... unsettling. It has people getting blown up for refusing to reduce carbon, including ''children''. And not in a cartoon-y sort of way either, but in a [[YourHeadAsplode bloody and graphic manner]], complete with visible organ pieces. The campaign got massive critical backlash for its realistic violence.
** [[MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Pretty strong meat there from]] Richard Curtis. Yes, you read that right. ''[[FourWeddingsAndAFuneral The]]'' [[TheVicarOfDibley Richard]] [[NottingHill Curtis]]. Would you have thought Richard Curtis of all people would be capable of making something as horrifying as this?
* There used to be an ad that aired on Cartoon Network in the US very early in the morning, usually not long after the channel had changed from the adult block into the kids block. It was an environmental awareness ad that featured a little girl lying in various places around her room while images of various environmental problems flashed across the room, things like destroyed forests, toxic waste, and polluted rivers. All of this happened while creepy children's music played in the background. At the end she sits up and asks you how the world is going to be when she grows up.
* More mild than most examples here, but the [=EnergyLife=].com commercial 'Wasted Kilowatts' has creepy men in black body suits crawling around your basement, your attic, [[ParanoiaFuel your fridge]]...
* Anthony Hopkins narrated a charity film showing exactly what happens during the annual pilot whale hunt in the Faroe Islands, tone [[SoundtrackDissonance all too cheery]] compared to the eerie animated visuals of whales being harpooned and shrieking in agony. The film is very graphic but got a U certificate in the United Kingdom (equivalent to a G stateside) [[AnimationAgeGhetto because it is a cartoon]]. Here's the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWgrl0377Kg video]].
* Those Web [=PSA=]s by the Environmental Protection Agency depicting a whitewash paint, apparently with lead, being poured on a cereal, or a baby's milk bottle.
* Though not contracted nor paid for by the organization itself, some advertising agency wound up sending the World Wildlife Fund into issuing public apologies for [[http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2009/09/911-was-nothing-according-to-new-wwf-ad.html this ad idea]]. It pushes all the wrong buttons by comparing the death toll of the September 11th terrorist attack to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, complete with a terrifying image of several airliners flying right into the New York skyline.
* There was a disturbing anti-pollution PSA that aired in the USA in the early 1990s. A typical family is sitting around their living room while the kids watch cartoons on television. Without warning, a hazmat team enters and dumps oil everywhere: in the fish tank, on the TV, on the family... and the family ''just sits there'', zombielike, and lets it happen. Then an ominous-sounding narrator asks the viewer if he or she would willingly let something like that happen in ''their'' home.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EjNnlnwk7g Planestupid.com]] showcased how an average European flight produces the weight of an adult polar bear in greenhouse gases for every passenger by depicting actual polar bears falling form the sky to their deaths, with nary a GoryDiscretionShot in sight. That fact that they're falling into a seemingly abandoned city doesn't help matters.
* Sometime in the early 21st century, the Ad Council released [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOi5FclEh_Q an ad]] for a website about global warming. It features a man standing on some train tracks as a train approaches in the distance. He talks about how experts say the long term effects of climate change could become irreversible in the next 30 years. "30 years?", he scoffs. "That won't affect me." He steps off the tracks, revealing a little girl standing behind him as the train closes in...
* [[http://www.tvspots.tv/video/49737/ "Tick".]] Ominous warnings are even more potent when delivered by 8-year-olds. Or as insanely annoying as a certain bad Music/{{Metallica}} song. Take your pick.
* Ok, so you're Greenpeace, and you want people to get Creator/Lego to break its contract with Shell. How do you do that? ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4 By drowning Emmett, Wildstyle and various other Lego minifigs in oil.]]''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Domestic Violence and Bullying]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4s5DA90L0k "Broken Toy"]], an anti-bullying video. The shots of the children are grainy in a documentary style, with mumbled, very real-sounding dialogue. It features a young boy who was constantly being bullied; at one point he manages to make a friend with another boy, whom is later shown having to move away. Eventually the boy is taunted so badly that he's pushed out into a street, gets hit by a car and nearly dies. One of the really scary things about this video isn't so much the video itself as the fact that schoolyard bullies can really be this bad. [[ChildrenAreInnocent Kids? Innocent?]] [[KidsAreCruel Forget that!]]
** There was also this one extended PSA called [[http://www.educationalmedia.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=EMOC&Product_Code=TOH "Tears on the Highway"]] which had a similar message, probably made by the same producers which is shown at local elementary schools. It features again a young boy being bullied on a school bus full of children. As the situation worsens from the bullies verbally abusing the kid to a fist fight, the bus driver gets distracted and gets in a full on collision with a semi-truck, killing nearly every child on the bus including the young boy (there is no GoryDiscretionShot either, you watch as these kids die horrible deaths). As the video ends a camera zooms into the boy's smiling face as the scene fades to red.
* There are some British adverts against domestic violence. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDr18UYO18 One of them]] features a teenage boy verbally and physically abusing his girlfriend. The camera then cuts to his bedroom window, where he is outside, looking in on himself and his girlfriend, banging on the window and screaming at himself to leave her alone. The idea is a very good one, that if you could see yourself, you might think twice about domestic violence, but it's still creepy. There was also a matching set done for the girl of the relationship, encouraging her to speak out about being abused. They are just as horrible, and a real TearJerker. And now they've done one for rape, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIX9oREk8Fw it's just as saddening]].
* An anti-bullying PSA showed a kid being bullied, and each day the bullies get more aggressive, and on the final day you see the kid standing on a chair -- he kicks the chair away and his legs stay suspended, and immediately, [[DrivenToSuicide you can tell what he's done]].
* An advertisement for the NSPCC from 1999, titled [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcgCdP4qtk8 Can't Look]]. It shows teddy bears in the sort of wallpaper you'd see in a baby's bedroom, a mug with ComicStrip/RupertBear and an ActionMan-like action figure and posters of footballers and pop stars all covering their eyes, over the sound of off-screen child abuse [There's a man molesting a girl and a woman shutting up a baby],the message being that covering our eyes doesn't stop bad things happening.
** Another NSPCC advert, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzliASm-UMA "Cartoon Boy"]], shows an [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin animated cartoon boy]] being abused by his live-action father, with cartoonish results that are out of keeping with the seriousness with which his father attacks him... culminating in the boy being knocked down the stairs... only to finally be shown as a real child, no longer cartoonishly affected but lying either knocked out or killed at the foot of the stairs. "Real children don't bounce back" indeed.
*** A [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YybCbjnWKg longer uncut version]] that was shown at 18-rated films features [[ClusterFBomb the father swearing several times throughout]].
** One disturbing NSPCC campaign was run in the style of a mock fairytale about a little girl who, just like Cinderella, was left alone at home while her family went out on the town. The advert ended with a fire starting and the girl being trapped with no way to escape.
** [[http://youtu.be/z0D-sSe7cI4 This ad]], also from the NSPCC, about victims of abuse being unable to speak out against their abusers is horrific. The puppet girl is especially creepy.
** [[http://youtu.be/bcX7G1hWQHs Yet another]] NSPCC campaign. Unsurprisingly, the ad was pulled due to the masks (used to represent how children cover up abuse) being deemed too [[UncannyValley realistic and distressing for children]]. (The TV one, at least; there was also a magazine ad.)
* There was [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSe40tX-oTA a domestic violence PSA]] shown in the 1990s by Futures Without Violence (formerly known as the Family Violence Prevention Fund). It featured a little boy sitting on some stairs while the viewer can hear the father berating the mother very nastily about her not having dinner ready in the background. There's an audible smack and the mother screams and cries as her husband beats her all while the little boy listens on. The fact that you could only hear it and not see it made it all the worse.
* Many years ago, there was a PSA about child abuse that showed a jack-in-the-box playing a lullaby tune, before the payload sprang forth - an archaic baby doll with a porcelain head - to the sound of a baby crying. Then, out of nowhere, a baseball bat swings around and smashes the doll's head. The best part? This little horror played in the middle of a block of daytime cartoons.
* There was a PublicServiceAnnouncement in Hong Kong that showed a red liquid dripping onto the floor from a table. Camera pans up to show that it is coming from an overturned glass, with a caption about a toddler whose abusive parents [[DisproportionateRetribution beat him to death for spilling his juice.]]
* In the early 21st century, Canadian broadcasters began running a PSA aptly titled [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ2a2NKtJrU "She Spilled My Coffee!"]] in which a family is sitting in a restaurant. The father is served coffee by a young waitress, but she accidentally spills a little bit of it on the plate. She apologizes before the father curses at her, grabs her by the neck, slams her against another table and sadistically spills the coffee pot on her body as she screams in agony and he slaps her, leaving her to slip off the table onto the floor and cry. Worse, nobody stops this from happening. Finally, as the father sits back down in his chair and the family continues to enjoy their time as if nothing happened, an announcer says "You wouldn't get away with it here, you shouldn't get away with it at home." This PSA was one of many made by Homefront in Calgary and, unsurprisingly enough, was considered controversial for TV. Another ad in the series that was also banned features a female employee accidentally speaking over the manager during a board meeting, and being sadistically beaten in front of everyone.
** The former is made even worse by just before the man attacks the waitress, the reactions of [[TheWoobie his children]] show when even they, despite both being under the age of 10, just knew the signals of when he was about to go off and [[FridgeHorror had previously witnessed his abuse happening to someone else, suffered from it themselves or both.]]
* From the NCPCA, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZOYiMqPGg Children believe what they hear...]] One of the earliest promos for ''verbal'' child abuse.
* Barnardo's, a British charity that works with vulnerable children, is well known for these. Its greatest hits include:
** A TV and poster campaign showing underage prostitutes with digitally aged faces to show that sexual abuse has stolen their childhood. The NSPCC later did its own version with adults speaking in children's voices about living with molestation.
** A series of posters featuring distance shots of people who have died horribly (through murder, suicide, drug overdose, etc.) with text explaining that they really "died" as children because of abuse or neglect.
** Images of babies [[{{Squick}} snuggled up with rats and cockroaches]] because they are trapped in substandard housing.
** An [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E1b_s9irUw advert]] that began with a group of men going out to hunt "parasites" and "scum" that "destroy lives." We're led to believe that they are hunting verminous wildlife, but they instead begin shooting at a group of teenagers. The advert states that every line of dialogue in the film was a quote about children, made by members of the public on the website of a national newspaper.
** Children talking about their dreams for the future (becoming a policeman, running a candy store, being an athlete or Hollywood star) juxtaposed with a caption stating what really happened to them, such as "fatal overdose at 17", "murdered by pimp", "jailed for life for an armed robbery" and so on.
* There was a radio PSA about Internet pedophiles where we hear a young girl talking about a guy that she and her friend met on the internet. He's 17 with his own car and wanted to meet them, but the girl didn't want to go. She wonders whether her friend went alone, and reflects that she hasn't heard from her since ...
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvvsohmOUwY Neighbors]]. Made worse by the fact you can hear the woman blatantly screaming "I can't get up!" and the husband keeps taunting her. We don't ''see'' what happens upstairs. And then there's the fact the neighbors in the title just shrug it off and go to bed. [[TearJerker Way to pack a punch there.]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbkgj2YDNlU There's a brief ad]] currently being shown before movies in the United States that features a little girl treating her doll the way her mother treats her. Sadly, the mother hasn't set a good example.
* A 1980s-era anti-hate PSA, in which we see a cartoon man walk towards the viewer with an increasingly red and angry face that gets bigger and bigger until said face fills up the entire screen and then explodes. In the background, we can hear a song: "When you hate/who do you hurt the most?/Hate hurts '''YOU!'''" In this case, the angry cartoon man's face exploding is timed to go along with the "YOU!" part of the song. [[http://www.retrojunk.com/content/commercial/37544/index/ Here's the ad]] in question.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4SAe9JhJ8I This ad]] for Samaritans is a bit indescribable, really. There's a woman in a dark room who is talking to the camera about...''something,'' but the only noise that comes out of her mouth is some sort of horrifying electric-guitar noise. At the beginning, she seems perfectly content and fine, but by the end of the ad she's reduced to screaming through her tears as the camera backs out to reveal that she's stuck in a dark corner. Some text pops up in the bottom right that says: "THE SAMARITANS UNDERSTAND."
** The fact that the audience can get the gist of what she is talking about but are only hearing the electronic noise is pretty horrifying because it feels like a massive guilt trip she is opening up but nobody is listening or there to help her. Way to pack a punch there.
* An ad for a rape crisis charity showed a woman in bed having nightmares, while a soundtrack plays of her being raped by a neighbour and then people saying various offensive, unhelpful or victim-blaming things to her (such as asking what she was wearing and whether she was having an affair with the rapist.) Eventually she wakes up and screams.
* Housing charity Shelter ran an ad showing a family forced to live at a "bed and breakfast" (cheap hostel accommodation offered to the homeless) in a room the size of a solitary confinement cell in jail. Tempers begin to fray with the baby screaming, mother nagging and father shouting. Eventually he lunges for his daughter because her out-of-tune music practice is irritating him; his wife gets in the way, and the ad ends on a freeze-frame of the guy about to violently beat her. You can see it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yjbNxhyX6g here]].
* An [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsq6cCYPVy4 ad for a domestic violence hotline]] has a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street" by Emy Reynolds playing while a woman stands in front of a bathroom mirror. Bruises continually form on her face and fade away, but become progressively worse. Text gives the ad's message that abuse doesn't stop on its own, further emphasized by the ending in which the woman quickly turns around as the screen cuts to black, suggesting whoever did this to her is about to do it again.
** Implied by the bruises on her neck that just because she survived the abuse this time doesn't mean that she will survive next time making this ad a [[TearJerker heartbreaking one]] as well as [[NightmareFuel horrifying]]
* This [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=trueview-instream&v=twGDu9UfVZ4 Israeli anti-racism ad.]] If the heavy metal rendition of Israel's national anthem isn't scary, wait until you learn hebrew. Then things get worse. '''MUCH''' Worse.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JcBHbO8aKo This PSA]] about racial acceptance, which features claymation animated shoes from the darkest areas of the UncannyValley.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Drugs, Tobacco and Alcohol]]
* Most television anti-smoking [=PSAs=] in the 21st century are surprisingly graphic, airing inside footage of brains, lungs, etc. affected by cancers created by smoking. These appear on various channels, even before the watershed.
* The "Partnership for a Drug Free America" has proven itself time and time again to be a constant manufacturer of nightmare fuel with their [=PSAs=].
** Perhaps one of their most notorious ones is [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSIZQRi4M6c this one from the eighties]]. A drug-dealer named Snake, half-hidden in shadow, as he introduced himself and spoke of how much you'd be willing to go to get more drugs from him. His voice become more and more distorted as he moved in a fluid manner, saying how we would "lie to your parents, steal, cheat on your homeboys." He finished up by saying, "Hey, do I look like the kind of guy who'd do that to a kid like you?" He then appeared in the light, revealing ''he is a human snake'' and hissed in a distorted voice, "''Yessss!''" The ad ends with a freeze-frame of Snake hissing at the camera with his snake tongue flailing about. Brrr!
*** [[WebVideo/JonTron "You look like a SNAKE!!! WHAT!?! WHAT THE FUCK-"]]
*** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s83kP07ufUI This PSA about the effects of huffing]] (meaning inhaling something poisonous) shows a girl trapped in her room as it becomes flooded, as an allegory for how huffing deprives the brain of oxygen and is, thus, similar to drowning. The girl's dead corpse floats by the camera at the end (right before the "Partnership for a Drug Free America" text fades in)!
** The legendary [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FtNm9CgA6U "This is your Brain on Drugs"]] PSA can qualify in a certain way. While the actual imagery, narration and overall idea of the PSA is pretty non-frightening, the music sting at the beginning as well as the sound of the eggs being cooked on the pan is very unsettling, giving off a rather ominous kind of feeling.
*** [[WebVideo/JonTron "So you're telling me that my brain on drugs is a nutritious food that helps my brain grow? I guess I should do some drugs!"]]
*** Later taken UpToEleven by Rachel Leigh Cook, as she proceeds to demolish the entire kitchen with the pan.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGkt5oAhT0 When I Grow Up]] This ad is meant to drive home the point that you can't do the things you dream of doing if you do drugs. We see a man running from a cop, a woman dancing until she suddenly collapses, and a woman pounding hysterically on her unconscious (or dead) boyfriend's chest, all set to an ominous background music that gradually builds up throughout, culminating into something of a LastNoteNightmare at the very end. Just...''brrrr.''
** There's one from 1988 that features a narrator asking, "What if the joint were in someone else's hand? Would you still say marijuana is harmless?" Cut to a young man StrappedToAnOperatingTable... and then a ''stoned surgeon, with a scalpel in one hand and a joint in the other''. The young man repeatedly has to remind the surgeon why he's there (Surgeon: "I've never had anybody die of tonsillitis before." Patient: "Appendicitis...") and no one else in the ER seems bothered by this. As the young man is put under, the surgeon looks down at him and says, "Well, let's see if I can still make a straight line!", [[EvilLaugh laughs maniacally]], and begins to bring the scalpel down on the patient. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAx1_CsJc1k Here]] is a link for those who want it.
*** [[NightmareRetardant There are strict rules in the operating room that state a surgeon must be sober before operating. Otherwise, they are sent home.]] [[{{Narm}} Also, the surgeon acts so over the top that they can be more funny than scary.]]
*** Some people may find the surgeon's over-the-top antics to be [[NarmCharm why the PSA is scary in the first place]].
*** [[WebVideo/JonTron "(laughs) You're really a piece of shit, aren't you?"]]
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He2UN0MSNPg Another one]] from the Partnership, this time with a young woman staring straight at the camera while "Happy Birthday to You" plays faintly in the background. Then some spooky voices sing "How ooollld arrre youuu nowww, la dee dee dee deeee." And her face begins to morph and disintegrate until she becomes a lifeless corpse with empty blue eyes. And it ends with someone throwing a sheet over her face.
*** There was another [[http://youtu.be/MaVTAu0TNcE version]] made that was just as frightening, if not more since the person doesn't throw a sheet over her face so her lifeless corpse is on the screen for a few seconds longer.
** An [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryqhFbJBsuE anti-drug ad]] that showed a montage of people partying, dancing, etc. while a voice narrates how "he's your friend", "I make everything better"; but all the while the voice grows more menacing and the people in the montage change from happy partygoers to frightened/injured victims; at the end the voice growls, "You want to know who I really am?"
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qe19--5AE This]] one from 1989 starts with someone putting on a suit and tie as an upbeat party-type song plays ("Life is Like" by The Suburbs, to be specific). "When Juan turned 16, he smoked crack to celebrate", a narrator tells us. "He wanted to start a new life." Judging by the eerie music that drowns out the song, and the reveal that the clothes are being put on a young man by a mortician preparing for his funeral, it didn't go as he planned.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb-3FIS9WQk This]] Drug Free America PSA from 1998 was allegedly done in response to claims that the fashion industry at the time was promoting heroin use in young people. It features an attractive model sitting down in front of a mirror, letting her hair down and removing her fake eyelashes, makeup, etc. Finally, she removes a set of false teeth from her upper mouth that she uses to cover up the teeth she lost due to heroin abuse.
** The NightmareFuel in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nroh6G-HmpI this one]] is more subtle than most. It features Sasha Mitchell (known for his roles on {{Dallas}} and StepByStep) sitting in a hospital room and talking about how two years ago, his brother and his best friend, Rick, used crack to celebrate his birthday. The commercial is vague, but it seems that they both overdosed. "You know, sometimes I think Rick was the lucky one. [[WhamLine He]] [[FateWorseThanDeath died.]]" He looks over to the bed and wishes a happy birthday to his brother, [[AndIMustScream who is in a vegetative state]].
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTqeJ0yxBWQ This particularly creepy one]] features a kid (with strings attached to his limbs like a puppet, and is controlled as such) lighting a blunt (while the kid narrator explains that people telling you that doing pot is okay are "pulling your strings"), while carnival music plays in the background.[[spoiler:.. which cuts out after the kid takes a puff, which causes his body to seize up. The commerical ends with the body now limp [[FridgeHorror and one of the arms now waving goodbye]].]]
** [[http://youtu.be/onUIjgxPFf4?list=PL92177997E5592A6A This late 1990s psa]] features actor [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Harvey Rodney Harvey]]. At the beginning of the ad, in a vein similar to the "This is your brain on drugs" ads, we hear a man's voiceover say, "This is my friend, Rodney" featuring a [[MrFanservice very handsome, black and white headshot of him]], then the VO says "This is my friend Rodney on heroin", which then switches to a mugshot of him badly scratched about the face and chest. He then switches back to the good-looking headshot and says again, "This is my friend, Rodney." Then he switches to another unattractive mugshot of him and repeats "This is my friend Rodney on heroin." The scene then keeps switching between the black-and-white headshot of him and another horrible mugshot of him and some other pictures of him strung out on drugs as the VO goes between saying "Rodney" and "on heroin" to compliment his status before the final picture is revealed him to be passed-out (and presumably dead) as the male voiceover finishes with, ''"That'' was my friend, Rodney" before the picture fades with white lettering on a black screen saying [[TearJerker "Rodney Harvey, July 31, 1967-April 11, 1998.]]
* An anti-smoking PSA from the late 1960s showed a smiling cartoon guy smoking in a bright pastel landscape by a pond, where a cheerful fish kept easily dodging the paw of an equally happy cat. A soft-spoken, sing-song narrator explained that everything was safe here because it was all make-believe, and in the real world, the smiling guy would be risking lung cancer or emphysema. The voice took on an unbelievably chilling tone for the closing lines: "Why are we talking to you like this? Because when we talk to you like adults, ''you don't listen.'' " Guaranteed to keep you from ever touching a cig, ever.
* An anti-smoking PSA featured hundreds of mechanical babies scattered across the city streets. It is arguably the creepiest thing ever aired before 6 P.M. on a family network, especially toward the end.
* The UK anti-smoking PIF titled 'Mutations' shows tumours caused by smoking appearing on the lit cigarette.
* This anti smoking [[http://youtu.be/0hySFt8O11A ad]] about a man called Anthony who is suffering from cancer and had to have his voice box removed. He talks about how his daughter is coming to visit. The ad ends with a caption informing the audience that he died ten days after filming. [[{{Tearjerker}} He never got to see his daughter.]]
* There's this anti-smoking PSA where this guy is dressed like a cowboy, and he is playing his guitar at what looks like a tailgate party, and starts singing in a creepy monotone about how you don't always die from smoking. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuh2w2sFRMI See it here.]]
** Not only is it a monotone, it's actually the cowboy singing with his stoma (the hole you get in your throat after needing tracheal surgery due to excessive smoking) with the mic pressed to it. It got the point across, all right.
* The Australia Quitline possibly has some of the scariest anti-smoking ads in the world. Amongst the ads are: cameras zooming down people's throats to show tumors; cutting brains in half; and a gangrenous leg about to get sawed off. ALWAYS EXPECT A BRAIN CUTTING OFF! Thailand and Hong Kong are the same way.
** What is perhaps their most iconic [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMP7pkmvgP4 ad]] features a beautiful woman with mouth cancer, complete with rotting lips.
*** In Singapore, they did a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W2fmYz2os remake]] of this commercial, and it is arguably even ''more'' gruesome.
* There is one PSA for the partnership for a drug free association from Singapore about how nobody knows the effects ecstasy can cause on the brain with creepy visuals of a man trapped in a chair while he is being force fed ecstasy the narrator says in a sinister voice "Try ecstasy and you're the guinea pig"
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGcXqWBMkjA This anti-drug ad.]] It features a rather creepy young boy "burning" every time his older sister smokes marijuana.
* The United Kingdom's series of anti-drug PIFs includes the deeply disturbing [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rwd0cIHYVc Brain Warehouse]]. It's not the products as such (nor the fact that they can be freely handled by all the customers) that's scariest. It's the salesman's [[StepfordSmiler smile]].
* Anti-steroid [=PSAs=] have featured: things fading away into nothingness (in the last one, it's actually a person disappearing); a statue's limbs crumbling away (as a metaphor for what will happen to those who use), and in a supreme example of a scary metaphor, [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar a deflating football, basketball and volleyball and]] ''[[GettingCrapPastTheRadar a baseball being crushed like a soda can]]'' They're not allowed to say it on TV, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything but we all know]] ''[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything exactly]]'' [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything what they're saying.]] Talk about "scared straight".
* This [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJTC_sX5cxs surprisingly well-animated]] PSA by Hanna-Barbera, where a dude wanders through a psychedelic landscape of pills and spliffs...then walks into a ''closet full of zombies, which grab him and age him 50 years in two seconds while a ScareChord plays.''
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV6PM8KjBZg This anti-drug PSA]] from Canada features two extremely creepy puppets being offered drugs by a third. The commercial gets scary near the end when the kids refuse the drug dealer's wares. Defeated, he removes his sunglasses, [[EyeScream revealing the horrific toll his puppet narcotics have taken on him]]. A less-creepy [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72tKT0LHii8 alternate edit]] had to be used for later airings.
** Another variant manages to be more terrifying than the original version. It plays out as the previous two, but at the part where the puppet drug dealer removes his shades, the image lingers on his eyes, and then the camera ''zooms in closer to them!!''
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVRO_a6pQB8 This]] New Zealand anti-drug PSA show a man snorting a piece of ''his own brain''!
* A terrifying PSA in the 1970s showed a wind-up monkey while a young girl's voice intoned, "They say that people on heroin have a monkey on their back. Isn't that cute?" Right as she finishes, the camera zoomed in on the monkey, which transformed into a freeze-frame image of a real monkey screaming at the camera. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AegsJYtwccw The ad in question.]] Pleasant dreams.
** [[OlderThanTheyThink The first example of a 'screamer']].
* The [[http://www.methproject.org/ads/tv/ PSAs]] for the Meth Project.
** One of their most famous ads is one where a girl on a phone tells her friend that she lied to her parents about sleeping over at their house so they could go to a party. She hangs up and decides to take a shower. While in the shower, she sees blood in the water. She turns around and screams when she sees her future self, bleeding from various (possibly self inflicted) injuries, and begging her not to go. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYlwSepW7Bs See it here]].
** Another one shows a boy and a few other customers that are in a laundromat when a junkie rushes in demanding people's money. He beats up a man, taking his wallet, and threatens a woman with two kids. He sees the boy and grabs him by the collar, revealing [[FutureMeScaresMe he is the boy's future self]], and shouts [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkSYCe98lMg "This wasn't supposed to be your life!"]]
* A few years back there was this anti-smoking advert in the United Kingdom. It had a bunch of people smoking, and the smoke makes a skull shape. It was really creepy at the time.
* An over-the-top 'Frank' drugs-prevention ad: Pablo the drug mule dog. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LnA-xCz5U8 You need to see it for yourself.]]
** On the other hand, it does have a BlackComedy feel to it, especially as it's the comedian Creator/DavidMitchell who's doing the voice of the dog. The "Talk To Frank" campaign usually aims for a humorous tone in its ads.
* There's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hThkvQmtDqU an anti-smoking ad]] from the Truth organization that plays before some movies in US theaters with a bunch of people on a colorful parade float going through Hollywood, singing a upbeat sounding song about different flavors. Cue the shocked reactions of pedestrians when they realize the people on the float are all cancer victims singing about the flavors tobacco companies use in their products. Some of them have tracheotomy scars, some don't have tongues, and some are missing the entire lower half of their face... it's freakier than most R-rated films, but they show it before PG-13 movies. Gosh darn it, guys!
* From the same people who brought you Broken Toy comes [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q21hK4lte0 The Boy Who Was Swallowed By the Drug Monster]].
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLvqP2hptiQ This anti-coke ad]]. A man sitting in his car while a decaying zombie dances around him. If that's not bad enough, ''we also get a closeup of his rotting teeth''.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi-7HwwN9PQ This anti-smoking PSA]] which seems to imply that smoking is a one-way ticket to hell, with demonic skeleton creatures ready to drag you down should you choose to light up a cigarette.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zWB4dLYChM This anti-smoking PSA]] is half-BodyHorror and half-TearJerker, showing Terrie Hall, a former chain-smoker turned anti-tobacco advocate going through the extra steps she takes in her morning routine due to having throat cancer and a laryngectomy.
** The saddest part of this commercial is knowing that Terrie died in 2013. She was only 53. RIP.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Qefq-UiG4 This PSA]] from Concerned Children's Advertisers explaining talk of disgusting chemicals being added to drugs shows quick-cut, slow-motion shots of a needle being tossed into the air before smashing onto the dark, filthy road in a nighttime setting. Wow. ''Exactly'' what a kid needs to see while innocently sitting in front of the TV watching ''Anime/SailorMoon'' on YTV when the commercial break comes.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73cjNp7n75o This delightful little]] film from the Russian Ministry of Health plays on a slang phrase for delerium tremens. It's horrifying enough if you don't understand Russian but when you select the captions, it gets really horrific as the squirrel rants about spiders crawling everywhere and the need to kill someone's wife.
* A 2012 series of anti-smoking PSAs from the CDC called "Tips From Former Smokers" would show various people with stomas explaining how their lives have been affected by smoking. Some of them were shown individually, but the most commonly aired one showed several people speaking through their voice boxes giving tips on living life with a stoma. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEWky9PEroU See it here.]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFt6LvDVy-M This]] anti-smoking commercial shows a man stomping a lump under the rug he believes is a pack of cigarettes...[[spoiler: it was actually his daughter's runaway hamster]].
* In the early 2000s, an anti-smoking ad featured a [[ItMakesSenseInContext cigarette on trial]], all done in claymation. The cigarette would say about how he killed aunts, uncles and parents while the jury would gasp and reaction in shock. And if that wasn't scary enough, the camera would cut to a close up of the cigarette's face, ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall looking at the viewer]]'', saying "And if you light me up, I'll kill ''you'', too." Brr.
** It also didn't helped that it aired late night.
* One campaign showed stoned teens getting up to various antics, with "replays" of the scene each time to show different outcomes, the final one always tragic or fatal (running over a child, raping one's girlfriend at a party, playing around with a gun that goes off, being busted by the cops, and walking out of a babysitting job leaving the screaming baby alone in the house.) The "drive-thru" one was parodied by Creator/DaveChappelle. While nothing visually graphic happened, the MoodWhiplash and AdultFear were more than disturbing enough. What's ''your'' babysitter doing while you're not there?
* [[http://youtu.be/XwdUXS94yNk Fragile Childhood]] asks "How do out children see us when we've been drinking?" Apparently, they see up as [[HairRaisingHare a monstrous anthropomorphic rabbit,]] a shady man in a hood, [[EverythingsDeaderWithZombies a zombie,]] a MonsterClown, [[BadSanta a sketchy, half-dressed Santa Claus]] and a criminal in a stocking mask. As if the costumes weren't bad enough, the last one is buckling his son into a car seat...and remember, [[FridgeHorror he's been drinking.]]
* The Truth organization made a short series of ads depicting the statistic that a third of tabacco users ultimately die from it. They accomplish this by posing as ads for seemingly harmless products...that happen to make every third person who uses them explode. Examples include teenagers using acne medication, bungee jumpers drinking soda, and basketball players showing off new sneakers. The sneakers ad is particularly cringeworthy as it takes place in a stadium, with lots of innocent bystanders around when the third player explodes.
* Another series of anti-drug PSA from the 2000s involves scenarios of what happens when people get high on drugs that range from AdultFear, FridgeHorror and TearJerker. One memorable (and arguably the most horrifying and saddest) involves a toddler girl going towards the family pool and slowly lifting up the pool cover of it when the sarcastic and condescending voice of the narrator saying, "Just tell her parents that you were too busy getting high to watch her. They'll understand." Another memorable (and just as sad) one includes an elderly woman sitting at her kitchen table with an anxious and sad look on her face as she waits for her granddaughter to visit her (as she had previously promised) and the narrator saying, "Just tell your Grandmother that you were too busy getting high to keep your plans with her. She'll understand." Other commercials in the series involve a little boy waiting '''past dark and alone''' for his big brother to pick him up from Little League practice and a little girl at a carnival standing in a crowd while holding a balloon waiting for her older sister to meet up with her there.
* One PSA, entitled "Crackhead Bob" features a grown man in a school classroom struggling to recite the alphabet. Some text reveals that people call him Crackhead Bob, [[spoiler:and that cocaine use has left him with permanent brain damage.]] The sudden introduction of context is what makes this PSA so shocking.
* One poster advert from Crimestoppers (which focused on drug dealers rather than the drugs themselves) featured the bleak image of a very young girl in an empty field reaching down to pick up a syringe, with the caption reading, "Drug dealers don't care where dirty needles end up. Do ''you''?". It is the epitome of AdultFear.
* The FDA is launching its first national public education campaign designed to prevent young people from using tobacco and to reduce the number of kids ages 12 to 17 who become regular smokers. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oJZm5YBCL0 One the ads in the campaign]] is just horrifying. The employee's face just says it all.
** And if that wasn't enough, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Q5qGgfz_Q they made one]] where instead of skin peeling off, it's teeth being pulled out.
*** Another version for both ads also air on tv, but unfortunately, only replaces menthol with cigarettes
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Safety]]
* A series of Public Service Announcements airing in Canada show the effects of workplace accidents on average people. The short commercials are produced by the Canadian WSIB (Workplace Insurance Safety Board), and often feature a person being killed in an accident right at the beginning, then proceeding to explain their mistake to a fellow employee. However, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noFCekWiUGE one of the commercials]] involves a young sous chef working at a restaurant, who explains how she wants to be a head chef, and talks about her fiancee. She explains that she is going to have a "terrible accident", grabs a heavy vat of boiling water, and slips on a grease puddle carelessly left on the floor, causing the entire pot to douse her in the boiling liquid. She starts screaming at a hysterical pitch, and as a co-worker yells for help, there's a split-second shot of her skin boiling (as pictured above), and then the picture cuts to black. The worst part? These commercials air during not only primetime hours, but during shows aimed at children.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwCyVku1HvI Here]] is the link to all five Prevent-It Ads. The chef one is first, but the most disturbing are when the accident victims sit up and describe their mishaps while dying. Without pain. The creepy, otherworldly music/ambient noise that plays when they get up certainly doesn't make things better. Probably the second most notable one (behind the chef ad) is the one where the corpse at a funeral gets up and explains why his face and hands are covered in burn marks (something to do with high-voltage power lines).
* A series of Australian workplace safety ads featured, among other things, a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnAiMmKfGww chef pouring boiling water on himself,]] (but is less graphic compared to the above PSA) a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJig-1YJl2Y teenager in a bakery having a finger cut off in a bread slicing machine,]] a woman falling off a ladder and breaking her neck and a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYv5cnoHQmo builder's apprentice shooting himself in the eye with a nail gun]] (or maybe it was a splinter hitting him in the eye).
* While they don't seem nearly as extreme as some these examples, New Zealand ACC ads are incredibly scary indeed. They start off as ads for other products - house paint, muesli bars etc. - and then accelerate rapidly into horrible domestic accidents. In the house paint ad, the guy falls off the ladder, onto the concrete below, and breaks his back. However, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u51OxZF1ltI in the muesli bar one]], a woman advertising them trips on a Tonka truck and lands, ''face first'', on a glass table. It ends with a lingering long-shot of her trying to get up out of the table and whimpering softly in agony.
* A PSA by the Federal Railroad Administration warning you the danger of railroad crossings started with a railroad crossing crossbuck sign on a black background as there's some creepy horror-type music playing in the background. An off-screen voice says "A lot of drivers ignore this warning." Then the crossbuck sign fades into a skull and crossbones as the voice continues, "Almost every 90 minutes, one of them is hit by a train." After he says this the skull and crossbones fades back into the railroad crossing sign as "ALWAYS EXPECT A TRAIN" appears on the bottom as the music fades with scary synthesized sounds. Scaring people into not ignoring railroad crossing signs or signals with a scary Halloween-ish PSA is a little too far; no wonder they show more kid-friendly cartoons about this stuff to kids in elementary schools (such as Sly Fox and Birdie).
* [[http://www.safezonellc.com/train.html This]] train crossing safety PSA from the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York.
* A PIF for car safety shown in movie theaters in England involved showing actual footage of children being hit by cars as they played in the street. There's another one with just [[EmpathyDollShot a toy]] and a splash of blood lying in the street.
* One PSA from the Czech Republic called Grotesque shows several people about to go to the beach and cramming themselves and their beach inflatables into a fairly small car while cheerful music plays in the background. The driver turns around to look at them all then starts the car. [[MoodWhiplash the light mood of the ad changes dramatically]] when the driver's smile fades revealing that everybody else is dead and voiceover informs the audience how two or three people dead and hundreds killed every year in such a small country is not a joke at all. He then says that too many people in a car and obscuring the view of the driver is one of the most common causes of road accidents.
* There is a print advertisement showing the aftermath of grisly accidents, showing open wounds, blood, stitches, with slogans like "I thought I could wing it", "I wanted to show off", etc.
* Nacaids made an infamous ad where the Grim Reaper [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo bowls for AIDS victims]]. This ad, written by Simon Reynolds, shouldn't be watched before bed.
* So you're writing a Government Information Advert to prevent little towheaded British children from drowning. Why not [[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6IVUvVsAs get Donald Pleasance to wear a hood and stalk them]]?
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ7OxEKac4M This]] vintage Smokey the Bear commercial from 1973, for a split-second near the end, is the. Most frightening. Thing. Ever... For those who'd rather not watch, we slowly move in on Joanna Cassidy's face as she's talking about forest fire prevention with a seductive look on her face... then she peels off her skin disguise to [[UncannyValley reveal a poorly made Smokey underneath]], explaining that he thought this was the best way to get our attention.
** The ending was redone in 1980, where Smokey removing his Joanna Cassidy mask is less scary and more natural, and Smokey himself is more friendly and cuddly-looking.
* A different terrifying Smokey Bear one is set with a grandfather walking with his granddaughter in a world where people let forests burn. Then the birds died. The air became unfit to breathe...and it's implied we're heading for extinction. It then zooms out to show the grandfather and girl in gas masks...with a spooky breathing noise here. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH_MW0Bi7L4 Watch and be scared.]]
* And here's a 1984 PSA from the USDA Forest Service, featuring a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8zqkxUkPA paper doll chain of a family]] igniting. The music doesn't help wonders.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwHOYOqJVw This]] British speeding PIF. Holy crap. That creepy version of "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You" contributes to a lot of the horror.
* There was an old British [[http://youtu.be/XqqCoiyAafU anti-speed PIF]] in the nineties from the very to the point campaign 'Kill your speed' with the narration of a young girl informing the audience that she will be killed because of a speeding driver, while looking straight at the camera every time she changes location. There is no gore but it is still disturbing
** The scariest part was probably the soundtrack: "Mysteries of Love" performed by Julee Cruise. Almost certainly chosen for her immensely creepy vocals rather than the relevance of the song.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJHrCENXGs This]] British drink-driving public information film from the 1970's. Why did British television have to be so scary in those days?
* [[http://youtu.be/cGjdlNeZNo0 This]] PIF from the UK ''Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives'' campaign, entitled 'Eyes' is horrifying to say the least. For those who would rather not watch, the ad begins with a close up of the face of a young woman (future TV presenter Denise Van Outen), while paramedics attempt to revive her and the driver of the vehicle is being questioned about the accident. It was considered to be too graphic to be shown before the 9:00pm watershed.
** The same campaign brought us several spectacular TearJerker ''and'' NightmareFuel [=PIFs=], including [[http://youtu.be/kADUAXf7hOo "Dave"]], [[http://youtu.be/kADUAXf7hOo "Mirror"]], and [[http://youtu.be/QIYTPYHCI7E "Kathy Can't Sleep"]].
* Some Australian drinking and driving ads are horrifying. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbaeNQ_fVEM Here's one.]] When you compare TAC ads to other countries, they get the point across in the most horrifying ways. No wonder there are [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY0qw_Yt7bc some which can't be played]] until 9:00 on prime time TV.
* The Queensland Transport ads are very to the point, but [[http://youtu.be/JEziqKYrnS4 this]] is one of the worst. A father and son crash into a woman, pushing her pram, killing her instantly and wounding her infant daughter. The horror and heartbreak begins when the father lifts up the infant crying and hearing his traumatized son crying "Da-daddddyyyy!"
** And then there's the [[http://youtu.be/leaK_GebhfA Slow Down]] [[http://youtu.be/qFH24xX1Em8 Stupid]] campaign. The music doesn't help wonders.
** Also from the Queensland Transport were a series of pifs dubbed "Fatal 4" that were shot POV-style, through the eyes of victims just after a car wreck. The noises the victims make while in a state of pure agony is just flat out horrific. The chilling ending tagline in each one certainly doesn't help things either. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkaX1S9s0Y "Speeding"]] shows a man all alone lying on the ground, completely unable to get up. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnpFaDQGDWI "Tired"]] depicts someone waking up inside the crashed wreck of their car as they attempt to move. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teQkrSt97vQ "Unbuckled"]] shows a father outside the wreckage of his car, being able to only crawl through the grass to reach his crying infant. The last one, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awsVEVnhFmA "Drink Driving"]] is by far the most horrifying, depicting a young woman practically convulsing in pain as people around her desperately try to get her to stay still.
* There is one Australian road safety ad in particular that this author remembers vividly. It aired in the early 2000s and started out with a shot of a teenage boy, handheld camera style. He says "this is my Summer holiday". Next we see a shot from inside a driving car. Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday" begins playing, as the car continues travelling. Suddenly, the music stops as the car collides with something, sending the camera flying all over the place. It eventually falls just inches from the boy's lifeless face, blood trickling from his nose. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak40KHz6x-E Here it is]], view at your own discretion.
** A similar campaign in the UK showed teenagers filming themselves on a cameraphone as they walk home together, until one of them tries to cross the road without looking both ways and is hit by a car. For authenticity, only the crash scene was staged; they used a real group of teen friends (not actors) and had them film it on a cameraphone.
* This [[http://youtu.be/v_AMEYsBxZA PSA]] from New Zealand is horrifying. A family is about to be involved in a horrific car accident however all movement stops while voice over explains in graphic detail that if the driver had been driving at a certain speed his family wouldn't have suffered the injuries described.
* A UK drinking and driving ad began as the "Light and Cheerful" kind, with a man sitting down at a bar next to a beautiful woman, picking up a beer, and setting down his keys. The woman frowns and a voice over says "Before you drink and drive, think of the choices you'd be forcing onto others." It then showed clips of blood soaked people in wrecked cars, a woman trying to walk and screaming in agony, a man in a semi-vegetative state, an attractive looking woman turning around to reveal a horribly disfigured face, and a police officer delivering the bad news to an elderly woman, all while everyone stoically considers the choices forced upon them. The scene then cuts back to the happy bar as the man sets down his beer, and the woman smiles.
* A British PIF on texting and driving. There were about 5 girls in the car, cruising down the highway. Practically all of them had cell phones in their hands talking about stereotypically girlish things when suddenly out of nowhere, you see a car on the horizon, the girl at the wheel start to panic, then a blackout with screams and the sounds of the crash echoing in a weird, tinny fade out. When it fades back in, it shows a close up of the driving girl's eyes. As the camera pans out, you see that the car is completely flipped, and the rest of the girl's friends are bloodspattered and motionless, presumably dead. The one surviving girl whispers the names of her friends, screams, and it ends.
* A poster at entitled "Not everyone who gets hit by a drunk driver dies." showed pre- and post-crash photographs of a twenty-year-old woman who was in a car hit by a drunk driver and trapped in it when the car caught fire. [[http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/adults/saburido.asp The Snopes page]] describes her injuries and links to several pages with images of her. There was also a TV commercial in which she held up a "before" a picture of herself and introduced herself before lowering the picture and revealing what she now looks like. She has since been the topic of several surgery-themed documentaries.
* Wisconsin has these DOT radio [=PSAs=] that are just a mother and son talking ''after they've been in a horrible car accident'', slowly coming to grips with their situation and ending with them ''realizing that nobody is coming to help them.''
* In New Zealand, there's an ad where a strange old man sits by a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgQyaBNBao0 Wheel of (mis)Fortune]] and he watches the road, accompanied by haunting music and freaky noises. As a car enters the intersection, he spins the wheel. Where the wheel stops on decides the car's (and their occupant's) fate. There are three versions of this ad.
** In [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IGdCVBdqoU one]] ad, the wheel stops on "Miracle". The car in question almost comes into contact with ''two'' cars. They all spin and, after all that, they remain unharmed.
** In the much more frequent ad, the wheel stops on "Death". The car in question is hit by a speeding car. Everything stops in slow motion as the horrific scene is showered upon by a rain of broken glass.
** Both ads were also shown in a longer version, where the wheel initially lands on "Near Miss". The car in question almost hits another car. After the miss, a police car is in pursuit.
** In a follow-up advert, a driver is careful at every intersection, so the man doesn't spin the wheel. (This version is arguably the scariest, because it shows the man and his wheel at ''every'' street corner, intersection and road bridge!) When the driver is tempted to rush the intersection after abuse from another road user, the man goes to spin the wheel; but stops when the driver resists and does it properly. However, the next car behind him drives out without looking, and gets a spin of the wheel.
** They actually had the man go to intersections all over New Zealand and had him sitting and spinning the wheel.
* In an ad on British TV, a man is shown without a seatbelt and he crashes into another car, then the camera goes X-Ray and a narrator, a very monotone creepy middle aged lady's voice, explains how the airbag saved him from going trough the window, but then in ''extreme'' detail goes into how his ribs break, his lungs get punctured and his heart suffers physical trauma, as the organs ''go through this'' on later afternoon TV before 6! [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsp-nrf_8KQ Enjoy]].
* A similar ad exists in Denmark, except it doesn't actually show the person crashing, there's just a middle aged man telling you in detail exactly what happens if you drive a little too fast and loses control over your car. He ends the whole thing with, "Have fun."
* There is a workplace safety video called ''Will You Be Here Tomorrow?'' that skips the "what is workplace safety?" and goes straight into a montage of people being maimed, dismembered, and killed in excruciating and extremely graphic ways, including a man being hurt by a nail after it jumps into the air as forces itself into his eye just because he hit it wrong.
* An ad for the prevention of identity theft depicts a man having his pocket picked while walking down the street, another man being mugged, and a woman just not paying attention in a restaurant as another woman watches, and in all three scenarios, the victim's smartphone is stolen. What makes the commercial nightmare worth is that the people committing the crimes ''have no faces'', their noses, mouth and eyes are obscured...and then when the woman at the end takes the other woman's phone and walks away with it, her features morph into those of the woman whose phone she just stole.
* There was a PSA about firearm responsibility. It begins with a cartoonish version of two siblings playing cowboy, complete with the hats and bandanas. The little boy goes "Bang, bang", shooting his sister, who collapses on the ground covered in blood. The boy says "Jenny, wake up, it's only a game." The ad pauses as the boy stares down at his sister. Then he says "But she didn't wake up." Then they showed a message telling families to lock up their guns.
** There were two others in the series, both with the same crude, childish drawings and child's narration. One has a boy describing how he shot a friend who came over to play - "There was a hole in him." The other is a girl talking about how her little sister loved pink dresses and Barbie dolls, until the narrator found mommy and daddy's gun and shot her. At the end she sadly says "I made Kelly go away. I hate me," making this a real TearJerker as well.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGE8LzRaySk A British PSA]] features the effects of texting while driving. Heads get smashed through windows, necks are snapped, blood is all over the place and a dead baby is shown staring ahead, unmoving. It's extremely realistic and horrifying.
* In Ireland, there is a series of car-related PSA's that are absolutely horrifying. One of them starts with a loving couple cuddling on a bench, with the words "Today (boy's name) will hit his girlfriend so hard, she'll end up with permanent brain damage." They get in a car with two other people, and everyone wears a seatbelt except the boyfriend. They get in an accident, and the camera graphically shows him bouncing around the cab, striking other people with his head, before cutting to the crippled girlfriend at the funeral for the other three passengers. The second, WAY more horrifying drunk driving PSA involves a man happily playing with his toddler in his own back yard, when an SUV suddenly crashes through the fence. The bloodied driver exits his car to view the man clutching his son's dead body and silently wailing while the narrator asks if you could live with the guilt.
** In 2014, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD8BkIgp9Fo a similar one to that last one was made]], in which a car smashes through a hedgerow in much the same fashion and ''crushes an entire class of schoolchildren''. It will leave you thinking "Surely you can't actually have made this?" In fact the carnage (and BloodlessCarnage at that) is so over the top it borders on {{Narm}}.
* This anti-drinking PSA[[note]](No link yet, if you find a link, just incorporate it into the example. DO NOT MAKE ANOTHER BULLET POINT TO PUT THE LINK.)[[/note]]. It showed a home video of an adorable 1-year-old, repeating his mother's words for numbers in Spanish. Then writing appears on the screen, telling the viewer the baby died in an actual crash, which was the result of the mother trusting a friend to pick the baby up. The friend had been drunk. ''Why'' would they show this on a ''kid's station''? This commercial was one in a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSubMoHZ934 series of similar]] [=PSAs=]. All of them showed home movies of adults and children in happy moments and then the writing on the screen would have the names of the people in the video, their date of death, and stated that they were killed by a drunk driver.
** Those were done by Wells Rich Greene BDDP for the Ad Council, beginning in 1994 or '95.
* There was a similar UK PIF, featuring home video of variously-aged, similarly-deceased children who had been killed by drivers exceeding the speed limit. One of the films ran to the narration of a man reading out the police protocol for officers delivering the news of a road death; others featured readings of poems about death and sorrow, including "Funeral Blues" by WH Auden (famous for its appearance in ''FourWeddingsAndAFuneral''.)
* A Hemophilia Foundation PSA from the '70s: eerie, distorted visuals of a hand-held camera travelling around a house, with sudden extreme close-ups on ordinary objects that would be very dangerous to a hemophiliac like knives, the corners of a table or a cat scratching at the camera. All the time there is the sound of a CreepyChild laughing in the background.
* There was a London-only PIF showing a cheery, smiling mother making breakfast for her vast family of children and then pulling out a gun and shooting one of them in the head, with blood all over the table and splattering over the other kids. Then a voiceover says that keeping quiet about gun crime is as bad as shooting the victim yourself. To stop it from being banned completely, the PIF could only be shown in cinemas for 18-certificate films. [[http://www.tvspots.tv/video/49785/SOUTHWARK-COUNCIL--GUN-CRIME Watch it here.]]
* Fire safety adverts seem to be creepy in general. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kd7b2-5YpM These]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmVU0mm9fwI are good]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLYaPczgChg examples]].
* There was a fire safety PIF in the UK a few years ago. The ad starts with a close-up on a man's face, emotionless and apparently dead. He then suddenly breaks down in tears as the camera zooms out to reveal him standing in a house that's been completely destroyed by fire, to the accompaniment of a disembodied voiceover (his daughter asking "Are you alright, daddy?") and as his sobs echo, a voiceover says [[TearJerker "A fire doesn't have to kill you to take your life" ]]. The implication is that his wife died in the fire. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57XocAzLs34 See it here]].
** An even scarier film urged the public to plan how they would escape the house if a fire started, and anticipate potential dangers. It showed children trapped in a burning house screaming for their parents (because no one had taught them what to do in an emergency); an old woman screaming for help and banging on her door because she can't find her keys, with a shot of the empty street outside that makes it clear no one will save her in time; and a man who fails to escape from a fire when he trips over a bicycle lying in the hall. It was eventually removed from the air after complaints that it terrified children. [[http://youtu.be/gQOzUarmz70 view it here]]
** Fire safety PIFs are generally among the most upsetting. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhMiXDGiNvA This]] 2012 example features a coroner narrating the (out-of-frame) autopsy of a child who died in a fire, intercut with home videos of the dead child. As if the dispassionate description of the effects of smoke inhalation weren't grim enough, the final line is "Parents survived everything."
* [[http://youtu.be/4I4TBq-49Mk This]] PIF about chip pan safety. A woman's voice over provides information on what to do and what not to do in the events of a chip pan fire. The ad ends with a bit of a shock factor. For those who would rather not watch [[spoiler:after the audience is informed that they must not throw water over the fire the camera pans to the right revealing the woman watching the video on a screen. She tells the camera that the effects can be devastating and a close up shows that she did not follow these instructions and she ended up being badly injured because of that.]]
* [[http://youtu.be/Pgir2hvKpSg George and Betty]], a 90's PIF about the dangers of old electric blankets, is pretty terrifying.
* [[http://youtu.be/lR9QJo7BcYg This PIF]] about the dangers of carbon monoxide leaking into your home. Will almost certainly press your paranoia buttons, and incidentally it was made after two students were killed from carbon monoxide poisoning for an extra bit of nightmare fuel.
* [[http://youtu.be/92xPM7JR2NU This]] UK ad from TheSeventies called ''Searching'', showing someone looking around in their fire-destroyed house while a disembodied voice over of the family screaming for each other can be heard. There is no mercy with this one.
* This [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAYpNGK4fTk New Zealand one]] advocating fire alarms. It's tame in content compared to many others on this site, but the narrator's voice alone is more than unsettling.
* A series of bus ads on the DC Metrobus system make mention of crossing the street only during the 'Walk' portion of the pedestrian signals. Some are relatively low-key, but there's one in particular where a car is barreling straight into a woman. Said woman is flying, rag-doll through the air, scattering brown paper bag with groceries, purse, and shoes. To make it all the more nightmarish, a baby in a stroller is sitting in front of the woman.
* There was a British radio PIF in the mid-1990s with a cheerful, motherly-sounding woman (if not JudiDench, then a remarkable simulation) relating the tale of little AliceAndBob, whose favourite fairytale was PeterPan. They wanted to be like him, and got their wish - when the car crashed on their way to school. They weren't wearing seatbelts, so Bob got to fly (through the windscreen, blinding him in at least one eye during the process) and Alice never grew up (Because she hit her father's head, causing both of their skulls to crack and sending brain matter everywhere)! Just like Peter Pan! Made all the more horrific by the way the narrator lovingly describes the children's injuries in intensely graphic detail. Enjoy the horror [[http://www.rab.co.uk/publicationMedia/COIDepartmentOfTransport_PeterPan.mp3 here]] .
** This PIF ran at the same time as a companion piece aimed at teenagers, where a doctor describes in excruciating detail the reconstructive surgery that a young person may have to go through if they sustain facial injuries from smashing into a windscreen.
* A TV ad against texting while driving. It showed a first-person view of someone reading messages on an iPhone, the messages saying stuff like "If you have to pick up Chris at 11, and the party ends at 3, and you have 50 miles of gas worth in your tank..." and then it ends with the final text message being "What are your chances of surviving this crash?" and then you can ''feel'' the guy's OhCrap reaction as he jerks his head up and sees a car roaring towards him...then the screen goes black. Congratulations. You just died in a car accident. ''In first person''.
* Another corporate campaign from the UK's Network Rail, reflecting on why using a mobile phone at work can be a very bad idea (specifically, while working near the rails). This one's called [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDCecBVXeQ Hit or Miss]].
* There was a PSA in the early/mid-nineties about keeping your guns away from children. It showed a young boy and his two friends, playing some sort of cops-and-robbers game with squirtguns. the boy runs through the kitchen and hides upstairs as his mom tells him and his friends to play quieter... he hides under a bed in his mother's room, and his friends go into his mother's bathroom to find him. Then the kid pulls out a real gun that was hidden under the bed, aims at his friends, and we cut to his mother and baby sister in the kitchen, startled (and in Mom's case, horrified) by a sudden gunshot. And then as the narrator speaks, we realize it's a little ''too'' quiet in the house now.
-->''"You think your kids can't get to your guns? Think again."''
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ez1sypeq2hI This]] brand-new (as of 2014) firearm-safety PSA, aimed at parents, does a really good job, literally subverting ChekhovsGun by showing it at the end when we never even suspected it was there, then having the kid play with the gun for a little while before the horrible inevitable happens while his oblivious father keeps mowing the front lawn outside.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsFE-TONe2w "Drive Like an Idiot, Die Like an Idiot"]] This ad features bloody (fake) dead bodies, a crashed car and Creator/ChristopherEccleston [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking making tasteless jokes]].
* A British PIF shown in cinemas which advises against buying drugs from the internet shows a man taking a pill from an envelope and swallowing it. He looks confused for a moment and pulls from his mouth a whole dead rat, then vomits into his sink. A close-up of the rat on the floor is then shown while the narrator talks about rat poison being used as ingredients in non-prescription drugs. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw3epI6nd3Q View here]].
* [[http://youtu.be/TugVVrT4I3I this]] UK ad about the dangers of keeping your medicines in reach of young children shows a group of little girls upstairs eating medicine that wasn't kept locked away unable to tell the difference between the medicine and sweets while their mother's are talking downstairs. One comments how it is quiet up there and the ending shot has the medicines still on the table but the children are nowhere to be seen.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAJ8EG8MVE This seatbelt PSA from the early 1970s.]] While the line "they wrinkle my dress" might sound a little narm-y, the tympani combined with the imagery delivers quite an eerie effect.
* The Winnipeg Police Service is committed to safer streets. You don't want to hit an unsuspecting little girl with a car, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5EyOnccJLg do you?]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSMXYbvxDsI This]] UK ad, a combination of anti-littering and general safety, is no more comfortable to watch as an adult.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNuyg-M89XY&t=0m9s This UK fire safety ad]] by Fire Kills (at 0:09 in the video) which like the anti-drug PSA about monkeys mentioned earlier, is a screamer. It's a home video-styled ad that opens on a man sleeping in a chair, with a cigarette between his fingers, all the while an (off-screen) television is on. Throughout the duration of the video, the camera focuses on the still-burning end of the cigarette in the man's hand, which slowly starts to sag, threatening to fall off. Just when it does, the video cuts to [[NightmareFace a giant skull surrounded in flames]] [[JumpScare that lunges towards the screen and screams at you]]! Who thought this would be a good idea to play on television?
* Ever wondered how you, if you own an electric substation, could use a way of keeping children away from them without necessarily shouting "Stay out of here! This is not a playground!"? [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgeUiNwtEU Here's a good way]]!
** Allegedly, the PIF above is a reworking of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-yGTrd4Z7I "Jimmy Gets Electrocuted"]]. The creepy electronic music makes it unnerving.
** A similar ad was aired on Dutch TV in the early nineties; there was a PSA advising kids not to try and climb the fences surrounding the giant electrical transformers that power the countries. How did they do this? By showing a distressingly realistic and graphic portrayal of a young teenager electrocuting himself followed by his distraught brother kneeling down next to him and putting a hand on the transformer as the screen goes to black with a hideous zapping noise and the warning 'don't risk your life, don't climb the fences'.
* There was an anti-firearms commercial that took place in ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' where Alice went into a room with a gun and shot herself.
* From the Finnish, there's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaoLkayPOUI "Varokaa heikkoa jäätä"]], which loosely translates to "Beware of weak ice". It features weird animation, spooky music and a scary grumbling bear in the end - traumatizing Finnish children for a few decades now.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-3HOYGGtE4 This]] harrowing Canadian advertisement for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD Canada) depicts a black-and-white scene of a baby named Emily lying in a crib crying with nobody coming to take care of her. After slowly zooming out, the picture finally goes to black, with the sound of the baby crying still audible, and explains that drunk driving kills 4 Canadians every day, including the baby's mother.
* A Houston PSA created [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcSwejU2D0 RUN. HIDE. FIGHT.]] The fact that the situation is all unpredictable from the very beginning like it was just a normal work day alone is FridgeHorror.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUAhg6QU0Q This]] (surprise, surprise) 1979 UK ad warns of the dangers of... tying bags to the handles of prams. Sound a tad ridiculous of a subject for a PIF? Try laughing after you've seen a baby topple several feet facefirst onto the sidewalk, and heard her mother's horrific scream...
* John Mackenzie's notorious ''{{Film/Apaches}}'' from 1977, a 26 minute long public information film made to show the dangers of playing on farms, showed children dying in various horrible ways while playing on a farm. One boy drowns slowly in a slurry pit, a young girl is run over by a tractor, another boy gets crushed under a metal gate...
** But none of these scenes can compare with what is possibly the movie's scariest scene; Sharon unintentionally drinks some paraquat-loaded weed killer and goes home not feeling well. A few hours later, she wakes up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain, screaming and crying for her mother as she dies from chemical poisoning. What really makes this scene so frightening are not just [[HellIsThatNoise Sharon's increasingly hysterical agonized shrieks]], but also the fact that ''we never actually get to see what's happening'', [[ScreamDiscretionShot as all we see during that scene is a shot of the outside of her house as the lights turn on]].
* In the same vein as ''Apaches'', John Krish's infamous ''{{Film/The Finishing Line}}'', also from 1977, a 21 minute long British Transport Films commission about a child daydreaming about their school's sports day being held on a railway track. It's quite graphic, to say the least, especially the aftermath of "the great tunnel walk" scene.
* The "Kids and Cars" commercials are just bone chilling. They include a mother trying to wake her apparently dead son up, shoving a baby into a oven, and a mother telling about how she accidentally backed her own son. The worst thing is that they showed them on Boomerang and Discovery Kids before it was defunct.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy-sIfsW7tg "See Track, Think Train"]] by UK's Network Rail. shows a family biking in the country, when a boy starts an innocent sounding game of "I spy", challenging the others to guess the word he's thinking of that starts with the letter "T". Tractor, tree, train, tire, and teddy are incorrectly guessed, and then a MoodWhiplash comes as a girl guesses "Wait, is it... track?" as she walks with her bike onto a train track, and then a SmashToBlack as a train is heard whooshing by.
* Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service ran a campaign with several ads filmed from the perspective of a firefighter in a burnt-out house, complete with the sound of heavy breathing from inside their mask. Each one would end with a chilling message scrawled on the wall in soot: "YOU FORGOT THE BATTERY, DADDY" or "YOU SAID YOU WOULD ONLY BE GONE FOR A MINUTE." The worst of the bunch depicted a child's handprints in soot where they had tried to reach the door; ending in a jumble of prints and the words "I COULDN'T FIND THE WAY OUT."
** An even scarier version of the commercials was based around dangers in the summer (crop fires, barbecues, etc) and would show the scene of an accident with a message left nearby. In one, a child's football is sinking in a bog while his mother frantically screams for him out of shot, and the words "MOMMY THOUGHT I WAS SAFE HERE" appear in the mire.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz30m_YHrmQ Death Zones]], Gene Starbecker's graphic bus safety film from 1975, about kids getting run over by buses for not paying attention to what they're doing and the way they show it was pretty graphic and gave kids nightmares. One kid loses her card for her mother she goes back to get it but gets hit by a bus! Another kid drops his books and goes under the bus to get them but his head gets runs over instead! But the ending really takes the cake. One girl tries to get her book back from the boys who are teasing her. She manages to get it back, but then she slips under the bus and the bus runs over her stomach, while we see a close up of her face moaning in pain. Later on, she is taken to the hospital, but she's going to die before the day is out. This video has Adult Fear written all over it!
* A Canadian anti-drunk driving PSA shows a group of teens being pulled over by a police officer. You think the teens are going to be arrested for underage drinking and driving under the influence but instead, as the police officer waits for the teens to roll down their window, he's struck from behind by another car. The ad ends with a horrible thump as he's hit and then silence as the camera focuses on the two cars and an empty road with one of the officer's shoes. Worst part of the ad, it's based on a true story.
* A US PSA against texting and driving shows an inside-the-car view of a teenage girl and her friends driving along. The girl gets a text and runs a stop sign while checking it. What follows is a slow-motion view of a semi truck hitting the car and the teenagers being whipped around in slow motion like crash test dummies. The scene then cuts to a view of the crash site with a police officer picking up the shattered phone and saying "If I had pulled her over for texting and driving and given her a ticket, it might have saved her life."
* [[http://sortieenmer.com/ This]] interactive French-British website by Guy Cotten on wearing life jackets when going out to sea. It features a live-action video first-person view of a man who is in the middle of the sea on a sailboat with his friend. Innocent enough, [[MoodWhiplash until your person falls into the water]] (who, of course, doesn't have a life jacket). In what turns into a scarily realistic drowning simulation game, you then have to start using the mouse to scroll upwards in order to keep your person afloat as he waits for his buddy to turn the boat around and rescue him... [[spoiler: ...but sadly, the friend can't/doesn't turn the boat around and/or is unable to see your player (due to your player being carried away by the current of the water as soon as he falls in), and your player [[RealityEnsues eventually gets exhausted from trying to stay afloat and drowns]]. The fact that the site afterwards reveals that a person without a life-jacket can keep afloat for ''79 minutes'' before succumbing to fatigue and subsequent drowning [[FridgeHorror just makes it even worse]].]]
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jhF74BKsuM This eerie UK smoke alarm PIF]], which compares smoke inhalation to drowning.
* An old PSA from the late 80s to early 90s features a man with a group of friends driving at night when all of a sudden, he comes across some train tracks and the train itself can be heard in the distance. The man is reluctant to cross it since it's coming, yet his friends egg him on even as we can hear it approaching. Giving into peer pressure (including the last moment where we can hear his friends [[NobodyCallsMeChicken calling him a chicken and bawking as such]]), he crosses it when the next thing we see is a bright light and silence. The man's eyes now appear in the rearview mirror looking at us, the audience, saying, "I should have waited" and we see that the train has smashed the car into an accordion.
* There was a missing children's PSA from the mid-2000s that also would qualify as AdultFear and a TearJerker. In the beginning of the commercial, we see a little girl explaining to us that "A stranger once offered me a ride home...", then the camera pans back quickly and the color fades as she is then talking ''from her "Missing" poster'' and says, [[TearJerker "...and I haven't been seen in two years."]] We then see a little boy explaining to us, "A man once offered me money to help him look for his dog...and I said no." It is then that the picture of the little boy is freeze-framed into a photo in his family living room as he himself is walking outside to play catch with his father.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUx3ZF3sTtg This advert]], about internet safety, features one of the most terrifying examples of VocalDissonance. It starts with the camera looking up at a ceiling, and a young boy's voice speaking. The camera slowly pans down to reveal [[spoiler:a grown man speaking in a child's voice, looking right at you.]] The message is that people on the internet may not necessarily be who they say they are.
* Transport for London ads have strayed into NightmareFuel territory on several occasions:
** In 2009, [=TfL=] began running a successful campaign entitled "Don't let your friendship die on the road", encouraging young people to look out for each other on London roads. Three rather disturbing print ads were produced, and [[http://mayorwatch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011_road_safety.jpg here]] [[http://payload144.cargocollective.com/1/11/354997/5181728/Screen%20shot%202012-01-11%20at%2020.18.57.png they]] [[http://files2.coloribus.com/files/adsarchive/part_1527/15272555/file/teenage-road-safety-girl-600-26406.jpg are]]. It'll take you a moment to realise what's happening, which is what makes them disturbing. You don't immediately realise that what you're looking at is actually [[spoiler:[[DiesWideOpen a dead child lying in the middle of the road]]]]. A few years later, they [[http://www.haystackonline.com/Uploads/Medias/00/00/51/08/MediaMainImage_PICT/s36-21919-tfl-didnt-see-teens-13413.jpg made]] [[http://www.thoburns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/S36-21919-TFL-Didnt-See-Teens-DR11.jpg three]] [[http://www.inseec-travel-tips.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2869155967.jpg more]]. The situation is more obvious in these ones, but they're still equally disturbing.
** Another of their road safety campaigns ran two adverts which appeared initially to be a film trailer and a gossip mag advert, respectively. Both focused on one character, the male star of the film or the female supermodel being interviewed by the magazine. After several shots following them as they walked around with voice overs and/or quotes describing their success, the character was seen to walk through a door, whereupon the screen blacked out with a loud sound of squealing brakes and an impact - and the screen would fade up on the collapsed body of a boy or girl in school uniform, with the caption "Don't die before you've lived."
** [[http://osocio.org/images/uploads/transport-for-london-ladygr.jpg Three]] [[http://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/images/Face.jpg print]] [[http://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/media_retina/public/images/bowler.jpg?itok=YDXR1yYS ads]] from 2007 urged people using the transport system to report suspicious behaviour. They all featured a short first-person story set against dark and rather unsettling pastel drawings. One ad features the image of a sinister woman glowering at the audience from her seat on a near-empty bus, another has a faceless man in a long coat sitting on a bench with a suspicious-looking bag underneath, and the third has the unnerving stare of a man in a bowler hat. All the stories end in a CliffHanger, [[NothingIsScarier leaving it to the public's imagination to guess what happened next]]. Creepy imagery plus creepy story equals damned creepy advert.
** [=TfL=] and the Metropolitan Police run an annual campaign called "Know What You're Getting Into", about the dangers of unlicensed minicabs. All its TV spots are terrifying. Notable among them include a man in a car talking about his conviction for rape and then leaning out of the window to offer a passing woman a lift; a woman getting into a minicab and talking on her mobile phone then breaking off as she realises the driver isn't taking her where she asked to go, screaming "What's happening? Where am I?"; and one with blurry, distorted visuals of a group of girls ''forcing'' their drunken friend into an unlicensed car. There were equally disturbing print ads such as [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VVIFcpLfj14/UUnnRjKnPNI/AAAAAAAARio/9kIx4FyxL0E/s640/Angel-City%2520Cars-Minicab_N1_cabwise.jpg this one]], which faced several complaints of being triggering to people who have actually been through rape.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNXg3niVeoI This ad]] from 2013 features the dying victim of a motorcycle accident lying in the middle of the road, surrounded by paramedics. [[UncannyValley With an intense, unblinking stare]], and in a completely unaffected voice, he describes how he caused his accident and what's happening to his body as he succumbs to his injuries. "Still, you live and learn... don't you?"
* The UK advertising campaign 'THINK!', which deals with road safety, has always had a few ScareEmStraight moments:
** One of their adverts about drug driving features a car full of youths with their eyes digitally enlarged. The girl's huge, blank eyes as she stares out of the window are particularly creepy.
** Another features a man going about his daily routine whilst being followed by the lifeless body of a boy he killed when he was speeding. The message: "Kill your speed or live with it." [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7fhzDUOsxI Watch and be horrified]].
** There is also a very creepy anti-speaking-on-the-phone-when-driving ad, in which a man is calmly talking to his wife through a mobile phone, they talk for about 30 seconds before you hear a thump, the man jerks forward and just lays there (presumably dead) with a bleeding nose as his distraught wife repeatedly calls his name while crying. Watch it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iqCcMDByLA here.]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEVbSB2vz_8 In one ad]], three men in a pub ask each other if they'd like another drink. The three men sit at a table with a pint each, and spot a woman standing at the bar. She winks at them, then suddenly looks shocked as a loud, screeching car is heard as the woman suddenly flies towards the table, violently crashing into it. The men then peer over the table to see the woman lying, bloody on the floor, surrounded by broken glass.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUX6LABCEA This terrifying anti-speeding PIF]] opens with a dead girl lying by the side of the road, with her voice informing us that "If you hit at 40 miles an hour, there's around an 80% chance I'll die." Then her injuries begin to heal, complete with a SickeningCrunch as her bones snap back into place. She slides back into the middle of the road and gasps as she wakes up, demonstrating that "If you hit me at 30, there's around an 80% chance I'll live." An equally terrifying [[http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3118/2319/1600/09037.1.jpg print ad]] was also made.
** This anti-drink-driving ad, entitled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJDsH64sqNY&list=UUDnKjAhoLVQce2zOAY0JmrQ "#PubLooShocker"]] is centred around {{Jump Scare}}s. The sight of a bloodied mannequin smashing though a mirror might make you want to keep away from mirrors for a while. Or you might find the people's reactions to be utterly hilarious. You decide.
* Any and all of [[http://www.youtube.com/user/ProtectandSurvive?blend=2&ob=1 these]] infamous Public Information Films detailing what to do in the event of a nuclear war. Picture being a child in the 1980s in the UK. Sitting happily, watching He Man on TV, then the commercial break. One of these plays. Your parents, who have been acting oddly already today, break down completely. Your mother starts to cry. Your father's face is white, and he's shaking. Every single member of your family, everyone you could possibly talk to, is terrified. And none of them dares tell you why. That's what those films would have done if they ever aired for real.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Health]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW9Cjj3i6QE "Watch Your Own Heart Attack"]] was a short TV film run by the British Heart Foundation, a charity that funds research into heart disease and promotes prevention. Rather graphically showed you in first person the symptoms of a heart attack and what to do if someone is having one.
* An Australian charity ran [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxXIjrnAZ8o a PSA]] that started as a cartoon showing Alice in Wonderland riding through a field of flowers on the White Rabbit's back. Unfortunately, the rabbit's fur causes her to have an asthma attack, and the scene changes to show a real child struggling for breath (implied to be fatal by the caption on screen) and unable to reach her beloved toy rabbit which is only a few inches away from her. The whole thing ends with a caption: [[spoiler: "ASTHMA CAN KILL. END OF STORY."]]
* Two particularly nightmarish ads concerning Motor Neuron Disease, both from the same association:
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyCTo6LoDX0 The first one]] is simply the face of a man with MND fading away into a white screen, with the aural accompaniment of said man talking about how there is no cure for his disease, and no hope for him. To quote the video's poster, "...there's absolutely no way a kid ''wouldn't'' be shaken up by this." It simply shows that [[NothingIsScarier minimalism can sometimes be scarier than anything else.]]
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZxK7Vvyhqc The second one]], however, is equally scary, and ''far'' more dramatic. It concerns a woman (supposedly named Sarah) being assaulted, contorted, and abused by some invisible force, ending with Sarah confined to a wheelchair. What have we learned today, kids? MOTOR NEURON DISEASE WILL FUCK. YOU. UP.
*** Motor Neuron Disease is an EldritchAbomination that simply manifests itself as a nervous disease. Pure and simple.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gaInVQmuCI This]] is Michael Clarke Duncan in a very dark room with a very angry voice giving a very scary... public service announcement. It feels more like a death threat than a PSA.
** "I don't care if you're rich or poor, young or old. I will come after you. I will hit you so hard, you won't know what day it is. You'll want to scream for help but you won't be able to. I'll cripple an arm or a leg, or maybe, just maybe, I will kill you. [[spoiler: I am a stroke.]]"
** Also worth a mention are other ads in the same series, featuring [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A06fi4sSCOM Don Rickles]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0CWXWx8J1I Sharon Stone]], and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoMkf3uP0Y Patrick Dempsey]]. These aren't incredibly fun at 3:00 A.M.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5sCbUDEVw This]] German tanning bed PSA about skin cancer, made popular as a Screamer video called "Hot Blonde in Tanning Bed", is a strange mix of horror and {{Narm}}.
* Australia had a landmark [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo 1987 AIDS education ad]] which portrayed the reaper going bowling... with people as pins. The Grim Reaper from this PIF once even used to be the page image.
* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZAGoox-T5o "Don't Inject AIDS"]] [=PIF=] shows off the perspective of an [=HIV=] infected man in an incredibly nightmarishly surreal way, as well as showing a flashback to when he first discovered that he was infected. The ad managed to show all too effectively how bleak the lives of infected people were in the 80's, and if you're in the mood for cringing, the [=PIF=] also has a shot of the man injecting drugs into his arm with an infected needle all in its glory.
* There's a radio ad in the US about childhood pertussis that frequently cuts between the celebrity spokesman, and the very sudden (and very loud) sounds of what is clearly an infant coughing its lungs out and struggling to breathe, all while ominous music plays in the background. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8HORVhXujA Here's the video version of the ad in question.]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbGIRM5nKxU This AIDS awareness ad]] from Medecines sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) features a rolling ball of dead bodies sweeping through the countryside, eventually making it to the city, where we see it crush a mother as she sings to her child. Sadly, however, it becomes NightmareRetardant if you remember one thing: [[spoiler: NAAA! NA NA NA NA NA! NA! NA NA [[VideoGame/KatamariDamacy KATAMARI DAMASHII!]]]]
* [[http://youtu.be/nHSt65r34c4 This]] UK ad from the NHS about the importance of using the right medical advice service is one of the most horrifying things ever. We are shown different people looking guilty as voice-overs talk about how they should have dialed 111 to find the right service instead of going to A&E (a medical service intended for life threatening accidents and emergencies only). One is a mother with a mildly sick infant. Another is a young man who admits to calling an ambulance because he had a sprained wrist. [[spoiler:At the end, we hear a flatline as a little girl is shown lying on a bed motionless, wondering why the others thought they were more important than her as a doctor covers her with a sheet. The implication being that since all these people misused emergency medical services, they inadvertently caused the death of someone who urgently needed care.]]
* [[http://youtu.be/50cKNBz0d2c This]] UK ad from 2001 about blood donation shows a man talking about how blood donation is not just used for emergencies; there are many people who need it whether they are giving birth, cancer patients etc. but there are not enough people giving it. Except that while he's talking, [[spoiler:he's slowly being drained of blood, and the ad ends with him staring straight at the camera with deathly pale skin and lifeless eyes with black circles underneath them.]]
* [[http://youtu.be/raMabDzN12s This]] Scottish ad for organ donation is chilling to say the least. A young girl named Jill stares at the camera smiling. A woman's voiceover asks the audience if they would like to use their organs to save someone's life and that they have thirty seconds to decide. The girl's stare gradually becomes more unnerving while the voiceover asks if Jill should die, then waits for five seconds before deciding for the audience.
* There was a PSA about early detection of pancreatic cancer. A man is in a car behind a similar looking man and goes, "That's Jim and I'm Jim's pancreatic tumor." He goes on to talk about the onset of the man's pancreatic cancer. It's creepy to imagine your health problems, personified and discussing their onset.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d4gmdl3zNQ Children See, Children Do]]: The commercial starts off cute enough, with a kid mimicking her parent in their daily commute...up until you see she's smoking a cigarette just like her mum. Then it starts getting weird: some of it is unintentionally fun, such as a kid mimicking her mom while she's screaming at another driver and giving the bird, or the aforementioned payphone users start getting frustrated at the payphones, but most of it is pretty jarring, especially near the end when a kid is ready to punch his mom out alongside his abusive father...
* The 1943 WartimeCartoon "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8bCuNiJ-NI Education for Death]]". "He sees nothing but what the party wants him to see, says nothing but what the party wants him to say, and he does no more than the party wants him to do." The final shot shows rows of marching Nazi soldiers turn into rows of gravestones with the narration "For now, his education is complete. His education... for death." You know what makes this truly scary? The fact that this actually happened. Demons, monsters and witches are make-believe. Nazis and the Holocaust are very real. Disney effectively exposed children to a real-life tragedy.
* [[http://youtu.be/Aa782wOrUVM The Unicef PSA where the Smurfs' village gets bombed ]]. Talk about a childhood killer, especially when one learns Peyo's family approved it.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_g2vTFert4 This]] advertisement. So...toxic resins are blobby gang-rapists? Is that the message they mean to convey?
* A 1984 anti-abortion propaganda video ''The Silent Scream''. Until 2004 it was a regular part of Religion classes in Croatia. According to the media, lots of students have been heavily traumatized by it.
* This Anti-Israel PSA [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYamviV7ZSY&feature=youtu.be Imagine if London was Occupied by Israel]] The blood on the girl and the fact that the man can't get her to an ambulance is extremely terrifying.
* Similarly, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQ-IoHfimQ this ad]] from Save the Children imagines what it would be like if a crisis like one in the Middle East happened in Britain. It piles on the AdultFear by showing everything from the perspective of a young girl.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xYxwAZmNc0 "What are your kids learning?"]] It's a PSA from The Learning Channel, where a boy watches a video online. It's never shown what's in the video, but there's a panting man and a bleating goat, and it's pretty obvious he's watching something... [[BestialityIsDepraved off-color]]. The kid runs off...and then comes back into the room with his pet poodle before shutting the door. The best part is the end, where the image cuts out...but [[NothingIsScarier you can hear the poodle whimpering]].
* Comedic Australian duo Henry & Aaron are perhaps best known for creating some of the most unsettling ads to hit the internet.
** [[http://youtu.be/4Am7oKBD3PU This]] ad for The Central Institute of Technology in Australia. Just wait until you get to the end. For the curious, but afraid to click: [[spoiler: A video that's half typical college advertising, half meta-humor, half horror. A guy shows his friend around the campus by snapping his fingers and "teleporting" him around. It's super hilarious, until the guy realizes he [[TeleporterAccident teleported himself through a rack of clothing.]] His friend tells him to teleport away and a scream comes from down the hall. Most horrifying is his friend's fear and horror upon realizing that he's dead. Why is he dead? Well, he teleported himself through an employee ladder! [[CrossesTheLineTwice Then again...]]]]
** A few years later, they made [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHpMUYeznQ THIS little horror]]. It starts with a bunch of kids sneaking out of school and heading off to the beach, set off to a catchy indie-folk song. Then one of the girls explodes randomly, and it's revealed that they're actually on an explosive testing site, and then things go FromBadToWorse. The best part is at the end where the last girl to survive is on the ground doing a SkywardScream upon realizing that all her friends are dead, as the camera zooms out to reveal a huge mushroom cloud, and just as that happens her screaming is immediately cut off.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpfq-EjLDdA These]] anti-car crime ads from the UK shouldn't be as effective as they are, but the tone of the narrator and the horrible yelps of the hyenas - combined with the AdultFear and violation of having one's car broken into work to make it very, very unsettling.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWZkuXwPVx0 This PSA]] is meant to raise awareness of the problem of landmines. It's mostly just disturbing.
[[/folder]]
----

** This anti-drink-driving ad, entitled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJDsH64sqNY&list=UUDnKjAhoLVQce2zOAY0JmrQ "#PubLooShocker"]] is centred around {{Jump Scare}}s. The sight of a bloodied mannequin smashing though a mirror might make you want to keep away from mirrors for a while. Or you might find the people's relations to be utterly hilarious. You decide.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEVbSB2vz_8 In one ad]], three men in a pub ask each other if they'd like another drink. The two men sat at a table with a pint each, and spotted a woman standing at the bar. She winked at them, then suddenly looked shocked as a loud, screeching car was heard as the woman suddenly flew towards the table, violently crashing into it. The men then peered over the table to see the woman lying, bloody on the floor, surrounded by broken glass.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUX6LABCEA This terrifying anti-speeding PIF]] opens with a dead girl lying by the side of the road, with her voice informing us that "If you hit at 40 miles an hour, there's around an 80% chance I'll die." Then her injuries begin to heal, complete with a SickeningCrunch as her bones snap back into place. She slides back into the middle of the road and gasps as she wakes up, demonstrating that "If you hit me at 30, there's around an 80% chance I'll live."

** Another features a man going about his daily routine whilst being followed by the lifeless body of a boy he killed when he was speeding. The message: "Kill your speed or live with it."[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7fhzDUOsxI Watch and be horrified]].

* The UK advertising campaign 'THINK!', which deals with road safety, has always had a few Scare Them Straight moments. However one of their adverts about drug driving features a car full of youths with their eyes digitally enlarged. The girl's huge, blank eyes as she stares out of the window are particularly creepy.

* Currently, the UK is running a "THINK!" PIF which some have taken to calling 'Dead Ginger'. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7fhzDUOsxI Watch and be horrified]].

* There is also a very creepy anti-speaking-on-the-phone-when-driving ad, in which a man is calmly talking to his wife through a mobile phone, they talk for about 30 seconds before you hear a thump, the man jerks forward and just lays there (presumably dead) with a bleeding nose as his distraught wife repeatedly calls his name while crying. Watch it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iqCcMDByLA here.]]

* There was a UK ad from the THINK! road safety campaign that played in the 00s, in which two men in a pub asked each other if they'd like another drink (beer). The two men sat at a table with a pint each, and spotted a woman standing at the bar. She winked at them, then suddenly looked shocked as a loud, screeching car was heard as the woman suddenly flew towards the table, violently crashing into it. The men then peered over the table to see the woman lying, bloody on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. The tagline being something like "'Just one more' might be one drink too much."

** In 2014, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD8BkIgp9Fo a similar one to that last one was made]], in which a car smashes through a hedgerow in much the same fashion and ''crushes an entire class of schoolchildren''. It will leave you thinking "Surely you can't actually have made this. You cannot have had meetings and decided that this was a good idea." In fact the carnage (and BloodlessCarnage at that) is so over the top it borders on {{Narm}}.

* The very first negative political TV ad in the United States, one which portrays an innocent-looking young girl picking the petals off a flower and counting them before looking up? That part is sweet and charming. What immediately follows, OTOH, is still extremely chilling.
** The above commercial is Lyndon B.Johnson's iconic 1964 campaign ad "Daisy". A little girl innocently counts the petals on a flower in a meadow, before looking up suddenly, at which point the frame freezes and we are treated to an extreme close-up of her eye. While this occurs, a male announcer has begun counting down to one. At the count of one, shots of nuclear explosions and firestorms play until the ad concludes with Lyndon Johnson's voice: "These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." Then the voiceover, by sportscaster Chris Schenkel: "Vote for President Johnson on Nov 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." The ad, obviously referencing Cold War nuclear paranoia was broadcast only once and has since gone down in history as one of the most successful ads ever: Johnson won a landslide victory.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JcBHbO8aKo This PSA]] about racial acceptance, which features claymation animated shoes from the darkest areas of the UncannyValley.

Attentive readers may notice that on this page the NF examples that come from {{Public Service Announcement}}s vastly outnumber those that come from normal commercials. This is [[ScareEmStraight no accident]].

-->-- '''Russell Brand''', ''on old British government PSA's''

* The [[http://www.methproject.org/ads/tv/ PSAs]] for the Meth Project.

* There is an ad where a girl on a phone tells her friend that she lied to her parents about sleeping over at their house so they could go to a party. She hangs up and decides to take a shower. While in the shower, she sees blood in the water. She turns around and screams when she sees her future self, bleeding from various (possibly self inflicted) injuries, and begging her not to go. It's from the Montana Meth Project ads, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYlwSepW7Bs see it here]].
** From the same campaign, a boy and a few other customers are in a laundromat when a junkie rushes in demanding people's money. He beats up a man, taking his wallet, and threatens a woman with two kids. He sees the boy and grabs him by the collar, revealing [[FutureMeScaresMe he is the boy's future self]], and shouts [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkSYCe98lMg "This wasn't supposed to be your life!"]]

* The legendary [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FtNm9CgA6U "This is your Brain on Drugs"]] PSA can qualify in a certain way. While the actual imagery, narration and overall idea of the PSA is pretty non-frightening, the music sting at the beginning as well as the sound of the eggs being cooked on the pan is very unsettling, giving off a rather ominous kind of feeling.
** [[WebVideo/JonTron "So you're telling me that my brain on drugs is a nutritious food that helps my brain grow? I guess I should do some drugs!"]]
** Later taken UpToEleven by Rachel Leigh Cook, as she proceeds to demolish the entire kitchen with the pan.

* There's an anti-drug PSA from 1988 that features a narrator asking, "What if the joint were in someone else's hand? Would you still say marijuana is harmless?" Cut to a young man StrappedToAnOperatingTable... and then a ''stoned surgeon, with a scalpel in one hand and a joint in the other''. The young man repeatedly has to remind the surgeon why he's there (Surgeon: "I've never had anybody die of tonsillitis before." Patient: "Appendicitis...") and no one else in the ER seems bothered by this. As the young man is put under, the surgeon looks down at him and says, "Well, let's see if I can still make a straight line!", [[EvilLaugh laughs maniacally]], and begins to bring the scalpel down on the patient. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAx1_CsJc1k Here]] is a link for those who want it.
** [[NightmareRetardant There are strict rules in the operating room that state a surgeon must be sober before operating. Otherwise, they are sent home.]] [[{{Narm}} Also, the surgeon acts so over the top that they can be more funny than scary.]]
*** Some people may find the surgeon's over-the-top antics to be [[NarmCharm why the PSA is scary in the first place]].
*** [[WebVideo/JonTron "(laughs) You're really a piece of shit, aren't you?"]]
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s83kP07ufUI This PSA about the effects of huffing]] (meaning inhaling something poisonous) shows a girl trapped in her room as it becomes flooded, as an allegory for how huffing deprives the brain of oxygen and is, thus, similar to drowning. The girl's dead corpse floats by the camera at the end (right before the "Partnership for a Drug Free America" text fades in)!
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He2UN0MSNPg Another one]] from the Partnership, this time with a young woman staring straight at the camera while "Happy Birthday to You" plays faintly in the background. Then some spooky voices sing "How ooollld arrre youuu nowww, la dee dee dee deeee." And her face begins to morph and disintegrate until she becomes a lifeless corpse with empty blue eyes. And it ends with someone throwing a sheet over her face.
** There was another [[http://youtu.be/MaVTAu0TNcE version]] made that was just as frightening, if not more since the person doesn't throw a sheet over her face so her lifeless corpse is on the screen for a few seconds longer.
* An [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryqhFbJBsuE anti-drug ad]] that showed a montage of people partying, dancing, etc. while a voice narrates how "he's your friend", "I make everything better"; but all the while the voice grows more menacing and the people in the montage change from happy partygoers to frightened/injured victims; at the end the voice growls, "You want to know who I really am?"

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSIZQRi4M6c This anti-drug PSA from the eighties]]. A drug-dealer named Snake, half-hidden in shadow, as he introduced himself and spoke of how much you'd be willing to go to get more drugs from him. His voice become more and more distorted as he moved in a fluid manner, saying how we would "lie to your parents, steal, cheat on your homeboys." He finished up by saying, "Hey, do I look like the kind of guy who'd do that to a kid like you?" He then appeared in the light, revealing ''he is a human snake'' and hissed in a distorted voice, "''Yessss!''" The ad ends with a freeze-frame of Snake hissing at the camera with his snake tongue flailing about. Brrr!
** [[WebVideo/JonTron "You look like a SNAKE!!! WHAT!?! WHAT THE FUCK-"]]

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGkt5oAhT0 When I Grow Up]] This ad is meant to drive home the point that you can't do the things you dream of doing if you do drugs. We see a man running from a cop, a woman dancing until she suddenly collapses, and a woman pounding hysterically on her unconscious (or dead) boyfriend's chest, all set to an ominous background music that gradually builds up throughout, culminating into something of a LastNoteNightmare at the very end. Just...''brrrr.''
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qe19--5AE This]] Drug Free America PSA from 1989 starts with someone putting on a suit and tie as an upbeat party-type song plays ("Life is Like" by The Suburbs, to be specific). "When Juan turned 16, he smoked crack to celebrate", a narrator tells us. "He wanted to start a new life." Judging by the eerie music that drowns out the song, and the reveal that the clothes are being put on a young man by a mortician preparing for his funeral, it didn't go as he planned.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb-3FIS9WQk This]] Drug Free America PSA from 1998 was allegedly done in response to claims that the fashion industry at the time was promoting heroin use in young people. It features an attractive model sitting down in front of a mirror, letting her hair down and removing her fake eyelashes, makeup, etc. Finally, she removes a set of false teeth from her upper mouth that she uses to cover up the teeth she lost due to heroin abuse.

* The NightmareFuel in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nroh6G-HmpI this Drug Free America ad]] is more subtle than most. It features Sasha Mitchell (known for his roles on {{Dallas}} and StepByStep) sitting in a hospital room and talking about how two years ago, his brother and his best friend, Rick, used crack to celebrate his birthday. The commercial is vague, but it seems that they both overdosed. "You know, sometimes I think Rick was the lucky one. [[WhamLine He]] [[FateWorseThanDeath died.]]" He looks over to the bed and wishes a happy birthday to his brother, [[AndIMustScream who is in a vegetative state]].

* [[http://youtu.be/onUIjgxPFf4?list=PL92177997E5592A6A This PSA]] from the late 1990s features actor [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Harvey Rodney Harvey]]. At the beginning of the ad, in a vein similar to the "This is your brain on drugs" ads, we hear a man's voiceover say, "This is my friend, Rodney" featuring a [[MrFanservice very handsome, black and white headshot of him]], then the VO says "This is my friend Rodney on heroin", which then switches to a mugshot of him badly scratched about the face and chest. He then switches back to the good-looking headshot and says again, "This is my friend, Rodney." Then he switches to another unattractive mugshot of him and repeats "This is my friend Rodney on heroin." The scene then keeps switching between the black-and-white headshot of him and another horrible mugshot of him and some other pictures of him strung out on drugs as the VO goes between saying "Rodney" and "on heroin" to compliment his status before the final picture is revealed him to be passed-out (and presumably dead) as the male voiceover finishes with, ''"That'' was my friend, Rodney" before the picture fades with white lettering on a black screen saying [[TearJerker "Rodney Harvey, July 31, 1967-April 11, 1998.]]
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTqeJ0yxBWQ This anti pot ad]]. It features a kid (with strings attached to his limbs like a puppet, and is controlled as such) lighting a blunt (while the kid narrator explains that people telling you that doing pot is okay are "pulling your strings"), while carnival music plays in the background.[[spoiler:.. which cuts out after the kid takes a puff, which causes his body to seize up. The commerical ends with the body now limp [[FridgeHorror and one of the arms now waving goodbye]].]]

* Australia possibly has some of the scariest anti-smoking ads in the world. Amongst the ads are: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YjrkBYDDQM a woman with mouth cancer]] complete with rotting lips; cameras zooming down people's throats to show tumors; cutting brains in half; and a gangrenous leg about to get sawed off. ALWAYS EXPECT A BRAIN CUTTING OFF! Thailand and Hong Kong are the same way.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMP7pkmvgP4 This]] commercial for the Australian Quitline stop-smoking phone service features a beautiful woman with a lip and teeth problem.
** In Singapore, they did a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W2fmYz2os remake]] of this commercial, and it is arguably even ''more'' gruesome.

* The Queensland transport ads are very to the point, but [[http://youtu.be/JEziqKYrnS4 this]] is one of the worst. A father and son crash into a woman, pushing her pram, killing her instantly and wounding her infant daughter. The horror and heartbreak begins when the father lifts up the infant crying and hearing his traumatized son crying "Da-daddddyyyy!"

* There are a series of four [=PIFs=] from the Queensland Transport dubbed "Fatal 4" that were shot POV-style, through the eyes of victims just after a car wreck. The noises the victims make while in a state of pure agony is just flat out horrific. The chilling ending tagline in each one certainly doesn't help things either. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkaX1S9s0Y "Speeding"]] shows a man all alone lying on the ground, completely unable to get up. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnpFaDQGDWI "Tired"]] depicts someone waking up inside the crashed wreck of their car as they attempt to move. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teQkrSt97vQ "Unbuckled"]] shows a father outside the wreckage of his car, being able to only crawl through the grass to reach his crying infant. The last one, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awsVEVnhFmA "Drink Driving"]] is by far the most horrifying, depicting a young woman practically convulsing in pain as people around her desperately try to get her to stay still.

** [[http://osocio.org/images/uploads/transport-for-london-ladygr.jpg Three]] [[http://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/images/Face.jpg print]] [[http://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/media_retina/public/images/bowler.jpg?itok=YDXR1yYS ads]] from 2007 urged people using the transport system to report suspicious behaviour. They all featured a short first-person story set against dark and rather unsettling pastel drawings. One ad features the image of a faceless man in a long coat sitting on a bench with a suspicious-looking bag underneath, another has the unnerving stare of a man in a bowler hat, and the third has a sinister woman glowering at the audience from her seat on a near-empty bus. All the stories end in a CliffHanger, [[NothingIsScarier leaving it to the public's imagination to guess what happened next]]. Creepy imagery plus creepy story equals damned creepy advert.

** On the other hand, it does have a BlackComedy feel to it, especially as it's the comedian Creator/DavidMitchell who's doing the voice of the dog.

** Greenpeace ran a cinema ad protesting the Nestlé company, known for using palm oil, which contributes to deforestation and the loss of orangutan habitats. In the ad a man unwraps a Kit Kat bar (they're manufactured by Nestlé in the United Kingdom but Hershey's in America), which turns out to contain severed orangutan fingers, and he bites into them with blood dripping from his mouth. It's so unsettling that Website/YouTube pulled the official upload of the ad and Greenpeace had to host it on Vimeo instead. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaJjPRwExO8 It did make it back to YouTube, however.]]

* The NightmareFuel in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nroh6G-HmpI this Drug Free America ad]] is more subtle than most. It features Sasha Mitchell (known for his roles on {{Dallas}} and StepByStep) sitting in a hospital room and talking about how two years ago, his brother and his best friend, Rick, used crack to celebrate his birthday. The commercial is vague, but it seems that they both overdosed. "You know, sometimes I think Rick was the lucky one. [[FateWorseThanDeath He died.]]" He looks over to the bed and wishes a happy birthday to his brother, [[AndIMustScream who is in a vegetative state]].

* There's an anti-drug PSA from 1988 that features a narrator asking, "What if the joint were in someone else's hand? Would you still say marijuana is harmless?" Cut to a young man StrappedToAnOperatingTable...and then a ''stoned surgeon, with a scalpel in one hand and a joint in the other''. The young man repeatedly has to remind the surgeon why he's there (Surgeon: "I've never had anybody die of tonsillitis before." Patient: "But I'm here for appendicitis!") and no one else in the ER seems bothered by this. As the young man is put under, the surgeon looks down at him; says, "Well, let's see if I can still make a straight line!"; laughs maniacally, and begins to bring the scalpel down on the patient. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAx1_CsJc1k Here]] is a link for those who want it.

* There's an anti-drug PSA from 1992 that features a narrator asking, "What if the joint were in someone else's hand? Would you still say marijuana is harmless?" Cut to a young man StrappedToAnOperatingTable...and then a ''stoned surgeon, with a scalpel in one hand and a joint in the other''. The young man repeatedly has to remind the surgeon why he's there (Surgeon: "I've never had anybody die of tonsillitis before." Patient: "But I'm here for appendicitis!") and no one else in the ER seems bothered by this. As the young man is put under, the surgeon looks down at him; says, "Well, let's see if I can still make a straight line!"; laughs maniacally, and begins to bring the scalpel down on the patient. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAx1_CsJc1k Here]] is a link for those who want it.