As made known on the Discussion over on the main Nightmare Fuel page, I've been on a quest to catalogue every PSA on that list and patch up any one of the dead links with more active ones. Along the way, I've located a few vague ones that I'm bringing up in case any Troper remembers exactly which specific ads these descriptions are referring to (this will be updated as I go through each of them):
Any animal shelter ad, especially the ASPCA ones with the sad music and pictures of abused animals. There is a local shelter ad that has more uplifting, eyes-get-misty-in-a-good-way ads showing before and after pictures of animals after being nursed back to health and looking all happy.
From an anti-dog fighting ad: "You're my best friend," that quote will echo in one's head for a while.
There was one commercial where rain was falling in sheets on grimy city streets while anonymous feet stomped and hurried to and fro. From a crack in a sidewalk, a single flower was growing, the only bit of color in the whole city, but battered by the rain and always in danger of being crushed. The flower was a child with cancer...
Those commercials for the children in foreign countries that have lost their families and need water or vaccinations. (Not only is this too vague, it's too common.)
These two old anti-AIDS Public Service Announcements. To say that these stories are depressing is an understatement. (The two links seen on the actual page lead to privated videos, which is why I consider it an unwise decision to *not* describe a PSA properly when submitting it to the wiki, no matter if there's a link or not.)
Most Australian anti-smoking, anti-drug or road-safe PSAs count.
The road-safe ads especially. The Australia Road-Safe advertisers don't just show you a car crash or a gravestone, they will show you graphic reconstructions of devastating accidents and the effect they have on both the family and the person at fault. They have ads that are just footage of family and friends of actual casualties speaking about how the incident has affected them.
The work-safe ones which feature a family waiting for their father at home or at some event he was supposed to meet them at. The music as he finally walks through the door...
The Happier Home Movie ads for the UK Kill Your Speed campaign in The '90s, showing young children smiling and having fun on home videos until the caption at the end tells you they all were all killed in childhood by speeding drivers.
One variation had the home videos juxtaposed with a voice-over instructing police officers on how to break the news of a child's death to their family.
A similar campaign ran in the States around this same time, done by the Ad Council. They too showed home movies of adults and children, before a caption would state that they were killed by drunk drivers.
There was a radio PSA in the early nineties warning against attempting to beat a train to a railroad crossing. The PSA features testimonials from engineers involved in fatal collisions. One particularly stands out:
How can I be so mad at someone who's dead? Didn't she realize that a crossing gate means yield?
However, the last one can make you cry tears of relief:
I prayed that he'd stop, that he'd see me somehow. Thank God he did!
One PSA shows a little girl celebrating her birthday with her mother. They discuss her father returning with the cake. They hear a car pull up and a door slam and run out to the driveway to greet him, only to meet with a police officer instead. The girl doesn't know what's happening while the mother immediately bursts into tears. The now grown-up little girl explains in voiceover that her father was killed by a Drunk Driver and she now spends her birthdays visiting his grave. A radio PSA with a near-identical story aired in 2022, with the little girl audibly crying as police sirens are heard.
To cap it off, I've edited these ones under "Unlinked" to add functioning links, and I'm lucky the latter is easily searchable on the Internet, and is infamous as one of the saddest commercials on the Internet.
Originally, the Verizon one read:
This Verizon commercial about a little girl who was discouraged from following her dreams.
And the TrueMove one read:
Here's a PSA from True Move, Thailand's third-largest mobile operator and a testament to the power of a simple good deed.
Edited by shearsforestHey, all. I read and create alternate history for alternatehistory.com.
As made known on the Discussion over on the main Nightmare Fuel page, I've been on a quest to catalogue every PSA on that list and patch up any one of the dead links with more active ones. Along the way, I've located a few vague ones that I'm bringing up in case any Troper remembers exactly which specific ads these descriptions are referring to (this will be updated as I go through each of them):
To cap it off, I've edited these ones under "Unlinked" to add functioning links, and I'm lucky the latter is easily searchable on the Internet, and is infamous as one of the saddest commercials on the Internet.