one of the characters like really sucks and sucks even more when he gets possessed but he “sacrifices” himself after one of the main characters exposes his old memories. they kinda like gloss over how awful he was for the whole season and his sister who he abuses for a lot of the show like forgives him for like everything for whatever reason. even for literally trying to kill her boyfriend
S3E6: a brief memory around minute 49. A husband is shown yelling at his wife accusing her of cheating. The wife throws plates, and a child tries to intervene. The husband is verbally abusive toward the wife, pushes the child out of the way, and punches his wife in the face. These same memories are shown quickly in the middle of S3E8.
Season one a kid's mother keeps being told she is crazy by the community, and in season three, a woman is repeatedly told she's imagining things by the men at her workplace and her boyfriend
S3E6: a brief memory around minute 49 of a father being verbally abusive and pushing his son out of the way in order to hit his wife. These same memories are shown quickly in the middle of S3E8.
There's an allusion to Hopper's former drug addiction. S3E6 involves two characters being injected with drugs while captured. They end up vomiting in a bathroom but are ultimately fine.
No horses are seen, as far as I know. There is a deer that is seen injured, however, and it is grabbed by a creature. We later see the creature eating something, which is presumably the deer.
near the end of s1ep5 there's a dying deer crying out it seems it was hit by a car and left to agonize, they were gonna shoot it to put the poor thing out of its misery but something quickly snatches it away, it's obviously computerized but still realist and painful to watch. Highkey upset that no one mentioned this before and that I had to see it myself
In the first season, episode three Eleven has a flashback from when she was in a laboratory, where she is asked to kill a cat in a cage with her powers. The cat is obviously scared and Eleven can't bring herself to hurt it.
No actual snakes, but snake like things that are a cross between moving limbs and vines, in final episode of season one, one of these is pulled from someone's throat. More are seen in later seasons
The teenage lifeguard is 18 in season 3 when he is flirted with (although this has been established as canon outside of the show and I don't think is mentioned onscreen). So not pedophilia, but a big age gap.
in 11's dreamscape, she sees heather in abathtub begging for help. when 11 reaches for her, heather is yanked into the floor and the tub dissapears, showing heather screaming as she sinks to the bottom
Steve is beaten up trying to defend Lucas from Billy. Jonathan and Steve get into a fight, that is started by Steve, who had been bullying Jonathan at the time. Lucas is pinned against a wall by Billy, who looks as though he is about to beat him up. Mike is shoved to the ground by a bully in season 1/2
Will is restrained a few times in Season 2 in order to prevent the Mind Flayer from causing damage. In Season 3, Steve and Robin are tied back-to-back in chairs while being held captive by the Russians.
While no one is outright sexually assaulted, there is a scene near the end of episode 2 which greatly resembles sexual assault, using common stock phrases used in sexual assault scenes. People who are triggered by this may be just as bothered by this imagery
End of episode 3, a monster "enters" a character. While it may be a vivid portrayal of a mental thing, this scene may be unsettling. In episode 4, it's also described in a way that could be uncomfortable for victims.
A man gets stabbed directly in the throat with a scissor blade, but this wouldn't be mutilation. Another man is grabbed by the throat and has it crushed, brutal but not graphic.
Eleven breaks a kids arm in season one, because he was bullying Mike and Dustin. It is not that graphic, he just screams Ah! She broke my arm! Let's get out of here!"
A boy becomes possessed by a supernatural being. When a part of this supernatural being is burnt with a flamethrower, the boy is thrown onto the ground and starts to have a seizure.
in season one, mike nearly falls to his death, but is saved by eleven. i feel this should still be mentioned, since it's a very scary, suspenseful scene.
Season 4
A couple of teenagers are found dead with their missing and bloody
S4E4
The prisoner is seen with scars over his eyelids, his eyelids remain closed showing these scars
the conspiracy theorist guy is creepily joking/too comfortable discussing the sex lives of teenagers. it’s very brief after nancy and jonathan stay overnight at his place. it’s possible I’m remembering wrong and they have turned 18 by that point in the show, but still a creepy vibe
Multiple monsters are shown to die, the ones i can think of is the first demogorgon in season 1, dart and multiple other demodogs in season 2, in season 3 meat monsters are destroyed, in season 4 a demogorgons head gets chopped off and a demodog gets electrocuted
A character named Bob who's introduced in the second season dies in episode 8 of the same season. He was dating Joyce, so he acted as a pseudo-father for Will and Jonathon. The death is graphically shown on screen.
Not exactly a toy, and it's the owner of the item that chooses to destroy it, but early in season 3 Will destroys his "Castle Byers" fort. Also, Joyce smashes a porcelain doll in season 4, but it didn't belong to anyone.
There are MANY jumpscares ALL through the entire series. Sometimes mere scene-transitions are jumpscares simply because the 'from' scene is quiet and the 'to' scene is loud and abrupt.
In season 1, Nancy is in the shower after her crawl though a slimy space; nothing violent happens. In season 2, three teenage boys are showering after basketball practice; there is verbal bullying but no violence.
as someone with severe trypophobia this show is not bad at all with the trypophobic content just some of the stuff in the upside down that can be easily avoided by moving your eyes to somewhere else on the screen it's definitely there in the show but not too bad and won't stay in your mind
SEASON FOUR WARNINGS!!!
- ep1 - NOT SAFE! at 33 minutes, max is in the restroom and chrissy vomits, you can hear it and you see her over the toilet, no visual -
- ep2 - NOT SAFE! lucas vomits in the toilet at between 9 and 10 minutes, right after you see the benny's burgers sign, with visual -
- ep3 - SAFE! at 26 minutes, for a brief moment we see the same scene of chrissy from ep1, this time we only see her kneeling near a toilet, no audio or visual -
- ep4 - SAFE! -
- ep5 - SAFE! -
- ep6 - SAFE! -
- ep7 - SAFE! at 1 hour and 16 minutes, nancy gets closer to a body, which has slimy stuff coming out of her mouth -
- ep8 - SAFE! -
- ep9 - SAFE! steve spits quite a bit at 1 hour and 36 minutes -
i cant remember any more scenes but i know lucus makes farting noise when jonathen walks in when they are playing dnd its in the last episode of season one
spoiler:
in season 4 when the vecna kills people, you can hear their bones breaking. you can also see it. in my opinion, it’s not that bad because it looks and sounds fake but it could be triggering to some. also, there is a lot of squishing sounds bc of the demogorgon things in the upside down. but that’s it for season 4
While the show does not focus on it, there are some scenes where the chief of police is misusing its power and it is not clearly framed in a critical way and maybe even more for laughs.
I would add to the other comment that in the final episode, a child is shown, via flashbacks, in the final stages of cancer and going into cardiac arrest in the hospital.
It’s not confirmed or stated, but Robin is heavily implied to be autistic (she struggles with social cues, has “no filter”, is sensitive to loud noises and uncomfortable clothing, and took longer to learn to walk than average as a child), and I consider her to be good representation. It’s rare to see an adult autistic woman who’s funny, confident, and capable in a TV show.
You could somewhat argue that characters like Will are bullied for autism-related traits despite not being canonically on the spectrum but other than that not really
In season 2 episode 2, while trick or treating, Lucas says “If I get another 3 Musketeers (chocolate bar) I’m gonna kill myself” though it is clearly in a joking manner.
Hopper, a vet, suffers from PTSD. Will and Eleven also seem to suffer from it after their involvement with the upside-down. In S4, the main villain, Vecna, uses teenagers’ trauma to kill them and open gates— primarily seen with Max.
In season 4 when Eddie, Robin, Steve and Nancy go on the boat characters can be seen swimming into deep bodies of water, one of them gets quickly pulled back under by a vine and struggles to swim back up
Terry Ives (A.K.A Eleven's mother), introduced mostly in season 2, is told to have had a miscarriage, when really they stole Eleven/Jane from her because of Eleven's mind powers.
^ adding onto opencastings comment, i believe the baby was born but the doctors claimed she “wasn’t breathing”, which is false as she was crying so no i don’t think there was any abortion talk
One f-word in each of the first two seasons, the first one also has many uses of fairy and queer by the evil kids because they think Will is gay. Arguably the worst instance is in episode four or five when they talk about Will “going to fairyland with all the other fairies” when it’s believed he has died.
There isn't antisemitism, but a character who is experimented on has a shaved head and a tattoo of a number on her arm, which are very likely allusions to Josef Mengele's experiments during the Holocaust.
billy's dad calls him a f*ggot. there are also racist implications in his actions; he tries to keep max away from lucas, and no reason is given other than the implication that it's because he's dark-skinned. (props to the brothers for making a realistic central indiana from the 80's, i guess.) not to mention that in the very first episode, the bullies make fun of lucas's race by calling him midnight.
Karen Wheeler and other women who look to be late 30s(maybe early 40s) have an interest towards Billy, who I believe is 19, in season 3. Billy asks out Karen for "swimming lessons" which she at first accepts but then changes her mind. Sure he is above 18 but still a pretty big maturity difference.
Billy had toxic masculinity forced on him after his parents divorced and his father verbally abuses him for crying. Jonathan details a time where he cried after his dad shot a rabbit, it’s not confirmed if he was ridiculed over it but it’s an easy inference to make and there’s talk of the dad being insensitive to Will’s emotions. El is ridiculed for crying but she's a girl and eventually kicks the ass of the main bully anyways.
No dementia, but I don't know if this could be triggering: In season 2 a woman (who does not have dementia) is stuck for years in a continuous cycle of flashbacks where she sees the same memories repeated. She only says the same few words over and over. Her flashback cycle is shown in S2 Ep 5 and again at the very start of episode 7, but it's an important part of the plot
The ending is bittersweet - the characters are alright and happy, mostly, but sad about certain things that have happened / are happening. Also, certain plot elements are left open (a few bad-ending-like things), presumably because the series will continue.
S4E2 there is a theme of a car accident throughout. You see a memory of the aftermath of a horrible car accident at the very end, while the group tells Eddie about Hawkins. Fred starts walking towards a car that is on fire. Very triggering for people with car accident trauma/ aversion
S3E3: A character is shown gasping for air after her head shoots up from a bathtub. S3E6: The character in the bathtub is shown again. A character is thrown back onto the beach by a wave and coughs out water.
Throughout the show, Nancy Wheeler uses guns to defeat monsters. There's a scene in season one where she and Jonathan practice shooting to prepare for a fight against a monster.
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