Corrupted Childhood Element

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Childhood innocence is one of the most stressed aspects of life. We are taught that children are precious and that they should be protected at all costs. However, bad actors, traumatic experiences, and other horrible things can corrupt that childhood innocence.

In some instances, this can result in key elements of one's childhood being repurposed or reimagined to show how much it affected them. It can be a song, a friendship, a toy, etc. From a psychological standpoint, it can be interpreted as a coping mechanism or a defense mechanism. Sometimes it can manifest into destructive behaviors or even idiosyncrasies in personalities that persist into adulthood.

A subtrope of Subverted Innocence: Sometimes the character in question is the product of Corruption of a Minor or is a Troubled Child. Can bleed into Dark and Troubled Past, It obviously goes without saying that it can come as a result of Child Abuse Is a Special Kind of Evil. If the corrupted childhood element is a person, then it veers into Broken Pedestal territory. For a more literal and physical interpretation of corrupting a childhood element, like a doll, see Smuggling with Dolls.

Sub Tropes:

• Creepy Children Singing
• Creepy Doll
• Creepy Dollhouse
• Fractured Fairytale
• Hide-and-Seek Horror
• Ironic Nursery Rhyme
• Killer Teddy Bear
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book
• Nightmarish Nursery
• Ominous Music Box Tune
• Perverse Puppet
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box
• Subverted Kids' Show
• Troubled Toy Breaker
• Vengeful Abandoned Toy

A quick note, just because a childhood element is corrupted, doesn't necessarily mean it has to be played for horror. There are some instances where the element in question is warped, but the intention is not to scare, but rather to show the subversion of innocence. On the other hand, it can be played for black comedy, where the funny part is your disgusted grimace upon seeing. In this case, it might overlap with Juxtaposition Gag.

There are spoilers, and as such, they are unmarked.

No Real Life Examples, Please! For multiple reasons, including the potential risk of posting NSFW content and Troper Tales stemming from Public Domain Expiry turned into horror films.

Examples:

Films — Animation

• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: A variation; when Count Volpe turns Pinocchio into the starring attraction for his carnival, Pinocchio sings a jazzy up-tempo showtune called "My Bubblegum". When Geppetto finds out about this, he is greatly upset as the song is a warped repurpose of a lullaby he sang for his deceased son Carlo, "My Son". In Pinocchio's defense, he did not know the song's importance as he was still a newly made wooden puppet that had just come to life.

Films — Live-Action

• Beethoven: In one of the sequels, the father takes his family on the same extended road trip he went on as a boy. The entire trip has been thoroughly visited by the Childhood Memory Demolition Team: one roadside park has been taken over by a Japanese corporation, the kids won't stop fighting, the RV loses a windshield, two Stupid Crooks are tailing the family because they unknowingly have a CD full of sensitive information... and to top it all off, the father eventually breaks down and admits the original trip wasn't that great, featuring as it did a carsick dog.
• Bugonia: Don mentions that he wishes that he could undo everything bad that has happened to his cousin Teddy, who has become a full-blown Conspiracy Theorist. We learn through dialogue and flashbacks that Teddy's mother Sandy was a drug addict, and, despite his suggestion that she participate in a drug trial by Auxolith, she was left comatose. depriving him of any parental influence as his father was never present, with Michelle Fuller only offering to cover her medical care. Furthermore, Casey — now the town sheriff, molested Teddy when he was his babysitter, and while he does make awkward attempts to apologize and explain his actions, it's clear that Teddy was left broken from those successive traumatic experiences.
• Ghostbusters: The famous Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man appears in some way, shape, or form in most tie-ins with the original movie. In said movie, Ray admits that it's something from his childhood, something he thought would never hurt anyone. Naturally, this is the form that Gozer takes to attack New York.
• Hot Fuzz: Nicholas Angel had a police uncle who gave him a police pedal car when he was five, which is one of the factors that inspired him to be a cop. Said uncle however was later busted for selling drugs, and the realization the toy was likely bought with crime proceeds ruined the toy for him.
• Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Crane's rigid pragmatism and early dismissivness towards magic and spirituality stems from a traumatic childhood experience where he witnessed his father, a Sinister Minister, murder his mother under the guise of "saving her soul". As seen in flashback, Young Ichabod Crane would stumble upon his father's torture chamber, hidden behind the family's chapel, where he found his mother trapped in an iron maiden, becoming even more traumatized when the maiden opened and her corpse fell out, her blood washing over him.
• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Dewey Cox had a traumatic childhood, to say the least. He accidentally killed his brother in a machete fight, which his father resented him for until his dying day. Needless to say, this affected him to the point where he lost his sense of smell. Even in his musical career, he was haunted by the machete incident, incorporating it into his songs, and having it appear in an LSD-induced trip with the Beatles.

Literature

• Ciaphas Cain has occasional brief references to this, seemingly as a reminder to the reader that, as charismatic as the protagonists can be, they're still the agents of a horrific totalitarian state. Amberley Vail recalls a children's book with comical pictures of heretics being burned at the stake, and there's a mention of a children's song that goes "The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics" (to the tune of the real-world song "The Wheels on the Bus").

Live-Action TV

• Jessica Jones (2015): Kilgrave bought Jessica's childhood home and later kidnapped her to live there.
• Sherlock: One of the reasons why Sherlock is a high-functioning sociopath is the loss of his beloved Redbeard. While the audience is initially led to believe Redbeard was his pet dog that the family had put down, he was actually Sherlock's childhood friend Victor Trevor, and Redbeard was the nickname he used when they played pirates. As it turns out, Sherlock's sister Eurus drowned Victor in a well in a fit of jealousy. The memory of this traumatized Sherlock so much that he essentially rewrote his memories and recast Redbeard as a dog.
• The Sopranos: One of the elements of Tony Soprano's panic attacks involves the sight of meat, specifically gabagool. With probing from Dr. Melfi, Tony recounts a time as a child when he witnessed his father extort the butcher Mr. Satriale, culminating in him cutting off Satriale's finger. When his mother cut into the meat his father brought home, he had his first fainting attack. Dr. Melfi deduces that the meat, his mother and father’s sexuality, and his realization of his family’s involvement in organized crime are what started triggering his episodes.
• Squid Game is built on this. The competition itself twists innocent children's games into battle royale horror designed to torment the poverty-stricken competitors afflicted by pressures of society and maturity. The final round even pits two childhood best friends into a blood duel because they are too broken at this point to regain that friendship.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "Gernot and Strudel", Klaus comes clean as to why he doesn't share and why he trapped the Smiths in puppet bodies. As a German youth, he was a fan of the aforementioned German educational show. As it would happen, one episode they filmed focused on sharing, and Klaus - then a human - was present at the taping. When he went to give a hug to one of the characters, he accidentally electrocuted her puppeteer, which led to two other puppeteers getting electrocuted as well ^note and later that day, the final puppeteer committing suicide . The episode was banned, and although the characters were replaced with new puppeteers, it was never the same. Klaus struggled with the guilt of this for the rest of his life.
  Francine: Jesus, Klaus! and that's why you became a fish?
  Klaus: What? No! That's how I became traumatized! But after sharing it, I feel so much better! Thank you!
• BoJack Horseman: Sarah Lynn's character's nickname on Horsin' Around, bestowed by Bojack's character, was an affectionate "Prickly Muffin". Her tumultuous career as a child star, not helped by her family’s exploitation or her costars’ outright dismissiveness, led to her becoming a pop music sensation as an adult, albeit one with major substance abuse issues. One of her chart-topping pop songs was an overtly sexual number called "Prickly Muffin".
• Family Guy: Patrick Pewterschmidt suffered a nervous breakdown as a child when he walked in on his mother Barbara having an affair with Jackie Gleason. This led to him being institutionalized. When Lois was granted custody of him, a run in with Peter where he dressed up as Ralph Kramden and repeatedly exclaimed "Pow, right in the kisser!" triggered the memory and drove him to become a serial killer. As a result he started strangling fat people.
• Futurama:
  • Played for Laughs in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch". While trying to convince Amy to move in with him, Kif takes her to the ship's holodeck and shows her several ideas he has for homes they could have. In one, he programmed in the pony she always wanted as a child.^note She never got it because her parents said she had too many ponies already When the holodeck malfunctions, the pony becomes evil and (much like the other holodeck monsters), tries to kill everyone.
  • Played with in "Quids Game". When the group is kidnapped by aliens during Fry’s birthday, they forced them to reenact murder games based on the ones that Fry had at his childhood birthday party. Fry has sore memories about the party, as that is when his friends left him believing he was cheating in every game, and he grows increasingly angry when everyone thinks he is cheating somehow as he survives each round. Unbeknownst to Fry, his parents wanted to make his birthday special and helped him win the games, unaware that it alienated him from his friends.
• Gravity Falls: After meeting a Nice Girl named Melody, Soos takes her to dinner at Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizza-matronic Jamboree, a place they both loved as kids. Unfortunately, in true Gravity Falls fashion, Soos' video game girlfriend comes back for revenge and turns all of the restaurant's robots against them. After Soos defeats her, he apologizes to Melody (who admits it isn't as bad as that time she dated a magician and doesn't blame him at all).
• King of the Hill: The episode "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying" shows that Hank has performance anxiety when he tries to shoot a rifle. While he looks for any excuse to get out of the father-son shooting tournament at the Arlen gun club, Bobby's disappointment, especially considering how he's an amazing shot, forces Hank to confront his fear, which happened because of Cotton berating him as a child and essentially browbeating him to the point where he had the shakes. Eventually, Hank goes to see a sports psychologist who, through the use of visualization, gets Hank out of his own head. Hank also confronts and stands up for himself against Cotton, who showed up for the tournament to cheer on Bobby.
• The Owl House: Inverted in "Understanding Willow". One of Willow's most traumatic childhood memories was her former best friend Amity kicking her out of her birthday party, telling her that she was too weak to be worthy of being Amity's friend. After Amity tries to erase that memory, and instead nearly wipes out all of Willow's memories by accident, she and Luz are forced to travel into Willow's self-conscience to repair the damage. While there, they are confronted by Willow's inner self, who tries to destroy Amity for all the harm she's done to Willow. In order to get the vengeful psyche to back off, Amity decides to show her that traumatic day from her own perspective - her parents were angry with her for inviting Willow to her birthday party and demanded that Amity break things off with Willow once and for all, threatening to use their connections to make sure that Willow got rejected from Hexside unless Amity complied. She explains to Willow that she didn't try to erase Willow's memories of her because she's embarrassed of having been her friend, she did it because she's ashamed of how she betrayed her in order to appease her parents. With this added context, Willow is finally able to make peace with that memory, and she and Amity are finally able to start rebuilding their friendship.
• This trope is an essential part of Pibby. The main plot of the series is that a virus is spreading through a TV channel (specifically Cartoon Network) and turning all of its beloved characters into heavily-pixelated murderous zombies. Part of the series' horror is meant to appeal to the discomfort/fear some viewers would feel at seeing some of their favorite childhood characters turned into monsters.