'Legends Of The Hidden Temple' Was Nightmare Fuel
Put on your 90's caps (so a bucket hat probably) because we're about to revisit Nickelodeon's Legends of The Hidden Temple. Legends of The Hidden Temple was like Indiana Jones meets Jeopardy! meets American Gladiator meets child protective services, as six teams of two faced off in a series of physical and mental challenges, the last remaining team being granted the honor of doing "the temple run" and the chance to win big prizes. If you don't remember Hidden Temple then here's a great video taking you through the history:
But, we assume you do remember Legends of The Hidden Temple because the only way you could forget Nickelodeon's most popular game show of the early '90s is if you were a kid who didn't have access to a television, or you were a competitor on the show, who like many, was so traumatized that you permanently blocked the memory out of your mind.
Yes, for as scary as Hidden Temple looked to the viewers, it must have been twice as terrifying for the contestants of the show, especially this part:
That adult human jumping out of a pile of packaging peanuts is known as a "Temple Guardian" and it was their job to literally scare children and remove them from the Temple Run. It couldn't be more 90's how weird and unnecessary this was. You can just picture the network executive pitching this saying, "What if, right at the moment when these kids are in their most emotionally heightened state, we have a grown man in a mask jumps out and look like he's about to grab them?"
Keeli, the girl screaming in that clip, is now an adult and has gone on the record to say the temple guards "are the scariest thing imaginable. Nothing is scarier, and I will stand by that statement until the day I die."
It's not hard to see why. Imagine you're a kid having already spent 14 hours filming this awesome, albeit creepy gameshow. You're exhausted. The fumes from all of the artificial fog floating up from the moat have made you lightheaded. An animatronic rock is shouting riddles at you that not even the writer of the Da Vinci Code could follow. You're told to run a janky obstacle course where apparently some of the equipment doesn't work and then this happens:
"I'm 31, and I can't go to haunted houses. I'm deathly afraid of things popping out of closets and doors, etc., at me. I can't watch scary movies where things jump out and scare people. Can I say that this is directly related to that? No, not 100 percent, but ..."
Ah, the 90's sure were crazy. You could almost call it traumatizingly wonderful. Sadly, Quibi was looking to reboot Legends of The Hidden Temple right before quarantine hit they realized no one wants Quibi.
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Top Image: Nickelodeon
