During the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Nike aired a commercial. Okay. Big deal. It’s fucking Nike. They always advertise during the Olympics. It also starred middle distance runner Suzy Favor Hamilton, who competed in three separate Summer Olympics (for those curious, she never medaled, which might be why you’ve never heard of her before depending on your age). Okay, so it’s a Nike commercial with an Olympic athlete. Why the fuck is Scrat making a header about it?

Because it was banned.

For this wasn’t a typical Olympic ad. It featured Hamilton alone in a spooky house in the woods, and just as she’s seemingly getting ready to turn in for the night (presumably after a long day of running middle distances), a maniac suddenly appears in her home (well, maybe it’s just her summer home, I have no idea). The psycho is essentially Michael Myers if he used a chainsaw (a weapon everyone associates with Jason for some reason, even though he doesn’t use one), and he tries to tear Hamilton to shreds even though she isn’t having sex. A chase ensues, and Hamilton is ultimately able to outrun Michael Leatherface Voorhees, because she is wearing Nikes (it’s also possible her being an Olympic athlete and everything may have had something to do with it too).

Now, by the standards of the genre it is spoofing, the ad is tame. There is no blood, no one dies, and there’s no nudity (something which the creators of Crystal Lake would apparently approve of). But for someone who had never watched a slasher movie before–including a sheltered, young, naive, innocent Scrat–the commercial was terrifying. I have a very vivid memory of being so upset by this ad that I had to watch a Sesame Street video to calm down in order to get myself to be able to sleep that night (it was Big Bird Sings, and why do I remember that?). Look, the scariest film I had watched at that stage of my life was Jurassic Park. I wasn’t raised on horror. The point is that it scared me.

And I wasn’t the only one. What Nike and to some extent NBC didn’t take into account is that plenty of young children watch the Olympics with their families, and soon, they were being flooded with furious phone calls from parents (and maybe some emails, but mind you, email was still so new that they made an entire Tom Hanks movie about it). But that might not even be the real reason the ad got pulled. No, the main motivator might’ve been something far more stupid. You see, there was concern that the commercial was providing “false advertising” that if you were wearing Nikes, they would give you a better chance of surviving a home invader. Yes, the commercial which any adult–and not silly young Scrat–will recognize as a dumb parody of Halloween the 13th is clearly telling customers that their sneakers will be instrumental if they ever encounter Freddy Kruger in real life. Yup. I’m sure that was the logic behind this totally serious PSA of an advertisment.

After a handful of airings, Nike permanently pulled the commercial long before the Olympics were even over, and they’ve never shown it anywhere since. Heck, they haven’t even put in on their YouTube channel for shits and giggles. It’s something Nike wants you forget they ever made, and that’s the reason I made this header. Because I never forgive. And I never forget.

Have the power today, y’all! Be safe, be well, be you!