🧸 Rewatching childhood cartoons now hits differently as an adult

Put on an old cartoon from my own childhood last weekend purely out of simple nostalgia while genuinely feeling under the weather and wanting something familiar and low effort, and ended up genuinely surprised by how differently certain specific episodes actually read now as an adult compared to how I honestly remembered experiencing them as a kid originally watching it. Some specific jokes I never even properly noticed or registered as a child turned out to be genuinely aimed squarely at adult viewers all along, clever, occasionally fairly dark humor woven quietly into what I had always simply assumed was purely straightforward children's content back then without a second thought. There was also a genuinely surprising emotional depth to a couple of specific episodes that completely went over my head entirely as a kid, one storyline dealing with a character's actual grief that I honestly do not think I even fully registered or understood the first time around, but that hit noticeably harder watching it again now with considerably more actual life experience of my own behind me. Mentioned this specific experience to a sibling who watched the exact same show growing up alongside me, and she had a nearly identical specific reaction rewatching a completely different episode herself recently, suggesting this particular show was genuinely more layered and thoughtfully written than either of us ever properly gave it real credit for as actual kids ourselves at the time. This has made me want to actually go back and rewatch a few more specific childhood favorites deliberately now, curious whether other shows I remember fondly hold up in this exact same way, revealing genuinely new layers now that I am actually watching with an adult's proper perspective rather than a child's more limited original one. Has anyone else rewatched a specific childhood cartoon recently and discovered genuinely new layers you completely missed entirely as a kid, and which specific show actually surprised you the most this particular way?

Colour and pacing choices from that era hold up surprisingly well against most newer stuff aimed at the same age group, at least to my eyes watching now as a grown adult with nothing much better to compare it against on a slow weekend afternoon at home. The writing also occasionally sneaks in a joke clearly meant only for the parents sitting quietly in the room.

My nephew watched an old cartoon of mine recently and asked why the humour felt so mean compared to what he usually watches on his own tablet, which caught me off guard since I never noticed that as a kid myself. Rewatching a couple of episodes alone afterward, he had a fair point about some of the jokes landing considerably rougher now than I remembered them being back then.