Now two separate Dungeons & Dragons-inspired films (don’t ask about the first one), the D&D IP has come a very long way from its controversial past. If you want to find a good example of the changing zeitgeist of pop culture and the ascendancy of nerd culture, just look at D&D.

By 1982, the trembling parents of America had yet another form of media to freak out about, this time a Risk spin-off. Debuting in the mid-70s from the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the general rules and play-styles of D&D were devised by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who crated a fantasy-board game in which players would take turns playing as their own personas, plundering dungeons, taking influence from military strategy titles. The stat-based title would influence video game RPG design for decades. You’re welcome, Skyrim fans.

The most bizarre development was not the lasting influence, but the sheer amount of villainization the board game garnered in such a brief lifespan. Dungeons and Dragons became public enemy number 1 in the 80s. If you played the game you might have as well have worn an upside-down cross. The dread over elves, bards, and paladins reached unacceptable proportions when the cautionary film Mazes and Monsters hit TV screens, produced by all people, the company that makes Dawn dishsoap. Oh, and it also happened to be the film debut of one of greatest stars in film history, but he probably would prefer that you skip this one ... Don’t.

An Epidemic of Childhood Imagination

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Paramount Pictures

The game itself is fairly simple, participants rolling dice to determine their fates within the game. Sometimes you died, sometimes you slayed the orc, each toss of the die determining whether your designated action was successful or not.

Great, you say. No, children creating their own stories and working together is bad. That’s what very uptight parents thought at least. The plague of 20-sided die was indoctrinating youngsters into the esoteric ways of paganism and demon worship, critics declared despite any hard evidence. Televangelist Pat Robertson warned for over 30 years, “People got into role-playing and the next thing you know they were on a fantasy world that really captured them." This innocent board game was supposedly the greatest demonic gateway drug.

Related: Best Movies Inspired by the Satanic Panic, Ranked

All of this was, and still is, quite laughable, but in the 80s, with a big nudge from the media, parents were convinced that a board game company was a Satanic conspiracy. Dungeons and Dragons was but a small part of a larger social panic that ended up ruining people’s lives, this chapter but one tiny sliver of the complete story of the delusional panic over teens' entertainment choices, whether it be horror films, heavy metal, or games. Deaths were pinned on a children’s game, while the real causes went ignored. Gygax took the abuse diplomatically, calmly explaining that it was all about escapism and getting lost in a fantasy, and that "all of us at times feel a little inadequate in dealing with the modern world," (via New York Times). But the backlash was crashing down on TSR like a tidal wave.

Clueless Parents Meet Clueless TV Executives

Mazes and Monsters
McDermott Productions
Procter & Gamble Productions (PGP)

Inspired by the missing person case of a Michigan State University student, author William Dear singled out the game as a nefarious threat to America’s easily-impressionable youth. The TV movie Mazes and Monsters took up the baton.

In the movie, Robbie, played by Tom Hanks, and his friends partake in what should be a simple board game. However, Robbie, going by his in-game avatar name, Pardue, begins to take it way too seriously. In his first film appearance, Hanks starred as a young adult on the verge of a breakdown, believing he really was his character inside a fantasy world, refusing to respond to his real name when in the fugue state, believing there were monsters pursuing him as he attempted magic spells, in search of a critical hit.

Despite the pleas of his game’s “maze controller,” (likely a change from D&D’s "dungeon master" to not invite a lawsuit for copyright infringement) Hanks climbs to the top of the World Trade Center in the climactic finale, forcing his friends to play along with his fever dream. We’re not going to spoil it for you, but if you really want to see the best scene in the whole movie, here you go. This film is truly a grab-bag of demented, retro nostalgia.

Related: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Cast and Character Guide

A Far Out Game

Tom Hanks first role
McDermott Productions
Procter & Gamble Productions

As a drama, it falls short. As social commentary, it’s no better. As a black comedy, it’s rightfully gone down as a cult classic, full of quotable lines. It's probably one of Hanks' more hilarious roles, though that is clearly not the intention of the filmmakers nor actors. Robbie takes LARPing to a whole new level, while reviving his own version of the Mid-Atlantic accent that no film star used in thirty years to fully capture his character. It's the definition of a "good bad movie," not in small part because of the totally awesome box art depicting a bunch of dice in a pool of blood. The film’s modern promoters steered into the silliness, emphasizing this fashionable cult aspect of the film. Mazes and Monsters a classic example of a film that got a new lease on life, albeit only as a joke.

Not really a shocker that Hanks would make his bones as a comedic actor immediately after this. He would need to wait another decade before anyone would ever believe him as a serious actor after watching this goofy TV movie. In a side note, following the release of Dear’s book and Mazes and Monsters, D&D’s sales increased through the roof, taking advantage of free advertising. Call it the Pat Robertson effect. If you don’t take this seriously, and enjoy it merely for the po-faced, out-of-touch after-school special that it is, it’s enjoyable. In a weird, dark way it does capture the terror of dissociative identity disorder, but that’s not really what it was trying to do.