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Tad was the title character in a dark parody of ALF, which aired for a very short time in early 1988. In the show, the not-Tanners found him (an adorable walking, talking cat) rummaging through their garbage one night and proceeded to "adopt" him. They then strung him along, convincing him they were the only ones he could trust, because the outside world was full of awful, scary people who would experiment on him! In truth, they were actually preparing him as a sacrifice to some mysterious entity (strongly implied to be ALF himself somehow) while freeloading off of his powers. After the creators got slapped with a cease-and-desist, the directors ended the show, but not before putting out one last episode... where the sacrifice went through. Very brutally. It was arguably the catalyst for scrutiny surrounding puppet media as a whole, especially among prominent fundamentalist cult Center for Children and Culture. (Didn't help that the CCC's disillusioned "rising star" Jesse V. took inspiration from the finale a year later, ending his show Flock of God in a similar fashion.) Fortunately, Tad's puppet body was completely unharmed, but in his mind that's almost worse. Puppets tend to consider everything that happens in their show 100% real, so remembering such a horrific event while being living proof that it never actually happened... Needless to say, he has some issues.
