In mere minutes after learning of Robin Williams' death, it began to sink in just how influential he's been throughout our lives. Entertaining generations of people attracted to his excitable, energetic charm and sharp wit, his films didn't only inform our growing up, but totally punctuated our experience of both cinema-going in the days when we still went to the cinema and, well, our entire childhoods.
Here are just some of the memorable moments of his career, which have stuck with you in ways you might not have quite realised until today.
That time he taught us how weird the real world is
OK, so Mork & Mindy was broadcast in the ’70s, but via re-runs, our understanding was that in the sitcom, where Robin played an alien sent to report on earth by his leader Orson, he eventually shows, very innocently, how strange the world and its manners are.
That time we got upset over a pair of trainers
If you haven't seen Jumanji, first of all, see Jumanji, it's incredible. Secondly, we won't spoil it for you (your life's already been spoiled enough by not watching this sooner) but there's a sort of plotline with some trainers, in amongst the magic and the elephants and the manic monkeys, that'll totally tug on your heartstrings.
That time we ended up busting a gut to get into the cinema to see One Hour Photo, thinking it was going to be funny
We sneaked into this film a little underage because we assumed a Robin Williams film would be a kids' film, or at least a fun film. He was so good that we didn't even check the storyline before going in. Robin plays a lonely, creepy photo developer, it's very light on the lols, and actually pretty scary at points, showing he could really play more than a clown.
That time he looked kind of handsome as a swashbuckling forever-teen
Playing Peter Pan in Hook, he brought the role just about enough silly charm for it to totally compete with the Disney cartoon version in our affections.
That time old women could be sexy
Mrs Doubtfire, the heartfelt tale of a man cross-dressing to be closer to his kids, was full of slapstick laughs like the above. Maybe it's a little old and fusty now, PC-wise, but it had its heart in the right place at the time.
That time we saw an older sibling crying to a film about poetry
We couldn't tell you exactly what happens in Dead Poets Society, because we only watched it through an older sibling who was bawling at it and mounting chairs in the living room. But we're definitely going to revisit it.
That time he totally owned a cartoon role
Along with Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo, Eddie Murphy in Shrek and Tom Hanks in Toy Story, Robin's erratic voice was so utterly recognisable as he played the Genie in Aladdin that you almost don't remember the cartoon bit of him.
That time he was basically a moral compass in Good Will Hunting
There are oodles of other moments, his screech of 'Good Morning, Vietnam', that time he made us basically cry throughout the complicated maths of* Jack*, where he played a man who would always look four times as old as his peers, and intrigued us in ways we might have not quite understood in films like* Toys*, The Birdcage and To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, which, despite their names, were never quite family viewing.
Sadly, 63 is too young for someone to die, especially someone who still had so much career ahead of him (there are four recently shot films of him yet to be released). It's some small consolation, then, that Robin left behind such a strong legacy of films that, as President Obama put it in his message of condolence 'made us laugh… made us cry'. By looking back at his career, we also get a nostalgia-filled trip through our childhood.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.