Fact-checking the vocabulary of Stranger Things

I got into this briefly on facebook, but I'd like to take a closer look at some of the language in Stranger Things. Have you seen this show? I knew I was going to watch it the moment I saw the part of the trailer where Winona Ryder (!) is yelling about the one kidnapped kid out of a hundred. I loved that part. I am here for unhinged Winona Ryder, and she is unhinged through the whole series. It's great.

But as I watched, I kept wondering, "is this really how we talked in the 80s?" Here are some specific things I noticed.

1. Douchebag. The kids in Stranger Things say this a lot. Jeremy remembers hearing it as a kid but I don't remember hearing it until the early 2000s. I thought there was no way this was period-correct. So I checked the OED! Turns out it was used as early as the 1960s to mean an "unattractive co-ed," and its use extended after that to someone of either gender. So it's possible and even likely that this is legitimate language for early 80s kids.

2. This sucks. Again, I was feeling pretty confident that this was a late-80s-at-the-earliest thing, making Stranger Things' use of it period-incorrect. But the OED says it was in use as American slang in the 1970s! I do think this phrase has lost some of its potency over time. I used to think it was really rude, and I still kind of do, but I say it from time to time because there is literally no other way in the English language to convey its sentiment in as few words.

3. Bada**. This one might be a bit of a stretch. OED has it in use in the 50s and 60s but the sense is off. They have an example from the Chicago Tribune in 1985 that is spot-on, but which comes first - use in small-town, little-kid America, or use in the Chicago Tribune? I don't know. If the latter, then this is probably a bit anachronistic.

4. Mouth-breather. I loved the deployment of this insult in Stranger Things...but I don't think its use is legitimate. OED has one use in Maclean's (a Canadian magazine? I guess?) in 1985, and another in Esquire in 1998. That's it. And yet, of all the words on this list, I would have picked 'mouth-breather' as the one most likely to be legit for 1983. It feels right. Maybe kid insults are just that timeless.

5. R-rated. A mom in the series offers to let her sick child pick out any video from the video store, "even an R-rated one." My period-correct alarm bells went off for about two seconds before I remembered that it was the PG-13 rating that didn't exist until 1984, not the R one.

6. "One step ahead of the Russians." When we talked about spying and space and missiles in the 80s, did we say "Russians," or "Soviets"? From my own memory, I think we actually did say "Russians." I just ran "Russians" through the Brown Corpus and it looks like we talked about the Russian nuclear threat all the time, not just the Soviet one. So this one checks out, too.

What else about Stranger Things struck you as particularly period- correct or incorrect?