Biting The Hand Humor / Western Animation

Real subtle, Disney.

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Code", Mr. Robinson's browser has an enormous number of "stupid toolbars" sucking up his bandwidth, and, as the Wattersons use his wi-fi instead of their own, they are unable to use the internet. One of those toolbars has a Cartoon Network logo.
• In the American Dad! episode "Less Money, Mo' Problems", the end credits has a preview for the fictional show Shoe Police (a Call-Back to a joke earlier in the episode) that is reviewed as "A new low for FOX".
• Amphibia:
  • "New Wartwood" shows Marcy attempting to give the town a renovation in the style of Disney Theme Parks, which subsequently goes awry and ends up playing out similarly to the infamously-troubled opening day of Disneyland.
  • In "Hop Till You Drop," one of the accessories in the Create a Carnivore shop resembles Mickey Mouse's ears and face; causing Polly to respond, "Hmm, no thanks."
• Animaniacs:
  • After being forced to switch from FOX to The WB, practically every episode uses the rotating gag credit at the end to bash their new network: "Be The First Kid on Your Block To Actually Watch The WB!"
  • Also in "The Sunshine Squirrels", Skippy tells Slappy that her agent got her a spot on a network TV special.
    Slappy: You mean the WB?
    Skippy: No, on a real network.
    [cut to Wakko doing a rimshot]
  • The show also made fun of Warner Bros. in general, which is natural, seeing as a lot of it took place on the Warner movie lot. As early as the first episode, Mr. Plotz, enraged at the siblings' escape, ranted, "I haven't been this upset since we made Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead!"
  • One of the things that Wakko would respond to Yakko's "It's that time again!" line in the "Wheel of Morality" segments was "To make the FOX censors cry?".
  • In "Turkey Jerky", the Warners are trying to protect a turkey from Miles Standish, who wants to serve it at the first Thanksgiving. Yakko responds to Standish's request to "give me the bird!" with "We'd love to, really, but the Fox censors won't allow it!".
  • "The Taming of the Screwy":
    Yakko and Wakko: We're the Warner Brothers!
    Michelle Pfeiffer: Like the studio?
    Yakko: Not very much, but we don't have a choice.
• Like its predecessor, Animaniacs (2020) pokes frequent fun at Warner Bros. and the industry in general.
  • Its very first episode makes fun of the tendency of Hollywood to reboot old shows instead of making new projects (which also doubles as Self-Deprecation). The Warners also enthusiastically push aside several other Warner Bros. characters when returning to the lot.
  • While the first two seasons received a 13-episode order, the third season was cut to only 10 episodes. To express grief at this decision, the "2 New Seasons" contract the Grim Reaper offers the Warners in the intro now reads "2 10/13 New Seasons."
  • "Planet Warner" is a Wildlife Commentary Spoof about a typical day on the Warner movie lot. When a producer tries to pitch a new character to Nora and the executives, the latter group performs a "ritualistic dance" to intimidate the producer and then rejects the poor character to fend for itself in the wild.
  Narrator: A pack of hungry executives will feast on the carcass of once-popular comic book IP for four, possibly even five sequels. [...]The world of entertainment can be a cruel and often unforgiving place.
  • The "Santamaniacs" segment from the Christmas Episode begins with the narrator lamenting how the Warner Bros. crew has to work on Christmas Eve due to the CEO's selfishness.
• Arthur:
  • In one episode, Buster claims that a program that he's making is going to be "edutainment." The characters respond to this with an "ew." The chapter-book adaptation of that episode goes even further, with Brain stating that edutainment is supposed to be a blend of education and entertainment, but often ends up being the worst of both. Mind you, Arthur IS an Edutainment Show.
  • The show features a Barney Expy called Mary Moo-Cow, who D.W. loves and Arthur can't stand. It's a PBS show making fun of a PBS show.
• After the original version of the episode was rejected for not meeting Broadcast Standards and Practices guidelines, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Gee Whiz" was rewritten to be an extended slam of said organization, complete with a filmstrip about network standards that ends by congratulating the viewer for making "a bland show that no one can relate to." A filmstrip that makes its point by showing the incorrect and then the correct way to blow a nun's head off.
  • Another example in the one hundredth episode has Shake trying to push the show's merchandise at the Adult Swim Shop, saying they "sell all our stuff for more than you can buy in other places."
  • In another example, Shake tells Meatwad that he can no longer watch Futurama because "we're too cheap to get it."
  • "The Granite Family" mocks Time-Warner for its overzealous efforts to get music to which they own the copyright off YouTube and other such sites with Time Warner, a network executive who travels through time to warn people about the evils of unauthorized use of others' intellectual property.
  • "Jumpy George" has a mother tell Carl that her children are allowed to watch only cartoons, and that means no Cartoon Network. This is a jab at CN's abundance of live-action shows at the time.
• Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Has the episode Silver Scream features the Gang going to a studio, where a director, Lori Logan, frequently struggles with her boss Ray Fletcher, who keeps mandating sloppy, out-of-touch changes to the movie she's trying to complete. Given that Be Cool, Scooby-Doo apparently had its fair share of behind-the-scenes problems that stemmed from frequent Executive Meddling, it's not hard to see the episode as the crew condemning their bosses for making their experience working on the series miserable.
• Big Mouth has No Fourth Wall and frequently makes fun of Netflix and its viewers. One example in Season 2 (which was even used in the on-site trailer) has Nick tell Gina to get a Netflix account, and offers to just share his password so she doesn't have to pay, resulting in the joke being "censored".
  • Season 3 had a stealthy one. Andrew turns down Maury's request that Andrew kill himself by saying no teenager should kill themselves. Maury agrees, citing "Netflix legal" and then turns to the camera saying, "No teenager should kill themselves even though it makes for captivating programming." This is very likely a Take That! against fellow Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which had then-recently undergone edits and extra content warnings after a long backlash against its onscreen depiction of teenage suicide.
  • Also in Season 3, "The ASSes" has Jay put a suspicious emphasis on Amazon Prime being the number one streaming service.
  • When Andrew rants over the credits of the Season 7 finale, he mocks John Mulaney for being a consulting producer, as Big Mouth only does ten episodes a year compared to Everybody Loves Raymond getting 22-episode seasons.
  • Human Resources (2022): In the pilot, Connie tries to make Maury feel better by pointing out that he has two shows on Netflix. Maury waves it off by saying everyone's got a show on Netflix.
• BoJack Horseman:
  • Season 3 contains a b-plot that seems to be mocking the Netflix original series Fuller House. Bradley, the actor who played Ethan in Show Within a Show 90s horse-raises-three-human-orphans sitcom Horsin' Around, wants to do a reboot series called Ethan Around about his grownup character raising three horses.
  • "The BoJack Horseman Show" has a gag where Mr Peanutbutter is doing a "Blockbuster Original Series" where you go to the video store and rent one DVD of a series at a time...
  • Season 5 has BoJack join Philbert, a drama series aired on a streaming service. While this mostly targets Netflix competitors like Amazon who were not originally streaming services (the website on which Philbert is streamed was originally a site for telling time), a few jokes also function as jabs against Netflix shows. For example, the time card used during the premiere informs us that the pilot episode is "a tight hour and eighteen minutes."
  • In "The Kidney Stays in the Picture," Princess Carolyn and Lenny brainstorn ways to end an assistants' strike without actually giving them what they want. She compares this to how networks satiate showrunners by giving them Vanity Plates at the end of the episode, then sell the shows to streaming services that auto-skip the credits so nobody ever sees the vanity cards. You know, like Netflix does with its shows.
  • Inverted with "Angela", where Angela praises Michael Eisner, founder of The Tornante Company that distributed BoJack, as a "compassionate and progressive individual."
• In one episode of The Boondocks, as Robert beats Riley, he tells the grandson to stop watching [adult swim], which happens to be the late night block that airs the show.
• In the Captain Sturdy pilot Captain Sturdy: Back in Action, which originally aired on Cartoon Network's What A Cartoon! Show, Moid's death ray can be seen obliterating a Cartoon Network satellite.
• Chowder: In the episode "Gazpacho Stands Up", Gazpacho stops Chowder from scribbling on the screen and wipes off the markings when the camera cuts close enough for him to do so. Chowder asks, "What about that one?" while pointing to the Cartoon Network logo bug. Gazpacho taps on it while saying, "Eh, that one doesn't come off. I've tried."
• Clone High: The first episode of the second season, which came out two decades after the series was Screwed by the Network, has a gag where Scudworth accidentally burns himself with coffee when Candide Sampson enters his office. To cool himself off, he splashes more coffee on himself, only to recoil again. Butlertron then snarks with an Aside Glance, "Yes, why would anybody do anything a second time after they got burned so badly the first tiiiiiime?"
• The Critic during its Fox run:
  • One of Jay's voiceovers during the show's Eye Catch:
    "You're watching Fox. Shame on you!"
  • In the episode "A Song For Margo":
    Margo: Johnny is just like you, Jay. He's not afraid of anything. Not even the TV networks.
    Jay: Well, they're all pretty crummy. (Turns to the camera when the FOX logo appears) Except for FOX. The last bastion of quality programming. (Does a salute) God bless you, little logo.
  • In the episode "All The Duke's Men":
    "It's a giant horse's ass! (Turns to the camera) You're watching FOX. Give us 10 minutes, we'll give you an ass."
  • And from another bumper:
    "You're watching Fox, where we can say the word 'boobies'!"
  • From the episode "From Chunk To Hunk":
    "Ah yes. Sweet, non-judgmental Fox Network, where coming in third is a triumph!"
• Duckman frequently made jabs at the USA Network.
  • In "Papa Oom M.O.W. M.O.W.", Duckman cuts a deal with USA to air the movie about his life story.
    Bernice: USA? Are they on at night?
    Duckman: Are you kidding? Dozens of people watch USA!
  • And again, during the movie.
    Cornfed: Did we really need all that degrading sex and gratuitous stomach-churning violence?
    Duckman: Hey, USA had certain guidelines.
  • "Color of Naught" has several jokes poking fun at USA for airing them on Saturday nights alongside a show with an incompatible audience. King Chicken even says USA is okay with him killing the casts of both shows, as they can save money by just rerunning Silk Stalkings.
  • One where USA wasn't the target was in "How to Suck in Business Without Really Trying". Viacom, the rightsholder to the show at the time, was parodied as Variecom.
• Eek! The Cat has an episode of Eek visiting his own production studio, to find out that series writers are treated as slaves, being forced to write to the point of getting crazy of it and haven't seen the outside world for a long time and that executives will do anything to get their way, including riding them over with a steamroller.
• The Fairly OddParents! special "Channel Chasers" has a joke when they reach the end credits to the show Adolescent Genetically Altered Karate Cows (a ''TMNT parody), when Wanda comments on how fast the credits are moving.
  Cosmo: They're animation credits. They move so fast because nobody cares about them.
  • It's made more humorous seeing that one of the names in the credits is Butch Hartman, the series' creator. During the fight scene on the credits, they blow the name up.
• Fish Hooks features the Hamster Channel, airing programs that parody Disney Channel live-action sitcoms.
• One episode of Freakazoid! was interrupted by a "special report" from The WB network. The anchorman is Freakazoid, who repeatedly asks what "The WB" even means. "The Water Bucket? The Wimpy Boy? The Wet Bananas?! I don't know!! What, the Weird Butt?! What? I'm asking!!" Cue a Beat, then a cut back to the "special report" title card, while the announcer says "This has been a special report from the Weird Butt network."
• Adam Reed (creator of Frisky Dingo and Archer) has made a Running Gag of making sponsorship deals with Car Companies and mocking them in his shows with comically blatant Product Placement.
  Killface: Shut up! There's a clear line between entertainment and advertising, and you've bloody well crossed it. Those 18-34's that you're so keen on detest being pitched to, and when I destroy the world, they won't have much use for the new Scion TC's 17-inch alloy wheels! Turn that off there. Stop it! I won't be your pitchman, you hear me! I hate this country.
• Futurama:
  • The intro to the first movie is a long string of jokes where the cancellation of the show is compared to Planet Express' flight license being canceled by the "Box Network," which is in turn an unending string of attacks on Fox for canceling the show in the first place.
  • The Couch Gag tagline for that movie is "It just won't stay dead!"
  • In the first string of lampshade jokes that opens the movie, the Professor mentions that the executives responsible for their cancellation had been fired, then beaten up, badly mauled and finally ground into a fine powder that was then packaged and sold as "'Torgo's Executive Powder,' a product with a million and one uses", which the Professor uses to powder his crotch.
  • Fox is repeatedly the target of jabs during the series. Such as this exchange from a flashback to start off "When Aliens Attack":
    Fry: Wow, so this is a real TV station, huh?
    Technician: Well, it's a Fox affiliate.
    • Fry then spills his drink on the control console, knocking the station off the air. The technician panics, but Fry is confident that nobody will notice.
      Technician: Oh my God. You knocked FOX off the air!
      Fry: Pfft, like anyone on Earth cares.
  • "Mars University" ends with Gunther the monkey becoming getting an MBA and becoming CEO of FOX, after getting his super-intelligence hat damaged to the point where it only radiates about-average human intelligence.
  • The trope strikes again in the very first Comedy Central episode, which opens with a still of the Hypnotoad while a voiceover by Bender tells the viewer, on the count of three, to forget the show was ever cancelled by idiots and revived by... bigger idiots.^note This was redubbed in later airings and streaming into a different Self-Deprecation joke that doesn't mention the cancellation: "This has been a test of the Emergency Hypnotoad System. Had this been an actual hypnosis, you would go limp and watch whatever crap comes on next. Comin' up next: Futurama!" This is something of an inversion of this trope, for instead of mocking their old network, they mock the one by which they were just picked up.
  • Back when they were on Fox, the crew go on a tour of Hollywood, where the tour guide says the 30th Century Fox logo spotlights are used to blind pilots so that they can film the resulting plane crashes. The joke being that Fox makes pilots crash and burn.
  • In "The Route of All Evil," Dwight laments that Hermes and Farnsworth treat him and Cubert like little kids, despite the fact that "we're old enough to find the Fox network infantile."
  • In "Möbius Dick", Amy confronts Leela regarding the latter's deteriorating sanity noting that she "has gone from crazy like a fox, to crazy like FOX News."
  • "Cold Warriors" has a science fair being judged by Buzz Aldrin, who is introduced as "Our very special guest: he walked on the moon, and now he is judging a high school science contest. Truly a man who can, and will, do anything". Buzz Aldrin himself voiced his character: a man who once walked on the moon but is now doing Futurama.
  • "The Impossible Stream," the first episode of the revival on Hulu, is built around taking potshots at Hulu and television executives in general. To save Fry from a risky binge-watching session, Leela and Bender pitch a revival of All My Circuits to the fourth-most-popular streaming service, Fulu, which picks up "any old crap." Despite its massive fanbase, the Execu-bots don't greenlight the show until they see a rise in advertiser sales, and then they later cancel the show out of nowhere despite saying they love it.
• An episode of Garfield and Friends, "The Discount of Monte Cristo", predicted the reason the show ended. The episode is all about Aloysius cutting the show's budget. In the episode, Orson hated Aloysius ruining the story by firing the show's staff in order to keep its budget low. The reason for Garfield and Friends' cancellation is that CBS wanted to dice the show's budget, and the show's creators refused to let the show suffer the budget cuts.
  • Speaking of Aloysius Pig, there's also this little gem from "Kiddie Korner":
    "Da Dum! The Network!"^note The name of the network is revealed at the end of the episode and is called "SUUS The Network. Try saying that out loud, if you must.
  • In the same episode, Aloysius is planning "The Fall Schedule" with a dart board.
• Gravity Falls:
  • A promotional poster created for San Diego Comic-Con 2013 features a gnome puking a rainbow on the Disney Channel logo.
  • "Boyz Crazy" has Wendy dismissing a boy band as "just a manufactured product of the bloated corporate music industry," an obvious jab at Disney's forays into pop music, particularly The Jonas Brothers.
  • In "Gideon Rises", the font used on the logo for Gideon Gleeful's planned theme park is blatantly based on the logo for Disneyland. Not exactly flattering to associate Disney's most famous theme park with the show's season 1 Arc Villain.
  • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", Dipper prepares himself for a 48-hour marathon of Ghost Harassers on the Used-to-Be-About-History Channel. Disney actually owns part of the real-life History Channel (through A+E Television Networks).
  • Mabel's first glimpse of high school in "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future" comes across as a huge Take That! to the channel's most iconic franchise, High School Musical.
    Mabel: Why aren't they singing about following their dreams? TV taught me that high school was like some sort of musical.
    Wendy: TV lied, man.
  • In "Summerween", the flyer for the party Wendy and Robbie are going to reads "Not S&P approved" — it was originally supposed to say "Bottles will be spun", but it was changed to the jab at the Disney Channel's Standards and Practices after Alex Hirsch couldn't get that past them.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy The shows intro has a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment where if you look at the graves in the graveyard shows names of other Cartoon Network shows that canceled after one season such as, Evil Con Carne, Time Squad, and Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law:
  • Whenever an evil corporation is mentioned, a little neon sign turns on the background saying "An AOL/TimeWarner company."
  Reducto: No! [pulls out a complicated schematic] There is no government, just a few multi-national corporations that run everything.
  [The words "An AOL/Time Warner Co." appear on the bar's sign in the background.]
  • Playing on the same joke, in ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney General" special when Harvey, Potamus and President Phil Ken Sebben are walking through White House, there are certain rooms akin to ones named after former US presidents, with names of Adult Swim's parent companies through the years - Turner Room, Time Warner Room, AOL/TimeWarner Room and finally the most recent one, WarnerMedia Room.
• Inside Job (2021): At the end of "Clone Gunman," Reagan puts on Friends for Robotus. When he complains, she points out that Netflix paid a hundred million dollars for the streaming rights, snarking about how much money they have to spare. Inside Job is a Netflix original series.
• Invader Zim had a minor character named "Nick" who was created as a symbol for Nickelodeon. Nick had various disturbing science experiments performed on him by the main character. Also considering that Nick had a giant probe installed in his head to make him perpetually happy, it was obviously a jab at how Nickelodeon disliked the dark stuff Zim was putting out.
• The King of the Hill episode "Enrique-ciliable Differences" shows Hank locking out the FOX network (except during football season) and generally disparaging the quality of programming on it.
• Looney Tunes
  • The beginning of "Tortoise Beats Hare" has Bugs Bunny reading the credits out loud. He blows his top after seeing the cartoon title:
    Bugs: (angrily) Why dese guys don't know what they're talkin' about, the big buncha joiks! (smugly) I oughta know. I woik for 'em.
  • Bob Clampett managed one of these in The Big Snooze, his last cartoon with Warner Bros. through Elmer Fudd, who is frustrated with being outwitted by Bugs one time too many, so he tears up his contract with Warner Bros., and decides to quit hunting "wabbits" so he can spend time fishing. After pleading with Elmer fails, Bugs goes into Elmer's peaceful dream, and uses Nightmare Fuel in the form of loud, chaotic colors to scare Elmer back into working for Warner Bros. After a crazy chase scene where Elmer falls off a cliff and wakes up, he re-assembles his contract back together and says in a singsong voice: "Oh, Mr. Warner, I'm ba-ack!" At the time, Clampett's cutting-edge style, which diverged from those of Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, and Clampett was ready to take on new animation challenges even though his colleagues were trying to dissuade him from leaving Warner Bros.
  • "(blooper) Bunny!" was created as a parody of the hooplah over Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary the previous year, and features Daffy Duck kvetching about his role in the Bugs Bunny 51st ½ anniversary special:
    Daffy: Who writes this slop?! (Groans) Warner Bros. doesn't have a creative bone in their...
    • Showing how this trope can backfire, this particular line made the executives at Warner Bros. so angry that they shelved the cartoon for six years, not helped by the fact that Greg Ford refused to cut it out.
  • "Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers", which like "Blooper Bunny" was directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon, also pokes fun at Warner Bros. for cutting corners in the animation department and watering down their characters to be less edgy and more wholesome. The plot revolves around Bugs finding his fiercest enemies replaced by bland, friendly, badly-drawn and -animated "pale stereotypes".
• In The Loud House episode "Really Loud Music", Luna gets turned into a cutesy pop-star by the judges of America's Next Hitmaker, as an In-Universe example of Executive Meddling. This could be a Take That! to the teen pop stars that Nickelodeon also loves promoting, especially JoJo Siwa.
• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures:
  • The episode "Anatomy of a Milquetoast" had Mighty Mouse on trial for the disappearance of orphan Scrappy, using season 1 footage with the dialogue altered as evidence. A dialogue-changed scene from "It's Scrappy's Birthday" had Scrappy's boxcar companion Slappy Rimshot reuniting with some hobo friends, to which Slappy says "Hey, look. The network boards are here!"
  • The ending of "Don't Touch That Dial". After chastising a toddler for vegetating to "electronic pablum," Mighty Mouse turns to the audience and says "But enough of all this lying and hypocrisy. Time for what television's really about." Cut to commercial.
• Mission Hill got some, although because The WB booted it from the schedule after two episodes to summer backburner and then to Adult Swim, it wasn't quite effective.
  Female executive: How would you like to be on The Real World?
  Andy French: What, me? Come on. I'm not MTV material. Hell, I'm barely WB material.
  • In "Stories of Hope and Forgiveness (or Day of the Jackass)", every major network is covering the supposed crisis in live news broadcast...except WB, who's showing happy-happy-joy-joy cartoon.
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023), a Disney Channel series, gets in a swipe at their parent company’s recent trend of live-action remakes of beloved animated films when Beyonder, an alien being questions why humans are obsessed with remakes when the animated versions are superior.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a scene of Pinkie Pie talking to an Evil Knockoff of Twilight Sparkle and not realizing she's actually a clone, and irritating said clone by talking too much about past events. Which two things visibly anger "Mean" Twilight the most? Rainbow Power and the Castle of Friendship, two Merchandise-Driven elements inserted into the show at the behest of the higher-ups. Note that this is one of only two times Rainbow Power is ever even so much as even mentioned in the show other than its very brief introduction way back in Season 4 and that the writers were clearly setting up the old castle in the Everfree Forest to be inherited by Twilight before that subplot was dropped in favor of the Castle of Friendship. And the only other time Rainbow Power appears? Princess Luna's nightmare.
• The Owl House: The third season was reduced to three 44-minute specials for a number of Executive Meddling reasons. In one of the final second season episodes, when Eda asks if Luz would rather "have a beach day" than go on the episode's mission, the latter retorts "Maybe if we ''had time'' for twenty more adventures, but we don't."
• The Patrick Star Show: Much of "The Patrick Show Cashes In" jokes about brand recognition and invokedMisaimed Merchandising, showing that companies are willing to slap their brand on anything to get money out of kids. Nickelodeon is particularly infamous for pushing SpongeBob as their Cash-Cow Franchise. The episode ends with the moral that the franchise needs to stop being milked and should just be about invokedDoing It for the Art.
  Squidina: GrandPat, you just figured out how to fund season two!
  GrandPat: Stealing from children?
  Squidina: No, we'll sell official Patrick Show merchandise!
  GrandPat: What's the difference?
• The Real Ghostbusters episode "Janine, You've Changed" was one against the changes to Janine in the third season. These changes were forced upon the show by executives who had hired a consulting firm called Q5 who, without doing any market research and operating purely on assumptions, believed making Janine more feminine, meeker, and giving her rounder glasses to "be less threatening to children" (no, really, they said that) would make her a more appealing character. The episode explains Janine's softer design and more demure personality as being due to a pact she made with a ghost to become more attractive. Some of the self-criticisms Janine has about her appearance are even lifted from notes that the network gave the writers. At the end of the episode, Janine learns to love herself the way she is (though she still doesn't revert back to her original portrayal).
• ReBoot:
  • Emma See, the Program Censor from the episode "Talent Night", was a parody of the ABC network's censors, and the one act she absolutely adores is the "Small Town Binomes" song "B.S.N.P." with lyrics like "hey, it's fun to play in a non-violent way." Subtle. According to the DVD commentary she was a direct parody of a specific BS&P official named Mary, who was "not happy about it".
  • Another episode had the writers be told by BS&P that Bob couldn't break a window with a rock to jump outside. Their response was to have him tell Glitch to use "BS&P", which had the glass open up around him and reassemble unharmed behind him.
  • Another episode had Enzo get his hands on a massive bazooka, which only harmlessly fires a self-inflating rubber life raft. Which is stamped with "BS&P Approved!" Rubbing it in their face even worse is it does nothing to repel the Viral Binomes, while Frisket getting his paws on an actual rocket launcher sending them running.
  • After the show was dropped by ABC, Megabyte's forces were retroactively dubbed "Armored Binome Carriers. Which leads to the line:
    Algernon: It's the ABCs, they've turned on us!
    Binky: Treacherous dogs.
  • And as one final chomp to the hand, even though it wasn't technically feeding them anymore, how did they retaliate against Dot's infamous "uniboob" and all the ludicrous censorship as soon as they were free of BS&P's influence? A game cube called "Malicious Corpses", inspired by Evil Dead complete with blood, guns, zombies, gore, and Dot dressed like Elvira◊.
  • Also, the words "Fuck you, Broadcast Standards!" are written in Mainframe's skybox in binary code.
• Rocko's Modern Life had a minor one in the form of Dr. Hutchinson. The writers were told, among some other provisos for the character, to add "a professional woman, someone with a good hook"^note A personality trait that attracts viewers. so the show would have a positive female role model. The writers, particularly Joe Murray, were against the idea as they believed people didn't watch cartoons for role models or life lessons but had no choice, so they did exactly that and created a professional woman with a good hook.
• Rugrats:
  • The show has a character named Dr. Lipschitz who the adult characters (mainly Didi) obsess over, The character was a dig at series co-creator Arlene Klasky who butted heads with the writers on how the babies should act especially Angelica who she thought was too mean.
  • Also the episode "Reptar 2010" of Rugrats shows Reptar rampaging through a city and destroying a skyscraper with Viacom's name on it, Viacom being the owner of Nickelodeon (and its sister networks).
• Phineas and Ferb
  • In the special "Summer Belongs To You" When the boys come up with the idea of traveling around the world in 1 day a TV promo at the bottom of the screen that says "You're Watching Television!" is shown and Phineas notices and responds:
    Phineas: Hey, do you mind? We've kinda got a visual gag going on here.
    (the promo disappears)
    Phineas: Thank you!
  • In the episode "The Inator Method", in a brilliant way of doing something new with the usual Uranus Is Showing joke, Buford races in the planet Uranus and uses its other name, "Ouranos".
    Buford: Uranus (Ouranos) is ready to go.
    Baljeet: That is not how it is pronounced, Buford.
    Buford: It is on this channel.
• Pinky and the Brain:
  • Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain: The opening song uses the lines "It's what the network wants, why bother to complain?". This is accommodated by Pinky and the Brain getting kicked out of the Warner Bros. corporate building while Elmyra shrugs. At the end of the song, Brain also says "I deeply resent this", and, given the very real hatred of the idea by the show's own writers, it seems likely enough that he's referring to more than just his in-story predicaments with Elmyra. This was itself preceded by the episode "Pinky and The Brain... and Larry", with an intentionally lame and useless extra character inserted just to show how the show didn't need a third wheel... but it was railroaded through anyway.
  • "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again!" features the titular lab mice as the stars of a hit TV show being heavily meddled with by network executives, who think heavily altering the show's premise will increase ratings.
  • The song "A Meticulous Analysis of History" has one line making a jab at The WB for scheduling the show's brief stint in primetime opposite CBS's 60 Minutes, complete with the TV showing a stopwatch similar to the one used in the show it lost to appearing at the appropriate line.
    The TV viewers you'll delight
    Unless the network puts your show on Sunday night
• The Ren & Stimpy Show:
  • The season 3 episode Stimpy's Cartoon Show is a perfect example of this trope, with Stimpy wanting to make a cartoon and Ren holding him up to a high standard throwing out finished work and being verbally abusive. This episode was written for season 2 by John K with Ren being a sympathetic director but when he was fired it was rewritten to make fun of him.
  • The entire episode of Reverend Jack was a whole pisstake at John K himself, Even the character Rev. Jack Cheese is a direct parody of John K satirizing his personality and the awful treatment he gave the cast and crew behind the scenes. The fact that he's portrayed as a Riddler ersatz (a character who is known for being arrogant, obsessive, and crazy) is a dig at him as well. The character even wear horn-rimmed glasses like John does.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle has been known to poke fun at their producers on occasion. Example:
  Rocky: Bullwinkle, I'm worried.
  Bullwinkle: Ratings down in the show again?
  Rocky: No.
  Bullwinkle: That's odd.
  Rocky: I'm worried because there have already been two attempts on your life.
  Bullwinkle: Oh, don't worry. We will be renewed.
  Rocky: I'm not talking about the Bullwinkle Show.
  Bullwinkle: You had better; we could use the publicity.
  • Another example, as Boris and Natasha look for an A-bomb to blow open a giant trunk:
    Rocky: They said A-bomb! Do you know what A-bomb means?
    Bullwinkle: Certainly! "A bomb" is what some people call our program!
    Rocky: (miffed) I didn't think that's so funny.
    Bullwinkle: (looking to camera) Neither do they, apparently.
• In the Mickey Mouse short Runaway Brain, As Mickey is being sucked down through the trap door tube, in a don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, one of the pieces of debris in the tube is a pink slip with the initials "J.K." written on it, for "Jeffrey Katzenberg". After Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash in 1994, Katzenberg sought Wells' job, but he was at such professional and personal odds with Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney that he was ultimately forced out of the studio at the time of the cartoon's production.
• In the Famous Studios Screen Songs "Toys Will Be Toys", we see a wind-up Popeye toy among the toy parade. As he waters a patch of spinach, a boxing glove emerges and socks the sailor in the face. This was possibly an outlet from the Famous Studios staff who were dissatisfied with the quality of the Popeye cartoons being made at the time.
• A rare Fox Kids example occurred from J. Jonah Jameson on Spider-Man: The Animated Series in its third episode, "The Spider Slayer": "The networks are laughing at me, Brock! Even Fox! Can you imagine the humiliation?"
• Solar Opposites:
  • Yumyulack plans to get popular by simply sneaking to the popular kids' table and hoping everyone just trusts that he always belonged there, to which Jesse replies, "It worked for Hulu!"
  • In one episode, part of Ms. Frankie's plan involved buying masks of the aliens, to which she makes a point of stating she bought them from the Hulu Store's going-out-of-business sale.
  • The show makes frequent digs at Hulu making it out to be something akin to Google, right down to having an email.
• South Park
  • In the "Cartoon Wars" episodes the creators had a very public disagreement with Comedy Central over their right to visually portray the Islamic prophet Mohammad in their show, after a French satirical magazine was fire-bombed by terrorists for doing just that. The episode is essentially an extended debate between freedom of speech (in regards to comedy and satire) and censorship in the name of political correctness. During the scene where Mohammad was supposed to appear, the show inserted a neutral title card stating (truthfully) that Comedy Central had ultimately refused to allow Mohammad to be shown. The irony was that the show had featured Mohammad as a character in the episode "Super Best Friends" and had him hidden in the title sequence of the show for the last two seasons. It is worth noting that "Super Best Friends" aired 2 months before 9/11. It was a very different climate then.
  • The episode "Funnybot" completely lambasts The Comedy Awards, an event organized by Comedy Central.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie": At the very end, one of the evil computers locked up in the Angstrom Institute bears the CBS eye logo. CBS produces the show.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "Know Your Fusion", Sardonyx puts on a mock-Show Within a Show in order to learn more about Smoky Quartz, the fusion of Steven and Amethyst, and provides some clips from previous episodes, taking the time to poke fun at Cartoon Network's habit of pulling the plug on shows that don't sell enough merchandise.
  Sardonyx: Don't those cartoon characters make you wanna buy those products? I sure hope so, or else I'll be off air.
  • A more subtle and less humorous example but the end song in the show's final episode Change Your Mind was made by Rebecca Sugar in frustration after the network resisted against an episode where Ruby and Sapphire get married.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • The show took aim at network execs in general in its very first episode (which aired on CBS, ironically):^note Other TTA instances are featured on the Fox animated series page
  Babs: It takes a group of highly-paid network executives YEARS to come up with a TV show!
  Buster: Which means it should take US... about as long as this next commercial break!
  • In a segment featuring instructions on how to make your own cartoon, Buster comments after a long list of writers, animators and other personnel.
    Buster: And one guy who does nothing except sign his name on it! *Steven Spielberg falls onto the top of the pile
  • There's a segment where Fox, having picked up the show, is represented by a duo of ravenous foxes, the "FOX Network Executives", who are on the trail of Babs and Buster.
• On Undergrads, one character remarks to Nitz that a concert might not be so bad since Good Charlotte is headlining. Nitz asks what Good Charlotte have done that he should care about. Good Charlotte provided the theme song to the show, which actually plays in the background of the scene to drive the point home.
• The side-story in the VeggieTales episode Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler, "The Asparagus of La Mancha", has Don and Poncho floating around a Suck E. Cheese's named "Cheese E. Rodent" as a replacement for their restaurant. The actual Chuck E. Cheese has featured VeggieTales promos in-between the songs in their showtapes for years.

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