Break The Cutie / Western Animation

"Fired..."

Shows with their own pages:

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

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Individual examples:

#-L

• Adventure Time: This happens to Finn a lot:
  • His biggest example is in "The New Frontier". Nearly losing your best friend/only relative to a You Can't Fight Fate type of suicide is not the best thing to happen to you.
  • In "Too Young", Princess Bubblegum just broke up with him; he goes through a Heroic BSoD when she pushes him further away in "Incendium". It's also one of the few times Finn actually cries.
  • In "Escape from the Citadel", the Lich returns, Finn's biological father turns out to be a capital "A" arsehole, and Finn even loses his right arm.
  • Lots of later episodes seem to be this trope on laser guidance. Finn tries to get one tiny thing done and the entire world gangs up on him. See "Blood under the skin", "Another Way", etc.
  • As it turns out, the Ice King is a pre-broken Cutie. He was a normal human studying to be an antiquarian until he stumbled upon the crown. He only put it on because he thought it would make his fiance laugh, but it caused some unexplained event that drove his fiance to leave him before gradually driving him insane.
  • Little Marceline (as well as Teen and adult marcy) Was definitely this many times. Part one was having to witness half of the human population die from The End of the World as We Know It, her Parental Substitute lost all his memories, had a abusive Jerkass father, was betrayed by a LOT of friends, etc. This definitely isn't all she went through. Not to mention her tendency to frighten other people away so that no more harm would come to her.
• The 8 children of All Grown Up! play a role in this trope. As babies in Rugrats, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, and Kimi (excluding Dil, due to being a few months too young at the time for character development) had no serious worries (aside from Angelica and other episodic misunderstandings) compared to their 10-year pre-teen future-selves. In All Grown Up, the children deal with various life difficulties as they attend school. Occasionally, the problems they face would delve into heavier issues, which would put them at each other's throats, like a loose spoof of Degrassi, making their toddler years seem like bliss. Some example would include Tommy and Chuckie's friendship being strained in "Fear of Falling" and "TP + KF", Phil & Lil having a less-than-inseparable bond in "Coup Deville" and "Separate But Equal", and Chuckie and Kimi's sibling bond being strained in "Memoirs of a Finster" and "Petition This".
• Amphibia:
  • Both Anne and Sprig took this hard at the end of Hopping Mall when they both miss their respective moms. Anne tells Sprig about her mom and hope she would see her again if she finds a way to get back. After hearing this, Sprig tells Anne his mom passed away when he was young, but he never knew her because he was too young. After she realized that Sprig lost his parents, both Anne and Sprig hugged one another as they break down crying in each other's arms. If it's not enough to make you cry, the credits even made the mood more sadder as a soft version of "Anne's Theme" plays in the background.
  • Happens twice in the Season 2 finale: first when normally cheerful Marcy's Dark Secret is revealed, causing her to go on a Motive Rant while bursting into Broken Tears; again when King Andrias drops Sprig, with Anne bursting into tears and going into a Super Mode.
  • Things get worse in Season 3 for Marcy. After being impaled through the chest by Andrias' flaming sword, Andrias uses her as the host for a Mind Hive called The Core, with the poor girl in visible terror as The Core prepares to take over her body and then screaming in agony as she is effectively Mind Raped by the monstrosity.
• Arcane's first act is all about showing how Powder would become Jinx. While trying to save her family, she accidentally kills three of them and gets hit and yelled at by her older sister for causing said accident. Then her older sister is taken away, with the two never meeting again for years, with Powder ending up mentally scarred from the guilt, anger, and separation.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
  • Happens to Prince Zuko prior to the show's timeline. Flashbacks of younger Zuko portray an idealistic young man with a thirst for knowledge and experience to help him learn to be a good leader and a genuine concern for the welfare of his nation's citizens. True, he's arrogant and brash, but hey he's a teenage boy and Royalty. His naivety results in a serious disagreement with his father that leads to his scarring and banishment. By the time the other characters encounter him he's bitter, angry and obsessed with doing whatever it takes to regain his father's approval. It doesn't help that actions stemming from his inherent "good" side often backfire. Speak out against the needless sacrificing of soldiers? Get burned and banished by his father. Spare Zhao's life? Zhao tries to kill him- several times. Help the little boy bullied by thuggish soldiers? Whole village turns on him because he has to resort to Firebending to do so. Share a moment of introspection with a fellow traveler? Said traveler tries to recruit him, then stalks and attacks him. Well, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
  • Aang himself starts off as this rather goofy, optimistic kid. Then learns that his own people have been killed off, everyone he ever knew is gone, that he's capable of pretty horrible destruction and might need to kill people. Quadruple ouch!
  • "Appa's Lost Days" does this to Appa. Kidnapped by Sandbenders, sold to a circus, beaten, sleep-deprived, forced to abandon friends in need, and captured again. This flying bison needs a freaking break!
  • Hama. She doesn't cross the Moral Event Horizon. She is forcibily thrown over it◊. See before◊ and after.◊
  • Katara herself suffered this very early in her life — before the series even started — when her mother was executed in cold blood.
  • Jet counts. He's probably one of the last characters on the show anyone would describe as a "cutie" (Well, unless you're using a certain connotation of the word), but a flashback scene shows a little 8-year-old Jet sobbing while watching his village burn down... which is what turns him into the thug he is when the Gaang meets him.
  • Like Jet above, Azula also fits into this and somewhat like Katara, she was broken prior to the start of the series. Unlike Katara, we don't see it until her Villainous Breakdown near the series end and the extent of the damage is a case of Show, Don't Tell. Turns out that while Ozai was very overt in his abuse with Zuko, Azula suffered emotional and psychological abuse, also with a subtle fear of knowing what happened to Zuko could happen to her. Combined with a deep-seated resentment of her mother who thinks viewed Azula herself as a monster and no friends or family due to her's father's beliefs and philosophies she emulated (Zuko grew out of this mentality); she literally snaps at the end of the series; and the comics have shown that her recovery is going to take some time.
  • In Season 3 of the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, Opal is encouraged by Korra to try and connect with her aunt Lin Beifong, in an attempt to relieve some of the animosity between Lin and her half-sister Suyin, Opal's mother. Lin angrily tells Opal to piss off and that she wants nothing to do with her, driving the poor girl to tears. Lin apologizes to Opal later and all is well more or less (after Lin herself has been more or less bullied into reconciling with Suyin).
• Beetlejuice: In "Out of My Mind," Beetlejuice breaks a promise to Lydia to not prank her parents which gets her in trouble with them. Angrily, she sends B.J. back to the Neitherworld. When we see her next, Lydia is sobbing on her bed.
• Bluey: Happens to Bluey, herself, towards the end of the episode, "Camping". When she found out from her Mum that Jean-Luc left the campsite, she goes back to the place where they'd planted a tree and tearfully breaks down.
• Maggie Pesky at least half of the time in The Buzz on Maggie; in addition to being stuck living in literal garbage, she also gets treated like much of the same by practically everyone around her, "fellow" schoolmates and her own parents alike.
• Max from Capitol Critters is a sweet little Midwestern fieldmouse from Nebraska with Puppy-Dog Eyes. In the first episode, he watches his own family get gassed to death. In later episodes, he nearly dies from smoke inhalation and a forced drug overdose from a gang member and in another episode, he breaks down in tears when he thinks he accidentally killed a cat, falls in love with a girl who has to move back to Japan and in general plays to Only Sane Man to a bunch of jerkasses. Poor Max...
• Aelita from Code Lyoko gets this treatment over the course of the series. She never actually breaks (although she gets quite close to suicide in the Season 2 finale), but dang, the poor girl's been to hell and back. And it doesn't get much better in the end, when XANA is finally defeated... at the cost of her father's life.
• Danny Phantom: Danielle, aka Dani Phantom really wanted to make her "father" Vlad happy. She didn't want to believe Danny that Vlad cares nothing for her, but realizes the horrible truth when he asks, then orders, that she risks her life for him. She's about to break into tears before freeing Danny. She spends weeks living on the streets, slowly dying. She goes to find Danny for help and is tricked by Valerie into setting Danny up for a trap, then knocked out where Vlad starts torturing her with equipment that slowly melts her. This girl needs her "cousin" to give her a hug.
• In an episode of Dexter's Laboratory, DeeDee breaks when she loses her teddy bear, Mr. Fuzzums. Throughout the episode, she is catatonic and only speaks by muttering, "Fuzzum uzzum, uzzum, uzzum fuzzum," etc. She is fixed by the end of the episode, though.
• This happens to the title character of Doug during the Nickelodeon Christmas special. After his dog, Porkchop, ends up biting Beebe Bluff while she and the other main kids were playing hockey (he was actually trying to save her from the thin ice) and she gets badly injured, poor Porkchop ends up having to be taken to the pound and has to be put on trial. The day before the trial, Doug remembers about how he got Porkchop for Christmas when he was a year old, and how the previous Christmas, he got him his journal. Then, because of how Porkchop is being treated by everyone in town, he imagines standing at Porkchop's grave, and begins to cry. He really needed a hug in this episode.
• Double D from Ed, Edd n Eddy has had 2 major ones near the end of the series. The first one happens in "A Fistful of Ed" and the finale. In the former episode, the poor guy has accident after accident, resulting in many of the kids getting injured very badly. This leads to him getting exiled out of society more than he already was, and boy is it hard on him. At least it ended well for him. In the movie though, he ends up a fugitive along with the rest of the Eds, gets dragged along a wild goose chase, and gets treated like how he was for most of the series. But it all comes to a head when he's pranked by Ed and Eddy into thinking that they sunk in quicksand. After that, he verbally and physically goes hog wild on Eddy:
  Eddy: Hey! (him and Ed follow Edd) Where ya goin? You're headed back into the swamp! (reaches for Edd's shoulder) My bro don't live–-
  Edd: (slapping his hand away) Don't you dare touch me! (begins to let it all out) A "sap"!? Well, excuse my sincerity, but thinking I had lost the only two people I have left in this world–-
  Eddy: (smiling, sure Edd's putting on an act) And?
  Edd: (angrier) It's surprising, because your stubborn, inane desire to scam, sandbag, and swindle is what put us here in the first place!
  Ed: (indignant) I helped too! (Edd gives Ed a pointed Death Glare to shut him up, before turning back to Eddy)
  Edd: You and your nefarious scams!
  Eddy: (realizes the seriousness of the situation, and becomes angry as well) Like you were picking daisies!? You built the stupid thing!
  Edd: If you had paid attention to what I said and not pushed the red button—! (a fight ensues)
  Ed: Stop! I demand you tickle each other right now!
  Edd and Eddy: Stay out of it, Ed!
  Ed: The evil dark side has consumed them both! Trouble! Bad! Pain!
  Edd: I've had enough! (kicks Eddy off) I'm returning home!
  Ed: But we can't go home, Double D!
  Edd: I'd rather face my consequences, Ed, than wander aimlessly with a so-called friend!
  • After that, Eddy breaks down in tears and shows massive contempt for his actions. This wins him back he and Edd's friendship, and the reunited trio continue their journey from there.
    • Jimmy has it even worse. If you push his buttons and he doesn't bawl his eyes out, he will get either violent or downright malicious.
• Family Guy usually plays with this as most of the characters go through some of the most horrible incidents that someone can go through. But it's played straight with Lois during the Christmas Episode in the earlier seasons. All the presents given to another family? Hey, another family benefits from the charity. House burn down? At least everyone's safe. Your turkey is ruined? We can work something out. Out of paper-towels? Oh, snap.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Mac goes through this a ton of times. Especially in "Bye Bye Nerdy", when he comes to the conclusion he's a nerd.
  • Then in "Afair Weather Friends", when he found out Bloo was hanging with another kid behind his back.
  • When he found out that Santa Claus wasn't real in the Christmas Special. (in this case, he was) (He gets better)
  • When Bloo became a celebrity and was ignoring him (it was actually because his manager was nasty). (He gets better).
• This happens to the younger gargoyles in Gargoyles to break some hard truths about the world, often initiated by their own naïvete.
  • Lexington believes the Pack are heroes and he could trust them, simply because it's what the television showed him. Only for the Pack to reveal their true colors and betray and hunt him and Goliath down like animals for sport.
  • Brooklyn was manipulated by Demona who deliberately showed him the worst of humanity, claiming this is the norm for human society. She would prey on his disillusion to have him help her make Goliath "see the truth of the world" by stealing a spell book for her. But Demona actually wanted to mind-control Goliath into her slave, horrifying Brooklyn.
  • Brooklyn had a fascination with guns after watching several shows and movies. He picks up Elisa's gun and begins playing around with it, only for it to accidentally go off and critically injure Elisa. The episode doesn't hold back on the severity of what the bullet did to her and Elisa almost died because of her wounds.
• In the The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, episode "Five o'Clock Shadows", an alternate version of Mandy is seen that was very cute and innocent, and she also really liked unicorns. However, when Mandy told her shadow that unicorns do not exist and that they are just toys made in a factory in Detroit and that enchanted oats is just mustard she then starts crying only to then toughen up and lose her innocence/cuteness. She becomes just as edgy as the real Mandy and the two become indistinguishable from each other at the end of the episode.
• 2-D of the Gorillaz gets pretty thoroughly broken over the course of the story. It all starts when he gets run over and knocked into a coma at age 19... which is how he met his 'friend' Murdoc. From then on he is run over again, has his front teeth bashed out, beaten silly countless times, kidnapped, held captive against his will, harvested for organs and mentally tortured. Granted, 2-D is by no means a saint, but he was always pretty harmless. At this point, it's nigh-impossible not to feel kind of sorry for him.
• Gravity Falls: In "Boss Mabel", when the Mystery Shack employees take advantage of Mabel's generosity one time too many, she completely snaps, and begins angrily barking orders like Grunkle Stan.
  • This is also integral to the backstories of Stan, Ford, and Mcgucket.
• Flippy from Happy Tree Friends starts out as a cute, friendly, fun loving bear but whenever he sees or hears something that reminds him of the War he transforms into a cruel, murderous, psychopath.
• Hilda:
  • One notable example comes from "The Nightmare Spirit". Only this time, she's scared. The episode reveals her secret: Her inability to ride a bike. Just before Frida, David, and Johanna save her from her nightmare, Hilda is seen mentally and physically tortured by the Marra, screaming in terror in her sleep.
  • Another example is from "The Deerfox". Hilda has a severe massive breakdown over everything that changed in her former home, especially when she has to let Twig go. Despite Twig deciding to stay with Hilda in the end, hearing and seeing Hilda crying is hard to watch. Her dialogue throughout is also powerful enough to tug at viewers' heartstrings, if it hadn't been for Bella Ramsey's voice-acting. In addition, while recording her lines, Ramsey was actually in tears!
  Hilda: But that's all it is! Memories. Out house is gone. The mountains are gone. Our life here's gone. And now...[tears up] Now, Twig's gone too.
• Hazel from Infinity Train. She starts off the third season an optimistic bundle of joy, and manages to hold onto that innocence for a few episodes. Until Simon proudly murders her mother figure Tuba and tells her about the deed with a loving grin. And it just keeps getting worse from there. She learns she isn't a real passenger on the train, or fully human for that matter, and begins fearing that Simon would kill her without remorse should he find out. Later, she learns she is a failed experiment created by the first season's villain and subsequently gets betrayed by Grace (the only person she had left to trust at that point), who degrades her in an attempt to save face in front of Simon. By the time she leaves the story, she has completely lost all sense of playful innocence, and the only person she feels remotely comfortable being around is the aforementioned villain, someone who explicitly refuses to be any sort of caregiver for the six-year-old child.
• Dib from Invader Zim, though YMMV. If you count him to be cute and The Woobie. During the course of the show, he gets laughed at, gets pummeled by his sister (numerous times), gets threatened to be eaten by mechanical stuffed animals, has a water balloon CONTAINING ALL THE WATER ON PLANET EARTH dropped on his head, is held over the city cesspool for a day, gets thrown into a slowly expanding explosion, gets put into a Lotus-Eater Machine and has a wonderful life, until he realizes that it was all a dream, gets shot with a gigantic laser gun (albeit using muffins as ammo,) gets laughed at again, gets pummeled by a monkey, and his LANDING-PAD-SIZED MONSTER OF A HEAD THAT IS ALSO DISTURBINGLY LARGE? He cracks appropriately.
• Drakken, Monkey Fist and Killigan nearly do this to Kim Possible when they are all toddlers. When they go after Ron however, she breaks them.
  • Drakken tries this again in So The Drama, by creating a "perfect boyfriend" for Kim and having him betray her when she is most vulnerable. When she realizes the truth, she nearly gives up, saying, "Drakken won. I should have stuck to babysitting." Ron pulled her out of her funk, and in the process instigated their Relationship Upgrade.
• Let's Go Luna!: Up until Luna talks with the spirit of her fallen friend, Bessie, in "Blue Orleans", the normally cheerful guardian Luna goes through a rollercoaster of sadness as she is heartbroken over Bessie's death.
• The Loud House has Lynn Loud Jr. A dorky teenage girl with a cute appearance due to being younger than she looks. She seems to have been traumatised and warped as a result of the bullying she received during her time in middle school. It's made her a lot more violent and competitive as a result.

M-Z

• Toki Wartooth from Metalocalypse. Man, Season 2 broke that cutie. Yet, being an Adult Swim show, this is all somehow played for (very dark) laughs.
  • In-universe, the Omniscient Council of Vagueness even notes that everything Toki loves dies.
• Miraculous Ladybug :
  • Adrien Agreste during almost every interaction with his father. In fact, the constant Parental Neglect may count as a slow, torturous case of it.
  • Marinette Dupain-Cheng seems to be heading towards this as of the end of the third season and into Season 4 due to the pressure and responsibility of being Ladybug, especially after Master Fu passes his guardianship of the Miracle Box onto her, at the cost of his memories.
  • This trope is often what leads to various characters (most of which are teenagers) being turned into the Monster of the Week by the Big Bad, who takes advantage of their negative emotions.
• Molly of Denali: In "Molly and the Great One", Trini's mom Joy comes home after serving in the military. They enjoy their time together, but Joy eventually has to leave. Trini breaks down crying, because Joy always leaves and all she wants is her to stay forever.
• Moral Orel.
  • Nurse Bendy. Seasons 1-2 play her as a loose, air-headed woman who is commonly used by the men of the town. Her presence in Season 3 would reveal she's mentally 14, treats two teddy bears like an actual husband and son, and starts weeping and screaming when she thinks the teddy husband's trying to have sex with her. It is not Played for Laughs.
  • Orel himself, during the infamous "Nature" two parter. In the span of 2 episode, thanks to his drunk father shooting him in the leg, blaming Orel for it, and passing out drunk for two days the usually chipper Orel is broken something fierce, and he's never quite the same from then on. Interestingly as the third season goes on it seems like this is Clay's whole motivation. To make up for his own shittiness he tries to prove that Orel is not really as pure, good, and innocent as he seems and that his religious beliefs are built on sand. When Orel proves him wrong it drives Clay crazy.
• In the last episode of Over the Garden Wall, Greg has been convinced by the beast to give up hope and let himself be turned into an edelwood tree, and when Wirt finds him, he tells him that he stole the rock that he uses for rock facts, while a depressing version of "Potatoes and Molasses" plays. This is the same Greg that sang silly songs and was just a giant Cloud Cuckoo Lander in general, although he does get better.
• The Owl House: Luz Noceda goes through this four times:
  • At the end of "Agony of a Witch", Eda ends up using up all of her magic to protect Luz, leading her to be fully overwhelmed by the Owl Beast curse and be captured by the Emperor's Coven. Luz trudges back to the Owl House and breaks down in tears when King asks where Eda is.
  • In "Yesterday's Lie", when she accidentally reveals to her mother that she made the choice of wanting to stay in the Boiling Isles. this causes her mother Camila to feel both betrayed and heartbrokern, wondering if Luz hated living with her. Before Luz can explain, she starts to get pulled back through the portal before it collapses. Camila then asks her to promise her when she returns to Earth, she has to promise to stay on Earth. Luz is then forced to keep her mother's promise, however she ends up regretting it, as she is now wondering what she's going to tell her found family, friends, and girlfriend.
  • Luz gets an even bigger one in "Hollow Mind"; Emperor Belos, who up until that point she had assumed was simply an evil tyrant, reveals to her that he's actually Philip Wittebane, the previous human visitor to the Demon Realm before Luz, and someone Luz deeply admired and looked up to. Not only that, but Luz had in a previous episode gone back in time and given Philip something he needed for his plans, which Belos makes sure she knows. Finally, Belos reveals that he's not just a tyrant, but a witch hunter who's planning an outright genocide against everyone in the demon realm. The revelation that she is in part responsible for the rise of a genocidal dictator leaves Luz utterly broken, ending the episode on a Thousand-Yard Stare.
  • Luz, along with Amity, Gus, Willow, and Hunter get a final one in the season 2 finale. They utterly fail at defeating Belos, as nothing they can do can stop the draining spell, and he gets very close to killing them. They are saved by the Collector, a Physical God freed from their prison by King, who kills Belos right in front of them before giving them an implied death threat. Then the Collector starts ripping the world apart around them, forcing the kids to escape through a portal to the human realm with no known way back, and are forced to leave King behind. The final shot before the credits are of the five kids standing in the rain with expressions ranging from outright despair to trying to keep it together.
  • Season 3's first episode shows the culmination of all the trama Luz endured before escaping to the human realm. She is so utterly racked with guilt over her actions that lead to the destruction of the Boiling Isles and for stranding the only friends she knew in a world completely unfamiliar to them that she's become a depressed shell of her former self. Despite being surrounded by the people she loves and getting to spend time with her girlfriend like she promised, her depression overshadows her once optimistic nature and she's convinced that everyone would have been better off without her..
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • On "Summer Belongs To You", the crew is stranded on an island with no resources, and Phineas has a nervous breakdown because he can't build anything to help them.
  • On "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", Phineas and Ferb's latest invention actually destroys the house and they are caught by their mom. Even though they believed they had permission, they're shipped off to reform school, where they are tortured and stripped of their identities and creativity, afraid to even touch on of their tools. It's all a dream, but still a pretty horrid What If? episode.
• Pibby: The title character begins as the sweet, innocent protagonist of a cartoon for small children, only for an Eldritch Abomination to invade, ruin her world, and force her to mature quickly as she grapples with the horror of the scenario. The trailer strings together several scenes to show her progression: she goes from innocently wondering what "red water" is after receiving an eye injury that causes her to bleed to leading an army of cartoon characters against the antagonist, sword in hand.
• Pocoyo:
  • Baby Bird becomes a weeping mess when the stars stop shining in "Twinkle Twinkle", Pocoyo and Pato refuse to play ball with him in "Having a Ball", and Pocoyo, Pato, Elly, and Loula torment each other with whistles in "Who's Calling Me Now?".
  • In "Super Pocoyo", Pocoyo is subjected to this when his misguided rescue attempts make Loula, Sleepy Bird, and Elly angry, causing him to stop playing superhero. He recovers when Pato gets his hat stuck on his head, allowing him to perform a real rescue.
  • During their feud, Pocoyo and Pato are reduced to tears after seeing a picture of them together in "A Little Something Between Friends".
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • Averted in the perpetrating case of Him, who's bent on destroying the Powerpuffs (especially Bubbles) mentally and came close a few times (like in "Speed Demon", "Power-Noia", and "All Chalked Up"). However, he failed every time.
  • Played semi-straight in the episode "Bubblevicious". Bubbles essentially induces this on herself, trying to become as strong as her sisters. She loses her sweet act and becomes rather brutal (read: bitchy). This culminates with Bubbles taking it up a notch after Mojo Jojo tries to torture her and break her even further. Bubbles wouldn't have any of that shit. Luckily, though, after probably deadening a majority of Mojo's nerve cells, her sisters come and quickly get back her sweet side.
  • Also played straight again in "The Mane Event" with Blossom, due to her being embarrassed by her Traumatic Haircut.
  • Played straight again in the episode "Not So Awesome Blossom", when Blossom feels as if she might not be fit to be the leader anymore after she messes up on a mission.
• The Problem Solverz : While not a Cutie, per se, this at times happens to Roba when people make fun of him.
• The animated Punky Brewster episode "Punky The Heiress" has her aunt and uncle playing her like a violin in order to embezzle an inheritance. They dress Punky up to look like the heiress of a missing tycoon's fortune and make her think she's going to be reunited with her missing mother, until Glomer overhears the plan and breaks it to her. It understandably devastates her.
• The Recess finale "Lost Leader" does this to T.J.. After one of his plans goes wrong and injures Gus in the process, he has a Heroic BSoD and absolutely refuses to lead the gang with their plans.
• The unproduced The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "Life Sucks" was going to be a huge one for Stimpy; fans have guessed it was a prelude to "Ren Seeks Help", where poor Stimpy is finally broken.
  • In "Son Of Stimpy", Stimpy (a generally happy character) tries to find his flying fart but when he fails to find him for a while, he then becomes depressed to the point where he goes out into the cold winter looking for him. It's one of the saddest episodes in the series. Fortunately, he eventually meets him again when the flying fart arrives home.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated breaks all four at once in the season finale. After Mayor Jones is revealed to not only have been the Freak Of Crystal Cove and kidnapped Freddy as an infant from his real parents to raise, but now Freddy has dissolved the team to look for his parents. Meanwhile, Shaggy's parents are shipping him to military school, and Velma is on the outs with everyone for keeping Angel Dynamite's identity a secret from them. Daphne is absolutely devastated as Fred had proposed marriage to her in episode 24, but now that's off as Fred seeks to discover who he really is.
• The Simpsons arguably subverts this in "Dog of Death". When Burns gets a hold of Bart's friendly, gentle pet dog, he straps the dog to a chair, sets up a machine that holds the dog's eyes open, and forces the dog to watch several images of animal abuse to, as Burns himself put it, turn the dog into "a vicious, soulless killer." However, when Burns sends said dog after Bart, the dog's memories of good times with Bart prompt him to lick Bart's face instead of attacking him. When the other dogs come after Bart, said pet dog growls at the other dogs and scares them off, only to proceed to lick Bart's face again. Burns' attempt at breaking the dog's spirit yields, if any change in the dog at all, a result of the dog taking a level in badass while no longer being on Burns' side in the long run.
  • Played straight with Ralph when he takes Lisa out to Krusty's anniversary special, only for her to dump him on live TV.
    Bart: (replaying a video of the event) Watch this, Lise. You can actually pinpoint the second his heart breaks in half...
  • One of the usually playful and rambunctious Nahasapeemapetilon Octuplets, Anoop, becomes this in the alternate future of the episode "Future-Drama". When Bart works part-time at the Kwik-E-Mart, he (along with the other Octuplets) is very bossy and sadistic to him, going as far as to kick him in the head (while wearing a hover pack).
    Anoop: You missed a spot! (spits on the floor) Do it again!
    Bart: Yes, Mr. Gheet...
    Anoop: I'm Anoop, you racist cracker! (kicks Bart in the head)
  • Perhaps the most memorable example is "Hurricane Neddy". Ned Flanders loses his home to a hurricane, made worse by the fact that he followed all precautions and was the only one to end up homeless. He then lost his business to post-disaster looting. Just when things seemed hopeless, his neighbors rebuild his house... but do such a poor job at it that it collapses shortly thereafter. Then when his glasses break, the normally calm and saintly Flanders finally snaps, tells off everyone in town, and drives himself to the psychiatric ward.
• Both Sofia and Amber suffer from this on Sofia the First from time to time. The most notable examples are in "Once Upon A Princess", "The Curse Of Princess Ivy", and "The Mystic Isles".
  • In the first movie, Sofia is having a hard time adjusting to Royal life while Amber is jealous on how she's being neglected by others in favor of Sofia. When Sofia ends up humiliating herself in dance class, she's crushed on how Amber willingly set this up. She becomes even sadder when she unknowingly uses Cedric's spell to put everyone in the ballroom to sleep, and she doesn't know who to turn to. Wow! As for Amber, even with her behavior, you still feel bad for her considering she wants to feel special. After the incident in dance class, James, her own brother, tells her off on how he likes Sofia more. This is turn followed up by her hearing the castle maids talk about how Sofia is the prettiest princess in the castle, bringing her to tears. Dang!
  • In the second movie, Amber desperately wants to borrow Sofia's amulet for awhile upon finding out its magical, but is denied it. She then takes the amulet when she's not looking, inadvertently summoning Princess Ivy, who wants to take over Enchancia. You can really feel the intensity when Sofia tells Amber off, as the former feels betrayed while the latter doesn't know to react since she's never messed up this much.
  • You thought that was sad. "The Mystic Isles" really wrings out the emotion. Amber wants to have her own magical amulet in order to feel special, and accompanies Sofia to the Mystic Isles. Like in the above movie, Amber's desire to feel special causes the antagonist, in this case Prisma, to be given the ability to take over the Mystic Isles, with Sofia feeling betrayed. As if that weren't enough, Amber sings a whole song on she doesn't feel special compared to Sofia, who's more outwardly altruistic. You will want a box of tissues after this.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Star goes through this in "Bon Bon the Birthday Clown". In this episode, Star and Marco are supposed to go to the high school dance together on the next day until Janna points out to Star that it will be the death day of Bon Bon, a clown who perished 100 years ago, on the same day. Luckily for Marco, Jackie asks him to the dance, therefore, Star and Janna can go see Bon Bon. Then throughout the rest of the episode, things don't go so well for Star. She becomes jealous as she sees Marco and Jackie together (either indicating that she has feelings for Marco or that since Marco now has a date, he might no longer have time to hang out and go on adventures with her), as well as missing out on Bon Bon due to him getting sucked in by her magic. To make things even worse, Star loses her book of spells and Glossaryck due to Ludo stealing them and as Star put it in the next episode, her parents might ground her for a thousand years when they find out (fortunately for her, they're completely understanding).
• A lot of this in Steven Universe:
  • Steven is literally half of his mother, and he never got to see her, and gets UPSET whenever she's insulted. He is also constantly in danger, and becomes traumatized by experiences like being abducted and put in a cell by Jasper along with the Crystal Gems, or being stranded in space with very little air, or giving himself up to Homeworld to prevent his human friends from being taken to a People Zoo that he and his dad had previously ended up in. And then he finds out that his mother was actually a Diamond. If he wasn't The Woobie before, he certainly is now.
  • DO NOT make fun of or remind Amethyst of her origins (though she warms up later), or take her Parental Substitute away for an extensive period of time.
  • Pearl seems like a kind, though stressed, adorably dorky person, but Rose's departure and the rebellion pretty much scarred her for most of her life.
  • Lapis Lazuli, we could go on all day. ^{The Full(ish) Story}She was a casualty in the middle of a 1000 year war; then mistaken for the enemy by her Homeworld; imprisoned in a magitek mirror and relentlessly interrogated for information she didn't know; left behind when the planet was evacuated (her gem cracked at the same time); then stayed there for five thousand years in total isolation, conscious the entire time. When she woke up in the present, she managed to befriend Steven and he healed her gem. Then she escaped back to Homeworld, but once there, she was subjected to the culture shock of a planet 5000 years more advanced than when she left; then forced to be an informant on the next mission to Earth, where she was bullied by Jasper; once she revealed that she knew Steven, Jasper put her in a jail cell to be punished back on Homeworld; once the Crystal Gems brought down the Homeworld spacecraft, she was pulled from the rubble by Jasper and cajoled into fusing; and when she accepted and they formed Malachite, she revealed that she only accepted in order to trap both of them at the bottom of the ocean. They stayed there, fused and fighting for dominance in the mind-space, for months. The Gems were eventually able to defeat Malachite and free the two components. Even so, the experiences have left definitive scars.
  • Peridot won't forgive herself for betraying Homeworld to join the Crystal Gems.
• Butters from South Park snapping and becoming Professor Chaos. He seems to revert back rather easily, though.
  • It happens again when he becomes a "vampire" (actually just a fad of pretending to be a vampire induced by the new Twilight movie, but he thinks it's real)
  • Kyle gets this as well, most notably in Cartmanland. It's one thing into being pushed into denouncing the existence of a God (or in this case a righteous God). It's another to be pushed to the point of giving up on life due to Cartman's constant Karma Houdini instances. It takes one major case of divine intervention to rectify.
  • In Season 15, Kyle isn't the only one who gets broken, but Stan, too. Stan spends two episodes in a state of cynicism that worsens after his parents temporarily divorce again.
  • Season 21 is this for Heidi Turner. She gets constantly mocked by the other girls for having Cartman as her boyfriend, said boyfriend constantly emotionally abuses her, and manipulates her into rejecting the only person (Kyle) who showed her any sympathy and kindness this season. It was inevitable that she would go from a Nice Girl to a Gender Flipped version of her boyfriend.
• Happens in SpongeBob SquarePants a lot, particularly to the titular character, who is very Prone to Tears. Here are just a few examples:
  • In "Nature Pants", Patrick does not take SpongeBob leaving well.
  • In "Pizza Delivery", SpongeBob is hit with this hard when the customer refuses to accept the Krusty Krab pizza because he didn't bring him a drink (even though he hadn't ordered one in the first place!), leaving the sponge reduced to blubbering sadness and crying nonstop. Seeing the poor sponge thinking the delivery was All for Nothing totally pisses Squidward off that he decides to let the customer have a piece of his mind.
  • In "Good Neighbors", Squidward witnesses SpongeBob and Patrick stealing his Sunday pedicure and he misses his hour; that in particular was the very last straw for him, leaving him to call out the two for ruining his Sunday which culminates in him destroying their fezzes which they wore as part of their Good Neighbor Lodge. This causes both Sponge and Pat to be reduced to a near-total depression when they realize they did nothing to prove to Squidward they were good neighbors and they're the worst neighbors ever, and decide to leave in sadness and attempt to apologize later. And as if calling them out like that weren't enough, it was the only way Squidward was able to get through to their thick skulls.
  • This page's image comes from "Karate Choppers"; Mr. Krabs catches what appears to be SpongeBob doing karate with Sandy when he told him not to (even though the sponge isn't doing anything), thus he fires him. This sends the sponge into a rather long tantrum over losing his job leaving Sandy to reason.
• This trope is the main reason why "Queen for a Day" from Tangled: The Series is such a Wham Episode. Over the course of a single episode, Endearingly Dorky fourteen-year-old alchemist Varian loses his home to the black spikes that have been plaguing the land; proceeds to experiment on said spikes, causing him to accidentally imprison his father in a Crystal Prison and lastly, tries to go to Rapunzel for help, only for her to turn him away since she has to prioritize the safety of her kingdom over the wellbeing of one person. Then he gets home and finds that it's too late to help his father, leaving him sobbing on the floor. And after all these disasters, Varian's problem is the only one that wasn't solved by the end of the episode. The final result? Varian snaps, vowing to save his father no matter the cost and enact revenge on the entire kingdom for abandoning him, thus becoming the main antagonist of the latter half of Season 1. Just...damn.
  • The fact that Cassandra has been turned away from her own mother, Gothel, in favor of Rapunzel causes her to feel left out and jealous of the princess, to the point she lets her rage get the better of her and tries to claim Rapunzel's destiny as her own.
• Transformers: Animated: Sari in Season 2. First her dad goes missing, then her dad's company gets taken out of her control by Porter C. Powell who reveals with the subtlety of a brick that she doesn't exist in any form of legal documentation. If it weren't for the Autobots helping her cope over all of this, Sari could very easily have snapped upon the revelation that she was part Cybertronian instead of taking a level in badass.
• Wakfu, Episode 19: Sadlygrove, possessed by the demon of his sword, proceed to crush both forearm and bow of Love Interest Evangelyne, who has only just begun to reciprocate his feelings, in one grasp. The tears of physical and emotional pain she show afterwards are enough to cause a My God, What Have I Done? moment in Sadlygrove, almost making him another broken cutie.
• Nerissa tried to do this to Hay Lin in the second-season W.I.T.C.H. episode "T is for Trauma", first by exploiting the fact that Hay Lin's grandmother Yan Lin had just betrayed her (though it was actually a brainwashed clone), secondly by using her good looks (in her youthful Uncanny Valley Girl form) to seduce Hay Lin's boyfriend Eric away (though again, she had to brainwash him), and thirdly, by trying to make Hay Lin feel insecure about her new braces. She finishes all this up by trying to kill Eric, but Hay Lin ends up pulling herself together and saving him.
  • In Season 2 of W.I.T.C.H., both of the Big Bads do this to Hay Lin in different points of the sow, but most notably in "T is for Trauma" where Nerissa brings her to a serious Heroic BSoD where she refuses to fight.

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