Adventure Time: In "The Vault", Finn has a flashback to one of his past lives, a girl named Shoko who briefly befriended Princess Bubblegum when the Candy Kingdom was just starting out. Shoko casually admitting that her parents traded away her arm for a new computer and abandoned her in a martial arts dojo is played for laughs.
Nicole Watterson's parents in The Amazing World of Gumball were such extreme perfectionists that her mother berated her because she had an "F" on her report card in the spot for her gender ("Being a girl is not an excuse!") and they endangered her life by giving her an A+ blood transfusion when her blood type is B-.
To some degree, Stan (mostly over-the-top Booby Traps to shut up Hayley's protests). Stan's father Jack was neglectful to a similar extreme.
Jeff: Were you close to your dad? Flashback Stan: Daddy, will you read me a story? Flashback Jack: Who the hell are you?
And in "Joint Custody", Jeff's dad frames him for a drug run and then tries to collect the bounty.
Jeff: You're wrong about my dad. He cares more about me than anything. Jeff's Dad:(to the police) There's your criminal. Just give me the money. That's all I care about — money. Not Jeff, money. Jeff: See? Wait. Am I Jeff or money?
This happens to Barry too.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Carl's continued adult life as a Butt-Monkey to his neighbors is shown to have been bred in him quite early, as the few glimpses we are given into his childhood include his father making him eat carpet squares ("That's berber!") and putting him to work as a child in a dangerous chemical factory for days at a time. Of course, Aqua Teen plays everything for comedy, and this wouldn't even make the top 50 most disturbing things they've joked about on that show.
The title character definitely received one of these from Malory. It's always played for laughs... but since this is a show that plays miscarriages and cancer for laughs, that's not really surprising.
Malory left Archer in the care of heroin addict Woodhouse for the first few years of his life, and then continued to neglect him, leaving him alone when he was in pain and at one point moving without telling Archer's boarding school, leading to him to take a train home alone and eventually ending up at a police station. She also kickstarted his alcoholism, giving him alcohol when he was a child, and denied him (much needed) psychological care. Moreover, she verbally and psychologically abused him.
Archer himself has absolutely no idea how to take care of The Wee Baby Seamus.
Trinette: (outraged) You can't tattoo a freaking baby! Archer: That's what the tattoo guy said; I had to slip him an extra hundred bucks.
Mallory once gave Sterling a brand new bike he'd always wanted, then when she saw he didn't chain it up properly after riding it, stole it to teach him how to take care of it. She not only neglected to give it back or reveal the deception but when he was forced to explain why the bike was missing, spanked him for it. Decades later, an episode is kicked off when she begins to do the same thing with Sterling's dream car.
Big Hero 6: The Series: In the later seasons of the show, Alistair Krei sometimes mentions the fact that he was sent to boarding school as a child and then to Fire Scouts camp whenever he was home. He's also never celebrated Christmas before, never even receiving gifts, and in one episode outright admits that he was "not allowed to love anything that showed weakness". All of this is Played for Laughs.
BoJack Horseman, being the kind of show that it is, zig-zags between playing this trope straight and playing Abusive Parents straight. Sometimes it'll be so over-the-top that it's funny, mainly in scenes with Bojack's father Butterscotch, such as when he asks Young!Bojack which is better, taking a boat through the Panama Canal "like a democrat" or going around the horn "like a gentleman," then backhands him for answering "the canal." Other times, it'll be depicted as viscerally terrifying, as with the scene of his mother Beatrice forcing him to smoke a cigarette, then yelling at him not to cry and saying that she hates him. Bojack in the present-day goes back and forth between being humorously cynical and depressingly destructive as a result.
Uncle Ruckus was abused both physically and verbally for most of his childhood; according to him when his parents found him as a doorstep baby his father stepped on him, he beat him almost every single day for even the silliest reasons (including having fun), and he threw him out of the house at a young age to fend for himself. Along the way he plowed his face through a fence, made him step in a bear trap, and smashed his face into a pole, deforming him.
Grandad Freeman is an outspoken proponent of beating misbehaving children with a belt buckle, often threatening his two grandsons with this. In one particularly polarising scene, Grandad encourages a nigh-hippie-ish mother to whip her (tantrum-throwing, extremely loud) roughly four-year-old old son in a grocery store. Although initially reluctant, she gives it a try with his belt while her fellow customers look on with approval.
The Crumpets: Ma crushes her infant son with a massive elephant plush and accidentally punishes him instead of one of his brothers with a ride in a clothing washing wheel in rapid cycles and hangs him outside for drying one night. She also forces the twin perpetrators of their dog's endless Tornado Move into stopping the rabid flea by dropping them to the tornado with a claw vehicle.
Dan Vs.: Dan is implied to have had one hell of a childhood. No surprise there, givenwhat he'slike, and it's all Played for Laughs. Whatever happened was bad enough to send a psychiatrist running and screaming.
Psychiatrist: Stooooooooop! STOP IT!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!! What is wrong in your brain?! Dan: Hey pal, if you didn't want to know about my childhood you shouldn't have asked.
Jake had one at the hands of his own father, "Mad Dog" Morgendorffer, a cruel military vet who wanted to stamp any sign of weakness from him. He was also something of a Manipulative Bastard, somehow twisting "I might want to go to tennis camp" into Jake "volunteering" for military school (which is the other thing Jake likes to rant about). Jake's mother, Ruth, was nicer but never could stand up to Mad Dog.
According to "The Daria Hunter," Mr. DeMartino had a single mother who sent him to live with his neighbors (who were "strange, twisted people") because she didn't want her dates to know she had a son. Mom wound up marrying his best friend at some point. Plus, Mr. D also had a stint in military school (he and Jake were able to bond over how awful it was).
Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed's home life may be just as bad as Eddy's, the only difference is that, while Eddy being abused by his brother is Played for Drama in the movie, Ed's situation is always Played for Laughs. He is always abused by his sister physically and verbally on a scale only slightly lower than what Eddy suffers from his brother. His parents aren't much better and it's been hinted that he suffers from both emotional abuse and neglect. Best seen in Ed's nightmare about his mom in "Rock-a-Bye Ed", and in "3 Squares and an Ed" when Ed is infamously grounded:
Eddy: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STAIRS?!
Ed: My parents took 'em down 'cause I am grounded.
Edd: That's disturbing.
The Fairly OddParents!: The entire childhood of Timmy Turner can to be considered this. Especially as that is why children get fairy godparents assigned to them in the first place.
The generally destructive treatment of Meg Griffin by her parents — and siblings — in which she is Ground Zero for just about every form of mental or physical abuse. Chris and Stewie aren't immune from bad parenting either, although this is generally by neglect, a sin of omission.
Peter. His (step)father was a hard-nosed fundamentalist who constantly ragged on him and apparently told him he wasn't his father repeatedly. And there was one flashback where his mother threw a bottle of whiskey at him to shut him up. He has a sister named Karen who basically treated him the way he treats Meg, but worse, and his parents didn't do anything to stop it. They are basically the reason why Peter is the man he is today.
Whenever we get a flashback to Fry's parents, they are usually shown being ludicrously neglectful towards their son (although they didn't exceptionally favour his brother either). In "The Cryonic Woman", we even learn that when Fry went missing due to being frozen, his parents didn't even want the police investigating the case due to them believing it would be a waste of taxpayers' money.However, in "Bender's Big Score", Fry went back in time and reunited with his parents, in whose perspective he didn't stay absent long enough to justify calling the authorities.
They apparently kept him out of school for the same reason.
Leela: Now, bees communicate by dancing. Fry: Just like my parents! No wait, that was hitting.
Leela: Just like old times. Gosh. The bars on the windows seemed so much thicker back then. Mr. Vogel? Remember me? Warden: Leela! You're worthless and no one will ever love you! (they laugh and hug) Leela: You used to say that all the time! Warden: Oh, those were happier days.
Every single child from the Cookieville Minimum-Security Orphanarium gets one.
Extends into a Hilariously Abusive Adulthood for Mom's three sons. In one particular flashback to when the older two were infants, we see Mom try to use them to shield herself from an explosion.
Mom: Shut up you milk-sucking leeches!
Gorillaz: The bassist Murdoc was, according to "Rise of the Ogre", forced by his father to participate in talent contests for money. The incident portrayed in the book involved him in costume as Pinocchio, complete with fake nose, singing "I've Got No Strings." "The prize? £2.50." Murdoc also claims to have hit puberty at age 8 and lost his virginity to a dinner lady at age 9. "And I've been in a bad mood ever since," though given that this is Murdoc it's not unlikely that he's making that up.
Kaeloo: Quack Quack the duck. When he was still in an egg, his parents were killed by a hunter. He was subsequently found by scientists and taken to a laboratory where they did weird experiments on him. Then, he moved to Smileyland, where the show takes place. His life there, which is the events of the show, is not much better as his friends just exploit the superpowers he got from the experiments, and Ax-Crazy psychopath Mr. Cat repeatedly kills him, taking advantage of his Nigh-Invulnerability.
Kevin Spencer: Kevin has been abused by his parents. Aside from neglect, they verbally abuse him, make fun of his mental disorders, let him assist them in crimes, and have no problems exposing him to (and supplying him with) beer and alcohol for most of his life. Much of the show's humor revolves around how messed up Kevin is because of them, and how badly he treats them in return.
Kim Possible: Ron Stoppable's childhood was molded by him going to a run-down summer camp where he lived in an insect-infested cabin with the camp's chimp mascot, while the lake was clearly toxic and was later revealed to have mutagenic properties. There are numerous hints that his parents neglect him, but this comes out the most in his relationship with his teacher and Kim's family, which is funny until you realize he feels closer to them than he does his folks.
Lil' Bush: Lil' Rummy constantly mentions being abused by his father. He sometimes tells his friends he'd like to talk about it, but they never will.
Condi: Does anyone have plans for Saturday? Rummy: My dad said he's gonna chain me to the radiator and throw beer cans at me all weekend. George: That's what you do every weekend.
Looney Tunes: The "Three Bears" series basically consists of the short, perpetually furious father smacking his giant half-wit son — who, to be fair, unintentionally inflicts plenty of pain on his dad. At one point, Dad lies unconscious and Junior takes hold of his lifeless fist and punches himself with it.
Mao Mao in Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart had emotionally negligent, possibly abusive parents and a childhood so strict and devoid of emotional validation that his adult self is several screws loose. This is Played for Laughs, usually to explain his bizarre eccentricities.
Any time Toki's childhood is shown in flashback, it involves him getting struck, whipped, and otherwise abused by his frighteningly somber parents. Whenever they show up in the present, he's stuck in an Angst Coma until they leave, doing nothing more than staring straight ahead in utter silence.
Other band members don't fare much better. Pickles was always overlooked in favour of his loser brother, and his father even told him that he "belongs in a trash can". Skwisgaar was messed up by a promiscuous and neglectful mother and a lack of a father figure. Murderface's father killed his mother and himself with a chainsaw in front of baby Murderface.
In utter contrast to his bandmates, Nathan has a fantastic relationship with his dad, and is shown fishing, go-karting, and playing Scrabble with him.
Nathan: I f***ing love my dad!
Moral Orel: This is a huge part of the humor for the first two seasons. During and after the events of "Nature", it quickly stops being funny.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie grew up on a rock farm, where she and her family worked all day moving rocks around to ensure they grew properly — some of which were about the same size as Pinkie herself at the time. Abuse didn't seem to be the intention, but the effect was about as soul-crushing as you'd expect. Pinkie Pie doesn't seem to have suffered too badly (her parents appreciated that first party she threw, so it's not like they were against any fun), but her older sister Maud doesn't appear capable of any strong emotions at all. Her other two sisters are a Shrinking Violet of concerning reclusiveness and a mare with severe anger issues. This was probably never meant to be so worrying.
Whenever Homer thinks back to his childhood, it's always a memory of his father mocking him, insulting him, or otherwise putting him down.
In "Lisa's Sax", as Bart started his first day of school:
Homer: Now son, on your first day of school, I'd like to pass on the words of advice my father gave me... Abe: (in flashback) Homer, you're as dumb as a mule and twice as ugly! If a strange man offers you a ride, I say take it! Homer: ... Lousy traumatic childhood!
When his mother encouraged 7-year-old Homer's impersonation of JFK after seeing him on the news.
Flashback Abe: You, President? This is the greatest country in the world. We've got a whole system set up to keep people like you from ever becoming president. Quit your daydreaming, melonhead! Current Abe: (to get Homer's attention) Quit your daydreaming, melonhead!
A flashback in "Bart Star" has Homer doing a spectacular gymnastic floor routine in high school. As Homer handsprings past Abe:
Abe:You'regonnablowit! (Homer promptly falls on his face) Abe: That's what I get for having faith in ya.
Homer repeatedly strangles Bart for humor. In one instance, while standing in front of a billboard saying "Report Child Abuse."
Matt Groening has stated that the inspiration for Homer's over-the-top abuse is The Katzenjammer Kids, and that he originally insisted that the strangling always be impulsive on Homer's part and that Bart always retaliates in some way. These policies quickly fell by the wayside, however, and Rule of Funny took their place.
Subverted in "Holidays of Future Passed" in a conversation between Lisa and Marge, where it's revealed "Homer's Law" makes it illegal to strangle any child for any reason. What does it say about the Simpsons' world that that implies that it previously wasn't?
In "Children of a Lesser Clod", Homer starts a daycare business and treats the kids far better than his own. When he's given an award, Bart and Lisa take revenge by showing a video montage of his usual parenting, including the scene on the image at the top of the main page of Homer chasing Bart with a morning star flail (which Homer claims was "completely taken out of context").
In one episode, Rod and Todd are shown shivering with some disease because Ned doesn't believe in inoculations.
Milhouse suffers this as part of being a Butt-Monkey in general. His parents apparently blamed him for their divorce and tried to foist him on each other during the custody hearing.
In "Hurricane Neddy", a psychologist does the experimental "University of Minnesota Spankological Protocol" to try and treat Ned Flanders' anger issues as a child. This apparently involved spanking Ned for eight straight months, not even taking time off for Christmas or Ned's birthday.
Butters's parents ground, beat, and berate him constantly; his mother went crazy and attempted to drown him in a lake; his parents attempt to sell him to Paris Hilton; Cartman convinces him the world is ending and he lives in a bunker and a junkyard for several weeks; he gets committed to a mental asylum and anally probed by a machine for eight straight hours... the creators ended up having to put a moratorium on torturing Butters because it was just becoming too much.
"Butters... why there is Hamburger Helper in my glass of milk?"
Ironically, "Jared has Aides," an episode whose entire plot is about what is and isn't too offensive to joke about, is rarely shown in reruns because people found the ending (where Butters is physically beaten offscreen) to be horrifying. Yeah. They found it.
Butters has also been sexually abused by his Uncle Bud. When an investigator shows the things that pedophiles do to children, he licks the doll's crotch and Butters tells him that his Uncle Bud does that to him.
The abuse of other children is implied as well.
Cartman, for example, wakes from a dream shouting "No, Uncle Jesse, no!" (though that could have been a reference to Full House). However, Father Maxi is the only priest shown in the South Park universe who doesn't molest children, preferring carnal relations with temptresses his own age. Cartman has been sexually abused by others, specifically noted in the episode "Simpsons Already Did It".
Cartman's mother abuses him in a different way. Her constant pampering and coddling of him turned him into The Sociopath that he is today. This comes from her own fear of being alone. It's made obvious in "Tsst!" — when she treats him like other parents treat their children, his behavior quickly changes (and changes back when she relents).
Shelley's abuse of Stan is also played for laughs, as is the fact that his parents refuse to believe him, regardless of how many bruises he has or how much he asks for help. Only once did they attempt to defend him ("Over-Logging"), but Shelley went right back to abusing Stan halfway through the episode without Randy, Sharon, or their grandfather caring.
Kyle is also subjected to emotional abuse at the hands of his controlling mother.
"Noo... don't kick da baby..." "Kick the baby!" "Don't kick da goddamn baby" "Kick the baby!"
Tweek's parents encourage him to drink copious amounts of coffee, ignoring the resulting insomnia and nervousness. They even send him to collect coffee deliveries from the local meth lab.
Ironically, one of the few major characters who never suffers on-screen child abuse (except maybe neglect) at home is Kenny McCormick, whose parents are alcoholic rednecks. Not that his home life is exactly what you'd call "healthy" either (his mother beats his father, for one thing).
It's never shown onscreen, sure, but in the episode "The Poor Kid" where Kenny and his siblings are taken away by Child Protective Services, their (admittedly incompetent) social worker does list various types of abuse in their case files.
Mr. Garrison feels that he had a traumatic childhood because his father didn't sexually abuse him, and to Garrison, this means that his father didn't love him. Mr. Mackey, the guidance counselor, says that the only way to save his son's life is for the elder Garrison to have sex with him, and he finally hires Kenny G to pretend to be him and sleep with the younger Garrison.
While he is actually surrounded by loving and supportive parental figures, Steven Universe occasionally likes to play Steven's Gem-inflicted trauma for laughs, such as in "Last One Out of Beach City" when he cheerfully tells Pearl that fleeing from the police in a high-speed car chase was "The most fun I've had since that time you almost let me die!" Or, in a completely separate incident near the end of "Space Race":
Pearl: I'm so sorry. I almost got us killed.
Steven[unfazed]: I'm used to it!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Splinter isn't really abusive per se, but he is training his sons to be warriors while raising them and many of his lessons can be rather painful.
The Teen Titans Go! version of Batman is strongly implied to have hit Robin for small misdeeds. After leaving Batman to be his own hero, Robin still cowers in fear when he thinks Batman is around and is terrified of making him angry.
Time Squad: Otto's upbringing is outrageously horrible to the point of it being morbidly funny. He was raised in an orphanage where he was worked relentlessly by the sadistic nun Sister Thornly, bullied mercilessly by the other kids, and forbidden from doing the only thing he enjoyed: reading about history. Were it not for the freak encounter with the Time Squad, who knows how miserable his life could have ended up as?
Total Drama: Priya's parents, both huge Total Drama fans, raised her specifically to compete on the show one day in case there was a reboot. Her training literally began the moment she was born, using her umbilical cord as a bungee cord on top of an icy mountain. From there, her training only got more intense, with stand-outs including climbing a wall to escape from a feral bear, being catapulted in a catapult camp, and being abandoned in a forest for a month without food or water. Priya herself wants to go to medical school, but her parents discourage her from it, believing that it would get in the way of her training. While it does pay off when it comes to the competition, with Priya not only getting to the finals, but also winning the million dollar prize money, someone should really be calling child services on her parents.
Rusty Venture's boyhood manages to teeter on the edge of being serious and morbidly funny. He was constantly being kidnapped and his father used him as little more than a prop to make himself look good, plus the issues this left him with are what made him the morally bankrupt mad scientist he is today. But given the laughs we get from the show already, seeing Jonas Venture drunkenly fall on top of Rusty while trying to score with this woman he just met is darkly hilarious. Likely this had something to do with his relationship with twin brother Jonas Jr., who did not go through any of this (having been swallowed as a fetus by Rusty and made his way out as an adult) and is every bit as arrogant as Jonas Sr. was.
Rusty's traumatic childhood is just the Freudian Excuse he has for treating his own sons so poorly and placing them in many of the same life-threatening situations he himself experienced. Apart from the constant danger and kidnappings they experience, the boys also have a very impoverished home life and no friends thanks mostly to being homeschooled in a box their pop made (and it sometimes gets very hot in the box that pop made). The most telling piece of evidence comes from the episode "Powerless in the Face of Death" when Rusty and Brock jovially recount all of the ways the boys have died. The hilarity of child abuse gets a wonderful 'metaphoric' representation midway through this montage, when we see Dr. Venture as a werewolf kill his own kids and we all laugh.
