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Like An Old Married Couple / Western Animation

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  • Unsurprisingly, Team Mom Grammi and Team Dad Gruffi in Adventures of the Gummi Bears are always at each other's throats, arguing over battle plans, complaining about the other not doing their chores, and playing Good Cop/Bad Cop when catching the kids, say, stealing candy or keeping a wild wolf pup as a pet (which Cubbi, at least, has learned to use to his advantage). In "A Gummi's Work Is Never Done," Tummi and Sunni watch them fight from the doorway just like two kids watching their parents fight.
  • Beetlejuice and Lydia fall into this on occasion. It's most evident in the episode where their werecar Doomie falls in love with another car, and they're at odds over it. They come across like bickering parents who can't agree on how to raise their lovesick child — and since they built Doomie together, the fact that he basically regards them as his parents does make a certain amount of sense.
  • Clarence: Jeff and Sumo, who are best friends have arguments like this several times with it being prominent in" The Break-Up" when Jeff and Sumo terminate their friendship and Jeff acts like he was divorced.
  • Code Lyoko: Everyone but, well, Yumi and Ulrich are prone to observing how Yumi and Ulrich argue like this.
  • Family Guy:
    • Played with when Stewie (pretending to be a teenager) tells his "date", Connie D'Amico, that they'll be "just like an old married couple!" He says it enthusiastically, but the ensuing Cutaway Gag shows aged-up versions of the two of them glaring at each other from opposite ends of a table.
    • Parodied again when Chris runs away form home and moves in with Herbert the pedophile. While Herbert spends the first ten minutes of his screen time going through his usual schtick of trying to get in Chris's pants (with his usual lack of success), by the end of the episode, they've devolved into a sexless pseudo-marriage between a slob and a neat freak.
      Chris: Well, I was only pretending to be lightheaded! "Oh, this Kool-Aid tastes funny... ohhh! Ohhhh, ahhhhh!" Sound familiar?!
  • Futurama: In "Calculon 2.0", Fry and Bender admit that they bicker around like this a lot but also claim that the only thing preventing them from doing it all the time is their favorite soap opera All My Circuits, which glues their friendship. They go into a spat of this in order to prove their point.
    Bender: Your voice is so annoying!
    Fry: You always leave the toilet seat crushed!
  • Gravity Falls: Federal agents Powers and Trigger have an incident of this when they are seen bickering in a closet.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Despite Billy's protests (and the fact that both are in denial), Billy and Mandy's relationship is basically a cynical Deadpan Snarker wife dealing with her idiot husband's exploits. Why else would Mandy willingly hang out with Billy?
  • The couple in Hot Stuff are a literal old married couple: she's an oblivious woman who calls her husband pet names and he is an impatient old man with a Hair-Trigger Temper and No Indoor Voice. Unfortunately, they're both also dumb enough to overload an outlet and leave a cigarette and iron burning.
  • The Justice League episode "Hearts and Minds" opens with Hawkgirl and Green Lantern arguing in the middle of repairing the Watchtower. The Flash walks by and remarks, "Geez, you two sound like an old married couple." HG and GL are then completely silent (presumably from embarrassment).
  • Kaeloo: Kaeloo and Mr. Cat constantly bicker with each other, and they clearly have Belligerent Sexual Tension. Despite their fighting, they also have plenty of married couple-like moments, like putting Stumpy and Quack-Quack to bed with bedtime stories and then going off to do their own thing (like how parents of young children tend to do), and Kaeloo making Mr. Cat's breakfast, complete with coffee, in the mornings.
  • Drakken and Shego from Kim Possible spend their time arguing and snarking at each other, especially when Shego makes fun of Drakken's silly plans and repeated failures to take over the world.
  • Ladybug and Cat Noir in Miraculous Ladybug have banter like this at least Once an Episode, although a part of this dynamic might be a result of their Miraculous companions' (Tikki and Plagg, respectively) clashing character traits, due to them being the Yin Yang Miraculouses.
  • In the Distant Finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Rainbow Dash and Applejack arrive at Twilight's castle while bickering over the dishes. Considering that they have apparently moved together since they live independently in the rest of the show, the implications are pretty obvious.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted", Perry the Platypus and his nemesis Dr. Doofenshmirtz are fighting over the controls to one of Doof's evil inventions:
    Doofenshmirtz: Awww, Perry the Platypus, look at us! We're fighting over the remote like an old married couple! [severely] It's not cute.
  • Rugrats: Stu and Drew's constant bickering is sometimes married couple-like, even though it's actually Sibling Rivalry.
  • Star Wars Rebels: Kanan and Hera interact with a strange mixture of comfortable familiarity, friendly banter, a fair amount of somewhat-playful bickering, and some flirtation. It's very strongly implied they're actually together (to the point that they jokingly refer to themselves as the mom and dad of the ship), but not actually confirmed. The more adult prequel novel A New Dawn clarifies that, while Hera didn't mind Kanan's flirtation, she prioritizes the war over a romance. In the end they do fully admit their love for each other and she has his child, although Kanan doesn't live to see him.
  • Steven Universe
    • Lars and Sadie are Vitriolic Best Buds and Sadie wouldn't mind a Relationship Upgrade. However, she Cannot Spit It Out and he is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. You've never seen two people more Tsundere for each other. Even Steven jokes about it: when he suggests starting a gym, not long after Lars was unable to open a jar and they'd recently had one of their trademark arguments, Steven says to Sadie "You could beat up Lars," and to Lars "and you won't starve to death if Sadie divorces you!"
    • Amethyst and Pearl also engage in such spats as seen in season one. It's difficult to tell whether they are basically Vitriolic Best Buds or a pair of gems showing Belligerent Sexual Tension because Pearl and Amethyst show signs of both when they bicker. It mostly takes form of Amethyst doing something that annoys and frustrates Pearl while Pearl gets tired of how immature and snarky Amethyst acts. Its exaggerated in season one but downplayed in later seasons after Amethyst's backstory and origins are revealed.
    • Peridot and Lapis settle into this when they end up living together in season 3. It's especially notable in "The New Crystal Gems", wherein they get into a lot of childish bickering and Peridot threatens to leave when compared to Pearl.
  • Super Noobs:
    • Alien agent Vitriolic Best Buds Memnock and Zenblock bickered like this, at least for the first half of season one, showing their struggle in being Heterosexual Life-Partners. They usually don't take responsibility for their own actions as they blame each other a lot for multiple things, not realizing how immature they are when they act like idiotic Manchildren during their bickering. After having their own Feud Episode, their bickering became almost nonexistent, subverting this trope and replacing it with Friendly Rivalry.
    • Kevin and Shope have some moments of this too.
  • Word of God has described Teen Titans (2003)'s Beast Boy and Raven like this. It worked too well, and led to the two gaining a sizeable fanbase online. The two eventually became a canonical pairing in the regular DC comics, and ended the pre-New 52 universe together (it didn't carry over into the reboot).
  • Shredder and Krang constantly bicker in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987). In one episode, Shredder even goes as far as saying "Sometimes, I don't know who I hate more, the turtles or you." They also have a pair of minions, Rocksteady and Bebop, who constantly fail at everything, which only adds to their frustration, and sometimes act as stand-ins for children in this relationship.
  • Time Squad: Larry 3000 and Buck Tuddrussel act like this from the get-go, heck in one episode Larry told him that he's sleeping on the sofa!
  • Total Drama:
    • Chris and Chef Hatchet's friendship can be best described as similar to that of an old married couple. They even bickered like one for the first part of "Jamaican Me Sweat".
    • Katie and Sadie also occasionally bickers like this with it being prominent in "The Sucky Outdoors
  • In W.I.T.C.H., when Will discovers she can bring inanimate objects to life, her computer and printer react like this.

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