Western Animation examples of Prank Gone Too Far.
- American Dad!: A recurring format for an episode's B-Plot is Steve offending Roger in some minor, trivial way and the incredibly petty Roger playing an elaborate prank on him in retaliation.
- In "Stannie Get Your Gun", Steve eats one of Roger's cookies without his permission. In revenge Roger convinces Steve that he's adopted, and as part of the ruse he destroys all family photos with Steve as a baby. Roger searches the FBI archives, finding a Norwegian couple whose son was kidknapped as an infant, and tells Steve he is the child in question, leading Steve to angrily upend a bookcase burying his paralysed and wheelchair-bound father underneath, and French kiss his own sister. Roger finally reveals the prank after Steve has already tracked down the couple and introduced himself to them as their long-lost son, leaving them distraught.
- In "Dope & Faith", Steve annoys Roger by bragging that he's special after he's told this by a fortune-teller. Roger sends him a fake Hogwarts letter and takes him to a crackhouse which Steve believes is the school in disguise. Roger expects him to be humiliated when the dealers throw him off the porch, but it turns out they were expecting a new recruit which they assume is Steve. Steve later brings home $2000, believing the crack operation was just part of potions class, making Roger realize there's a profit potential in prolonging the prank. This goes awry when Steve "borrows" some of the supplies for extra credit and the dealers follow him home, leading to a shootout between them and Roger.
- In The Angry Beavers episode "Omega Beaver", when Daggett falls for a conspiracy con about creatures called Howler Leeches, Norbert and their friends decide to play a trick on him by pretending to be Howler Leeches. Unfortunately, the paranoid Daggett sets a leech-killing canine on their friends which not only mauls them, but they also get frozen in the snow. Despite the gag being his idea, Norbert blames Daggett for them being frozen even as Dag points out it was their own fault.
- Chozen: When Chozen and Lacy's parents Greg and Brenda visits Lacy's college for an awards ceremony, the father of one of the bullying frat boys turns out to have been Greg's bully during their own college days, and Chozen decides to help his dad get back at him with a kidnapping prank. Unfortunately, the car gets stolen while the guy is still locked in the trunk, and when they finally find it again, the backseat is full of blood and guts, making it seem like they just caused his death. Thankfully, he turns up alive the next morning, revealing that the car had been stolen by some white trash who just so happened to need a doctor for his pregnant girlfriend, and the bloody remains in the car were actually just afterbirth. Gross, but no murders had occured.
- In the Danny Phantom episode "Forever Phantom", Amorpho, a shapeshifting trickster archetype, transforms into a cat and walks into the middle of road when a school bus was coming. Unfortunately, he ends up startling the bus driver into going off a cliff, requiring Danny to rescue it. Amorpho himself comments "That got out of hand. I only wanted to give them a scare".
- At the beginning of Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "It Cames From Out Ed", Eddy tricks Ed into thinking that a monster is attacking, which is actually a reluctant Double D on stilts and covered by shrubbery. Unfortunately, the prank results in Double D and Jimmy (who Eddy deliberately knocked into the line of fire) being smashed by Ed with a tree.
- In one episode of The Fairly OddParents!, after getting fed up of being pranked all the time, Timmy asks for help retaliating from the April Fool, an anthropomorphic personification of April Fools' Day. The Fool's pranks quickly escalate from merely mean-spirited to potentially lethal (i.e. tricking Timmy's parents into parachuting into a factory of sharp things), forcing Timmy to intervene and break off the deal. The Fool does not take this well, and plans a prank that would freeze the entire Earth, but Timmy and his fairies come up with a way to send him back to Fairy World.
- Garfield and Friends: In "First Class Feline", Jon, Odie, and Nermal decide to teach Garfield a lesson with his penchant for trying to mail Nermal to Abu Dhabi by substituting Nermal with a stuffed cat doll in the package and making Garfield's favorite meal but saying they can't eat without Nermal. Unfortunately, they underestimated the lengths Garfield would go for food as he chased after the package all the way to the central post office. When Garfield learned of the trick, he decided to turn the tables by using the stuffed cat (after painting its tail to look like his own) to make them think he mailed himself to Abu Dhabi.
- Hey Arnold!:
- In "April Fools' Day", Arnold accidentally seriously blinds Helga when he takes revenge on her for some pranks she pulled. She gets better, but the rest of the episode is a bizarre Cycle of Revenge. Also leads to a funny conversation:Arnold: Grandpa, why didn't you tell me? That the prank could cause blindness?
Grampa: Arnold, I did. I said it had a "blinding flash". - Used in the Halloween Episode where Arnold and Gerald prank the boarding house by imitating the infamous The War of the Worlds (1938) broadcast. Unfortunately, it gets out of hand when the radio show is picked up by an Orson Welles expy reporter who blows the situation out of proportion, coupled with an attempt to make the city water tower look like a spaceship causing the city to lose power, which sends the entire city into hysteria. Even worse is that Arnold's friends were dressed like aliens for Halloween and ended up getting chased by mobs, culminating in Helga nearly getting strangled by her alien schizophrenic father.
- In "April Fools' Day", Arnold accidentally seriously blinds Helga when he takes revenge on her for some pranks she pulled. She gets better, but the rest of the episode is a bizarre Cycle of Revenge. Also leads to a funny conversation:
- In the The Loud House episode, "Fool Me Twice", the Loud family hire stunt doubles of themselves to take the fall for whatever lethal pranks Luan may have planned for April Fool's Day. Midway through the episode, they find out that as her prank for this year, Luan hired the stunt doubles to ruin her family's reputations, each one doing something out of character for the real deal (Lana's stunt double being grossed out by worms, Lisa's stunt double acting like a normal kindergartener, Lynn Jr.'s double breaking the real Lynn Jr.'s winning streak, and Lucy's stunt double showing her eyes). Unfortunately, Luan forgot to consider the fact that this time she was humiliating her family to the entire town. So after having their reputations ruined by Luan, the Loud family decide to pack their bags and move out of Royal Woods, making Luan realize that she went too far with her prank. Subverted in that this was all part of the family's plan to prank Luan, and the only boxes they packed in the moving van were Luan's.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Rainbow Dash loves to pull pranks often. In "28 Pranks Later", the residents of Ponyville start getting annoyed due to how excessive and disruptive she is getting with her pranks. When she sets up a prank involving cookies, Pinkie Pie alerts the town, allowing them to turn the prank against her by pretending the prank cookies turned them all into zombies, frightening Rainbow. Upon revealing to her that she was pranked, she tells them how she didn't find it funny, causing her to realize that her excessive pranking made them all feel the same way.
- The Simpsons:
- In "So It's Come to This: A Simpson's Clip Show", Bart pranks Homer on April Fools Day with an extremely shaken can of beer. It ends up sending him to the hospital, and while he's moderately fine, Homer ends up in a coma when his attempts to get at a candy bar results in the vending machine falling on him.
- In "The Crepes of Wrath", Bart flushes a cherry bomb down the school toilet while Skinner's mother is also using the bathroom; this results in Bart getting "deported" (that is, sent to France as an exchange student)
- In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart connects several megaphones back-to-back, sending a massive soundwave through Springfield that breaks several windows and results in Bart getting sent to a military school.
- In "Bart's Comet", Bart modifies a weather balloon to be a caricature of "Big Butt Skinner", so as punishment Bart is forced to help Skinner at 4AM every morning to chart the skies in search of any previously undiscovered comets or other phenomena.
- Played with at the beginning of "Fear of Flying". After Lenny pranks Moe with a venomous snake and Barney does a variation of the squirting lapel flower prank by setting Moe on fire, Homer attempts a prank as well. Unlike the pranks pulled by Lenny and Barney, which inflicted actual pain on Moe, Homer's is a harmless prank of loosening the sugar shaker. Despite this, everybody in the bar considers Homer to have gone too far with his prank and they have him kicked out of the bar.
- The plot of "Dial 'N' for Nerder" teeters in between this and Deadly Prank when Bart pulls a prank on Martin Prince that seemingly results in his death, although it turns out he actually survived.
- In "Bart Gets a Z", Bart and his class pull a prank on Mrs. Krabappel by putting alcohol in her morning coffee. This results in her becoming intoxicated, much to their amusement. Unfortunately, Skinner ends up seeing her while she's drunk, causing her to be fired, leaving Bart in a rare moment of feeling guilt-ridden.
- South Park: In "The Vaccination Special," Cartman and Kenny pull a prank on their teacher Ms. Nelson, making her look like she had her period in class by putting ketchup on her chair. However, this triggers a breakdown for Ms. Nelson, who's already frazzled from not getting the COVID-19 vaccine and quits her teaching job on the spot. The boys have to get vaccines to the school staff so Mr. Garrison doesn't become their teacher again.
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series: During the Spider-Slayer arc, Flash Thompson, jealous that Felicia Hardy went to a dance with Peter, dresses up as Spider-Man to hassle him. It's harmless fun at first, and Peter finds it Actually Pretty Funny... until Spider-Slayers attack the party and mistake Flash for the actual Spider-Man, forcing the real deal to rescue him. Once the crisis is resolved, Felicia wastes no time chewing Flash out over what a stupid move that was on his part.
- Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: A pretty dark version happens in "The Party", where Doug Reisman plays a prank on Max Dillon; the "prank" is actually kidnapping, blindfolding him and taping a helmet to his head so he couldn't identify him, and leaving him inside a limo. It goes wrong when Max accidentally drives the car into a construction site and nearly drowns in concrete before Spider-Man saves him. Doug, however, doesn't let up, and orchestrates an insanely cruel prank that publicly humiliates Max, and drives him to a mental breakdown. Upon his transformation into Electro, Max electrocutes Doug to death.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In the episode "Fools in April", Squidward, having been annoyed by SpongeBob's incredibly-benign April Fool's Day shenanigans, pulls his own prank
this is more elaborate but also much meanernote that causes SpongeBob to run out of the Krusty Krab in tears. The customers are appalled by Squidward's rotten prank and call him out on this as they storm out of the restaurant in disgust. Squidward is subsequently hit with a My God, What Have I Done? as he too realizes he had gone way too far. Later, after several unsuccessful attempts to apologize to SpongeBob due to Cannot Spit It Out, Squidward tries to forget the prank ever happened, but he is haunted by memories of those who called him out, ultimately (albeit highly reluctantly) apologizing to SpongeBob... who then reveals that all of the above was part of an even more elaborate prank on Squidward, with the whole town in on it. - An unintentional example in "Frankendoodle". SpongeBob and Patrick are using a magic pencil to prank Squidward, when SpongeBob gets the idea to draw a fake SpongeBob and leave him outside Squidward's doorstep. When Squidward answers the door, "DoodleBob" reveals himself to be an Evil Twin and starts beating Squidward up. Patrick finds this hilarious, but SpongeBob is horrified and spends the rest of the episode trying to erase DoodleBob from existence before he can do any more damage.
- In the episode "Fools in April", Squidward, having been annoyed by SpongeBob's incredibly-benign April Fool's Day shenanigans, pulls his own prank
- One episode of Teen Titans (2003) attempted to do this with Beast Boy setting up a prank on Cyborg, only for it to inadvertently hit Starfire instead, and he spends the rest of the episode having to learn that pranks are wrong and understand why Starfire is pissed at him. However, it winds up being a Clueless Aesop because the prank was a glorified and harmless pie-in-the-face, the fact that he only did it because Cyborg pulled an extremely humiliating prank on him early that everyone, Starfire included, laughed at him for, and his harmless prank is repeatedly compared to a pair of villains causing massive property damage, with the moral coming off more like pranks are wrong if Beast Boy does them.
- The Teen Titans Go! episode "Batman v Teen Titans: Dark Injustice" is about a whole day of April Fools pranks between the members of the team. The first ones are funny, but then the pranks go to extremes at the point of Dude, Not Funny! and almost breaking the team with Raven as the Only Sane Woman telling them to stop.
- Total Drama: In the 2023 season, two contestants, Chase and Emma, are former exes who lived in a hype house together and pulled pranks on each other for their channel. However, Chase crossed a line by cutting the brakes on Emma's car without telling her, causing her to crash into a pet store. Oddly, she seems more upset that he didn't tell her about the prank before pulling it than about the prank itself, as it's implied he'd pulled pretty awful pranks before for the sake of content.
