Psychopathic Manchild / Western Animation

Psychopathic Manchildren in Western Animation TV.

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General Examples

• Filmation has many a Big Bad who are profoundly childish, egotistical, and immature which contrasts with their formidable powers and makes them ironically more kid-friendly:
  • Filmation's Ghostbusters has Prime Evil who despite being an all-powerful sorcerer from another dimension who can summon and materialize the dead from limbo, is also a self-important fool who gets angry at his henchman for having an idea, because only he is allowed to have ideas and wishes revenge for really exaggerated slights like a haunted house attraction which he sees as insulting and statues in honor of the ghostbusters despite the fact that the living has no reason to honor or even like him.
• Nearly every adult character in works by Seth MacFarlane is prone to immaturity; Flanderization has caused most of them to become "psychopathic".
  • Family Guy:
    • Peter Griffin, initially naive and impulsive, has evolved into a destructive, sociopathic, arrogant, selfish, and abusive psychopath. He is motivated by self-gratification and causes harm to others, including his family and friends.
    • Carter Pewterschmidt, Peter's father-in-law, is very immature and dismissive of the feelings of others. When he temporarily loses his fortune in "Peterotica", he's shown to be completely incapable of caring for himself.
    • Glenn Quagmire and Cleveland have also become psychopathically childish adults in later seasons.
  • American Dad!
    • Roger Smith is an alien with supernatural intellect and physical abilities who uses these for childish purposes. He has childish traits like a sweet tooth and juvenile whining. Despite being knowledgeable about life, Roger has committed heinous deeds throughout his long lifespan. Despite not appearing as much, he is a formidable force to be reckoned with.
    • Stan Smith also has his moments, being a destructive and ill-tempered man who has killed and terrorized numerous people throughout the series. He also can behave like a Spoiled Brat on occasion, such as when he gets escorted from his increasingly wealthy Native American half-brother's premises after unsuccessfully trying to reclaim all his belongings for himself.

Specific shows

• Adventure Time:
  • The Ice King, though he's a light-hearted example, being mostly harmless despite his habit of kidnapping princesses. Then the story takes a much darker twist when his origins are revealed, and how far he's fallen from the man he once was.
  • Lemongrab counts as well, as a result of having a DSM's worth of mental disorders.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Master Shake constantly whines and throws temper tantrums, cares for no one but himself, and constantly goes above and beyond to torture Meatwad For the Evulz.
• Archer: Sterling Archer himself might qualify. He views killing people as play and is a whining self-centered brat whose world revolves around his mother.
  Commander Kellogg: Archer broke both of Wu's arms while shouting "woo!"
  Archer: Happy coincidence!
• Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn is a dangerous loon and often behaves in a childish manner. She also talks in a rather childlike voice a lot of the time (likely to make her more cute and sympathetic.)
• The Batman's version of the Cluemaster. He was a former game show contestant and he believes he lost because his opponent cheated. He has spent 30 years doing nothing but plotting his revenge. In his mother's basement, no less.
• Beavis And Butthead: Even after two decades, Old Beavis hasn't matured one bit, still enjoying fire and destruction, goofing around with Old Butt-Head, and being emotionally imbalanced in general.
• Humphrey Dumpler, aka Humpty Dumpty, gets given this treatment in Beware the Batman. Whereas his comics incarnation was an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, placed in Arkham Asylum because he was genuinely mentally ill even if he was normally non-violent and inoffensive — he finally snapped because of all the abuse his grandmother gave him, murdered her with an axe, then sewed her together with bootlaces to try and "fix" her — the cartoon Dumpty is a child-like man who is driven by revenge, kidnapping people he blames for the brain damage that left him how he is and trying to blow them up in his first episode, then setting up lethal deathtraps in his second episode.
• Brickleberry:
  • Woody Johnson belittles anyone he considers beneath him, has a callous disregard for others, throws destructive temper tantrums when things don't go his way, and always feels it should be all about him. Basically a grade school bully inside a middle-aged man's body.
  • Malloy is an adult in bear years (being very small notwithstanding), yet he is obsessed with video games and junk food, always wants to be the center of attention no matter what, throws violent temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way, bullies others for his amusement, and has committed countless crimes (murder included). He was even disguised as a child in "Little Boy Malloy" and fit in perfectly with the other children due to his own immaturity.
• The Brothers Flub: Guapo is a manchild who loves to have fun, but he enjoys teasing his brother a little too much. "Heads Up" features him manipulating Fraz with a smug grin, refusing to save him unless he takes the blame for something he did.
• Norbert Klerm from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. He runs his own company called Comp U Klerm, which has engaged in plenty of illegal practices, but he tends to behave more like a spoiled brat than the head of a powerful corporation and often taunts Buzz and the other heroes like a playground bully.
• Scoutmaster Lumpus in Camp Lazlo, who confiscates Bean Scout toys so he can play with them himself and often throws tantrums when things don't go his way. Hell, Slinkman once told him to go to his room and think about what he did. Miss Mucus is a Psychopathic Womanchild as her man-hating qualities border on an almost elementary-age manner and she hoards toys as well.
• C.O.P.S. (1988): Big Boss's henchmen Berserko and Rock Krusher (the former being Big Boss's nephew as well) are both thuggish men with childlike interests and pursuits. Berserko in particular is shown to be impulsive and have a simplistic train of thought and at one point had a hideout in a funhouse.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • Eustace Bagge is essentially a Bratty Half-Pint in an old man's body. In the episode "Mother's Day", upon seeing that his Abusive Mom got Courage a teddy bear, he throws a temper tantrum and whines, "Why don't you ever get me anything?!". He also similarly acts immature and entitled towards his own wife Muriel, displaying jealousy when she dotes on their dog Courage (whom she treats like a surrogate son); in the episode "Ball of Revenge", after Muriel gives Eustace's favorite blanket to Courage, he hires several past villains to kill Courage.
  • Di Lung, who is an extremely blatant living stereotype caricature of Chinese Royal Brats and the fuerdai, uses his enemies as borderline-literal torture toys, and is too arrogant and immature to even be able to understand the concept of other people being better at anything than him; thankfully, however, the show is clearly aware of this.
• Dan Vs.: The titular character has argued over sci-fi memorabilia with Chris and has no job or girlfriend, let alone a wife. Chris' wife, Elise, treats Dan as a child, even sleeping with him in "Dan vs. George Washington" due to his insomnia.
  Dan: Tell me a story...
  Elise: There was once a little prince who was so very angry-
  Dan: Was his name Dan?
• Quackerjack from Darkwing Duck, going along with his "power" of making deadly toys that only he is deranged enough to appreciate.
• Claudia from The Dragon Prince is sixteen years old, yet she frequently displays behavior more appropriate for someone half that age, particularly with her extreme devotion to her father. By the time of Season 5, she's pretty much lost all sympathetic qualities and become as ruthless and power-hungry as her dad.
• The incarnation of Flintheart Glomgold in DuckTales (2017). He's loud, selfish, impatient, and petty to a downright outlandish degree. Not the mention his obsession with devising Awesome, yet Impractical ways to kill his enemies. His Freudian Excuse is that Glomgold emotionally stunted himself at the age when he swore revenge on Scrooge for giving him a dime as an Innocently Insensitive gesture of encouragement as a child. He's such a brat that his company's CFO, Zan Owlson, has to act more as his nanny than an employee.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • The Joker's henchgirl Harley Quinn thinks nothing of helping him with his destructive and murderous schemes and often acts like a perky teenager.
    • The comic book sequel to Batman: Mask of the Phantasm implied that The Joker himself was a psychopathic manchild after his transformation. Despite Phantasm's hatred for the Joker, when he's finally caught at the climax, there's a momentary hesitation as Phantasm realizes Joker isn't the same ruthless mob hitman from years ago, but just a grinning lunatic, no longer capable of remorse, and motivated only by a desire for personal stimulation through murder.
    • Joker gets deconstructed by Terry in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, mockingly calling his fixation with Batman, MO for villainy, and clown-themed gags stale. After all, a comedian's worst enemy is The Heckler. Joker doesn't take this insult lightly. It's an Ironic Echo to Joker's own taunting of Batman after finding out his identity, with the insult being thrown right back at his face.
    • A rather tragic Deconstruction is given in "Baby-Doll". The eponymous supervillainess is a 30-year-old actress with a medical condition that causes her to look about five, despite having the emotional and intellectual maturity of her actual age. Because of this, she was never taken seriously beyond her original role in a sitcom and ended up being Driven to Madness, throwing up her Cheerful Child stage persona as a psychological shield against her miserable existence (though it isn't perfect — she slips up and reveals her true, depressive personality on occasion). The plot is driven by her attempt to recreate the show's setting in an attempt to return to the one happy part of her life. Her emotional immaturity is a mask to help her avoid her problems with adulthood, as revealed when she crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Superman: The Animated Series reinvented the villain Toyman as a childish madman who wears a doll head with a creepy smile.
  • Shiv from Static Shock is completely insane and is seen attempting to rob a toy store in "Consequences", where he even tries to take a child's toy as his own.
• Captain Hero from Drawn Together is a superhero who acts like a kid yet often crosses the line into being a psychopath as well. A lot of this is due to his own stupidity as he is shown to have low intelligence and poor decision-making skills. He once destroyed his own home planet, ruined a charity walk, and terrorized an immigrant family from Greece.
• Eddy's brother from Ed, Edd n Eddy. He's an adult and he still likes to beat up kids, especially his brother Eddy.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Vicky. She obsessively tries to torture the children she babysits in every way she can think of (she also scares the hell out of her own parents), and whines and pouts whenever she doesn't get her way.
  • Mr. Crocker is one as well. He is a lunatic who is obsessed with trying to catch Fairies, still lives with his mother, and is known for randomly handing out Fs because he likes seeing children miserable.
• Futurama:
  • Bender, the alcoholic, amoral gambler who deals porn and has no qualms with selling children as dog food occasionally becomes incredibly childish, most notably in the Mom-centric episodes. Though he is only four. At first.
    "Mom! Mom! Look at me, Bender! Hey-ho, I want attention!"
  • Zapp Brannigan is very cowardly, dim-witted, immature, narcissistic, and perverted. He's also a high-ranking officer in the Earth's military, with disastrous results.
• Get Ace: Played for Laughs with Ned Krinkle, a wannabe supervillain who still lives with his "Mumsy". He's rightfully angry at the titular protagonist for having the braces that were meant for him but acts more like a spoiled brat whose toy was stolen and throws temper tantrums whenever he can't get what he wants. His immaturity is one of several humorous traits that mostly offset the fact that he's an evil villain who desires world domination rather than enhance it. He is also shown to share many of the same hobbies and interests as his 14-year-old adversary and even befriends Ace in an online game with neither realizing the identity of the other.
• G.I. Joe:
  • The titular villain of the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episode "The Gamesmaster" is a textbook case. He uses giant toy soldiers to abduct Flint, Lady Jaye, the Baroness, and Cobra Commander with the intent of killing them for his own pleasure, he's prone to juvenile taunting, and he throws nasty temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way.
  • Inferno from G.I. Joe Extreme regards warfare as a game and has a tendency to refer to weapons as "toys".
  • The G.I. Joe: Renegades incarnation of Dr. Mindbender is rather immature and tends to act like a lethargic teenager.
• Bill Cipher of Gravity Falls comes across as this occasionally, especially in the Grand Finale of the series. His main goal when using his extremely dangerous Reality Warper powers is to have his own sick brand of "fun." Bill likes to mock his enemies with childish insults ("It's funny how DUMB you are!"), and, when he pulls a Grand Theft Me on Dipper in one episode, spends his time gleefully drinking soda "LIKE A HUMAN!" and deliberately causing his new body pain. In the last episodes, he even outright tells Ford that he plans to rewrite humanity's universe into the "ultimate party," envisioning himself and his demonic minions goofing off as they conquer space and time. True to form, Bill's psychopathic tendencies come out when he doesn't get his way or has to wait for something; the problem is that his temper tantrums are deadly.
• Harley Quinn (2019): Harley Quinn is incredibly immature and unrestrained, in addition to being a dangerous supervillain.
• In the World of Jerkass of Hazbin Hotel, many demons (especially the former humans) behave like this since they're stuck in an environment that gives them no reason to practice self-control or virtue. Angel died at 37 and still acts like a rebellious teenager, Niffty died at 22 and both looks and acts like a little girl, and the Vees are prone to temper tantrums.
• If Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) was as good and creative with his imperialistic ambitions as he is with his name-calling and belittling of his subordinates he would have become the indisputable dark ruler of Eternia in no time and have even Horde-Prime serve him skull and crossbones cocktails. Of course, him trying to ruin a circus because they refused to perform for him seems to him as important as any of his other plans.
• Infinity Train:
  • Grace from Book 3 is a sadistic female Peter Pan Parody who does not understand the meaning of the Infinity Train's purpose to help people move on from trauma (as she says that Jesse's number going down is a bad thing) and is corrupting numerous children to follow her path. One of her reasons that she ransacked the Lucky Cat Car was so she could have a corndog. She grows out of it over the course of the book.
  • Simon is even this more so than Grace since at least she seems to care about her followers. Bonus points for his scene of threatening to throw MT off the train while he's painting tiny figurines. In the later half of Book 3, he breaks down when he learns the truth about what the train is for and how Amelia notes that he's nothing more than a kid throwing a temper tantrum. He also becomes very obsessed with having Grace being "just as she should be" before he decides to kill her.
• The eponymous character of Invader Zim, since, per Word of God, he's a full adult in Irken terms, who happens to think that the most productive way to spend his time is picking fights with an 11-year-old child and losing. This trope is most obvious in his interactions with his leaders.
  Zim: My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! It's me! Look at me! My Tallest? My Tallest!
  
  Zim: But I must get my equipment or... I won't... get it.
• The Iron Man: Armored Adventures incarnation of Justin Hammer has shades of this. At one point, when told to stop fighting Iron Man while wearing the Titanium Man armor, he reacts by whining in a manner similar to a child complaining about having to go to bed early.
• Jem: Pizzazz, lead singer of the Misfits, is prone to getting her schemes against Jem and the Holograms off the ground by begging her father to use his money to buy out other companies like a spoiled child and also tends to engage in immature name-calling and scream with wrath whenever anyone tells her off.
• Lucius Heinous VII from Jimmy Two-Shoes is effectively Satan as a Corrupt Corporate Executive and The Caligula, but also throws disproportionately violent tantrums at the slightest provocation, takes childish enjoyment out of making people miserable, and is an Abusive Parent who has been shown to value a childhood stuffed toy more than his own son.
• Justice League Action: Toyman, as in many continuities, is a dangerous madman obsessed with toys. Superman even describes him as "maturity-challenged" in "Play Date".
• Kid Cosmic: Fantos the Amassor lives with his mother, throws hissy fits when he doesn't get what he wants, and owns a ton of paraphernalia relating to Erodius the Planet Killer. However, he's a skilled combatant and is absolutely obsessed with Erodius and the way it rips apart planets and kills everyone in the way of its destruction of other planets.
• Senor Senior Junior is a mild form of this trope. At one point when his father told Kim Possible when rescuing a band from the former's clutches, told her that he'll unveil his new toy: a laser turret. Junior then tells Senior that he told him earlier that the turret was not a toy (implying that Junior attempted to play with it) before Senior explained that he meant the term figuratively.
• Jimmy Wichard, a minor character from King of the Hill is this trope personified. He speaks and acts in a very childish manner, and enjoys bullying those weaker than him. When working as a concession stand manager, he constantly belittles and terrorizes his employees, even going so far as to make Bobby cross a racetrack in the middle of the race just to fetch him a soda.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • Tarrlok has shades of this in episode 8. He has a lot of power in Republic City but comes off as a spoiled brat who will do anything to get what he wants and won't listen when others try to reason with him. However, it's much more complicated
  • Amon/Noatak is ultimately shown to be this in the finale. He comes across as a naive man who just wanted the good life with his younger brother (who happened to be the aforementioned Tarrlok) that their abusive childhood at the hands of their father Yakone denied them.
  • The Earth Queen. She's fussy, self-centered, greedy, and temperamental, and in her position of power, she had made the lives of everyone around her worse.
• In a number of Looney Tunes shorts, Marvin the Martian wants to blow up the Earth because it blocks his view of Venus. Yes, isn't that lovely, hmm?
• Metalocalypse: All of the members of Dethklok are this. They have extremely poor common sense, are oblivious to other people's feelings, and show no regard for the chaos and destruction that they cause.
• Mighty Max has the one-shot villain Spike, who laughs constantly as he chases after Max and his friends, when he's not bellowing and roaring or screaming Norman's name. His tone whenever he speaks is always that of a big silly kid who's having too much fun, even as he taunts a 10-year-old whose father he just murdered that he's going to come back, kill him and eat his heart, or talks about ripping his foes into little tiny pieces. He even laughs at his own injuries, since he's effectively Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Hawk Moth seems to have little issue manipulating the emotionally fragile and putting people in danger for his own benefit. At this point, it's clear his comatose wife is just an excuse.
• Baron Vain from The Modifyers, the Big Bad who gleefully goes "Yay!" when his favorite agent shows up, and ecstatically feeds incompetent henchmen to a gigantic fish while playing opera music.
• Clay Puppington, Orel's abusive father, from Moral Orel. While he tries to act like a stable adult, he has a serious Lack of Empathy, a profound desire for attention, is extremely egocentric, and is incapable of acknowledging when he's made a mistake. All of this can be traced back to his childhood, where his mother pampered him extensively because he was her first child after a string of miscarriages. After he accidentally caused her to suffer a fatal heart attack, his father alternated between ignoring him and physically abusing him. Because the abuse was the only kind of attention his father gave him, Clay came to associate abuse with affection, leading to him developing a very distorted idea of relationships in adulthood.
• In My Adventures with Superman, Do-Anything Robot Amazo's Mad Scientist inventor Dr. Anthony Ivo/Parasite is one in this continuity. He was an immature Tech Bro with no regard for others as he projected his own selfishness onto everyone else, and undergoes serious Sanity Slippage after being defeated by Superman for the first time. He whines petulantly that Superman is "cheating" whenever he loses an advantage in their fights and becomes obsessed with getting a rematch as a result. After Livewire turns his Powered Armor into a Humongous Mecha his rampage through the city is more akin to a child's temper tantrum, complete with him breaking down and crying after Supes beats him again.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Discord is an omnipotent Reality Warper and a Manipulative Bastard, but he's basically an all-powerful Trickster God who views the entire world as his own personal plaything. This includes the ponies, who he gleefully Mind Rapes, breaks, and drives insane. He's well aware of how evil his actions are but doesn't care so long as he's having fun. He also pretty much Rage Quit when Fluttershy actually won his mind games, brainwashing her via brute force and leaving in a huff.
    • Keep Calm and Flutter On takes this even further. The ponies are trying to reform him with The Power of Friendship and he is well aware of this and using it as a ticket to see exactly what he can get away with. In the end it works, and even though Discord's well aware that he fell for their scheme he can't help but admit that Friendship Feels Good. He's still far from reformed, though.
  • Starlight Glimmer is a rare female example. She gets angry easily and succumbs to temper tantrums should she not have her way. It also helps that her backstory of why she turned evil was considered relatively lukewarm. A future episode showed that her father had a habit of babying her (and she was apparently an Emo Teen.)
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Storm King has shades of this. The first thing he does when he's absorbed Celestia's and Luna's powers is to play with the Sun and Moon using his staff.
• Ninjago:
  • The Arc Villain of Season 4, Chen, is shown to be one of the least mature of the Ninja's enemies, frequently insulting his guests and cultists and throwing a tantrum when his attempts to cheat are exposed.
  • The Quiet One, aka Harumi, proves herself to be this when her identity is exposed. She idolizes Lord Garmadon as an evil being like a little kid who thinks villains are better, tends to throw tantrums and act like a Sore Loser whenever the heroes start to get one over her, and gloats about her victories (real or presumed). She also tends to antagonize Lloyd the most out of any of the Ninja, especially when she gloats about the apparent death of his friends and how Garmadon cares for her over him. This is possibly justified since her upbringing didn't do much to improve her mental and emotional health and she's been stewing in her own resentment for so long that she never really matured and grew out of it.
• The Owl House: Underneath the malevolent guise of Emperor Belos, Philip Wittebane is a small young boy from Gravesfield who wants to play games of witch-hunting with his big brother. And despite growing up as an adult and living for centuries, Belos's mentality hasn't matured one bit. He's playing the long game of killing all the witches to fulfill his childhood fantasies of being the greatest hero slaying monsters, and he creates the Grimwalkers as a means to get the big brother he always wanted standing by his side, only to break and destroy them whenever his "toys" show imperfections. His inner self even takes the form of a child wearing the prototype of Belos' mask which his brother carved for him when they were children.
• Paradise PD:
  • Gina Jabowski. Her Ax-Crazy personality makes her both childish and unpredictable. She also has a target scrapbook that appears to have been created for a grade school student.
  • Robby the criminal acts like a whiny Spoiled Brat despite clearly being an adult, as demonstrated in "Who Ate Wally's Waffles".
  • Satan acts a lot like a spoiled, bratty 7-year-old girl, loving to role-play and cosplay as Wanda Lynn and then throwing a huge childish tantrum over losing to Randall in a Dungeons & Dragons game.
• In PAW Patrol, the main villain, Mayor Humdinger, often acts childish with his selfishness and wanting to be the best all the time.
• Doctor Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb. It's shown a number of times that, despite ordinarily seeming like an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, he actually could be a serious threat if he really tried-it's just that he's too distracted trying to get petty revenge for old grudges. He also often treats the fight between good and evil as though it's just a game he and his friend/nemesis Perry like to play with him as the bad guy, and gets annoyed by other villains who "cheat" (such as building devices without self-destruct buttons or devising traps that hold their nemeses for longer than the Exposition they're about to give requires), despite himself often breaking those same rules.
• Regular Show: Muscle Man enjoys pulling childish pranks on people, has horrible manners, and is prone to throwing violent temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way.
• Ren from The Ren & Stimpy Show is the clearest example of this trope, behaving like an Ax-Crazy psycho, but behaving childishly sometimes.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Rick Sanchez, despite being in his 70s, acts less like an adult of his age and more like an unstable teenage boy. He makes frequent toilet jokes, sex jokes, swears a lot, has a huge house party (possibly to spite his granddaughter's idea of a party) when his daughter and son-in-law are away, blows money at an arcade, disrespects authority and treats Summer and Morty more like his friends than his grandkids. Also, during said house party, he fits in seamlessly, becoming the life of the party... even when it's among people who are almost a quarter his age.
  • President Evil Andre Curtis is also one, which is part of the reason he's Vitriolic Best Buds with Rick. He's incredibly petty and picks fights with Rick because he can't stand the idea of being Always Second Best to him, and in the Season 6 Christmas Episode he talks down to Morty over Star Wars because he was too young to have seen the original trilogy in theaters. Despite being the second most powerful man on the planet, he's still hung up on his Abusive Parents and Desperately Craves Affection to the point he tried to assimilate the country into a Hive Mind to save his approval rating.
• Samurai Jack:
  • The Daughters of Aku were raised from birth to be the perfect assassins and finally kill Jack. Outside of that task, they are hopeless; they think that a male deer is a minion of Aku simply because its antlers resemble his horns, are utterly perplexed when it affectionately nuzzles its mate instead of devouring it (one going so far as to step forward to attack them out of confusion and frustration), and when they are defeated sole survivor Ashi's Villainous Breakdown sounds more like a childish temper tantrum than a death threat (and is treated as such by Jack).
  • Aku himself. For an ancient and powerful demonic overlord, Aku is ultimately rather petty and immature. His motivation for trying to conquer the universe is simply to have fun, all the while treating everything with a dark sense of humor. Not to mention that he easily gets bored or irritated when things aren't going his way. The Scotsman even lampshades this during his rant towards Aku, while calling him a "big baby" for being a Dirty Coward towards Jack.
    • "Jack vs. Aku" examines his behavior further; while Jack believes that fighting Aku is his life's mission and treats it with the utmost seriousness, Aku considers every battle with Jack to be some kind of game (a game that's gotten a bit too long and repetitive for him). So Aku wants to shake things up by challenging Jack to a duel, but this time they have to fight differently.
    • In Season 5, we discover that Aku's inability to kill Jack for the past 50 years has driven him to depression, but he comes off acting like a teenager or young adult who's simply become bored and confused about what to do with his life. In contrast to Jack, whose depression seems much more justified, because his whole life has been mostly full of tragic events.
• The Simpsons: This is mostly Averted with Homer Simpson. However, there are times when he can come across as this, mostly due to Flanderization.
  • Mr. Burns also has some rather childish traits to him. He's extremely selfish, refuses to acknowledge the harm he inflicts on others, is never satisfied with what he has, and will resort to extremely petty means to get his way.
• South Park:
  • Satan is whiny, insecure, and fickle. He doesn't even seem to be that much of a bad guy, and on a good day, his domain can be quite nice a place. But he easily falls under bad influences and will launch an invasion against Heaven or Earth at the drop of a hat.
  • Mr. Garrison is definitely one. He's a grown man yet has an unhealthy obsession with rape, has frequent mood swings, has committed several felonies, wants power just to excuse being awful, and has no consideration for others' feelings. Despite his overall sociopathy, he's shown to have a slight touch of innocence, as he initially relied on a Companion Cube to support him, has occasional moments of being genuinely nice to his students, and in "Ike's Wee Wee" is shown watching Teletubbies while high.
  • Stan's father Randy Marsh sometimes falls into this category, one such example is from the episode "Night of the Living Homeless" in which he threatens the other townsfolk with a shotgun holding them hostage fearing they could become "one of the homeless" (treated like a zombie plague), he then murders his friend Glen after learning he lost his house, then later acts as if he were still alive.
  • Al Gore is also one, wanting to be seen as a hero by vanquishing ManBearPig, and runs around in a cape while making airplane noises and shouting "Excelsior!" His obsession has made him care nothing at all about the fact that his actions harm people instead of saving them.
  • Season 20 turns Kyle's father, Gerald Broflowski, into this. He viciously trolls women online because it reminds him of being a kid again. He even likes to troll little girls.
  • Lennart Bredrager, also from Season 20, reveals himself as one. His entire reason for trying to kickstart World War III is because he's a Straw Nihilist who finds it funny. Plus, when he drops his Danish act, his personality is similar to that of a douchey fratboy.
  • Heather Swanson from the Season 23 episode "Board Girls". Upon claiming to be a transgender woman, "she" acts very immature when bragging about beating women in sports competitions and throws a tantrum after elementary school girls beat "her" in board games.
  • The Return of Covid: Eric Cartman becomes this in the new future where he never grew out of his childhood spite and bigotry. He still wears his childhood clothes, lives on the road as a hobo, and screams obscenities at people.
• Brak progressed from a supervillain in Space Ghost to being an annoying loudmouth with a childlike attitude in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Planet, and The Brak Show. It is said that he suffered brain damage after Space Ghost.
• Spliced:
  • Entree is extremely impulsive and selfish. The "jokes" he pulls on Fuzzy in "Sgt. Snuggums" include, among other things, getting killer bees to attack him and throwing him in a volcano.
  • Peri is a really very nice guy, but he's just too stupid to avoid getting manipulated into going along with Entree's insane schemes.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • While Squidward Tentacles is generally reserved and keeps to himself, many times he's Not So Above It All and will join in on SpongeBob and Patrick's antics, usually taking it too far. Probably the best example is "Snowball Effect", where he at first stays out of SpongeBob and Patrick's snowball fights and tries to get them to stop. After trying to manipulate them into fighting again, he starts violently throwing snowballs, causing SpongeBob and Patrick to do the mature thing and leave the fight while Squidward is reduced to a psychotic wreck.
  • Sheldon Plankton may also count. He is normally portrayed as a Diabolical Mastermind, especially in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, but at least as seen in the episode "FUN", seems to have a pretty childish side with SpongeBob when he befriends him, and some of his behavior is pretty immature.
  • Patrick Star is good-natured and cheerful most of the time, but he can be quite frightening when upset. For example, in "Valentine's Day", he throws a destructive temper tantrum when he starts to think that SpongeBob hadn't given him an actual Valentine's Day gift.
• Mina Loveberry from Star vs. the Forces of Evil. She takes Blood Knight to a horrifying extreme, not hesitating to harm any and all monsters that she finds, purely because they're monsters, and not because they're hurting anyone. Centuries of needless violence molded Mina into a Crazy Homeless Person dead-set on completely wiping out the monster population by any means necessary.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • Darth Maul shows shades of this in his return in the Season 4 finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He hides himself from Savage behind boxes and can only be lured out by Mother Talzin's bright, floating energy ball, which he chases after in a way you would expect a small child to. Sure, he gets "better", but the effect is still fairly tragic and quite disturbing.
  • The Son was a living embodiment of The Dark Side and all the emotional instability that comes with it. His actions often came off as those of an angry child throwing a temper tantrum at his parents, only to be instantly regretful once he sees the damage he's done. For instance, he spends the entirety of the arc trying to kill his father and calling him "selfish" for "taking too long to die", but outright begs the Father not to die when he takes his own life.
• Ronaldo Fryman from Steven Universe. He's immature, excitable, petulant, irresponsible, and dangerously deluded Attention Whore. In "Beach City Horror Club", we find out that he's been holding a grudge against Lars since early childhood. There's a reason why lots of fans don't like him.
• Early Cuyler from Squidbillies is obviously very stunted emotionally. He has a short fuse, only cares about his own desires, fails to consider the consequences of his actions, develops grudges over petty slights, and generally acts very irresponsibly.
• Superfriends:
  • Mr. Mxyzptlk is portrayed as a childish prankster who uses his reality-warping abilities to cause havoc for the hell of it and even throws a tantrum in response to Superman and Batman escaping the fifth dimension in the lost season short "Mxyzptlk's Revenge". Jayna also addresses in "Uncle Mxyzptlk" that Mxyzptlk comes off as even more childish than the de-aged Superman he is manipulating by pretending to be his uncle.
  • The show's incarnation of Superman villain Toyman is depicted as a cackling lunatic whose obsession with toys isn't just limited to implementing weaponized toys in his schemes but also extends to seeing every weapon and property he gets his hands on as a toy for him to play with.
• The Warden from Superjail! puts the Manchild in Psychopathic Manchild. He acts his shoe size and is barely sane enough to keep his emotions together. For example, in the pilot, as the Warden sings and pets a dead rabbit, he rips its skin off in a moment of unprovoked aggression, then promptly puts the bloody skin on his head and orders Jared to get bunny suits for the inmates.
• Shredder's mutant henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady from the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon were shown to read comic books, watch cartoons, and play video games in their spare time. In general, they also did tend to act very childishly.
• Total Drama:
  • Chris McLean, the show's host, behaves childishly a lot, yet he comes up with challenges that were built to satisfy his own sadistic pleasures as he puts the contestants through them in hopes of seeing them get hurt.
  • Courtney doesn't seem this way at first, due to her prim and uptight exterior, but as time goes on she shows many signs of psychopathy such as an inability to learn from her mistakes, a disregard for the feelings and even the lives of others, and having extreme difficulty prioritizing long term relationships over short-term gain. She resorts to leveraging people's lives for her own gain rather often: threatening to kill DJ, Cody, Owen, and Tyler for the million dollars in the first season special, holding the only means of escape from an exploding building hostage until the others agree to split the money with her if they win, and offering to feed one of the other contestants to a shark in exchange for it returning her PDA. As for the man child part, she has a tendency to throw destructive temper tantrums and whine childishly whenever things aren't going her way, most notably whining about wanting a prize for so long that Chris gives her his snacks just to shut her up.
  • Mal, Mike's Enemy Within, also demonstrates this kind of behavior. He starts out doing petty things like breaking the other contestants' stuff, but it doesn't take long for him to show how sadistic he really is.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Shredder has shades of this; he is the skilled, feared leader of the Foot Clan armed to the teeth with knives and mutant henchmen... whose actions are largely, if not entirely, motivated by the fact that Tang Shen chose Yoshi/Splinter over him. Everything Shredder does is basically just him throwing a temper tantrum over not getting the girl and his angst about being adopted, using his adopted brother as The Scapegoat to vent his general contempt for the world.
• Tom Terrific foe Crabby Appleton occasionally shows signs of being immature. He cries over losing his dragon and his controls not working in "Crabby Appleton's Dragon" and Tom persuades him into bringing back and reassembling the scattered pieces of the North Pole in "Who Stole the North Pole?" by threatening to tell Santa Claus that he's the one who took the North Pole. He's at his most childish in "The Everlasting Birthday Party", where he traps everyone else on the planet in a "Groundhog Day" Loop solely so he can celebrate his birthday forever and gloats about how no one else in the world will be able to celebrate their birthdays.
• Grimlock from The Transformers is a Psychopathic Mech-Proto who regularly tries to defeat Optimus Prime for leadership of the Autobots, destroys Decepticons with pleasure, and rules his faction of Dinobots with an iron tail... in his downtime, he enjoys fishing with said faction, hearing stories about the Good Ole Days from Kup (in the middle of battles) and giving human children and annoying, rhyming Autobots piggy-back rides. He also has his own brand of Hulk Speak.
  • Speaking of rhyming Autobots, Wheelie might actually fall into this category. He fights about as well as any other Autobot and has taken down robots three times his size, but generally speaks in sing-song rhymes and hangs out with a 12-year-old human boy.
  • Galvatron in Season 3 definitely fits this trope, from treating potential mass murder as 'sport' and 'hunting season' for Autobots he acts like a child whenever he loses with the Decepticons taking the brunt of his tantrums. They eventually get sick of it and tell his loyal lieutenant Cyclonus to do something about his insanity.
• Transformers: Animated has the Autobots' second most dangerous human adversary, Henry Masterson, who acts more like an immature teenager than a grown man. He speaks with a Totally Radical speech pattern, demonstrates his Headmaster Unit (a machine that can decapitate giant robots, including the Transformers, and take control of their bodies) to Professor Sumdac, and also carelessly endangers lives while acting like his technology is the coolest thing ever. He gets angry when Professor Sumdac rejects his ideas and fires him, leading him to hold the city of Detroit hostage to get the money needed to make his own company, only to decide to blow up the city anyway when it looks like he got what he wanted. Getting fired again leads him to try and kill Sumdac and his daughter personally. It's no wonder Professor Sumdac doesn't want him working for his company.
  Henry Masterson: The only thing better than making toys, is breaking toys!
• Snaptrap in T.U.F.F. Puppy who constantly makes evil schemes for petty reasons (like blowing up the sun to make popcorn), acts like an immature dick to his henchmen, and constantly argues with his mom.
• Uncle Grandpa can be this at his kookiest.
  I do like it when the Earth explodes...
• Jonas Venture Sr. from The Venture Bros. was gradually revealed to be this. Beneath the charm, heroics, and intelligence, Jonas was a deeply selfish and irresponsible man who prioritized his ego and desires over everyone else. He was generally more concerned with having fun, getting laid, and being famous than anything else. Noticeably, when his son Rusty became a teenager, Jonas tortured him with an endless series of humiliating pranks and did little, if anything, to stop his teammates from bullying him with harmful pranks and violent threats.
• Voltron Force: Sky Marshall Wade, despite being a brilliant strategist and Gadgeteer Genius, is ultimately quite a childish and petty man. In “Clash of the Lions”, Coran reveals that Wade, since his beginnings, always wanted to be part of the Voltron Force. Unfortunately, he was rejected by the Lions. Consumed by envy and rage, Wade grew to be a cruel dictator, putting all his resources to bear in a desperate attempt to prove himself better than the Defender of the Universe. He’s essentially an obsessed, jilted fanboy raging against his former heroes over being told he couldn’t have something he wanted. Even worse, for all his talk of having made his way to the top by his own merits, his true plan, also revealed in “Clash of the Lions”, was to take control of Voltron by force, showing how he never got over wanting Voltron for himself. The small speech he gives the Force when he takes control of the big robot says it all:
  Sky Marshall Wade: “Life lesson, rookies: you don’t move up in this world by accepting rejection. When they tell you “No, you can’t have it”, well…you just find a way to TAKE it!”
• The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Professor Pinchworm in "Birthday World" doesn't really show much indication of being a mature or stable individual because of his habits of childishly gloating about his scheme for world domination and taunting the McDonaldland gang after he de-ages them into toddlerhood, but his tantrum over being defeated at the end (assuming it's not a side effect of being turned into a toddler himself) takes the cake.
• Wander over Yonder:
  • Lord Hater is immature, short-tempered, and obsessed with being "THE GREATEST IN ALL THE GALAXY!" When Wander challenged him over a trophy, he was more interested in the trophy than the planet he already conquered. Hater was originally developed as a child character for a different project. When added to the WOY cast, he was physically aged up to look like an imposing villain... but kept the exact same personality.
  • Lord Dominator, underneath the scary-looking armor, is basically a dorky, hormonal teenager who acts like a silly Card-Carrying Villain. This would be mostly funny, if not for the fact she was blowing up planets. Basically, she treats violence as one big joke. It ends as a joke on her once she runs out of things to blow up.
• Xavier: Renegade Angel is an anti-heroic example; while he always means well, it's clear he's a total lunatic. His basic response to any problem is to walk in with no clue what's going on, poorly act like he knows what he's doing, screw everything up, and then throw a hissy fit if someone suggests he's done something wrong. In the first episode of Season 2, an unnamed bully asks him "Are you going to go crying to your mommy about it?" — and Xavier answers "Yes, I am". His trying to find his mother in order to do so is the basic plot of the second season.
• The X-Men: The Animated Series' rendition of Kevin McTaggert, a.k.a. Proteus. The cartoon took the character and made him a teenage mutant with the mind of a young child after being locked away from the world by his mother Moira, due to said powers. He possesses people and Mind Rapes them while doing so, has minor reality-warping powers (which work like a charm on none other than Wolverine and reduce him to a borderline blubbering wreck for a while), and does all kinds of terrible things... because he desperately wants to see the father who left the family shortly after his powers manifested. While this is a far cry from the horror version of the character in the comics, it's an Enforced Trope since this particular X-Men cartoon was an animated series geared towards kids and young teens in The '90s; Proteus wouldn't have fitted in the cast, had his portrayal not toned down.

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