Sadist Show / Western Animation

A-K

• The Amazing World of Gumball: The Wattersons cause chaos in Elmore, and the other characters aren't much better — most are either insufferable pricks or stupid morons. It also turns out that Elmore would be exterminated if Richard ever gets a job or does something useful.
• American Dad!:
  • While not quite as prominent an example as Seth's other shows, there's some frequent Black Comedy and the majority of the cast are less than morally sound to say the least.
  • An in-universe example is shown in "Morning Mimosa" with the titular Show Within a Show. The entire show is dedicated to humiliating its guests on live TV, with the hosts even going so far as to get their entire audience drunk on mimosas and provoke them into physically attacking said guests. Francine outright describes it as the "most hostile audience in television," and Steve finds this out the hard way when he becomes a YouTube cooking celebrity and is invited onto the show.
  • Another in-universe example is shown in "Trophy Wife, Trophy Life". The Smiths learn that a Korean TV studio is filming their neighbor Tuttle for a show. The audience seems to enjoy the fact that Tuttle is a depressed sad sack. Notably, the show's ratings drop when the Smiths (hoping to get on the show) start hanging out with Tuttle and his mood improves.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force, as well as other [adult swim] shows, are very liberal in regards to characters suffering disgrace and misfortune for the sake of it.
• Archer: When the main character gets an erection at the idea of his mother's death and the Running Gag of Lana trying to kill him is not to be taken seriously, you know you have one of these.
• Brickleberry is full of this, with the main cast consisting of screwed-up individuals who have no problem tormenting and screwing each other over. The other characters aren't safe from this either, being in a Crapsack World where sex and hate crimes and child abuse are free to commit.
• The Buzz on Maggie is an interesting example where the protagonist isn't quite a saint, but nearly everyone else isn't much better, if at all. While Maggie tends to be self-centered, her older brother Aldrin is a Jerk Jock who would one-up his sister, their parents can be wet blankets (especially their dad), Maggie's best friend Rayna can be just as petty and throw her under the bus, and Dawn is an Alpha Bitch who rarely gets her comeuppance. One of the only nice characters is Maggie's kid brother Pupert, but even he would occasionally dip into this.
• CatDog is a cynical Black Comedy set in a Crapsack World where a lot of the humor comes from how miserable the eponymous brothers' lives are and how they rarely succeed at anything.
• Classic Disney Shorts: Donald Duck. In his own words: "You can't win. You just can't win."

• The Cramp Twins: Pretty much similar to Johnny Test where the majority of the characters are major jerks that often cause trouble for others. One of the main characters is the show's biggest Butt-Monkey that constantly suffers abuse from his brother. Said brother (named Wayne Cramp) cannot go a single episode without torturing his brother or even other kids. The twins' mother, in fact, is such a Neat Freak she is even willing to test dangerous products on her own family and said products are even deadlier than acid!
• Dan Vs. is all about the adventures of a paranoid, short-fused man who tries to enact revenge on almost anyone who slights him. Fortunately, almost everyone he targets turns out to completely deserve it.
• Dexter's Laboratory certainly qualifies. Dexter is rarely heroic and most of his exploits are usually for selfish reasons. And if that's not the case, he'll end up being the victim of Deedee's shenanigans.
• When Drawn Together isn't about taking the piss out of Reality TV (the original premise which it dropped in the second season) or cartoons, it's about heaping abuse on the dysfunctional housemates. Fortunately, they all retain strong Jerkass tendencies, so there's little room for sympathy save for Captain Hero, who was originally the biggest of the Jerkasses but developed into the most sympathetic character.
• The Drinky Crow Show, a series about a crow who drinks to escape the rigors of reality and tries to commit suicide regularly. What do you think?
• Ed, Edd n Eddy. It's a rare occasion that the neighborhood kids did something positive toward the Eds. It changed by the end of the movie—the neighborhood kids actually start liking the Eds at that point. Although the Eds usually take the most abuse, the other characters also receive a fair amount of Amusing Injuries. The show pretty much revolves around pain.
• The Fairly Oddparents: Most episodes revolve around ways to just torture Timmy in the cruelest ways possible, especially from Season 4 onwards. Heck, even his parents get in on the act more often than not. In addition, Timmy is rarely heroic and most of his exploits are usually for selfish reasons.
• Family Guy starts to become this after its second revival, and it only gets worse with each season.
• From its third season and onward, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends often wound up being this. Characters go through hell for little reason, many of the ones who cause trouble get away scot-free, while more well-meaning characters often wound up in trouble.
• Fraidy Cat: The premise alone revolves around the many troubles Fraidy faces in every episode. When Fraidy's life isn't accidentally made worse by his lives, dogs, other animals, or even fellow cats make life hell for him.

• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: What else can you call a show where the Grim Reaper is the Only Sane Man of the main characters?
• Invader Zim: A megalomaniac alien, a deranged hedonistic robot, a paranormal-obsessed lunatic and his self-centered, sociopath sister and negligent father in an ignorant, cybergothic Crapsack World, wherein everyone within it is destined to fail at everything they try almost all the time. The only ones who usually come out okay are the ones who don't care about anything or are too dumb to know any better. Dib tries to foil Zim's latest plan to destroy Earth? Best case scenario is that Dib probably succeeds and Zim's plan fails, but Zim has learned nothing, Gir has destroyed half the lab (again), Dib's forced to take the blame for whatever damage Zim wrought on the world, and Gaz walks by to rub salt into his wounds by calling him a kook that cares too much. Pyrrhic victories and downer endings all around, nobody grows, and the world is worse off. Some variant of this happens in nearly every other episode.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes thrives on this, being rife with cruel and often violent slapstick and other forms of humiliation directed towards everyone, from Jimmy himself to random background characters. It's pretty much how the show does its Black Comedy. But what else did you expect from a cartoon that's set in a place that is pretty much just Hell by another name known as Miseryville?
• Johnny Test: It's easier to list the characters who aren't selfish jerks who'd take advantage of one another. Though this is a lighter example then most, since a majority of the resolutions end up for the better.
• Kaeloo: All the characters are put through terrible physical and/or emotional torment just for the audience's amusement. Due to the Reset Button, some of them have even died and been fine in the next episode.

K-Z

• The Life & Times of Tim: When Tim isn't the victim of his own social ineptitude, he's suffering for being too meek and unassertive to turn down his friends and coworkers' terrible ideas.
• Pick one of the Looney Tunes derived series from WB in the 90s, such as Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, and tell yourself it isn't sadistic, you won't be able to.
• The Loud House isn't entirely a Sadist Show, but a major part of its comedy involves the protagonist Lincoln Loud being the victim of the antics and bullying from his family and other characters, especially in the earlier seasons. Later seasons added new characters as regular Butt-Monkeys alongside Lincoln, such as his older sister Lori.
• The MAD series from Cartoon Network. Much like Robot Chicken, it bases a large amount of its humor around popular characters getting severely injured/killed, all while abiding to the minimum quota of what qualifies as "child friendly".
• Moral Orel - Especially in the third season, when it stopped pretending to be a comedy.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Ordinary kid Adam Lyon tries to survive in a Sucky School where everyone is a Jerkass, The Ditz, or both. He fails constantly. Sometimes he wins... only for his life to go back to being crap for him.
• Oggy and the Cockroaches is the French posterboy for this. Characters love hurting each other? Check. Three cockroaches who look harmless at first sight but then will absolutely destroy you? Check. (Bonus points for "The Ghost Hunter" where they mentally and physically mess with Oggy.) Poisoning everyone who you hate? McDouble check.
• Phineas and Ferb expressly and shamelessly averts this, as explained by the creators in this article.
• The Proud Family generally doesn't revolve around pain, but Penny and especially Oscar both suffer bad luck: Oscar with his general misfortune, and Penny with her bad friends.
• Rabbids Invasion is prone to this trope, especially in the first season. The Rabbids can be quite mean to each other, they inflict all sorts of Amusing Injuries upon themselves, and they'll ruin the day of just about any human they happen across. Driving countless people mad, getting several more into trouble, causing huge traffic accidents, and brainwashing an entire town make up just a few of the things they've done.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show, in addition to being the Trope Codifier for Grossout Show, also has this as well, since much of the humor involve around pain and torture, as the characters harm one another in a Crapsack World, and without consequence.
• Robot Chicken: Basically taking pop culture icons from the '80s and '90s and throwing them into Black Comedy situations which more often than not result in trauma or death (or both).
• Robotomy takes place on a planet known as Insanus, mostly at Harry S. Apocalypse, which is filled with extremely violent robots who mutilate each other at any possible moment. Almost every scene has some mutilation going on.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko has been pushed and stepped on by almost everyone, even his friends.

• Sidekick: The show takes place in a city that is such a hive of villainy that there is an entire section where being a good person is literally forbidden. There are superheroes to fight the villains, but every single one we see is completely useless, and the only one we ever actually see doing something is only slightly more moral than the villains he fights. It's widely accepted in this universe that it's the job of the sidekicks, the real focus of the show (hence the name), to do all the real work while the superhero takes all the credit. Unfortunately, all the sidekicks we see are either completely incompetent, Jerkasses with little to no concern for those around them, or both. The only two characters who get a relatively sympathetic portrayal are Eric and Kitty, both of whom are subjected to a constant stream of mockery and humiliation by everyone including each other.
• The Simpsons:
  • The series is the only show ever to have a famous running gag involving child abuse. And everything that happens to Hans Moleman and Milhouse. "Homer's Enemy" and "The Boys Of Bummer" are some noteworthy examples.
  • Treehouse of Horror. It's easier to justify constant examples of Took a Level in Jerkass and Took a Level in Dumbass in episodes where Anyone Can Die.
  • The Itchy & Scratchy Show, in which Itchy the mouse comes up with a sadistic new way each episode to kill Scratchy, who's just minding his own business.
  • And then there's an in-universe example being that Japanese game show in Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo, which involves things like skunks, human pinatas, lightning, volcanoes, and scorpions.
• South Park: The moral of the show appears to be "Life sucks, then you die. Then life continues to suck, and you die again." And if you are a reasonable child Surrounded by Idiots or a Nice Guy in a World of Jerkass, you're going to get the short end of the stick quite often.
• SpongeBob SquarePants, particularly after the first movie and even moreso after the second movie. It's a rare occasion that jerks like Squidward did something positive toward SpongeBob. Squidward and Plankton are two of the biggest butt-monkies yet, but the other characters also receive a fair amount of Amusing Injuries, SpongeBob included at times. The show (namely in season 6-7 and 10-present episodes, and even in some of the episodes before or in between these seasons) pretty much revolves around pain.
• Stressed Eric: The entire point of this show was to have every single thing in the protagonist's life go horribly wrong. At the end of every episode, he collapses of a heart attack or some other such stress-related malady.
• Superjail!: It has a sadist Willy Wonka-looking character for a prison warden.
• Teen Titans Go! is prone to this, due to the main characters being jerks to each other. It's one of the reasons why the show is unfavorably compared to the 2003 series. The worst offenders are "Staff Meeting", "Money Grandma", and "Boys vs Girls".
• Ten Year Old Tom focuses on a Butters Stotch-type well-meaning, slightly ditzy, Extreme Doormat who constantly gets dragged into Zany Schemes by the adults around him, as well as his own friends, and always takes all the blame when they inevitably fail.
• Time Squad: Almost all of the humor comes from the main characters being complete dicks to each other. Tuddrussel abuses Larry, Larry tries to kill Otto, Otto attacks Tuddrussel, etc. The most vicious cases of this are when the writers had decided to make entire episodes dedicated to making sure that Otto is completely miserable, like having him abandoned on islands only inhabited by blood-thirsty baboons. If it's not the main guys, you can bet that some of the jokes come from either Tuddrussel beating people up for stuff they didn't even do or historical figures being stupid or jerks and their inventions or ideas cause mayhem.
• Thomas & Friends: Most of the engines tend to endure violent crashes (usually from either goofing off or not following instructions), with the people they're supporting often having to pay the price for it. This is mostly in the Stop Motion series, though.
• The Three Friends... and Jerry supports this trope a lot. Almost everyone in this show is a Jerkass, a Butt-Monkey, or both at the same time.
• Several shows like Tom and Jerry, Tex Avery MGM Cartoons and Looney Tunes have their source of humor based on this trope, complete with violence that is over-the-top but still family-friendly (no blood or gore involved).
  • A notable example was The Ducksters, featuring a Show Within a Show 'Truth or AAAAAAAAH!'. The penalties for missing answers on that show were ... probably not going to make it past the FCC these days. Winning wasn't much better— the prizes had a tendency to be dropped on you.
  • Wile E Coyote And The Roadrunner is probably the biggest example. The show consists of making Wile E. suffer every scene in every way possible.
  • Famous Studios' Herman and Katnip is effectively Tom & Jerry with the violent sadism stretched as far as it can go. The crew of The Simpsons has confirmed that The Itchy & Scratchy Show is based more on this series than on Tom & Jerry.
• Total Drama, as a parody of the shamelessly sleazy and exploitative nature of actual reality TV, goes as far as being hosted by a sadist who pretty much personifies the show's love of hurting and humiliating its characters and making them as miserable as much as possible. By the time of the fourth season, the original cast is so sick of all the hellacious torture they've gone through that many have sworn to never be on the show again in any capacity, only coming back when called for because of their legally binding contracts. DJ freaked when he found himself back at Camp Wawanakwa in the fourth season for a challenge, and he was there as a judge.
  • Generally averted by Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, which is the only entry in the franchise not to be hosted by a sadist. While there are definitely moments every now and then where the comedy comes from the torment the more immoral challenges inflict on the contestants, the characters are generally treated with a great deal of more dignity compared to the parent series.
• The Venture Bros. is all about heroes and villains who are failures.
• Villainous is a Villain Protagonist show centered around an Evil, Inc. owned by a Satanic Archetype which is contracted by supervillains to kill their Smug Super rivals. Several of the promotional shorts had them tormenting the heroes (and even villains) of some other Cartoon Network shows.

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