Sadist Teacher / Western Animation

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If you think he's bad now, wait until March 15th rolls in...

Sadist Teachers in Western Animation.

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• The Gromble from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, who at one point forced two students to be meshed into the same body as a punishment for their bickering. He ate a student on-screen in one episode because the student accidentally disrupted his lecture by having to chase after his nose, which was running away on little legs. On the other hand, he doesn't let anyone else mess with his students, and he does have a few signs of caring for them.
• Miss Simian in The Amazing World of Gumball can vary between an Apathetic Teacher and a Sadist Teacher with a particular dislike for Gumball. She treated his mother Nicole even worse, mocking her every failure throughout her entire life, even outside of school, and as an adult. Case in point; Nicole and her husband were standing outside the church on her wedding day, and Miss Simian drove past and yelled "Nice husband, loser!"
• Subversion in Mr. Ratburn of Arthur: Ratburn is feared as the strictest and toughest teacher in the school, so his reputation lives up to the trope. However, he is an excellent teacher in spite of, or indeed because of his strictness, and several episodes feature him outside of school in order to humanize him.
  • One episode revealed he had an even worse teacher, who was also very competent for the same reasons, when he was in school (he was taught Latin in 3rd grade!).
  • When his Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher sister took his place one day, everyone wanted Mr. Ratburn back by the day's end.
  • One episode featured an Academic Decathlon between the school's Third Grade classes. Ratburn's class won every single challenge. Not surprising to see as he is the only 3rd grade teacher who seems to actually teach the kids anything.
• As Told by Ginger:
  • The substitute teacher Mrs. Grimley takes it up to eleven. She makes the students sit facing the wall, she does not allow passing notes in class, drifting off into space, hall passes, talking, smiling, laughing, or breathing (if she hears you doing it), and she forces them to write essays for minor infractions. The essays get longer as the episode goes on. She makes Ginger, Miranda, and Courtney write 16,000-word essays for passing a note in class (and adds another thousand words for complaining). Ginger tries to see the good side of Mrs. Grimley by defending her house when the other students egg and TP it. And as it turns out, she doesn't have a good side and doesn't even care that her students pulled pranks on her house. Ginger and the students all rebel against her, and Ginger promptly gets detention for her "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
    Miranda: That's inhumane!
    Courtney: I don't even know 16,000 words!
  • Carl's middle school science teacher, Mr. Brooks, who was so anxious to set the poor kid up to fail that he convinced Carl that he had contracted a deadly virus that killed victims within 48 hours from the off-limits lab freezer. There was no such thing, and Lois chews Brooks out over it.
• Ms. Erlenemyer from Atomic Puppet. The biology skeleton in her classroom was the skeleton of the last kid to have gotten on her bad side, which leads to AP believing she's actually a supervillain. Long story short, she isn't and it gets her transformed into the evil psychic Queen Mindbender by an Eldritch Abomination, making her one of Atomic Puppet's most dangerous foes.
• Beavis and Butt-Head:
  • Inverted with Mr. Van Driessen, the boys' overly spiritual social studies teacher, who apparently can't bring himself to discipline anyone and gets steamrolled by their pranks time and time again.
  • Played straight by Drill Sergeant Nasty-turned-teacher Mr. Buzzcut, who is the complete and utter polar opposite of Mr. Van Driessen. He at least cares about the students' well-being however as in one episode he ran to the defense of his students, specifically Beavis and Butt-Head themselves no less, to protect them from a guest teacher who was physically attacking them, though it was only because HE wanted to be the one to kick the asses of his students.

• Rancid Rabbit and Sally O' Neil from CatDog were very cruel teachers to CatDog in the episode "Back to School".
• Mr. Wilter from ChalkZone. He'd have to be if he is willing to stunt creativity on the grounds that he hates cartoons.
• Ms. Shoop, the guidance counselor and recess monitor in Clarence, gets great pleasure from taking away recess, framing students, and taking the fun out of school.
• In the last episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage develops self-esteem issues that manifest in the form of a Sadist Teacher that immediately starts tormenting the poor dog and criticizing everything he does, and giving him horrible nightmares. It disperses when Courage eventually accepts himself.
• Danny Phantom: Mr. Lancer both uses this trope straight and subverts it. He had the terrible tendency to pick on the unpopular main character Danny by choosing the popular kids over him, harshly criticizing his schoolwork, and doling out punishments, yet a few episodes have shown he does care for all his students, even Danny.
• Daria:
  • Ms. Barch hates all her male students and gives them terrible grades. The unfairness of this is only slightly mitigated by the fact that they often deserve it. It is not for nothing that she is depicted as Xena the Warrior Princess in the show's closing credits.
  • Mr. Demartino likes to see all his students suffer, but in his case, it's because he feels it's payback for the pain they put him through with their stupidity. However, he greatly fears Ms. Barch^note She beats him up in more than one episode, and, when given a paintball gun and permission to fire it, she expends an entire magazine on a cowering Demartino. It is revealed that the real reason for her hatred of men is all the unresolved issues with her former husband; Demartino reminds her of him.

• Doug had Mr. Bone & Mrs. Wingo in Doug's own nightmarish imagination. Only his imagination though—in reality, they're both actually Stern Teachers, and Mr. Bone actually went Papa Wolf for Doug at one point and expelled his own nephew when he caught him bullying Doug.
• Played straight in the DuckTales (1987) episode "Nothing to Fear" with Huey Dewey and Louie's hallucination of their teacher Mrs. Quackenbush as a fearsome monster intent on punishing them severely for not doing their homework (when the boys tell her that they actually got it done, the hallucination apologizes and disappears). Subverted in later episodes when the same teacher actually appears in person and is very sweet.
• Mr. Crocker from The Fairly OddParents!. Besides his fairy-hunting obsession, he also takes a sadistic glee in handing out "F" grades to his students, and his favorite child to torment is none other than Timmy Turner. In The Movie, he actually manages to use magic to change reality and make himself Evil Overlord of a dystopian world. However, this is balanced out by making him one of the show's resident Butt Monkeys.
  • One episode had a substitute teacher named Mrs. Sunshine who came across as being a Cool Teacher... until Timmy wishes her to be a permanent teacher, at which point she reveals she's actually Ms. Doombringer, a terrifyingly competent fairy hunter. As it turns out, she poses as a substitute teacher all the time, attempting to earn her students' trust as a Cool Teacher, knowing that if she was made a permanent teacher, it was because one of her students wished for it with their fairy godparent. As soon as the façade drops, she begins torturing her class to try to find out which student has a fairy godparent in an attempt to capture them.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Friends of Peter G.", Stewie mentions that his new daycare teacher deactivates the security camera and beats her students. A few episodes later in "Be Careful What You Fish For", she's depicted as being a cross between this and Apathetic Teacher who isn't around to stop the kids from getting injured (or in the case of one unfortunate boy, abducted) and pulled Stewie's arm out of its socket when he protested her not even giving them a proper lunch (she fed them saltine crackers and the leftovers of her own lunch). Brian was completely useless to help until it turned out she already had a boyfriend, after which he immediately turned her over to the police.
  • In "The Finer Strings", Mr. Washee Washee tortures Peter by placing a hot iron onto his skin thinking it'll somehow accelerate his improvement in playing the violin.
• Mr. Mufflin from Fanboy and Chum Chum will occasionally border on being a mean teacher.
• Gravedale High generally averted this trope, as Max Schneider wasn't the only reasonable teacher at the titular All-Ghouls School, but the trope is played straight in "Goodbye Gravedale", where Schneider is driven away by his class because of a misunderstanding and is briefly replaced by substitute teachers Mr. Gross and Miss Burns, who both prove to be considerably harsher than Schneider. The latter even forced the class to take twelve tests on the same day.
• Hey Arnold! averts this with most teachers on the show, but plays it straight with Lieutenant Major Goose from the episode "New Teacher". He is a former drill sergeant who, for some reason, decided to be a teacher. Principal Wartz hires him to teach and restore order to Arnold's class after they scare Mr. Simmons away with their bad behavior. Lieutenant Major Goose runs the class like the military. When he sends Curly to the corner for dropping a pencil and Helga and Harold to two of the other corners for laughing, he makes Stinky stand in the remaining corner for no reason other than symmetry.
  • Principal Wartz himself has his moments of being cranky, explosively ill-tempered, and/or unreasonable, particularly later in the run of the show. It got to the point that it was brought to attention by the characters in the episode "Principal Simmons".
• Spiro Garkos from Hurricanes fits this trope as the coach of the Garkos Gorgons Youth Team. He seems to be this to all footballers but Stevie Pepenopolis had it the worst. And he couldn't be reported to Child Welfare because, on the Island of Garkos, he heads the Department of Child Welfare.
• Ms. Bitters from Invader Zim is an extreme example. She's a Straw Nihilist who not only hates her students (especially Dib and Zim) but everyone and everything in the world. "Children, your performance was miserable. Your parents will all receive phone calls instructing them to love you less now." However, there's apparently one thing she won't subject her students to: the reason for why Valentines Day is now celebrated with meat gifts instead of cards.
  • One could argue that she is the Only Sane Man and is well aware of how much of a Crapsack World it is.
    • Her design is almost exactly the same as the teacher in Squee (also by Jhonen Vasquez), who's just as sadistic, and intentionally teaches the students wrong information.
  • There's also the popular theory that she's not even human, but rather a Humanoid Abomination. Word of God is that she wasn't hired by the school — they built it around her.
• Were it not for the fact that the show is a cartoon and has a number of bizarre moments, Principal I.M. Greedyguts from Jacob Two-Two would have been fired and sent to jail years ago. Besides always having it out for Jacob (although the latter does frequently ruin his plans), his crimes include appropriating money from the Dreary Meadows and spending it on luxuries for himself, planning to turn said school into a stable for his horses (sending the kids to the sub-basement to learn but allowing one to come up "once in a while" to rub his feet) and not caring if Jacob, his friend and a fellow teacher, are trapped forever in another dimension.
• A flashback on Jimmy Two-Shoes revealed Lucius had a teacher who was cruel to him, despite knowing full well he was the future ruler of Miseryville. His still-living head is now mounted in Lucius' mansion.
• Cotton Hill from King of the Hill describes the principal where he went to military school as, "In my day the principal was the meanest son of a bitch God ever put on one leg, he'd lean on a desk with both hands and swing his leg at you, then when you were standing there shocked the one-legged man would kick you....... he'd bite you!" And it wasn't just him, the whole school was like that. Cotton actually looks back on the experience fondly and is outraged to find out that the school is no longer sadistic (after being sued multiple times). He forcibly takes over the place and becomes a Sadist Teacher himself, reinstating the cruel punishments of his day, and is driven mad when Bobby No-Sells every single one.
• The Loud House has Mr Bolhofner, especially after he Took a Level in Jerkass since "Schooled!". He has a run-down trailer as his classroom, a pet piranha, refuses to turn down the air cooler (until the end of the episode, and it's also explained that no one asked him) and torments Lincoln with his bad breath, which according to Lynn Jr., reeks of "sardines, with a hint of red onions and farts". It's shown from time to time, however, that he has a heart of gold underneath.
• Headmistress from ¡Mucha Lucha! loves to yell and menace with expulsion, but still has a lighter side that isn't really hidden.
• In Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, Charlie's elementary school teacher decides to give the kid War and Peace as a reading assignment. War And Peace. To a normal elementary school student. And over winter vacation, no less. And from the looks of it, he's the only student in the class who was given that assignment.
  • Not only that, but she gave Charlie a D- despite his best efforts.
    • Her reasoning was that no kid his age could have possibly read that whole book. She then proceeds to give him an even longer book — Crime and Punishment.
  • This was actually an exaggerated version of a storyline that ran in the comic strip, where his teacher assigned Gulliver's Travels during winter break (not quite as long, but still way too advanced for grade school) and Charlie didn't help matters by procrastinating.
• Subversion: This is what The Powerpuff Girls thought of Ms. Keane's fill-in at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten in "Substitute Creature" simply because he was a monster. But the girls learned by the episode's end to not judge a book by its cover.
• Recess:
  • Miss Muriel Finster is a sadistic playground monitor, especially in season 1. This is only ever when she's inside the school, though. As Spinelli found out, she's actually a Cool Old Lady when she doesn't have to be an authority figure and that she can actually get along with others, especially children. It's also implied in several episodes that there's a mutual Friendly Enemies understanding between the teachers and children, with the former playing the antagonists. "The Library Kid" has Miss Finster going into a panic when she sees the titular Library Kid in danger on the flagpole - confirming she would never want to see a child get hurt in spite of her imposing behavior.
  • Dr. Slicer, the replacement principal in the episode "Prickly is Leaving," is so cruel that his extreme methods of discipline and punishment horrifies all of the students; even Miss Finster is appalled of how the way he cruelly treats the students. He also wants to make the retired cannon at the front of the school operational and plans to tear down the jungle gym to replace it with a guard tower. Fortunately, in the end, Peter Prickly (the current principal of the school and Miss Finster's best friend) decided not to let Slicer run the school.
  • Dr. Phillium Benedict is even worse in Recess: School's Out; given to his former career as a principal of Third Street Elementary and Secretary of Education, he focus much of his efforts to keep students in class at all times by banning recess to raise test scores. As it turns out, getting rid of recess only contributed to low test scores as the children cannot concentrate well without getting any breaks to alleviate their stress of staying in class; even Principal Prickly and Miss Finster are perfectly aware of it as as they opposed Benedict's plan and tried to reason with him, though Benedict remains defiant in his beliefs. Benedict even tops this off by ordering his men to viciously beat up both the students and teachers of Third Street Elementary when they tried to stop him from sending the Earth to a new Ice Age.

• The Simpsons
  • Bart's kindergarten teacher. Ohh boy, did Bart have it rough in Kindergarten... Even worse is that her treatment towards Bart happened before he became the brat that he is known as. That's right, she is the reason that Bart is the troublemaker that he is today!
    Class: (singing) There was a farmer, had a dog, and Bingo was his name-O!
    Bart: B-I-(clap)-(clap)-O! B-I-(clap)-(clap)-O! B-I-(clap)-(clap)-(clap)! And Bingo was his name-O!
    Teacher: [writes on clipboard] Added extra clap; not college material.
  • Subverted in "The PTA Disbands". The teachers go on strike due to Bart's manipulation and a series of substitutes from the townspeople are introduced and quit one by one. Principal Skinner, fed up with the turnover rate, then introduces a thuggish-looking substitute who immediately starts hurling abuse at the terrified students. He's actually just there to introduce Marge, the real substitute.
  • The same man (named Leopold), also appeared in "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" where it appears he's going to be the new principal after Skinner is fired. Again he terrifies the kids only to announce the real new principal is Ned Flanders.
  • There are also teachers (despite their upbeat attitude) that are known to penalize students who tattle and moan (even if they're A-students), show no sympathy towards those who cry, and initially pair up students who clearly do not get along at all, causing even more friction in the class. Audrey McConnell from the episode "Bart vs. Lisa in Third Grade" is a clear candidate for this trope.
  • In "Black-Eyed, Please", new teacher Mrs. Cantwell takes a liking to everyone in the class except for Lisa, whom Cantwell bullies by giving her below-average grades and taking the paper cutout joeys off the kangaroo-themed "good behavior" board. When Homer and Marge try to get Principal Skinner to do something, the bullying worsens. Later, Edna got the idea of putting Bart in Cantwell's class and when Cantwell leaves to go to the bathroom, Bart brings chaos to the classroom and then shows her a compromising video of herself in the bathroom cursing Lisa and tells her he posted it online. The plan works in getting Cantwell to leave and before she drives off, the bully teacher confesses the reason for her hatred of Lisa: Mrs. Cantwell thinks that pretty girls like Lisa have it easier than girls like herself.
    • In the same episode, Mrs. Cantwell sends Lisa to detention, and she asks Jimbo, Kearney, and Dolph how a teacher can be a bully. This ends up giving them the idea of becoming teachers so that they can bully the other kids and get away with it.
  • All of these pale in comparison to Jack Lassen, Edna's replacement in "Blazed and Confused", who smokes in school even more frequently than Edna and Hoover, and will not tolerate class clown behaviour at all and gets glee in kicking the dog (or in this case, the cat) literally and metaphorically. He even shaved Bart just for attempting to pull a prank. He's so bad he even steals lunch money from the bullies and Bart vows revenge. Finally, when Lassen is publicly embarrassed by Bart, he tries to kill the boy.
• Mr./Mrs. Garrison of South Park sometimes slips into this trope, openly mocking his students if they get some question wrong. The rest of the time he's either just plain incompetent or trying to get the school to fire him so he can sue them as part of a get-rich-quick-scheme, not caring about the mental damage he might inflict on the children in the process through his lewd teachings. It doesn't help that most of the time, he's not even teaching an actual school curriculum, and instead focuses mostly on assorted pop culture gibberish. When Mrs. Garrison blew off teaching to go drink at a lesbian bar, she hired a group of illegal immigrants to do her job for her, and they did it better than she does.
  • This goes even further in the episode "The Death Camp of Tolerance", where Mr. Garrison hires a masochistic leatherman named Mr. Slave as the teacher's assistant, who would eventually become his boyfriend up until season 9, thus becoming a literal sadist teacher.
• The Teen Titans episode "Mad Mod" took this to extremes, in which Mad Mod traps the heroes in a school that's constantly trying to kill or brainwash them.
• Vice Principal Chakal of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. He has it in for Manny and Frida, and enjoys setting harsh punishments for them. However, said students are often troublemaking kids, so you can't really blame him.
• Tiny Toon Adventures had Granny, of all people, depicted this way in the first segment of the episode "Best O' Plucky Duck Day". She punishes every student who answers her questions incorrectly by making them do 8,000-15,000 page essays over the weekends.
• Mrs. Martin from Watch My Chops punishes Bernie and Corneil all the time, even when Bernie is not in school nor when school is open. It should be noted that Martin is breaking the law as this is illegal to punish children outside of school. Once, she punished Romeo for no reason, which is also illegal.
• The What A Cartoon! Show short "Trevor in Journey to Sector 5-G" has Trevor's teacher Mr. Fitzgibbon. He actively torments his students by giving them deliberately hard math problems and withholding recess until his students answer the problem correctly.
• Principal Madman from Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? is hard on all his students, but especially Robot, since he's also a technophobe.