Puppets Who Kill was a Canadian-produced Black Comedy series from The Comedy Network that centered on the lives of four puppets who had been sent to a halfway house run by the cynic Dan Barlow (played by Dan Redican) as a last ditch effort to rehabilitate them as every other effort had failed.
The puppets themselves were:
- Rocko the Dog (Bruce Hunter), who after suppressing his very child-unfriendly personality snapped on set;
- Cuddles (Bob Martin), a comfort doll whose consistent curbing of his own desires ended up with him shooting people with a rifle from a roof;
- Buttons the Bear (James Rankin), a sex maniac who had a good life until his private deeds were released to the public and he was fired.
- Bill the Dummy (Gord Robertson), a psychopath with a constant smile and a taste for meat who had 56 partners die in tragic "accidents".
The show tended to balance itself on the edge of a knife, often crossing the line more than twice and happily embracing the darkly humorous tone inherent in a show about living puppets who regularly break the law.
This series provides examples of:
- Animate Inanimate Object: The puppets are treated and behave like humans, even having organs both internal and sexual, despite otherwise being made of felt and wood.
- Asshole Victim : A lot of people the characters meet are sometimes this.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Almost everyone is a jerk in some way, and often deserve the horrible things that happen to them.
- Black Comedy
- Brain in a Jar: CBC has a whole room filled with them.
- Brainwashedand Crazy: Cuddles on more than one time.
- Butt-Monkey: Buttons, Cuddles and Dan share the title.
- The Casanova: Buttons.
- The Chessmaster: Dan
- Cluster F-Bomb: The show has quite a lot of them.
- Creepy Souvenir: Bill collects testicles.
- Deadpan Snarker: Dan, Rocko and Bill.
- Depraved Kids' Show Host: Rocko is this mixed with Nice Character, Mean Actor.
- Does This Remind Youof Anything?: In Cuddles the Manchurian Candidate, which originally aired in 2005, a rogue US General invades Canada to acquire Canada's water supply. He calls it Operation Liberation.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "Poopy pants". Bill
- Escalating War: It ended with an exploding toilet.
- Faux Affably Evil: Bill and Rocko.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Buttons' reaction to being saved from a Psycho Lesbian and her girlfriend moments before his death is one of disappointment, because it meant he would miss the lesbian make-up sex.
- I Love the Dead: The plot of the final episode is Buttons' ghost stealing Dan's girlfriend by being a better lay.
- Dan's cousin Hazel in "Dan and the Necrophiliac" makes love to a dead relative at the funeral they're attending. Rocko, the only one who saw this, is forced to keep it between them, but he tells Dan anyway. This ends up with them formulating a scheme for Dan to get some from her, only for him to find out the funeral home director also is into screwing corpses.
- Karma Houdini: The puppets sometimes get away with crimes they do mostly Bill and Rocko.
- 2 Lesbians in the episode Dead Ted get off scot-free from forcing a vacuum into Button's genitals
- A similar couple in the episode Prostitutes for Jesus gets away with leaving Button to almost get burned alive. The same could said with some minor characters in some episodes.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Just one of Bill's many traits, with several of the episodes often focused on his habits.
- Kavorka Man: Dan.
- Large Ham: Most of the minor characters and Buttons.
- Mr. Vice Guy: Dan means well, but is mainly interested in the halfway house's funding and his own job, even willing to look the other way when the puppets commit crimes.
- Only Sane Man: Dan seems to play this roll.
- Psycho Lesbian: Buttons is nearly killed by one for having sex with her girlfriend, who only slept with him in the first place because seeing her act psychotically jealous turned her on.
- In Dead Ted, Buttons is tricked by a lesbian woman and her girlfriend into giving his sperm away.
- Serial Killer: Bill has killed people in various episodes though it's offscreen
- Sign of the Apocalypse
- Slasher Smile: Bill's default expression.
- Sociopathic Hero: Bill, in spades. He's the smartest among the cast, and is often the one who saves them from their problems. Too bad his solutions usually involve cannibalism and violence.
- Squick: In-universe, Dan gets increasingly grossed out over the process of inserting a camera up a urinary tract in "Bill's Brain".
- Threat Backfire: One episode had Bill being ransomed by some mafia types, who threaten to send him back piece by piece; when the others refuse to cooperate, they do just that, cutting Bill up and sending the bits back to the halfway house. It never occurred to them that Bill is a puppet, and all the others have to do is stitch him back together again.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Cuddles.
- Villain Protagonist: The main cast is this
