The Bad Guy Wins / Western Animation

Everyone else is the proletariat, and baby, I'm the bourgeoisie!^note Look it up, Joe!

The Bad Guy Wins in Western Animation.

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• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius had a few episodes that ended this way, although a mass majority of them make them justified:
  • While not evil, Cindy and Libby did win a contest that Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen entered and proceeded to rub it in their face.
  • When Jimmy creates a bunch of clones to do his chores, one of them was created evil and is the only one that gets away scot-free, while the damage the other clones did wind up being blamed on the REAL Jimmy.
  • One episode features Libby turning into a power-hungry Dictator after being given the wrong present by Jimmy and Sheen. Fortunately, it was an alternate universe.
  • While Carl is DEFINITELY not a villain, in one episode, he turned into an enormous, cowardly jerk when trying to show off to a girl he had a crush on at Jimmy's expense. To rub salt in the wound, he gets away with it at the episode's end when the girl likes him for being a wuss.
• One of the interesting aspects of Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers was the sheer number of times that the Rangers' "victory" was merely getting away with their skins. The pilot was especially brutal. Zach's kids get away, but only because of Eliza's Heroic Sacrifice. Zach is gravely wounded, the bad guys get away clean, and the Queen's raid on Kirwin has netted her several dozen humans.
• Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake: Simon, Fionna, and Cake enter a dimension where Ooo is a desolate wasteland devoid of any life, which they discover is because this is the timeline where the Lich succeeded in wiping out all organic life in the universe. However, his victory in a cause that he had devoted himself entirely didn't bring him any fulfilment, since it left him purposeless now that it had been completed, and he fell into a depressive ennui from which he could not be invigorated even when new life appears for him to eradicate.
• American Dad! had an episode involving an evil hot tub (voiced by Cee-Lo Green) which ends with said hot tub killing Principal Lewis, Francine and Stan. To make it even more blunt, Cee-Lo himself (in live-action) appears and tells the viewer that Stan is dead and that the show is over. What makes it even more shocking is how abrupt it is, and how it subverts the usual ending (the conflict is usually resolved by the end of most episodes).
  • This episode was intended to be the season finale, as they weren't sure if they'd get brought back for another. When it was revealed American Dad! would get another season, it became the premiere instead.
  • This can also occur with some of the Smiths, depending just how far down the morality slope you consider them. Roger in particular commits all sorts of heinous or outright murderous deeds, and usually comes out clean, if not outright better than he was at the start.
  • Roger deserves special mention for the episodes "Ricky Spanish" and "Love, American Dad Style".
• The Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Broodwich" ends with Shake being given free brain surgery for passing the temptation of the Broodwich. He is forced to ingest the sun-dried tomatoes that he picked off and is sent to the hellish dimension where he gets chopped with an axe.
• A great deal of Archer episodes end like this, due to the incompetence of ISIS. Almost always Played for Laughs. Examples include "Killing Utne" and "Movie Star". One of the rare dramatic examples is "Crossing Over", where Barry successfully kills Jakov and stops Archer from finding out if he's his father.
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!: Tomatoes! Tomatoes! Putrid T. Gangreene and his Killer Tomatoes gain total world domination! (Well, at least for a few episodes of the series. And somehow the Prof. doesn't seem to be happy with the new situation either.)
• The second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender ended in a horrible defeat for the good guys. Azula kills Aang before he can go into the Avatar State, then proceeds to conquer Ba Sing Se with her recently face heel-turned brother Zuko, and forced our heroes into hiding. Aang only manages to survive thanks to a Chekhov's Gun from the first episode of the season, but has lost the ability to access his Super Mode. The later episode "Day of the Black Sun" also ended with the Fire nation capturing the adults, forcing team Avatar to escape. Unlike the former episode, there is one good thing that came from this. Zuko pulled off a Heel–Face Turn and leaves the Fire Nation.
  • A one-episode villain in season 3, Hama, wants to teach Katara bloodbending (the art of water-bending the fluid inside another human being), regardless of whether or not she actually wants to learn. In the end, Katara is forced to use the technique, and Hama, despite being arrested, cackles madly at her success while Katara breaks into tears.
  • In the first book of The Legend of Korra, Amon has a extremely progressive lead on the heroes in the first few episodes. Korra confronts him in the fourth episode, but it doesn't end well. She's only spared because he wishes to save her for later. In the sixth episode, titled "And the Winner Is...", he stages a successful attack on the Pro-Bending finals after arranging for security to be at its maximum — just as planned — and he doesn't let up from there...
  • In Episode 10, Amon and his followers conquer Republic City by quickly and decisively neutralizing the leading politicians and police force leaving the city without leadership and defenseless. Tenzin gets away, but he's still forced to flee to keep his family safe. Lin also gets de-bended after refusing to tell Amon where Korra is.
  • Yakone's plan for revenge on Republic City and the Avatar was to raise his sons as bloodbending Tykebombs. His eldest son Noatak betrayed him and he died thinking his revenge would never be fulfilled, but in the end his plan actually worked. Tarrlok, his youngest, went on to, for all practical purposes, take over Republic City and, while not intentionally, helped tear it apart socially and physically along with his brother, who was now known as Amon.
  • In the plot of Book 2, Unalaq's plan succeeds which relied on having Korra open the portals allowing Vaatu to be free by Harmonic Convergence. Then Vaatu went on to get his revenge by ripping Raava out of Korra and killing the spirit.
  • Despite Book 3 ending on the bad guys either being captured or killed, Korra is crippled and confined to a wheelchair with her will being broken and the Earth Kingdom has collapsed, which was (sorta) the objective of the Bad Guys for the entire season.^note Zaheer actually wanted to kill Korra and destroy all five nations, but in the next book he seems at least satisfied at the result nonetheless until Korra informs him that an even more brutal dictator took over.
  • In the final book, every time Kuvira appears she wins in a landslide, especially pronounced when she defeated an Avatar State Korra by sheer luck. It wouldn't be until the series finale that she finally gets taken down a peg.
• In The Batman episode "Minutes", the villain, Francis Grey, developed the ability to rewind time during the extremely unfair seventeen-year prison sentence that ruined his life. Since it only sends him back about 20 seconds or so undoing prison is out of the question, so he instead resolves to kill everyone at Gotham's New Years' celebration. Which he does, successfully. Including Batman and Batgirl. Fortunately for Gotham, Gray's grief at his son being among the casualties gives him the strength to pull a Cosmic Retcon and rewind to before his Start of Darkness, where he reforms.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • In the Riddler's first appearance in "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?", Batman and Robin stop the Riddler from murdering Daniel Mockridge, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who cheated him, but one could argue that the Riddler still won anyway; the episode ends by showing us that Mockridge now lives in paranoid fear of the Riddler's return. While the Dynamic Duo kept the Riddler from taking Mockridge's life or his money, the Riddler managed to take something nearly as valuable: Mockridge's peace of mind.
  Batman: How much is a good night's sleep worth? Now there's a riddle for you.
  • In "Appointment in Crime Alley," Daggett escapes arrest for blowing up several city blocks.
• Batman Beyond had at least two occasions of bad guys winning: in "Ascension", Paxton Powers tricked his father out of the way so he could take over Wayne-Powers Enterprises and; in "Inqueling", Inque's daughter steals her money albeit it's left unclear if Inque ever tried to extract a payback.
• Bat-Mite (who generally isn't a bad guy, but made a Face–Heel Turn in one episode) from Batman: The Brave and the Bold comes to believe that the show has jumped the shark, and tries to get it cancelled so it can be replaced by a Darker and Edgier Batman cartoon. Since this happened during the series finale, he succeeds. While Bat-Mite does suffer for this by getting erased from existence (he's too silly a character to work in a dark and realistic cartoon, so he unintentionally dooms himself by destroying the show that actually suits him) he takes his fate surprisingly well. This even applies out of universe: Brave and the Bold is being replaced by a Darker and Edgier Batman cartoon, at least by comparison.
  • Subverted earlier in the episode "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" where Joker, wanting to help his mentor, the Weeper (who'd come close to destroying Fawcett City thirty years earlier, but was bested by Bulletman) regain his villainous touch. In this case, it was The Joker who was portrayed as heroic while Batman, who wanted to thwart them both, was seen as the villain.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: In "The Frogs of War: Part 2", Attea finally takes her father's throne in the end.
• Big City Greens: In "Chipwrecked", Chip Whistler misinterprets his dad's advice to put the company to work for him and comes up with something harsh: he fires his two assistants and replaces them with a bouncer squad, destroys Big Coffee and prevents Cricket from fighting back, bribes Ms. Cho into retirement, fires Cricket and Gloria, shuts down the cafe, and to make matters worse, his new expansion will be right where the Greens' house is, and the Greens and Gloria are left worrying over what will happen next. And just to rub it in Cricket's face, Chip points out if he and his friends didn't believe he changed in the first place, then none of this would've happened.
• The Boondocks episode "The Itis" ended with Ed Wuncler Sr. obtaining Meadowlark Park once Robert Freeman's now-closed soul food restaurant he dreamed of for so long lowered the park's property values to make it easier for Wuncler to purchase despite him being more than rich enough to purchase it to begin with.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers has the notorious "Whoo Gives a Hoot", which is the only time this happens. The Planeteers attempt to stop Looten Plunder with a court injunction against clear-cutting an old growth forest. Despite their success in finding what they need to stop the cutting, Looten's clumsy, stupid minions actually managed to succeed in stealing the evidence, leaving Plunder free to continue. The Planeteers and judge eventually discover Looten's deception, only to discover that Looten had already cut down all the trees. What makes it worse is that the episode ends on that note. In other words, Looten gets away with not only destroying a protected wildlife area, but he also manages to get away with defrauding the government. Not only that, he laughs in their faces about it and dares them to try and stop him again.
• Castlevania (2017): Season 3 ends in this way. While not entirely without victories for the heroes, it's still a pretty low note. Isaac kills the Wizard and takes control of a city, Lenore tricks Hector into becoming a slave, and Carmilla's plans of conquering Eastern Europe look closer than ever to coming true.
• The Classic Disney Short Chicken Little (not to be confused with their movie of the same name) ends with Foxy Loxy eating Chicken Little and all of the chicken of the farm, and collecting their bones. The Narrator laments "Hey, wait a minute, this isn't right. That's not the way it ends in my book!", and then Foxy, while playing with the now dead Chicken Little's Yo-Yo, taunts him "Oh yeah? Don't believe everything you read, brother!" Considering that this was a Wartime Cartoon acting as a parable to Adolf Hitler's tactics, the message is clear.
  • The Barn Dance deals with Mickey Mouse and Pete competing to dance with Minnie at a barn dance. Mickey's antics for once backfire and Minnie storms off in a huff to dance with Pete. Mickey bursts into tears, Iris Out, title card.
• Code Lyoko, similarly to Beast Wars, had several cases of the Lyoko-Warriors failing at their current goals and XANA actually emerging victorious:
  • Subverted in Season 1. It ends with XANA causing Aelita's materialisation to partially fail by keeping her dependent on the Supercomputer being turned on, thus preventing the heroes from defeating him once and for all -but XANA now has a much harder time getting to Aelita by Season 2, as she is on Earth, and it's not making a lot of progress in its quest for world domination, ending things on a standstill.
  • Seasons 2 ends with him actually succeeding in his goal to leave the Supercomputer and reach the Internet, a plan he had been working on since the beginning of the season, with the Lyoko-Warriors being only saved from permanent failure by a Deus ex Machina from Franz Hopper.
  • Season 3 ends with XANA actually succeeding in destroying Lyoko (though Jeremy rebuilt it in the next season).
  • Even though, XANA gets defeated in Season 4 (but comes back in Code Lyoko: Evolution), it goes out with glory by fulfilling its main objective in this season: killing Franz Hopper.
• This actually happened a few times on Codename: Kids Next Door, in episodes such as "Operation: P.R.E.S.I.D.E.N.T.", where Sector V is trying to escort the fourth grade president to city hall for negotiating better school conditions for the kids only to learn that he was brainwashed by Father (or was evil all along) and school now ends at 8:25 p.m. with no lunch and triple the homework, "Operation: S.L.U.M.B.E.R." where the teenagers successfully steal the Code Module for Father thanks to an operative turning traitor reasoning she'll have to work for the teens sooner or later, "Operation F.O.U.N.T.A.I.N" where the Delightful Children destroy a Fountain of Youth, and "Operation: S.I.X." with Numbuhs 2, 3, and Bradley unknowingly delivering the Delightful Children's birthday cake, as well as The Movie, Operation: Z.E.R.O..
  • Operation T.A.P.I.O.C.A. plays with this. The Senior Citizen Squad defeats Sector V and threatens to take away their tapioca... the same tapioca they were trying to remove from the treehouse in the first place!
• Cyber Six has a variation. It ends with both Von Richter and Cyber Six killed in a massive explosion. Then right as the episode ends we learn Jose survived and now there's no one to stop him.
• Swiper from Dora the Explorer does succeed in swiping Dora's stuff in some episodes. Unfortunatly, he always hides it and taunts Dora, saying "You'll never find it now!". And then she does find it. In one episode, he was so determined they wouldn't regain the thing he stole that he actually told them where he put it!
• While the Urpneys were usually hopelessly unable to beat the Noops in The Dreamstone, there was an example of them outright winning- at least by the show's standards. The penultimate episode, "The Spidermobile", sees Urpgor create the titular weapon, and Blob and his men handle it extremely well, while the Noops and even the Wuts fail to do any damage to it. It's only by the mistakes of Zordrak and Urpgor themselves that they do not manage to win outright, and the Urpneys end the episode without being abused.
• Dick Dastardly wins a race or two in 1990's Fender Bender 500. The prizes weren't anything to speak of, rendering the victories a bit muddled- but it’s still a major victory for him since he never won a single Wacky Race.
• Final Space:
  • At the end of Season 1, the Titans drag Earth into Final Space before the interdimensional breach is closed by the Team Squad. Season 3 reveals that dragging the Earth into Final Space was the Titans' express goal at that point, meaning this trope technically happened.
  • In Season 3, Invictus' goals include corrupting Ash towards making a Face–Heel Turn and escaping from its Sealed Evil in a Can state. In the last two episodes, it succeeds at both of those.
• Futurama likes this trope, and it has had allusions to evil ruling for stretches of time in the future past.
  • But a current continuity example has bitter, demented Nixon (yes, that Nixon) winning the presidential election at the last minute and storming into the White House in his giant robot body causing carnage and destruction to the tune of Hail to the Chief.
  • "Attack of the Killer App" ends with Mom getting her army of between one and two million zombies. The heroes don't even realise what's going on. The end.
  • "Less Than Hero" works the same way: the good guys are forced to steal the Quantum Gemerald for the Zookeeper to free Leela's parents, and since they're Brought Down to Normal, they can't go after him. Like the above example, they don't even really seem to care much. Bender and Fry even walk off talking about bluffing their way through some super-villainy of their own (while the public still thinks they possess powers).
  • Another notable episode is "Decision 3012" where the gang help an opposing candidate beat Nixon in the presidential elections Said candidate was a time traveler from a bad future where Nixon's rule resulted in robots uprising and destroying humanity so he had came back in the hope of becoming Earth's president to avert it. By winning however his future and thus his existence was erased, allowing Nixon to win unopposed. And the real gut punch was that Bender, who was against the new candidate, knew all along that this would happen.
  • "A Fishful of Dollars" has Mom's henchmen successfully stealing all of the money from Fry's bank account, ending his streak of newfound wealth. Subsequently, Fry defiantly eats the ridiculously valuable can of anchovies that he could have used to regain some fraction of his fortune...which turns out to have been exactly what Mom wanted, since it leaves her with an intact monopoly on the world's supply of robot oil.
• An episode of Godzilla: The Series featured Corrupt Corporate Executive Cameron Winter breaking three criminals out of jail and giving each one of them a Humongous Mecha so they could hunt down Godzilla. When the three hunters were captured, Winter got off by accusing them of stealing their mechas and the Government even hired him to make them mechas of their own.
• In "Dreamscaperers", the penultimate episode of season one of Gravity Falls, Gideon ends up successfully stealing the deed to the Mystery Shack, and the episode ends. Fortunately, things turn around by the season finale.
  • "Dipper and Mabel vs The Future" ends with Bill Cipher gaining physical form and bringing about the end of the world. The end credits are then played with people audibly screaming in terror in the background. It takes three more episodes of apocalyptic chaos for the heroes to put things right.
• The mid-season finale of Grojband, "Six Strings of Evil", has Corey breaking free from the control of a demonic guitar intent on destroying Peaceville by bursting a dam and destroying the instrument, only for the Dam gets destroyed and all of Peaceville getting flooded (although thanks to the Reset Button, everything is back to normal in the following episode).
  • The episode "Girl Fest" has Laney delivering a blow to her former role model Candy Jams in the form of a song as an attempt to call her out as a a fraud. Unfortunately for her, it fails and people still give Candy their full support.
  • Kate and Allie also suffer no consequences for kidnapping Grojband and keeping them hostage in "Group Hug",unless you count Mina angrily tackling them for also kidnapping Trina.
  • Of course, Trina also wins in a few episodes... only for Karma to bite her in the butt in many an episode. The biggest instance however is in "Hear Us, Rock!", with Corey even outright admitting to Trina that she's won after she manages to steal Grojband's instruments, thus preventing them from using The Power of Rock to save Earth at least until Mina pulls a Heel–Face Turn and gives Grojband their instruments back.
• Played for Laughs in Harley Quinn as The Joker manages to successfully take over Gotham twice. The first time he's plagued by Victory Is Boring and even gets sick of torturing Batman, with it only getting worse for him after Scarecrow unmasks him as "half the fun of our relationship was the mystery". The second time around, he manages to get himself elected mayor and uses his newfound authority to put Gordon out of a job by abolishing the GCPD and have Bruce Wayne arrested for tax evasion.
• Hey Arnold!: At the end of "New Bully on the Block", Arnold and his friends lose Gerald Field to the two bullies Wolfgang and Ludwig after being continuously beaten up throughout the episode. The last shot of the episode shows the kids forcibly hanging from the goalposts en masse after dark, while Wolfgang and Ludwig laugh nearby—giving one the uncomfortable impression that the kids are being held hostage against their will. No wonder most fans don't like the episode.
• The first episode of Hurricanes had the Garkos Gorgons sabotaging the Hispanola Hurricanes by having several of their players injured before their upcoming game. In order to have a full team, Amanda Carey, the Hurricanes' owner, disguised herself as a male so she could play at the game. The Hurricanes won 3-2 but her conscience led her to confess, which led to the Gorgons being granted official victory.
• In the I Am Weasel episode "I.R.'s First Bike", we see that for Christmas, Santa didn't bring I.R. a banana like he wanted but rather a bicycle. And some human boy in Louisville who wanted a bike only got a banana for Christmas, making him break down into tears. Cue Santa watching this through a surveillance system back home in the North Pole laughing his ass off and evilly gloating how he trolled that kid real hard. One of his reindeer is disgusted by this and complains Santa's lost his mind.
• In Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, Zim finally achieves his goal of prepping the Earth for Alien Invasion by teleporting it directly into the path of the Irken armada. What he doesn't realize, however, is that the Tallest have no interest in Earth and would rather take the opportunity to get rid of him once and for all.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures:
  • "Hostile Takeover" ends with Justin Hammer taking over Stark International. It takes several episodes until "The Hammer Falls" until he loses it.
  • The Ghost frequently ended up getting what he wanted in his appearances, with "Ghost in the Machine" seeing him learn Tony is Iron Man and planning on blackmailing him when he gets older. The Grand Finale ends with Tony's identity outed, ending that plan.
• The third season premiere of Justice League has a minor version where a villainous initiation of sorts to steal the Spear of Longinus is successful... only for Grodd who ordered it to explain that he thought it would look good on his wall and he's fairly sure it's a harmless piece of wood. He just wanted to test the Luthor's abilities.
• The Kim Possible movie A Sitch in Time explores this possibility with a Bad Future if Shego were ever to seize control of the world.
• Likewise, the Really Rottens won at least twice on Laff-A-Lympics. In at least one of the instances, they weren't happy about it, because they wanted to win by cheating, instead of winning legitimately.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Any time an episode ends with Gantu capturing the featured experiment, meaning Lilo and Stitch have failed at their mission to find a one true place for them. It's not until "Snafu" do the captured experiments finally get released.
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc?. Not that the bad guy was all that happy about it however.
    Bugs: Well, what did you EXPECT in an opera? A happy ending?
  • Elmer beat Bugs in a few other cartoons and is happy about it. "Hare Brush" has Elmer (who has gone crazy and thinks he's a rabbit) trick Bugs into switching places with him at a hospital. Bugs is then hypnotized into thinking he is "Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire" and decides to go hunting for rabbits. Elmer is in a rabbit suit doing to Bugs what Bugs usually does to him. At the end Bugs is arrested because the police think he's Elmer, and Elmer owes a ton of back taxes. After Bugs is carried away Elmer triumphantly dances off into the sunset. It's heavily implied that Elmer was only Obfuscating Insanity.
    Elmer: I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
  • The last cartoon in which Elmer beat Bugs is when Elmer controls Bugs in Rabbit Rampage in a way resembling how Bugs controlled Daffy in Duck Amuck.
  • Inverted in three cartoons Bugs, where he's the bad guy, raced a turtle called Cecil who came out on top every time. He is the only person to go up against Bugs and always win! Until the episode "Customer Service" in the second season of The Looney Tunes Show, where Bugs finally one-ups him by using every trick he's got.
  • Another Bugs Bunny cartoon ended with his tail getting cut off, although he didn't seem to be particularly upset about it.
  • If Failure Hero Daffy Duck ever donned a hero gimmick and was without his Hyper-Competent Sidekick Porky to pick up the pieces, it's likely to happen as well. Particular examples include "My Little Duckaroo", which ends with western convict Nasty Canasta brutally beating him off screen and "Golden Yeggs" where he is captured by Rocky the gangster and forced to lay endless golden eggs. Curiously both instances were before said villains were paired against Bugs, with them having a much more sinister presence compared to their later appearances.
    • Special mention goes to the full version of "Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24th and a Half Century", in which Marvin the Martian is finally able to activate his explosive space modulator. With the bumbling Dodgers distracted elsewhere and Earth's destruction imminent, Marvin is left to inform the viewers "It's only a cartoon". This was oddly cut from the shortened theatrical version.
    • Also special mention for the manager of the Broken Arms Hotel in "Porky Pig's Feat". One of the few characters to outsmart Porky, Daffy, and Bugs.
  • Played with in the Road Runner cartoon Soup or Sonic. In the end, the Coyote finally managed to catch the Road Runner. Unfortunately for him, he is shrunk to the size of a mouse, barely able to reach the ankle of the Road Runner. Obviously, this makes his catch entirely pointless. The episode ends with the Coyote holding up signs that say "Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him. Now what do I do?"
  • The 1945 Looney Tunes short Fresh Airedale is all about a conniving, greedy, and selfish dog named Shep who plays up to his Designated Hero status as a dog and manipulates his owner and frames a cat for his crimes. He even helps a burglar rob his owners house, but the cat stops him, only for Shep to swoop in and steal the credit in the end, but what seals it is when Shep learns of a national dog champion in the paper, an airedale terrier, and sets out to murder him so Shep can be the number one dog, once again, the cat stops him and he falls into a nearby lake. The terrier rescues Shep, but is too exhausted and collapses, Shep takes advantage of the situation and makes it look like he rescued the terrier. The cartoon ends with "Good Old Shep" being hailed as a hero once again, while the cat (the true hero of the story) is left with mud on his face.
• Portia, Gwen, Penny, Mary Gibbons and Anton St. Germain in some episodes of The Mighty B!.
• The Cow beats Mighty Mouse at the end of the New Adventures episode "A Star is Milked." Mighty Mouse goes to Hollywood to have his life story made into a movie, but the Cow follows to sabotage it. It concludes with the producer impressed with the Cow's last attempt that he makes the Cow the star of the movie while Mighty Mouse is relegated to a mere stage prop. When Pearl asks why he doesn't quit:
  Mighty Mouse: What? And leave showbiz?
• Ninjago
  • At the end of the pilot episode, Lord Garmadon manipulates events so that the Golden Weapons open up a vortex that allows him to escape the Underworld.
  • In the eighth season, the entire main cast aside from Lloyd and Nya are sent to the First Realm, Lloyd loses his powers, and most crucially, Lord Garmadon and Princess Harumi successfully take over Ninjago City. This, just for Garmadon to be overthrown in the very next season, of course. Even still, it's one of the darkest season finales the series has had.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes has a few episodes where Lord Boxman, or sometimes another villain, gets the upper hand:
  • In "We're Captured", Boxman manages to get even with Rad, Enid, and K.O. for trying to sabotage his dinner with an important client, and he and Professor Venomous send them flying over the horizon with an enormous cream-pie cannon.
  • In "Stop Attacking the Plaza!", Boxman successfully wins over his investors by keeping his promise to avoid attacking Lakewood Plaza Turbo for twenty-four hours.
  • In "Villain's Night Out", Boxman is successful in his ploy to crash another villain's party and sabotage it.
  • In "Plaza Film Festival", the Boxmore robots win the film festival, and with it the highly unstable plutonium trophy they plan to use to blow up the Plaza. Though they end up dropping the trophy and blow up both the plaza and themselves.
  • Professor Venomous himself gets a case of this in "The K.O. Trap". He has Darrell steal the doors off the Bodega to lure the Bodega heroes to Boxmore into his trap, where he knocks them out, locks each of them in separate rooms with goo clones of the other two, and kills the clones in gruesome ways just to mentally break the heroes. He then tricks K.O. with a second set of clones to torment him further. When the heroes corner him and try to fight him, he springs another trap that launches them from the building back to the Bodega. In the end, he successfully emotionally tortured them, and they never got the doors to the Bodega back.
• The Patrick Star Show:
  • By the end of "Squidina's Little Helper", Fentin has successfully stolen the Star family's furniture and has his own show now, having taken Squidina's fame. "Best Served Cold" later on shows that the Stars did get the show back somehow.
  • In "The Wrath of Shmandor", a Shmandorian sergeant leads his army to attack Patrick. While Squidina finds a peaceful solution, the leader of the army manages to survive and mind-control Patrick's brain, ending the episode on an ominous note.
• Phineas and Ferb: Despite Dr. Doofenshmirtz's ineptitude as a villain, there were a few times he actually won against Perry:
  • In "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer", he created a tractor beam to successfully move the Earth to an early autumn, which allowed him and his fellow villains of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. to take over the Tri-State Area by force. It's after Rodney and L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. move the Earth into perpetual winter that Doof makes a Heel–Face Turn after realizing what the consequences would be if the Earth would be moved further away.
  • In the Series Finale, he used a series of time loops to predict Perry's moves and defeat him in order to create and successfully run for a new political position to cement his role as ruler of the Tri-State Area. He even signed a law forbidding Perry to thwart him until his term is over, leaving Perry depressed. Of course, he eventually reaches an epiphany, realizing that despite his success, he has found no happiness.
  • The page image comes from "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", where, as a result of a future version of Candace traveling back in time to the pilot to show Linda the rollercoaster, thus getting Phineas and Ferb busted, we get a Bad Future where Doof becomes Emperor of the Tri-State Area following a crusade by parents to remove anything creative from the lives of children, culminating in storing them in People Jars. Doof also makes an oath that Perry can’t attack him so long as he’s in power. He's still incredibly petty, as he renames every citizen to "Joe" just so he won’t forget their names and forces them to wear lab coats all day, but he still won- at least until the timeline was corrected.
  • "That Sinking Feeling" sports a technical subversion: Doof does manage to launch the lighthouse's rockets, but since he didn't put a guidance system on them, it pierces his own building, making Doof's nighttime a nightmare when the ships (for some odd reason) crowd around his building.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) actually have the villains winning instead of the girls in these episodes:
  • Subverted in the 10th anniversary episode. Mojo Jojo finally succeeds in taking over the world... and proceeds to be an extremely benevolent ruler who turns the planet into a peaceful utopia where everyone gets free puppies, leaving the Powerpuff Girls in shock. However, he quickly realizes that Victory Is Boring, especially when you're sitting in your desk all day doing nothing because there are no more problems in the world left to solve, so he goes back to being a supervillain.
  • The time-travel episode featuring HIM.
    • Also, HIM once challenged the girls to solve a series of riddles they had to solve on time or Professor Utonium would have to "pay". They were a few seconds too late, which forced Professor Utonium to pay for... the pancakes he ate at HIM's diner. The narrator, who usually ended each episode by saying the day had been saved and told who saved it, was at a loss for words this time.
  • And there's the Series Faux Nale "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey", in which the girls are defeated in the beginning of the episode by all the members of their Rogues Gallery.
• A few Private Snafu shorts end with Private Snafu being killed. At least one ends with him put in a Nazi prisoner of war camp under watch of a gloating German soldier. But since this is a Wartime Cartoon with the intent of showing American soldiers how NOT to act, it's justifiable.
• ReBoot:
  • Season 2 ends with Megabyte sending Bob into the Web and beginning his real attack on the city.
  • Later in Season 4 Megabyte also takes over the Principal Office and the series ends with a Bolivian Army Ending.
  • In the Season 1 episode "The Medusa Bug" Hexadecimal completely wins. However, once Bob explains to her what that particular victory entails (the entirety of Mainframe being Taken for Granite), she quickly reverses it, as a system where nothing will ever change anymore is anathema to the self-styled Queen of Chaos.
• Rick and Morty: Evil Morty succeeds in every one of his appearances in some form:
  • His first appearance in "Close Rick-Counters Of The Rick Kind" is the most downplayed example since he doesn't manage to kill Rick C-137 after the main Morty's uprising kills Evil Rick and brings down the operation. Nonetheless, Evil Morty is still able to get off scott-free without anyone figuring out he was the real mastermind, and he did get the brain scan of Rick C-137 that he wanted.
  • In "The Ricklantis Mix-up", he successfully gets himself elected as President of the Citadel, which is vital to enacting his true goal, then immediately has his political rivals assassinated and begins taking action to set up his plans.
  • "Rickmurai Jack" sees him accomplish his ultimate goal: to break the "Central Finite Curve" that separates the infinite number of universes where Rick is the smartest man in the universe from the rest of the infinite multiverse. The only thing that doesn't go as planned is that the main Rick and Morty and some other Mortys survive (he had intended for everyone in the Citadel to be killed), but it does destroy the Citadel (perhaps permanently this time) and possibly the production of Portal Fluid, which would make Rick's iconic portal gun worthless, and leaves him free to explore the rest of the infinite multiverse untouched by the influence of Rick.
  • Manages to win again in "Unmortricken" despite not technically being the bad guy this time. Not only does he take down Rick Prime, robbing Rick of the satisfaction of beating him (except for finishing him off), he also manages to steal the plans for the Omega Device, giving him the power to erase every Rick in existence should he be bothered.
• Samurai Jack:
  • Episode VI: "Jack and the Warrior Woman." After finally finding a surefire way to get back to his own time, Jack is aided by a mysterious female ally in reaching it. But it turns out that she's actually Aku in disguise the entire time who was using a cover so Jack would lead him to this. Aku destroys Jack's escape, reveals himself, laughs in his face about it, and takes off before the samurai can attack him.
  • For that matter, the first episode. The whole series takes place in a distant future (from Jack's POV) where Aku has already taken over the world after defeating Jack in the past (by throwing him into the future). Jack's quest is to find a means to return to the past and undo this victory.
  • The 50-year Time Skip between the fourth and fifth seasons counts as well. Aku seemingly destroyed every possible way for Jack to return to the past, and thought he could just wait for Jack to die of old age. But since time travel turned Jack into The Ageless, Aku just sits in his tower, depressed. That is, until Episode C; Aku comes out of his tower on the rumor that Jack lost his sword, and while that's shown to be false he also discovers that Ashi is his biological daughter. He gleefully corrupts Ashi into a demonic Daughter of Aku, forcing Jack to fight her while he looks on. Jack can't go through with it, and the last shot of the episode is Aku holding Jack's sword in triumph while the samurai sits slumped over in defeat.
• Comes up very often in Rick and Morty, because Rick is a rare combination of a Villain Protagonist and an Invincible Hero. Best shown in "Vindicators 3", where he kills the planet-eating villain of the episode in a matter of hours while being too drunk to remember doing it and engineers a series of Saw-style death games to put the titular superhero league through. By the end of the episode, all except one of the Vindicators have been killed either from his death-traps or by infighting, he has proven to Morty that the Vindicators are horrible people, and he gets away with all of it.]]
  • Evil Morty is notable not only for being one of the show's very rare recurring villains, but also for being one that always gets his way, he successfully used his Rick to scan C137's brain, infiltrate the Citadel of Ricks, get himself elected President of the Citadel, and finally enact his ultimate goal: destroy the Citadel, kill as many Ricks and Mortys as possible and escape the Central Finite Curve to a universe where Rick doesn't have all the power.
• The season 2 opener of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is both Downer Ending and this trope combined, Daphne doesn't come back to the team, Hot Dog Water replaces her, Fred's plan to capture Crybaby Clown fails, and the entire town of Crystal Cove is covered in flames, kind of a way to start the season on the wrong foot.
• Proffessor Pamplemoose in Sidekick.
• A Bond-style super villain takes over the East Coast at the end of The Simpsons episode "You Only Move Twice". The only "loss" for the "good guys" is that the Simpsons family had to move back to Springfield because no one was happy in the "perfect" neighborhood they had set up in. To rub salt in the wound, Homer was given his life's dream: ownership of a football team... Sadly, that football team was shown to be the worst in the league at the time, and it wasn't the one Homer wanted.
• Sofia the First: In the final season, Sofia has to find dangerous artifacts called the Wicked Nine and bring them back to the Mystic Isles while trying to protect them from Prisma who wants them for herself; while she's successful most times, she fails in "In Cedric We Trust", as she's unable to stop Prisma from getting off with the Evil Queen's crown.
• South Park
  • The "Stanley's Cup" episode ended with the pee-wee hockey team Stan is coaching being savagely and utterly destroyed in their game against the Detroit Red Wings. The episode ends with the Red Wings excitedly celebrating (the Coach's father even tells his son he loves him in a parody of cliche sports movie endings) while the boy's friend Nelson dies from leukemia and "no hope".
  • Zigzagged in The Movie, Sheila actually succeeds in killing Terrence and Phillip allowing Satan to rule the world, but everything is undone by the end.
  • The ending of "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
  • "The Return of Chef", which sees the Super Adventure Club successfully corrupt Chef into becoming a child molester.
  • "Casa Bonita" involves Cartman succeeding in getting invited to Kyle's birthday dinner. When they arrive at Casa Bonita, Kyle's mother gets a call on her cell phone, hearing that Cartman is responsible for Butters' disappearance. Cartman rushes inside and hurriedly does everything he wanted in a span of less than a minute before the authorities arrive.
  Officer: Well, kid, you made an entire town panic, you lost all your friends and now you're going to Juvenile Hall for a week! Huh, was it worth it?
  Cartman: Totally.
  • In the Black Friday Trilogy, Bill Gates and Niles Lawson (the reporter).
• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Vulture ultimately gets what he wanted for the entire series: his youth permanently restored.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • Night Light ends with The Moth succeeding in stealing the Lighthouse (Along with Spongebob's home).
  • Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V has Dirty Bubble, Man Ray, and a disgruntled Barnacle Boy win because the heroes defeated themselves. Barnacle Boy then tells Mermaid Man that he now has to give in to his demands to be called Barnacle Man, treated like a hero and not a sidekick and an adult sized krabby patty.
• Spongo, Fuzz and Jalapeña: In one episode, Fuzz enters a competition to win a yellow jacket he wants, which most other people in Champignon also have. Howeverm Taylor LeStrange also enters the competition to ensure he can't have it. Taylor ends up winning and getting the jacket, and Fuzz can only briefly touch Snowden's.
• Several episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars end with this trope. Some of these episodes include Cloak of Darkness, Gungan Attack, Hostage Crisis, Heroes on Both Sides, Slaves of the Republic, and the Netflix-exclusive episode, Orders.
  • Its predecessor, Star Wars: Clone Wars, ends some of its brief episodes with the apparent victory of the Seperatist villains: Chapter 4 ends with with Durge raising his lance in victory, Chapter 20, with General Grievous single-handedly taking out an outpost full of Jedi before finally descending on Ki-Adi-Mundi, and the whole second season ends with Grievous having just killed two Jedi and kidnapped the Chancellor... although these are respectively revisited in later installments with Obi-Wan taking back the battlefield, Mundi holding off Grievous long enough for at least some of his friends to survive, and Anakin and Obi-Wan staging a successful rescue mission.
    • ...and this is all in light of the fact that per Revenge of the Sith, the whole saga of the Clone Wars ended up serving Palpatine anyway, which was the whole point.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil has several instances of Toffee winning:
  • In the season one finale, Toffee's attempt to kidnap Marco succeeds, Star is unable to rescue him, and is forced to give in to Toffee's demand and use the Whispering Spell to destroy her wand. This results in a massive explosion that destroys the castle, which seems to startle him for a second — but then he makes an evil grin suggesting that this was an acceptable outcome, possibly even exactly what he was expecting all along. While Toffee seems to have been killed in the blast, the fact that he can regenerate limbs brings up the possibility that he wasn't destroyed for good. Turns out he was dead, but his spirit was sealed into the broken half of Star's wand, and couldn't return until Ludo retrieved him.
  • In the season two finale, Toffee possesses Ludo's body and merges Ludo's half of the wand with himself. He then curbstomps the entire Magic Commission and steals their magic, seemingly resulting in Lekmet's death. Queen Moon barely manages to escape with her incapacitated friends and Lekmet's remains. The season ends with Toffee undoubtedly victorious. And coming for Star..
  • While Toffee himself is long dead by the series finale, Star comes to the realization that he had a point in his crusade against magic, since it causes more harm than good, and she successfully destroys magic with the help of her family. Toffee's Final Speech suggests this is what he had in mind from the beginning.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has Well-Intentioned Extremist Bishop win in the episode "Aliens Among Us". He's managed to get the president to respect him and declare the turtles as aliens.
• The first season of Titan Maximum ends with Gibbs succeeding in bringing down the solar shield around Mercury, with the team able to do nothing but stand there looking shocked.
• Todd McFarlane's Spawn, has Al Simmons realize too late that he was a pawn of Malebogia from the start. The real reason the lord of hell allowed Spawn to see his white Wanda again in the flesh, was not in exchange for being his general in his army of hell, but to give into temptation and have sex with his ex wife, impregnating her with a demon seed who will grow to become the Antichrist and the real general of his army. Al does this by making himself appear in the image of Wanda's current husband, Terry.
• Sort of hard to believe if you haven't seen many of the shorts, but Tom and Jerry actually has a few episodes in which Tom wins. One example is the short "Southbound Duckling", which ends with Tom covering himself and the vulnerable mouse and duck, implied to do... something to them.
  • "The Bodyguard" also ends with Spike back in the Dog Pound and Tom allowed to chase Jerry all he wants. Around a dozen instances exist with Tom getting the last laugh, even if the majority of other examples were more karmic, with Tom being non provocative or Jerry taking his retribution to far too gratuitous levels to be considered "the good guy" anymore.
• Total Drama World Tour ends with either Heather or Alejandro winning, depending on where you live. While Heather is treated as the Designated Hero, she really is just as sneaky as Alejandro, especially since she helped him get Cody eliminated in that same episode. Then again, they only win the competition itself—both endings have the prize money destroyed and Al severely injured.
  • Then there's the US ending for Revenge of the Island, with Lightning winning over Cameron. Also, while Cameron chooses to split the money with the other contestants in his ending, Lightning refuses, annoying even the characters who supported him.
• Transformers:
  • Beast Wars: Occasionally ended some conflicts in victory for the Predacons, and the Maximals lucky to get out alive. This was especially true in the Season Finales. Season 1 with Megatron sabotaging a makeshift spacecraft, thereby turning Optimus Primal's risky ploy into a suicide mission. Season 2 ends with Megatron shooting the original Optimus Prime in the face, causing time and space to warp so that the Decepticons won in the original series. This gets a hasty fix at the beginning of season 3, but there is probably nothing more bone-chilling than the Big Bad pointing at the camera and telling the heroes "YOU NO LONGER EXIST!", especially when the show could have easily been canceled afterward. Only the third finale, which also ended the series, ended with a Maximal victory.
    • It was short lived. The sequel series Beast Machines sees the Maximals being graceless winners by chaining Megatron to the outside of their spaceship in the finale of Beast Wars biting them in the ass immediately. He gets free, gets through the time warp they were taking to return home first, and because of the Timey-Wimey Ball, he had all the time in Cybertron he needed to take over the planet with a virus from season 1 of Beast Wars, doing what no other Megatron could do in successfully winning it all alone.
  • The second season finale of Transformers: Prime: The Decepticons create a fortress on Earth, from which they launch a full-scale assault on the Autobot base. Wheeljack is shot down by Starscream, while the other Autobots and humans flee through the GroundBridge, just before the Nemesis obliterates the entire mountain... with Optimus still inside.
• In Wat's Pig, the invaders win both battles and successfully take over the kingdom, mainly due to the king's Dirty Cowardice.
• We Bare Bears:
  • "Nom Nom" ends with Nom Nom's Engineered Heroics plan failing, only for him to get his fame back anyway even though his original plan put Grizzly and Panda's lives in danger.
  • "The Audition" ends with the bears struggling to appease a snooty Prima Donna Director in order to get a role in a cereal commercial. The director decides none of the bears are worthy, and casts himself as the new Freshy Bear.
• In the Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? episode "Cube Wars" the Yogman Twins cheat to win a competition and get away with it.
• Episode 8 of What If…? (2021) is titled "What If... Ultron Won?", making this trope Exactly What It Says on the Tin. To be more specific, unlike the prime reality where the Avengers steal Ultron's would-be upgraded body and use it to create the Vision, in this universe Ultron suceeds in hijacking Vision's body, proceding to wipe out all life on Earth save for Black Widow and Hawkeye. To make matters worse, Ultron then uses the other five Infinity Stones to continue his genocidal campaign across the whole universe. And even worse than that, he actually notices the Watcher and plans on using his knowledge of the multiverse to continue his campaign of organic extermination.
• Several episodes of Xiaolin Showdown end in the bad guys winning, the first time was using a robot duplicate of Kimiko and while the other monks are busy fighting her Jack sneaks into the vault to steal the Shen gong wu resulting them in getting every wu except for the Mantis Flip Coin, villains being released into the world, teammates turning to the dark side, etc. Although occasionally the heroes manage to make some sort of comeback. If they lose a showdown and the corresponding wu, they can win another showdown later on or still save the day.
• In Yogi's Space Race, Phantom Phink and Sludge won most of the races (sometimes in their disguises). They're promptly dismayed when the prizes turn out to be rubbish.
• The Light of Young Justice (2010) winds up winning most skirmishes with the team, even/especially the ones that look like a clear-cut victory for the good guys. Then comes the seconnd season finale, where half the Light is captured, but the rest wind up in a better position than they started in, including the Big Bad Vandal Savage who has a War World, an alliance with Darkseid, and has accomplished every goal he wanted.

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