Whos Laughing Now / Western Animation

Times where somebody who's been mistreated rises up and asks "Who's Laughing Now?" in Western Animation.

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• In American Dad! episode "Da Flippity Flop", Klaus begs Stan to finally place him back in his body after it's discovered frozen and intact (Stan having placed him in his fish body years ago to prevent Germany winning the Olympics). It takes a while but Stan finally relents, only for them to discover his body has nearly completely decomposed in the meantime. Stan shows complete apathy to his situation, so Klaus finally cracks and knocks Stan out, switching their bodies. The rest of the family even support the prank due to Stan ruining Klaus' life until they realise he intends to make the change permanent.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Purple Man pulls this on Iron Man in "Emperor Stark" by mind-controlling Tony into taking over the world for him while leaving him just enough self-awareness to know what's happening.
  Purple Man: You shouldn't have mocked me. You thought it'd be funny, that day in the restaurant, didn't you? To make fun of me, to make me look stupid! Do you feel smart now?
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • Mary Dahl (alias Baby Doll) feels that Cousin Spunky unfairly caused her popularity to end, and kidnaps him:
    Baby Doll: You all remembers what happened the last time I had a birthday. Poopy old Spunky pushed my head in the cake. Everybody laughed and laughed. (Smashes cake in his face) Well, I'm laughing now!
  • This was an unusual example in that it actually illustrates just how delusional Baby Doll is. Not only was Cousin Spunky just a character on the TV show she starred in, but it wasn't even personal. The actor was just following the script that was written for that particular scene. He even points that out.
  • She admits it, not that it makes a difference:
    Baby Doll: (In an adult voice) It was real to me!
  • In "Joker's Millions", a rival gangster, Edward 'King' Barlow, died and left Joker 250 millions in cash, jewels, and gold. Joker blows through it to buy himself liberty, a luxury home, and a new Harley. Then, as he's collecting money to pay inheritance taxes, Joker finds out he's been had.
• One of the villains in Batman Beyond was a high school peer of Terry named Willie, who decided to take revenge on his tormentors at school by controlling a Humongous Mecha used in construction.
  • In another episode, it turns out that not only Willie spent time in the prison yard working out, the massive jolt that stopped his Golem control gave him strong psionic powers.
  • Then in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, after Joker has been demoralized and mocked by Terry and finally has him pinned down...
    Joker: Come on, McGinnis, laugh it up now... you miserable little punk. LAUGH! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!
    Terry: Ha. Ha.
    (Terry shocks the Joker with a joy buzzer, which disintegrates the chip containing the Joker's mind, effectively killing him.)
• The Musical Episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold gives the villain's origin in song!
  Bullies used to pick on me because I sang in choir
  But something very strange occurred when I kept singing higher
  The ruffians around me quickly fell into a trance
  And it was then, with wicked glee, I made those puppets dance!
  I'm the Music Meister!
• In one episode of Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben tells off Cash and JT for acting so immaturely after all these years and telling them to grow up. Cash doesn't take this too well and instead wants to humiliate Ben by beating the crap out of him for it. How? By stealing an adaptable suit of armor and going crazy with power.
• The Crumpets: Ohoh is a cowardly boy who is a frequent victim of Bother and Blister's pranks. In "My Family's Full of Losers" when it's Ohoh's turn to open the box in the game show, he receives a machine gun and tries to murder much of his family in the dark.
• Tucker in Danny Phantom. Usually the ignored Butt-Monkey, Tucker becomes aware of it when he tries to run for school president in one episode. It chain reacts to him taking over the entire school via a magical scepter until Danny sets him straight. Unfortunately he still gets the ignored status for the remainder of the series.
• Darkwing Duck subverts this one. In one episode, Darkwing is stranded on a planet where everyone is a superhero ...except for one man known as Ordinary Guy, who all the other inhabitants live to rescue from peril. Unfortunately for him, the "heroes" tend to put him in danger just so they can save him from it. Finally, he snaps, and becomes the planet's very first villain, with the dastardly moniker of "Not-So-Ordinary Guy". The heroes, having never actually fought a bad guy before, are clueless as to what to do about this.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: In "Sky-Hi I.Q.," snickering Muttley becomes the leader of Vulture Squadron which gives Dick Dastardly a chance to laugh the misfortunes he usually suffers that Muttley goes through, despite his supposed higher position in the hierarchy. Dick even gets in a Muttley-type snicker.
• In Ed, Edd n Eddy, Jimmy is the Butt-Monkey that even nature picks on (a Squirrel once somehow dropped a tree on top of him, apparently on purpose). However, when the Edds ^note  well, Eddy did, but this show is no stranger to Misplaced Retribution go too far and Break the Cutie, he reveals himself to be an extremely able Chessmaster and arranges a complicated plan resulting in all the kids chasing them down and pelting them with fruit, then getting dragged away by the Kanker Sisters. Beware the Nice Ones indeed. Also has traits of Hoist by His Own Petard, since it was Eddy that taught him to be a scam artist to begin with.
  • Eddy says this word-for-word at the end of "Hands Across Ed" when he has a magnet to ruin Kevin and Rolf's show. Unfortunately, it backfires on him.
    Eddy: Hey, Romeo and Juliet! Who's laughing now?!
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera does this with Sergio. After being made the laughingstock of Miracle City, he declares revenge on Manny/El Tigre with his evil robot persona, Senor Sinestrio.
• Family Guy: In Dial Meg For Murder, Meg goes to jail for housing an escaped convict. When she comes out, she's tough, and gets payback on the people who mocked and abused her the past few seasons.
  • It didn't last after the episode however and she returned to Butt-Monkey status.
• An episode of Fillmore! dealt with a group of kids who teamed up to get back at their bullies in the most spirit-breaking fashion. A lesson of this was that there are better ways to deal with bullies.
• A Freakazoid! episode had this part of its array. The villain, the lovable Tim Curry, was going at it with the Arson Murder And Jay Walking bit, playing the part of a surrogate Dr. Moreau character. He says: "They Called Me Mad!! Insane! Wendell! Well who's laughing NOW!?"
• Stan, Xander Crew's assistant on Frisky Dingo, did this after calmly explaining to his employer that after Crews went missing, Stan had him declared dead and took over his multi-billion dollar corporation. After hanging up, he said "Who's laughing now, Crews? Ha ha... Me. I am laughing."
  • Earlier, one of the X-Tacles punches an incapacitated Crews in the face and says "Who's laughing now, Crews?" Xander Crews responds "I wasn't laughing before!"
• In one episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), Skeletor spends the episode being mocked by his minions because he is wearing a belt that shocks him whenever he thinks an evil thought, and seemingly can't be removed. When he finally gets the belt off, he gets his revenge by suspending his minions over a tub of lava.
• Jem put it in music.
• The Jimmy Two-Shoes episode "Bad Horn Day" had a flashback where Lucius, as a child, is being laughed at for his bad horns by his teacher. In the present day, that teacher's head is mounted on his wall.
  Lucius: Not so funny now is it, professor? (exits screen)
  Teacher's Head: (aside) Frankly, I still think his horns are stubby.
• KaBlam! had Henry leave the show after June's been messing with him, showing her who's boss. He comes back, though, when he finds her in tears.
• Kaeloo: Quack Quack occasionally gets his own back at Mr. Cat for tormenting him, such as in "Let's Play Figurines" where he turns him into his personal slave.
• Kim Possible villain Dr. Drakken became an evil Mad Scientist after his college friends (one of whom was Kim's father) laughed at him for building fembots instead of finding dates for an upcoming dance.
  Drew: All right. Go on, laugh away, but one day my genius will be recognized! Bebe will be perfect—(Bebe starts to Bear Hug him)—and I will be the one laughing!
• Martin Mystery finishes off its 3 season run with the two-part episode It's Alive!, where all the frustration of Diana's being lesser than Martin in the Center, and his constantly annoying her to no end, is finally ignited when she's given a 'Needs Improvement' evaluation over Martin's 'Glowing Evaluation'. A bit more of Martin's prodding as a result of that sends her over, and when given the chance to join Octavia Paine's organization, she leaps at the chance. She then proceeds to humiliate Martin by stealing two monsters away from him, as a result of his over-confidence streak and laughs after the second capture. The second involves Octavia revealing her true intentions for the monsters, leaving her and Martin to stop her Super-creature from destroying the Center.
• This happens a lot on Miraculous Ladybug, usually if the Monster of the Week is someone who's been bullied by series Alpha Bitch Chloe Bourgeois; often the first thing they'll do is go after her, before being pressed by Hawkmoth to go after the heroes' MacGuffin.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down" is one of the few rare heroic examples. In a twist, her assertiveness results in her picking up and running with the Jerkass Ball.
  • The Great and Powerful Trixie was turned into a laughingstock throughout Equestria by the Ursa Minor incident, to the point, it ruined her career and her life. This drives her to obtain the Alicorn Amulet, an Artifact of Doom that gives her near unmatched power at the cost of her sanity, to take her revenge on those she sees as responsible for her humiliation.
• Elmer Sglue in The Powerpuff Girls episode "Paste Makes Waste."
• Robot Chicken:
  • Fumbles from the GI Joe short on is a great example. The incessant mocking by the rest of the GI Joe cast cause him to turn to Cobra and kill them all in the end.
    "It's Fumbles. It was always Fumbles."
  • Voltron Got Served!
    Pidge: Who's laughing now, biatch?
  • Another one comes from some of their Star Wars sketches. At one point, when Anakin is coming back from the Sand People with his dead mother in his arms, Owen Lars cracks a joke about how "That makes him Little Orphan Ani!" Anakin protests that it's Dude, Not Funny!, while everyone else tells him to get over it. Later, when the stormtroopers are interrogating Owen and Beru over the location of C-3P0 and R2-D2, and the stormtrooper squad is about to set Owen and Beru on fire, the leader of the squad leans over to Owen and says "Oh, and I have a personal message from Lord Vader; he says now you can laugh at that Little Orphan Ani joke". Owen looks shocked and stunned for a second, then chooses to give Vader the finger as he dies by responding "You tell him it was funny then, and it's funny now! Little Orphan Ani! Tell him that to his face!" Relevant Links
• Tim the Witch Hunter in Sabrina: The Animated Series since he was a half-mortal and his fellow witches made his life miserable during his school years. He comes back with a vengeance with technology powerful enough to negate their powers and capture them. Even sticking their still-living heads on his wall as mounted trophies.
• The Simpsons: In one episode, they discussed the origin of April Fool's Day. There used to be a time when people believed the year started in April. When it started changing, some people who adopted the new calendar mocked those who didn't. To exemplify, this is shown a flashback of a Flanders-like family mocking a Simpson-like family. The Simpson-like family perform a Disproportionate Retribution by tying the Flanders-like family to a stake, setting them on fire, and asking/chanting the trope.
  Homer: And that's the story of April Fool's Day.
  Lisa: Dad, I was telling the story!
  Homer: Oh, right.
• South Park:
  • Butters tries to do this with his Professor Chaos alter-ego, but it doesn't work too well as most of his schemes are just too inefficient, ineffective, and downright stupid, and once causes him to lose his eye in an accident while he was having a mock battle with the main characters and they forgot they were using real weapons.
    • But by himself, he does get Cartman back, in a big way.
    • Butters tends to play with this trope, while his attempts as Professor Chaos frequently have no effect whatsoever, he has on occasion got heavy justice completely by accident. In "AWESOME-O" for example, Cartman manages to trick Butters into believing he is a robot buddy, only to be driven insane by Butter's constant affection and playtime ideas. Also, in "The Tale Of Scrotie Mc Boogerballs", the boys trick him into taking credit for a vulgar novel they wrote, only to be labeled a literary genius, with the others labelled liars when they try to take back credit for their work. It is worth noting throughout all of this Butters is genuinely convinced he subconsciously wrote the novel, leading to this outburst when the boys confront him about it:
      Kyle: Butters, do you really think it's fair to lie like this?! Let me tell you, if you don't have—!
      Butters: (snaps) No! Let me tell you something, fellas!! You always take advantage of me. And after reading Catcher in the Rye, I've learned you're nothing but phonies! I'm not letting you trick me this time. So the four of you can just suck on my wiener.
      (Storms off, leaving the other boys speechless.)
      Cartman: [Beat] That inconsiderate jerk...
    • By the time of the episode The Coon, the town seems to regard him as superhuman.
  • Cartman himself in "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
  • Cartman tries it again in the Coon vs Mysterion trilogy after several rather unheroic actions lead to him being evicted from the Coon and Friends club (who also keep the self-aggrandizing name "because it pisses him off") he actually teams up with Cthulhu and banishes them to an alternate dimension, along with brutally killing millions of other people he finds to be "evil".
  • Cartman has another instance in "Tonsil Trouble", in which he purposely infects Kyle with HIV as payback for laughing upon hearing he got AIDS.
    Cartman: (to Kyle while he was asleep) You think HIV is something to be laughed at, Kyle? Well, let's just see how funny it is now, asshole.
  • Scott Tenorman pulls this on Cartman on 201 when he reveals that they both shared the same father, whom Cartman killed and pureed into chili in the previous episode with Tenorman.
• Barnacle Boy in SpongeBob SquarePants becomes a villain after various put-downs by the people he saves. To be fair though, Spongebob promises to respect him even though it doesn't convince him.
• Quoted verbatim in an episode of TaleSpin by a now-gloating Butt-Monkey after his rather amoral plan to be taken seriously appears to be succeeding.
• In Transformers: Animated, Blackarachnia uses this trope to convince Wasp to become techno-organic. There's just one small problem...
• invoked In a case of Word of God over What Could Have Been, the creator of Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, Greg Miller, has stated that he envisioned the series ending with Robot Jones rallying an army of robots into annihilating the human race and that such a scenario would still be the canon ending if the show wasn't canceled. This could be seen as this when you remember most of the humans were assholes to Robot throughout the entire series.
  • However, in-series Robot Jones did make everyone in the school go bald for his friends mocking him over how he'll never grow hair in "Hair". Unfortunately, this action is put in a more sinister light as seen in the above example...

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