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Hate Sink / American Dad!

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Considering that the show is a satire with very acid humor, it is not surprising that it has many of these.


  • Henry, the Jerkass kid in "A.T. The Abusive Terrestrial" was made to be a despicable and spiteful brat who relentlessly abused Roger in the episode, and Roger did not deserve any of the physical and verbal abuse that Henry inflicted on him at all. Not only that, when Steve tried to get Roger back, Henry outright threatened to rat the Smiths out to the CIA for harboring an alien. It's important to note that this episode featuring Henry aired before the show's writers decided to make Roger a Hate Sink as well.
  • Phillip, the sleazy car salesman responsible for getting Roger fired from his job in an early episode that aired before Roger’s own descent into hatedom. In that episode, he tricked Roger into selling cars that gave Phillip all the credit, resulting in his boss firing Roger. However, Phillip makes the mistake of angering Roger and gets his comeuppance after getting framed by Roger and Stan for domestic and sexual abuse, and during his arrest, he is revealed to be a practicing Neo-Nazi and the officer arresting him turns out to be a Holocaust survivor.
  • Francine's birth parents, who abandoned her because the flight they were scheduled for doesn't allow babies. Even Klaus was disgusted by this:
  • Jeff's father. Not only did he frame his own son for pot smuggling, but he blatantly admitted that he was going to turn him in for the reward money for his capture, trying to kill Stan and Roger in the process when they find this out... all because he wanted to collect the reward money for Jeff's arrest.
  • Randy, the creepy pedophile and sex offender from the episode “The 42-Year-Old Virgin”. He is a perverted man who was revealed to have molested young boys. He kidnapped Steve and his friends, dressed them in unitards, took them to a secret area in a water park, made them jump on a dirty mattress, and sprayed them with butter, then tried to molest them. When caught, he brags that he will get away with everything due to his mother's wealth, and his mother offhandedly mentions that he "also kills cats."
  • Stevearino from the episode "Son of Stan". He was a clone of Steve created for an experiment to see how he would turn out if raised only by Stan and not Francine. He tortures and kills hundreds of cats For the Evulz and keeps their heads as trophies. He eventually decides to kill all the cats in the entire city and kidnaps the real Steve so he can kill him and take his place. When Stan arrives to save Steve and the cats, he offers Stevearino a chance at redemption, only for Stevearino to reject his offer and try to kill him too. Before he can kill the two, Francine arrives and frees all the cats, who attack and kill him. Unlike most other villains on the show, he's played dead seriously; the only time he is Played for Laughs is in a brief scene where he juggles a bunch of cat heads and stops to eat them.
  • Roger the Alien himself. He is the most blatant example in this show and one of the most blatant examples of this trope in the history of western animation because there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves that the writers of the show have been trying to mold him into an intentional target of hate as the show progressed. While Roger was originally not hated in the first few episodes and the earlier seasons, the later seasons showed that he is a very arrogant and selfish Jerkass who has so many personality flaws that he shows numerous signs of both narcissism and sociopathy and has committed almost every single kind of crime in the book. Most of the episodes featuring Roger as the main point of focus are episodes where it's made obvious that the writers were trying to make Roger as despicable and evil as possible, all while stripping him of any positive qualities he had on him. Some examples include "Virtual Insanity" (where he neglects puppies, kills teenagers for not paying their fare to him with a limo and in the process blows up a plane filled with innocent people), and "Love, A.D Style" (where he shoots and abducts Hayley after getting a crush on her and then threatens to skin her alive but ends up skinning Jeff instead so he could feel close to her). “Frannie 911” revealed that Roger was designed in-universe to get people to despise him because kindness and altruism are so toxic to him that it would literally kill him to be nice. It’s also worth noting that in most of the conflicts Roger has with the Smith Family (especially with Stan), it is the Smith family who almost always come out on top and win, which strongly implies that the writers made Roger loathsome in these situations to get viewers to root for characters like Stan more in the conflicts. Even more convincing is that as of Season 8, most of the Smith family (especially Stan) hate Roger with every fiber of their well-being, yet they still allow him to live in their house.
    • The “Ricky Spanish” episode managed to not only become the episode that most blatantly showed Roger’s status as a hate sink but also parodied it through one of his personas. This persona called Ricky Spanish has no purpose other than to be loathsome and the most hated man in town (through defecating in a man's chest during open-heart surgery, massacring a wedding, and killing Bullock’s wife for no reason). Because Roger and Ricky Spanish are technically the same person, this episode permanently cemented Roger the alien as a scumbag even though Roger feared the Ricky Spanish persona. In fact, Ricky Spanish exists on the show as a foreshadowing of Roger’s own descent into sociopathy.
    • While Roger and his jerkass antics can be seen as rather hilarious and over the top in earlier episodes his evil was played out in a more sinister and realistic tone by the time Season 8 arrived ("Love, A.D Style" being a perfect example to show this).
  • Emperor Zing is also one. While he does have a Freudian Excuse (his lover, Roger, cheated on him with another man for no reason), Zing's actions in the episode "Lost In Space" are considered to be very atrocious and inexcusable. He has kidnapped numerous humans and aliens and forced them to work for him as slaves. Then he promises to free them if they undergo a "test" to prove that they are in love and deserve to be let go with the risk of losing their genitals if they fail. However, all of the candidates have "failed" as the test was a memory evaluation performed on them by The Majestic. However, The Majestic explained that Zing forced him to do this, threatening to blow him into space if he refused, and goes on to say that the whole test is a sham, used by Zing as a tool of propaganda to deceive his own race into believing that true love does not exist. Jeff eventually exposes Zing's deceit and Zing's own species does not hesitate to turn on him when they learn the truth.
    • It should be noted that Roger’s entire race can be considered to be an entire species of hate sinks, given how Roger’s revelation about them having to be jerks or die holds water. They basically live to feed off other people’s hatred of them parasitically.
  • Tank Bates, Terry's father, is unapologetically homophobic and disowns his son for being gay. Unlike most homophobes in fiction, Tank has no Freudian Excuse for his dislike of homosexuality. He's not against it for religious reasons, he knows that it isn't a choice to be homosexual and he is most definitely not an Armored Closet Gay.
  • Santa Claus also qualifies as this. While he has the Freudian Excuse of Steve shooting him (even though it was an accident), he has since then fortified himself as their Arch-Enemy, attacking them in a huge battle and almost convincing Jeff to side with him. In "Minstrel Krampus", it's revealed he encourages naughty children's behavior during the holiday season. In "Ninety North, Zero West", he kidnaps hundreds of innocent children and forces them to work in the coal mines to find two blue gems that he plans to use to take over the world.

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