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And That's Terrible

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/40cakes_4996.jpg
Dude, you're like, the richest man in Metropolis.
Can't you just buy some cakes?

"Is it necessary to utter one’s ideas about slavery? Show it, that’s enough."
— Gustave Flaubert, on Uncle Tom's Cabin

When the bad guy's acts are unquestionably evil, but the show's writers feel the need to have characters or the narrator say this out loud. This can be a sign of a Designated Villain: in this case, the sentence is used to make sure that the reader knows that what the villain does is wrong, when out of context it wouldn't seem particularly evil.

This could be considered a villains-only Sub-Trope of Anvilicious. Named for a page from ''The Super Dictionary'', where even though we see that Lex Luthor has stolen forty cakes, the panel still reminds us, "And that's terrible."

If they're established as bad by an actual action, see Kick the Dog and Moral Event Horizon. If this is used as most of what is supposed to make the villain bad, it's Offstage Villainy. You're Insane! can often be used as an alternative.

When used unironically, it can be bad writing as a Sub-Trope of Show, Don't Tell. Might be justified if the villain in question is edging toward Draco in Leather Pants territory. Certainly justified if there is controversy about whether an evil thing is really so bad (the page quote, for example, was about a book published shortly before an entire civil war was fought over whether or not slavery was acceptable). Also justified for works aimed at young children (such as the aforementioned Super Dictionary) who have just started to wrap their minds around the whole "morality" thing.

See also Captain Obvious, Captain Obvious Aesop, Do Not Do This Cool Thing, There Should Be a Law, That Makes Me Feel Angry, ...And That Would Be Wrong, Informed Wrongness, and Felony Misdemeanor. Contrast This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Sorcerer Hunters: In the very first episode, the heroes meet someone raising a dragon that feeds on tortured girls. The team points out that that's bad, even for a sorcerer.
  • Onime no Kyo of Samurai Deeper Kyo kills people for fun. Since he's the hero, every one of the villains in the series has to be called "You MONSTER!" at some point, just so we remember which of them is less bad.
  • YuYu Hakusho when Yukina's situation and capture are being described. Botan's reaction is a dramatic 'That's terrible!'
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Sailor Moon the DiC dub version Says! "Queen Beryl did a terrible thing when she destroyed the Moon." ...oh, really?!
    • In Sailor Moon Crystal, before fighting each Dark Kingdom General so far, Usagi generally rattles off their evil scheme from that episode before declaring, "That's unforgivable!", followed swiftly by "In the Name of the Moon, I will punish you!"
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, the 7th episode, Goodwin reveals to Jack Atlas (the current King of Duelists) that the Demon Lord and his army from the shadow realm were sealed under the earth by the crimson dragon, and that by absorbing negative emotions for millennia, they will soon break free with more power than when they were sealed, and return to pillage the earth! Jacks response? "Thats bad!"
  • A Gag Sub for Star Driver reminds its viewers, "Please do not imitate rapists!"
  • Played for Laughs in Galilei Donna — Kazuki Ferrari is a somewhat spacey law school student. Thus, when a sky pirate named Cicinho invades her home, holds up her family, has her father beaten, and demands the location of "Galileo's Inheritance", she starts listing off every law he just broke in the last five minutes before topping it off with, "You're the worst male scumbag in Italy! Oh, and you'd make the top three in all of Europe, too! If there was a world cup for scumbags, you'd be totally in the running. Congrats!" Cicinho finds this amusing and decides to add the crime of nicknaming her "Bambina" to the list.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, Homura steals Madoka's powers so she can "protect" her and perpetually torment the Incubators, and she tweaks everyone's memories to eliminate conflict, exuding Obviously Evil motifs throughout. Afterward, Sayaka feels the need to point out that this was just plain evil. Oddly enough, this may be meant to call the supposed evilness into question. The same character did almost exactly the same thing before the movie started, and Sayaka argued that it wasn't really that bad, so they shouldn't be too quick to condemn the antagonist as a monster.
  • The Lupin III: Part II episode "Gorilla Tactics" has Jigen listing Fujiko's misbehaviour, blatantly stating she was terrible in the original Japanese.

     Art 
  • Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: It's such a pity that Lucifer has betrayed God because not only it's obvious he was going to fail, but it also has cost him God's love and favor, and that's the cause of the emotional hurt he's feeling in the painting.

    Comedy 
  • Comedian Eugene Mirman often writes letters to companies he's mad at to read aloud on stage. A lot of the letters include a description of why he's mad, followed by "That's terrible." Things tend to get silly after that. ("Fleet Bank, you should be ashamed of all the things I made up that you would do.")
  • Bob Saget reminds the audience of this several times regarding his own black/blue comedy in his 'That Ain't Right' Stand-up tour.

    Comic Books 
  • In issue #709 of Superman a flashback reveals the young Lex Luthor was placed in detention for, you guessed it, stealing cakes. Forty of them from his school's bake sale, in fact. In revenge for the school administration refusing to allow him to enter a fission-powered toaster. And that's terrible. Terribly awesome.
  • In Jeff Smith's re-make of The Monster Society Of Evil, starring Captain Marvel, there's a scene where it's explained Dr. Sivana doesn't want to destroy the machines made by Mr. Mind, only to capture and sell them to the army so he can get rich. Upon hearing this, Tawky Tawny helpfully exclaims for the audience's sake, "War profiteering! That is immoral— and illegal." Considering that the book had a wide age appeal and most 7-year-olds don't have a clear understanding of war profiting this could be justified.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • In Frozen II, the backstory is revealed that Anna and Elsa’s grandfather was a bigot who knowingly led the Northuldra people to ruin in an attempt to subjugate them, but later murdered the Northuldra leader to incite collapse of their society to speed things along. Anna and Olaf (the kid-appeal character, no less) have a moment where they firmly assure the audience, especially the kids, that these actions go against everything Arendelle stands for.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Superman II, Perry White informs Clark Kent that terrorists are threatening to destroy the Eiffel Tower (and much, much more).
    Clark: Well, jeez, Mr. White, that's terrible!
    Perry: That's why they call them terrorists, Kent.
  • Kung Pow! Enter the Fist has this gem:
    The Chosen One: Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like... badwrong. Or... badong. Yes. Killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing. Gnodab.
  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice gives us this wisdom:
    Balthazar Blake: Horvath wants to free his fellow Morganians and destroy the world. THIS. MUST. NOT. HAPPEN.
  • One of Mark Whitacre's inner monologues in The Informant!.
    "I've been to Tokyo. They sell little-girl underwear in the vending machines right on the main drag, the Ginza, or whatever. Guys in suits buying used girl panties. How is that okay? That's not okay."
  • In Roxanne, this is the gist of the summation to C.D.'s diatribe to his volunteer fire department when he comes to work to find a burning barrel in the fire house.
    C.D.: You can't have people, if their houses are burning down, saying, "Whatever you do, don't call the fire department!" That would be bad.
  • In the Garfield movie the villain at one point tortures Odie with a shock collar. Garfield looks straight at the Fourth Wall and reminds us that "that's inhumane!"
  • Garth does in Wayne's World, when he and Wayne denounce Product Placement... while doing product placement:
    Garth: [wearing Reebok-branded clothing] It's like people only do things because they get paid, and that's just really sad.
  • In Go For It, near the end the two protagonists learn of the Evil Plan of K1, which will remove from everyone's minds the concept of "number". When they're given a pause to decide wether to join him or not, they discuss the potential, terrible consequences of such a plan in a tone which makes clear that they're not taking the threat seriously (like the impossibility of calling a hooker or eating more than one hamburger per time)... but they do once they realize that, without numbers, they'll be unable to enjoy their secret stash of a million dollars.

    Literature 
  • In A Brother's Price, Ren feels the need to deliver a speech of that kind to the soldiers who accompany her. In her opinion, they're insufficiently shocked by finding the dead body of a man who was raped and died of having his tongue cut off. She asks what the rapists intended to tell their children (if they succeeded in conceiving). That their father was raped and had his tongue cut off? Most terrible things that are done are lampshaded to be terrible by at least one protagonist, or the narrative itself, just in case the reader misses it. (Which, with marital rape is a justified concern. Maybe female-on-male rape warrants a "and that's terrible", too.)
    • It's then pointed out to Ren that she's one of the few people there who knew a father and wasn't a Child by Rape; women in this society who can't afford husbands conceive children by going to "cribs" full of drugged men.
  • In the Scholastic character guide for Battle for Dream Island, there are a few examples of this. From Golf Ball's bio:
    Golf Ball doesn't have the best people skills. Once she became angry at Spongy for how smelly he is. Not cool!
  • After Loki escapes in the Copper-Colored Cupids story The Winter Quests, Pythe feels the need to remark to Juliet:
    Pythagoras-858: "Oh, this is very bad. This is very very bad. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how bad this is, but it bears repeating."
  • Constantly in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which Gustave Flaubert provided the page quote about. Indeed, some contemporary abolitionist critiques of the novel could be boiled down to "people seriously need this spelled out for them?!" Sadly they did, as numerous Southern people — and some Northerners — defended slavery; the book garnered a huge number of responses trying to rebut it. Not just as a necessary evil too, but in some cases even a positive good. This came from leading thinkers often (and not all were even slave owners themselves). Yes, it was necessary.
  • The writers of The Glove of Darth Vader series apparently felt the Galactic Empire was not Obviously Evil enough. Yes, the Empire from Star Wars. The books dealt with this by taking the bad guys to sublime levels of Card Carrying Villainy. ("I bid you Dark Greetings!") And not even that stopped the narration from constantly referring to them as evil.
  • In The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, when Zyn starts to turn evil, everyone goes on about how he's so "nasty" that he's spreading nastiness like a disease. The talking animals, the Muggles (including Zyn's adopted mother), and dear lord the narrator herself can't go for two sentences without reminding us how evil Zyn is.
  • From the Honor Harrington series, we get this gem from War of Honor as the High Ridge government discusses the possibility of facing a new war that could cause their navy huge casualties:
    "That's terrible," New Kiev said softly. Which, Janacek reflected, was probably one of the most superfluous things even she'd ever said.
  • Andrej Kuraev, an Orthodox deacon, when arguing about Harry Potter with its detractors, essentially moved to Conversational Troping by explaining this trope, giving a couple examples from popular culture, and then pointing out Rowling's uses of it (particularly the one about a ceiling splattered with frog brains, where Rowling just went out of her way to tell people it's disgusting, as a narrator no less), pondering whether the detractors actually read the book in question, as their point was something like "Rowling says it's okay to kill frogs."
    From the series itself:
    And Odo the hero, they bore him back home
    To the place that he'd known as a lad.
    They laid him to rest with his hat inside out
    And his wand snapped in two, which was sad.
  • Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: The author went into this at least once. Deadly Deals has an unscrupulous lawyer named Adel Newsom, who has helped another unscrupulous lawyer named Baron Bell in the selling of babies. He abandons her, she tries calling the two surrogate mothers connected to this operation, but it doesn't go well, her records get snatched, she is reduced to stealing money and trying to get out of Washington, D.C. The author puts in this one line "Not once did she give a thought to the babies or their well-being." It's almost as if the author was afraid that she was turning this character into a Jerkass Woobie and felt the need to throw that in there to remind us to not sympathize with her.
  • The Superdictionary: The trope namer and the trope maker. Pictured above is Lex Luthor stealing 40 cakes. That's 4 tens. And that's terrible.
  • The Bible can come across this way at times, particularly Proverbs.
    "Do not enter on the path of the wicked; do not walk on the way of evil men.
    Avoid it; do not pass through it; turn away from it; pass it by.
    For they cannot sleep unless they have done evil; unless they make someone fall they are robbed of sleep.
    They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of lawlessness. "
    Proverbs 4:14-17
  • In Death Star, all but the most truly evil members of the large ensemble cast are horrified when the superweapon they live and work on is tested on Despayre and much much more so when it's used on Alderaan. They all have thoughts on the morality of this and, Vader and Tarkin and Motti aside, those thoughts are very similar. Of course, those characters are all in the process of turning on the Empire out of sheer moral outrage so it would be odd if the book wasn't having them think about how monstrous the situation is.
  • The Famous Five: In Five on Kirrin Island Again, Anne has this reaction when Dick tells of how he trod on Timmy's tail to make him whine, to distract George.
    Anne: That was horrid of you, Dick.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Harry has this reaction when Luna Lovegood tells him that people keeping stealing or hiding her belongings.

    Live-Action TV 
  • An All That sketch has Miss Fingerly continually catching one of her students cheating on a test in various ways. The first time it happens, she yells out, "That's cheating, which is bad!"
  • In "Chains" from the second series of Blackadder, Blackadder suddenly thrusts his sword through somebody in a cow costume. Believing it to be Nursie, Queenie's immediate reaction is "You've killed Nursie! That's horrid!"
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "The Harvest", Xander has perhaps his most Captain Obvious moment ever.
      Xander: I don't like vampires. I'm gonna take a stand and say they're not good.
    • Parodied in "Who Are You?" when Buffy and Faith (a rogue slayer) switch bodies. Faith assumes Buffy's catchphrase is (variations on) "you can't do that, because it's wrong."
  • Community does this in an episode where Jeff visits his old law firm and Pierce gets certain ideas about hunting man for sport.
    Jeff: Pierce, do I even need to say this? It's bad to hunt man for sport.
    Pierce: Bad Ass!
  • CSI does this with child molesters quite a lot, too, to contrast them with the frequently jovial treatment they give killers on the show and to say, "But this is really bad!"
  • One episode of Deadliest Warrior that its creators were very nervous about airing an episode that pitted the Nazi Waffen SS and the Viet Cong together in a fantasy scenario. That's right, the "round-up-Jews-strip-them-naked-then-spray-them-with-shower-nozzles-that-squirt-poison" guys versus the "place-tiger-traps-in-areas-where-American-soldiers-are-likely-to-hide-so-they'll-fall-through-and-get-impaled-on-punji-stakes-smeared-with-human-feces" guys. The DW crew knew they were going to tick off all kinds of viewers no matter who won (it was the Nazis), so they prefaced the episode with a disclaimer insisting they did not sympathize with either faction. However, this wasn't the first time they did an Evil Versus Evil matchup (that was the fifth episode: Mafia vs. Yakuza, won by the Mafia), nor the last (they've done a number of them, including Saddam Hussein vs. Pol Pot), but they always made it a point that they do not endorse evil actions and that the purpose of the show, as always, is to play "What If?"
  • Doctor Who is fond of this:
    • "The Dæmons": The Master goes off on a rant about how the human race needs a strong leader, which the Doctor compares to both Hitler and Genghis Khan.
    • "Boom Town":
      Margaret Slitheen: This is persecution. What did I ever do to you?
      The Doctor: You tried to kill me and destroy this entire planet.
      Margaret Slitheen: Apart from that.
    • You'd think the Master turning everyone on Earth into a copy of himself in "The End of Time" was evil enough without referring to them as the "Master Race".
  • Inverted in The Fast Show, where a nice middle class man is standing in his nice kitchen, and tells us of a wonderous event, only to completely underplay it by calling it nice:
    So I was in the loft last night, and I found the original copy of the Bible. So that was nice.
  • Highlander had a tendency to do this. Richie or Joe tells Duncan that the past "crimes" of some Immortal of the week weren't quite as heinous in the time period they were committed. Duncan retorts it was "always wrong" and since he's The Hero, is framed as being right.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit tends to do this whenever child pornography is involved. One episode features a convicted pedophile setting up a "safe" website for pedophiles to get their fill: pictures of underaged children, fully dressed, not in any sexual situations. The show tries to sell us that this is bad by having him post a picture of one of the detective's children, causing him to snap and attack him. Not that it's exactly "good", either. Worse, such an episode could conceivably lead some viewers to believe that posting non-sexual pictures of children in any context constitutes child pornography, and is completely unjustifiable.
    Some Truth in Television — in the UK paedophiles in prison can be denied pictures even of their own children — any request to have them in possession is vetted. Even after on release possession of 'innocent' images while on licence can get them recalled. Pictures don't have to be sexualised (eg just be a school uniform catalogue) to be a cause for concern.
  • Law & Order itself tends to be just as bad when their cases have sex crimes connection (with a side of Felony Misdemeanor when dealing with escort services).
  • Colonel Blake sums up the theme of the episode "To Market To Market" of M*A*S*H perfectly in two lines of conversation.
    Colonel Blake: [to General Hammond over the phone] Sir what I wanted to talk to you about was the black market.
    General Hammond: What about it?
    Colonel Blake: Well sir... it's terrible.
  • Many instances in Mystery Science Theater 3000. Once, a scientist roughly handles a female scientist in "King Dinosaur", to the degree that Tom Servo laughs and scolds at the same time, "That's terrible!"
  • NCIS, "Toxic": Played for Laughs when arresting the murderer of the week, as Tony feels the need to crack a joke of this kind.
    McGee: You are under arrest for the murder of nurse Hannah Dunsten.
    DiNozzo: That is correct. And many, many more bad things, because you're a very bad man.
  • Played for laughs in The Office, when David Brent will often end a conversation about sexism or racism with 'which I hate!' just to vainly try and affirm his PC credentials.
  • Our Miss Brooks: In "The Egg", Mr. Conklin is the Designated Villain for wanting to take a photograph of a hatching chick. Mr. Boynton and Miss Brooks are worried the chick will be harmed by the flashbulbs.
  • Scrubs used this to push itself into Refuge in Audacity when J.D. has a day dream of a Public Service Announcement for Munchausen's by Proxy i.e. child abuse to get attention. Remember—don't smother your kids.
  • Gul Dukat's appearances in the last two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine generally included a lot of this. Word of God says that the creators were concerned about Misaimed Fandom. So the episode "Waltz" ends with this speech:
    Sisko: Sometimes life seems so complicated. Nothing is truly good or truly evil. Everything seems to be a shade of grey. And then you spend some time with a man like Dukat, and you realize that there is such a thing as truly evil.
  • The series finale of Ultraman Ace have a particularly groan-worthy line when Yapool, unleashing his most powerful monster Jumbo King on humanity, threatens to destroy the entire city and kill everyone in it. Prompting a child who's with Hokuto (Ultraman Ace's human form) to deliver this line:
    Random kid: … if that happens, that'll be bad.

    Music 
  • Averting this trope for "Angel of Death" is more than likely what got people into thinking Slayer were Nazi sympathizers. According to guitarist Jeff Hanneman, "…there's nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily [Josef Mengele] was a bad man, because to me—well, isn't that obvious? I shouldn't have to tell you that."
  • Crime of the Century tells you that the people committing said crime (raping the universe) have gone from bad to worse.
  • From the song 'Chuck Al Hashib', "and one day/without being provoked/he killed bob (and that ain't right)"
  • The opening number of Batboy the Musical
    They stripped him of his dignity,
    they beat him like a gong
    and he was kicked repeatadedly
    and that was wrong!
  • In Christy Moore's "Don't Forget Your Shovel", he rants briefly about the number of Irish migrants in London who will be unable to make it back home, and concludes, "I think that's terrible."
  • In Pink Floyd's "The Trial", the prosecutor says that the defendant is charged for "showing feelings of an almost human nature", and says "this will not do."
  • "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" by the Temptations includes the immortal couplet: "Some bad talk goin' around town sayin' Papa had three outside children and another wife / And that ain't right."
  • The Arrogant Worms would like you to know that carrot juice constitutes murder (and that's a real crime).

    Podcasts 
  • In the fourth episode of Hathor 61, Mel has to remind herself a few times that someone being murdered at the hotel she's staying at is a bad thing, due to her slight obsession with classic detective fiction, and subsequent wanting to solve the case herself.
    Mel: It's just too good... an opportunity. Right, it's bad that someone was killed, but it's just so like what I've been absorbed with these past few weeks!
  • In Welcome to Night Vale, whenever the Apache Tracker is mentioned, Cecil makes sure to emphasize that his Magical Native American persona is racist and offensive, to the point of ignoring anything else about him. Manages to work as a Running Gag because it's far from the only time that Cecil lets his own opinions color his broadcast.

    Print Media 
  • This is very common in Catholic editorials to the point where one wonders if it's an Enforced Trope. No sin, no matter how heinous, can ever be mentioned without a preface that it is "vile", "disgusting", "atrocious", or "loathsome to God", as if the writers are worried that people will think they approve of such actions otherwise.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Annoyingly common, especially during long matches with occasional lulls. In part this is because the commentators have anywhere from between five to thirty minutes (and, in the case of Iron Man Matches, sixty minutes) of time to fill, but another reason is that, in the context of Kayfabe, the commentators are fictional characters as well, and they view the matches as actual athletic contests and take it for granted that all participants, faces and heels alike, will play by the rules.
  • Inverted in the case of heel commentators, who will vociferously condemn the actions of the faces, especially if the heels suffer as a result.
  • A particularly amusing example was when a wrestler in the middle of a Face–Heel Turn cemented his evil by... smoking a cigarette. The PG Era, ladies and germs.
  • Taken to extremes when a sports-entertainer is punished in real life for some really heinous kayfabe deed. Just ask Daniel Bryan, who was fired after his choking of a victim with a necktie which a sponsor of WWE deemed inappropriate. Daniel Bryan was brought back after the heat died down (he said Vince implied he would be brought back in a few months) and not due to fan backlash as was previously stated. Or Chris Jericho, who was nearly jailed in Brazil when (in character) he tore up a Brazilian flag due to this being illegal in Brazil.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • In Starflight 2 if the player brings Endurium to Starbase, after being fined heavily by Intersel, the message sent to the player will end with "Shame on you."
    • The reason for this is that the first game's ending reveals that Endurium is not starship fuel, but a race of ancient, intelligent, crystalline lifeforms.
  • In The Witcher, Salamandra attempts to gain control the drug trade at one point. Every non-addict (and some of them as they are concerned about their supply) in game seems to think it is bad. This is silly because they already include murderers and rapists, both of whom net nowhere near the response by the game or NPCs. It is also unfitting for the entirety of a morally ambiguous World Half Empty to show universal contempt for anything. Not helped in the least by the "dealing in death" line red shirt guards use during the quest.
  • Suikoden Tierkreis is rather heavy-handed in this. You're told three times that the Order is deeply messed-up within five minutes of first encountering it, and when you get to its capital city, the message becomes near-continuous until you leave. What makes it either better or worse is that they really are that bad—they're strawman fatalists who make fundamental logical errors in their arguments, then use those arguments to justify attempts to violently Take Over the World.
  • Supplice have the report where alien monsters have completely taken over the mining outpost on Planet Methuselah, and they cannot mount an effective resistance against the horde. It ends with a signle sentence: "This is Not Good".
  • The Tales series loves this. Especially Abyss. And Symphonia. You'd think racism and genocide aren't apparently such a big deal in the worlds of the Tales universe, the way the main characters constantly have to denounce it.
  • Warcraft III's manual. The back stories of the species take pains to distinguish antagonists from protagonists with expressions like "the evil group of orcs" and the like.
  • This is Sigrun's entire role in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, when she's not smugly antagonizing Justice with her pickpocketing.
  • In Dead to Rights, Jack just couldn't believe that the Big Bad was interested in the large amounts of gold ore under the city.
  • Pokémon Black and White offers this gem. "He stole the Pokémon and ran away so fast. And that's horrible because stealing other people's Pokémon is really bad!"
  • Hilariously subverted by GLaDOS in Portal 2 when she tries to confuse Wheatley.. It is ambiguous whether GLaDOS is sympathizing with or taunting the target, though.
    GLaDOS (loudly, to Wheatley): What exactly is wrong with being adopted? (quieter, to Chell) For the record, you are adopted and that's terrible, just work with me.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, when you pick up a Rupoor: "You picked up a Rupoor! That means you've lost 10 Rupees. And that's a little bit sad."
  • Team Fortress 2: While most of the time being hurt results in Major Injury Underreaction or simple, wordless screaming, general class response to being hit by Jarate (yellow-ish fluid in a jar) and Mad Milk (described as "non-milk substance") generally are either this trope or Big "NO!".
  • Suikoden II makes no secret of the fact that everyone hates Luca Blight and that he is a malicious, bloodthirsty, soulless monster.
  • Inverted in Conception 2: Children Of The Seven Stars when Torri says that Wake is a nice person. And that's good.
  • Sonic Lost World has one such moment:
    Sonic: They're gonna turn Tails into a robot! That's horrible!
  • In the video game adaptation of The Warriors (in which the characters are much more Affably Evil than their cinematic counterparts), there are quite a few levels where you're required to mug innocent New Yorkers; the very first level even teaches you precisely how to do this. The male victims usually just run off to call the police (or at least try to, since you can order your fellow gang members to "wreck" any squealers), but the female victims put up more of a fight, often accusing you of trying to rape them (which, to their credit, the Warriors never actually do), sometimes macing you in the face, and (if the mugging is successful) shouting "Stealing is wrong, boy!" after you as you run off.
  • In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Koal drops the following gem after explaining how the Black Crystals drain energy from the planet:
    "I'd say that I care, but I'd be lying. And that would be wrong."
  • Mutant Football League invokes this after some tackles.
    Grim Blitzrow: Oh, that's a vicious hit! And the crowd loves it!
    Brickhead Mulligan: He just turned that guy into 300 pounds of ground mutant meat!
    Grim Blitzrow: And you can't hit a guy much harder than that... and that is unfortunate.
  • Genshin Impact: Characters, mostly Paimon, often feel the need to verbally point out how sad some event was, how evil a certain villain is or otherwise give an emotional reaction the player is supposed to have at the moment.
    • In Xinyan's Mirage in Golden Apple Archipelago we see a memory of several people criticizing her appearance and interest in music. All the other characters are visibly displeased when listening to this, but Paimon additionally bursts out with "Why are they being do mean!?"
    • In Act I of Sumeru Archon Quest, Dunyazard tells a story of Sabzeruz Festival and how it's disregarded by Akademiya and other citizens. Then, the following exchange occurs:
      Paimon: Aw, but that's awful!
      Dunyarzad: It is. It's absolutely terrible!
  • Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The text for one zombie-killing quest reads "They're not pleasant, they're peasant! And that's terrible!".

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Red vs. Blue combines this with a form of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking when Sarge finds O'Mally's first victim.
    Sarge: Once again I find myself torn. On the one hand, there's one less blue in the Universe. But now Doc's got a bigger body count than me! And that just won't do. No sir.

    Webcomics 
  • Erfworld does this with Duke Antium describing the zombification of his commander as "vile". Given his expression, it's clear that he is only trying to stay stoic.
  • From the xkcd comic "Simple" (where a character is aping the language of the Simple English Wikipedia:
    We can't put the broken part in the machine. It wouldn't smash the right tiny things together. The machine might break. That would be very bad.
  • League of Super Redundant Heroes invokes the trope-namer.

    Web Original 
  • Syera of Springhole calls these "rightitudes" and states only arrogant and tryhard people say things along the lines of this trope.

    Web Videos 
  • Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Captain Hammer's penultimate speech. Once he drops the 'tiny cue cards', he says, "She turned me on to this whole homelessness things. Which is terrible. And I realized something..."
  • Epic Meal Time cracks eggs like they crack smoke. Smoke crack? No, that's bad.
  • This video by the ACLU about the higher levels of violence in private prisons. The narration is well-written throughout almost all of the video, but then there's this:
    "Now the Corrections Corporation of America is trying to buy more prisons. That's a terrible idea."
  • The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Wizard had a running joke based on Nintendo's old slogan "Now you're playing with power". One of the jokes was, "Now you're playing with paedophilia. And that's just wrong."

    Western Animation 
  • Both justified and not in "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part I", a summer cliffhanger on The Simpsons note  that gave Charles Montgomery Burns as many Kick the Dog moments as possible (in one case quite literally) to create a situation in which practically everyone in Springfield would have a motive for shooting him. Burns has become obsessed with forcing the people of Springfield to rely only on nuclear power from his power plant, and when oil is discovered in the town, Burns hijacks the oil fields to preempt their exploitation by the townspeople. Then, to prevent everyone from using solar power—the one energy source that Burns cannot monopolize—Burns deploys an invention of his that effectively blocks out the sun, plunging Springfield into eternal night. Waylon Smithers, Burns's assistant, has reluctantly gone along until now, primarily out of respect and genuine admiration for Burns, but now tells his boss that his plan is "unconscionably fiendish." Burns promptly fires Smithers for insubordination, reducing the servant to a drunken wreck. He then goes to City Hall just to taunt the townspeople, many of whom are wielding guns at the meeting and some of whom have already threatened to kill him. As Burns crows that no one in Springfield has the courage to shoot him in the open, the citizens stand up one by one and together deliver a drawn-out "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying that Burns deserves to die and should go to Hell and so forth. (Ironically, after all this, the one who eventually shoots Burns in a darkened alley does so (possibly) by accident: Maggie Simpson.)
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic says "If someone tries to touch you in a place or in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's no good!" Explanation 
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power had a very similar ''If someone tries to touch you in a place or in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable" PSA at the end of one episode that said almost the same thing. Though very Narmy, it actually prompted a few kids to confess to having been molested, so it did its job.
  • In one The Boondocks episode, Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy are engaged in idle chit-chat, (Before preparing to rob a bank) when Gin utters this line about text messaging:
    Gin Rummy: As if that wasn't enough, you have to type with your thumbs. YOUR THUMBS...which I just don't approve of.
  • The Fairly Oddparents:
    • From Nectar of the Odds:
      Timmy: What do you mean I can't just make three tickets [to Crash Nebula on Ice] appear like magic?!
      Wanda: Timmy, it's sold out! If we gave you three of the tickets, it means we'd be taking them away from somebody else who already has them!
      [Timmy looks at Wanda as if he doesn't understand the implications of this]
      Wanda: And that would be stealing!
      [Timmy still doesn't get it]
      Wanda: Which is bad.
    • Also, in Crocker's debut episode:
      Principal Waxleplax: [why she's given Crocker detention] And you, for trapping me in a toilet paper cocoon and telling two small boys they could enslave the Earth! That's not right!
  • Static Shock plays this trope so straight it crosses over into So Bad, It's Good territory on an episode dealing with the horrors of racism. No, really. Verbatim.
    Richie: My best friend is gone because of you and your stupid racism! I hate you!
  • Futurama gives Zoidberg the wonderful "Your music is bad, and you should feel bad!"
  • Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot has the characters use a lot of Feelings Talk to deliver the episode's aesop, so it's no wonder that Grizzle would get called out at least once in this manner.
    "Well, what you did was bad! And wrong! And a lot of feelings got hurt."
  • The Tick is really prone to doing this. What with his mental state, this is not particularly surprising.
  • Tigtone: Tigtone sets out to slay the wielder of a singing sword that is murdering townsfolk. When he finds the wielder is a ten year old boy, his Memory Gnome stops him.
    "Remember Tigtone! Killing children... is WRONG!"
  • A rather narmy version occurs in Avatar: The Last Airbender in the series finale, when Zuko finishes explaining what Ozai is actually going to do (burning down the entire Earth Continent, plants and people alike). And then Sokka points out for our convenience:
    Sokka: I always knew the Fire Lord was a bad guy, but... his plan is just pure evil.
  • In an especially Anvilicious episode of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, the gang discovers that the villain of the week is involved in drugs. Every time drugs are mentioned, Scooby says, without fail, "Drugs?! Yuck!"
  • The DVD sets for Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes contain disclaimers (the former had unskippable speeches from Whoopi Goldberg) about some of the racist content of a few shorts, emphasizing that the racial humor was "wrong then and is wrong now", but is included on the DVD for the sake of historical preservation (though that still doesn't stop them from editing or outright excluding some shorts because of Blackface gags and such).
    • Some Disney DVD collections place similar disclaimers before otherwise-controversial cartoons (often those portraying ethnic minorities or foreigners in an insulting way).
  • South Park.
    • Played for Laughs, especially when the episode has a civil-rights message.
    • The visit to the Museum of Tolerance in "Death Camp of Tolerance," for one. The tour guide speaks to the group of adults and children as if they're all five years old.
    • "It makes Jews into steereeuhtypes! And stereotyping minorities is teeribulle!" (The jews referring to the movie "The Passion")
    • They dedicate a song to it with 'Drugs Are Bad, M'Kay?"
  • Spongebob Squarepants: In "Walking Small", when Spongebob realizes Plankton was manipulating him in order to clear everyone off the Goo Lagoon beach and build a new Chum Bucket, Spongebob dramatically shouts "You used me... for land development!" Then he adds, in a pitiful tone, "That wasn't nice."
  • 1973/74 Super Friends episode "The Weather Maker''. The villains have been diverting the Gulf Stream and causing severe weather disruptions in the U.S. When the Big Bad turns his Weather-Control Machine to "Irreversibly On" so they can't turn it off, the Super Friends comment on the situation.
    Batman: Unforgivable!
    Wonder Woman: That's terrible!
    Aquaman: Criminal!
    Robin: It's not right at all!
  • U.S. Acres:
    • In the episode "Wanted: Wade!", it seems that tearing a tag off a pillow is so bad a crime it even gets two hardened robbers of banks and gas stations (a mouse and bulldog) to grab the bars of the cell and want out when Wade admits his "crime" to them.
    • Wade sees a police car on the farm and gets him into his panic. When Orson tries to convince Wade he won't go to jail for it, a voice tells them and Roy "We know you're in there, come out with your hands up! We have you surrounded!" The three adults run for it. It was all Booker playing a joke. Sheldon asks if it was very nice, and Booker, in an Ironic Echo asks "What harm can it do?"
  • Ben 10: Alien Force has an epic example with Rath at the end of Con of Rath, when it turns out the baby they were escorting the whole episode was intended to be offered as a snack to an alien king. Rath uses this trope as a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:
    Rath: Eating. Babies. Is NOT! COOL!
  • In an episode of Eek! The Cat where Eek becomes a Super Hero For A Day, he tell some bank robbers, "Didn't anybody ever tell you stealing is wrong?" They look at each other in surprise and then tell Eek that no, no one ever did. Eek says, "Oh. Well, it is!" They put the money back and apologize.
  • A downplayed example from Johnny in the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Strings".
    Johnny: Oh come on, that's just evil. You can't just go and make a guy's nose itch!
  • Characters in Thomas & Friends have a tendency to punctuate descriptions of bad things that might happen with "...and that will never do."
  • In "The Coin" on Babar, everyone gets upset when Rataxes suggests that he might take various things of theirs... but everyone stops their complaining to Babar at once to express outrage when Isabelle reveals that he threatened to take her dolly.
  • In the second episode of VeggieTales, Bob says a variant of this after hearing about the Grapes of Wrath insulting Junior Asparagus to the point of tears.
    Bob: Well that's just terrible. Don't those grapes know it's not nice to make fun of people?
  • Molly of Denali: In "Big Dreams and Blue Skies," this is Molly's reaction to learning that women have been left out of history books.
    Molly: That is so unfair!

    Real Life 

 
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Video Example(s):

"Sad. Very very sad."

A crazy nerd going missing is "Sad. Very very sad."

Alternative Title(s): And That Is Terrible

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"Sad. Very very sad."

A crazy nerd going missing is "Sad. Very very sad."

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