So Bad, It's Horrible is one of the more flame-bait-y parts of the site, so a cleanup thread is needed to ensure that works aren't added simply because someone doesn't like them.
If you want to list a work under this, keep the following in mind:
- The work must have very few fans or defenders (both genuine and ironic). It should fail to appeal to any type of audience.
- Being offensive in its subject matter isn't enough.
- It isn't horrible just because a certain critic disliked it, though their reviews can be used as sources and citations.
- The work should have notably poor reviews (e.g., less than 3/10 on IMDb, or single digit scores on Rotten Tomatoes)
- For a Moral Substitute to qualify, it cannot even appeal to its target demographic.
- Please be polite while writing and as much as possible, avoid falling into Complaining About Shows You Don't Like. Instead, focus on explaining why the work is horrible.
In addition, per No Recent Examples, Please!, a work must be at least one month old before it can be added, to prevent knee-jerk reactions.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 6th 2024 at 3:34:45 AM
Shoot. If I happened to have brought something up which this thread had already resolved, my apologies.
Wenn sie die Ente hierein lassen, lasse ich das Wasser hieraus!That's not it; I just had to check and it seems as though the reviews are neutral enough for it to squeak by.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallFrom Video Game Generations: Seventh Onwards:
- Pacific Rim on PS3 and Xbox 360 could've been an awesome game about giant robots fighting giant monsters, but the final product was mind-numbingly boring and tedious. Both the Jaegers and Kaijus fight as though they're wading through molasses, the combat has the depth of a kiddie pool, the controls are highly uncooperative bordering on random, and much of the game's content (including new characters and Jaeger customization) is locked behind paywalls. The only positive thing Thomas McDermott from Darkzero
had to say about the game was that it never crashed.
Sounds more like "generic bad movie tie-in game" that outright Horrible. Plus, this paragraph is shorter than most of the others on the page.
- The 2009 PC game Cadetstvo (Кадетство) is often considered the worst Russian video game ever. 99% of the game consists of walking from place A to place B and watching cutscenes. It feels more like a movie than a game, but there's no real plot, and the only real gameplay is easy and boring minigames. Watch some gameplay footage here
.
- Dimension Witches, a free game that at one point was apparently for sale at a price, plays off the Touhou Project style of Bullet Hell but fails horribly. The gameplay's botched, and the designs of all the characters are even worse and cliched. It was taken down from the IndieCity site and would've been forgotten if it weren't for MikeNnemonic posting a somewhat NSFW video of him playing it on a livestream on his YouTube channel
.
These two paragraphs are extremely bare-bones and do a poor job describing what makes the games Horrible. As someone who's never heard of these games, I don't know if these are on the same "generic bad" level that I believe Pacific Rim to be, but it's possible.
I was wondering if Little Clowns of Happytown qualifies for inclusion. I've heard nothing positive about it, being the product of the same consulting firm that messed with The Real Ghostbusters, and it ran for only one season before it was cancelled.
I only know of it because of Mr. Enter and I remember he used the review less to call the cartoon bad and more to rant about Political Overcorrectness. The IMDB rating is about 5/10 so it's too high to pass, and seems just 'cheap kids' content' bad as opposed to 'uniquely and distinctly horrible.'
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.Was there any discussion to remove 25 to Life from Video Game Generations: Fifth to Sixth? Because Sanmitvtropes removed it with the following edit reason:
GameFAQs user rating is 2/2.5 star average
and Metacritic is 39 critic score, 5.1 user score
so maybe it could get a pass? I don't know, I've never played it nor have I seen any notable critics (professional or otherwise) talk about it.
At the very least I agree we should've discussed it first.
Edited by SpongeBat1 on Jan 4th 2024 at 10:46:18 AM
Came for the tropes, stayed for the cleanup.I noticed Bolsomito 2K18 has a page, and while the game might look terrible, unfortunately I don't think it qualifies as it has "Very positive" reviews on Steam
. Granted this is probably because the people agree with the game's extreme politics rather than the game's quality, but that's an issue with a lot of these types of political media, even if they are considered poorly made and hated by most of the general public, people who agree with the political beliefs will support it regardless of how it is received.
@6456: I was just barely in the target demo for Little Clowns of Happytown when it first aired, and I remember liking it then, so that may count for something.
online since 1993 | huge retrocomputing and TV nerd | lee4hmz.info (under construction) | heapershangout.comI mean, kids aren't super critical but that doesn't mean they'll just watch anything. If it's bad enough, kids will notice it too. And the kids being the primary audience for this work, we can't just discount them.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThe OP (which hasn't been edited since 2022) says a work should fail to appeal to any kind of audience. The existence of a Periphery Hatedom doesn't make something SBIH if the target audience likes it.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 6th 2024 at 2:12:35 PM
I got a rock for Halloween.As someone who was subjected to a lot of Christian children's media growing up, I can tell you that children can absolutely tell when they're being shown shit. I assure you that there are plenty of children's media that children can't stand (and I assure you that I've seen more than enough of it).
Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
There is no doubt there is a large number that belong in The Moral Substitute that are also So Bad, It's Horrible.
However, it is important to note that if an intended audience likes a work, it is disqualified.
Kirby is awesome.- The Philippine chocolate bar Goya ran this ad
in 2018. It consists of a still image of the chocolate bar with the caption "Have you tried the No. 1 Chocolate Bar in the Philippines?" What makes this ad so bad is its audio, a headache-inducing SMPTE tone. Even worse, the tone suddenly gets louder at the last second as the image cuts to a "Please Stand By" message. It's caused the company to receive plenty of negative comments on their Facebook page.
The linked video's like/dislike ratio is split down the middle, and the still image does look pretty nice. I've not heard the tone nor do I want to hear it (I had the video on mute) but does that by itself make the ad Horrible?
The ad is horrible on a production standpoint and almost deafening if you have headphones on and don't know how loud it will be.
Btw, I might just write a Nightmare Fuel entry for this one. Jesus.
![]()
What do you mean "nice"? It's just a poorly-cropped model on a completely still image for 16 seconds. That's not nearly enough to save it from the frankly deafening tone used, especially since most people would presumably be watching TV with sound on.
I mean... yeah. It's a single image. Maybe for a normal advertisement it'd be nice, but it utterly fails as a commercial.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI think when the only thing that makes it a video commercial and not a print ad is the tone, you really should consider the audio to judge it as Horrible. That's enough to push it into Horrible, because it's just an objectively bad commercial to be both visually uninteresting and have terrible audio.
Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 9th 2024 at 12:25:31 PM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I say keep the Goya ad. The still photo is subpar at best and the production quality, lack of actual product promotion, and bizarre and deafening tone are all enough to make it Horrible.
EDIT: Looking through the YouTube comments, it seems the tone was to fool people into thinking there was an emergency broadcast on the television, and I'd say that deceptive practice actually makes it worse. Not only is it incredibly dishonest, but it could potentially cause real emergency broadcasts to go overlooked if the person can only hear the tone and assume it's just the annoying commercial again.
Edited by Lumberwood on Jan 9th 2024 at 11:25:31 AM
Sincerely, Lumberwood

It has middling reviews on both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. That's not bad enough.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall