So Bad It's Horrible/Western Animation

""When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry.""

- Don Bluth, speaking from personal experience.

Maybe because cartoons are seen as entertainment for kids, some studios seem to think they can get away with releasing anything, no matter how poor the quality. However, there are some things even the Nostalgia Filter can't save. After all, with glitchy animation, unanswered questions, awful decisions by the higher-ups, and jokes that wouldn't make a three-year-old laugh, can you blame them for not remembering?

Important Note: Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as So Bad It's Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this.

Important Note #2: It isn't a Horrible film or cartoon just because anyone from That Guy With The Glasses and/or any other Caustic Critic reviewed it. There needs to be independent evidence, such as actual critics (emphasis on plural) for example, to list it. (Though once it is listed, they can provide the detailed review.)

Animation Studios

 * Dingo Pictures is an animation studio tied to "super-budget" producer Phoenix Games (formerly Midas). It features animated rip-offs of (mostly) Disney films such as One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Hercules, The Lion King, and Aladdin. Their plagiarism is overshadowed by the films' animation, which is so colossally awful on every level that they make the Legend Of Zelda CD-i games look good. Seriously, just look at their film trailers.
 * ...Why are there cowboys in the Pocahontas one?
 * The writing for the films is about as terrible as the animation and voice acting. Watch in amazement as their version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame shows a heartless Esmeralda leaving Quasimodo to die in a dungeon. Clearly the fact that he hung himself in the original novel wasn't enough for them.
 * Most viewers will still agree that Animal Soccer World is quite possibly the most notorious of their films. It's not easy to tell just by looking at it, but it's superficially based on an animated sequence from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. What makes it particularly notorious, apart from its incomprehensible plot and laughable animation, is the voice acting, performed entirely by one or two voice actors bored out of their skulls and speaking with a ridiculous, impenetrable (presumably) Dutch accent. It's as if Tommy Wiseau started his own dub company, only less awesome.
 * The same exact short, rather unfitting musical riff looping in the background nonstop over and over does not help at all.
 * Brilliantly parodied here.
 * Thailand's Happy2Doo Studio, which plagiarizes Disney and other films. The cel-shaded CGI they use isn't much better.
 * "The Larriva Eleven", a series of Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner cartoons made by former Warner Bros animator Rudy Larriva in the mid-1960s after Warners closed their original cartoon studio. There are some potentially good gags here, but they're ruined by Larriva's abysmal sense of timing and the cheap animation. Case in point — while Acme products had simply been there as needed for the gags before, one cartoon used lots of time showing the Coyote writing out an order form and mailing it without a trace of funny.
 * Most of the other farmed-out Warner Bros. cartoons of the time pitted Speedy Gonzales against a Daffy Duck who was reduced to a grouchy humorless foil with none of the humorous shadings of Chuck Jones' Jerkass portrayal.
 * Ironically, Larriva subsequently produced three "Daffy Vs. Speedy" cartoons just before Warner Bros. reopened their studio, and they were arguably the best cartoons by the admittedly low standards of that series (likely because they were more dialogue-based, meaning that Larriva's shoddy timing was less detrimental). Unfortunately, the "Daffy Vs. Speedy" series would subsequently sink to horrendous new lows under succeeding director Alex Lovy, before Warner Bros. finally gave the classic Looney Tunes characters a Mercy Kill.
 * The Tom Palmer directed Looney Tunes Buddy comedies, the first batch of cartoons rushed out of the Leon Schlesigner cartoon studio after Harman and Ising left in 1933, were so sloppily done and unfunny that Jack Warner himself rejected the cartoons on sight—had Friz Freleng not returned to the studio in time to rework these Buddy cartoons into one somewhat coherent but still lousy cartoon (Buddy's Day Out) the Looney Tunes studio as we know it would have been dead before it even started!
 * Many of the syndicated cartoons produced by Sam Singer (called "the Ed Wood of animation" by Animatio Magazine) in the late 1950s and early 1960s were notoriously shoddy.
 * Most animation buffs consider Bucky and Pepito the worst of the lot and frequently cite it as one of the worst cartoons ever made. Set against a bleak but beautifully-painted desert backdrop were the crudely-animated and thoroughly-unlikable title characters — an Anglo kid in a cowboy costume and his lazy Mexican sidekick. The plots often involved annoying animal pests and a tedious procession of contrived visual gags.
 * A DVD collection of the worst cartoons ever made featured not only two episodes of Bucky and Pepito, but also another of his cartoons, Paddy the Pelican. Paddy's cartoons were especially lousy because they were basically pencil tests submitted as finished cartoons. The picture was often blurry, each shot was made up of one or two seconds of animation looped back and forth, and there was no background. Perhaps even worse was the voice acting, all done by Singer himself in a single take with no script. The finished product sounds (appropriately) like an insane man talking to himself for eight minutes.
 * Spark Plug Entertainment, the American equivalent of Video Brinquedo (see below). Exactly which one is worse is up for debate.
 * In modern-day Brazil, Video Brinquedo is to Pixar (and to a lesser extent, Dreamworks Animation) what Dingo Pictures was to Disney. Just look at this scene from Ratatoing (Reviewed by Film Brain here) — the English dub of that scene adds even more madness with random grunts that sound quite...suggestive. If you want to burn your eyes more, look at their trailers.
 * The trailers for Gladiformers 2 look like trailers for a Nintendo 64 game that was never released. The film was made in 2008! And the sad thing is, that one is their least eye-gouging work... The music's pretty good, though.
 * Oh, and for how bad the rip-offs are? Check The Little Cars.
 * Holy crap, is that the guy that made End of Ze World???
 * Then there's their Up ripoff, What's Up? Balloon to the Rescue! Not only are the plot, animation, and voice acting all terrible, but their only attempts at being funny are racist jokes.
 * Even the naming of the films is horrible. When not going for some obvious ripoff of the movie they are trying to rip off, they usually just go with the diminutive form of whatever creature the movie's about (which translates to English as "The Little [creature]".)

Cartoons
""Bad Dog is a Canadian cartoon series produced by Saban Entertainment and Cine Groupe for the Teletoon and Fox Family networks. The cartoon focused on the Potanski family and their dog Berkeley. The show's gimmick was that, whenever Berkeley was told that he was a bad dog, he would freeze and pretend to be dead until someone told him he was a good dog. This would happen in every episode.""
 * This zero-budget adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. The public-domain radio play audio and the atrocious character designs (the Duchess is an overweight African-American woman with large lips, not to mention that nobody looks anything like their Tenniel illustrations) really say it all. They are the creatures that haunt the nightmares of Tim Burton, American McGee's Alice, David Hall, Walt Disney and Jan Svankmajer, and make Lewis Carroll rotate frantically in his grave.
 * Not to mention a rather blatant example of Critical Research Failure and/or They Just Didn't Care in that the Griffin looks like a dragon. People, griffins are not dragons.
 * The trailer is so bad that even a toddler would shake their head at it. Oh, and the description would love to remind you that it is trying to please the children with its art style and definitely not trying to emulate any other movies, no siree.
 * Allen Gregory. Short lived FOX animated series co-created by and starring Jonah Hill as the voice of the titular character, Allen Gregory De Longpre, a nerdy, pretentious seven-year-old who is forced to attend elementary school in the face of the recession when his gay parents' finances are hit hard, principally those of his CEO father, Richard. Allen has a very warped view of the world and can't socialize with kids of age. The series was so bad, its pilot episode received mostly negative reviews, and was cancelled after only 7 episodes in late 2011.
 * What makes the series so bad you asked? Dull and unfunny jokes (almost all of them Dude, Not Funny), bland animation (with downright HIDEOUS character designs), and unlikable characters who are either a whiny Butt Monkey, a complete Jerkass, or both. The Jerkass characters from other Fox shows are at least funny with their asshole-ism most of the time. Plus, the ungoing plot of Allen and his principal who is in her 70s.
 * Bad Dog was a FOX Family Channel cartoon that came on during the late-1990s (often in a animation block called "The Basement" that included other shows like Monster Farm [not the anime; this was about a 20-something who inherits a farm full of monsters], Walter Melon [an English-dubbed French cartoon about a man who hires himself out as a stand-in for famous movie, TV, and book heroes], The Three Friends and Jerry Show, and old reruns of Pee-Wee's Playhouse). Bad Dog, appropriately enough, was true to its name. It lives on as a running joke for anyone who brings up the "quality" programming of FOX/ABC Family and is a rare example of being worse than it sounds on Wikipedia without using outside testimonials from critics:


 * The lesson here is, if you're going to make an animated series, don't base it on a screensaver.
 * After the Sputnik launch, there seemed to be a push for "educational" TV cartoons to raise kids' intellects, and they were generally awful. One, The Big World of Little Adam, was nothing but a still shot of two kids' heads behind a book, conveniently covering the mouths to avoid animating speech — the only movement was their pupils darting back and forth. This "action" framed montages of still pictures of the subject at hand. On a whole other level of awful, one installment dealing with missiles praised the V-1 and V-2 rockets (who cares where they come down?).
 * Bolívar El Héroe ("Bolívar the Hero"), a 2003 Colombian "animated" movie about Simón Bolívar (who would most likely be spinning in his grave right now if Hugo Chavez hadn't had him exhumed), featuring barely-animated, terribly-drawn Animesque versions of Bolívar and his allies and enemies, MS Paint-worthy special effects, ridiculously-bombastic acting, and generally pathetically-low production "values". You can look at the thing yourself...or just look at the IMDB reviews.
 * Chip and Pepper's Cartoon Madness. Not to be confused with Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Cartoon Madness was an affront to animation with its badly-animated surfer bulldogs pasted against the kind of computer-rendered animation you'd expect from the early 1990s. It was like a bloody collision between a bad Flash cartoon and a computer science student's D- project, with no survivors.
 * ...Then the two dogs enter reality, and somehow this transforms them into two aggressively Totally Radical Surfer Dudes With Attitude. Oy.
 * ...And then there's the editing, which makes it look almost like something from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!...except for real. The guy in the editing room was either on LSD, had ADHD, or both. At times, it resembled a Youtube Poop.
 * The live-action segments take place in "The Chillin' Shack", basically ripped off from Pee-Wee's Playhouse except with a crowd full of cheering kids in sunglasses who clearly don't want to be there, a butler(?) with a crappy Russian(?) accent, and hands sticking out of the walls which they high-five with whenever they pass them, but pay no attention to for the rest of the show.
 * Club Mario, which was just repeats of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show with the live-action segments (the ones that actually involved the Mario Brothers) replaced by two aggressively Totally Radical Surfer Dudes With Attitude. Worse, the live-action segments have NOTHING to do with the Mario or the cartoons except for some stock footage in the intro and a brief summary of the episode in question. A quick edit and dub and the so-called "Club Mario" could be used for anything.
 * Rumor has it that the Club Mario segments were so horrible, that DiC Entertainment ordered every single copy of them to be destroyed.
 * Chop-Kick Panda, a blatant rip-off of Kung Fu Panda that only lasts forty minutes, has horrible and cheap animation, bad voice acting, unfunny jokes (most of the "humor" involves the main character trying to do a move, only to break his back), and jokes that have been used in over a million other cartoons. Three-fourths of the cartoon is taken up by these unfunny, repetitious gags (that is, if you could even call them gags), so then the last ten minutes finally have the main character fighting the villain...but all he does is continuously hit the villain in the face with a mop over and over. Netflix tries to claim that this isn't a rip-off, but anyone with at least half a brain knows that it is.
 * Ctrl Alt Del: The Animated Series is regarded by many as one of the worst Animated Adaptations of all time, and easily the worst of the 2000s. Noted for its awful production, unlikeable characterization, and a plot that continues upon a wildly-despised comic arc. The Stock Footage is okay—but takes up at least half an episode. Nothing else is even excusable. The voice acting's poorly done, cheaply recorded, and so badly edited that speech commonly starts and stops partway through a line. The animation wouldn't pass on Newgrounds—it's devoid of any fluidity, rarely doesn't use 3/4 profile, and character movement isn't the least bit natural. The series itself was so unpopular that over the course of two seasons, it almost cost Blind Ferret Entertainment their jobs (and they have since then gone on record as saying they'll never produce another season).
 * Da Boom Crew was played on Kids WB on Saturday mornings for about four weeks at one new episode per week, like any new show. They had time to show reruns before the show was canceled...and thank goodness it was. Totally Radical speech, traveling through a video game world with generic characters, and other unneeded things made this show not worth the timeslot it took up.
 * Not to mention the the negative stereotypes...and for those who are not enough to convince how bad it is, you have been warned...
 * There's a reason that Delgo is one of the biggest bombs in movie history. It's unenjoyable, boring and unimaginably ugly. The art and animation are significantly worse here than in many 1990s cartoons. There are a couple of famous-though-you-will-never-hear-from-them-again voices (like Freddie Prinze, Jr, who used to have a career, sorta) who phone it in so badly their consciousness can be called into question. The film has a really bad case of The Scrappy, loads of clichés, and a tendency to treat the audience like idiots. At times, it resembles a Video Brinquedo knockoff of Avatar, even though it was released first and had a budget; the producers even unsuccessfully tried to sue Fox and James Cameron. Infamous Animation did a review of Delgo here.
 * What do you get when you try to make a CGI-animated movie to cash in on a toyline that was never popular? Freaky Flickers: The Movie, of course! The official Freaky Flickers website boasts that they are "all the rage with children in test markets" and that the movie was animated entirely by one person. Yes, they're bragging about that.
 * Kis Vuk, titled A Fox's Tale for the English market, is a dreadful CGI-animated sequel to and cash-in on the classic Hungarian animated film Vuk the Little Fox. The CGI work with its awkward, choppy animation, bizarre character designs and amateurish rendering would have looked, lets say, passable in a cheap-o, late-nineties TV cartoon, but this was made in 2008, and screened in cinemas. The staggeringly cliché- and Plot Hole-ridden plot, utter lack of likable or original characters, gruesome scenes of animal cruelty, an anticlimactic Ass Pull of a climax and a total shift in tone compared to the original lead to the movie becoming a failure that screened to almost empty theaters (a major Schedule Slip also helped in this). Fans of the original work, critics, and reportedly even some little kids left screenings disgusted, and upon release, it went straight to the bottom of IMDb's movie list, where it lingered on for a good couple of weeks. Currently holds a rating of 1.6 as the fifth worst animated movie ever.
 * Kung Fu Dino Posse, a sister show to Dino Squad, has all the same flaws, terrible Better Than a Bare Bulb-style jokes, and awful frame-skipping animation. However, Dino Squad was at least fluid and slightly entertaining (they switched animation production from China's Hong Ying to Korea's Sunwoo, who's done similar animation with Darkwing Duck and Bonkers, neither of which fall under this trope).
 * Lazer Tag Academy was a show trying to sell Lazer Tag, despite having almost nothing to do with it. The gear is actually used as Reality Warper devices only certain people from a specific bloodline can use. The animation and voice acting suck. It ignores all the potential time paradoxes (Time Squad did this too, but it at least made sure history happened and it was funny), and there are massive plot holes! The main villain's plan will essentially erase him from existence if he succeeds, but is completely oblivious to it even though it's Time Travel 101. TJOmega had some things to say about it.
 * The Legend of the Titanic is a shining example of everything bad about the Animation Age Ghetto. Beyond its lazy animation, bad CGI, and god-awful pacing, it panders to the littl'uns at every turn, strictly enforcing Black and White Morality and Beauty Equals Goodness (the latter to the point where an octopus has a dog's face just to justify making it a hero). The baddies are all Obviously Evil from the start. The film's loaded with bizarre Plot Holes, bad slapstick, and clichés. The romantic subplot is loaded with Relationship Writing Fumbles even though the characters only share one line. Every death is a ham-fisted Disney Death without shame or explanation, even the entire Titanic...which, to salt the wound, is revealed to be a conspiracy between an evil whaler and a school of sharks. Worse, the film drops all pretense of respect for anything in lieu of a blatant anti-whaling tract. See the Nostalgia Critic review of this movie for yourself here. The Cartoon Hero has also attacked it and its sequel.
 * Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, which came out around the time the first live-action movie hit theaters. It was meant as some sort of prequel/retelling/sidestory of the video game and the movie...we think. Chances are, you're better off enjoying the Gorn of the video games, the impressive stuntwork and exciting techno of the live-action movie, or the laughable stupidity of the Saturday-morning cartoon series. This trainwreck had horrible, repetitive, and downright-ugly animation haphazardly set against conspicuous outdated CGI backgrounds.
 * The behind-the-scenes look at the movie at the end is interesting, but it's not worth watching the whole tape for. In fact, the only part of the animated movie alone worth watching is the "Meet the Mortal Kombatants" segment. The main reason to watch that was for the "hidden clues" for Mortal Kombat 3 at the end. Even then, the code was something of a fraud because one of the symbols used isn't in any version of the game.
 * Somehow, Jennifer Hale (a voice actress featured in many popular video games) provided the voice of Sonya Blade for this movie.
 * In a truly bizarre example of Unbuilt Trope, the CG interludes in this feature look a lot like the CG cutscenes in the video game Drake of the 99 Dragons, which is considered horrible all on its own.
 * The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil was a disastrous attempt at reviving the classic Bob Clampett TV show. Although spearheaded by the Clampett family and Bob's apprentice John Kricfalusi (who left Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures to run the series), the show suffered from horrible writing and uneven animation quality due to nightmarish amounts of Executive Meddling from ABC. John soon quit the show in frustration, and poor ratings sank it after just five episodes with three more being left off the air.
 * Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw features crappy musical numbers which are blatant ripoffs of other songs (such as "At the Hop" and "Duke of Earl"), unexplained changes to designs of characters from the TV series, atrocious animation, and sub-par voice-acting. The main villain's name is Marvin McNasty (who absolutely cannot sing). It also features noticeable animation errors — for example, a scene where a character's nose disappears while he's talking. There's also a weird scene/musical number where the Pound Puppies wander through a forest filled with monsters. Wanna see it yourself?
 * This movie was such a huge flop at the box office that TriStar would not produce their next animated feature until 2001, 13 years after this movie was released. It was also the only animated feature produced by Carolco.
 * Robert D. Hanna's Kung Fu Panda rip-off The Prodigy is full of stock models, scary bad animation, terrible voice acting (the panda) and an eight minute long dance sequence.
 * NBC's Saturday Morning block was full of stinkers, but had a few good shows (like Alvin and The Chipmunks, Saved by the Bell, etc.). However, Pro Stars isn't one of them. It features superstar players Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson helping kids around the world and fighting criminals who do what they do just because they can do it. It tries to promote diversity by the various countries and kids they visit, but it's all cancelled out by ruthless stereotyping. There are also massive continuity and animation errors, with more that 40 in the first episode alone! Demoversi looked at the first episode.
 * Linkara even saw Pro Stars as partially being the reason NBC's Saturday morning block was cancelled.
 * These were based on real athletes. Bo Jackson's career didn't last much longer than the show, but Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan were active in their sports and had active fanbases well into the 2000s. If this show had been any good, then fans of these people would defend it.
 * Note: the basketball superhero here would, in real life, be Michael "Air" Jordan, the man who would lead the Chicago Bulls to numerous championships and sell millions of sneakers. He was, in Real Life, media-genic. If his character here had been more like his character in Space Jam, then this show would not be listed here.
 * Redakai - By Marathon Media, only without any camp appeal. The characters are dull, the plotlines are uninspired, the morals are poorly delivered (A Green Aesop is spearheaded by a good guy hurling a flaming flame-spiral of flame to protect a forest) and the show makes no attempt to set atmosphere. It can't find its stride because it doesn't even have a place to start. The fact that all of this series' merchandise seems to have become permanently glued to store shelves despite huge markdowns seems to be the best indication of how this show has been received.
 * Brought to you by the National Football League is flagrant fame engine Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core. Extremely low-budget Flash animation, a plot that makes rarely any sense (and when it does, it's rushed and utterly predictable), and a stupid kid named Ish who doesn't even question a guy appearing on his screen and talking to him. Luckily, barring the TV movie, it's only five minutes long.
 * Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back. Sure, Space Chimps was a poor quality All CGI Cartoon movie, but this straight to DVD sequel got worse. Horrid animation, unfunny cliche jokes, and a near-nonexistent plot make this film atrocious. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 0% fresh.
 * Actually, there's no official consensus, as only 6 people reviewed it. However, unofficially, that's the consensus, as none liked it. All the most helpful reviews on Amazon are 1 star, with a 2 star average.
 * In the late 1980s and early 1990s a TV cartoon series was made in Flanders, based on the popular comic strip Suske en Wiske. The only positive aspect was that the design of the characters looked OK and even resembled the comic strip. But these cartoons were so cheaply made that almost every scene was stock footage. For instance, whenever a specific character was walking from one point to another, they always played the same clip. The animators also animated only one expression of a certain emotion for each main cast member. If for instance a specific character became angry it was always the same scene, without any sort of variation. As one can imagine: watching these cartoons can become rather tedious after a while, especially since they follow the stories of the comic book albums almost frame-by-frame in extremely slow pacing.
 * Just slightly ahead of Delgo in terms of box office is an animated version of The Ten Commandments. With outdated CGI, art designs that would look at home with the original PlayStation, and dull voice acting from a talented cast that somehow includes Ben Kingsley and Christian Slater, one would have to wonder how the hell this film made more money than Delgo. Compared to the 1956 classic (91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.8 on IMDb), this 2007 movie bombed critically as well, earning a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes and a paltry 2.8 on IMDb. You can see Infamous Animation rip this film to shreds here.
 * Time Travel Academy, AKA Learn Our History, a series of educational CGI cartoons produced by Mike Huckabee to educate kids on the "history that schools are afraid to tell". Let's put it this way; you know you've got a real stinker on your hands when you can't even make the trailers look good. Among its flaws:
 * Amateurish CGI work: It looks like it was done half-heartedly on Daz Studio and cel-shaded to cover up the fact.
 * Shamelessly didactic pro-Republican propaganda, giving Ronald Reagan a blatant Historical Hero Upgrade.
 * Cardboard cut-out characters, only backed up by the embarrasingly wooden dialogue and passionless, pedestrian acting.
 * Moments of Did Not Do the Research (i.e. the scene in the World War II trailer where the modern day black girl appears, praising Rosie the Riveter—inexcusably ignorant of the rampant racism that went on during the time), not to mention its shameless abuse of Hollywood History, featuring a woefully dishonest Theme Park version of the 1970's and 80's.
 * Blatant plagiarism—a character wearing a helmet from Warhammer 40000 appears--in the 1970's. Fortunately for them, this was later removed from future trailers).
 * And to top it off, the audacity to make the audience-insulting claim that they "teach history without bias".
 * Tex Avery is one of the greatest names in animation history, practically inventing the modern idea of what a cartoon is. But in 1997, 17 years after his death, a show called The Wacky World of Tex Avery came to redefine In Name Only. This "Homage" to Avery's work starred a cowboy named Tex Avery, allowing them to get away with the name, and featured an ensemble cast of "original" cartoon characters done "in the style of" Avery's works. The animation stunk, the characters were all ripoffs of better WB or MGM properties, and close to none of the jokes were actually funny. The real Avery is doing Wild Takes in his grave.
 * Yo Yogi was one of the last NBC Saturday-morning animated shows for a decade. After somehow making a lot of money out of plagiarizing Muppet Babies via The Flintstone Kids, Hanna-Barbera tried to do the same with Yogi Bear and all the related characters in his cartoons...but turned almost everybody into teens with dated, late 1980s-early 1990s clothes who spoke in Totally Radical "surfer" lingo. They also tried to get ratings by throwing in 3-D scenes during an era where 3-D glasses still tended to be red-green. Other than two specials and the 2010 Yogi Bear movie, Hanna-Barbera never made another new work starring Yogi Bear. Feel free to look at TV Trash's take on it.
 * Not to mention that some of the crew are teens (Yogi, Boo Boo, Huck, Cindy etc.) while other characters, like Augie Doggie & Doggie Daddy or Snooper & Blabber are the same age as they are when interacting with the grown-up Yogi. How does that even work?