Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Real Ghostbusters had "The Collect Call of Cthulhu" episode, where the Busters managed to electrocute Cthulhu himself. In a follow up episode, the 'Busters take care of another Old One by sucking it into an artificially created black hole (probably not a bad way to take care of a powerful being).
    • They've fought other supernatural beings that look like something Lovecraft might have thought up, such as Mee-Krah, which Egon describes as a a "mindless force" and "giant storage battery", and the embodiment of Ragnarok, to name just two.
    • Extreme Ghostbusters had them dealing with Fenrir, who was trying to bring about the end of the world but apparently the original crew had already captured his master Surt in an untold tale. In Ragnarok, it's Surt who actually kills the most humans.
  • A Billy and Mandy episode, "The Prank Call of Cthulhu", ended with Cthulhu trapped in interdimensional phone lines, sucking off his shoes in the process (an episode Running Gag).
    • And let's not forget that the whole series centers around two kids bossing around the Grim Reaper.
      • Who was subdued and captured by Mandy making a geriatric hamster bite him no less.
      • Ah, but that was merely to cheat at limbo.
  • The Justice League episode "The Terror Beyond," in which A Cthulhuesque Eldritch Abomination tries to invade earth. Given that the beatdown is delivered courtesy of the Justice League, but especially Solomon Grundy and Hawkgirl, the "Punch" part is extremely literal.

(Monsters burst out of giant pods and attack.)
Solomon Grundy: Grundy crush Pimple-man!

    • They had actually set up her Nth Metal mace as pretty much designed to kill Eldritch Abominations. Aquaman's trident as well, in another badass moment for the (oft parodied) King of the Seas has him beating back a legion of eldritch abominations that are trying to invade Earth.
  • Justice League Unlimited, "Divided We Fall": The Flash versus the fledgling god that is Braniac-Luthor. Judging by the way the fusion of Luthor and Braniac is implied, shortly after running around the entire world in seconds for a hypersonic clothesline punch four separate times, the Flash punches every single braniac molecule out of Lex Luthor's body before simply fading out of existence due to the impossible speeds involved.
  • The near universal Big Bad of Transformers is Unicron, who would have been impossible to defeat if it wasn't for the power of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, which Optimus Prime had presented earlier as being prophecied as there being a Chosen One to use The Matrix to "Light our darkest hour."
    • Megatron was just as BAMF as Optimus, when he literally punched out Unicron (or a stone effigy of him anyway) at the penultimate season 1 episode of Transformers Prime.
  • In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the evil witch Malificent is imbued with "all the powers of Hell." The prince defeats her anyway.
  • Invoked - ironically, by a villain - in |Hercules. Hades poses this hypothetical question to his lackeys Pain and Panic: How do you kill a god? Pain and Panic, playing along, remark that this is impossible, since gods are immortal. Hades then explains to them his plan to use his dark magic to turn the baby Hercules into a human just so he can be killed.
  • The title character of Samurai Jack almost killed the almost-invincible Big Bad Eldritch Abomination Aku in the second episode, and anytime the two meet later on Aku barely manages to escape.
  • Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. At the end of Book 2, while Aang is rising into the air in the Avatar State after finally unlocking the final chakra, she shot down Aang with a bolt of lightning straight to the back, which nearly killed him (dying in the Avatar State would break the cycle of reincarnation).
    • Azula has nothing on Admiral Zhao, who killed the moon. Crosses over with Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu, cause the ocean was fucking pissed about that, and Zhao died. What's worse, he was too dumb to take Zuko's hand and avoid drowning.
    • In Book 2 Episode 10, The Library, the gang succeeds in escaping from the Knowledge Spirit not with bending...but with Sokka dropping down with a death from above style blow to the head with a book. It practically knocks the spirit out cold.
      • That was quite the book.
  • Ben 10 Alien Force had one in The Final Battle, where the lead villain Vilgax actually becomes Cthulhu when underwater.
  • Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic - At first it seems like Dante broke his arm punching Cthulhu, since he ends up only defeating Lucifer's shadow form which accidently releases his true monstrous form from his frozen prison in the ninth circle of hell. However, being a fallen angel of god and ruler of hell, Lucifer proves a rather unimpressive villain as the fight between him and Dante was not completely one-sided. But Dante doesn't truly defeat him until (with a little help from God) he reseals Lucifer back into his prison.
  • South Park plays this hilariously straight: Mint-Berry Crunch, easily the lamest member of Coon and Friends barring Iron Maiden, singlehandedly vanquishes Cthulhu and banishes him back to his dimension.
  • An everyday occurrence in Regular Show. Though it's almost always in an outrageous fashion. Example; defeating a giant floating eye monster in a staring contest!
  • The Lich in Adventure Time is an Omnicidal Maniac Ultimate Evil and the most powerful entity in the show. The legendary hero Billy pummeled him into a tree and sealed him in amber to save the world.
    • We he gets loose, Finn ultimately beats him once by using the Power of Love to tear the top part of his skull off with a sweater. When he returns possessing Princess Bubblegum and goes One-Winged Angel, Finn has an Enemy Mine with Ice King and they manage to freeze him solid to beat him.
    • Finn gets this earlier by defeating the Lord Of Evil, Marceline's dad, and sealing him back in the Nightosphere.
    • When Marceline's Dad is about to suck the soul of Gunter, the penguin smacks him.
  • In the pilot of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle and her True Companions manage to defeat Nightmare Moon, a Fallen Hero and Mad God who plunged the world into The Night That Never Ends.
  • In the Gargoyles two-parter "The Gathering", Oberon, lord of the Third Race, arrives to claim Xanatos's child, changing into a half mile tall version of himself and putting the whole city to sleep while attacking the building. Xanatos and the gargoyles fight back with all manner of high technology and get him on the ropes (though Fox's harpoon gun seems to do the most damage). Ultimately, though, they end up negotiating with him.
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