Made Myself Sad

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Of course Fry still exists... as a frozen corpse in outer space! Ho ho ho ho ho... (Beat) Oh... I made myself sad."
—Professor Farnsworth, Futurama, "The Sting"

A character is speaking, usually referencing a tragedy or other unfortunate event, and maybe even joking about it. After finishing his story, the character takes a Beat, then adds a comment that they just depressed themselves by bringing up the tragedy. Alternately, just their facial expressions and body language say it.

Sometimes a Funny Aneurysm Moment is enough to start one of these. In Dead Baby Comedy, this can lead to a Driven to Suicide moment that is Played for Laughs.

Examples of Made Myself Sad include:


Anime And Manga

  • Basically the punchline of 90% of what Nozomu Itoshiki says.
    • There's also an instance played more seriously. Nozomu is talking about it being easier to get through life if you ignore unpleasant things. One of his students, who is married makes a comment about ignoring her husband cheating on and mooching off of her and generally treating her like dirt. Nozomu pauses and says that he's sorry for saying that. This kind of thing happens occasionally, when his melodramatic complaining runs into actual problems.

Comic Books

Hotshot Charlie: I yield to no one in my appreciation of Oriental art, but there is a small segment of my mind which I reserve for the well-being of Charles C. Charles - Hotshot Charlie to the multitudes - and at the moment I feel myself somewhat depressed about his future.

  • Double inversion in Batman: Mad Love: The Joker, looking over his elaborate ideas for killing Batman in a "funny" way, gleefully cackles and carries on about "The Death of a Hundred Smiles," which would involve Batman getting dunked in an aquarium full of piranhas and then torn to pieces - and then suddenly becomes depressed when he realizes that the plan wouldn't be funny at all, because piranhas can't smile.

Film

Mark Hunter: "Now I'm depressed. Now I feel like killing myself, but luckily I'm too depressed to."

  • From Johnny Dangerously: "Johnny Dangerously can't live a normal life! It ain't in the cards, is all. People like me, we're like... we're like shooting stars. We... we cross the sky, burning hot, for one moment in time, and then we... plunge to earth and disappear... Jesus Christ, I'm starting to upset myself."
  • In The Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the Marley brothers, who are played by Statler and Waldorf. They openly admit that, in life, they were selfish and heartless bankers, and they even reminisce about evicting an entire orphanage in the middle of winter. This makes them break out into their trademark laugh, which almost immediately degenerates into a shudder, and they move on to warn Scrooge to repent from the mistakes they made.

Live Action TV

  • Zathras, from Babylon 5, did this to himself, but he was remarkably sanguine about it.
    • Debatable, seeing as how it would be pretty hard for someone to make themselves depressed, if they're never not in that condition to begin with.
  • In an early Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Buffy and Xander try to cheer Willow up (who has just realized her on-line boyfriend was a demon) by mentioning their own hapless experiences in the romance department: Xander's fling with a giant preying mantis that tried to eat his head, and Buffy's discovery that Angel is a vampire. They laugh together, and then a beat later, sink into quiet depression.
  • In an episode of Friends, Joey asks Chandler and Ross for advice on how to repel women. They start off offended, then become enthusiastic, then end up depressed. Ross spends the rest of the episode responding to everything with "Who cares? I repel women."
  • A vignette on Lamb Chop's Play Along has Hush Puppy (the show's Ditz, or maybe their Cloudcuckoolander) recite a limerick about a lady who was so skinny "that when she essayed, to drink lemonade, she slipped through the straw and fell in." He then laughs his head off at the poem....until he realizes that the character probably drowned, and he reflects: "Hey, that's not funny; that's tragic!"

Stand Up Comedy

  • During one of Rich Little's bits as Johnny Carson, a large black man complains of the stereotype of black men having large penises, when he has a small one, and complains that his last name of "Small" reflects that. They run through embarrassing celebrity last names, til "Carson" mentions "Rich Little", pauses, and moans, "For some reason, that one really hurt."

Video Games

  • In World of Warcraft, when you turn in the quest "Trolls is gone crazy!" to Chief Rageclaw in Zul'Drak, he comments:

Rageclaw thank you, <name>. Though Rageclaw Den probably lost forever and troll-Rageclaw friendship also lost forever... and also now I think of it, Ragemane lost forever too. Also brother-in-law. He gone. Hrm, have you seen Chief's mate? I think she gone too... Maybe you go now. Chief a little depressed.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • Invoked in The Nostalgia Critic's review of the dumbest moments in the Superman movies, when what he says that the movies reminds him of things like the tragic fates of Christoper Reeve, Margot Kidder and the World Trade Center.

"I'm The Nostalgia Critic, and I'm gonna go kill myself. "

Western Animation

  • The Trope Namer would be the Futurama episode "The Sting", in which Professor Farnsworth has one of these moments when he jokes about Fry being dead.
    • In "I Second That Emotion", Bender does this when he insults Leela while affected by a chip causing him to feel her emotions:

"Aw... I just made myself feel bad."

    • Hedonism-bot has a party that is basically an orgy, except then almost everyone there gets blown up.

Hedonism-bot: Everywhere I looked, there were piles of bodies... and then the explosion struck! Ah ha ha ha! Oh hoo hoo...

  • An example from everybody's favorite prime time cartoon The Simpsons, in the episode "Radioactive Man", Nelson tries out for the part of Fallout Boy. On being dismissed, he passes a mirror and gives himself his trademark "Ha-ha", followed by "Hey, that hurt. No wonder nobody came to my birthday party!"
  • From Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension: "I'm Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, but my friends call me... (beat) I just got in such a funk."

Truth in Television

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