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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"What I see here is a dozen people, all trying to make each other miserable. You disgust me, but it's also faintly amusing. Carry on."''
|'''Quote from an attorney in a Dutch court (translated)'''}}
There's a German word, ''[[Schadenfreude]].'' It means "the joy you get at seeing other people's misfortune" (Schaden = "damage", Freude = "joy"). The '''Sadist Show''' is built on it. In this kind of show, there are no sympathetic characters whatsoever, and nobody will ever [[Pet the Dog]]. Everybody is both obnoxious and incompetent, beyond even the [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]—the audience can't really root for them. The fun is in seeing the characters [[Deus Angst Machina|suffer more than they deserve]], more than Job, [[The Chew Toy|more than possibly everybody in the history of the human race combined]]. In short, it's a comedy, but not in the Shakespearean sense.
▲{{quote|''"What I see here is a dozen people, all trying to make each other miserable. You disgust me, but it's also faintly amusing. Carry on."''|'''Quote from an attorney in a Dutch court (translated)'''}}
Sometimes, there will be a character who the audience kind of sort of roots for, but not really. One form is the [["No Respect" Guy]] (like Frylock from ''[[
▲Sometimes, there will be a character who the audience kind of sort of roots for, but not really. One form is the [[No Respect Guy]] (like Frylock from ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Animation)|Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'') who tries to act decent but fails. However, the audience doesn't exactly root for them, because they're so ineffective, and they're usually a bit of a stick in the mud too. Another form is a [[Heroic Comedic Sociopath|Heroic Sociopath]], who is as vile as the rest of the cast, but is at least competent (like Brock Sampson from ''[[The Venture Brothers]]''). But they're too evil to really cheer for, and how sympathetic can they be if they're stuck with the rest of these losers? ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', with its emphasis on failure, reminds us that Brock may be competent, but he's in a pointless dead-end gig, and one that he is so over-qualified for that it's humiliating.
Note that this can be somewhat subjective, depending on how sympathetic and/or interesting one finds a character, a cast, or a situation.
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This kind of show almost always has [[Negative Continuity]], so the writers can inflict any kind of torment they like (including [[They Killed Kenny|killing them off over and over again]]) without affecting future episodes.
Often overlaps with the [[Gross
{{examples|Examples: }}▼
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Panty
* Pick a harem series. Any. You'll be lucky if it ''isn't'' this trope.
* ''[[
** Snigger.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]''. The titular character is God! Absolutely everything has to go her way, at all costs. And that's mainly so that she can fondle Mikuru and treat her as her dress-up doll as much as she wants to. {{spoiler|The last episode is ''all'' about that.}} (Kyon is better off than Mikuru, but not much.)
* ''[[
* Grrl Power! One half-hour OAV which focuses on convincing this one guy to go to school. How do the girls do it? {{spoiler|Set him up for all kinds of miserable tasks, and when he asks for payment, explain that it's not a part-time job. The girls are saving up to set up a new country at some island.}} Oh, and there's also this one man who the girls refuse to do a damn thing for, for no explained reason, even though they make a point of helping everyone else who can pay up.
* [[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]. The rules of the universe were made specifically to make all girls who contract with [[Weasel Mascot|Kyubey]] as miserable as possible for the rest of their lives. Those last five words take on a whole new meaning too: {{spoiler|It means they'll become witches once they lose all hope for life, if they don't get killed by any first.}}
* ''[[Blood
* All characters in the movie version of [[X 1999]] die either in the first 5 minutes after they're introduced or at least before the end of the movie.
* [[Love Hina]]. Everything bad that happens to the main protaganist is meant to be funny. Not many people find it to be funny at all.
* [[
* [[Excel Saga (
* [[Amazing Nurse Nanako]]. One of the few shows starring a female [[Butt Monkey]]. And it's played for laughs, too.
* [[Its Not My Fault That I Am Not Popular]]!, the semireal tales of a mangaka who went through a loss of humiliation and abuse.
* [[Keroro Gunsou]]. Being a space frog with inferiority complex, while trying to take over Earth, only to be at the mercy of the pink-haired Natsumi Hinata, who you live under and forces you to do chores can suck big time.
* [[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]], considering everything that has happened to the Elric brothers and the people they have to associate with, especially the State Military of Ametris.
* [[Paranoia Agent]]. This applies to the lives of nearly every main character that is featured in each episode, up until Lil' Slugger comes by and puts them out of their misery.
* [[Jigoku Shoujo]]. That. is. all.
* '''D. Grayman's''' Allen Walker is the universe's chew toy whose rather depressing life is played off for laughs.
== [[
* The comics in ''Mad Magazine'' featuring Monroe, a whiny, ugly teenage loser. His stories often end with something nasty and painful being done to him.
* Also Mad's ''Spy vs. Spy'' by Prohias. Unlike in the golden age cartoons such as [[
* [[Spider
* ''[[Ziggy]]'', the titular character is always getting the short end of the stick, and the other human characters he comes across are sarcastic and indifferent towards him at best, and cruel to him at worst. No wonder he only has animals as friends-- but then again his pet parrot Josh isn't all that nice to him either.▼
* ''[[Funky Winkerbean]]'' started as a standard humor comic strip, and eventually morphed into a treatise on existential despair and the futility of life.▼
▲* [[Spider Man]] can tend this way, [[Depending On the Writer]]. At the best of times, writers make sure to show how his superheroic life makes his mundane life more difficult. At the nasty end of the scale, he can't keep a girlfriend ([[One More Day|or wife]]), job, or residence; he's roundly hated and on the run from both the police, the mob, and a veritable army of [[Super Villain|Super Villains]]; all of his friends are dead, insane, on drugs, insane AND on drugs, or refuse to take his phone calls because he's so unreliable; and he intermittently suffers injuries, power fluctuations, web-fluid shortages, and costume damage. {{spoiler|[[Ultimate Spider Man|And at one point, his heroism winds up killing him!]]}}
** How pathetic can it get? There was a three issue run in the early 90s where, because Peter had been so busy with superheroics ''and'' his mundane life, he forgot to do laundry and had to fight crime in a dirty, slightly mildewed costume. ''Everyone'' he encountered commented on the smell and made remarks about his personal hygiene.
* ''[[Life in Hell]]''. [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]].▼
* ''[[Garfield]]''. Lots of the humor revolves around Garfield, Jon, and Odie (usually the latter two) being injured. In [http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1998/ga980111.gif one strip], Garfield [[Running Gag|kicks Odie off the table,]] ''[[Crosses the Line Twice|then drops a freaking vase on him.]]''▼
** [http://cdn.svcs.c2.uclick.com/c2/20e9a6a05f3b012ee3c100163e41dd5b This strip] is another particularly sadistic one. ▼
* [[Hagar the Horrible]], particularly when the titular character deals with his wife Helga.▼
* [[Baby Blues]], mainly for the parents.▼
* [[Zits]], for both the parents (whose teenage son drives them crazy), and for said son (whom they [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents|deliberately humiliate]], as if that's an acceptable way to run ''any'' relationship). Though, to they're credit, at least they're not nearly as abusive as [[Mad Magazine|Monroe's]] parents.▼
* [[Peanuts]]. Everything that happens to [[Chew Toy|Charlie]] [[Butt Monkey|Brown]]. Linus is not much better off, having such a tyrannical big sister as [[Jerkass|Lucy]].▼
* [[The Lockhorns]]. [[Meaningful Name|Their last name says it all:]] They argue and berate eachother about ''everything''.▼
== [[Film]] ==
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* Pretty much any of Paul Verhoeven's movies. Even the 'heroes' are unlikeable and amoral, tending to use sex as a weapon against others. Bad things happen to his characters, and you can't really find a reason to care. (The SFX are usually pretty entertaining, though.)
* ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'': Subverted in ''[[South Park]]'', "it only shows a man being tortured for 2 hours".
* ''[[The Karate Kid]]'': Giving us plenty of scenes of Daniel being beaten and tortured, and bad guys being patheticaly punished.
== [[Literature]] ==
* "Kevin Shapiro, Boy Orphan" in [[Daniel Pinkwater]]'s story ''[[Young Adult Novel]]'' is the lugubriously sad tale of a thirteen-year-old boy straight out of [[Dysfunction Junction]], told by the Wild Dada Ducks of Himmler High School. Kevin fails so completely to fix his messed-up life that he often gets killed off in frustration; of course, [[Negative Continuity]] lets him always come back to life in the next chapter.
* The early novels of Evelyn Waugh are sadist shows. In the first few pages of Decline and Fall, for instance, Paul Pennyfeather gets debagged, expelled from Oxford, fined five and sixpence for two cigarette burns in his room, cheated out of his inheritance by his guardian, and sent to work in the worst school in England. No wonder he's upset. ('God damn and blast them all to hell,' said Paul meekly to himself as he drove to the station, and then he felt rather ashamed, because he rarely swore.')
* When [[Philip K. Dick]] was going through his darkest days of depression and insanity, he wrote some ''very'' painful stories, most of which consist of him bashing down his protagonists so that even suicide seems like a happy option.
* ''The Gap Cycle''. Hooooo, boy, ''and HOW''. It's even represented by an ''actual'' sadist show in which a large-breasted woman ''cuts off her breasts'' with a rusty knife, then guts herself. [[Fridge Horror|On a nightly basis, thanks to future technology - but she still feels everything.]]
* ''Justine'' by the [[Marquis
== Live
* The [[Ur Example]] for this in television might be the game show [[Queen for
*
* Teen soaps are prone to this half of the time, apparently to show you that some [[Teens Are Monsters]]. [[Nickelodeon]] usually leads this trope, as well as [[Dan Schneider]] shows that employ [[Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male]]/
** The [[Dan Schneider]] shows ''[[
* Almost any Indonesian TV.
* The series ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' finds its characters, particularly Michael Bluth, constantly having brief opportunities at success yanked away from them. Often times, it will be the culmination of the decisions of everyone in the house working against each other to completely void any progress they may have made. The mildly likable Michael Bluth often finds that as soon as he himself is willing to be the slightest bit lax in his principles he is karmically punished, as when he condemns his family for spending their shares of company stock only to have it immediately revealed that he has used his shares to buy a new car.
* The humor in the BBC TV series ''[[The Office]]'' and ''[[Extras]]'' comes from the continual humiliation of the main characters, especially the second series of Extras.
** The US adaptation of ''[[The Office]]'' will occasionally flirt with this, but seldom rely on it. However, the Dinner Party episode...
** The same goes for ''[[The IT Crowd]]'', often in a big way.
* The [[Britcom]] ''[[Bottom]]'' (as well as its spiritual predecessor ''The Young Ones'') exists entirely so the audience can watch two only-slightly-sympathetic [[Loser Protagonist
* ''[[Peep Show]]'' is another [[Britcom]] to fit this trope, a cringingly awkward black comedy following, once again, two only-slightly-sympathetic [[Loser Protagonist
** Every single episode can be summed up as Mark Corrigan narrowly avoids a fleeting moment of happiness.
* ''[[Married...
* Played for drama in ''[[Breaking Bad]].'' The show opens with Walt deciding to use his scientific expertise to make a batch of meth so he can pay for his cancer treatments. [[It Got Worse]] from there, again and again, as the expense of treatment draws Walt deeper and deeper into the drug world.
* Somewhat inverted on ''[[Frasier]]'', which was an extremely well-written show with sympathetic characters, but it was very rare for the titular character or his brother to ever come out ahead by the end of the episode. This made the series a bit of a "''Masochist'' Show."
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* ''[[Mad TV]]''
* It's arguable that the humor in Australian mockumentary ''[[We Can Be Heroes]]'' derives from the patheticness of the characters.
* ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]'', to some extent. There are no more than token efforts to solve the [[Dysfunction Junction]] situation. Ray is a wuss when it comes to standing up to his wife and mother, although he does get better at this in the later seasons; Frank is an insensitive [[Jerkass]]; Deborah is a mean, overly angry housewife; Robert is a self-loathing whiner who expresses [[Wangst]] despite the fact that he's in his forties; and Marie is simply the personification of the devil who uses guilt to get what she wants in addition to being meddlesome.
* ''[[
** From the same network, a lot of the "Food Network Specials" basically consist of the audience waiting for the cake to fall over.
** Or shows like ''[[Chopped]]'' and ''[[Cupcake Wars]]'' which is a stage by stage elimination show where 3 out of 4 chefs dreams gets crushed one chef at a time.
** ''[[
* Hello, ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]''. All the fans watch it to see the Winchesters suffer and see how Dean will fall apart this week (except for the [[Fan Dumb|portion of the fandom]] [[Misaimed Fandom|that thinks Dean is a saint]]). And everyone loves to watch Sam and Dean [[Manly Tears|cry]].
* ''[[Everybody Hates Chris]]''. The name speaks for [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Seinfeld]]'' was practically built around this idea. "No hugging, no learning" was the mantra in the show's formative years.
** Likewise, ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]].''
* ''[[
* ''[[Lexx]]'' is another [[World Half Empty]] example. The characters are less than sympathetic, and while you'd kinda root for them at first, by the third series you'd wish [[Kill It
* [[The BBC]] show ''[[Mongrels]]''
* ''[[Malcolm in
** There was an in-universe example of this as well... In one episode, Francis babysits his brothers and sets up a "contest" to see which brother loves him most by doing random tasks for him. This quickly devolves into a brawl, and Francis briefly cuts in, saying something to the effect of "Whoa, whoa. This was supposed to be about love, and you've turned it into something ugly! ...Carry on." He then sits down with a drink and watches his brothers fighting, saying "This, too, pleases me."
* ''[[The Thick of It]]'' is a relentlessly cynical, sadistic show about [[Dirty Coward|dirty cowards]] and a near [[Villain Protagonist]]. The characters who aren't self-serving and malicious are hideously incompetent, and they all inhabit a realm where idealism goes to die. Oh, and it's about politics. But we repeat ourselves.
* And then there's ''Cheaters''. The show's purpose is to be a private investigator service for people who think their significant other is being unfaithful. [[Dissimile|Except without the "private" portion.]] If the SO is indeed cheating, you don't have to pay any fees for hiring the show, but you are expected to confront them and the Other (Wo)Man in public with the host and camera crew trailing behind like [[Ambulance Chaser
* ''[[Naeturvaktin]]''/''[[Dagvaktin]]''/''[[Fangavaktin]]''/''[[Bjarnfredarson]]'' are about a [[Dysfunction Junction]] [[Comic Trio]] unintentionally (and occasionally intentionally) making each others's lives worse in a [[Crapsack World]]. ''[[Dagvaktin]]'' is the most extreme, dealing with the cast committing or enduring rape, murder and child abuse, as well as embarking upon a [[Mushroom Samba]] and breaking the index finger of a [[Jerkass]] surgeon with million-dollar hand insurance.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
▲* ''[[Ziggy]]'', the titular character is always getting the short end of the stick, and the other human characters he comes across are sarcastic and indifferent towards him at best, and cruel to him at worst. No wonder he only has animals as
▲* ''[[Funky Winkerbean]]'' started as a standard humor comic strip, and eventually morphed into a treatise on existential despair and the futility of life.
▲* ''[[Garfield]]''. Lots of the humor revolves around Garfield, Jon, and Odie (usually the latter two) being injured. In [http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1998/ga980111.gif one strip], Garfield [[Running Gag|kicks Odie off the table,]] ''[[Crosses the Line Twice|then drops a freaking vase on him.]]''
▲** [http://cdn.svcs.c2.uclick.com/c2/20e9a6a05f3b012ee3c100163e41dd5b This strip]{{Dead link}} is another particularly sadistic one.
▲* ''[[Hagar the Horrible]]'', particularly when the titular character deals with his wife Helga.
▲* ''[[Baby Blues]]'', mainly for the parents.
▲* ''[[Zits]]'', for both the parents (whose teenage son drives them crazy), and for said son (whom they [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents|deliberately humiliate]], as if that's an acceptable way to run ''any'' relationship). Though, to they're credit, at least they're not nearly as abusive as [[Mad Magazine|Monroe's]] parents.
▲* ''[[Peanuts]]''. Everything that happens to [[Chew Toy|Charlie]] [[Butt Monkey|Brown]]. Linus is not much better off, having such a tyrannical big sister as [[Jerkass|Lucy]].
▲* ''[[The Lockhorns]]''. [[Meaningful Name|Their last name says it all:]] They argue and berate
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Whacked!]]'' No matter what the specifics are for any given round, it will ''always'' involve slaughtering your opponents with baseball bats, meat cleavers, exploding rubber duckies, oversized shishkabobs, cacti, missiles, and plenty more! [[Death Is Cheap|Again, and again, and again!]]
* ''[[
* ''[[Dragon Age 2]]'', Hawke is caught smack dab in the middle of having an apostate (or being an apostate) on the run from Templars and insane blood mages and have absolutely no way to make anything better. Only the way they approached one bad thing after another. Either by being pragmatic/sarcastic/angry.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Something
* ''[[
** Even White Mage is becoming more of a [[Jerkass]], with her refusing to heal Black Mage when he has a spear through his head (though to be fair, it's [[Complete Monster|Black Mage]]). Also, to add insult to injury, Thief almost never gets his comeuppance, whereas Black Belt (an actually slightly sympathetic character) is the only character yet to have been [[Killed Off for Real]] (even the [[Big Bad
** Technically, Thief does get his comeuppance when he loses everything he has ever stolen when his bag of holding is frozen, then is shattered into a million pieces in order to kill one of the fiends. He is catatonic for several strips afterwards.
** It's true, he rarely gets his comeuppance, so it's just that more hilarious when Berserker strangles him with his own intestines. He has savagely attacked Thief at least 3 times by now.
* The
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Every protagonist in ''[[Contemplating Reiko]]'' is a sadistic demon girl.
* ''[[
== Web Original ==
* "Hello, I'm the [[
** Like [[
* ''[[
* [[
** AVGN's French counterpart, ''[[Joueur Du Grenier]]'', created a spinoff series to his angry review videos called "JDG La Revanche" that consists entirely of him losing his mind trying to beat games he already tested but couldn't beat back then because of how absurdly difficult or just plain awful they are, and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
* [[
** Increasingly so as the character develops, really taking off with her [[All Take and No Give|casual abuse of her best friend]]. The Chick has coalesced into a geeky shut-in [[Closet Geek|in denial about her nerdy nature]], and an insecure [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]] who [[Inferiority Superiority Complex|needs to beat down her friends to boost her]] own [[Broken Bird|broken self-esteem]]. The "Dark Nella Saga" tried breaking her down instead, but she was too oblivious for it to work.
* ''[[Happy Tree Friends]]'': Everyone gets killed horribly in every episode.
* ''[[Mari Kari]]'': It’s like the paranormal ''[[Beetlejuice (
{{quote|
* ''[[You Suck At Photoshop]]'' is about an [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]] going through a complete mental, emotional and life breakdown, while making faux-snarky Photoshop tutorial videos because being able to Photoshop is all he has.
* Several ''[[Harry Partridge]]'' shorts have characters suffering in [[Bloody Hilarious]] and occasionally [[Nightmare Fuel|disturbing]] ways.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Classic Disney Shorts]]'': [[Donald Duck]]. OH, Donald. In his own words "You can't win. You just can't win"
** Though this trope does exemplify many of the [[The Golden Age of Animation|golden age animated shorts]] with [[
* ''[[
* ''[[
** This one's worth elaborating on a bit, because there's something special about just ''how'' all these characters come together to create the amazingly unfortunate (for the characters) milieu of this show. Vasquez has managed, through no small amount of effort in both writing the show and fighting to get his ideas aired by the censor-happy Nickelodeon network, to create a world wherein ''everyone'' fails at ''everything'' they try '''all the time'''. The only ones who come out okay are the ones (read: Gaz and...pretty much just Gaz) who do. Not. Give a shit. About anything. Dib tries to foil Zim's latest plan to destroy Earth? Dib probably succeeds, Zim's plan fails, ending up with Zim learning nothing, Gir having destroyed half the lab (again), Dib taking the blame for whatever damage Zim wrought on the world, and Gaz rubbing salt in his wounds by calling him a kook. [[Pyrrhic Victory|Pyrrhic victories]] all around, nobody grows, and the world is worse off. In ''every goddamn episode''. Vasquez is a misanthropic ''savant.''
* ''[[
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''. Only show ever to have a famous running gag involving ''child abuse''. Not to mention everything that happens to [[The Chew Toy|Homer]].
** Though, to its credit, it's not ''as'' cynical as other shows like ''[[Family Guy]]'', usually ending on an upbeat note.
* ''[[
* ''[[Sealab 2021]]''
* ''[[Frisky Dingo]]''
* Pick one of the ''[[
* When ''[[Drawn Together]]'' isn't about taking the piss out of [[Reality TV]] (the original premise which it pretty much dropped in the second season) or [[Animation Tropes|cartoons]], it's about heaping abuse on the dysfunctional housemates. Fortunately, they all retain strong [[Jerkass]] tendencies, so there's little room for sympathy save for Captain Hero, who was originally the biggest of the Jerkasses but developed into the most sympathetic character.
** ...and then developed into a [[Heroic Sociopath]].
* ''[[Stressed Eric]]'' (and how!)
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]''. It's a rare occasion that the neighborhood kids did something positive toward the Eds. {{spoiler|It changed by the end of the movie--the neighborhood kids actually start liking the Eds at that point.}}
** In most of the episodes, a character gets hurt practically every five seconds. The show practically revolves around pain.
* ''[[
** And [[Cosmic Plaything|if you're unlucky]] you [[They Killed Kenny|will continue to die in very horrible ways]] only for [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|no one to remember]].
* From it's second season and onward, ''[[
* ''[[Jimmy Two
* ''[[Total Drama]]''. It's even hosted by a sadist!
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[The Life and Times of Tim]]'': When [[Butt Monkey|Tim]] isn't the victim of his own social ineptitude, he's suffering for being too meek and unassertive to turn down his friends and coworkers' terrible ideas.
* ''[[
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