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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.
 
And not just any old misfortune, like getting an [[Anvil Onon Head]]. The agony in a [[Sadist Show]] is a very sharp kind, the one that reminds you how totally unfair life is. It isn't a [[Sadist Show]] unless the characters suffer the very opposite of poetic justice. For instance, if our [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]] has been mugged, that's not enough. If the poor dope runs to report the mugging, and is arrested for jaywalking, and has to sit in jail while the mugger walks past their cell every day, that's the [[Sadist Show]].
 
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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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion (Anime)|Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' plays this for drama.
* ''[[Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu (Anime)|Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu]]''. Guu uses her logic-defying powers just to fuck Hare's life up. His mother is not much nicer to him. Seriously, asking him if he saved his game, and then turning it off for no apparent reason? He never knew his father most of his life, and it turns out that it was the school doctor, who looks at pornography and hates him with a passion.
* ''[[Panty and& Stocking Withwith Garterbelt (Anime)|Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt]]'': It's like ''[[Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi (Animation)|Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''[[South Park (Animation)|South Park]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''[[The Powerpuff Girls (Animation)|The Powerpuff Girls]]'', Japanese Anime Style.
* Pick a harem series. Any. You'll be lucky if it ''isn't'' this trope.
* ''[[School Days (Visual Novel)|School Days]]''. Maybe the ONLY harem series that takes itself seriously.
** Snigger.
* ''[[Ultimate Girls (Anime)|Ultimate Girls]]''. UFO Man has revived three girls by sacrificing much of his own life force, so now they're in charge of protecting Tokyo. Oh, but growing 50 feet tall is only the half of this show. While most fellow fanservice shows just feature embarrassment as a natural emotion of being seen naked, this show actively goes out of its way to utterly humiliate the protagonists. It's not enough that embarrassment becomes the girls' power source as their magical spandex wears out (''very'' quickly). Oh no. When they revert back to their normal size, they don't even get their clothes back, even though said embarrassment has already served its purpose.
* ''[[Lucky Star (Manga)|Lucky Star]]'', somewhat. While a lot of it ''is'' fluff and cuteness, the girls ''do'' tend to find themselves in awkward situations much of the time. Examples? {{spoiler|Tsukasa having no say when Konata and Kagami go to see a slasher movie, the three girls (not much later in the same episode) finding themselves in a jam at a cake buffet, Miyuki missing a dentist appointment while waiting inside the lobby, Yui barging in drunk just when Konata and Soujiro are about to have a nice, heartwarming moment, more than one instance of Kuroi-sensei appearing online and telling Konata to go study instead of gaming, Konata scaring Tsukasa while they're sleeping at the beachhouse, and let's not even get started on [[Chew Toy|Hiyori]] or the Lucky Channel segments!}}
* ''[[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.)
* ''[[Alien Nine (Manga)|Alien Nine]]''. Yuri got chosen for the Alien Party completely against her will. And there is no way out of it for her (except maybe killing herself).
* 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- C]]'' chances are if you're not a ally of the [[Big Bad]] or Saya prepare to die ''[[Cruel and Unusual Death|horribly]]''.
* 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.
* [[Girls Bravo (Manga)|Girls Bravo]] takes that [[Up to Eleven|to the point where its own protagonist becomes allergic to females]].
* [[Excel Saga (Animeanime)|Excel Saga]]. [[Failure Is the Only Option|Everything Il Palazzo assigns to his henchgirls ends up in failure]], Hyatt is [[Ill Girl|so ill that she continually dies and comes back to life]], [[Failure Is the Only Option|all of Menchi's attempts to escape Excel's ownership end in failure]], [[Butt Monkey|Mr. Pedro]] lost ties with his family to Gomez, Nabeshin is prone to lose loved ones only moments after he reunites with them, and Excel's neighbors are led by one hell of an iron-fisted bitch.
* [[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.
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== [[Comics]] ==
* 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 [[Tom and Jerry (Animation)|Tom and Jerry]], one of the two spies always died a horrible death.
* ''[[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 Onon 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 Onon 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.
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* "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 Dede Sade]] is nothing but a [[Sadist Show]] punctuated by philosophical monologues. The world is not just indifferent, but actively malevolent. Justine is consistently punished for her decent behavior while her persecutors experience nothing but boons for their cruelty and selfishness.
 
== Live Action Television ==
* The [[Ur Example]] for this in television might be the game show [[Queen for Aa Day]], on which five female contestants described in excruciating detail their horrible [[Real Life]] problems (such as deaths in the family, cancer, job loss, poverty, homelessness, even ''mental illness'') in order to win prizes, the host viciously belittling and ridiculing them as the audience laughed at their predicaments. When the winner was announced, the other contestants were ushered off the stage and given ''nothing'', not even bus fare home. This passed for family entertainment for ''twenty years'' on American TV.
* The re-imagined ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' plays this for drama. It got excruciatingly (and brilliantly) dark at points.
* 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 ''[[I CarlyICarly]]'' and ''[[Drake and Josh]]'' are poster-children for [[Comedic Sociopathy]], each having a massive [[Karma Houdini]] in the form of Megan, and Sam with their targets [[Drake and Josh]], and Freddie.
* 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...
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* ''[[Peep Show]]'' is another [[Britcom]] to fit this trope, a cringingly awkward black comedy following, once again, two only-slightly-sympathetic [[Loser Protagonist|Loser Protagonists]] as they ruin their own chances in life and love.
** Every single episode can be summed up as Mark Corrigan narrowly avoids a fleeting moment of happiness.
* ''[[Married... Withwith Children]]''. What redeeming moments the characters had were very few and far between, and such moments were almost always the exclusive purview of Al and to a lesser extent Bud.
* 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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* 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.
* ''[[Dinner Impossible|Dinner: Impossible]]'' could be fairly accurately summarized as "Food Network tries to kill Robert Irvine." ''[[Restaurant Impossible|Restaurant: Impossible]]'' allows him to spread the suffering around a bit more.
** 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.
** ''[[HellsHell's Kitchen (TV)|Hells Kitchen]]'' anybody? Getting eliminated early there is practically suicide for your career in the culinary field, you will be stuck working for slave wages after this at a low quality dining place if you were eliminated early.
* 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 Onon the Tin|itself]].
* ''[[Seinfeld]]'' was practically built around this idea. "No hugging, no learning" was the mantra in the show's formative years.
** Likewise, ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]].''
* ''[[Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia|It's Always Sunny Inin Philadelphia]]'' is this trope in ''spades''. The main cast of five has virtually no redeeming qualities and their attempts to improve anything ''always'' makes it worse. Sweet Dee was originally conceived as the voice of reason, but very quickly lost that aspect of her character and is now just as horrible as the rest of them.
* ''[[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 Withwith Fire|they died in the pilot]], for the ''entire Universe's'' sake. The third series tries to redeem them, but some even consider {{spoiler|[[Crosses the Line Twice|blowing up Heaven and Hell planets]]}} to deserve them the fate above. Fourth series goes to {{spoiler|Earth}}, which doesn't have that much luck or sympathy either, and is destroyed chunk by chunk {{spoiler|until it is blown up and between the survivors manage to wind up [[Our Presidents Are Different|President Buffoon]], the [[Mad Scientist]] partly responsible for Earth's destruction (and his [[Fan Girl|Fangirls]]), and of course, [[Satan|the devil himself]]}}.
* [[The BBC]] show ''[[Mongrels]]''
* ''[[Malcolm in Thethe Middle]]''. The show is wall-to-wall power struggles and emotional warfare. The rule on that show is that whatever makes the characters (especially Malcolm) the most miserable is what will happen. Just two examples: the episode that ends with Francis dragged naked behind a Zamboni on a skating rink (after trying to stop getting deeper in debt to his evil employer), and the episode that ends with Malcolm being insulted, a lot, by a girl, having a crying jag, and drying his tears with poison oak.
** 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.
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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!]]
* [[Conkers Bad Fur Day (Video Game)|Conkers Bad Fur Day]]. [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]]. Maybe minus the "fur" part, since none of it has anything to do with his fur so much as his acid-trippy trials and tribulations, which are ultimately topped off with his life being ruined. Did the prologue say that this was all how he became the king? {{spoiler|It was all a lie. He never became anything grand; he just went through hell for nothing... or, less than nothing, if you will.}}
* [[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.
 
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** 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 webcomic ''[[Ansem Retort]]'', which tells the tale of a sadistic [[FOXFox]] reality show.
* [http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ Garfield minus Garfield] forces this trope into being, but that's somewhat the point.
* ''[[NanasNana's Everyday Life]]'' is basically about how long you can keep a character alive without putting her out of her misery...
* Every protagonist in ''[[Contemplating Reiko]]'' is a sadistic demon girl.
* ''[[The Snail Factory (Webcomic)|The Snail Factory]]'' features characters which eat each other on a fairly regular basis.
 
== Web Original ==
* "Hello, I'm the [[The Nostalgia Critic (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Critic]], I remember it so ''you'' don't have to!" He's even said once that he can't stop torturing himself. Also, he's [[You Bastard|cursed the audience]] for [[The Chew Toy|just wanting to see him suffer]].
** Like [[The Nostalgia Chick (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Chick]], it's not just a case of being [[Suckiness Is Painful|hurt with a bad movie]] anymore. He's a frequently unhappy, lonely man who only reviews because he has nothing else and that's the only thing he can be proud of.
* [[Atop the Fourth Wall (Web Video)|Atop the Fourth Wall]] sometime dips into this. "Anti-Life justifies my hate", anyone?
* [[The Angry Video Game Nerd (Web Video)|The Angry Video Game Nerd]] is all about watching the titular Nerd play through [[So Bad Its Horrible|craptastic]] games just to show us everything that's wrong with them. Doing so must cost him his sanity and self-respect.
* [[The Nostalgia Chick (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Chick]] will dip into this, especially when she reviewed the [[Interquel]] to her all-time favourite Disney movie, ''[[Beauty and The Beast (Disney)|Beauty and Thethe Beast]]''. She didn't have fun.
** 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 (Animationanimation)|Beetlejuice]]'' meets the vulgar, blood and guts & mayhem of [[South Park]].
** -> "MARI, MARI! Sweeter than a cherry. Head is kinda airy. SHE LOVES YOU!!! KARI, KARI! Horrible and Scary! If you mess with Mari; SHE'LL KILL YOU!!"
{{quote| -- The Theme Song of Mari-Kari.}}
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== [[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 [[Tom and Jerry (Animation)|Tom and Jerry]] and [[Looney Tunes (Animation)|Looney Tunes]] leading the pack.
* ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Animation)|Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]''
* ''[[Invader Zim (Animation)|Invader Zim]]'': A megalomaniac alien, a deranged hedonistic robot, a paranormal-obsessed lunatic and his self-centered, sociopath sister in a ignorant, cybergothic [[Crapsack World]].
** 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.''
* ''[[Family Guy (Animation)|Family Guy]]'' - From about season 4 and onwards.
* ''[[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.
* ''[[Moral Orel (Animation)|Moral Orel]]'' - Especially in the third season, when it stopped pretending to be a comedy.
* ''[[Sealab 2021]]''
* ''[[Frisky Dingo]]''
* Pick one of the ''[[Looney Tunes (Animation)|Looney Tunes]]'' derived series from WB in the 90s and tell yourself it isn't sadistic, you won't be able to.
* 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!)
* ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show (Animation)|The Ren and Stimpy Show]]''
* ''[[The Venture Brothers (Animation)|The Venture Brothers]]''. More on show page.
* ''[[Cat Dog]]'', everyone hated them just because they're different, [[Yank the Dog's Chain|they never succeeded]], and they lived in a [[Crapsack World]].
* ''[[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.
* ''[[South Park (Animation)|South Park]]'' - the moral of the show appears to be "Life sucks, then you die. Then life continues to suck, and you die ''again''."
** 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, ''[[FostersFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'' often wound up being this.
* ''[[Jimmy Two -Shoes (Animation)|Jimmy Two Shoes]]'': It takes place in a town that's obviously [[Hell]], with the titular character the only one in the cast that isn't either a [[Comedic Sociopathy|complete sociopath]] or an [[The Hedonist|idiotic hedonist]].
* ''[[Total Drama]]''. It's even hosted by a sadist!
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants (Animation)|SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' seems to have become this in it's later seasons, due to [[Seasonal Rot]].
* ''[[The Drinky Crow Show (Animation)|The Drinky Crow Show]]''
* ''[[Superjail (Animation)|Superjail]]'': It has a sadist Willy Wonka looking character for a prison warden.
* ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'', though to a lesser extent than ''[[Family Guy (Animation)|Family Guy]]''.
* ''[[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.
* ''[[MAD (Animation)|MAD]]''
 
{{reflist}}
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/898775"