So Bad It's Horrible/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"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 off-model 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.)

Examples (more or less in alphabetical order):


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 like Studio Ghibli films by comparison. Seriously, just look at their film trailers.
  • 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.
    • 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]".)
    • In what can be charitably described as misguided marketing, Video Brinquedo have have a number of their films available in their entirety on YouTube, including works like Ratatoing for all to see.
  • GoodTimes Entertainment, Ltd., which lasted from 1984 to 2005, became infamous for producing and distributing low-budget animated Mockbusters that more often than not, plagiarized other studios (most notably, Disney), even going so far as to time their releases with the theatrical/home-video releases of others. It eventually reached the point wherein Disney sued the company for making its movies' packaging nigh identical, prompting GoodTimes to slap its name on top of its releases to distinguish its works from Disney's. Which doesn't even get to the quality of said works, as they tend to come across as cheap, slipshod farces that barely even try being competent, be it copious amounts of Off-Model animation, dragging and nonsensical plots that bear superficial similarities to the works they're mimicking, unlikable characters or generally atrocious presentation. Phelous has covered some of GoodTimes' schlock on his channel, including its version of Beauty and the Beast.
  • The collaboration between Boat Angel/Car Angel and Aberle Films has resulted in some of the worse examples of cheap, shoddily-made Christian animation made in this century alone. Their most notorious legacy, however, would arguably be their "Donkey Ollie" series of religious CGI movies; five films are known to have been made, the most recent being Circus Maximus from 2009. While following the titular lead character in adventures technically inspired by the Bible, what all these works share in common are cheap production values, amateurish voice acting, barely finished Off-Model animation that tread into the Uncanny Valley and plotlines that either make unintentional mockery of the source material or are plain inept.
    • The Adventures of Donkey Ollie is a 13-episode Direct to Video TV series released in 2010 that continues the "tradition" established by the films. Right down to the horrendous CGI (which wouldn't even pass muster in the early 1990s), moronic, nominally "Biblical" plots and inexplicable swerves that make one wonder whether the producers really had children in mind. Don't take our word for it though, take Cr1tikal's.

Animated Films

  • 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.
  • 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, or watch the review by The Film Renegado to get the idea. For a long time only the trailer was known, as the production company retired the film from circulation after the obligatory round in the movie festival circuits and at some point even tried to deny its existence, until on 2015 somebody finally captured the full movie from a rare TV airing and released it on YouTube to share the horror.
  • 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.T
  • Deti protiv volshebnikov (aka, Kids against the Sorcerers, Children vs. Wizards) is a 2016 Russian CGI adaptation of a book of the same name that confounds expectations, and not in a good way. Produced by the Russian Orthodox equivalent of Moral Guardians with the intent of being both a very patriotic Moral Substitute to Harry Potter and religious propaganda piece, it supposedly follows a group of devout teenagers as they try to infiltrate and stop an evil demonic school that's totally not Hogwarts...at least before the story devolves into a borderline Random Events Plot laden with Strawman Political jabs (such as not-Hogwarts being backed by NATO) and Unfortunate Implications. The increasingly Anvilicious, patronizing and inane tone of the film is further "complemented" by the horrendously animated CG and the sketchy circumstances behind its production involving misappropriated taxpayers' money.[1] The end result is a farcical mess that manages to insult Russians and foreigners alike, all the while helping stir negative stereotypes about Russia through its abysmal reception. In other words, it not only fails as a film, but also fails at its supposed purpose. Here's Russian Youtuber BadComedian tearing into the film, as well as Cr1tikal's running commentary.
  • The Emoji Movie, released in 2017, is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, while trying hard to mimic films like The LEGO Movie and Wreck-It Ralph without any of the heart or talent. If the utterly tone-deaf and nonsensical premise don't give it away, then the hackneyed execution, cheap Product Placement and Patrick Stewart as a shit emoji definitely will, among other grievances. What passes for humor falls flat, the CGI is barely competent and the overall delivery is boring, while the Seltzer and Friedberg-esque attempts to reference modern internet culture come across as forced, dated and clueless. This isn't even getting to the poor reception received even while in production[2] or the questionable marketing and excessively politicized PR. The end result is one of the worst animated films of the year, failing to appeal to anyone. Upon release, it has received nigh universal disdain from critics, with 8% on Rotten Tomatoes (having had at one point a 0% rating), a 1.4 on IMDb and even a 9 on Metacritic, with moviegoers expressing similar if not even more abysmal reactions. While it managed to recoup their production costs (mostly by being watched by kids that didn't knew better and by people wanting to experiment the suck themselves), it failed to break it even. To top the cherry in this shit sundae, it received the Razzie to the worst film of 2017. Here's Jeremy Jahns tearing into it.
  • Foodfight is a Direct to Video CGI animated feature film released in 2012 in which the backstory behind its production (be it in its large budget, planned 2003 theatrical release or the original computer files going missing in an act of "corporate espionage") is much more fascinating than the movie itself. It's notable for attempting to be the next Toy Story but falling well below the mark, with unfinished and glitchy graphics, Uncanny Valley characters whose animation alternates between ugly and lazy, a nonsensical plot, and one of the sleaziest attempts at Product Placement in existence. While the film could be seen as So Bad It's Good at points thanks to the writing and ineptitude, whatever "redeeming" value it has is far outshone by the sheer ugliness on display and hubris far exceeding talent; that the producers of the film were also responsible for among other things, Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins as seen below don't help matters. JonTron has reviewed it, despite the toll on his soul. Cr1tikal couldn't even finish watching it, his copy coincidentally having subtitles partially in machine-translated Finnish and Icelandic.
  • 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 likeable 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.
  • 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.
    • The sequel, Tentaccolino (named In Search of The Titanic in several markets), manages to be even worse. The plot turns out to have little connection with both its prequel, its original title and its adapted title, and all the original's bad qualities go up to eleven, with the Disneyfication and the Artistic Licence History qualities of the original amped up directly into thick glurge. The animation here is even lazier than in the original film, which, given its already low quality, is no small feat. The Cartoon Hero also covered it.
  • 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.
  • Rob Schneider has a long legacy of bad films, but his animated production Norm of the North is, hands down, probably the worst animated film of 2016 and one of the worst of the decade so far. The plot (to call it somehow) is that the titular polar bear goes to a New York-knock-off city to convince some developer to stop building an housing complex in the Arctic. While such a plot would stretch the Suspension of Disbelief, the story is handled in the most clichéd and idiotic way possible,[3] a lot of pop-culture references are inserted randomly, the soundtrack is made of shoehorned pop songs, the Green Aesop reaches anvil breaking levels and the whole film is so supremely boring, even its supposed audience of children get bored fast with it.
  • 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).[4] 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Kid, a Direct to Video feature-length animated film by DIC Entertainment that's originally made for Nickelodeon in 2003, is ostensibly an adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. But aside from taking certain elements from the 1960 live-action movie, the film has so little connection to the source material that it's warped virtually beyond recognition; the Eloi and Morlocks for instance are reinterpreted as the "Lumen" and "Submen," both of which bare only a passing semblance to what they're supposed to be. Whether it's the cheap quality of the animation itself, the grating voice acting or a story that, when it isn't rife with Plot Holes, simultaneously Disneyfies the premise and misses the point of the source material, the result is schlock that makes the abysmally-received 2002 movie look better by comparison. While the movie is relatively obscure these days, a snippet of it exists on YouTube for posterity.
  • The original cut of the Italian animated film Titanic: The Legend Goes On. Everything is plagiarized, and not only from the 1997 film - the plagiarism isn't limited only to the designs they swiped from 101 Dalmatians, Disney's Cinderella, An American Tail, Looney Tunes, and several others, but also they take plots points of all those films to add to theirs. What little assets they have that aren't plagiarized fall into the depths of the Uncanny Valley. The musical numbers happen without rhyme nor logic, with "Party Time" (the one with the rapper dog) being the most egregious of them. The animation quality is horribly low, with frequent recycling of animation and Off-Model galore. The sound mixing is equally atrocious, and sometimes it don't even synchronize with the visuals. The plot is a Cliché Storm barely better than the one of The Legend of the Titanic, albeit this film at least indirectly recognizes that the travelers that weren't the focus characters did perish in the sinking. The international version solved some of its goofs by reediting and cutting some of the worst parts (in the process gaining a signature scene), but that one manages to be So Bad It's Good at best (and even that depends on which dub are you watching it).
  • From Turkey, there's Uzay Kuvvetleri 2911 (aka, Space Force 2911), which was released in 2015. Marketed as Turkey's first 3D indie animated film, it may be best described as a latter-day Turkish Star Wars but with all of the Narm surgically replaced with even worse material and without any of the redeeming qualities. If the Uncanny Valley characters (with the protagonists coincidentally resembling Mass Effect knockoffs and enemy Mooks looking like Crysis rejects), Special Effects Failure and generally inconsistent CGI don't give away the film's quality or lack thereof, then the nonsensical plot (which involves a pointless prophecy that doesn't pay off and a massive Plot Hole that could have ended the movie much sooner if the protagonists weren't idiots) and attempts to rip off every notable sci-fi work in recent years like Battlestar Galactica definitely will. It's no surprise then that it garnered a 3.9 on IMDb. Cr1tikal has also made a video evaluation of this farce.

Animated Series

  • 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.
  • 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 animated series 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:

"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."

    • 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 animations 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?).
  • The pilot for an animated adaptation of Bubsy is without doubt one of the worst things ever made. Horrible animation (with overuse of Stock Footage to boot), a terrible script, unlikeable characters, and awful voice acting that despite having a lot of talented voice actors cast is incredibly ear grating. No wonder this thing never was picked. Rob Paulsen ,who voiced Bubsy, is openly ashamed of having been involved in this mess. If you are curious, you can judge for yourselves.
  • In terms of how much it absolutely defines the phrase "wasted potential", The Buzz on Maggie easily qualifies as an example of this trope.
    • To elaborate further, it has an absolutely fascinating "insects living in a Scavenger World" concept but wastes said concept on one of the most horribly cliched and generic school sitcoms ever.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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...
    • Bafflingly, this series was dubbed in Spanish and inflicted onto unsuspecting Latin-American kids via the Fox Kids/Jetix channel. Many awful series has been rescued by the Latin Spanish dub, but sadly this time it didn't work.
  • Fairview . Executive produced by Stephen Colbert and appearing on Comedy Central, there’s a rumor that he made a bet with someone that he could air the worst show possible on a major network, and if that were true, he has succeeded admirably. The show is a blatant rip off of South Park, and like that show, has simplistic animation and edgy political satire. Much like South Park, the only sane folks are the ones who don’t take sides on anything, anyone who does take a side on an issue being a raving idiot who overreacts to everything while looking like a fool. Unlike South Park, however, the humor is lame and has no subtlety whatsoever, every character on this show has No Indoor Voice. The characters on Fairview have no legs; supposedly they were supposed to represent Matryoshka dolls, but they come across more like Weebles; very ugly Weebles. Writing was terrible, every character was obnoxious, and it is obvious to anyone watching that they were throwing out every idea they could think might be funny, and failing with each, eight episodes being all the folks in charge could take before they cancelled it.
  • Hoops. This M-rated Netflix show is about Ben Hopkins, "a hot-headed, foul-mouthed high school basketball coach who thinks turning around his God-awful team will take him to the 'big leagues' and turn his miserable life around” and hopefully reconcile with his estranged wife Shannon. Unfortunately, not only is Ben hot headed and foul mouthed, he is a whiny crybaby who throws a tantrum every time something doesn't go his way, which is almost all the time. There is nothing redeemable or likable about him, and frankly he does not deserve to turn his miserable life around, the show delivering a horrible first impression that it never recovers from. As far as the humor of this supposed comedy is concerned, there is not one joke in the whole series that is not obscene, offensive, tasteless, and/or about someone else's junk, and for that matter, absolutely none that are funny. The Family Unfriendly Moral that the show was trying to push was that there are some people who are comfortable at being complete jerks and feel that whoever doesn't like it can shove it, but be that as it may, it doesn't do a good job at getting anyone to accept it or convincing them the show is worth watching. It is little wonder that Netflix pulled the plug on this one after only 10 episodes.
  • 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.
  • Mauser y Pirulo, an animated series that was emitted in Venezuela for about 5 chapters in 1999. It was promoted as "the first prime time Venezuelan animated series"; in truth, it was a redub and re-edit of the Colombian animation El Siguiente Programa. The original show was an star vehicle for a couple of popular radio jocks, to mock and parody Colombian culture and current events; the Venezuelan version turned the protagonists into expies of Beavis and Butthead (rename included), incongruently added more vulgarity (which was weird because the Media Watchdogs are stricter in Venezuela than in Colombia) and awkwardly changed cultural references. The art and animation style, who was admittedly ugly, was serviceable for the original but only added to the bad perception of the redub. The result was a mess that was put in the midnight time slot and quickly canceled. While El Siguente Programa went on four seasons and was released in DVD, the only proof of Mauser y Pirulo's existence is the opening song, uploaded by the band that sang it, and arguably the only salvageable part of this farce.
  • Mega Babies, which rather-humiliatingly was made by the creators of SWAT Kats, is an absolutely definitive example of how Gross-Out Shows should not be made. Watch it if you dare.
  • The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil was a disastrous attempt at reviving the classic Bob Clampett TV series. 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.
  • 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.
  • The Ren and Stimpy Show's "Adult Party Cartoon" spin-off basically embodies all of the absolute worst things that Rocko's Modern Life and the original Ren and Stimpy get stereotyped as by critics (most-notably Refuge in Vulgarity).
  • Many of the "bottom tier" episodes in the SpongeBob SquarePants television series (such as To Love a Patty, One Coarse Meal and Face Freeze) randomly zig-zag between being this and being So Bad It's Good.
  • 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.
  • 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:
  • 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.
  • The Problem Solverz is incredibly close to objectively being the single worst thing that has ever appeared on Cartoon Network. Practically nothing about said show makes sense, and for the most part, absolutely nothing about said show is good. Its character designs are laughable at best, its animation style is unbelievably hideous and has a color palette that looks as if someone literally vomited rainbows all over it, its writing basically just exists and does nothing else other than be stupid and random, and even its actual characters are one-dimensional and obnoxious beyond belief. Surprisingly, however, TPS actually has a somewhat decently sized cult following despite said extremely crippling problems.
  • Velma. Premering on HBO-MAX in 2023, the first season of this show (all but guaranteed not to get a second) did the impossible twice over, it made an established character in the Scooby-Doo franchise even less likable than Scrappy-Doo (the Trope Namer for The Scrappy, that is), and it got the entire internet to agree on something, that this was the worst adaptation of that cartoon ever made. The premise seemed innocent enough, we have a prequel setting where Velma, Daphne, Fred, and Shaggy (called here by his actual name, Norville), who are friends, enemies, rivals, and/or potential love interests to each other, depending on their moods, all of them in high school. Amateur Sleuth Velma is attempting to find a Serial Killer preying on her classmates while also trying to find her mother, who has disappeared. The series was supposed to cement Velma as a lesbian icon and as the brains behind the founding of Mystery Inc, but unfortunately, they failed to put any effort into making it a good show, ending up with a cringe-inducing farce that is barely watchable. There is even a rumor going around the web that the show was purposely designed to be as bad as possible in order for advocates of the “cancel culture” phenomenon to use as fodder, although if that were true, it's hard to pin down just whose side they're on. It's one thing to have humor that is intentionally offensive, but the humor this show has is offensive and insulting, blatantly throwing pot shots at every demographic who might have reason to watch it, none of which are actually funny. One infamous scene has Velma claim “420” is code for “adults who still watch cartoons" - actually, it's slang for smoking cannabis, so basically she is claiming all potential viewers are stoners. This in itself is rather odd, seeing as the the plot of each episode is a convoluted mess that makes you wonder just what their target audience actually was. To wit, conservatives hit the roof when it was announced that Velma would be openly gay, but the show portrays her in a way only a misogynist and homophobe would (theoretically) appreciate, while also mocking “white male privilege” by making Fred, as Velma puts it, “such a whiny white man baby that his mommy cuts his steak and he hasn’t finished puberty so he has a small penis.” (On this note, Velma was using this as evidence as to why Fred was not the killer, meaning she was insulting him in order to clear his name; such an angle could have been hilarious if done right, but poor writing wasted every opportunity for humor.) Each and every character in this show, be it regulars, recurring, or one-shot, are rude, arrogant, cynical, hateful, and downright mean, the rare cases where affection is shown between them of the lustful perverted type, and even worse, the show seems rather proud of depicting them that way. Velma herself is, by far, the worst of the lot, being a narcissist, nihilist, and misanthrope who has alienated each and every one of her peers because she’s a smarter-than-the-rest Hispanic girl who incessantly reminds everyone of those two facts. Worst of all, Scooby-Doo himself isn’t even in the show! How can you make a decent adaptation where the iconic Lovable Coward is Adapted Out? Well, it seems you can’t. As of September 2023, the show has an abysmal rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 39% Tomatometer and 7% Audience, each score placing it firmly in the Rotten category.
  • 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?
  • The Prince was an M-rated cartoon on HBO that not only missed the mark, it aimed at the wrong mark. The show is a political satire with raunchy comedy not unlike Family Guy where the cast is the Royal Family of Great Britain, portraying the elderly members as Upper Class Twits and the younger ones (mostly Prince George) as Royal Brats. Their first problem here was marketing this series for millennials. A live action version of such a plot aimed at seniors might have worked, as such a generation grew up under the idea that you were supposed to show respect to a monarchy and listen to authoritative views, even from those who had really done nothing to earn it. Millennials, however? It is rare to even find British millennials (or Gen Zers) who care about such a concept or are eager to watch it lampooned. To give one example of the “humor” of the show, the highlight of the trailer has George telling a butler, “Excuse me, do you have any tea that doesn’t taste like piss?” Seems the “joke” there is that he’s a spoiled, sheltered, privileged part of the 1%, which is neither funny nor anything a viewer could relate to. (It seems the writers never learned from the failure of Allen Gregory, mentioned above.) After the COVID pandemic, threats of recession, a housing crisis, bad inflation, and a rise in homelessness, a plot mocking selfish and uppity snobs just isn’t as amusing as it used to be. The show hit a snag before it was even aired due to the passing of Prince Philip right before it was set to air; a Running Gag on this show is Philip being so incredibly old that there is doubt as to whether or not he’s still alive, which was now a lot less funny. (They did delay the debut by two months). As even That Other Wiki concurs, reception for the show was overwhelmingly negative. Before the series was officially released, Kayleigh Donaldson of Pajiba (who viewed a sneak peek preview), said it "lacks intent and appropriate targets." Joel Keller of Decider advised users not to watch it, claiming it was "essentially a royal version of Family Guy, and not nearly as biting and funny". Possibly the most honest review (from a viewer who did watch it) called it “Mirthless garbage and cheap shots, a boring ego project, a tired, classless, unnecessary attempt at cashing in on pase tabloid pop culture. I don’t like it!” Neither did anyone else; HBO Max canceled it after one season.


  1. ↑ That the film, which somehow received sponsorship from Russia's Ministry of Culture, was found to be linked to an embezzlement scheme by corrupt politicians doesn't help matters.
  2. ↑ That the infamous cancellation of Genndy Tartakovsky's planned Popeye movie coincided with the production of The Emoji Movie only added even more fuel to the fire.
  3. ↑ Internet reviewer Mr Enter pointed out that Norm inadvertently helped his supposed nemesis and the whole plot would have be avoided if he had remained in the arctic doing nothing
  4. ↑ He has interpreted by George Rose, an stage actor who has a long success in Musical theater, making his bad singing very unexplained. Sadly, it was his last work before he was murdered by his adopted son
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/So_Bad_It%27s_Horrible/Western_Animation?oldid=2045808"