History Main / DepravedKidsShowHost

* The Creepypasta ''Literature/NineteenNinetyNine'' features one of these as the owner of a local television station. "Mr. Bear," [[KnownOnlyByTheirNickname as he is known]], is a Satanist and a MisanthropeSupreme who uses his TV station to get kids to come to his house under the pretense of being a special guest star, only to drag them out into the woods and burn them alive as a sacrifice to Satan.

* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': This is the backstory for the ComicBook/PostCrisis incarnation of the Prankster.

*** Of course, next time that Gabbo and his puppeteer appeared on the show, they had become a ''very'' poor (and that is figurative and literal-Gabbo has deteriorated to the point he's falling apart) vaudeville act. [[NoodleIncident It is somewhat implied]] that the second time Gabbo was caught being a jackass after the above episode, he ''didn't'' dodge the bullet.

* From Finnish sketch comedy, there's the legendary "Nasse-setä" who is chronically hungover, and irritated at the anatomically incorrect drawings kids send him, taking offense at exceptionally large nose holes and lack of an actual nose in one of them and coming to the conclusion that the kid who drew it is a lazy slob who doesn't bother to draw any noses, let alone blow them because "you can't possibly blow a nose like this neatly!". His CatchPhrase was "Nasse-setä on harvinaisen vihainen!" [Uncle-Nasse is exceptionally angry!].

** A straighter example would be That Frog Kurtis, a Jive talkin' parody of Kermit the Frog, who grew tired of teaching kids on TV for free, went rogue and used his influence over children to have them rob adults for him.

Unlike his [[ExcitedKidsShowHost zany-go-lucky cousin]], who is excitable but pretty nice off-set as well, the Depraved Kids' Show Host is at the very least a {{Jerkass}}. When he's on air, he's Mr. Snuggles, happiest figure in Friendlytown. But when the cameras ''aren't'' rolling, he (and it's [[AlwaysMale almost always a he]]) is a sex, drug, and [[TheGamblingAddict gambling addict]] who drinks, cavorts, and swears enough to make a sailor blush. He smokes like a tilt, lashes out at techies, and above all, he absolutely ''[[ChildHater hates]]'' kids. That, or he [[PaedoHunt likes them a bit too much]].

-->-- '''Krusty the Clown''', host of '''The Krusty the Clown Show''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "My Fair Laddy"

-->-- '''Krusty the Clown''', host of '''The Krusty the Clown Show''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

* ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}

** [[http://strips.garfield.com/iimages/1989/ga891117.gif This]] example from the comic strip, where Binky rants about [[ClassicallyTrainedExtra how he's stuck performing on TV in a clown suit while on the air]].
--->'''Garfield:''' Third time this week. He's lost it.
** Also in the comic there was Binky's rival Uncle Roy who had his own side hinted toward in the May 25, 1988 strip when his co-star Mr. Blue Jeans delivers his mail consisting of a back tax notice, a copy of ''Leather and Bike Magazine'' and a letter from his ex-wife's lawyer.

* ''Series/LastWeekTonightWithJohnOliver'' featured the newly public-domain ''WesternAnimation/SteamboatWillie'' incarnation of WesternAnimation/MickeyHouse. He's a children's entertainer vying for a position at Chuck E. Cheese, but he's foul-mouthed, insults the guests, masturbates inside his costume, and sexually harasses John by grinding against him.

* [=AbsoluteBillion=]'s WebAnimation/YouTubePoop titled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpRb4McIxys The Gradual Mental Traumatization of a Kids' Show Host]] is about Steve from ''WesternAnimation/BluesClues'' undergoing serious SanitySlippage.

* Sketch show ''Radio/I'mSorryIllReadThatAgain'' opened a parody with these words:

* In ''Series/TreintaYUnMinutos'' a secondary character is Tio Horacio, the animator of a children's program of the '70s, he is not exactly a pervert but a greedy swindler who is hated by his former collaborators because he owes them money. Also in his program, he stated that children who were [[DeliberateValuesDissonance left-handed were abnormal and that they had to be forced to use their right hand.]]

This trope plays on the irony of a jovial character who interacts with children actually being a horrible person. As such, it's related to MonsterClown and other like tropes. The worst examples tend to be murderous or even turn into supervillains if left unchecked.

%% * Hazel and Cha-Cha from ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy'', sort of. See the back of issue 3: "The Hazel and Cha-Cha Show: Who needs drugs when you have cookies and guns?" And really, with those big cartoon characters heads...? The two are what the hosts of a kids show created by Quentin Tarantino would be like.

* ''ComicBook/SwampThing'' Vol. 2 #4 featured Barney Stryker. On-air, host of ''Uncle Barney's Good Neighbor Hour''. Off-air, possessed by a demon which fed on the suffering of children and responsible for the gruesome death of eleven kids.

* Outback Ollie from ''WesternAnimation/KangarooJackGDayUSA''. On camera he might seem-friendly, but off-camera he's an AxCrazy animal smuggler.

* ''{{Film/Garfield}}'': Well, actually a ''pet'' show host. While Happy Chapman may ''look'' like he lives up to his name, in reality he is very arrogant, allergic to cats, and wants a dog to star in his show to overshadow his more successful twin brother newscaster Walter.

* Mexican clown [[Series/LaCaravana Brozo's]] entire schtick is this; he's a depraved, homeless, bitter and a tad misogynistic. This is played for laughs... currently he has a Series/TheDailyShow type of program. Needless to say, Brozo was never supposed to be seen by kids to begin with.

* "Tia Penha" (Aunt Penha), one of the many characters of Brazilian Comedian Marcelo Médici, is a gender-flipped version of this. But unlike other examples, she's an outright [[JerkAss bitch]] even on air. She [[{{Grimmification}} subverts upbeat children' songs]] by [[EveryoneDiesEnding telling that everybody died in the end]] and that everybody WILL die ([[AndYourLittleDogToo your mommy included]]). She's also particularly fond of telling some truths about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

* Back in TheEighties, an episode of ''Les Dennis's Laughter Show'' featured Les parodying then-Creator/{{CBBC}} host Phillip Schofield. Dennis's version of Schofield gets steadily more drunk, attempts to murder NonHumanSidekick Gordon T. Gopher, and eventually has a prostitute/groupie in the studio who he tries to pass off as "Gordon's mum"! Bizarrely, Schofield himself, long after his CBBC career, was interviewed for Creator/Channel4's ''Zippy & George's Puppet Legends'', where he claimed that ''Gordon'' had a drink problem. This idea has since continued on the official Gordon T. Gopher [[CharacterBlog Twitter]], where the bio claims he's "Sober since 5/6/15".

** Played with in "Fool Me Once..." Dr. Stephen Fletcher is supposedly a lovable Arctic adventurer and wildlife expert who is presenting his adventures to little kids via web-cast from the wilderness. Instead, he's a con man faking the whole thing from his apartment, until he's murdered. Eventually it turns out that the con man really had a heart of gold: although he'd already gotten the money in advance, he put on a fun show for the kids long after he'd already gotten his money and even personally wrote replies to every kid who wrote him. He was quitting his con man ways out of love for his fiance, a woman he'd originally intended to con. So the lovable scientist is really a scheming conman who turns out to be [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished murdered because he's redeemed himself]]... whew.

-->'''Clerk:''' The charges are gambling, disorderly conduct, inciting a riot, attempted assault, attacking an officer and resisting arrest.\\

* In ''Series/TreintaYUnMinutos'' a secondary character is Tio Horacio, the animator of a children's program of the 70s, he is not exactly a pervert but a greedy swindler who is hated by his former collaborators because he owes them money. Also in his program, he stated that children who were [[DeliberateValuesDissonance left-handed were abnormal and that they had to be forced to use their right hand.]]

* ''[[Series/RupaulsDragRace Canada's Drag Race]]'': Season 1 winner Priyanka is Mark "Suki" Suknanan, former host of ''The Zone'' on the kids network Creator/{{YTV}}. For young Canadian viewers, seeing Suki not only in drag but also drinking, swearing, and doing suggestive performances must have been quite jarring.
* ''Series/{{Creepshow}}'': In "[[Recap/CreepshowS2E2PublicTelevisionOfTheDead Public Television Of The Dead]]" Bookberry is the host of a reading show for kids', where she comes off as a sweet child lover. Offscreen, she is just a racist asshole who's only who's a prima-donna along with swearing like a sailor, and has a quite troubled past with her father (which may be the cause of this).
* Dazzlingly zig-zagged in ''Series/{{Kidding}}''. Contrary to rumors, Mr. Jeff Pickles (aka Jeff Piccarillo) was never a military sniper or anything like that (this parodies urban legends about Fred Rogers), and in fact is a truly AllLovingHero who is terrified at his own repressed anger and potential for violence (stemming from an unhappy childhood and controlling father/executive producer). '''BUT''' his mental breakdown over the course of Season One, caused by his inability to process the death of one of his twin sons and the subsequent dissolution of his marriage due to needing to keep up his sunny onscreen persona ''and'' be the gentle soul he really is, does involve him killing a parrot when he takes offense at its vile language...but he secretly replaces it and tries to give the corpse a proper burial in private...then at his lowest point, a moment of weakness, he [[spoiler: hits his ex-wife's new boyfriend with his car and doesn't immediately admit it's his fault]]...but he ''does'' feel so much guilt that [[spoiler: when he realizes only he can save Peter's life by donating part of his liver, he does ''and'' and comes clean to his loved ones]]...and in the penultimate episode of Season Two he does [[spoiler: beat a man to a bloody pulp in full view of a busload of kids]]...but [[spoiler: it was to save his surviving son's life ''and'' kids everywhere actually love him more for what he did]].

--> If you could be a super hero, would you be Justice Guy?\\

** In Poland, there's a well-known anecdote which claims that the host of the live kids' show ''Mis z okienka'' ("Bear in the Window") once said "And now, dear kids, you can kiss the bear's ass!" during credits, unaware that the show was still on air.

* ''Series/BluePeter'''s long-running presenter Valerie Singleton has been "outed" far more times than she would care to count as a closet lesbian. This would have been a ''very'' big thing in the 1960s and 1970s when children's TV presenters were contractually required to be squeaky-clean in every conceivable respect. For some reason, the rumours started spreading and never stopped, despite the fact that what Val really ''was'' keen to keep hidden was a long heterosexual affair with fellow presenter Peter Purvis - something the BBC would have sacked them both for. Valerie Singleton is probably a case of [[MistakenForGay a lesbian who never was]] - perhaps because there were more sniggers in the idea that a morally upright children's TV presenter, a woman popularly thought of as being more saintly and clean-living than Mother Theresa, ''did'' have a big disreputable secret life to keep concealed.

* Big Brown Bary from [[VideoGame/{{Pico}} Pico vs Bear]], a [[BearsAreBadNews mentally-ill and murderous bear]] who was Pico's childhood idol, but Pico was sent to kill him to put an end to an "extremely stupid" hostage situation.

* In ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'', Matt Engarde is a children's show actor (specifically, the protagonist of in-universe {{tokusatsu}} ''The Nickel Samurai'') who goes to great lengths to preserve his "fresh as a spring breeze" image. Like most other defendants, he carries a tragic secret. [[spoiler: However, ''unlike'' every other defendant, he is in fact '''guilty''' of the crime he's accused of. He's a sociopath who drove his ex-girlfriend to suicide just to piss off his rival Juan Corrida, and later hired an assassin to murder Corrida while he videotaped it with a secret camera, all so he could blackmail said assassin. And he was entirely willing to frame his agent, Adrian Andrews, so he could get away scot-free]]. His rival, Juan Corrida, wasn't much better.

* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'': The ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' "for kids" sees Strong Bad imagining himself hosting a kids show in which he challenges kids to play "Where's The Cheat?". The problem is he doesn't show the kids a lot of respect, as we first see when he gives them an "FMinusMinus" because one of them said "Christopher Columbus" instead of "The Cheat". Immediately after, he gets increasingly frustrated when the kids try to tell him where The Cheat is hiding but only give vague answers like "He's over there!", leading him to start freaking out.

* Halloweenie from ''WebVideo/{{Halloweenie}}'' is sociopath, swears all the time (though it's constantly edited out), and seems to have nothing but contempt for his audience.

* This trope is the punchline of the video ''[[https://vimeo.com/4685463 Uncle Ray's House]]'', where Uncle Ray initially appears to be a wholesome and squeaky-clean kids' show host, but the theme song is briefly interrupted by a news bulletin revealing Uncle Ray to be a sex offender wanted by the police for exposing himself to schoolbuses. Once Uncle Ray finishes singing the theme song, he then notices a news ticker at the bottom of the screen reminding the audience that the police are searching for him and he [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere promptly makes a run for it]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FiremanSam'' special "Alien Alert", we have Buck Douglas, a television presenter of the TV show "Alien Quest". Lots of fans love him, even Norman Price, and want to be on his show. But, when fans are not around and/or he's off-screen, [[spoiler: he dresses up like an alien and remote-controls toy UFO's, starts fires (both by accident), and sends a huge space signal to outer space to surprise everyone in Pontypandy. Although, he's not that mean, he's not even against "The Hero Next Door", nor his fans. He feels sorry for what he has done after Fireman Sam caught him and showed his fans that he's a ''mean person''.]]

* The ''WesternAnimation/SuperMansion'' episode "Teacher and the Goof" has the titular Teacher, who on the surface is merely teaching lessons to her audience in a unnecessarily harsh tone, but is later revealed to have murdered or driven crazy several former co-stars of her show when she felt their presence on the show threatened her employment and is strongly implied to be a Nazi scientist. As if this isn't enough, she's also rather abusive and harsh towards her costumed sidekick The Goof.
* Invoked in-universe in ''WesternAnimation/GrizzlyTalesForGruesomeKids'': Uncle Grizzly is clearly enjoying the horrific fates of each episode's victim(s) and makes no bones about abusing his pet spider Spindleshanks, but unlike most examples this [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools compliments]] the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids decidedly child-unfriendly]] tone of the show. In addition, we never see him when he's not presenting the show, so for all we know it's [[MeanCharacterNiceActor just an act]].

* In ''Film/TheBananaSplits'', the animatronic stars of the titular children’s show are accompanied by a human co-star, Stevie. On air, he’s cheerful and zany but behind the scenes, he’s a drunken lech who resents the Splits for being more popular than him. [[spoiler: He eventually becomes the Splits’ [[AssholeVictim first victim.]]]]

** In "Road to Europe," it is revealed that the characters on Jolly Farm Revue, a show Stewie likes, are Depraved Kids' Show Hosts. Mother Maggie turns out to be a foul-mouthed ChildHater (her American counterpart seems to be quite more decent), while Pengrove Pig is a DirtyOldMan who draws obscene pictures inside the magic tome prop.

Unlike his [[ExcitedKidsShowHost zany-go-lucky cousin]], who's excitable but pretty nice off-set as well, the Depraved Kids' Show Host is at the very least a {{Jerkass}}. When he's on air, he's Mr. Snuggles, happiest figure in Friendlytown. But when the cameras ''aren't'' rolling, he (and it's [[AlwaysMale almost always a he]]) is a sex, drug, and [[TheGamblingAddict gambling addict]] who drinks, cavorts, and swears enough to make a sailor blush. He smokes like a tilt, lashes out at techies, and above all, he absolutely ''[[ChildHater hates]]'' kids. That, or he [[PaedoHunt likes them a bit too much]].

* [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-993 Bobble the Clown]] of the Wiki/SCPFoundation mixes this trope with MonsterClown to frightening effect. For starters, he's an EldritchAbomination, and anyone over the age of 10 who tries to watch his show gets knocked out instantly. Most of the time, he's just an AffablyEvil character who [[DissonantSerenity cheerfully teaches children how to become arsonists and cannibals]], but in one "episode" he lets his facade slip and he just glares at the kids for a half-hour straight. Long story short, he's ''pissed'' that the foundation is blocking his "show" from being aired.

* Similarly to the urban legends about Valerie Singleton, scurrilous stories persist that the squeaky-clean eponymous presenter of long-running French [[SaturdayMorningKidsShow kids' show]] ''Club Dorothée'' had a shameful past involving appearing in porn, both lesbian and straight, and that she had a backstage drugs problem. There appears to be absolutely no truth in these tales and they probably emerged for the same reasons as the innuendos about Valerie S - that it's funny to imagine a children's TV presenter doing wholly inappropriate things when not on camera, things that don't sit well with being a sort of "nanny" to the nation's children. It is also the case that the production company responsible for ''Club Dorothée'' and many [[Series/LesFillesDaCote other hit French series]] was run by a man who left a lot of resentment and bad feeling in his wake and attracted a reputation for dictatorial management combined with shoddy underhand dealings: attacking AB productions' hit show with damaging rumours would have been a way, for many bruised and resentful people, to get back at Jean-Luc Azoulay.

* Invoked for [[Creator/NickJr Face]] during the early days of Creator/NickRewind. Since the block targets adults, he has a habit of telling very mature jokes, some of which are very inappropriate for his original target audience of preschoolers. The 2012 New Year's Eve bumpers make this even more egregious, where he gets visibly and audibly drunk on camera, much to [[Creator/{{SNICK}} Stick Stickly's]] dismay.

* Floop from the first ''Film/SpyKids1'' film was a subversion. The movie paints him as the AffablyEvil BigBad almost immediately: his "Fooglies" are actually secret agents subjected to BalefulPolymorph, and he's building an army of super-powered robots to take over the world. However, it's [[HeelFaceTurn later revealed]] that [[spoiler:neither of those were his ideas, they were [[DragonAscendant Mr. Minion's]]. Floop is too preoccupied with genuine concern for his show.]]