History Main / SadistShow

* Pick one of the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' derived series from WB in the 90s, such as ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventure'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}},'' and tell yourself it isn't sadistic, you won't be able to.

* Pick one of the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' derived series from WB in the 90s, such as ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonsAdventure'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}},'' and tell yourself it isn't sadistic, you won't be able to.

There's a German word, ''{{Schadenfreude}}.'' It means "the joy you get at seeing other people's misfortune" (Schaden = "damage", Freude = "joy"). (This phrase is commonly mistranslated as "shameful joy.") In other words, the "point-and-laugh" school of comedy. The Sadist Show is built on it. In this kind of show, there are no sympathetic characters whatsoever, and nobody will ever PetTheDog. Everybody is both obnoxious and incompetent, beyond even the UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist. The audience can't really root for them, so the fun is in seeing the characters [[DeusAngstMachina suffer more than they deserve]], more than [[Literature/TheBible Job]], [[TheChewToy more than possibly everybody in the history of the human race combined]]. In short, it's a comedy, but not in the Shakespearean sense.

* ''Super Cruel and Terrible Tales of Mangaka''. It's a semi-documentary manga about the lives of typical down-on-their-luck mangaka, and it's darkly hilarious: between dysfunctional workplace, overbearing editor, and general sad state of the manga industry in Japan, it comes out as something that is genuinely funny. For example, [[spoiler:one of the mangaka just lost his position in a prestigious magazine and is forced to draw for no-name hentai publication for a shitty amount of money. To avoid unwanted children he can't afford to raise, he forces his wife to only do oral. This in turn makes the wife sick of him, and she abandoned her. The mangaka is now jobless and gets no sex at all.]] Hahaha.

* ''Anime/WonderEggPriority'' is a {{Reconstruction}} of this trope in regards to MagicalGirl anime: [[DysfunctionJunction the heroines all have emotional baggage]] and deep feelings of guilt over [[ILetGwenStacyDie the suicides of their friends]], the [[VictimOfTheWeek Victims of the Week]] are all women who have committed suicide, and their trauma is PlayedForDrama rather than comedy as the show deals with dark subject matter, including (but not limited to) suicide, self-harm, and sexual abuse. As the series progresses, however, the heroines gradually overcome their traumas and strive to [[EarnYourHappyEnding Earn Their Happy Ending]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Empowered}}'' is another example. Poor Emp is stuck with a suit that is only good at full power and when she's at her most confident...of which she rarely is and the suit is very fragile to boot. What's more, she can't wear any clothing under it, so she often finds herself humiliated because of it. Add to the fact that her so called teammates are largely jerkasses to her and you'll start wondering exactly how these people can even be considered superheroes.

* The humour in ''Film/TheHitmansWifesBodyguard'' comes from two main sources: Sonia (the titular wife) being CrazyIsCool (with an emphasis on crazy) and Bryce (the titular bodyguard) enduring all kinds of physical and psychological abuse (half of them because of Sonia's antics). He starts the film with a HappyEndingOverride from [[Film/TheHitmansBodyguard the previous film]], receives zero respect from anyone (including [[spoiler:his father]]), gets run over by cars and boats, drugged, stuffed in the trunk of a car, mistaken for dead, and that only covers half of the movie. The film ends with him [[spoiler:[[ScrewThisImOuttaHere jumping out of a small boat]] where he had been stuck for a month in the company of the Kincaids, now his adoptive parents, who spend their time having loud sex.]]

* ''Series/QueenForADay'' is a show in which five female contestants describe in excruciating detail their horrible RealLife problems (such as deaths in the family, cancer, job loss, poverty, homelessness, even ''mental illness'') in order to win prizes, the host often doing some jokes to avoid things from getting sour, with the only result often being that the audience had no chance but ''laugh'' at their predicaments. When the winner was announced, the other contestants were ushered off the stage and given ''nothing'', not even bus fare home.[[note]](From the viewer's standpoint, anyway. The losers actually did get a small consolation prize, such as a toaster oven or camera, but this was never mentioned on air to avoid getting liars as contestants.)[[/note]] This passed for family entertainment for ''twenty years'' on American TV.

* The series ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' 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 (though, in all fairness, a car is way more useful than a boat and gaybar in a terrifying neighborhood).

** Or shows like ''Series/{{Chopped}}'' and ''Series/CupcakeWars'' which is a stage by stage elimination show where 3 out of 4 chefs dreams gets crushed one chef at a time.

* ''Series/{{Lexx}}'' is another WorldHalfEmpty example. The characters are less than sympathetic, and while you'd kinda root for them at first, by the third season you'd wish [[KillItWithFire they died in the pilot]], for the ''entire Universe's'' sake. The third season tries to redeem them, but some even consider [[spoiler:[[CrossesTheLineTwice blowing up Heaven and Hell planets]]]] to deserve them the fate above. Fourth season 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 [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent President Buffoon]], the MadScientist partly responsible for Earth's destruction (and his {{Fangirl}}s), and of course, [[{{Satan}} the devil himself]]]].

* The SketchComedy series ''Series/CameraCafe'' is this UpToEleven. The two main characters are {{Anti Role Model}}s {{Villain Protagonist}}s with no redeeming qualities. Everyone else is a jerk, a ChewToy, an idiot or all three of them. It's a show where DomesticAbuse is PlayedForLaughs and everybody believes ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption.

* ''Webcomic/SomethingPositive'' is a form of Sadist Webcomic that is more about characters surviving their lives while the world continues to spit at them. (Of course, how sympathetic you think the characters are does depend on how you view the [[TheEeyore passive-aggressiveness]] and sadism they react with.)
* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'' has an entire cast of [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs idiots, sadists, and idiotic sadists]]. The main characters are Fighter, a nimrod who manages to be TooDumbToLive and [[NoOneShouldSurviveThat too stupid to die]] at the same time ([[ObfuscatingStupidity or maybe not]]); Black Mage, a psychotic murderer who kills any- and everyone that gets in his way (and a few others just for the hell of it); Red Mage, a {{Munchkin}} powergamer blissfully unaware of his own idiocy with no regard for anyone else's well-being; and Thief, a duplicitous, greedy elf supremacist with no conscience. All their opponents are of matching idiocy, and the king of the local kingdom wears the literal interpretation of BlackComedy for shoes. In fact, the most sympathetic main character other than White Mage, the voice of reason, is Black Mage, as he's at least tried to change. Well, before it was revealed that in order to obtain his doomsday attack, he sacrificed orphans to a dark god. Said doomsday attack is also powered by love; i.e. it siphons love out of the universe, and the divorce rate goes up by a few percents every time he uses it. Even White Mage is becoming more of a {{Jerkass}}, with her refusing to heal Black Mage when he has a spear through his head. Also, to add insult to injury, Thief almost never gets his comeuppance, whereas Black Belt (an actually slightly sympathetic character) is the only character yet to have been KilledOffForReal (even the [[BigBad Big Bads]] turn up in Hell occasionally).

* ''Webcomic/TheSnailFactory'' features characters which eat each other on a fairly regular basis.

* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick will dip into this, especially when she reviewed the {{Interquel}} to her all-time favourite Disney movie, ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''. She didn't have fun.

* ''Blog/BeochanPaiseanAgustAifeala'' doesn't torture it's characters all the time but when they do, it can get pretty violent.

* ''WebVideo/YouSuckAtPhotoshop'' is about an UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist going through a complete mental, emotional and life breakdown, while making faux-snarky Photoshop tutorial videos because being able to Photoshop is all he has.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': A megalomaniac alien, a deranged hedonistic robot, a paranormal-obsessed lunatic and his self-centered, sociopath sister and negligent father in an ignorant, cybergothic CrapsackWorld, wherein ''everyone'' within it is destined to fail at ''everything'' they try ''' ''almost all the time.'' ''' The only ones who usually come out okay are the ones who don't care about anything or are too dumb to know any better. Dib tries to foil Zim's latest plan to destroy Earth? Best case scenario is that Dib probably succeeds and Zim's plan fails, but Zim has learnt nothing, Gir has destroyed half the lab (again), Dib's forced to take the blame for whatever damage Zim wrought on the world, and Gaz walks by to rub salt into his wounds by calling him a kook that cares too much. [[PyrrhicVictory Pyrrhic victories]] and [[DownerEnding downer endings]] all around, nobody grows, and the world is worse off. Some variant of this happens in ''nearly every other episode''.

* ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'' is a cynical BlackComedy set in a CrapsackWorld where a lot of the humour comes from how miserable the eponymous brothers' lives are and how [[YankTheDogsChain they rarely succeed at anything]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', particularly after the [[WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobSquarePantsMovie first movie]]. It's a rare occasion that [[{{Jerkass}} jerks]] like Squidward did something positive toward [=SpongeBob=]. Although Squidward and Plankton usually take the most abuse, the other characters also receive a fair amount of AmusingInjuries, [=SpongeBob=] included at times. The show (namely in the Paul Tibbitt episodes, and even in the episodes before or after) pretty much revolves around pain.
* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy''. 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.]] Although, the Eds usually take the most abuse, the other characters also receive a fair amount of AmusingInjuries. The show pretty much revolves around pain.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'': It has a sadist Willy Wonka looking character for a prison warden.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'': Most episodes revolve around ways to just to torture Timmy in the cruelest ways possible. Heck, even his parents get in on the act more often than not. In addition, Timmy is rarely heroic and most of his exploits are usually for selfish reasons.

* ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'': Almost all of the humour comes from the main characters being complete dicks to each other. Tuddrussel abuses Larry, Larry tries to kill Otto, Otto attacks Tuddrussel, etc. The most vicious cases of this are when the writers had decided to make entire episodes dedicated to making sure that Otto is completely miserable, like have him abandoned on islands only inhabited by blood-thirsty baboons. If it's not the main guys, you can bet that some of the jokes come from ether Tuddrussel beating people up for stuff they didn't even do or historical figures being stupid or jerks and their inventions or ideas cause mayhem.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'': When the main character getting an erection at the idea of his mother's death and the RunningGag of Lana trying to kill him is not to be taken seriously, you know you have one of these.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Sidekick}}'': The show takes place in a city which is such a hive of villainy that there is an entire section where being a good person is literally forbidden. There are superheroes to fight the villains, but every single one we see is completely useless, and the only one we ever actually see doing something is only slightly more moral than the villains he fights. It's widely accepted in this universe that it's the job of the sidekicks, the real focus of the show (hence the name), to do all the real work while the superhero takes all the credit. Unfortunately, all the sidekicks we see are either completely incompetent, {{Jerkass}}es with little to no concern for those around them, or both. The only two characters who get a ''relatively'' sympathetic portrayal are Eric and Kitty, both of whom are subjected to a constant stream of mockery and humiliation by everyone including each other.

* ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'', as a parody of the shamelessly sleazy and exploitative nature of actual reality TV, goes as far as being hosted by a sadist who pretty much personifies the show's love of hurting and humiliating its characters and making them as miserable as much as possible. By the time of the fourth season, the original cast is so sick of all the hellacious torture they've gone through that many have sworn to never be on the show again in any capacity, only coming back when called for because of their legally binding contracts. DJ ''freaked'' when he found himself back at Camp Wawanakwa in the fourth season for a challenge, and he was there as a ''judge''.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' 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.

* ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'':
** The series 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.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'', which provides the page image. 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 [[RunningGag kicks Odie off the table,]] ''[[CrossesTheLineTwice then drops a freaking vase on him.]]'' Even worse was the time he [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute smooshed a spider with his thumb]]...then, after remembering that the spider had dropped a contact lens, reached over and [[EvilIsPetty smooshed that too]].

* The humour in ''Film/TheHitmansWifesBodyguard'' comes from two main sources: Sonia (the titular wife) being CrazyAwesome (with an emphasis on crazy) and Bryce (the titular bodyguard) enduring all kinds of physical and psychological abuse (half of them because of Sonia's antics). He starts the film with a HappyEndingOverride from [[Film/TheHitmansBodyguard the previous film]], receives zero respect from anyone (including [[spoiler:his father]]), gets run over by cars and boats, drugged, stuffed in the trunk of a car, mistaken for dead, and that only covers half of the movie. The film ends with him [[spoiler:[[ScrewThisImOuttaHere jumping out of a small boat]] where he had been stuck for a month in the company of the Kincaids, now his adoptive parents, who spend their time having loud sex.]]

* ''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. [[FridgeHorror On a nightly basis, thanks to future technology - but she still feels everything.]]

** However what made ''Ed, Edd & Eddy'' (the movie specifically) so incredibly awesome is that ''of all shows'', ''this one'' depicts DomesticAbuse [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped as completely serious and awful]].

* Pick one of the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' derived series from WB in the 90s and tell yourself it isn't sadistic, you won't be able to.

* Several shows like ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'', the ''Creator/TexAvery'' shorts and ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' have their source of humor based on this trope, complete with violence that is over-the-top but still family-friendly (no blood or gore involved).

* ''WebVideo/TheAnnoyingOrange''. Possibly the only series ever to make cutting guest characters in half a OnceAnEpisode gag.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' - the moral of the show appears to be "Life sucks, then you die. Then life continues to suck, and you die ''again''." And if you are a reasonable child SurroundedByIdiots or a NiceGuy in a WorldOfJerkass, you're going to get the short end of the stick quite often.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents''. Most episodes revolve around ways to just to torture Timmy in the cruelest ways possible. Heck, even his parents get in on the act more often than not. In addition, Timmy is rarely heroic and most of his exploits are usually for selfish reasons.

* ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad''. Almost all of the humour comes from the main characters being complete dicks to each other. Tuddrussel abuses Larry, Larry tries to kill Otto, Otto attacks Tuddrussel, etc. The most vicious cases of this are when the writers had decided to make entire episodes dedicated to making sure that Otto is completely miserable, like have him abandoned on islands only inhabited by blood-thirsty baboons. If it's not the main guys, you can bet that some of the jokes come from ether Tuddrussel beating people up for stuff they didn't even do or historical figures being stupid or jerks and their inventions or ideas cause mayhem.
* ''Fraidy Cat''. The premise alone is cosmically sadistic; A cat is on his last life, and he has to avoid calling out numbers 1-9, or else his previous lives will come and make things worse for him.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}.'' When the main character getting an erection at the idea of his mother's death and the RunningGag of Lana trying to kill him is not to be taken seriously, you know you have one of these.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Sidekick}}''. The show takes place in a city which is such a hive of villainy that there is an entire section where being a good person is literally forbidden. There are superheroes to fight the villains, but every single one we see is completely useless, and the only one we ever actually see doing something is only slightly more moral than the villains he fights. It's widely accepted in this universe that it's the job of the sidekicks, the real focus of the show (hence the name), to do all the real work while the superhero takes all the credit. Unfortunately, all the sidekicks we see are either completely incompetent, {{Jerkass}}es with little to no concern for those around them, or both. The only two characters who get a ''relatively'' sympathetic portrayal are Eric and Kitty, both of whom are subjected to a constant stream of mockery and humiliation by everyone including each other.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy''. What else can you call a show where the Grim Reaper is the OnlySaneMan of the main characters?

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1346208416037205400

[[quoteright:203:[[ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Garfield_01_200_9865.jpeg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:203:"...for some of us."]]

* ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan''. Everyone's stupid, evil, a FailureHero or some combination of the three, the characters almost ''always'' fail at achieving even the simplest of goals (i.e. just wanting peace and quiet), several videos conclude on a DownerEnding or [[NoEnding the characters being in the same place were they started with no resolution]], and ''nobody'' ever seems to grow or learn from their mistakes -- and even in the cases where that happens, AesopAmnesia and StatusQuoIsGod will make sure to rear their ugly heads.

* ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan''. Everyone's stupid, evil, a FailureHero or some combination of the three, the characters almost ''always'' fail at achieving even the simplest of desires (i.e. just wanting peace and quiet), several videos conclude on a DownerEnding or [[NoEnding the characters being in the same place were they started with no resolution]], and ''nobody'' ever seems to grow or learn from their mistakes -- and even in the cases where that happens, AesopAmnesia and StatusQuoIsGod will make sure to rear their ugly heads.

* [[WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland Battle for Dream Island]] may look like a lighthearted show, but [[CrapSaccharineWorld can be quite mean-spirited]] as each contestant gets eliminated one by one (until the final 3), you get to see them get locked in a metal box [[{{Understatement}} FOR MONTHS]]! This is also justified due to the fact that when a character dies, they don't just die, but are perfectly fine in the next shot, but actually dead, and need to be revived.

* Pretty much anything by ''Creator/GiseleLagace'': ''Webcomic/MenageA3'', ''Webcomic/StickyDillyBuns'', ''Webcomic/EerieCuties'', ''Webcomic/MagickChicks'', ''Webcomic/DangerouslyChloe''. If there's a decent character in the story, expect them to get short changed and humiliated by the more {{Jerkass}} characters.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', particularly after the [[WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobSquarePantsMovie first movie]]. It's a rare occasion that [[{{Jerkass}} jerks]] like Squidward did something positive toward [=SpongeBob=]. Although Squidward and Plankton usually take the most abuse, the other characters also receive a fair amount of AmusingInjuries, SpongeBob included at times. The show (namely in the Paul Tibbitt episodes, and even in the episodes before or after) pretty much revolves around pain.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': A megalomaniac alien, a deranged hedonistic robot, a paranormal-obsessed lunatic and his self-centered, sociopath sister and negligent father in an ignorant, cybergothic CrapsackWorld wherein ''everyone'' fails at ''everything'' they try ''' almost all the time'''. The only ones who usually come out okay are the ones who don't care about anything or are too dumb to know any better. Dib tries to foil Zim's latest plan to destroy Earth? Best case scenario is that Dib probably succeeds and Zim's plan fails, but Zim has learnt nothing, Gir has destroyed half the lab (again), Dib's forced to take the blame for whatever damage Zim wrought on the world, and Gaz walks by to rub salt into his wounds by calling him a kook that cares too much. [[PyrrhicVictory Pyrrhic victories]] and [[DownerEnding downer endings]] all around, nobody grows, and the world is worse off. Some variant of this happens in ''nearly every other episode''.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': A megalomaniac alien, a deranged hedonistic robot, a paranormal-obsessed lunatic and his self-centered, sociopath sister in an ignorant, cybergothic CrapsackWorld wherein ''everyone'' fails at ''everything'' they try ''' almost all the time'''. The only ones who usually come out okay are the ones who don't care about anything or are too dumb to know any better. Dib tries to foil Zim's latest plan to destroy Earth? Dib probably succeeds and Zim's plan fails, but Zim has learnt nothing, Gir has destroyed half the lab (again), Dib's forced to take the blame for whatever damage Zim wrought on the world, and Gaz walks by to rub salt into his wounds by calling him a kook that cares too much. [[PyrrhicVictory Pyrrhic victories]] and [[DownerEnding downer endings]] all around, nobody grows, and the world is worse off. Some variant of this happens in ''nearly every other episode''.