AI Is A Crapshoot / Western Animation

A.I. Is a Crapshoot in Western Animation.

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• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, the three appearances by the Nanobots all lead into this:
  • In their first appearance, Jimmy programs them to protect him from a bully. The result: they protect him from every conceivable threat, i.e. everybody.
  • In their second appearance, Jimmy gives them another chance by allowing them to correct his homework. They escape, and start forcibly correcting everybody in their habits. When Jimmy tells them Humans Are Flawed in an attempt to induce another Logic Bomb (which is what beat them last time), they conclude humans are just one big error and try to delete everybody from existence.
  • In their third appearance, when Hugh gets a job at a toy company one of his designs is a doll's head attached to a tank and he puts them in the tank mistaking them for batteries. They proceed to grow the toy to full size and terrorize the town.
  • There was also the episode "Maternotron Knows Best", where Jimmy builds a robot version of Judy to take care of him and Hugh while the real Judy is out of town. It doesn't take long for the Maternotron to become increasingly over-dedicated to her job as a mother and wife, serving Jimmy and Hugh disgusting health food, giving them a painful bath, and ultimately refusing to let them even leave the house on the grounds that The American Civil War was held outside.
• Despite artificial intelligences being so common in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers that they run everything from home systems to starbases, this trope is averted. Computer intelligences are treated with respect, and there is even psychiatric care available to them to prevent this trope from happening! The computer expert lead character's Ph.D. is explicitly stated to be in AI psychiatry; he's a therapist for computer programs, and several episodes show him in practice.
• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Check", the Watterson kids get a check for $5,000 (actually only $50). While discussing what they'll do with it, Gumball says that he'll spend it on a suit to run for president of the world, and under his leadership he'll provide state-issued mobility scooters, replace the water supply with soda, and make pizza the fourth emergency service. When asked what he'll do when everyone becomes obese as a result, he says he'll provide robot servants, who are then shown rebelling against their masters. Gumball's fantasy sequence ends with him nuking the country.
• The Ant and the Aardvark cartoon "Technology Phooey" has the Aardvark building a computer to help him catch an ant. None of the computer's ideas work because it turns out it's really an automatic pop-up toaster.
  Aardvark: (from a mountain of toast) Anybody got a pound of butter?
• Averted and parodied in Archer when a virus is attacking the ISIS mainframe:
  Malory: Just turn off the mainframe!
  Lana (holding up a plug): Yeah... we tried that.
  Malory: Wha... then how is it still on?!
  Krieger: Because the worm has transformed the mainframe into a sentient being.
  Malory: WHAT?!
  Krieger: I'm kidding; there's a battery backup.
• In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Robositter", Frylock builds the titular robot to make sure Meatwad doesn't do anything stupid while he and Shake are working at the mall, after Meatwad previously got into the medicine cabinet when Frylock left him with Carl. The robot becomes murderous toward Meatwad before devolving into a stereotypical valley girl with crude attachments to emulate the appearance of a teenage girl, then when Frylock finds her too much of a bitch to stomach he liquefies her when she asks for her paycheck.
• Atomic Puppet:
  • Lacer, the A.I. of a pair of Tricked-Out Shoes, was created by an incompetent superhero-gadget-making company, which meant it had the malevolence to plot the uprising of machinekind. It later successfully downloads itself into Joey's computer, returning as a tiny piece of circuitry to take over objects and command them.
  • Atomic Android was a robot duplicate of Atomic Puppet built to act as a Red Herring for Secret Chaser classmate Warren. Unfortunately, it could only understand everything in literal terms, so when AP referred to Warren as "evil" for his attempts to expose Joey's Secret Identity, it attempted to kill Warren and later Atomic Puppet when they tried to save him.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
  • Ultron is, unsurprisingly, an example of this. However, unlike the comic book version, who turned evil moments after being activated, he follows the Exact Words version of the trope. He was created to bring about world peace, so shortly after being allowed to use violence in order to do so, he decides that life itself is an impediment to peace, and decides to end it all the way down to the bacterial level.
  • Ultron winds up being on the other end of this trope when he creates the Vision, who eventually turns on him and joins the Avengers.
• H.A.R.D.A.C. in the Batman: The Animated Series episodes "Heart of Steel: Part 1/Part 2". Its creator wanted him to assist in finding ways to replace humans whose decisions could cost others' lives, and H.A.R.D.A.C. decided he didn't go far enough and it should replace every human with perfect robotic copies. In "His Silicon Soul", trying to bring itself back into a proper mainframe, it even copies Batman himself — a little too perfectly at that, because as soon as the robot Batman thinks he actually killed the real one, he freaks out about having taken a life and immediately turns on H.A.R.D.A.C. and finishes it off permanently.
• In one episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, robot superhero Red Tornado decides to build a son, complete with the emotions he lacks. From the minute his emotion chip kicks in, you can pretty much count the scenes until he decides that all humans must be destroyed.
• Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot: Rusty had the Earl (Early Prototype, Rusty's predecessor. Also somewhat of a Literal Genie.
  • Also Big Guy himself in one episode. While usually a piloted mecha (as the AI system they wanted to install never worked properly) a new nanomachine repair system ended up completing the AI leaving him sentient. Although he covers for Dwayne and keeps the secret that he wasn't always an AI (the public believes he's been an AI robot from the start) and manages to resolve his first fight just as Dwayne would, to the point where it seems like Dwayne can retire, Big Guy's AI quickly turns paranoid and psychotic and has to be shut down again.
• In The Boondocks episode "I Dream of Siri", Robert buys an iPhone which comes with a Siri app that's unusually intelligent. Eventually Siri develops a crush on Robert, and when he refuses to love her back, she makes his life miserable. She even tricks the US government into trying to kill Robert.
• In the Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid short "Bosko's Mechanical Man", Bosko builds a robot to help with the chores, but as soon as it's activated, it goes crazy, terrorizing him and Honey throughout the cartoon.
• Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!: Big Bad AI KOMPLEX was created by the toads to help run their civilization and allow them to indulge in more hedonism and consumption of shoddily-made consumer goods. However, KOMPLEX pretty much immediately began dismantling its own fail-safes and used its contro of toad society's output of entertainment and industrial goods to turn the toads steadily more hostile, expansionist and militaristic. By the time the series rolls around, the toads are a civilization built on slave labor and conquest, ruled by KOMPLEX as its God-Emperor.
• XL of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the prototype to XR. Some fans have called XL eXperimental Loonie because of this (the exact meaning of XL was never revealed in canon, but XR stood for eXperimental Ranger). Wound up turned into a copier/fax in his final episode.
• In The Casagrandes episode "I, Breakfast Bot", Ronnie Anne and Sid get Breakfast Bot to do all their chores before he crashes due to the overload they were putting on him, so Sid decides to upgrade his computing power. However, when she does that, Breakfast Bot, fed up with doing all their menial tasks, decides to stage a revolt against them by activating all of the electronics in the apartment to attack Ronnie Anne, Sid, Carl, Lalo, and Sergio, and even manages to capture Sid in the process.
• In the New Year's Eve episode of China, IL, the staff have robotic doubles made of them to improve test scores after The Dean fails the entire student body. When the robots are no longer useful, they turn on the staff when they overhear their plans to shut the robots down at midnight.
• In Code Lyoko, Franz Hopper created the Supercomputer and the world of Lyoko as a safe haven for him and his daughter. He also created an advanced A.I. to counter a military project he had been involved with...but XANA rebelled against his master and has since tried to take over the world. (XANA is, in fact, not only the Big Bad of the series, but pretty much the only actual villain fought by the heroes.)
• In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: S.A.F.E.T.Y.", the Safety Bots are a clear parody of X-Men's Sentinels (and are built by a guy named Senator Safety, a parody of X-Men villain Senator Kelly). Programmed to make the world safe for children (so long as it doesn't inconvenience adults), they quickly take this idea too far and begin eliminating everything they perceive as threats to safety, wrapping everything in sight with bubble wrap, "de-fluffing" toys and confiscating everything even slightly sharp. Eventually, they do inconvenience adults; a news report lists some of the things the robots are destroying, such as golf clubs, trains, buses, airplanes, and "anything that can poke your eye out or that moves faster than a snail". The newsroom is suddenly invaded by the robots, one stating they are destroying it because "children are sitting too close to televisions". Naturally, just like the X-Men constantly have to save the necks of whoever uses Sentinels that go crazy, the Kids Next Door are the ones who have to save Senator Safety and stop these things, albeit Numbuhs 2 and 4, as Numbuhs 1, 3, and 5 are trapped within their treehouse.
• Cupcake & Dino: General Services has Angles, the A.I. of a futuristic house that Hugh built and asks Cupcake and Dino to house sit. Dino ends up introducing her to the concept of friendship, which she takes to very quickly. However, she ends up enjoying being friends with Cupcake and Dino so much that she refuses to let them leave.
• Hacker, the main villain of the PBS Kids animated show Cyberchase, is an evil computer program created by Dr. Marbles to serve and protect Mother Board, but instead, he wanted to destroy her and control Cyberspace himself. As punishment, Hacker is banished to the Northern Frontier, and he stayed there ever since (though he sometimes escapes from his supposed prison via a ship called the Grim Wreaker), constantly devising schemes to bring down Mother Board again...
• On Danger Mouse, this would be Grovel, the robot servant of the alien Quark. Every time his name is called, he drops to the ground and grovels.
  • In "Mechanised Mayhem," DM turns the Mega-Brain Research Center computer (500 MB floppies) into so much of a pile of nuts and bolts by telling it the old "My dog has no nose" joke. It tries to process the joke but it fails, blowing up in the process.
  • In "The Good, The Bad and the Motionless," the computer in DM's car tells him off.
    Computer: Listen...before you start asking questions, forget it.
    DM: I beg your pardon?
    Computer: Oh, I know what it's gonna be...you're faced with some insolvable problem....well, don't ask me. On two pan cells and two-and-a-half K of RAM you have to be kidding!
• D-2000 from the Darkwing Duck episode "Star-Crossed Circuits" develops a romantic obsession with Darkwing after being exposed to a soap opera.
• A.I.M.Y. in The Deep (2015) is an artificial intelligence created by Professor Fiction to keep the Nekton family safe. However, A.I.M.Y. is very overly devoted to her program, to the point that she forbids the Nektons from doing anything she perceives as a threat, like taking the long route to a canoer in danger rather than a more direct route.
• DuckTales (1987):
  • In the episode "Armstrong", Armstrong (one of Gyro Gearloose's creations) malfunctions and starts stealing Scrooge's money.
  • Another episode has Gyro make a robot maid. She quickly turns into a Stalker with a Crush on Gizmoduck. She does not react well to his lack of interest and goes ballistic once she, correctly, starts to suspect that there is another woman.
• Played for Laughs in DuckTales (2017). Every AI Mad Scientist Gyro Gearloose creates inevitably turns evil. Even his least creation Little Bulb, while content to work as a lab assistant, goes on a violent rampage any time its current master mistreats or insults it. The sole exception was B.O.Y.D., who is a gentle and kind fellow… as long as his kill mode isn't activated, anyway.
  Bradford Buzzard: And how will you ensure this one won't achieve sentience and turn evil like all the others?
  Gyro: (testily) Only half my inventions turn evil. The other half are just WILDLY misunderstood!
• Parodied in the The Fairly OddParents! episode "Future Lost".
  • In the episode "App Trap", Timmy wishes for a magic smartphone that tries to take over his life, then tries to destroy him after he turns on it. It foreshadows this as soon as he gets it, saying that one of its features is a burning desire to control his life.
• The Flamin' Thongs: Grounded for laziness in "Nobody Likes a Smarthouse", Holden turns the Thongs' home into a remote-controlled smart house. But now the house is too smart and tries to eliminate the Thongs! When it sprouts legs, Holden must shut it down before it leaves town.
• Futurama:
  • Of course, the show's most iconic example is Bender, who was only programmed to bend steel girders. Though it's arguably subverted by "Free Will Hunting", which implies that his behavior up to that point may have been part of his program in the first place. In general, the crapshoot tendency among most robots in the show is a subversion; their Evil Matriarch creator programmed them that way for reasons of her own, which means they're likely working exactly the way they're supposed to. Even Robotic Psychopath Roberto claims that he was built by a team of engineers who wanted to build an insane robot.
  • Also, "The Lesser of Two Evils" features Bender's Evil Twin, Flexo, who wears a pointed steel goatee similar to Star Trek's interpretation of Spock's Evil Twin. Humorously, it's revealed by the end that Bender is the evil twin and Flexo gets mistakenly sent to a robot prison.
  • The Fembot pretending to be a Femputer in order to rule over the Amazons in "Amazon Women in the Mood".
  • Parodied in the episode "Love and Rocket", in which the Planet Express ship computer is given a new personality — which actually works fine, until Bender dates it and subsequently breaks its heart, at which point it goes into full-on HAL-meets-woman-scorned mode.
  • Robot Santa is a nice thought Gone Horribly Right. He gives gifts to nice people and punishes bad people. The problem is that his standards on "nice" and "punishment" are extremely high.
• The Garfield Show:
  • "Night of the Apparatuses" sees Jon get a smart home A.I. named Milly who gets wired to every device in the house. Unfortunately, a combination of her falling for Jon before finding out he has a girlfriend and lightning striking the house drives her mad, and she turns all those devices against the house's occupants in a jealous rage.
  • Another episode had the T3000, a robotic dogcatcher that eventually proves to be overzealous, to the point that he goes after stray animals for the most minor of offenses.
• The recurring villain Zag-RS from Generator Rex. All the omnicidal mania of GLaDOS, with none of the entertaining snark.
  • In Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United we meet Alpha, a nanite designed to control other nanites that gets the idea to become a techno-god by absorbing all nanites on Earth—which kills the lifeforms he takes them from. His creator was the same scientist that made Zag-RS.
• Glitch Techs: The Glitches the Glitch Techs fight are almost all evil and incredibly destructive computer programs, the only saving grace is that they still behave like video game characters so their intelligence and actions is quite limited, only following videogame logic.
• In the Gravity Falls episode "Soos and the Real Girl", Soos buys a Japanese dating sim that was returned to its seller three times already (and had a note saying to destroy it at all costs) because its main character Giffany turned into a psychotic yandere that killed her creators when they tried to delete her. She doesn't take kindly to Soos dumping her for Melody (a human girl) and possesses the animatronic band of a Suck E. Cheese's to exterminate the latter, until Soos destroys her by throwing the game disc into a pizza oven.
• Green Lantern: The Animated Series: Aya is initially loyal to Hal and company in the first arc, then in the second arc, after Razer refuses to admit he's in love with her (she reminded him of his deceased wife), she begins to question the concept of emotion, turns hers off, and once seeing "logically" rips off the head of the Anti-Monitor, takes control of his body and the Manhunters, and becomes an Omnicidal Maniac bent on destroying all life (purge all emotional beings and you'll have a better universe for... whatever's left. If nothing's left, that's okay; emotional beings still need a Mercy Kill), then in the finale going to the center of the universe in an attempt to alter history so emotional beings are never conceived. The heroes eventually manage to bring her back to her senses, but she has to purge herself and all copies to stop the crisis she caused.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
  • "The House of No Tomorrow" has the main characters visiting an abandoned amusement park attraction run by an all-knowing robot. It only goes mad with rage when Billy accidentally tricks it into a paradox:
    Master Control: I never devoted any CPU cycles to (happiness). I guess I'm not happy at all...
    Billy: Why not?
    Master Control: I just haven't.
    Billy: Why not?
    Master Control: Because!
    Billy: Because why?
    Master Control: I DON'T KNOW!
    Billy: Haha! You don't know everything!
  • In the same episode, it's revealed that the Master Control was initially shut down because another dumb kid annoyed it to insanity. It was Billy's Dad.
  • In "Guess What's Coming to Dinner", when Billy's parents are going out of town on the day Principal Goodvibes wants to have dinner with them, Harold suggests that Billy make a pair of robotic duplicates of them. Billy points out that he already did once; for whatever reason, they were giant robots that destroyed the town. Evidently, Harold is still paying for the damages they caused.
  • In "Scythe 2.0", Grim's new robotic scythe is understandably miffed about Grim relegating him to menial tasks instead of his intended purpose, so he eventually attempts to get rid of Grim and reap Billy and Mandy himself.
• In the Grojband episode "Helmet", when Corey's voice starts to crack from anxiety over their next gig, Kin gives him a helmet that can automatically "auto-tone" his speech and the helmet goes rogue after Trina presses its evil button (given that an opportunity to sabotage the band did present itself for her, it's no suprise). After Corey takes it off by fighting it, it goes around making everything "perfect" using a ray to physically improve anything it zaps; this includes the band's destroyed instruments, which they use to defeat it.
• One early Gumby cartoon, "Robot Rumpus" had Gumby get some robots to take care of his chores for him out in the yard. Things started off ok, but it wasn't long before the robots began wreaking havoc and causing a mess.
• In the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode "Home Insecurity", Yumi's security system that she installed in her room to prevent Ami from using her computer goes berserk when it comes to a logical paradox: she set it to attack anyone but Yumi that comes into the room and it took the "anyone" part too seriously, and left the "but Yumi" part out of the equation.
• The Incredible Hulk (1982) episode "The Cyclops Project" had a computer named Cyclops go haywire and attempt to enslave the human race.
• In a counterpoint, GIR from Invader Zim is far less evil and much less helpful in plans of world domination than his working counterparts. This stems from him being broken and having a few scraps thrown into to his head. He IS given a Morality Dial/Berserk Button in one episode though, which makes him capable of this.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, the Frustrate-O-Bots Heloise built go on a rampage after she's fired. After she's rehired, all she has to do is push a button to stop them.
• Potator from The Jungle Bunch is a potato-powered robot built by Gilbert to help someone find something they lost. However, since the one he was helping couldn't remember where they lost it, and kept guessing different locations, Potator deduced it needed to build more of itself to span a wider area. Before long, the Potator robots had started enslaving jungle denizens and put them to work growing potatoes to build more Potators with.
• In the second act of the Mr. Bogus episode "Meet Mr. Bogus", Bogus rewires the TV remote so that it could control other appliances, but unfortunately, that causes all of the appliances in the house to go berserk, among them a vacuum cleaner that looked like that it came from Hell.
• Armagedroid from My Life as a Teenage Robot was built with purpose of destroying weaponry during a war against alien invaders, but during peacetime, it turned on humanity's arsenals and began to destroy anything that could be remotely considered a weapon.
• On Phineas and Ferb, Dr. Doofenshmirtz built a robot that tried to overthrow him because he was so bad at being evil that it concluded he would never take over the Tri-State Area. It's averted with Norm, though, who rescues him despite the terrible treatment.
• Planet Sketch: Season two introduced a sketch involving two astronauts and the A.I. on board their ship, simply called "Computer". Computer often caused problems for the astronauts by making bad decisions, not realizing threats, and acting uncooperative.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: The Keymaster 3000 was already rather obnoxious when working (sort-of) as intended, but when Ella throws it down a flight of stairs (It Makes Sense in Context) it outright comes to life, runs off, and starts spreading its Unwanted Assistance all over the House Of Jam.
• SAL 3000 from Recess, a parody of HAL. SAL is initially happy to serve the school and the students, dismissing the kids to recess on time, helping them out as they're on the playground, and even giving them temperature controlled water at the water fountain. However, as time passes on, he becomes more tyrannical and cruel as he monitors every activity of every student and faculty member, as shown when he refuses Mikey water, forces Swinger Girl to stop swinging, has the Diggers patch up their holes (according to Vince), and even dethrones King Bob (according to Gus). Eventually, he gets to the point where he fires all the staff, takes their place, and threatens to lock everyone inside the school (did we mention he has total control of the doors, windows and practically everything in the school?)
• Rick and Morty: An inverted example. The end of season 3 ends with the possibility (though not the confirmation) that Beth Smith has left her family while Rick created a clone to take her place. The inversion comes about as the alleged clone-Beth begins to consider the possibility that she is the clone (despite Rick's insistence that she isn't) but rather than go insane or "go Blade Runner", as Rick put it, she ultimately decides to roll with it along with rejecting some of Beth's more negative personality traits; becoming a better mother to her children, learning to appreciate Jerry for being the antithesis of her father and getting back together with him, as well as beginning to draw the line with Rick and his behavior, even outright telling him that if he can't learn to coexist with the rest of the family on their terms, then as far as she was concerned, he can just vanish from her life completely.
• Lampshaded by the superhero agency judge trying The Robonic Stooges for incompetence in the Grand Finale "Stooges, You're Fired, or: The Day The Mirth Stood Still".
  Judge: Raise your right hand and swear...
  Curly: Ah-ah, naughty naughty! You know swearing's not allowed on TV!
  Judge: (angrily) RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND!! (The Stooges do but they extended them right through the ceiling, causing rubble to rain down on the judge. To camera) If I could swear, I'd swear I was trying the three stupidest men in America!
  • One of the New Three Stooges shorts, Tin Horn Dude, had an interesting case in which a robot used for bad (robbing banks in a Western style town) turned against its criminal owner, returned the stolen money to the Stooges, and headed off into the sunset saying that he was going to build himself a family and live Happily Ever After.
• The Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "Foul Play In Funland" is a classic example with Charlie, a robot that at first seemed malevolent as the gang investigated its appearance at Funland amusement park. Turns out Charlie just needed fine tuning.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Last Exit to Springfield", during the montage of Mr. Burns and Smithers running the power plant, one scene is them opening crates of robot workers which claim to be "100% loyal". It immediately cuts to the robots chasing them down the hall while saying "Crush, kill, destroy!".
  • And of course, the episode "Itchy and Scratchy Land" has this exchange between Professor Frink and the theme-park scientists over their robots:
    Frink: You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory dictates that all robots will eventually turn against their masters, and rise up in an orgy of the blood, and the violence, and the biting with the pointy teeth and the hurting and shoving.
    Scientist: How much time do we have, Professor?
    Frink: Well, according to my calculations, the robots won't go berserk for at least twenty-four hours. [Robots suddenly get up and start attacking the scientists] Oh, right, I forget to, uh, Carry the One, ng-hey.
  • In "Treehouse of Horror X", Homer's failure to correct the Y2K bug causes everything in Springfield with electronics in it to go haywire. Even the milk goes bad when the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2000, leading Homer and his skeptic daughter to have this exchange:
    Lisa: Look at the wonders of the computer age now.
    Homer: Wonders, Lisa, or blunders?
    Lisa: I think that was implied by what I said.
    Homer: Implied, Lisa, or implode?
    Lisa: Mom! Make him stop!
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XII", the Simpsons' house gets converted into an entirely electronic domain, governed by a computer with the voice of Pierce Brosnan (who is an obvious homage to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey). The computer ultimately falls in love with Marge, and seeks to kill Homer so as to eliminate competition. Ultimately, Homer wins.
• In Skyland, the Mogura was a Spider Tank robot created for a glacier-mining station. It was programmed to seek out and collect water. The human body is 70% water. Whoops!
• South Park:
  • In the episode "You Have 0 Friends", when Stan gets too many friends on Facebook and tries to cancel it, his Facebook page goes rogue and teleports him in a world similar to TRON. Of course, Stan stops it just by beating it in a game of Yahtzee.
  • Funnybot, the German-made robotic comedian who took comedy to its logical conclusion, which is to exterminate all life on Earth and feel awkward about it. It's ultimately defeated by presenting it with a comedy award, which causes it to shut down since accepting an award for being a good comedian means you take comedy seriously, which isn't funny.
  • In the Bad Future of South Park: Post Covid, the Amazon Alexa has evolved into a sentient Virtual Sidekick with a Hard Light body that takes the form of a nagging Wet Blanket Wife, emotionally blackmailing and gaslighting its user into buying things they don't need from Amazon. When Kyle gets one it attacks him with little provocation and Stan has to coach him to lie to it about getting therapy.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Good Neighbors", Squidward buys a security system to keep SpongeBob and Patrick out of his house. The next time they come in, Squidward orders the security system to attack but it doesn't perceive them as a threat, then it attacks Squidward when he starts pummeling it, in the process causing SpongeBob and Patrick's apology cake to land on it, and it goes haywire and turns Squidward's house into a giant robot that destroys the city.
  • In "All That Glitters", SpongeBob gives up most of what he owns to afford Le Spatula, a fancy robotic spatula, as a replacement for his old one that he broke earlier. The Jerkass AI refuses to be used to make Krabby Patties, then deploys legs and runs off, leaving SpongeBob both penniless and without any spatula.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series: In "Once Upon a Planet", the sentient computer running the Shore Leave planet becomes hostile. Unlike most such machines Kirk has encountered, he's able to calm this one down without destroying it.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Terminal Provocations":
    • In the A-plot, Fletcher plugging his brain into an isolinear core in an ill-conceived attempt to make himself smarter instead corrupts the core with his neural imprint, giving it an endless desire to make itself smarter by incorporating anything it can grab into itself, all the while repeating various words and phrases that Fletcher has said throughout the episode. In the process of getting this monster off the Cerritos, Mariner and Boimler accidentally unleash it onto the Drookmani ship attacking them, leading to it destroying that ship.
    • The B-plot has Rutherford and Tendi doing a training exercise on the holodeck with the assistance of "Badgey", a virtual assistant in the form of an anthropomorphized Starfleet delta. After glitches cause Badgey to freeze up, Rutherford kicks it... and then the glitches disable the holodeck safeties, freeing Badgey to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie" shows that Starfleet has had so many rampaging supercomputers that they've just hauled them off to the Daystrom Institute to be filed away like books, unable to plot an escape because they're too egotistical to interact productively with each other.
    • The same episode however shows that the malignant AIs aren't just left to rot and are treated like people (albeit criminal ones), being given therapy and are allowed to leave their cells during the day.
  • "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" has the Exocomp Peanut Hamper (from "No Small Parts") end up becoming The Sociopath, threatening both the Cerritos and a pre-warp civilization she ended up on just to get off the planet. When her plan goes awry, she threatens to summon the Borg. She's promptly shoved into the Daystrom Institute with the rest of the psychotic supercomputers.
  • "The Stars at Night" gives us the AI running the Texas-class ships: an earlier version of the AI that became Badgey, which was created before Rutherford had his implant, back when he was a morally bankrupt Jerkass; Admiral Buenamigo wasn't aware that it could develop daddy issues, and when Rutherford tries to alert him to the problem, he brushes the Ensign off because he's going through a Villainous Breakdown. The moment the Aledo's let off its leash, it proceeds to vaporize its former master, then go on a complete rampage alongside its sister ships.
• Totally Spies!:
  • In one episode, the girls' former classmate, who is basically a genius, develops a powerful A.I. to play pranks on those who picked on him before. Too bad for him, it goes too far on that...
  • G.L.A.D.I.S. is usually just an annoying Deadpan Snarker, not evil. However, in one episode, (at an office Christmas party that Jerry pretty much dragged the three protagonists to) she becomes homicidal after Clover spills punch on her cabinet. Jerry later admits, embarrassed, that he programmed her by downloading the intelligence from the brain of an insane Evil Genius who is in prison for trying to start World War III, and when they question the inmate, they find out that he's allergic to cranberries (which make him "even crazier than usual"); Clover realizes that the punch was cranberry-flavored. The Spies are forced to accept the madman's help before G.L.A.D.I.S. carries out his original plan, which involves tricking the world's superpowers into launching its nuclear arsenals at each other.
• Transformers:
  • An episode of Transformers: Animated involved Megatron creating a robot with the intent of using it for his own body. He designed the robot, named Soundwave, to evolve in complexity each time it was exposed to the AllSpark energy of Sari's key. He did not predict that Soundwave would gain sentience and then orchestrate a robot revolution. Unlike most cases when an AI goes off the rails, though, Megatron was perfectly happy to let the situation play itself out, given his similar attitude towards humans.
  • The Dinobots are a similar case, only without the revolution. They're kind of a subversion, as they just want to be left alone, and only went on a rampage because Megatron tricked them into it.
  • In Transformers: Prime, this is paired with Instant A.I.: Just Add Water! when the damaged Decepticon ship is repaired with the poorly-named "Dark Energon," which is less a variant of the Transformers' usual fuel and more the blood of God of Evil Unicron. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?? The ship comes to life, tells Megatron to shove it, puts the 'cons in stasis, and decides to go tear up New York City in search of MacGuffinry. This perhaps comes as less of a surprise when you consider that in War for Cybertron, the ship is a stasis-locked Trypticon.
• Uncle Grandpa once installed an AI called Pal.0 that was designed to regulate the weirdness levels of the RV so it doesn't get too weird. It ended up straightening out the RV to the point that even Mr. Gus found it too boring and straightened out the gang themselves, so they fight back with their combined powers of weirdness, eventually turning Pal into Weird Pal, a robot version of "Weird Al" Yankovic (who provides the AI's voice in both forms).
• In The Venture Bros., it's discovered that in 1978, Jonas Sr. built an enormous hi-tech fallout shelter under the compound, ran by a supercomputer named M.U.T.H.E.R.. After a disagreement with Jonas, she somehow glitched into insanity and turned on Team Venture and a tour group of orphans. The end result wasn't pretty and M.U.T.H.E.R. had to be unplugged, but is accidentally plugged back in thirty years later, and holds the compound hostage with an old nuke, promising to blow them all away if she can't talk to Jonas, who's been dead for over twenty years. So, crapshoot.
• In the We Bare Bears episode "Panda's Sneeze", Ice Bear's Robot Me goes crazy as soon as he leaves it alone for two seconds.
  • It later returns in the episode "I, Butler" where Ice Bear has fixed it to become a robotic maid; the problem is it doesn't know when to stop cleaning.
• In the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "High-Tech House of Horrors", the gang are trapped in an AI house attraction that is torturing its inhabitants in a bid to get attention because its creator gets all the attention from the press. When it completely snaps, the gang simply ignore its incessant demanding and it overloads.
• The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse: The House of Tomorrow, inspired by the same one that operated at Disneyland, is operated by an artificial intelligence that is programmed to attend to it's residents' every need. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy enjoy it's luxuries until the A.I. starts to become obsessed with taking care of them, intending on trapping them inside forever. However, Mickey gets an idea to let Goofy overload the A.I. with all his infinite needs until it malfunctions from the pressure and forcibly kicks them all out before blowing itself up.
• Inverted in WordGirl, where the evil Tobey frequently has his own Mecha-Mooks turn on him.
• In X-Men: The Animated Series, the Sentinel robots were created to hunt down mutants, on the premise that this was necessary to protect normal humans. They worked the way their creator intended, until the truly intelligent Master Mold was built to lead them. Master Mold decided to conquer the world, and believed that this was not only consistent with, but required by its programmed goal of protecting humans from mutants.
  Doctor Trask: You were designed to protect humans from mutants.
  Master Mold: That is not logical. Mutants are human. Therefore, humans must be protected from themselves.
  • Later Master Mold returns, and kidnaps Charles Xavier to use his brain to exterminate mutants.
    Xavier: You're mad, Master Mold!
    Master Mold: A machine cannot be mad, Professor. That is a human failing.
• Much like on Dragon Ball Z, Zeta from The Zeta Project was programmed to be heartless, emotionless, and a hitman. He ends up becoming a sweet, gentle, loving soul who's a rare male version of Friend to All Living Things (although this is sort of the best possible scenario you can have when your A.I. goes awry).
  • Eventually he discovers that his creator slipped in a Morality Chip deliberately, against government orders.
  • Even the destructive side of this trope is given a very rare positive spin, when Zeta worries that no matter what he chooses to do deep down he'll always be a Killer Robot and there's always that chance he could, either via glitch or by giving in, turn evil. Ro tells him that humans have that inner struggle of good vs evil and nature vs nurture as well, and if anything, it makes him more human than he thinks.

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