Amazingly Embarrassing Parents / Western Animation

Ace: Please Mom, you're embarrassing me!
Jeanie: I'm your mother, it's my thing!

— Get Ace

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• In The Addams Family (1992), Wednesday and Pugsley's friend Norman has a father who prides himself on being the best underwear salesman ever, and his mother is a rather spacey Stepford Smiler. It doesn't help that his parents absolutely hate the Addams and tend to end up embarrassing themselves in their schemes to get them to leave. Notably in one episode, his father was doing a 'history of underwear' for school career day, making Norman hold up said historical undies.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • "How To Sink a Sub" had this when Jimmy sends all his teachers into outer space and all the kids' parents decide to fill in for them, putting this trope into effect. Judy at one point shows all of Jimmy's classmates his baby pictures.
  • The episode "Make Room for Daddy-O" has Jimmy altering Hugh's usual personality after embarrassing him in a talent show audition. Hugh becomes cool and no longer embarrassing but stops caring about Jimmy. This makes Jimmy realize he was better off with a father devoted to his role, even if he was a dork.
• In American Dad!, this is actually a plot point in one episode, where Steve pretends that Greg and Terry are his parents so he won't have to introduce his new girlfriend to Stan and Francine. His reasoning is that his father would either drive her away by saying or doing something stupid and if not, then his mother's crappy food would kill her. It's further cemented when Klaus reveals that Stan keeps a pack of "inbred dinner wolves" in a trap-door under the kitchen floor to feed Francine's food to instead of eating it himself. Despite the silliness, it's still portrayed seriously, as these and other problems were all secrets the family had been keeping from each other instead of dealing with the problems.
• American Dragon: Jake Long: For one episode it was both parents tucking annoying little rhyming Post-It notes on his person that people would find and read. But for the duration of the series, except for the Father's Day episode in the last season, Jake's father was not just embarrassing by the old stories ? he had embarrassing nicknames and behavior. To quote Jake when Rose asks if they can practice their lines for the play at his house: "My house is being fumigated."
• In Beetlejuice, the title character's parents are so dull, their pictures are in the Netherworld Dictionary, under "Boring". Literally. They still manage to embarrass him.
• Ben 10: Ben's parents Carl and Sandra are New Age Retro Hippies who don't really embarrass him in public in front of others — they're just embarrassing on principle.
• This drives the plot of an episode of Birdz. Eddie is embarrassed by his dopey father, but they quickly grow to bond after getting lost on a scavenger hunt.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • Linda is this to Louise. This is really just a matter of Linda either not recognizing or not caring that Louise isn't like other girls her age and doesn't care about things 9-year-old girls are stereotypically interested in, or even about getting to know other 9-year-old girls in general. The two biggest examples are when Linda drags Louise to an 8-hour new age mother-daughter seminar in "Mother Daughter Laser Razor", and when Linda organizes a surprise slumber party for Louise without her permission, after Louise explicitly voiced her opposition to the concept, in "Slumber Party".
  • Linda is this to Tina in "Grand Mama-Pest Hotel" after Tina bonding with a cool girl at a woman's empowerment conference freaks her out because she's afraid Tina won't want to hang out with her anymore. She causes trouble at the hotel to seem cool to Tina, and when she gets banned from the hotel, she sneaks back in wearing a ridiculous disguise to try and convince the keynote speaker to say that her inspiration was her mother so Tina won't start devaluing Linda.
  • Bob can also be embarrassing at times, but this is usually when he playfully needles Louise about being a Daddy's Girl, which she takes in stride because, to a certain extent, he's right.
• The Bremen Avenue Experience: One episode has Tanner's dad Pete seem like this at first, interrupting their band and showing them the snacks he prepared for them. But this eventually gets subverted when Pete reveals his past, having been The Roadie to plenty of popular bands back in his day and being a good drummer. Tanner starts appreciating his dad after this, thanking him for the snacks and letting him perform his drumming with the band once more.
• Central Park:
  • In Season 1 "Skater's Circle", Molly has the unfortunate luck to see her father pantless and her mother shirtless and seeing her mother telling her father to "Do me!". For context, Owen is ironing his shorts and Paige realizes her blouse is wrinkly so she takes it off and asks Owen to quickly iron her blouse.
    Molly: So many parents body parts on display right now.
  • In Season 1 "Squirrel, Interrupted", after Molly wins her first chess match against someone other than mom, Paige loudly shouts out their family chess chant, "Stranger-Daughter Blood Chess Champion! Drink the blood!", which embarrasses Molly.
  • In Season 1 "Hot Oven", Owen and Paige teases Molly about having Brendan over for dinner and embarrass her further by thinking about showing off their dance to welcome Brendan.
• Jack and Maddie in Danny Phantom, though there are frequent times both Danny and Jazz admire them and their abilities. One of the biggest extreme would be in "Forever Phantom" when the two are on a search and rescue mission for their son. One of their methods is announcing to the entire city of Amity Park to keep an eye out for their son AKA "the cutest, sweetest son in the world." They later add their further desire to "shower him with hugs and kisses".
• Daria:
  • There was a variation of this in one episode: Daria quite deliberately told embarrassing anecdotes about Quinn to the "cool crowd".
  • On a couple of occasions, Helen has threatened to embarrass Daria or Quinn in order to get them to cooperate with her.
• Dinosaur Train: The Conductor's mother enjoys humiliating her 'sonny boy', whether intentionally or not.
• Doug:
  • Subverted when Doug is terrified that his older sister will tell everyone about his secret crush when she does a poetry recital at his school. (She doesn't.)
  • Played straight when Doug's father shows up at his first party... dressed as a party clown. "The cheese stands alone! The cheese stands alone!"
  • Then played straight again in "Doug's Sister Act" when Judy is afraid that her family is too boring for her new boyfriend Kyle, so she dresses up the folks and writes them a script.
  • Subverted in "Quailman VII: Quaildad", where Doug is planning to go interview the Beets for the school paper, and since his dad is taking him, he worries about this happening. Instead, his dad quickly hits it off with them as they share similar taste in music, and impresses them with his drumming skills.
• Lois and Peter in Family Guy. Especially where Meg is concerned.
  • In "He's Too Sexy for His Fat":
    Lois: Will you keep your voice down? You're embarrassing him! [Chris]
    Peter: What are you talking about? If I wanted to embarrass him, I'd do something like this. Hey, hey everybody, hey look what Chris Griffin's father, Peter Griffin's doing! (licks his own nipple)
  • In "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", Meg tricks the family onto the Jerry Springer-like talk show.
• Get Ace: Both parents of the titular character. The dad, Dougal McDougal is a wannabe stand-up comic who tells incredibly lame jokes. The plot of an early episode has him prepare to perform his "chicken suit" routine for the high school talent show, which both Ace and Becky try to sabotage in order to avoid social humiliation in front of the entire school. Jeanie, the mom, doesn't have any particularly wacky or outlandish traits but is embarrassing by virtue of just being a typical mother. In one episode, she asks her Ace for a goodbye kiss right before he's about to go on a date.
• In Goof Troop, Goofy is generally this towards Max. Max is at times characterized as generally ashamed of Goofy in general, so it's not just one-way.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy had an example of an amazingly embarrassing grandparent in the short "Hate in an Elevator", where Irwin, his grandmother, and Mandy get stuck in an elevator for 14 hours and Irwin's grandma decides to pass the time by telling humiliating stories about Irwin to Mandy. After they're finally freed, a news crew shows up to interview them about their time in the elevator, which results in Grandmama resuming telling embarrassing stories about her grandson.
• Hercules: The Animated Series: Hercules's foster parents fell into this trope when it was the day parents visited their children at Hercules' school. In their defense, Hercules would be disappointed anyway since he expected his birth parents to show up.
• Inverted in House of Mouse. Max was afraid his father Goofy would embarrass him on his date when the rest of cast did it for him.
• Invader Zim's "parents" are Amazingly Embarrassing for a unique reason: they're robots meant to aid in his disguise as a human being. Unfortunately, they're not very good at it. In the episode "Parent Teacher Night", Zim tries reprogramming his robot parents so that they act more human (and don't attack random passersby). Due in part to Gir's meddling, this had disastrous results.
• The Kids from Room 402 has this with Cody's mom, who doesn't seem to grasp the fact that her son's bathroom habits aren't the sort of thing to be discussed in public, let alone in front of Cody's peer group.
• Kim Possible has parents like this. On the other hand, the Alpha Bitch and Big Bad Dr. Drakken's mothers are like this too. The Mother's Day episode is a train wreck of social awkwardness. And does not mark the only appearance of any of the Mothers.
• Peggy Hill of King of the Hill can be like this to Bobby, he mostly finds it embarrassing in public or when he's around his friends. Usually the trope is inverted; Hank is extremely embarrassed of Bobby.
• The Legend of Korra: When Mako's grandmother Yin meets Korra and Asami for the first time, she asks him why he isn't "dating any nice girls like them", unaware that the three of them had only recently gotten out of a very messy Love Triangle.
• Roger Baxter is this to his daughter Blythe in Littlest Pet Shop (2012), especially in the episode "Helicopter Dad".
• The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show has Mr. Peabody's foster parents who are non-anthropomorphic dogs. The embarrassment is so bad the normally unfettered Mr. Peabody suffers a complete nervous breakdown.
• Professor Wakeman humiliates Jenny in My Life as a Teenage Robot and Jenny is miserable about it until Brad tells her part of being a teenager is enduring mortifying embarrassment at the hands of their parents. At which point Jenny feels a lot better, knowing all teenagers go through it.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • The episode "Family Appreciation Day" had Apple Bloom noticing all the embarrassing things her Granny Smith did once the resident Alpha Bitch pointed it out to her.
    • Rarity's parents seem to be this at first glance. Their manner of dress, speech, and preference for eating badly-made food indicate they're nothing like their elegant and high-society daughter. However, the main plot of the episode brushes them aside before we're shown if Rarity does feel ashamed of them or not.
    • "Parental Glideance" has Rainbow Dash's parents take this to extremes. Their house has a room dedicated to Rainbow Dash memorabilia, which includes a used diaper (from when she said her first word). They go out of their way to cheer her on for everything, up to and including hanging up a towel (Dash even lampshades the ridiculousness of that), and are hammy enough to give Rainbow herself a run for her money. They went so far as to shoot off fireworks during an airshow, and were then shown to badly distract her from her other Wonderbolt duties with their constant cheering. The episode they appear in nonetheless ends in a pretty one-sided way, with Rainbow apologising to her parents for not appreciating them (with just the slightest nod in the other direction, as the parents claim that Rainbow going out of her way to show her appreciation for them is a little embarrassing).
    • In "Surf And/Or Turf", Terramar and Silverstream's mother, Ocean Flow, has shades of this with this typical exchange.
    Ocean Flow: [to Twilight] Both of my children are so smart. Would you like to see their baby pictures?
    Terramar: MOM!
    • In "The Parent Map", both Starlight's dad Firelight and Sunburst's mom Stellar Flare refuse to leave their kids alone, with the former treating Starlight like she's still a kid, and the latter treating Sunburst like he can't take care of himself without her to guide him. Also, both parents keep constantly embarrassing them in public by calling them pet names and pestering them about the future. Though in this episode, the parents learn to respect the fact that their children are all grown up while Starlight and Sunburst learn to discuss such matters in a civil manner. Presumably, the writers had learned their lesson from the blatant Informed Wrongness of "Parental Glideance".
  • My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: In "Father of the Bridlewood", Alphabittle reunites with his long-lost daughter Misty, and he babies her because he sorely misses her ever since she got lost as a filly. Misty tries to grin and bear it, but she eventually tells him that she has long changed in the years they were separated. Alphabittle then realizes that he was dwelling in the past, and he allows her to be independent from him and stay with her friends at the Brighthouse.
• Milo's parents on The Oblongs. At a parent-teacher conference, his mother gets stuck in a desk and his father plays the piano... despite having no arms or legs.
  Milo: Helga, I want you to take this compass and drive it deep into my forehead.
• Pepper Ann: The titular character's mom, Lydia, occasionally slips into this. At one time, when she took Pepper Ann bra shopping, PA literally melts. However (for the rest of the series), deep down, they love each other very much.
• Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb has shades of this towards his daughter Vanessa, such as throwing her an embarrassing 16th birthday.
• In Pixel Pinkie, Nina dearly loves her Hippie Parents, but she does wish they would act a tad more conventionally in public.
• Planet Sketch: Parodied in the "My Mother, The Armchair" segments. The teenage girl protagonist often acts like her mother is doing something embarrassing, despite the latter being an inanimate armchair..
• The Powerpuff Girls has the episode "Powerprof" in which their father Professor Utonium, wanting to spend more time with the girls, builds a power suit so he can fight crime alongside them. He then proceeds to embarrass them by being highly overprotective, using painfully outdated slang, and casually revealing to the public gathered that Bubbles was wetting the bed until recently.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Project Pluto", Dr. Rafferty unintentionally embarrasses Sean by mentioning that when he was four, he insisted on carrying a purple hippo plush everywhere.
• Spinelli's parents in Recess. They are actually revealed to be very famous and skilled secret agents, though Spinelli herself is unaware of this, leading one to wonder whether they really are like this or if they are faking being your 'normal ultra-embarrassing parents' as part of their secret identity.
• The Scotsman becomes this in the final season of Samurai Jack. Right before he and his daughters charge into battle as part of a larger army, he holds up everything to tell his daughters to cover themselves (although their clothes could at best be described as revealing) before they catch their death of cold. Every last one reacts as a typical embarrassed teenager.
• Sheep in the Big City has Private Public's father embarrass him in "Daddy Shearest" by showing humiliating childhood photos to General Specific and revealing that Private Public constantly wet himself until he was 17.
• Frequently comes up in The Simpsons. "Lisa the Greek" had Bart and Marge shopping for clothing and she does things such as suggest he try on some cute underwear when other kids were around and opening the door to the changing room without warning while he was still getting dressed. It came off as less of 'Marge is embarrassing' than 'Marge is a Cloudcuckoolander Jerk'. Then again, they don't object to much of what Homer does because he is at least frequently called on it, even though everything snaps back by the end.
  • The episode "The Front" has this conversation at the beginning:
    [After watching Krusty chastise a chef for reminding his audience that he's Jewish by preparing a dish based on his mother's recipe]
    Lisa: It's so sad that Krusty is ashamed of his roots.
    Homer: (With plunger stuck on his head) Marge, it happened again. (Pulls on handle, it comes off, but suction cup stays on his head) Ohh.
    Bart: What are you gonna change your name to when you grow up?
    Lisa: Lois Sanborn.
    Bart: Steve Bennett.
  • In the episode "Homerpalooza", Homer embarrasses his kids with his taste in music, which hasn't changed since his teen years in the 1970s. A flashback reveals that he felt the same way about his own father, who gives him a dire warning:
    Homer: You wouldn't understand, dad. You're not "with it".
    Abe: I used to be with "it". Then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't "it", and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. And it'll happen to yoooooouuuu!
• Aunt Tilly from Sofia the First is an Amazingly Embarrassing Aunt. Amber and James dread her visit at first because she pinches their cheeks and pats their heads before asking them to help her bake pies, but they and Sofia find her cool in her next visit.
• South Park: All of the parents, with the possible exception of Sharon.
  • Randy Marsh is the show's crowning example of this trope, when accounting for the other degrees of uselessness of the adults. Stan often uses a variation of the Face Palm where he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose in response to his father's stupidity.
    • He gets drunk at every little league game and gets into fights with other dads.
    • Gets caught drunk driving, thinks alcoholism is an incurable disease until getting his 9-year-old son to drive him to a religious miracle to get cured of his alcoholism.
    • Quits his job repeatedly to chase the new dream of the week, be it a reality show gourmet cafeteria chef or a worker at Walmart.
    • Along with the other adults, sends the kids away to keep them from being abducted. When several days later and a Mongolian demolition of the city wall occurs, he thinks the kids have become Mongolians.
    Stan: Jesus they've done some stupid crap before, but Jesus Christ.
    • Convinces the town that the town's spending has made the economy, a sentient being, angry and that the town must repent by forgoing any spending and wearing bedsheets as clothing.
    • Creates the word "timecist" to describe people who are intolerant towards the people from the future. Then, after a future person takes his job, becomes the spokesman for the big pile of men having gay sex with each other to try to un-breed the future people.
  • Sheila Broflovski, Kyle's mother, is easily a close second. An on-and-off Moral Guardian (taken to full-blown Knight Templar levels in The Movie) completely oblivious to the disproportional ways she treats her son vs. the rest of the world (seeing fit to control his every behavior while letting Cartman walk all over him). Oh, and she's also from New Jersey.
  • The McCormick parents joined a doomsday cult of Cthulhu for free beer and are crackheads. They also have a meth lab in an open shed in their backyard.
  • Ms. Cartman is apparently a famous enough porn star to end up on the cover of Crackwhore Magazine.
  • This is weaponized by the parents when they find out that Chinpokomon is brainwashing kids into becoming terrorists. They know the surest way to get their kids to stop liking Chinpokomon is to pretend to like it themselves because anything parents like is automatically uncool and embarrassing for the sole reason that parents like it.
• Downplayed in Steven Universe. Steven's dad and Crystal Gems, who all act like Steven's parental figures, don't embarrass Steven as often as usual for this trope, but they still have their moments. For example, in "Bubble Buddies", Pearl embarrasses Steven by being too motherly and Amethyst embarrasses Steven by teasing him.
• Those Scurvy Rascals: During her visit, Shark Bait's mom proves to be this. The same is implied for Smelly Pete's mom at the end of the episode.
• Dwayne from Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race is definitely this. He has a tendency to unintentionally embarrass Junior in front of other people.
• W.I.T.C.H.:
  • Will's mother calls her by the Embarrassing Nickname "Pink Perky Pookie Pumpkin" at least once.
  • Irma's parents are this way to her. They have brought cookies to Parents Night, which is mildly embarrassing enough for Irma, but they also have called her a pet name from her infancy around her friends. Episode 4 has her trying to avoid her parents embarrassing her at a party she's hosting. When she leaves them in charge to go out for a moment, she later returns to find out they actually did the opposite and made the party more fun.
• Zeke's Pad: Zeke's father, Alvin, is a total embarrassment in front of Zeke's friends. Alvin has spinach-clotted teeth, corny songs, and weird dance moves, none of which strike Zeke as cool.

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