Dramatic Irony / Western Animation

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• Arcane: The show as an origin story delights in juxtaposing characters origins with their eventual state as Champions in League of Legends.
  • Vi who is introduced despising Piltover Enforcers for killing her parents literally has the title of the Piltover Enforcer as a Champion.
  • Powder is a comparatively timid child, who has an emotional need to tag along and can't get her grenades to work when Jinx is infamous as the Loose Canon, utterly wild and free with a habit of blowing up entire buildings.
    • More specifically, episode 3 has her proudly exclaiming over one of her bombs finally working, believing that she'd saved the day by doing so - completely unaware that the bomb had caused the deaths of Mylo, Claggor, and Vander.
  • Caitlyn is shown to be a young rookie whose an outsider amongst the Enforcers when as a Champion she's the Sheriff of Piltover.
  • Ekko is introduced asking for a few more seconds to work fix a clock when as Champion he's the Boy who Shattered Time.
  • Jayce is introduced as a humble researcher who happily works with Viktor when as a Champion he's known as an arrogant hero with a rivalry against Viktor.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Western Air Temple" revolves around this. The audience knows that Zuko finally has his head on straight, but the Gaang thinks that he's trying to trick them.
  • The first half of season 3, which revolves mostly around the characters getting ready to invade the Fire Nation. It was supposed to be a surprise attack, but of course, the audience knew that the Fire Nation was well-informed of these events.
  • According to Ozai, his father ordered him to kill Zuko so he would know what it feels to lose a child. Ozai was more than willing to do it, meaning Azulon’s order would've been essentially pointless, as his son would feel no pain from ridding himself of what to him is a burden. It's further evidence that, as his unfavorite child, Azulon never paid enough attention to Ozai to even notice the latter's negative opinion of Zuko.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: In the episode "Who Do You Trust?", after the Avengers discover a Skrull impostor in their midst, the team's paranoia over the infiltrator causes them to split. Captain America ends up giving a Rousing Speech that convinces the few remaining heroes to stay. However, the audience has been aware since the end of season 1 that Captain America himself is the Skrull, and now, he's been put in charge of the team.
• Batman Beyond: Terry McGinnis regularly has trouble balancing his crime-fighting life and personal life, and he's unable to tell anybody the truth about this. In "The Winning Edge", when Terry gets in trouble for sleeping in class after another night of fighting crime, his girlfriend Dana Tan invites him to join her in going to a sports game after school, saying "Don't be such a spud, you need some excitement in your life."
• In the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Chill of the Night!" Batman is taken back in time to meet his parents and when he impulsively gives his mother a hug she thinks he's just overly affectionate.
  Martha Wayne: Oh my, you're friendly, aren't you.
• Bluey: In "Bingo", Bingo spends the last few minutes of the episode looking for a puzzle piece. It's stuck on her bum, but she doesn't notice until Bluey points it out to her, which is a little while.
• DuckTales (2017): At the end of Season 1, the audience learns that Della Duck (aka Huey, Dewey and Louie's Missing Mom) is still alive, but has been stuck on the moon for the past decade. The main cast doesn't learn this until halfway through Season 2, in the episode "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!", when Scrooge declares that the adventuring trip he's going to take the triplets and Webby on could be the most important moment in their adventuring lives and he opens the door to see the recently-returned Della behind it.
• Used in the Guatemala episode of Gargoyles — while Goliath, Angela, and Bronx are helping the Guatemalan gargoyles defend their home against Jackal, Hyena has flown to New York to destroy the talisman that allows them to stay fleshy during the day. Broadway and Lexington attempt to stop her; Hyena comments that the talisman will result in a lot of gargoyles becoming "stone-cold dead". Broadway and Lexy conclude that she is planning on using it to cast a spell to kill all gargoyles, and consider destroying it. They don't.
  • Also used in "Hunter's Moon". The Canmore family's vendetta against "the Demon" and their many attempts to kill her are particularly ironic in light of the fact that only Macbeth can kill her—a fact that only the Weird Sisters, the Manhattan Clan, and Macbeth and Demona themselves are aware of. (And the audience, of course.)
  • And in "Revelations". Before infiltrating the Hotel Cabal, Matt gives Goliath his key so that Goliath can escape. Then, when Mace is about to kill Goliath, Matt pushes him down an elevator shaft. Finally, an old acquaintance rewards his trickery by inducting him into the Illuminati, saying "Your job was to get Goliath to the Hotel Cabal. It's not your fault old Mace couldn't hold him."
• Futurama: In "Jurassic Bark", Fry decides in the end not to clone his fossilized dog Seymour, reasoning that the dog lived a long and fulfilling life long after he was cryogenically frozen and that tampering in God's domain is not wise. The ending montage cruelly reveals that, in fact, Seymour spent every day of his remaining years waiting outside Fry's workplace, pining for his master. It's considered one of the biggest Tear Jerker endings in animation history and after years of notoriety, the writing team Retconned it with "Bender's Big Score", which uses a complicated time travel plot to leave Seymour happy with an alternate version of Fry instead.
• Goof Troop uses this trope constantly. Sometimes it is played for humor (like in "And Baby Makes Three" where everyone is convinced that Peg is pregnant and Pete doesn't notice that the "baby" he runs into is really his 11-year-old son PJ, saying both "Reminds me of PJ back when he was cute" and "PJ was never this bad!"), other times it is played to make the audience cringe on behalf of the character (such as in "To Heir Is Human" when PJ, being manipulated through lying, reverse-psychology, and guilt-trips into doing his father's job, says "You can't con me! I'm your son!"), and other times it seems to be in place to let the audience know a "Shaggy Dog" Story is happening (like in "Slightly Dinghy" when only the audience is aware Goofy found the last quarter Max needed for his video game).
• In Gravity Falls episode "Weirdmagedon Part 1" Dipper thinks that the rift that allowed Bill Cipher and his forces to cross over fell out of the backpack Mabel had accidentally taken and broke, not knowing that Mabel actually, but unknowingly, gave the rift to Bill who smashed it.
  • Which also had some dramatic irony to it, since Mabel had no idea what the rift was. She thinks it's just some useless "nerd junk," so her suspicions aren't raised when Blendin asks for it. Meanwhile, the audience knows that it's the one thing Bill needs for his plans to come true.
• Nearly all of season 1 in Jackie Chan Adventures, the audience knows who Shendu is and why the Dark Hand wants the talismans, but the Chans and Captain Black don't fully find out about Shendu and his talismans until an injured Tohru^note after being forced to fight the fully powered Shendu by Valmont came to Uncle's shop and told them the demon's name.
• Jelly Jamm: In "Wild Nature", Goomo and Rita find a dodo egg and lose it. After looking everywhere for the egg, Goomo is careful not to make the lost baby's parents angry... not realizing that the egg he's after is on the back of his helmet, strapped in place by his aviator's goggles.
• Dale Gribble from King of the Hill is a Conspiracy Theorist who believes in aliens, Bigfoot, and evil government plots... but he is one of only two characters on the show to not recognize that his son Joseph clearly isn't his and that his wife Nancy has been cheating on him with her massage therapist John Redcorn for over a decade.^note The only other character who doesn't know is Joseph himself. Peggy also didn't know initially, but figured it out pretty quick. When she asked why nobody told her, she was told that it was so obvious that nobody thought they needed to tell her. Half the things Dale says about Joseph and/or John Redcorn are made all the funnier because of the irony, like him thinking Redcorn is gay because of the "weird vibe" he got when around him, or this gem:
  Dale: Joseph is turning into a real lady killer, just like his old man.
  • Further, as you can probably guess from the above, Dale is a raging paranoiac whose "trust list" is remarkably short... and of course, both his wife and Redcorn are on it. The affair eventually ends largely because they start feeling guilty about betraying that trust.
• Let's Go Luna!: In "Where's Luna?", Luna seemingly goes missing. The gang spends most of the episode not knowing that Luna is right behind them.
• Looney Tunes:
  • This gives the seminal Chuck Jones short "Feed the Kitty" much of its Tear Jerker status. The audience knows that Pussyfoot the kitten hasn't really been baked in a batch of cookies and is perfectly safe, but Marc Anthony doesn't.
  • In the short "Mouse Mazurka", a mouse plays a trick on Sylvester with a nitroglycerin bottle that's actually filled with water and makes him think that he'll explode at the slightest impact. However, the audience are the only ones aware that the fake bottle accidentally got switched with an actual bottle of nitroglycerin, and when the mouse drinks it, they know he's actually in danger of exploding, which he does.
• In the Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) cartoon, Protoman and Wily reveal the former's faking being good about three minutes into "Bro Bots", but Mega and company don't find out until much later.
  • In "Mega-Pinocchio", Roll spends the entirety of the episode wanting to fight Wily's bots. Instead she had to fight a mental battle against her own brother.
• Miraculous Ladybug more or less runs on this for its premise. The show centers on two teenage heroes, Adrien/Chat Noir, and Marinette/Ladybug. Marinette is in love with Adrien, while Chat is in love with Ladybug. Neither of them know each other's secret identities. The writers absolutely milk this for all it's worth, resulting in many a Head Desk for the shippers. And in Season Two it gets upped with The Reveal that the Big Bad Hawk Moth is secretly Adrien's father Gabriel. Adrien also does not know this, nor does Gabriel know that his son is Chat Noir. As of season five much of this has been put to rest with Marinette and Adrien being in a relationship as their civilian identities and Garbriel dead.
  • In the 3rd season episode "Party Crasher", Marinette questions Master Fu being at a party in Adrien's room, since he needs to protect the Miraculous. He tells her that it's fine because he brought the Miraculous box with him (concealed in the bottom of a cooler). Neither of them is aware that they're in Hawk Moth's house, the most unsafe place in the world to have brought the Miraculous box.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot has the episode "No Harmony with Melody," which features the return of Brad's love interest Melody from a previous episode. Jenny is very suspicious of her and believes that she may be as evil as her Mad Scientist father when destruction starts to happen around her. Brad insists that she's just jealous and Melody isn't keeping any secrets, but viewers who have seen the previous episode already know that this isn't the case. The truth is, Melody isn't actually human at all. She's a very advanced robot, much like Jenny. The tension this creates for the audience is ultimately subverted when it turns out that Melody genuinely WASN'T responsible for any of the strange events - but only after her secret has been revealed to everyone and she runs away in tears after seeing their shock at her true appearance (particularly Brad's reaction). It's definitely a tearjerker ending, especially when you consider that the show was cancelled and this was the last time she was ever seen.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "The Mean 6", The Mane Six and Starlight (except the Tree of Harmony) are completely unaware of Chrysalis's plan, or that they had run afoul of Psycho Ranger counterparts, instead believing that they themselves were being jerkish to each other. Of course, the audience was aware the entire time.
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "Where Oh Where Has My Piglet Gone?", Pooh is looking for Rabbit's hammer when Piglet comes over, saying he wants to learn to sing. After Rabbit berates Pooh for misplacing other people's belongings, Pooh accidentally insults Piglet's singing, instead referring to his own vice. Piglet runs away, not wanting to bother anyone, while Pooh believes he's misplaced Piglet. When Rabbit agrees to help him look for Piglet, he then misplaces Rabbit and their meeting spot.
• Phineas and Ferb: Due to Perry the platypus's double life as a secret agent, Phineas and Ferb are completely unaware of where he disappears to every day. The only times they learned of that were in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" and Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, though in the former case, it was all just Perry's nightmare over fear of having his cover blown, and in the latter case, it was later undone through Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • Furthermore, the show's B Plotlines that feature Perry stopping Doofenshmirtz's schemes often take place really close to where Phineas and Ferb are putting their own ideas into action, often causing the 2 plotlines to affect one another without anybody realizing (other than Perry)
  • This trope gets Played for Drama in the episode, "Oh, There You Are, Perry." Perry's agency forces him to relocate when he gets assigned to a new nemesis, leading to Perry having to leave the Flynn/Fletcher family unnanounced. Coincidentally, Candace happened to leave him outside the night before his disappearance, so she worries that she was the person responsible. Meanwhile, Phineas and Ferb's plotline involves them attempting to track him down and bring him back home.
  Phineas: Well, he's a platypus. They don't do much.
• The Owl House: "Clouds on the Horizon" has The Collector casually tease Emperor Belos about his concerns about becoming a Stranger in a Familiar Land once he succeeds in his Final Solution goals and returns to Earth, with his violent response indicating that he doesn't take kindly to the implications that his efforts will go unrewarded upon his return. Not only is the viewer acutely aware that these fears are very justified, it confirms that Philip has never once returned to earth for hundreds of years despite his yearning too...and thus, unlike Luz, he is unaware that Glyph magic does not work away from the Background Magic Field of the Titan's corpse. Given the implications that the Glyph arrays carved into his flesh are very necessary for him to maintain control over his body, he is unlikely to find his return to Earth a pleasant experience at all.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Helping Hands”, Buddy and Krupa are unable to locate the Keymaster 3000, which the audience saw gain self-awareness and run off. Krupa, wondering what could have happened to it, says this:
  Krupa: It couldn’t have just gotten up and walked away!
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • Series-wide example: No one knows that Jet is an alien except for Sean, Sydney, Mindy, and the audience, while Mitchell is suspicious.
  • In "A Visit to the Planetarium", Jet sings a bombastic song about the Milky Way to entertain the kids at the planetarium. Mr. Peterson, the curator, is away. When he comes back and sees the kids cheering, he doesn't know why they're so happy, because the planetarium film is the same as it's always been, unaware that Jet entertained them.
• At the end of the plot portion of season 3 finale of Reboot a young copy of Enzo is created and after knocking Bob down he looks at Matrix, who the audience knows is a grown up version of Enzo, and asks "Hey! Who's the big ugly green guy?"
• Rick and Morty: In the episode "Solaricks", the Jerry from the Cronenberg universe states that Rick's philosophy of just letting go and not caring was the way to go. Meanwhile, in his original universe, Rick straight up admits to the AI he programmed to sound like his deceased wife Diane and mercilessly needle him about his failures that he can't move on from what he lost.
• In the final episode of Samurai Jack, Jack finally finds a time portal to return to the past, and arrives mere seconds after Aku warped him in the first place. Aku's reaction is, "You're back already?!" Viewers know it took Jack about fifty years in-universe of wandering the Bad Future to reach it.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: A major undercurrent to Entrapta's functional defection. She is convinced her comrades in the Princess Alliance abandoned her, while said comrades are convinced she was killed.
  • A few episodes later, Glimmer and Bow learn Entrapta is alive and working for the Horde. They naturally assume she's been taken prisoner and kidnap Catra in an attempt to get her released. Not only is Entrapta willingly with the Horde, Catra is more like her direct supervisor than her captor.
• Skull Island (2023): Only Kong and the viewer know of Kong's past with the Island Girl and the Kraken after viewing the Whole Episode Flashback. To the series' main human cast, the Island Girl's necklace which Kong broods over in private is nothing more than a mysterious trinket that Kong has some attachment to.
• Gwen Stacy smacks of this whenever she appears in an adaptation; however, The Spectacular Spider-Man subverts this by not using that storyline (though being cancelled might have simply cut the series short before it could do so). Word of God says there were no plans to kill Gwen off.
• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, when Morbius returns, Black Cat naturally acts confusing and distracted, much to Spidey's confusion. He remarks to himself that the only good thing is that Felicia (who is supposedly out of town) isn't around, as seeing Morbius again would be too much for her to bear.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Pizza Delivery", SpongeBob repeatedly tries to keep Squidward from eating the pizza, saying "it's for the customer". When they finally deliver it, the customer berates SpongeBob for not including a drink, shouting "Didn't you once think of the customer?!"
  • In "Stuck in the Wringer", the carnival patrons tell SpongeBob he deserves to be glued to his wringer for telling off Patrick, unaware of the fact he told him off because Patrick glued him to his wringer in the first place.
  • In "A Pal for Gary", SpongeBob is oblivious to Puffy Fluffy's evil side, yet the audience knows.
  • In Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "The Spy Humongous" has Boimler recruited into a group of command division ensigns known as the Redshirts. One of the members proclaims that the name makes them sound invincible. We all know the meme by now. For further irony, the group is effectively killed after Boimler points out how useless the group is.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars is fuelled by this. The audience knows who the Big Bad really is, and what his real plans are, but none of the protagonists or antagonists do (no, not even The Dragon knows everything). Most of the victories the protagonists achieve are overshadowed by the knowledge of what the future brings.
  • Early in Season 3 Ahsoka saves Padmé's life, on Alderaan, where Padmé's daughter Leia will grow up, adopted by their host at the time of the rescue, Bail Organa. Then, near the end of the same season she saves Tarkin (who served the Republic then), who'll destroy Alderaan in order to torture Leia.
  • Speaking of Ahsoka, we all know how Anakin loses faith and turns on Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Jedi. What we didn't know until this series is that Anakin's apprentice Ahsoka lost faith in the Jedi, after she was framed for a crime she didn't commit and the Jedi wouldn't give her the benefit of the doubt. Her leaving after clearing her name caused a Heroic BSoD for Anakin and began his Start of Darkness.
• Star Wars Rebels: Since it's an interquel like its predecessor, it has elements of this built into the story, although to a lesser degree. However, one standout example would be whenever Captain Rex brings up Anakin Skywalker in a positive light, considering what happened to him.
• Star Wars Resistance:
  • The first season of the show starts six months before The Force Awakens. This gives us moments such as, in "Station Theta-Black", Poe calling the titular mining station the largest First Order facility he's ever heard of, and then an establishing shot of planet-sized superweapon Starkiller Base later in the episode to drive the point home.
  • In a comedic example, short "GL-N" has Flix and Orka talking with Aunt Z about how people these days don't notice things happening around them, while themselves not noticing Flix and Orka's pit droid GL-N being chased around the tavern by several people he annoyed.
• Steven Universe
  • In "Steven's Dream", Steven and Greg run into Blue Diamond, who has come to Earth to mourn the death of Pink Diamond. Greg sympathizes with her, telling her that he knows how it feels to lose a loved one. The irony is, the person Greg is talking about is Rose, the person who shattered Pink Diamond in the first place.
    • This gets even more ironic after the reveal that Rose Quartz actually was Pink Diamond, meaning that the two were unknowingly mourning the loss of the same person.
  • In that same episode, as well as "That Will Be All", Blue Diamond becomes saddened by the fact that the Earth will soon be destroyed by the Cluster, and expresses her wish to save humanity from it. Except the Cluster was bubbled all the way back in "Gem Drill", and thus will never emerge. Which is something that, if the Diamonds continue to be uninformed of, might have some terrible repercussions for humanity...
    Blue Diamond: The window for preserving Earth's specimens is closing...
    Yellow Diamond: Is that what you want? Sapphire, has the Cluster emerged yet?
    Sapphire: No, it has not.
    Yellow Diamond: [smiles sinisterly at Blue Diamond] Then there's still time.
• In a Columbo-style episode of Tiny Toon Adventures called "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny", the audience is fully aware that Slappy Stanley is responsible for Bugs' disappearance.
• In Total Drama World Tour, we are treated to a confessional from DJ after he was the only person left on his team and Alejandro was trying to form an alliance with him. After we had seen him trick and betray Harold, Leshawna, and Bridgette, DJ says that he is a "trustworthy" ally.
• The Venture Bros.: Jonas Junior's apparent competence and good-natured personality are an ironic twist of fate, particularly given his claim in his first appearance the he was the son that Jonas Venture Senior should have had. Given the increasing indications thought out the series that many of Thaddeus' issues and failings are the results of shortcomings in his father's parenting, combined with various traumatic experiences incurred during his childhood as a boy adventurer, it could be surmised that Jonas Venture Junior is able to fulfill the role expected of a son of the great Dr. Venture better than his brother, due to the ironic fact that unlike Thaddeus, Jonas Junior wasn't actually raised by their father.
• Wakfu: It's a bit of Fridge Brilliance, but with Grougaloragran effectively killed and forced to reincarnate with his past life's memories gone; after Nox dies, the audience are the only ones who know what his tragic true motives for committing the atrocities that he did trying to reverse time were. In-Universe, the World of Twelve will not remember him as anything other than a genocidal mad despot who destroyed entire countries by draining wakfu in his quest. The effect intensifies after viewing Nox's Origins Episode.
• Wander over Yonder: In "The Pet", Wander plays with a ferocious small creature (which Wander thinks is adorable and treats as a pet), he offers it a teddy bear, which the "pet" tears up and stuffs into a self-made cocoon. Sylvia, looking for Wander, finds the cocoon with its reddish remains. She ends up thinking he's been killed and abandons the ship thinking she has no purpose there... but it's not until after activating the self-destruct and leaving the ship does she realize Wander is still alive.

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