Jerkass Realization / Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "The Cooler", Flame Princess finds out that Princess Bubblegum has been spying on people with hidden cameras and gives her a "Reason You Suck" Speech. This appears to sink in, as PB takes down her surveillance system. But then in "Graybles 1000+" it's revealed she was just replacing that surveillance system with a new slightly less invasive one that tracks chips implanted in her citizens' teeth, though she can only monitor their movement and can't actually see what they're doing.
• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Hall Monster", Jimmy was assigned to be the new hall monitor, after the old hall monitor moved away. While being hall monitor, Jimmy lets his status go to his big head as he busts every student for even most ridiculous things (ex. Carl having too many llama stickers on his lunchbox). However, Jimmy was unintentionally shown footage from Goddard that showed him how overboard he went as hall monitor. Seeing the footage, Jimmy realized how badly he got carried away and purposely broke the rules to get fired from being hall monitor.
• A lot of episodes of Adventures of the Gummi Bears start with Gruffi been mean to the other characters due to one of their perceived flaws like; be too young and irresponsible, be too old and unwieldy with magic, be too childish, having love for an activity that he considers useless like art or sailing, etc., just for that character to do something incredibly heroic at the end of the episode proving him wrong. When this action often seems to be a Heroic Sacrifice he shows deep remorse for the dead of his friend and regrets all his harsh words promising not to do it again if the characters were alive. Of course, the character is never dead and he never keeps his promise as he’s mean again in the next episode.
• Arthur:
  • In the episode "So Funny, I Forgot to Laugh", Arthur starts to make fun of Sue Ellen due to her wearing a wooly sweater to school. He constantly makes a bunch of jokes about how Sue Ellen looks like a sheepdog and even draws a picture of Sue Ellen with a sheepdog's body and sticks it to her locker. Arthur finally goes too far when he photoshops a sheepdog's head over a photo of Sue Ellen and emails it to her, and when Sue Ellen sees it, she is reduced to tears. It isn't until Arthur hears that Sue Ellen is thinking about switching classes that he realizes that he was being a bully to her and he finally apologizes.
  • There is also the episode "Draw" where Fern gets mad at Francine for calling her a "mouse" and she decides to get back at her by creating a bunch of mean drawings about her and gets all the others to join in. They soon find out that they went too far after they hear Francine telling Mrs. Macgrady about the whole thing and she's done talking, she starts to cry.
• Ben 10: Alien Force: Throughout the episode "In Charm's Way," Kevin acts like a complete dick to Gwen, openly accusing her of not even trying to find a way to fix his mutation after their ill-fated attempt to hack the Omnitrix, which makes him a prime target for Charmcaster's manipulations. At the end of the episode, he gets hit with a big-time helping of this trope when Ben gets fed up with his attitude and tells him that Gwen has in fact been spending all of her spare time since the accident trying to find a cure for him:
  Kevin: She... she never told me.
  Ben: Should she have had to?
• This happens in the animated Peanuts special, Charlie Brown's All Stars. Charlie Brown ends up turning down a sponsor deal that would have allowed his baseball team to become apart of the little league, complete with uniforms. When the team finds this out (on top of Charlie Brown causing them to lose yet another game), they berate him to no end. As they walk away, they continue to complain about how stupid he was to turn down the deal, until Linus had enough and informed them he only turned it down because he would've been forced to kick the girls and Snoopy off the team. As if they didn't feel bad enough, Linus and Schroeder then decide to give everyone "The Reason You Suck" Speech. It's probably one of the few times the characters felt genuine remorse for their treatment of Charlie Brown.
• Craig of the Creek: After Craig calls her out for the way she's been treating him, her bird mating dance confession to him, and working together with him so they can get off the island, Wildernessa finally apologizes to Craig for always tearing him down and gives him her dog whistle.
• Danny Phantom: In the episode "Reality Trip," Freakshow's machinations result in Danny's Secret Identity being outed to the world. Jack and Maddie are confused as to why he hid it from them, and when Jazz points out that it's because of their very anti-ghost attitude, all they can do is look down in shame.
  Jazz: Hmm, let me guess. [mimicking Jack] "Hey, Maddie, let's destroy the ghost!" [mimicking Maddie] "No, Jack, let's dissect the ghost." [mimicking Jack again] "I know, let's catch the ghost and rip it apart molecule by molecule!" [normal voice] You guys are so understanding.
• Quite a few Donald Duck shorts involves the titular character going overboard in punishing his nephews for an imagined slight, only to realize that they've been trying to do something nice for him the entire time. One such cartoon, Donalds Happy Birthday, has his guilt causing him to shrink so small that he escapes meekly through a knothole.
• In "Follow the Leader" from Dragon Tales, Emmy is the leader, but keeps having everyone play stuff that Max is too old to do until he gets irritated and says he's going to play on his own. Then, a giant grabs Emmy and starts trying to do stuff like make her going down a tall slide, leading her to complain that it's too hard and she's to little. Then she realizes that she sounds like Max.
• At the end of Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, Eddy breaks down and realizes that his horrible behavior he had over the course of the series, which he learned from his brother, only caused him and his two friends pain and trouble and that he made up all the stories about his brother just so people would like him. It's with that and the heartless beating his brother gave him that the kids realize two things: the reason for Eddy's behavior and that they are becoming just as bad as Eddy's Brother. Sarah, in particular, is implied to be most affected by this as she abuses her brother constantly and takes joy in it, just like Eddy's Brother. After realizing what Eddy had went through all this time, the kids forgive the Eds for all the scams and trouble they caused, apologize for the ruthless torment they gave the Eds, and finally accept the Eds as their friends. Except for Jonny, who was Late to the Realization and ends up beating up the Eds like the other kids planned to do at the start, only for the kids to retaliate and beat him up in turn, cementing the fact that Jonny took the Eds' place as the social outcast from now on.
• Family Guy:
  • Played for laughs in the episode, "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea". An inmate at a jail who was about to stab Joe, who along with Peter, Quagmire, and Cleveland was in prison for arson stabs himself with the knife to know what his victims felt. Then he says "Is that what I've been doing to people?! ...I belong here."
  • In the episode "Brothers and Sisters," Lois plays Relationship Sabotage between her sister Carol and Mayor West, firmly believing that the relationship will end badly like Carol's previous marriages. When West finally gives up and plans to leave Quahog, Peter calls her out on her bitchiness, pointing out that no one else believed their own relationship would work. Lois retorts that Carol supported them, and she never would have had the confidence to marry Peter if it weren't for that... and now that Carol needs her support, Lois is turning her back on her. Cue realization.
    Lois: Oh, my God! Peter, I've made a terrible mistake!
• Franklin:
  • In "Franklin's Favorite Card", Franklin and Bear have a disagreement about whether Bear lost Franklin's Carl Cougar card or not and decide to not be best friends anymore. On his way home, Snail asks Franklin if the card was really more important than being friends with Bear, causing Franklin to remember how good friends he and Bear were.
    Franklin: I think I've made a big mistake, Snail. Bear is my best friend.
  • In "Franklin Forgives," Franklin forgives Harriet for accidentally knocking his pet fish Goldie into the pond after realizing how awful he's been to her and how horrifying it would be if she were the one who were missing. In returns, she forgives him for having been like this.
• Futurama: In "The Late Phillip J. Fry", Fry misses a date with Leela on her birthday due to a mishap with the Professor's new time machine (which can only move forward) which strands him in the distant future, and the video birthday card he was recording for her falls out just after the time machine launches. Leela thinks he ditched her for a party that was being held the same night (and during which an accident killed almost everyone) and spends decades being angry at him... at which point the video card flies out of the time machine, hits Leela in the head, and after viewing it Leela realizes she spent her entire life being mad at Fry for something that wasn't his fault.
• Parodied and subverted in the Goof Troop episode "Axed by Addition." When PJ plays (extremely) sick, Pete starts to realize that he's been a jerk to him, for some reasons that make sense and others that are very mundane. He sobs confessions to everyone he sees, which creeps most of them out, and then chases PJ all across the city, and eventually catches up to him, holds him, and apologizes... then immediately drops him when the phone rings and starts being a jerk to him again as soon as he finds out PJ wasn't really sick.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "Sock Opera", Eldritch Abomination Bill Cipher gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Mabel, who's staging a puppet show to attract the boy she has a crush on. Bill points out that Mabel is so obsessed with her project that she's broken her promise to help her twin brother Dipper, who has sacrificed a lot for her. This backfires big time; Mabel immediately realizes how selfish she's been and goes to save Dipper, abandoning her show (and defeating Bill) in the process.
    Bill: I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?
    Mabel: ...Dipper would!
  • Similarly, in the episode "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", Mabel worries that Dipper is spending an inordinate amount of time with Grunkle Ford instead of her and Stan. Dipper points out that this is because Ford doesn't tease him like they do. Mabel cracks "Give him time!" and laughs for a second... then immediately and visibly regrets it.
  • One for Dipper in "Little Dipper" — he spends the whole episode obsessing over Mabel finally growing taller than him. When he finally asks why she calls him short so much, she points out that he normally beats her at everything and has no problem rubbing it in her face. Being taller than him was the first time she'd beaten him at something.
    Dipper: Oh man... now I feel like a big jerk.
    Mabel: Don't you mean... a little jerk?
    Dipper: [laughing weakly] Yeah, alright, I walked into that one.
  • In "Blendin's Game", Dipper and Mabel run into a very young Wendy and Tambry while time-traveling. Dipper is mildly freaked out on learning Wendy thinks he's cute, due to her being a young child. Mabel gently elbows him with a, "Now you know how she felt, creep!" (referring to Dipper's own crush on Wendy in the present). Dipper laughs at first, but then has a moment of realization:
    Dipper: Heh heh, yeah... Whoa. (eyes narrow) Whoa.
  • In the Grand Finale, Stan and Ford, who have held a grudge against each other for past events, get this when their bickering not only ruins their chance to destroy Bill Cipher, but also endangers Dipper and Mabel. When they see how well the younger twins work together to fight Bill, they realize what petty jerks they've been.
    Stan: How did things get so messed up between us?
    Ford: We used to be like Dipper and Mabel. The world's about to end and they still work together. How do they do it?
• Justice League: In the episode "Clash," Superman gets hit with this when he realizes that he's been treating the newest member of the team, Captain Marvel, incredibly unfairly and uncharitably after learning during their battle that he's a child. Unfortunately, this realization comes too little, too late, and Captain Marvel quits the team after delivering a brutal verbal takedown of Superman and the League.
• In The Loud House, it's happened several times to Lincoln, after he realises that whatever Zany Scheme he concocted came at the expense of his sisters, and will ether find a way to make it up to them or will accept whatever they do to him to get even.
  • In "Driving Miss Hazy", tired of having to do menial chores in exchange for Lori to drive them somewhere, the other Loud siblings try to teach Leni to drive. After realising what they are trying to do, Lori sabotages Leni's driver's test by giving her incorrect information. When Lincoln tells her that what she did may result in Leni getting into an accident, Lori rushes to the DMV, worried about her sister.
  • In "Net Gains", Lynn Jr. is forced to join the worst team in the local basketball league, and tells the other girls to just pass her the ball when they get a chance. After Lynn Jr. wins the game, the other girls lament that they barely got a chance to play, to which she responds "a win's a win, no matter who plays." When their next game ends in defeat, she brings in some older girls to help her out. When the older girls win the game, Lynn Jr. calls them out for hogging the ball, to which one girl replies, "a win's a win, no matter who plays." At the championship game, Lynn Jr. is more supportive of her teamamtes, and though they don't win, she's happy that they all got to play and have fun.
• Miraculous Ladybug: In Season 3, Marinette doesn't see Kagami as a person instead of a rival to be undermined (Animaestro and Backwarder come to mind), until in "Ikari Gozen", she learns by chance that Kagami doesn't have any friends. Then she apologizes and — since Kagami is a forgiving sort of person — they become friends for real.
• During the 4th season of Monkie Kid, Macaque seems to have his own one of these in regard to his long-standing hatred towards Monkey King. When he and MK join forces to traverse the broken Scroll of Memory and rescue Monkey King. They watch the memory of the argument that broke their friendship, he visibly shows regret over his past accusations towards his former friend. Realizing he was wrong to ever view Monkey King as a backstabber who would willingly discard his friends.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Prince and the Ponies", the jealous foals wish all manner of unpleasant fates on the Newborn Twins when said twins are the ones invited to a banquet. The older foals are horrified when it turns out to have been a trap and one of those fates (captivity) comes true.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has quite a number of instances:
    • "Suited for Success": Rarity's friends criticize the dresses she makes for them for the Grand Galloping Gala (free of charge and out of kindness, mind you), and bombard her with suggestions to make the dresses look exactly the way they want them to. Unfortunately for Rarity, her friends' tacky fashion sense nearly destroys her career when she displays the new dresses at a fashion show attended by an understandably offended critic. The guilt-ridden five make it up to her by completing her own unfinished dress with her designs and throwing another fashion show with the original dresses that blows the critic away.
    • "Sisterhooves Social": After blowing off her little sister Sweetie Belle as an inconvenience following one too many blunders — shrinking her favorite wool sweater in the wash, using up her spare gemstones to decorate a drawing, and tidying a design room that's supposed to be messy — Rarity begins to soften when she finds innovative ways to incorporate those blunders into her work. She remains peeved about the gems, though, until she finds them forming a heart shape around Sweetie Belle's drawing of the two sisters. Rarity cries "My God, What Have I Done?" and spends the rest of the episode trying to win her sister back.
    • "May the Best Pet Win!": At the end, when Tank saves her, Rainbow Dash realizes that she was choosing a pet based on athletic ability and not what really makes a good pet. She ultimately decides to adopt Tank as her new pet, despite him being the total opposite of what she had in mind.
    • "Putting Your Hoof Down": Fluttershy takes assertiveness lessons in order to quit being a pushover, but takes them too far and becomes a jerk. She comes to her realization after brutally tearing into Rarity and Pinkie Pie for their love of fashion and parties, respectively, driving them off in tears.
      Fluttershy: I'm the monster...
    • "Hurricane Fluttershy": Rainbow Dash learns this very fast after realizing that her brusque manner of coaching and motivating the other pegasi is only terrifying her friend early in the episode, and makes an effort to be much calmer and praises her when she really improves, despite the improved level still being a bit low. Played both ways, since Fluttershy only agrees to training out of guilt when a dejected Rainbow Dash submits to her refusal to take part. To a lesser degree, when RD's forcing a visibly sick Thunderlane to participate in training results in him getting several other ponies sick and unable to attend the main task.
    • "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" works toward this on more than one level. On one hand, Rainbow Dash is letting her fame and respect get to her head, and the whole MMDW gambit is intended to make her see how a true hero should act. On the other hand, several viewers thought RD's best friends were going simply too far in trying to teach her a lesson, to the point where it was degrading Dash and near enough humiliating her. At least one Fix Fic has them realize their jerkass behavior when RD earnestly thanks them for their brutal wakeup-call.
    • "A Canterlot Wedding": This happens twice. In the first part, Twilight accuses Princess Cadance of being "evil" (with little to no actual evidence to back herself up), to which her accusations were easily dispelled by her brother, Shining Armor. The result leaves her alienated from her brother, friends and mentor, and she tearfully apologizes to Cadance for her accusations. Then it turns out Cadance really is evil, albeit an evil imposter named Queen Chrysalis, who is exposed to the rest of the cast by the real Cadance in the second part. As she prepares to take over Canterlot, she smugly tells off the ponies for ignoring Twilight and letting her plan go through, leading a solemn Applejack to apologize to Twilight on everyone's behalf.
      Twilight: It's not your fault. She fooled everypony.
    • "One Bad Apple": It turns out that Babs Seed, Applebloom's visiting cousin, was bullied back home for not having a cutiemark, and only took up bullying the CMC to avoid getting bullied again. The CMC only finds out this after they've set in motion an elaborate and potentially dangerous scheme to get revenge. Also, when they show Babs around at the start, they insensitively remark on her blank-flank several times, and she's visibly uncomfortable.
    • "Spike at Your Service": Twilight's attention deficit leads her to ignore Spike as he leaves her service due to a life debt with Applejack. The latter explains this to her later on, with the expected results. When she asks if she was listening to Spike's conversation, Twilight can only stammer a meek and ashamed "No".
    • Discord might be on the side of good now, but he still has some difficulty understanding friendship and differentiating right from wrong. Most episodes that feature him have him lose his temper, whip up some serious trouble with his limitless power, realize he's being an asshole, and giving a meek but genuine apology:
      Discord: Er, Tree Hugger, I'm sorry that you got caught in the middle of my... er, you know... wrath.
    • "Honest Apple": After Applejack drives off all the contestants for a fashion show with her Brutal Honesty, Rarity teaches her a lesson by having Applejack talk with Strawberry Sunrise, a pony who doesn't like apples and proceeds to flippantly bad-mouth them.
      Applejack: Well, that's fine if she doesn't like 'em! But if she knew how hard we worked to make our apples perfect, maybe she wouldn't be so mean about— ohhhhhh... oh boy.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In "Radical Rescue", Rad starts to realize that he's a bad influence on K.O., just like Bell Beefer and Mega Football Baby were a bad influence on him, and he needs to stop worrying about people thinking he's "lame".
• Throughout most of Over the Garden Wall, Wirt is quick to blame his younger brother Gregory for the trouble they get into, even when the problems are caused by Wirt's wishy-washiness and refusal to take responsibility. In fact, a flashback in the penultimate episode reveals Wirt's inaction nearly got him and his brother killed, and led to them getting stranded in the Unknown in the first place, and it's at this point Wirt realizes how much he is to blame for their predicament.
  Beatrice's Mother: You'll be no good to your brother dead!
  Wirt: I was never any good to him when I was alive...
• In the Christmas Episode of Pinky and the Brain, throughout their scheme to infiltrate Santa's toys with brainwashing dolls, Pinky constantly bugs Brain over his "very important" Christmas letter. When he later realizes he forgot to send it and breaks down in tears, Brain finally snaps and snatches away his "stupid letter", ordering him to see to his device. Just seconds from his plan succeeding, Brain reads the letter out of curiosity, discovering it is actually a heartwrenching speech from Pinky about his "best friend in the whole world, the Brain" and how he never gets the respect he deserves, pleading for Santa to give every present intended for Pinky to him (and the world should he have it in that big old bag of his). The letter (and the sight of a heartbroken Pinky still loyally tending to his work) leaves Brain a teary eyed wreck, only able to muster out a Merry Christmas through his control booth before smashing it to pieces.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • In "Twisted Sister", all three girls have this when Bunny dies after saving them from a mob of escaped prisoners, especially because the last thing they said to her was "Bunny do bad!" for letting them out in the first place.
    Bubbles: She was good all along. We were the ones who were bad.
  • And again in "Equal Fights", when they realize that Femme Fatale had tricked them into becoming raging misandrists like her so they wouldn't stop her from committing crimes.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016):
  • Buttercup spends the first few minutes of "Painbow" disrupting the class by making jokes at Ms. Keane's expense. Later on in the episode she realizes she's been a jerk when seeing her sisters brainwashed by Allegro and acting the same way she did.
  • Bubbles has one in "Strong Armed". After she threw a fit that caused Packrat to fall into toxic waste and becomes a monster, this is what gets Bubbles to find out that being so overly-dependent on her robotic cast is what caused this problem.
  • Bubbles has another one in "Little Octi Lost" during Buttercup's Disney Death. Having refused to forgive Buttercup for losing Octi up to this point, she comes to the realization that if she had just pardoned her that none of this would have ever happened.
  • Bubbles suffers one again in "Horn Sweet Horn" due to her impulsiveness costing her her friendship with Donny after he's turned into a beast from the transmogrifier.
  • Blossom in "Presidential Punchout" upon hearing Matt Manser's speech on how he'll make the school better, which causes her to realize that she was no better than Princess due to doing what Princess had done to sabotage her.
  • Blossom again in "Puffdora's Box" when she gets the message that her bossiness does not always help and that she should do other people's way of things sometimes.
  • Buttercup and Blossom in "The Stayover" after they find out that their sugar-induced antics had caused problems for the orphanage.
  • Buttercup and Blossom again in "Tiara Trouble" after all their pressure on Bubbles causes the latter to crack under the pressure.
  • Buttercup in "Man Up 2", when her looking for a bottle cap rather than helping her sisters caused them to get captured by Man-Boy.
• The Raccoons: In "Moving In!", Lisa grows depressed over leaving her old life behind and moving to the Evergreen Forest. Tired of keeping her emotions bottled up any longer, she lashes out at her family at the dinner table, selfishly claiming that no one cares about how she feels and blaming her father for losing his old job which led to the move. Bert tries to cheer her up with a friendly game of basketball, but when he reminds her that a family requires cooperation like basketball, she realizes how rude she's been to her own family. This leads to her making a surprise appearance on her father's cooking show, where she apologizes for her behavior.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show, "Stimpy's Fan Club": Ren becomes jealous of Stimpy getting all the fan mail, so when he finally gets one, he reads it to Stimpy to rub it in his face (even literally rubbing the letter in his face), all the while adding comments on how Stimpy is finished and how he is now the most loved. Then he gets to the end and realizes the letter is from Stimpy himself. And to drive the point home, he briefly turns into a person's ass.
• In the Rocket Power episode "Reggie and a Net", Reggie tries out for the local volleyball team, but doesn't make the cut because she spent her tryouts trying to steal the spotlight and perform all sorts of techniques at the expense of her teammates. It isn't until she reviews the footage of her that she realizes what the coach meant when she says she needs players "who can be part of a team."
• In the Christmas Episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko decides to throw a Christmas party with his new elf neighbors. Mr. Bighead however feels left out when he doesn't get an invitation, and starts a rumor about the elves that blows out of proportion, resulting in no one showing up. Mr. Bighead later finds out that Rocko had in fact invited him, but his invitation got lost in the mail and he's left feeling incredibly guilty.
• Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat
  • In the episode "Not So Purrfect Paitent", Dongwa takes advantage of Sagwa by forcing her to clean the clubhouse by himself, but is soon caught faking being still hurt, so Dongwa had to do the chores by himself.
  • In the episode "Precious Gift", the Alley Cats tricked Sheegwa to giving them Tai-Tai's necklace. But when the necklace broke to pieces, they see this and realizes they went too far.
    Wing-Wing: Tough break.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Radioactive Man", after being rejected for the part of Fallout Boy, Nelson points at his reflection and delivers his trademark laugh. He then remarks, "Hey, that hurts. No wonder no one came to my birthday party."
  • In "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy", Grandpa Simpson also realizes his jerkiness after he tells Homer that his birth was an accident.
  • During "The Boys of Bummer", the entire town of Springfield harasses Bart endlessly simply because he accidentally cost them the Little League championship, eventually causing him to suffer Sanity Slippage and attempt suicide only to end up in a coma. When they all gather outside his hospital room purely to chant about how much Bart sucks, Marge finally puts her foot down and chews out the entire town for their actions, pointing out the billboard that labels Springfield the "Meanest City in America" and how their treatment of Bart proves it right. At that, the entire town gets the message and make up for their jerkassery by restaging the game so Bart can win.
  • In "Lisa's Pony", Homer breaks down upon realizing what crappy father he's been towards Lisa and in a desperate attempt to win her back over to his side, buys her a pony that he has to work himself to near death at a second job to afford. She choose to let it go for his sake.
• South Park: In "Splatty Tomato" Heidi Turner realizes how horrible she has become because of Cartman's influence.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Squidward:
    • In the April Fools' Day episode, had enough of SpongeBob's annoying pranks on everyone, such as one of which only putting one ice cube in a drink where the patron asked for a couple of them. Eventually, Squidward gets so fed up that he decides to get revenge on SpongeBob by showing him what a "real" prank is. He then sets up an elaborate, physically painful, and rather cruel prank on SpongeBob that causes the latter to leave the Krusty Krab in tears. After all the customers call Squidward out on this and storm out in disgust, Squidward looks around as he sees the damage his "harmless" prank did to the Krusty Krab and SpongeBob then realizes he went too far.
      Squidward: [sighs] Why is it whenever I'm having fun, it's wrong?
    • In the Christmas special, cruelly mocks Spongebob after Santa fails to come like he thought he would. Not long afterwards, he realizes how much of an asshole he was, complete with a Visual Gag of a photo of a donkey, to show how he was being a jackass, after he gave him a homemade clarinet as a present. He spends the rest of the episode trying to make it up to Spongebob by acting as Santa.
  • In the episode "What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?", all of SpongeBob's friends get exasperated with his clumsy behavior, call him "idiot boy," and bluntly tell him to get lost. They're left in tearful remorse when they discover that SpongeBob has run away as a result and do everything they can to find him and bring him home... except for Squidward, who's ecstatic that he's gone.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "On The Run", Amethyst takes Steven to the Prime Kindergarten, the place where Amethyst was born. When Pearl finds out, she's furious that Amethyst told Steven about the Kindergartens, because as it turns out, the Kindergartens were part of a resource extraction project that, had it continued, would've destroyed Earth and killed all life on it; an Awful Truth that the Crystal Gems didn't want Steven to know about. The resulting argument results in Amethyst lashing out violently and attacking Pearl. The fight gets interrupted and Amethyst runs off, and Pearl is surprised and confused that criticizing the aforementioned project upset Amethyst so badly. It turns out Amethyst hates herself for having been created by such a horrible and evil project, and Pearl's condemnations of the Kindergartens felt like a condemnation of Amethyst herself. Pearl tries to explain that she wasn't saying that Amethyst's birth wasn't a bad thing just because the Kindergartens were bad, but when she puts her explanation into words Pearl realizes that that was exactly what she was saying. This realization prompts Pearl to give a heartfelt apology and ask for Amethyst's forgiveness.
    Pearl: No, no, Amethyst you're not the mistake, you're just the byproduct of a ...big mistake.
  • In "Keystone Motel", Garnet ends up accompanying Steven and Greg to they nearby state of Keystone on an errand as an excuse to leave the house after her huge fight with Pearl in the prior episode. However, not long before they arrive at the motel, she ends up splitting into Ruby and Sapphire, who are arguing over whether or not they should forgive Pearl. Throughout the trip, the two's arguing and hostility stresses Steven more and more until they descend into shouting in the diner the next day, causing Steven to crack and leave the restaurant after dropping his plate. Ruby and Sapphire immediately stop fighting and follow him outside, where Steven just vents out how horrible everything has been because of all the tension before even musing if it's his own fault. The two are immediately stricken with remorse and the shock is enough to force them to talk things through and confess their own feelings on the matter before fusing. It hits Sapphire especially hard because her future vision lets her know their feud will eventually end, and thus she thinks she's being the bigger Gem by accepting this outcome while Ruby continues to throw a tantrum. She's driven to tears when she realizes how insensitive she's being to Ruby because of this. Similarly, the shock is enough to get Ruby that in her frustrations, she's been making the problem worse and hurting everyone else, while also forgetting that while Sapphire may be acting calm about the thing, she's also upset about what Pearl did.
    Sapphire: I keep looking into the future, when all of this has already been solved... As if it doesn't matter how you feel in the present... [starts to cry] No wonder you think I don't care!
    Ruby: Sapphire... Nonononono, this is all my fault! I didn't want to look for a solution, I just wanted to be mad — you're right, you're always right, I was being stupid!
    Sapphire: I don't think you're stupid!
  • In "Dewey Wins", Steven, having unexpectedly returned from Homeworld after previously giving himself up to save Connie, Onion, Jamie, Lars, and Sadie from being taken to a People Zoo, doesn't understand why Connie is unhappy with him for doing so. While he had a good reason (Mainly the fact that one of the Gems who came for them could stop Alexandrite), she feels that he forgot about their training together for these kind of situations. The following day, he tries to help Mayor Dewey keep his position as Mayor when Nanefua decided she would like to be elected. After she brings up better points than his own, he resigns, and Steven catches himself responding in a similar way to Connie, now realizing how he made her feel.
  • In "The New Lars", when Steven spends the whole day in his body. Lars was depressed and shocked to find out what Steven and everybody (including his own parents) liked the "new" him and didn't noticed or missed him at all. That when he decided to still act like himself but more nicer and open about his feelings.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
  • In "New Girl in Town," Raph repeatedly criticizes Leo's leadership skills and methods, eventually leading to an exasperated Leo giving him the leader position to see if he can do it any better. It doesn't take long for Raph to crack under the pressure, leading to Mikey getting injured by Snakeweed; when they get back to the lair, Raph gets hit with this, acknowledging that he's not fit to be the leader and now realizes how tough Leo has it.
  • In the season two premiere, April's father accidentally got mutated into a mutant bat. When she learns the Turtles were responsible for the accident, April loses it and declares that she doesn't want to see them again. Several episodes later, April was approached by Donnie (who feels horrible about the whole thing) as he tried to apologize to her for what happened to her father, but her blind anger leads her to not listen to him, although she took a moment to listen to his advice about some things can't be controlled. After Casey tells her how he accidentally destroyed a friendship and saying the same thing Donnie said about how everything can't be controlled, April realizes how wrong she was to be so hard on him and the rest of the Turtles. Also, while being attacked by Karai and seeing it getting out of hand, April not only realized that she can't control everything but also that Donnie and Casey were right about it as it convinced her to call the Turtles for help. After being saved, April forgives the Turtles and in return apologizes to them for how she treated them.
  • In "A Foot Too Big," Donnie finds himself the recipient of Bigfoot's unwanted advances, and complains about how she keeps bugging him and following him everywhere, to which Raph remarks that that's exactly what Donnie himself does to April. Donnie gets hit with this, and by the end of the episode vows to dial it back.
  • In "The Croaking", after scolding Mikey for a mess he made and sees that he ran away, the boys complain about cleaning up after him but April told them about how completely inconsiderate they were too him. Also, April tells the boys that they don't truly appreciate Mikey for who he is or what he does for them, especially Raph. Realizing that April was right, the boys felt remorses as they tried to be more respectful and understanding towards Mikey.
• Thomas & Friends: In "Toby's Afternoon Off", Toby finishes his regular jobs early and is hoping for an afternoon off so he can go to Farmer McColl's farm and visit the animals who live there. However, Sir Topham Hatt has three important jobs for Toby to do since Toby was the first engine to get all his jobs done early. While Toby ordinarily likes being useful, he worries that he won't have time to go to the farm afterwards as a result of doing all those jobs, so he decides to ask one of his friends to help him on just one of his jobs. Unfortunately for him, Mavis, Thomas, and Salty are all too busy to help him. Fortunately for Toby, his last job is delayed until the next morning because the ship he was supposed to help Cranky unload his cargo from had been caught in rough seas, meaning he does have time to go to the farm after all. On his way to the farm, Toby comes across Henry, telling him about his desire to go to the farm and complaining to him about how Mavis, Thomas, and Salty were all too busy to help him, as he thought friends helped each other. When Henry tells Toby that Mavis, Thomas, and Salty were all helping him because he had broken down, this gets Toby to realize that his friends were helping another friend after all, but he hadn't thought about it at first because he was too fixated on his own desire to go the farm. To make it up to Henry, Toby decides to take his empty coaches back to Knapford Station for him. Henry tells Toby that if he does this, it means he won't have time to go to the farm, but Toby tells him that it doesn't matter to him, since helping a friend is much more important.

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