Kick The Dog / Animated Films

Kick the Dog in Animated Films.

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• Cruella de Vil, villain of Disney's 101 Dalmatians, has three in one scene. First, she crushes Nanny behind the door as she enters the house. A moment later, she stubs out her cigarette in Anita's cupcake, and follows by flicking ash into her cup of tea. And that's even before we learn what she has in mind for the puppies!
• In The Book of Life, after Manolo apparently loses Maria to Joaquin, Carlos tells Manolo that "the whole Sanchez family would be so disappointed", clearly referring to Manolo's mother, long since dead. Manolo is understandably hurt and miserable because of the statement.
• Brave: Eleanor burning Merida's bow is a step too far, and Eleanor has a My God, What Have I Done? moment afterwards. Merida also has one where she slashed the tapestry.
• Cinderella's stepsisters do this when they tore Cinderella's dress to prevent her from going to the ball, even after she kept her end of the bargain of doing all the house chores. What made this moment even worse was that all the materials used on Cinderella's dress were things that they considered "trash" and they still made a big fuss over it, just so Cinderella wouldn't be able to go to the ball.
  • They learned well from their mother Lady Tremaine. She locked Cinderella up when she realized she was the one the Prince was looking for. And when Cinderella was able to escape with the help of her animal friends, she purposely tripped the footman carrying the glass slipper, causing him to trip and the slipper to break.
    • Bonus points for flashing an evil grin right after the duke implies that the king will have his head for this. Because, you know, she wasn't enough of a monster already apparently.
  • In the sequels, Tremaine keeps up with the puppy kicking. In A Twist in Time she manipulates her soon-to-pull-a-Heel–Face Turn daughter Anastasia into being her henchwoman because she knows how emotionally needy she is (and the other things she does go straight up into Moral Event Horizon), and in Dreams Come True she pulls a rather cruel Parental Marriage Veto on Anastasia.
• Despicable Me has a character-establishing moment at the beginning where the protagonist comforts a child who has dropped an ice-cream cone by... giving him a balloon, after twisting it into some kind of four-legged animal. Protagonist then produces a pin and pops said balloon, and walks off contentedly. Cut to a shocked child with bits of balloon stuck to his face. Yes, he's despicable. His jerkness is further established in the car he drives, an ugly polluting rocket shaped monstrosity; in the fact that he bumps other cars out of the way to park, and when he goes in to the cafe to get a coffee he freezes all the other customers with his freeze ray and goes to the front of the line to get his coffee (which probably was meant for someone else). At least he tips well.
  • Miss Hattie has a moment of this when she tells Edith that she will never be adopted after the latter gives her a mud pie out of kindness. Her treatment of the children itself is already unpleasant in general, especially by punishing them to their "Box of Shame" when they fail to make her enough money, as they are forced to sell cookies against their own will.
  • The Jerkass carny scams Agnes out of her stuffed unicorn and outright belittles her face when she loses. This leaves even Gru appalled and he blows up the douchebag's booth for good measure.
• In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Kadaj kicked the dog when he convinced Rufus he needed to tell the truth by tossing Tseng and Elena's bloodstained ID cards at his feet. It would have been a much more gruesome moment if... well...
  • In Advent Children Complete, we get to see a glimpse of how Tseng and Elena got their asses handed to them.
• In Freddie as F.R.O.7 Freddie's evil aunt, Queen Messina in her introduction scene turns her own pet cat into a baby chick and eats it after turning into a snake, for no particular reason.
• In A Goofy Movie, Pete decides that what he really wants to do after forcing his son PJ to knock down the last pin for him in his bowling game (which is one of the many things he does to PJ for a selfish reason of needing something done but being too lazy to do it himself) is to offer to give him a high-five, take it back, and then laugh in his face after he falls for it, visibly upsetting him. There was no reason at all for him to do that, not even a selfish one. And he does it just after attempting to give Goofy some parenting advice.
• Professor Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective casually kicks, knocks over and generally abuses his mice minions while they're singing about how great he is. Mid-song, he executes one for calling him a rat, then frightens the rest into finishing the song.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): Frollo engages in a lot of pointless cruelty throughout the film:
  • Frollo warns Quasimodo that people will be cruel to him if he leaves the Notre Dame. And boy, was he right. But there was no need to mock poor Quasimodo for it after the incident.
  • The fact he chose "Quasimodo" as a name for the baby, a name that means "half-formed", a continual reminder and marker of his appearance. Clopin points this out.
  • In the climax of the film, the elderly Archdeacon tries to protest him laying siege to one of God's houses. Frollo responds by shoving the old man down the stairs. Not even the cruellest thing he does, but it really underlines how little the authority of the Church really matters to the Judge, given how he claims to do everything he does in God's name.
  • And then of course, he tries to burn down a mill with the family still inside because they harboured gypsies. When Captain Phoebus refuses to go along with the order and then heroically runs into the burning mill to rescue the family from the flames, Frollo orders Phoebus to be summarily executed on the spot.
• The LEGO Batman Movie: It takes Batman being shown a montage of his own moments doing this to Alfred and Robin, among other characters that leads to him having his Jerkass Realization.
• When Eric marries Vanessa in The Little Mermaid (1989), she lays a classic one into Eric's Evil-Detecting Dog.
  • Not to mention when we're first introduced to Ursula, where she's munching on adorable, terrified little shrimp that squeal in her grasp.
• Even after becoming a "zillionaire" through his company that sells fresh air to people, Mr. O'Hare from The Lorax (2012) is willing to do anything to prevent the trees that used to be abundant in Thneedville from coming back. Including painting over Audrey's mural of trees.
• In Mulan, Shan-Yu captures a pair of Chinese scouts (and mockingly congratulates them on finding his army), then lets them go to tell their Emperor he is coming. As they flee, he turns to one of his henchmen, an archer:
  "How many men does it take to deliver a message?"
  [nocks arrow] "One."
  • Later, after having his pet falcon steal a small item from a nearby village to confirm the presence of the Chinese army there, he orders the attack:
    "Besides, the little girl will be missing her doll. We should return it to her."
• In Penguins of Madagascar, Skipper slaps around a baby squid at one point. He quickly realizes his mistake, though.
  Skipper: Sorry, laddie.
• In Disney's version of Peter Pan, Captain Hook, in a rather Bad Boss fashion, shoots one of his own men for singing off key. Later, when another mentions that Wendy made no splash after walking the plank (she got rescued by Peter), Hook tosses him overboard just to hear a splash.
• Pixar films often feature these kinds of moments with their villains and often in ways that hurt characters other than the protagonists beforehand, to give the audience an idea who the protagonists are dealing with. Even for the more despicable of villains, a Kick the Dog moment is often involved long before the villain crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
  • In the Toy Story series...
    • Sid in Toy Story arguably exhibits Troubling Unchildlike Behavior in the way he mistreats his toys, but that's not enough to make him a bad kid (and says more about his parents than him, particularly his ability to acquire working explosives). But then we see him steal one of his sister's dolls and mutilate it as well, just to make her upset. For what turns out to be at least the third time.
    • Toy Story 3 has several on Lotso's part, from reprogramming Buzz for expressing solidarity with his friends, to having said reprogrammed Buzz throw his former friends in their cells, to throwing Woody's hat onto the prison floor to make it seem like Woody was tortured or killed, (or both) to the flashback in which it is revealed that Lotso told Big Baby they were all replaced by their owner when only Lotso was replaced, and then there is Lotso hitting Big Baby (who apart from being a baby was his most loyal minion), and last but not least, him leaving the main toys to burn in the incinerator, including Buzz and Woody who had both just risked their lives to save him.
  • In The Incredibles...
    • Mr. Huph, Bob's boss at the insurance company, prevents Bob from leaving to help a man being mugged purely to exert his authority over Bob.
    • Syndrome has a few. First, he continues to send missiles at the oncoming plane even after Helen makes the plea to abort because there are children aboard. Then, after the plane is confirmed as destroyed, he mocks Mr. Incredible's grief over the apparent loss of his family. Then, he challenges Mr. Incredible's resolve by gambling with the life of Mirage by daring him to actually kill her.
• Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish practically turns this into an artform. He spends all of his screentime killing, maiming, or just being a petty Jerkass in general. He even does it in the most literal manner possible at one point.
  Ethical Bug: You're not gonna shoot a puppy, are you, Jack?
  Jack: Yeah, in the face, why?
• For most of the Rainbow Brite movie, the Dark Princess had a sizable green gem with her that she treated like her Companion Cube, stroking it like a pet or keeping it on a leash. All that tenderness disappeared when she was on a spaceship that used minerals as fuel and was running out of fuel: she threw that gem into the ship's furnace to keep it going. Downplayed in that she didn't do this to an actual living thing, but it does drive home how callous the Dark Princess could be.
• Ratatouille: It's easy to miss, but making Linguini serve the Gusteau sweetbread recipe was nothing other than pettiness on Skinner's part. The only reason to do so was to undercut Linguini (and Rémy).
• In The Rescuers, Madame Medusa asks Penny, the adorable orphan she's kidnapped, "What makes you think anyone would want a homely little girl like you?" in a sickeningly sweet voice, and after trying to get Penny to like her. The cruel manipulation in this scene is arguably more memorably evil than kidnapping Penny in the first place.
• The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood (1973) (who, ironically enough for a Dog Kicker, is a wolf) goes as far as to steal money from a disabled beggar (who is also a literal dog) (who is hiding the money in his cast and he beats his leg to get to it), children, and even from Friar Tuck's church. He does all this with an almost jovial countenance, as if he was just playing an innocent joke... and to top it off, he calls it "his job".
  • Prince John also seems to cross this when he orders Friar Tuck to be hanged as bait to trap Robin Hood. Now, hanging anybody is pretty bad, but Friar Tuck is a man of the church. Even his advisor Sir Hiss seems horrified by this.
• In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, when the Queen is on her way out to poison Snow White, she passes a skeleton reaching for a jug of water just outside his dungeon cell. "Thirsty?" she mocks; "Then have a drink!" and throws the jug at the skull, destroying it, showing she has no respect for the dead.
• Storks: Tulip doesn't appreciate being called "Orphan Tulip," which Junior is quick to do once he deserts her in the middle of the tundra after their fight.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Foreman Spike leaves a negative, 1-star review on the Bros.' defictionalized website that says nothing about their plumbing business all so he can berate them for leaving his business. There were only three reviews when the website first launched. The website launched before the movie released, already establishing him as a jerk.
• Tangled has Mother Gothel literally kicking Pascal, Rapunzel's pet chameleon, out of her way.
• In Turning Red, During the climax, in a fit of rage, Ming rants to Mei about how she always put her family first when she was a teenager, and how she "tried to be a good daughter". If anything, she is basically saying Mei's being a bad daughter by thinking of herself, undermining every self-sacrificing thing she's ever done for her mother.
• Up: Used frequently, and often quite literally. Almost all instances involve Charles Muntz; his targets include, but are not limited to, a few of the talking dogs.
• In the Wallace & Gromit short, The Wrong Trousers, Feathers Mcgraw does this to Gromit in a nearly literal sense. He takes over Gromit's room within the first minute of arriving (forcing him into the spare room — which has to be done up to accommodate him), playing loud music to keep him awake and drive him out of the house (even if Feathers isn't in the house at the moment), then taking over Gromit taking Wallace his slippers and newspaper, which essentially replaces Gromit and causes him to get so fed up and upset he leaves home. This is actually part of Feather's overall plan to steal the diamond, as he needs Gromit out of the way in order to trap Wallace in the Techno-Trousers and prepare for the actual heist.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Let's put what King Candy (a.k.a. Turbo) did to Vanellope in human terms: He invaded her world and attempted to murder her, but failed. He did manage to cripple her in the attempt, though, and was able to usurp her position by manipulating her mind and the minds of her subjects. He distorted the other kids' memories of her and turned them against her, encouraging them to pick on her for the disability he inflicted upon her. Then he changed the rules specifically to exclude her from an event she used to love before her memories were lost, and all the while she can still feel the affinity she has for the sport. Remember, the character he's doing all this to is designed as a nine-year-old girl. His reason? He can't stand not being the center of attention. Yeah, he definitely deserves all that comes his way in the movie's climax.

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