Lack Of Empathy / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The Ice King and Lemongrab. The Ice King is insane, and Lemongrab is unable to read social cues.
• American Dad!: Roger Smith. In the episode "Frannie 911", he tries showing empathy for a change, and it literally almost kills him, after which he reveals that empathy is fatally toxic to his species. In a later episode, he had a moment of empathy for a shopgirl, which gives him such a shock that one of his personas goes rogue.
• Amphibia:
  • King Andrias pretends to understand Marcy's plight and plays along until he gets everything that he ever wants. Zigzagged later on. Andrias shows absolutely no remorse for the mass deforestation his robots are causing to Amphiba, his ancestor's traditional home, even looking forward to draining "this pitiful mud ball" of all its remaining resources. He tasks Yunan with conscripting frogs to build more factories to produce his robots, even outright telling her to terminate any dissenters. However, he does show genuine fondness for Marcy after the Core chooses her as its suitable host and tries to dissuade it from that course of action, even being unwilling to watch as she's possessed in the end. That said, he still helps the Core take her over, showing how sentimental feelings aren't enough to dissuade him from his course of action.
  • The Core, more so than even Andrias himself. Whereas Andrias is implied to have some genuine guilt over what he's been doing, the Core expresses no such reservations. Darcy's immediate response to catching Andrias staring forlornly at his friendship portrait is to smirk slyly and passive-aggressively mock him over what happened between him and his friends; Darcy is eagerly looking forward to their invasion of Earth.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Master Shake is a raging Jerkass who just plain doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself. He constantly goes above and beyond to torment Meatwad for his own amusement, going so far as to stuff Meatwad's pets into a microwave. One particular example is in the Season 2 episode "Super Squatter", in which he breaks into Carl's house to watch TV and spends hours watching while completely ignoring the fact that Carl shot himself in the foot with a shotgun and is sitting right next to him bleeding out and begging for help the entire time.
• Arcane: Jinx is pretty much totally indifferent to anything and anyone she doesn't personally care about; even that can turn on a dime if they do her the slightest wrong, either in reality or in her own head. This is made most clear to the audience through Vi, when she's so completely unconcerned with collateral damage that she almost shoots her sister during their battle with the Firelights.
• Arthur: One of D.W.'s flaws. It's mostly expressed towards Arthur, but it's not limited to him — for example, "Arthur's Chicken Pox" has her take advantage of her grandma by faking chicken pox for her attention, not caring that it may hurt her feelings, and in "Prove It", she shamelessly cons her classmates out of their money just to make Arthur agree to take her to a museum. This is justified by her being only four years old.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Subverted in "The Beach" when Azula, who seems to be a total psychopath for most of the series, apologizes to Ty Lee after insulting her. She also comforts Zuko when she finds him at their family's old beach house.
  • Ozai's only goal in life is to be the most powerful man in the world, so he casually tosses aside his father, his brother, his wife, his son, and eventually his prized daughter in the pursuit of ever greater power.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • Ferris Boyle from "Heart of Ice", whose malicious greed hardened him to Victor Fries begging to keep his wife alive.
  • As a disciplinarian, Temple Fugate doesn't know how to accept not only other human beings, but the universe: before he becomes the Clock King in his introductory episode, he is a Mean Boss to his employees and he is sure he will lose an appeal because everyone thinks of him as a Jerkass.
  • The Joker is completely insane and kicks the dog on several occasions, but what really cements him with this trope is the infamous flashback in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, in which Joker mocks Batman after learning his Secret Identity from torturing Robin enough to drive him insane while showing Batman that he filmed it all, remarking that Batman's origin story "would be funny if it weren't so pathetic", before deciding to laugh about it anyway. When Batman manages to crash through a window and beats him to a pulp, Joker nonchalantly tells him, "If you don't like the movie... I've got slides!" When Batman threatens to "break [Joker] in two", Joker is unafraid, saying that if Batman really wanted to "have that kind of fun", he would have done it years ago. This final comment perfectly displays his fundamental inability to understand human emotions, as any viewer could immediately tell from the context and the tone of Batman's voice that there was a very real chance of him breaking his one rule this time, but the Joker apparently didn't realize that killing strangers and torturing one of Batman's loved ones might cause him to react differently from normal. Or the Joker just didn't care.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: The titular characters generally couldn't care less when others are suffering. In "A Very Special Episode", they are delighted by a baby bird's potential death. In "Breakdown", they show no remorse for immobilizing McVicker with their antics and even cheer when McVicker goes through electroshock therapy.
• Ben 10:
  • Kevin Levin. In his debut episode in the original series, he deliberately rigs two trains to collide so he can steal all of the valuables on board; when Ben points out that he'll be killing hundreds of innocent people in the process, Kevin flippantly remarks, "Hey, no pain, no gain." He's gotten much better in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, because he's stopped using his powers to absorb energy, which had made him violently insane in the first place.
  • Vilgax was originally this, then he became a sort of Noble Demon in Alien Force, which was quickly revealed to be an act.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: Obake has this due to brain damage from an accident in his youth.
• Bob's Burgers: Louise Belcher admits at one point that she doesn't understand emotions such as empathy. When she realizes she feels sorry for her father, Bob, she outright questions her own sanity.
• Brickleberry: Just about everyone has shown this in one way or another, but especially Woody and Malloy. The former frequently mistreats his employees (Steve in particular) and is willing to kill or maim those who get in his way; the latter only cares about getting what he wants with absolutely no regard for others.
• Eustace from Courage the Cowardly Dog. Throughout the series, the only moment he ever shows true empathy is when he hallucinates Courage as a version of his younger self and gives him his hat out of pity. It makes the audience wonder what worth his kind wife Muriel sees in him.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Vlad Masters. He doesn't care if Maddie is already happily married with children because he wants her to be his wife and her son Danny to be his son. He spends much of the show trying to accomplish this. "Masters of All Time" examined an alternate future where Vlad and Maddie got married. The relationship is not a happy one, with Vlad treating Maddie more like a trophy that he won from Jack than his wife.
  • Dan Phantom, Danny's evil future counterpart, is even worse in this regard, as a result of being Danny and Vlad's ghost halves merged together without any human element.
• The Dragon Prince: Explored. Viren's a textbook narcissist, so this comes with the territory. He is a textbook narcissist who wants to be a good friend, ruler, and parent, so he goes on without completely understanding what those are and how to be one (and without the interest and patience to learn what he doesn't understand). The usual rule of thumb is that he'll do things for other people in hopes of gaining their adulation, or in hopes of improving his own power, reputation, and legacy through them, while sincerely believing that this is what it means to do good.
• Drawn Together: Most of the cast qualifies, but Captain Hero is by far the worst offender. He shows zero regards for the well-being of others and will gleefully kill or maim those who stand between him and what he wants.
  Bambi: You killed my mother!
  (Beat)
  Captain Hero: Sucks to be you!
• Family Guy: Stewie Griffin and Peter Griffin. Lois may fall under this trope in the later seasons. Though still present to an extent, Stewie started to grow out of this as the series went on, especially after he and Brian became close friends.
• Futurama: Bender is known for his love for Fry, but he lacks empathy. He loves Fry in a narcissistic way, focusing more on his own happiness than Fry's. In "Jurassic Bark", Bender tosses Seymour the Dog's corpse into a volcano out of jealousy, but he soon realizes that Fry's feelings for Seymour are similar to his own, leading to a realization about empathy. In "I Second That Emotion", Prof. Farnsworth installs an empathy chip, only for Bender to go back to being a jerkass at the end of the episode.
• Generator Rex:
  • Van Kleiss is willing to kill EVO henchmen who displease him without a second thought, kidnap a little girl so he could force her EVO father to go on a rampage, and messes with Rex's emotions simply because he can.
  • White Knight also counts. Despite dedicating himself to wiping the threat of EVOs from the earth, he's just as ruthless and uncaring as Van Kleiss. His disregard towards Rex as a mere weapon, willingness to sacrifice his own forces and millions of innocent people to stop one EVO (he even openly states that "Soldiers are replaceable" to the group of soldiers Rex rescued), and use of Dr. Holiday's mutated EVO sister as blackmail to keep her in Providence are proof of this.
  • By the end of the series, White Knight has warmed up to Rex, to the point of rescinding Six's standing orders to take out Rex if he ever transforms into a Humongous Mecha again since he trusts Six and Rex. Van Kleiss reveals that he was always a selfish jerk seeking godhood and never cared about anyone but himself.
• Goof Troop: Pete generally uses other people as means to an end and either doesn't notice or doesn't care how much anguish he causes any of them—on some occasions he even finds it amusing. He does occasionally feel regret for his actions if something drastic happens (such as his wife threatening to leave him or his son almost dying), but then he's motivated more by keeping them in his life than by caring about how they feel. One episode in the entire series showed him caring about another person's feelings out of more than convenience; he understood how the kid who lost at mini-golf felt in "Tee for Two."
• Infinity Train:
  • Zigzagged with Grace; while she's motherly to the children in the Apex, she doesn't even view the inhabitants of the Infinity Train as sentient beings, calling them "Nulls" and seeing them as nothing more than 'constructs' with no emotions. "The Musical Car" shows that she feigns compassion to the Apex kids by showing appreciation for their objects but merely discards them when they aren't looking. By the second half of Book 3, she's learning to become more empathetic, to the point where she becomes absolutely devastated when Hazel decides to leave her and travel with Amelia instead. She also comes to terms with the mistakes she's made and vows to reform the Apex.
  • Also Zig-Zagged with Simon; he happily tells Hazel that he murdered Tuba, her mother figure and that she's better off without her. But on the other hand, its made clear that in he believes that Denizens like Tuba will inherently abandon their charges, thus in his eyes he's Cruel Tobe Kind. He also worries about the kids of the Apex and shows concern over Grace's lowering number, so it seems he does have empathy, he just uses it on things that ultimately don't matter.
• Invader Zim:
  • Zim himself doesn't care about anyone's feelings, aside from the rare Pet the Dog moment with GIR.
  • Gaz as a rule doesn't care about anyone except her father, though the movie shows that she does also care about her brother, she just never expresses it.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: Lucius, whose job is literally to make people miserable. Heloise on a lesser level, but at least she cares about Jimmy.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012): The Biskit Twins display this in most of their appearances due to their It's All About Me attitudes, although they have the occasional Pet the Dog moment.
• The Looney Tunes Show: Daffy Duck prioritizes his personal possessions over people, which is best demonstrated in the episode "The Float". He refuses to sell his yacht to give Porky back his money, and when Bugs points out he'll lose a friend if he doesn't, Daffy says friends are easy to replace now that he has a yacht. When he finds himself in the hospital after almost drowning, his first concern is finding out the state of his yacht. Leading to this conversation:
  Daffy: What about the Queen of the Ocean, did she survive!?
  Bugs: Yeah, and was towed back to shore.
  Daffy: [gasps happily] Thank goodness! It is things that matter. This proves it!
  Bugs: We sold it and got Porky's money back.
  Daffy: [cries out as he collapses on his hospital bed]
• Mary Shelley's Frankenhole: Mostly everyone qualifies, but protagonist and immortal Mad Scientist Frankenstein is this all the way through. He will create horrific abominations, like a flying shark or vampiric horse, just to kill them for his amusement and will happily let his own elderly children get reaped by the Grim Reaper just because he grew bored with them. When he created a robot housing a copy of his brain so he could have better company to talk to, even his robot self couldn't stand how much of a self-centered jerk he was.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Chloé Bourgeois, one of Marinette's and Adrien's classmates (and a Rich Bitch), has no empathy for middle-class people. In "Derision", when Adrien asks her to apologize to Marinette for a prank she pulled with Kim last year that left her (Marinette) traumatized, Chloé outright refuses to make amends and insists that people like Marinette only exist to suffer for her amusement. This causes Adrien to lose whatever faith he has left in Chloé and sever his ties with her for good.
• Moral Orel:
  • Clay Puppington; he accidentally shot his son and not only refused to take responsibility for it, he mocks Orel for crying in pain.
  • Subverted with Bloberta who proves to have some capacity for empathy. In the last episode, when Clay says that the family is going to sing Christmas carols, Bloberta says that Orel should be involved in it too. Some might ask when she started caring about Orel. There was an episode that went into her childhood. Her mother would not let her sing with the rest of the family because they already had a soprano and they did not need another one. Fridge Brilliance sets in when you realize that Bloberta remembers the humiliation she suffered when it came to families singing songs and does not want to put Orel through that.
  • A lot of the cast shows traits of this. Stopframe and Dr. Potterswheel both have their moments in "Numb" (regarding Bloberta). The former when he takes back his apology (for taking advantage of her to get to Clay) and the latter when he admits he cares for her, not about her. Joe is a brat who's a jerk to pretty much all the children and most of the adults in the show, Miss Sculptham pretty much just does her job as a teacher and shows no interest in teaching or giving advice outside school hours.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: One of Tuck's major flaws, Depending on the Writer. He regularly takes advantage of and humiliates his friends like in "Tuckered Out" and "The Boy Who Cried Robot" and shows little regard for their safety like in in "Histrionics". In "Ball and Chain", he doesn't care about his brother being forced into a marriage with a fish monster, only seeing it as an opportunity to have adventures in space.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Discord, the Arc Villain of the first two episodes of Season 2, is a Reality Warper with a very twisted sense of humor. He feels absolutely no empathy for anyone, and the only thing that matters to him is his own amusement. This turns out to be because he has never had a single friend; when Fluttershy befriends him, he reforms.
  • Diamond Tiara, the Cutie Mark Crusaders's school snob is all over this trope in episode Ponyville Confidential, when she gains the name of "Foal Free Press" editor-in-chief, she blackmails the Crusader Trio to write more embarrassing stories about most of the show's cast, or else she'll post private photos. At the end, after the trio write an apology to their victims, Diamond is finally punished by being kicked out of the chief's chair.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Too Many Pinkie Pies", the main thing that differentiates the Pinkie clones from the original is that the clones care only for their own amusement, while the real Pinkie wants her friends to be happy too.
  • "Griffon the Brush-Off" is all about this trope. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash avert it while playing pranks on their friends; they both agree that pranking Fluttershy is out of the question because she's too sensitive and it would hurt her feelings. Then RD's old friend Gilda comes to visit, and plays the trope straight by being a Jerkass to everypony except RD, because she cares only about being cool. RD also wants to be cool, but is so appalled at Gilda's behavior (which includes making Fluttershy cry) that she tell her to "go find some new cool friends someplace else."
  • "Wonderbolts Academy" has Lightning Dust, a pony who has all of Rainbow Dash's drive and ego, but none of her empathy, to the point that she sees nothing wrong with pulling a stunt that nearly kills several ponies.
  • Lord Tirek, the giant centaur, outright declares that he is fully entitled to use magic. To himself only, it is nothing but a source of power. He does not even care for his own brother, who had chose to befriend Star Swirl.
  • The most explicit example is Cozy Glow, the Big Bad in the Season 8 finale. Unlike all previous villains who outright rejected friendship (or at least were unable to understand it), she is aware of the Power of Friendship, and plans to harness it for her own ends. Cozy uses her youth and cute appearance to ingratiate herself to others and form immediate "friendships" with them that amount to nothing more than her convincing them to do things for her. Even when sent to Tartarus as punishment for attempting to drain magic from Equestria, the very first thing she does upon her arrival is attempt to make "friends" with aforementioned Big Bad Tirek.
• The Owl House:
  • Emperor Belos doesn't give a damn about the people that die in the course of his expeditions. He even mocks Luz and Lilith for being so gullible after he tricks them into almost becoming sacrifices to a Stonesleeper in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen". "King's Tide" makes it clear that he is willing to extend any sympathies or kindness to humans alone — and even that is conditional upon accepting his way of thinking as the correct one, and he's willing to kill any who disagree with him or try to prove him wrong, showing a startling disregard for life beyond what benefits him.
    Belos: [mockingly] That's right, you wouldn't want me hurting your precious palisman would you? Oh, but then again, I don't care what you want.
  • Odalia Blight shows no concern for her family's feelings or even the lives of others, as shown when she's willing to keep Luz's fight with the Abomaton 2.0 going even when it looks like it'll kill her. "Clouds on the Horizon" shows this extends to all life on the Boiling Isles as she's willing to let Belos kill literally everyone else if it means she and the Blight family are rewarded. Even more telling is her outright lack of a reaction to her husband and daughter effectively disowning her. She actually has more of a reaction to Alador destroying the Ambomiton lab than the loss of her family.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • In the Season 2 premiere, we're introduced to Princess Morbucks, a snobby, greedy, selfish, arrogant, shallow, vain, all-around Spoiled Brat who has no sense of empathy whatsoever. She only wants to be a Powerpuff Girl because they have superpowers, the one thing they have and she doesn't have. When the Girls reject her and she screws up one of their missions, it's clear that her actions were only for her sake and she was just jealous of their superpowers and their popularity, not even the least bit grateful for the Girls saving her from being blown up, instead blaming them for her humiliation. Enraged by the Girls' rejection, she proceeds to destroy the Girls with a new Supersuit that she bought and manages to defeat Buttercup and Bubbles with little effort, only for Blossom to retaliate in a glaring sense of Tranquil Fury, who manages to beat the hateful little snot in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown with her sisters waking up to help her before Blossom destroys Princess' Supersuit with her Ice Breath, then gives her a powerful "Reason You Suck" Speech of what it means to be a Powerpuff Girl and how Spoiled Brats like her will never truly get what they want, but they will get what they deserve. And this was just in her debut episode alone. After that, Princess Morbucks becomes yet another in the parade of evildoers for the Girls to battle.
  • One-off villain Dick Hardly. The first thing he does when he sees the Powerpuff Girls, he starts talking to Professor Utonium about making money out of creating more of them (note also that he's talking about his own former roommate's children). His total lack of regard of anybody but himself made him one of the most infamous villains in the series, and by far the more malicious.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: The majority of the cast, with Ren being the most blatant example; he lacks any form of empathy towards Stimpy... except when he doesn't.^note And that's only because the network forced him to give Ren any form of empathy.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Zig-Zagged with Rick Sanchez. While he's fully capable of caring for other people in his life, he actively tries (and often succeeds) in treating them as being meaningless. While it is rarely outright stated, the implied reason is that all the horrible things he has seen on his adventures led to him deciding that every decision he makes is ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of the multiverse. Whether he actually believes that or it's an excuse to justify some of his more morally dark actions is up in the air, but either way, Rick doesn't see it as worth the effort to bond with any particular version of family/friends, since they can be interchanged with any other of the infinite versions of them that exist just one portal-gun trip away.
  • Evil Morty doesn't care about Ricks nor Mortys, having multiple versions of both murdered in gruesome ways to advance his plans. It's completely unknown if he does care about someone else besides himself or if he is even capable of doing so- IE there's been no mention of his original family or his realities' Jessica or anything of the sort. Either way, his complete lack of concern for other Mortys sticks out as particularly heinous and hypocritical, as he knows more than anybody the lengths that Mortys truly do suffer under Ricks- yet he chooses to murder and maim them all the same, as well as ultimately leave them behind at the mercy of their Ricks in favor of saving only himself.
  • Played straight with Rick Prime who killed the protagonist Rick's family. As Rick himself points out, this Rick is the "real deal" when it comes to not giving a shit about anyone.
• South Park:
  • Eric Cartman only cares about himself and getting whatever he wants, and is perfectly willing to lie, cheat, manipulate, and commit mass murder to do so. In one episode, when Kyle is in dire need of a kidney transplant and Cartman is the only match, Cartman blatantly refuses to do so unless he's paid $10 million for it, forcing Stan and the other people of South Park to resort to trickery to get said kidney.
  • Done very frequently, perhaps the most notable involving Kenny's deaths, which, aside from the standard shocked exclamation, are rarely treated with much weight at all and forgotten about quickly. Subverted with "Kenny Dies" when the boys actually treat Kenny's supposedly permanent death with much more sorrow. It doesn't last long, however, and by "A Ladder to Heaven" it's obvious they've all but forgotten about him.
• Spongebob Squarepants: Even though he's justified by being Surrounded by Idiots, Squidward Tentacles himself is often shown to be indifferent in later episodes such as refusing to help a man who was handcuffed by Mr. Krabs for not paying. But Mr. Krabs tops the cake more than the aloof Small Name, Big Ego, as his greed takes over his empathy and common sense.
• Street Fighter: M. Bison don't get why Chun-Li is pissed at him for killing her father. After all, he killed his father too, and you don't hear him whining about it.
• Teen Titans (2003): Slade feels no sympathy for all the people he's hurt in his various actions, from mistreated underlings to people he's harmed in his plans. When Robin calls him out for helping Trigon destroy the world, Slade rationalizes his role in it, and when Robin points out that Slade's made people suffer, Slade coolly says "It's what I do best."
• ThunderCats (2011): Captain Tunas is obsessed with killing the Ramlak, a monster who destroyed his home, and has no regard for the lives of his crew, who he sees as a bunch of worthless weaklings. He strikes up a rapport with protagonist Lion-O, who also desires vengeance on a villain who destroyed his kingdom. But after seeing where Tunar's actions lead, Lion-O turns from his course.
• Total Drama:
  • Series host Chris McLean has shown his disdain for teenagers many times, regularly putting the campers through torturous challenges all for ratings sake. As bad as Chris treats the campers, he treats his interns much worse, with some even dying on his watch.
  • Mike's evil Split Personality Mal has this in spades. He laughs at Sam when he's stung by a jellyfish, is fine with leaving Cameron to die in the forest and would have let Zoey get eaten alive by piranhas if that wouldn't have ruined his Hyde Plays Jekyll act.
  • Duncan has also pulled this trope. When Leshawna got voted off in "Super Hero-ld", Duncan just kicks Harold instead of thanking him for helping the guys alliance, or apologizing to him for [Harold's] loss. Later on in "Rock n' Rule", Duncan was the only laughing at Lindsay's mistake in voting herself off. In World Tour, Duncan doesn't forgive or talk to Courtney before cheating on her for Gwen. This move was what put Gwen on the Villainous Vultures and Courtney on the Heroic Hamsters in All-Stars. However, karma bites Duncan in the butt when he destroys Chris McLean's mansion, resulting in his arrest.
  • Julia shows a complete lack of concern for anyone who isn't her. When Wayne and Raj are forced to medically evacuate from the competition, she's happy since that means she has avoided elimination. After surviving the destruction of the cave's entrance during the final four challenge alongside Bowie, what does Julia do when she assumes that Priya and Millie have been crushed to death? Starts dancing happily because if her two rivals are dead, then that automatically makes her and Bowie the season's finalists. She turns out to be wrong and this time she's eliminated.
  • Though Don from Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race is much less of a sadistic host than Chris, he still shows very little empathy when it comes to his interns. An intern is maimed or killed? No problem. On with the show!
• Velma: Velma Dinkley, at her core, is a self-centered individual who believes everyone should cater to her desires, even when it inconveniences her tremendously. She often makes big demands but never considers returning the favor at all. She never says sorry when any of her actions harm others, like when Fred got arrested due to her pinning the blame on him and bullying him in court. She even says she finds delight that a rich white guy like him got wrongfully convicted, or when she tried to publicly humiliate Daphne to win the tournament and refused to admit she did anything wrong. A prime example is when, in the season one finale, instead of feeling sorry that Fred lost his mother, she gloats about solving the case and distastefully twerks in front of her corpse.