Failed Attempt at Scaring

Don't bother, Erma. Felicia's used to it.

Rex: RAAAAWWWWRRRR!!!!
Woody: [unflinched] How you doing, Rex?
Rex: Were you scared? Tell me honestly...
Woody: I was close to being scared that time.
Rex: I'm going for fearsome here but I just don't feel it. I think I'm just coming off as annoying...

— Toy Story

When a character, usually a Harmless Villain, a Card-Carrying Jerkass, a Peek-a-Bogeyman, or a good guy around Halloween, tries to scare our protagonists but fails miserably. There can be many reasons for this, but expect it to be a requirement in the Find the Cure! part of a Hiccup Hijinks story.

Why it fails depends on either the scarer or the would-be scared. The "scared" has been Conditioned to Accept Horror and it takes a lot to provoke them, are The Stoic or had Nerves of Steel. Maybe the scarer has a limited pool of Absurd Phobias to draw from and their attempts at frightening people just come across as hilarious or pathetic. Sometimes the would-be scarer is genuinely frightening and dangerous, but they're unaware that their target is even worse.

Fear is a subjective thing, and things that would have frightened people a hundred years ago — like a cough or a sneeze or Communists giving you erectile dysfunction — wouldn't register with people in the present. Age is also a factor, as the ominous shadows the trees make in the window or the threat of cooties from the opposite sex wouldn't work on an adult, just as kindergarteners wouldn't exactly be trembling in their booties about the thought of paying rent and the socio-political impact of the next election.

Super-Trope to Conditioned to Accept Horror and Immune to Jump Scares. Compare Cannot Tell a Joke, Failed Attempt at Drama, Horrifying the Horror, and Nightmare Retardant. Contrast Faux Horrific, where something not scary to the audience is treated as scary to characters In-Universe. See also No-Sell, Played for Horror and Rule of Scary.

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In-Universe Examples Only:

Anime & Manga

• Played for Laughs in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Shizuka uses her text-to-speech app to try and scare Mei into opening her eyes. Rentarou's Comical Overreacting gets a bigger scare from the others.
• Fairy Tail: Near the end of the Edolas Arc, Wendy tries to help out Natsu with his plan to take the blame for all the magic disappearing from Edolas by pretending to be one of his demon underlings who are supposed to scare the people. Unfortunately for Wendy, her attempts at trying to scare an Edolas citizen fail as in spite of her best attempts the citizen is unfazed by Wendy which results in Gajeel sneaking up behind Wendy in order to scare said citizen while making it look like Wendy did it.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has Barry the Chopper, a sadistic killer made into Animated Armor and who should be plenty scary, but has the bad luck to run into Alphonse Elric, who is in the same state as him. He later tries to scare Riza Hawkeye, but she also stands firm and this seems to spark some attraction from him.
  Barry: [upon revealing himself as an empty suit of armor] Even if you don't know who I am, shouldn't you be at least a little scared? Shouldn't you be going "AAAH!" or "What happened to your body!?"
  [Al removes his helmet to reveal that he's also an empty suit of armor]
  Barry: AAAAH! What happened to your body, freak!?
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu: Zig-zagged in one episode. Kaname tells a scary story, which very much terrifies Kiyoko and Mizuki. However, Sousuke is unfazed. Suggesting that a trip to a real haunted location might prove more effective, Kaname and Mizuki take Sousuke to an abandoned hospital that is reputed to be haunted (Kiyoko is excused due to a recent run-in with a sex offender). Mizuki is immediately scared off when she sees an old woman in the hospital window. Kaname thinks Mizuki is just being paranoid...until Sousuke reveals he also saw the woman but wasn't frightened because she wasn't armed. Throughout the hospital, Kaname and Sousuke encounter classic haunted house tropes, like mysterious phone calls from people claiming to be burning in a fire (the hospital was closed after a fire), whispering voices, things moving in the shadows, ghostly apparitions, and even a blood-soaked girl holding a hammer saying "Go home or drop dead." in a Creepy Monotone. All of this has Kaname freaked out, but Sousuke, a veteran of numerous battlefields, is utterly unfazed. It turns out the whole thing was an effort by some local kids to do the hospital as a haunted house to keep teens and hooligans from using the hospital as a make-out spot or harassing the man who lived there (the son of the former hospital director).
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: While being held captive by Yuya's Highway Star, Rohan is told to deliberately lure Josuke over to a trap if he wishes to avoid being killed as he is being drained of energy. Rohan's response is a swift "I Refuse" as he immediately tells Josuke the circumstances of the trap, only for Josuke to fearlessly step in for an attempt to get Rohan out.
  • The JoJoLands: CharmingMan attempts to get Jodio into discarding the lava rock while disguised as Paco by telling him The Mafia, or an even worse organization, might be involved and are after them, and they should just give it up and leave at once. It fails as Jodio's Nerves of Steel prevents him from calling quits and fully determined to keep his word with Rohan that he won't give up the rock.

Fan Works

• With This Ring: A Sheeda highborn warrior mistakes Paul for Harold Jordan, and tries to weaken him by intimidating him, then throws a magical spear through time and stabs him in the chest with it. However, with his ring keeping him together, Paul isn't seriously hurt, and with his past combat experience, he's not impressed either.
  Aeres: Do you fear me now?
  Paul: Six months ago an angel shoved a burning sword through my skull, while I was in hell and defended by an army of demons. I'm sorry, but no matter what you do you're not going to get the emotional reaction you're looking for.

Films — Animation

• In Here Comes Peter Cottontail, our hero has encountered the Halloween witch Madame Esmerelda. She tries to scare him, but Peter treats her antics like a joke instead of something scary. She cries at failing in her mission, but he makes her feel better by befriending her with a Halloween Egg.
• The LEGO Batman Movie: In the film's opening, where the Joker and his crew hijack a plane full of explosives, the Joker tries to intimidate Pilot Bill by telling him his copilot Captain Dale was ejected and giving him a Slasher Smile. However, Pilot Bill is not intimidated as he's confident that Batman will be able to foil his plans like always.
• When the titular character from Megamind has Roxanne tied up in his lair, none of his death traps impress her, since he's threatened her so many times, and Metro Man has always managed to save her, that she's just bored by the whole thing. When a random spider appears hanging from the ceiling, Megamind pretends it's part of his plan, but Roxanne just blows the spider at his face and he freaks out.
• Monsters, Inc.:
  • Monsters, Inc.: A major plot point is that today's kids are harder for the monsters of M.I. to scare, resulting in an energy crisis caused by a scream shortage. Not helped by the fact that monsters think human kids are extremely toxic, making their jobs even tougher.
  Scarer: That kid almost touched me! She got this close to me!
  Assistant: She wasn't scared of you?! She was only six!
  • Monsters University: The main conflict of the prequel is Mike wanting to be a scarer despite the fact that he isn't naturally scary-looking. When he does sneak into the human world to scare some kids, they just laugh at him.
• Open Season opens up with Boog, our grizzly protagonist, sneaking out of the garage he lives in behind his owner, Beth the park ranger, and giving a Mighty Roar from behind her, in an attempt at being scary. Beth, however, just smirks and turns around before roaring right back at Boog, actually startling him, and telling him, "Now, that's a roar, Boog."
• Toy Story: Rex's Establishing Character Moment is him jumping in front of Woody and roaring at him. Woody barely reacts, leaving Rex to wonder what he's doing wrong.

Films — Live-Action

• Beetlejuice: After the Deetzes move into their house, the ghosts of the Maitlands try to scare them away, but no matter how gruesome they make themselves, none of the Deetzes are aware of them except for Lydia, because ghosts are Invisible to Normals.
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Cindy Lou Who invites herself into the Grinch's home in Mt. Crumpet to invite him to the town's Christmas festival as their guest of honor. The Grinch, in his usual Grinchy-flare, tries to act like the horrifying villain everyone thinks he is. All this accomplishes is making him look like an oafish weirdo and he ends up running out of steam very quickly.
  Cindy Lou Who: I think you need a time-out.
  The Grinch: [Turns to the viewer] Kids today. So desensitized by movies and television. [Turns back to Cindy Lou] WHAT DO YOU WANT?!
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: When Elizabeth first sees the skeletal pirates, she is shown running around the Pearl in a vain attempt to find somewhere to hide, capped off with her being frightened out of her hiding place by Barbossa's pet monkey, Jack (also an undead skeleton). At the end, when she sneaks back onto the Black Pearl to free the crew, she is again surprised by the undead monkey, but this time she just gets annoyed and throws Jack overboard.
• Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed: When Shaggy and Scooby get separated from the group by ghosts and locked the door, The Cotton Candy Glob shows himself. The duo a scared for a second... before realizing that he literally made of cotton candy. The duo (who are Big Eaters) quickly brighten up in delight, scaring the monster before eating him alive.

Literature

• In a Dirty Bertie story, Bertie, Darren, and Eugene are camping and trying to scare one another with ghost stories. However, Eugene's story is just a parody of Goldilocks in which the bears are ghost bears. Not only are Bertie and Darren not scared, they laugh.
• Discworld: Late in Hogfather, Susan finally gets to meet the Tooth Fairy herself... and is immediately suspicious because of how stereotypical the whole scene looks. Alarmed, the Tooth Fairy begins rapidly shapeshifting in an attempt to scare Susan off, becoming spiders, snakes, rats, and a few things that aren't even described in detail... but Susan is the granddaughter of Death, so she shrugs off the entire display, before grabbing the Tooth Fairy by the neck and forcing her to reveal her true form.
• Emily's Runaway Imagination: Subverted. Emily tells her cousin June that her (Emily's) house is haunted during a sleepover, and initially June doesn't buy it, but eventually both girls become scared when they hear scary noises and are convinced the house really is haunted.
• Slartibartfast, in The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, makes a spectacularly feeble threat to Arthur Dent, realises it hasn't worked, and deflatedly remarks
  Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent. It's a sort of threat, you see. I've never been terribly good at them myself, but I'm told they can be terribly effective.
• In the Paul Jennings short story Inside Out, a horror film buff goes to the local Haunted House and finds himself incredibly bored by all the horrifying phenomena he witnesses. Unfortunately, the ghost haunting the place is trying to pass an exam, and if he can't scare the protagonist in the allotted time, the ghost will have to retake the exam - leaving said protagonist trapped until he can be used as a victim all over again next semester. So, the protagonist does his best to look scared at the ensuing display of fearsome gimmicks, even though he's Seen It All. What actually works is the ghost demonstrating a talent for magically turning objects inside-out, and then gearing up to use it on the protagonist. The examiner gives the ghost a passing grade and the protagonist is allowed to go free... but is left scared of everything as a result of his experiences.
• In the first Warrior Cats book, Graypaw tries to sneak up on his friend Firepaw using his best "stealth crouch". Unfortunately he isn't as stealthy as he thinks he is, so Firepaw hears something that sounds large moving through the brush, and, thinking it's an enemy warrior or predator, attacks, resulting in Graypaw being startled instead.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: After his colleagues prank him, Sheldon tries to scare each in turn. None of it goes well.
  Sheldon: I tried to scare an Indian with a snake! Come on, Cooper, you're better than this.
• The Brady Bunch: One episode sees Marcia throwing a girls-only slumber party, so naturally Greg, Peter, and Bobby decide to play pranks and scare them. At one point, they don monster masks and bedsheets and prepare to sneak into the living room, only to be met by Alice, who doesn't even blink as they walk by: "Any of you monsters want a hot dog?"
• The Goes Wrong Show episode "The Lodge" is the Cornley Drama Society's latest attempt at a horror play, and just like all their other performances, the whole thing is greeted with gales of laughter by the studio audience. Quite apart from the cliched nature of the attempted scares, the horror is often undermined by Special Effect Failure, prop failure, or acting failure. Among other things, Albert's (Robert) attempt to make a menacing exit end with the stairlift repeatedly malfunctioning; the words "EXPECT MORE BOIDES" appear on the wall, closely followed by Trevor hastily repainting the sign; and last but not least, the spectacle of Emma (Vanessa) speaking in unison with the ghost (Sandra) possessing her would have been frightening... if Sandra had been able to get her lines right.
• Hey Dude!: Played with in the episode "Ghost Stories", Brad declares she never gets scared by ghost stories, until Ted tells one that actually does scare her. She spends much of the episode trying to scare him back, but all her attempts fall flat, Ted dismissing them as gags. Then Lucy a story of an unsolved murder that occurred there on the ranch, though she doesn't make any attempt to up the fright factor. But that night, as a storm rolls in, Ted finds himself awake and thinking about the murders as strange noises fill his cabin (which it turns out were caused by yard tools he failed to put away himself, and Lucy and Mr. Ernst putting them away). His imagination runs wild and when Mr. Ernst appears at his door with a pair of pruning shears, he scares himself silly. It turns out the only one who could scare Ted was Ted himself. At the end, Ted makes one more scare attempt on the others... which falls flat.
• Living Single had a Halloween Episode where Overton, Synclaire and Kyle all attempt to scare Max with various tricks and pranks that she manages to brush off until Overton falls down a flight of stairs and goes into shock. As she freaks out over the situation, that also ended up being a prank that apparently scared her to death, leaving her with the last laugh.
• Salute Your Shorts: After Budnick tells the other kids a ghost story, they make plans to get him back. They challenge him to spend the night alone out in the woods while they devise various means to try and scare him. Budnick anticipates this and leaves a number of warnings that will alert him to their presence, so he hears them coming and is able to foil all their attempts. Except for the last one, where they trick him into walking into some spiderwebs. He hates spiders.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In one episode, Tom Paris tries to scare Tuvok by suggesting that the starship they're on is haunted. Tuvok just says that's highly improbable, causing Paris to quip that there are probably no ghost stories on Tuvok's planet.

Video Games

• Living Books: In "The Tortoise and the Hare", a sentient scarecrow says, "Boo!" to Simon, a bird. Simon isn't scared and scares the scarecrow by yelling "Boo!" back.
• Luigi's Mansion: A portrait ghost known as "Uncle Grimmly" likes to practice making scary faces, but when Luigi encounters him, all Grimmly does is wave his arms and make soft sounds ghost moans. Luigi having been screaming from nearly everything else, has no reaction and merely captures him with the Poltergust. Ironically, this is during a genuinely horrific moment in the game as a lightning bolt caused a blackout in the mansion allowing the ghosts to ambush Luigi in nearly every mansion room.
• Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion: While alive, Spooky repeatedly attempted to scare people, but never succeeded. Her final attempt involved setting off firecrackers to help scare a PTSD victim. Unfortunately, it went too well, with her victim shooting her to death out of surprise.
• The Quarry: In chapter 2, Emma will try and Jump Scare Jacob with an evil clown mask, and get zero reaction from him to her consternation. She does get a rise out of him when she starts pretending to seduce him after though.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: The Halloween toon "Mr. Poofers Must Die" plays this for horror. Homestar attempts to tell a "4 1/2 stars with over 600 reviews-quality" ghost story that involves Mr. Poofers, a fictional cloud-like dog, dying. However, whenever Homestar tries to harm Mr. Poofers, his narration turns into lighthearted nonsense. Other characters tried taking a whack at telling the story, all of them failing to harm Mr. Poofers in any way. They break out into a cold sweat upon finishing their narration, horrified about how the story seems to have a mind of its own.
• Minilife TV: A short on the channel made for a video contest, "The Spook Contest", centers around Skipper the Swamp Monster, Boris the Frankenstein, and Radley the Ghost trying to scare Jack Pierce, who is believed to be unscareable, for a chance to win a LEGO Monster Fighters Haunted House set. Their attempts to scare him are ineffective and they get scared instead when he's revealed to be a werewolf. He ends up winning the contest.
• Starter Squad: While trying to find where Caterpie took Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur are convinced by a Haunter to go to the top of Poke Tower to get a better view. There Haunter makes attempts to scare Charmander, who remains unfazed due to none of it being real. The one time Haunter comes close to scaring Charmander is ruined by a Gastly jumpscaring the lizard, much to Haunter's frustration.

Web Comics

• Cucumber Quest: The Forsaken Master is a Disaster Master who has the ability to make one's greatest fears manifest, but due to him constantly misinterpreting the fears of other characters around him, the attempts always fail to genuinely frighten people, and the protagonists treat him as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
• Erma:
  • As a half-ghost, Erma enjoys using her various powers to spook people. When she gets a new babysitter, Felicia, she of course tries to spook her too. Unfortunately for Erma, Felicia is a horror fan, so despite numerous attempts to scare her, Felicia remains completely unfazed.
  • Erma has a cousin Emily. Emily is such a Genki Girl that all Erma's attempts to scare her horribly backfired: Erma is visibly scared of Emily after she laughs it all.
• Chapter 4 of Gunnerkrigg Court introduces Morty, a bedsheet ghost who tried to scare Annie with a trick. However, Annie pointed out the many cliches he used during his attempt.
• Sonic: Into, Across and Beyond!: Not only do Sonic.RAW's attempts to slay Team Sonic fall flat, but he falls victim to his own traps continuously, raising the group’s concerns.

Websites

• Invoked with the SCP Foundation monster SCP-2006. SCP-2006 is a polymorphic entity that takes the form of what it thinks scares humans. The Foundation manages to contain it by convincing it that people are afraid of ineffectual, harmless things like the Ro-Man, training the staff that contain it to pretend that it's scary. This is done because the entity has no perceivable limits to its abilities, the Site Director citing the Fridge Horror of what would happen if it learned about things that genuinely scared people, like war or a nuclear holocaust.

Western Animation

• Due to his own insecurities, Ickis from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters often has trouble scaring people. He frequently feels like he lives in his father's shadow, and his big ears make him look like a rabbit, which does not help him at all. When push comes to shove though, he can be scary when he absolutely needs to be.
• Adventure Time: In the episode "Conquest of Cuteness", the main antagonists want to be taken seriously. The catch? Their race is named "Cuties" and they're Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains (to the point that even Finn and Jake want to help them). They even try Gaslighting Finn and Jake by pretending to be their dead mother. Finn and Jake are only annoyed by that trick.
• Big City Greens: In the Halloween Episode, Gramma Alice tries to warn Cricket and Tilly about the Blood Moon, but they just laugh her off.
• The Bob's Burgers Halloween Episode "The Hauntening" starts with this trope as its premise; Louis does not scare easily and every year her parents try to make a haunted house that can finally terrify her, only for their efforts to be too tongue-in-cheek to take seriously. This year's Halloween they try and go all-out, only to wind up being put in danger by a band of hooded men that trap them in the house. Then it turns out that the "failed" haunted house was deliberately done to put her into a false sense of security so that the real haunted house experience could catch her off-guard, the hooded men being Teddy, Mort, Mort's mother, and a neighbor who were in on the act.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • The titular scarecrow from "Night of the Scarecrow" tries hard to be scary like the rest of his family, but it just doesn't work for him. In the end, the Bagges convince him to become a hay ride driver who is liked by children instead.
  • In "Remembrance of Courage's Past", Courage has gone into a Thousand-Yard Stare overnight from his repressed memories of losing his parents. When Muriel expresses concern, Eustace meanly offers a "cure" and pulls out his Ooga-Booga-Booga mask. Courage doesn't even flinch or acknowledge the scare. At that point, even Eustace is surprised at the odd behavior.
• The Box Ghost from Danny Phantom is the show's recurring Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, being a ghost with power over boxes and other containers. As a ghost and a bad guy, he desires to terrorize humanity and be respected amongst other more threatening ghosts in the Ghost Zone, but he is so non-threatening that Danny treats him more as a nuisance than a genuine threat. Even when the existence of ghosts becomes more commonplace and people react accordingly (that is, with blind terror), people are prone to ignore his empty threats.
• Family Guy: The episode "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One", the Griffins go to Quagmire's cabin to spend some time outdoors and interrupt him about to have sex with a woman because he forgot that was the weekend he let them borrow his cabin. That night, as they sit around the campfire telling scary stories, Quagmire's turn is about a woman not leaving the morning after a one-night stand, which cause the Griffins to just stare at him blankly.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the Halloween Episode, Wilt tries to scare some trick-or-treaters by wearing a fake arm and having it fall off when he hands them their candy, but they’re far from impressed.
• Garfield and Friends featured this trope a few times, with the titular fat cat's Deadpan Snarker attitude preventing him from being afraid.
  • In "Mistakes Will Happen," Jon, Garfield, and Odie go camping, with Jon telling the pets that the nearby woods are supposed to be haunted. Garfield doesn't buy it, so Jon decides to dress up as a ghost to scare them. Later, an escaped convict who's hiding in the woods discovers an unconscious Jon and steals his bedsheet disguise to frighten off Garfield and Odie; an unimpressed Garfield fights back instead.
  • In "Ghost of a Chance," it's revealed that there's a Celestial Bureaucracy of ghosts that are assigned to different regions of the country to scare people. A tiny phantom named McCraven has been unable to properly frighten anyone, and a larger ghost named Diablo says that he should be fired. McCraven is given one final chance to prove his merit and selects Jon's house, where all of his would-be horrors fail to faze Garfield. When Diablo shows up and starts genuinely terrifying everyone, though, Garfield teams up with McCraven to outspook the specter.
• The Ghost and Molly McGee: The Inciting Incident of the series is Scratch trying to scare Molly out of his house, and failing miserably because she is too darn cheerful (and desperate for friends) to be scared of him.
• Gravity Falls: The subplot of "Summerween" has Grunkle Stan trying and failing to scare a bratty pair of trick-or-treaters who've come to his door so that he doesn't have to give them candy. No matter what trick he tries, they aren't fazed. Upon breaking in to confront Stan about their candy, the boys are finally scared off by the sight of the old man half-naked and preparing to take a shower.
• The pilot episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy has The Grim Reaper coming to reap the soul of Billy's hamster, only to get sidetracked by the kids. He's confused as to why they aren't cowering in fear and tries to make some scary poses, but Billy and Mandy are respectively too dense and too stoic to scare.
  Grim: Look, aren't you two scared? Boo blah! [Beat] Oh come on. I'm a walking skeleton! Isn't that scary?!
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Elements of Harmony", Nightmare Moon's efforts to create a scary haunted forest scared most of the main/mane cast, except for Pinkie Pie, who encouraged the others to "Giggle at the Ghostly".
  • In "Sleepless in Ponyville", Rainbow Dash tells a Ghost Story about a headless pony. This scares Scootaloo, but Applejack just heckles the story by asking where the horse's brain is if it has no head.
  • In "Scare Master", the others try to get the shy and easily frightened Fluttershy to enjoy Nightmare Night by having her set up the haunted house. But the scariest things Fluttershy can think of are social anxieties rather than monsters. Ponies looking for scares are unimpressed by the awkward tea party with uninvited guests that Fluttershy sets up for them.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In "Phineas And Ferb One Good Scare Ought To Do It", Phineas set up a Haunted House to try and cure Isabella's hiccups. One of the rooms had Baljeet dressed up as the scariest thing he can imagine — a failed math test! Phineas and Isabella stare at him blankly before moving on.
    Baljeet: You can run, but it won't be to the college of your choice I tell you!
  • In the same episode, Buford dresses up as little Susie Johnson, declaring her the "face of evil". Phineas and Isabella are unimpressed, though, ironically this episode has already demonstrated where Buford's justifiable fear comes from.
• Pinky and the Brain: In "Bah, Wilderness", the mice become counselors at Camp Davey, a summer camp for the kids of world leaders, and Brain attempts to tell a scary story around the campfire. His story proves to be too highbrow for everyone to understand the "implications."
• Pinky Dinky Doo: In one episode, Tyler dresses as a banana for Halloween and wants to be scary, but everyone just finds him cute. A guy dressed as a vampire tells him to make a "scary noise", so he shouts, "Bleeeeyy!" but it doesn't work.
• The Real Ghostbusters: The ghost of a dead gangster tells the Ghostbusters they'll never take him alive. They point out he's already dead. He acknowledges that, then makes a hideous, ghoulish face to try and scare them. Their response?
  Venkman: You don't scare us, Vinny. Take away those supernatural powers and you're just another two-bit dead hood.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Haunted House", Ren and Stimpy shack up in an old house, where a ghost tries to scare them. Unfortunately, all his attempts at being scary end up failing miserably.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In "Hiccups", Tommy has hiccups and the only way for him to be cured is to scare him. But as Phil and Lil put it, Tommy is very brave to be scared by anything. So, Angelica tries her best to scare him by using Halloween masks, disguising herself as the "boogeyman" and building a "scream machine". At the end of the episode, Tommy is cured of the hiccups but this is because he's afraid that Angelica might get hurt after the props from the "scream machine" fell on her.
  • In "Ghost Story", the kids are trying to tell a ghost story. When Chuckie tries ending the story on a Surprisingly Happy Ending, Angelica snaps at him to not do that and makes a scary part of the story instead. So, he tries... but being a nervy two-year-old boy, the scariest things he can come up with are hard pillows and expired candy. No one is scared, but Angelica decides it will have to do.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!: The Halloween Witch finds Fred calmly waiting for her, and when she tries to scare him, he actively yawns. She tries to approach him, only for a pair of Zombie Velmas (one of them Daphne dressing as Velma since Velma won't celebrate Halloween) to jump at her out of a pile of leaves, scaring the witch. Fred says it best.
    Fred: After ten years, it's your turn to be scared, lady.
  • The New Scooby-Doo Movies: Grandma Frickert is not scared of the scarecrow that seems to be haunting her farm, just annoyed that it ran off with her farm hand's Sunday best.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Zig-zagged. Night Fright is trying to terrify Vincent Van Ghoul, and he's doing a very good job of it. Until Scooby and Shaggy remind Van Ghoul that he's a professional actor. He then walks around the house giving Shaggy and Scooby a tour while utterly ignoring Night Fright who keeps trying to scare them, except at one point turn to the demon and say, "Excuse me, you are being rude!"
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Flying Dutchman is often considered a being of terror, but there are moments where his horror fails.
  • In "Shanghaied", The Dutchman takes SpongBob and Patrick as crewmates to instill fear into others. However, the two are so bad at being scary that it kills the fright the Dutchman himself brings to people.
  • When the Flying Dutchman moves into SpongeBob's home in the episode "Ghost Host", SpongeBob is genuinely terrified by all of the scary stuff the Dutchman throws at him, he becomes Conditioned to Accept Horror due to him reusing his tricks and SpongeBob starts ignoring him entirely. Afterward, SpongeBob attempts to help him be scary again by having him go after other folks, only for him to be ignored by everybody. It only gets subverted when SpongeBob convinces him to go after the ghost skeptic Squidward.
• Teacher's Pet: In "Let Sleeping-Over Dogs Lie", when the "sleepover" segment of the birthday party/sleepover starts, Ian starts trying to get a scare out of Leonard and Spot. However, his attempts (dressing up like a jungle native and dancing around, and describing things in a spooky voice) don't yield the desired results.
• Total Drama: In "The Sand Witch Project", for the horror movie themed-challenge, the teams have to have one person dress as the serial killer, and whoever makes their own team scream the loudest wins. Beth gets to be the killer for a scene that calls for two characters to make out. Izzy and Owen, who are already a couple, start making out and get really into it. When Beth tries to scare them with a long knife and announces, "I'm gonna chop you into little teriyaki bits!", they're not scared at all, do a tiny scream, and then get back to making out. (It doesn't help that Beth is a short, nerdy girl who isn't particularly scary to begin with.)
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015): In "Even Robots Have Nightmares", Sideswipe, Grimlock, and Strongarm are amazed that Russell is not scared by a horror movie and decide to scare him themselves. Sideswipe dresses up as a zombie and Grimlock dresses up as an axe murderer Decepticon who apparently hacked Strongarm to pieces (she just buried most of herself in the ground), both of which fail because Russell can see through their disguises.
• In the Uncle Grandpa Halloween Episode "Haunted RV", Uncle Grandpa implants Frankenstein's brain into the RV's engine, turning it into a shapeshifting Haunted House so scary that it winds up becoming dangerous, the RV feeding off of the fear of others. They all manage to defeat it by removing their own brains, leaving their mindless bodies for it to try and fail to scare, sapping it of its power.
• The Venture Bros.: "A Very Venture Halloween" opens with a series of flashbacks showing Hank and Dean trying to scare their father and Brock on three different Halloweens. First as vampires, then as mummies, then by faking their deaths by pretending a bookcase crushed their heads. Dr. Venture isn't the least bit scared by any of these, and on the last attempt is more annoyed that he has to get their clones ready again, much to the confusion of the boys.

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