Suck E. Cheese's

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"Gunther Goat-Cheese's, the goatcheesiest place in all of Drusselstein!"

"Uhhh...Is this a pizza place, or like...a preschool?"

— Panda, We Bare Bears

One for the Stock Parodies: an obvious pastiche of Chuck E. Cheese's, a combination pizza restaurant and "family fun" center. It's the home of arcade games, ball pits, subpar pizza, and costumed and animatronic characters from the depths of the Uncanny Valley. A fun place for kids? More like a Fate Worse than Death for parents.

The chain was created by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari. It reached its heyday between The '80s and The '90s, but also suffered bad publicity as a hunting ground for sexual predators and (in recent years) as a stomping ground for adult brawls. It has inspired a number of knock-offs throughout the country which have gone into similar decline, with the most prominent being ShowBiz Pizza Place (which would purchase Chuck E. Cheese's) and its band, The Rock-afire Explosion. The one exception is an adult version called Dave & Buster's (other wiki), which is actually flourishing because, unlike the above which (unsuccessfully) play the Rule of Cute, it plays the Rule of Cool, caters to a wide audience (including the popular sports bar crowd) and has absolutely no animatronics or mascots. Similar properties exist outside the US, including the UK's Wacky Warehouse, though they rarely make their way into media.^note As an interesting footnote, in Mexico and the Middle East, Chuck E. Cheese's used the name of ShowBiz Pizza, which was the previous name of their matrix company in the States before converting all their locations into Chuck E. Cheese's instead. Unlike in the U.S., ShowBiz Pizza in those regions never had the same problems their American Chuck E. Cheese's equivalents had, other than the franchise having died in Mexico in the 90s, albeit it still exists in the Middle East to this date. ^note

However, to some there is still a nostalgia for Chuck E. Cheese's and ShowBiz Pizza Place, so much that in spring 2018, an arcade bar for adults opened up in Kansas City, Missouri (home of the first ShowBiz Pizza Place in 1980) featuring a working Rock-afire Explosion animatronic band, just as ShowBiz did; however, it closed as quickly as it opened, with a planned move to the far-more tourist-friendly Branson, Missouri in Development Hell.

Note that not all examples are terrible; some are rather awesome and kids will do anything to go there. (May still qualify as hell-on-earth for their hapless parents and the equally hapless teenage employees, though.) On the other hand, some of them go beyond "unpleasant" and become downright life-threatening.

Examples:

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Art

Meow Wolf's Convergence Station has the Pizza Pals Playzone, a Denver pizza joint that closed after "The Great Gooping of 2002" as the fictitious original tenant of the land the station was built on.

Comic Books

In Robin (1993), Tim Drake's best friend Ives formerly worked at the Bomp'n'Stomp as costumed mascot Ricky Rat. This was such a craptacular job Tim suspected Ives was being abused.

Fan Works

Just Another Night at Freddy's: In addition to the canonically lousy and dangerous Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, the series introduces a restaurant called Pizza Baron: a poorly planned and executed ripoff of the former chain that uses ethnic steroetypes, bizarre, made-up instruments and awful animatronics that barely count as interactive. When the guys running it kidnap Foxy to use him in their show, the resulting shitfest that ensues to get him back^note only speeds up their inevitable failure.
Raphie's Revenge: Bill E. Badger's Pizza-Riffic and Hot Dog-Tastic Fun Center, complete with an animatronic band that Raphie ends up taking control of.

Films — Animation

Subverted by Pizza Planet in Toy Story, which is actually a very cool place (the only "Suck E." part is Sid breaking the games). According to the DVD Commentary, the goal was to design a pizza place so cool that they just had to build it. And they did! It was in Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World from 1997 up until 2016. Tragically, the real version wasn't as cool as the version seen in the film, consisting of a pizza counter and the same arcade games to be found all over the resort. Disneyland Paris also features a Pizza Planet with a slightly better execution.
A Goofy Movie had a tourist trap called "Lester's Possum Park" that was partly Chuck E. Cheese and partly a self-deprecating reference to the Country Bear Jamboree at the Disney theme parks; and to top it off, Goofy plants a possum mascot hat atop his son Max's head, much to his apparent humiliation. He later outright calls it a "stupid rat show."
A scrapped opening for The Mitchells vs. the Machines took place at a "Chester Cheeser" restaurant as the machine uprising began. All of the arcade machines attack their players, and the happy animatronic mouse descends upon the customers until the Mitchells drive through and decapitate it.
"A is for apple, B is for ball... C is for CAPTURE ALL HUMANS!"
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie:
- Goofy Goober's Ice Cream Party Boat is basically Chuck E. Cheese combined with Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour^note, with a dancing peanut named Goofy Goober. Unlike most other parodies, this place isn't portrayed as soul-crushing or cheap, instead being a fairly light-hearted example beloved by SpongeBob and Patrick. That said, SpongeBob came here to drown his sorrows in gallons and gallons of ice cream sundaes (another way in which this sticks out from most examples, since it has an ice cream counter specifically for older patrons). When the sun rises the next morning, he's an absolute mess, covered in smears of vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. The employee we see doesn't seem too enthusiastic about his job, though this might just be since he has to deal with ice cream-drunk SpongeBob.
- Later episodes of the cartoon would revisit Goofy Goober's and give it a slightly sinister edge. When Patrick gets hired, it turns out to be a vaguely cult-like organization that forces employees to believe in aliens (yes, like that) but is outwardly very polite to employees.

Films — Live-Action

Zyggie's Ice Cream Parlor in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (where Deacon takes Napoleon) is a lot like Chuck E. Cheese, except that it seems to focus more on ice cream than pizza. Subverted in that it seems to be a pretty cool place.^*
In Hot Tub Time Machine, Adam tells a story about how his father (and several others) died of salmonella poisoning after going to The Enchanted Forest of Pizza, a fantasy-themed pizza place.
The Hug: The short is set in Pandory's Pan Pizza Palace, which, while it certainly has games and pizza, has only one animatronic, Pandory. And he eats any kid who gets too close to him.
Just Go with It has J.D. McFunnigan's, with an orange kangaroo mascot. Bonus points for featuring the actual robots of the Rockafire Explosion, the animatronic band that played at Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants in the 80s.
Made ends with a birthday party at an unnamed Suck E. Cheese's restaurant. Rickie criticizes a costumed employee for arriving only after the children have all left for the arcade, then offers him a bribe to go away.
There's Woody Woodchuck's in The Pacifier. It does not look like a very fun place to be. Kids screaming and fighting, the employees wearing terrible-looking around-the-head braces ...
Shane: And they say war is hell.
The Buckmans take a visit to an unnamed Suck E. Cheese's in Parenthood.
In Problem Child 2 both the Healy and the Young families go to one of these for dinner, and a food fight breaks out when Junior and Trixie encounter their Jerkass principal Peabody on a date.
In Role Models, the main characters first take the kids to a Suck E. Cheese's that has chipmunk mascots because they have no experience with kids and figure this is as good an activity as any.
Willy's Wonderland has Nicolas Cage playing a janitor at the titular restaurant, fighting animatronics that are possessed by Satanist serial killers.

Literature

In The Unorthodox Chronicles, Grimsby is an Inept Mage who's stuck working at a children's pizza join/play center called Mighty Magic Donald's Food Kingdom. While the name seems like a pun off McDonald's, the restaurant itself is a mix between a Medieval Times and Chuck E. Cheese, minus any quality assurance.
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Anxious Clown, with clown-costumed waiters, balloons, and food with names like "Surprising Chicken Salad".
The eighteen-year-old main character of the YA book Prom, by Laurie Halse Anderson, works at something called an EZ-CHEEZ-E. She's Rompin' Ratty; there's plenty of gory details.
Forever Amber Brown has a Type 2 example. Justin and Amber visit Say Cheese. Although they do offer very cheesy pizza, which Amber and Justin get and enjoy, they also offer pretty much anything else with cheese you can think of; burritos, cheesecakes, Cheese Doodles, dumplings, etc. The food is good, the games are high-tech and fun, and there are displays where kids can have their pictures taken and pretend to be in various scenes, like aliens in space.
Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her has Gerty Goat's. It's actually considered quite good, probably due to having been created by a Mad Scientist with a mascot (the titular Gerty) who's a 12-foot-tall anthropomorphic robot goat that makes great pizza and is a "weapon of mass friendship."
Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules featured an unnamed restaurant with a costumed rodent mascot where Rowley had his birthday party. It comes to a screeching halt when Greg uncovers a kid who wasn't invited in the ballpit — it transpires he was from an earlier party and nobody had found him in there, forcing the staff to try and track down his parents!
- Corny's Family-Style Restaurant in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel is a blend of this and Kitschy Themed Restaurant, with very messy serving areas, sloppy waitstaff, and a smelly playground area. Greg has a traumatic experience trying to rescue Manny from the indoor playground, and the serving staff and overall chaos easily makes up for the lack of animatronic robots and video games. Remember, anyone who comes in wearing a tie clearly isn't having fun and will get it snipped off.
- Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlor in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School, where Rodrick gets a job dressing as the restaurant's creepy mascot, Old-Timey Tobias. He doesn't enjoy it.
- Hipp'o Henry's in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Diper Överlöde is the most blatant one, complete with animatronics, pizza and even the infamous rumor that Chuck. E. Cheese recycles their pizza slices. Rodrick and his friends attempt to steal a drum stick for their band from one of the animatronics.
Queasy Cheesy from Dork Diaries is Nikki's least favorite restaurant, but her little sister Brianna's favorite. Once, they got called onstage to sing the Queasy Cheesy theme song, but Nikki admitted she actually had fun doing it. Eventually, the place grows on Nikki, and she even goes on her first date with Brandon there.

Live-Action TV

That's So Raven featured one of these. Raven even ended up having to disguise herself as an animatronic pirate.
Sister, Sister had Buck E. Duck for an episode (which had the twins taking their SATs...for the second time... under the tutorship of that kid from Smart Guy... who is also their brother in Real Life...)
House opened one episode with the Patient of the Week working in such a hellhole to earn a living for him and his parentless siblings. No wonder he wanted to perpetuate his illness so that his siblings would be taken into foster care.
All That had "Stink E. Cheese's". The mascot was a skunk, and everyone delighted in the horrible smells.
NewsRadio had "Petey the Pirate's Pizza Palace" in one episode, which was Matthew's favorite place to eat. Dave and Bill toughed it out, including him in the ball pit.
Sonny with a Chance has Arcadia, which is kind of like a less noisy and crowded Dave & Buster's.
In Living Color! had Homey D. Clown running a deliberately cheap, unpleasant version. Spoofing Chuck E. Cheese's most famous slogan, it's "Where a kid can be a kid...as long as he doesn't get on my damn nerves!"
Roundhouse mentioned a Suck E. Cheese's without showing it.
An episode of The Big Bang Theory had Sheldon (who was obsessed with solving a molecular equation and was using the balls as subatomic particles) hiding out in the ball pit at one of these places, only to pop up at regular intervals like a prairie dog and shout "Bazinga!"
One first season episode of Home Improvement mentions a place called Wacky Jack's Pizza Pagoda, which seems similar to places like this, but it's never seen onscreen, so it might be okay. However, the Taylors made history by being the first family to ever be kicked out of the place for having hyperactive and disobedient children. (And given what such places are like, that's saying a lot.)
The Office (US) episode "Happy Hour" took places at a Dave & Buster's knock-off called Sid & Dexter's.
- In the episode "The Injury", Michael lampshades the trope when Jim is about to take both him and Dwight to the hospital.
Dwight: Where are we going? Where are we going?
Jim: Chuck E. Cheese.
Michael: Ugh! I'm sick of Chuck E. Cheese.
Jim: We're going to the hospital, Michael
Michael: I know I'm just saying.
Supernatural has Plucky Pennywhistle's Magic Menagerie, the focus of the episode of the same name, where people are overly cheery, the pizza tastes like 'butt' and kids are left there (as Sam was by Dean to go pick up chicks.) Lots of Lampshade Hanging about this parody, using the 'we only accept tickets here not money' bit for 'prizes'.
Workaholics has Dante's Pizza Palace, which is described as basically 'a black Chuck E. Cheese's'.
The Golden Girls had an episode with one of these: (Mr. Haha's Hotdog Hacienda). It was Rose's attempt to make a fun birthday for Dorothy. It didn't work, naturally, though it was salvaged somewhat when one of the children Dorothy shares her birthday with gave the clown a Pie in the Face on Dorothy's behalf.
The third episode of The IT Crowd featured a similar restaurant named Messy Joe's, voted "best family restaurant in London", complete with in-house mariachi singers and clowns. Moss mispronounces it as 'Messijos,' recommending that Roy and Jen take their dates there.
A later episode of The Man Show had a skit set at an actual Chuck E. Cheese's, although it was not referred to by name. Adam rounded up some Latin American day laborers and treated them to a night on the town. The Where Are They Now montage at the end informs us that one of the immigrants "returned to his native Guatemala with tales of a magical rat who made dreams come true...He was burned as a heretic."
30 Rock - Tracy's mental state is questioned by his being arrested at three Chuck E. Cheeses - a quick flashback shows him being dragged shirtless out of a ball pit.
Do you know who I am???...Seriously, please, tell me who I am!!!
Justified: In "For Blood or Money", Clinton breaks out of his halfway house and commits a string of crimes because he has promised to take his 12-year-old son to Billy the Kid Zone for his birthday. Clinton describes the place as "Chuck E. Cheese but with cowboys" and, when shown, the place does look really tacky with the staff dressed in cheesy cowboy outfits.
I Didn't Do It had Fireman Freddy's Spaghetti Station (which doesn't serve pizza put something different, but is similar enough to fit the trope and even could uncheerable employee's).
A Saturday Night Live sketch involved two cops about to standoff with a criminal in a closed Pepper Ronnie's Pizza Town restaurant, but when one of the cops switches on a fusebox to turn on the lights, he ends up activating the '80s-style human animatronic band, which often interrupts their impending standoff and eventually leads to the cops being able to easily arrest the bad guy.
An episode of Wings reveals that Roy's birthday is February 29th so he only celebrates it only once every 4 years, and does so with a party and gifts appropriate for someone 1/4 his age. He drags the rest of the cast kicking and screaming to a train-themed version of this trope where even the employee "Engineer Willy" calls him a psycho.
In the B-plot of the Full House episode "Yours, Mine, and Ours", Danny and Joey take the former's bickering daughters to a pirate-themed restaurant for a "family fun night". When Stephanie doesn't clean her plate, all five are forced to walk the plank into a ball pit, though this experience does inspire them to reconcile.
- Earlier, the trope namer is referenced in the second half of "Happy Birthday Babies" as an impressed Michelle reacts to her Flintstones-themed birthday party being interrupted by Becky going into labor with "This is better than Chuck E. Cheese!"
One episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia features the gang going to Risk E. Rat's Pizza and Amusement Center, a restaurant with a rat mascot. The current-day restaurant seems innocuous enough (although not high quality), but the gang prefers the Risky E. Rat's of their childhood, with crappier toys, unsanitary food and abusive employees. Frank's memories, meanwhile, take things even further, implying the place was named after an actual rat that inhabited the place, and seemed to feature the owner beating and humiliating his sons, which the kids mistook for scripted entertainment.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: John claims that, in contrast to the lack of recorded overdoses at safe injection sites, many people die at Chuck E. Cheese; apparently, the ball pit is mostly made of bones, and the "E" really stands for "executioner."

Music

Weird Paul Petroskey's "I Got Drunk at Chuck E. Cheese". "You don't know what it's like unless you are plastered/When a six-foot mouse calls you a bastard."
Tim Wilson's song "Chucky Cheese Hell" is sung from the point of view of a bouncer at Chuck E. Cheese, where "The band sucks and the pizza's cold/And you eat it with a slobberin' four-year-old..."

Podcasts

In episode 223 of Welcome To Nightvale, Big Rico's pizza is finally done being rebuilt and now features a new animatronic animal band named The Table Scraps, made up of Rodney Rat, Pasha Possum, and Chrissy Cockroach. All of these animatronics feature state of the art A.I. technology, making new songs and dances themselves. Of course, things go horribly wrong when the animatronics start imprisoning guests, with Rodney Rat lighting things on fire, Pasha Possum tearing apart pizza boxes, and Chrissy Cockroach corralling the children. However, all ends well when it's revealed that the animatronics were formerly security bots that were simply trying to stop a teen from vandalizing the establishment. After the police take the teen into custody, the rampage ends, though Big Rico's is once again closed for repairs.

Video Games

77p egg: Eggwife has one called Pooge's Pizzeria in the local Pissco (a Tesco parody). Including an employee in a mascot suit dancing onstage. Like everything else in the game, you can kill everyone in it.
Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino from Sam & Max: The Mole, The Mob, & the Meatball, which is Chuck E. Cheese's crossed with Totally Not a Criminal Front. Oddly enough, there actually was a real-life Ted E. Bear's in Southern California, a small chain of Chuck E. Cheese knock-offs.
Street Fighter EX: The backstory of Skullomania: He was a salaryman forced to wear a stupid costume for a sale promotion, until one day, he decided he was the next generation of Kamen Rider.
Played for Horror throughout the Five Nights at Freddy's series:
- In the first game, you play as the nightguard of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where the management is incompetent, corners are cut, employees are paid minimum wage, the animatronics are out to kill you, and children were killed. The place is set to close within two months after many incidents in previous locations; chiefly, the mentioned dead children.
- The sequel, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, takes place during the grand reopening of the pizzeria. It's revealed at the end of Night 5 that it's actually a prequel taking place in the week leading up to the infamous Bite of '87. The place itself looks a lot better and isn't as seedy, but the various animatronics are even nastier. Not to mention, whereas the original had four animatronics — five if you count the Easter Egg of Golden Freddy — the sequel has eleven (including the aforementioned Golden Freddy becoming a regular threat). Possibly up to fourteen, depending on which ones you count.
- In Five Nights at Freddy's 3, the restaurant has been converted into a haunted house-style attraction at an amusement park, riding off the horrible history. They recently found a never-before-seen animatronic that just might be usable... And contains the rotting corpse of that child murderer, incidentally.
- In Five Nights at Freddy's 4, the pizzeria isn't Freddy's, but its predecessor, Fredbear's Family Diner. The place has two animatronics: Fredbear, who is Golden Freddy before he was decommissioned, and Spring Bonnie, whose suit the murderer wore during his spree. It ends up being shut down after the older brother of the protagonist and his friends accidentally cause Fredbear to bite the protagonist in what has gone down as the Bite of '83.
- Averted in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. This one takes in a place called Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, and if the name didn't clue you in, it's made clear early on that it's not a restaurant.
- You actually get to make your own establishment in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator. However, you'll still have to deal with animatronics you end up salvaging. It's actually a subversion: the "pizzeria" was built as a trap to lure those animatronics — including the murderer — into a massive furnace to destroy them once and for all.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach takes the trope a step further. This time, the animatronics are in a large shopping mall-like complex with multiple areas. However, once again, Fazbear Inc.'s devil-may-care attitude towards their locations continues to show: customers complain about Freddy breaking down, the Daycare Attendant's creepy nature, pizza being served from the trash, and the fact that they even opened a new location when everyone knows what happened last time. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the true ending reveals that the location was built over the previous entry's location — and the murderer is still alive and stuck down there.
In Sunset Overdrive, the Oxfords hide in such a place, called "Sasquatch and Friends". The animatronic band includes Sasquatch, as well as the Loch Ness Monster, a Cyclops, and a Unicorn.
We Happy Restaurant lets you run one of these. It doesn't have animatronics, but it has radioactive and genetically modified food that mutates your customers.
Deltarune: If the descriptions given by the employee otherwise known as Pizzapants are anything to go by, ICE-E's PEZZA is one of these. The place is hell on Earth for him, so badly organized that they have all the employees outside wearing silly costumes instead of running the place, and dislike slacking and retort with an absurd slogan.
Pizzapants: I can't slack off for SECONDS without hearing... "Be a team player, there's no I in PEZZA!" YES THERE IS. YOU JUST TOOK IT OUT.
- In Chapter 2, you can go inside and find that it looks like a normal fast food restaurant with no animatronics, so it's likely that Pizzapants is just biased. However, the mascot is said to be confusing or outright frightening to a few kids, with Kris having told Noelle scary stories about ICE-E when they were younger.
Stezzoni's Pizzeria in No Delivery, as the disclaimer says "No Delivery is a game about making the best of your impending doom."
Rock Band 4 features the venue Budd F. Bonkazoid's, a restaurant with broken animatronics on the stage that is the setting for your first concert in Rockudrama mode.
The idle game app My Arcade Empire is more direct than most parodies of this trope by featuring a character named Ratso, who is an obvious Expy of Chuck E. Cheese himself. What makes him stand out is that Ratso is one of the villains of the story, trying to sabotage the protagonists' arcade to ensure that he doesn’t have competition.
Pizza Tower has "Don't Make A Sound", a level set within a dilapitated Blackout Basement pizza restaurant, complete with animatronics that try to chase the player. One of the background images shows a storage room filled with several blatantly unsafe toys and products, implied to be some of the reasons why it shut down. Posters around the place imply that it belonged to the Final Boss, Pizzahead, before it went out of business.

Webcomics

One of the members of The Anime Club in KC Green's recent strips reviews a "Whyme R. Reiner's" as a possible location for the new, HQ-less Anime Club. They revisit it at the end of part 5, only to find that the club could have just met in Clyde's mom's basement all along.
Employee: All our pizzas come with hateful gobs of spit already.
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Wonderella's friends have a surprise birthday party for her every year at "Chunk E. Cheeses," as seen here, here, and here.
The protagonists of Scrambled Eggs tried to avoid attending one of Michelle's birthday parties by hiding at Chunky Cheesy's, because no one goes there anymore, at least according to Quint. It turned out Michelle had the place reserved for her party, so the kids ended up attending anyway.
A Something*Positive strip has Rory blackmailing Vanessa into taking him to the genuine article.
Vanessa: I want black olives on my half of the pizza, and for him — what do you have that goes with emotional blackmail?
Downplayed in Spider-Verse Unlimited (2022). The Classic Arcade Dining Entertainment facility run by Randy Cade III is actually pretty cool facility, with everything from laser tag to rock walls to skee ball. The children present are shown having a blast and even May finds the place fairly charming. But the skee ball machines are designed poorly enough that someone is nearly beaned on the head when a ball flies off a machine and a bumper car spins out of control until Benjy stops it. Then May and Benjy are caught using their powers on camera to prevent accidents and subsequently ushered into the "V.I.P. room" that gets them caught in a series of Death Traps. By the end of the story, the place is shut down for faulty wiring.
The late 1990s/early 2000s webcomic Surf Rat and Spencer featured a child's birthday party storyline at "Chunk E. Cheddar", where the comic's title characters were able to gauge the age of the restaurant from the number of layers of duct tape on the seats, and the current occupant of the chain's mascot suit challenged Surf Rat (an anthropomorphic rat) to a fistfight (encouraged by the children at the party) for looking too similar to him.
In Rhapsodies Michelle takes Dielle, and some children she's babysitting, to a celestial one called Cheezy Nezumi's.

Web Original

The Backrooms has Level "Fun =)", a birthday party themed maze of hallways connecting to childrens' birthday party rooms like you'd find at kids' entertainment restaurants. However, the level is a dangerous trap, with entities called Partygoers heavily populating the place, and it is meant for luring unsuspecting wanderers in with promises of a very fun time. If you find this level, you'd better avoid the party rooms — which are traps — and locate an exit quickly but silently.
In various GoAnimate Grounded videos, Chuck E. Cheese's is the ultimate destination for troublemakers like Caillou. Many videos will have them attempt to go there, skipping school if need be, to enjoy the games and the pizza. In the case of Caillou, his father Boris hates the place with a burning passion, and there have been videos where he has attempted to shut down or destroy the place. Of course, that doesn't stop Caillou from razing the place if it's closed or he doesn't get his way. Another place, Peter Piper's Pizza, is treated as an Evil Counterpart to Chuck E. Cheese's.
- In some videos, Chuck E. Cheese's pulls a Five Nights at Freddy's and becomes "Deadl E. Cheese's", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin - a place where the kids who didn't leave prior to 9:00 PM get murdered.
Smosh co-founder Ian Hecox used to work at Chuck E. Cheese's which helped in the creation of their original web series Part Timers. It follows the various workers at Pork E. Pine's, where the main problems include employees slacking on the job and upper management looking to clear themselves of murder charges against a new hire who died on his first day (granted, by accident but still as a result of them goofing around with the skee balls).

Western Animation

Kim Possible has "J.P. Bearymore's Pizza Partytorium" in the "Coach Possible" episode ("I come for the games, but I stay for the burnt pizza smell!"). It is later destroyed in season 4 then rebuilt. Note that Jim, Tim, and Ron love the place unironically whereas Kim and Mrs. Dr. P view it with amazing amounts of dread.
Rugrats (1991):
- There is "Piggy's Pizza Palace" from the episode of the same name. A slight subversion with the main costumed character; the actor in the Piggy suit clearly seems to enjoy his job, even though he gets hurt while doing so (thanks to the Rugrats' shenanigans.) By the end, he's bandaged and his arm in a sling while still in full costume, but still eager to say goodbye to the kids (and scare Chuckie in the process, of course.)
- There's another one called the "Pizza Puppet Place" in an earlier episode, "The Slide", which looked pretty decent. However, the place had a terribly high slide and, when Chuckie accidentally got onto it, it scared him silly and got him to swear off sliding for a while.
My Gym Partner's a Monkey has the very similarly-named Pig E. Porker's Pizza Palace.
Dexter's Laboratory has "Chubby Cheese's", which featured animatronic Hanna-Barbera characters doing the Mushroom Samba with Dexter and employees who were part of a secret conspiracy, complete with Bond-style hidden lair. While Dexter is open about his disdain of the place, a later episode shows him and Dee Dee happy about the idea of going, so his opinion may have softened.
In the Being Ian episode "Links for Love", Ian and his family go get pizza with Uncle Ian at a restaurant called "Yucky Cheese".
Big City Greens: In "Wishing Well", Cricket visits a restaurant called Snuggly Pete's House of Pizza.
The Simpsons:
- In the season three episode "Radio Bart", Bart's birthday party is held at Wall E. Weasel's ("We cram fun down your throat!"). Some kids beat the crap out of one of the costumed mascots, and the animatronics catch fire while singing Bart an off-brand birthday song.
  "You're the birthday, you're the birthday, you're the birthday boy or girl!"
- In season ten's "Bart the Mother," there was a place generically called "Family Fun Center." The joke is that this seemingly normal place was featured on one of FOX's "reality" specials of the mid-to-late 1990s (you know, the ones titled, "When Animals Attack" and "World's Wildest Police Chases"), in this case, it was featured on the fictitious special, "When Disaster Strikes 4".^note
- Season 32's "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars?" has Razzle-Dazzle's Pizza Entertainment Palace, an establishment run by Gil Gunderson (and later revealed that he was using it as a front to sell drugs). Homer Simpson worked there as a teenager in the early 1990s and loved deejaying and working on the animatronic band, most notably when he freshened up their image. The FBI busting Gil and confiscating the robots traumatizes Homer, getting the main plot underway in the present time where the family tries to get the robots back for Homer to cheer him up.
Family Guy:
- In the episode "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", Lois has booked Cheesie Charlie's for Stewie's birthday party. It's a nice enough place, but when Peter has a disagreement with the management and cancels the reservation he was supposed to confirm for her, he tells her a ridiculous story about how the restaurant/playground was actually a Haunted Castle deathtrap to justify what he did.
  "Oh sorry Timmy, but you need fifteen tickets to live!" (drops child down Trap Door)
  "Welcome to Cheesie Charlie's. Heil Hitler!"
- Ironically, a real Chuck E. Cheese's eventually appears in "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey" and another was mentioned in "Chick Cancer". The former did not feature any of the actual characters in any form; but the text-only logo outside the restaurant closely resembled the actual "Chuck E. Cheese's" logo of the time.
- In another episode, Stewie mentions a visit to Chuck E Cheese's had to be canceled because a 4-year-old died in the ball pit.
- Also ironically, in Real Life, Chuck E. Cheese's is called Charlie Cheese's in Australia.
On The Cleveland Show, Rallo Tubbs took a date to another Cheesie Charlie's location.
Pinky from Pinky and the Brain throws a birthday party for Brain at "Chunky Cheesy."
South Park: The show had Crust E. Crotch's, a direct pastiche of Chuck E. Cheese's. It, later on, became Whistling Willy's, a real life knock-off in Denver.
Invader Zim has the rather unsavory Bloaty's Pizza Hog. Being from a Crapsack World it was probably the worst of the bunch. The mascot is disgustingly fat (so much so that children sink into him) and the person under the costume is even fatter.
Bloaty eat too many pizzas. Bloaty hate his life.
- To exemplify how far it gets taken, the credits of the episode list an actor as voicing Animatronic Horrors. The description is quite apt.
Tom Goes to the Mayor has WW Laserz in the episode of the same name, a World War II-themed place complete with an animatronic doo-wop singing Hitler.
Macki Macaw's from the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Phantasmo", although it ends up becoming one of the more positive examples of this trope. The Experiment of the episode was convinced to take over the restaurant's broken title animatronic so he could indulge in his attention-seeking nature and use his ability to control inanimate objects to help others instead of hurt them.
Cheezy Sneezer's in Tiny Toon Adventures. Although the name brings to mind Caesarland, a Chuck E. Cheese's expy created by Little Caesars.
In the short-lived cartoon adaptation of Baby Blues, there was a Chuck E. Cheese knock-off called Gum Drop Station. The place wasn't all that bad, but it did feature a busty blonde singer in a white tank top and short-shorts known as "The Birthday Lady" as Parent Service for the bored dads.
In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary", Master Shake assumes "ownership" of an abandoned Pizza Potamus restaurant (apparently a licensing spinoff of the Hanna-Barbera character Peter Potamus, later of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law); the obligatory animatronic musicians were a pair of giant, realistic-looking, banjo-playing robot scorpions—to which Shake added Zakk Wylde "on washtub bass". In keeping with the usual tendencies of the show, it blows up before the episode is out. That is also where they took MC Pee Pants to apply for a job...before he/it is blown up.
The Phineas and Ferb episode "Raging Bully" featured Gunther Goatcheese's, "the goat-cheesiest place in Drusselstein", and site of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's miserable childhood birthdays. Some of the animatronic cast include Count Wolfgang (a wolf), Betty the She-Boar, Ratputin, and the licekins, Olga and Chicago Joe. (The latter two characters would become a semi-Running Gag.)
An episode of Duck Dodgers featured a pasta place with a scary animatronic dinosaur mascot. When he was destroyed by Rocky and Mugsy, the kids all cheered.
The Mighty B! had one with an Australian theme to it; the main mascot being a kangaroo with the accent...which Penny fell in love with and stole.
The Fairly OddParents!: The rat-themed "Mike E. Mozzarella's Pizza Funhouse" appears to be a lot of fun despite its sanitary concerns (the ball pit is named the "pellet pit," and as Cosmo notes, it's not clear whether those are the pellets that go in or the pellets that come out of the rat). While Tootie hates it because nobody came to her birthday party (due to being afraid of her sister Vicky), Timmy uses the free passes he got from Tootie's invitations to bring Chester and A.J. with him (and ignore her party).
Chester: I love the all you can eat pizza! It makes me feel full.
A.J.: I love the crude robotic figures. They make me feel smart.
Timmy: I love the teeth on that rat! They make me feel normal!
Pizza Forest in Daria. In the premiere episode, Daria insists on going here with her family, just to torture them. Although the family went there for what Daria claimed to be the sake of her self-esteem. The minute she joined in on the singing with the entertainers in animal costumes, Helen noticeably perked up.
T.U.F.F. Puppy:
- In one episode, T.U.F.F.'s headquarters got bombed, so they rented a version called "Peet-Za Possum's" as a temporary headquarters. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context. Reality ensures when some of the agents get pink eye from the ball pit. Thankfully, it was bombed later in the episode.
- In the episode, "Quacky Birthday", Quacky the Duck creates "Duck E. Cheese's" as part of his plan to destroy Dudley.
Birdz averts this with Ducky Cheese's, which is apparently a.) a good place for actual pizza, and b.) more of a traditional pizzeria than an arcade.
Goof Nuts Pizza in the animated series of Napoleon Dynamite, where the animatronic animals songs are all about pizza (BTO's "Takin Care Of Business" becomes "Takin Care Of Pizza). Kip Dynamite is shown to be a huge fan of Goof Nuts Pizza, to the degree of taking his new girlfriend there on a date and burning her a mixtape of the animals' pizza songs. In the end of the episode the animals are revealed to be alive, and on a first name basis with Kip.
The Family Fun Center in the Bob's Burgers episode "Burgerboss" includes an animatronic band of some sort.
VeggieTales: In Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler, one of the ideas that Don and Poncho use to replace their restaurant is a Suck E. Cheese's named "Cheese E. Rodent." You'd think they'd use the actual Chuck E. Cheese's name given that many showtapes for CEC have featured VeggieTales promos in-between the shows.
Chowder: Carlito con Quesos features in "Weekend at Shnitzel's". Shnitzel falls in love with animatronic singer Senorita Mesquite.
Regular Show has one named Fun Fun Zone in the episode "Fuzzy Dice" which the Park Crew dread going to, but have to do so since it's where the titular dice are being held and a birthday present Pops wants. And indeed the place is an absolute mess; sticky floors, unruly children and apathetic employees (save for the woman at the front who wouldn't let them in without a kid^note. The crew have to dress up Rigby to gain entrance). It turns out that the animatronic characters are actually a trio of criminals who have been waiting out the statute of limitations on a diamond heist they perpetrated and the diamonds themselves are hidden inside the dice.
In "Keen On Keane", The Powerpuff Girls secretly set up a date between their teacher Ms. Keane and their dad Professor Utonium, with the date taking place at a kiddie pizza restaurant. Hilariously enough, in the forged messages the girls send to both parties, they call it "the finest restaurant in all of Townsville", which they probably believe since they're little kids. A nonplussed waiter in a canine mascot costume comes up to the couple and, mustering whatever dignity he has left, says in monotone "Bowa wowa wowa...may I take your order nowa?"
The Pizza Swamp in Clarence, which features such games as Big Betty, Money Broom, and a seal-whacking game that ends with the line, "Good job clubber, now collect your blubber!"
Gravity Falls:
- The episode "Soos and the Real Girl" introduces such a place, Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizza-ma-tronic Jamboree. It's actually a pretty decent place, and Soos takes his date Melody there, but things go awry when he's followed by crazy virtual girl Giffany and she possesses the animatronics.
- There's also a side plot about Stan trying to steal an animatronic badger because he needs a kid-appeal attraction for the Mystery Shack.
  "WHO WANTS TO GET BADGERED?!"
- One of the animatronics is a beaver that very closely resembles Billy Bob, the bear character from the Rock-Afire Explosion that served as the mascot of Showbiz Pizza Place. Another beaver looks like Mitzi Mozzarella, another Rock-Afire member.
In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Fremergency Fronfract", Wander and Sylvia take a brain-zapped Lord Hater to a place called "Gelatinous Bob's".
Rick and Morty averts this with Blips and Chitz, which appears to be an intergalactic version of Dave & Busters.
F is for Family has Captain ChuckleCrust's Family Fun Time Pizza Palace, with an animatronic bear band. In season 2 it ends up being converted to a strip club, Captain ChuckleThrust's.
Funso's Fun Zone is a semi-recurring location in DuckTales (2017) that Webby and the triplets frequent when they aren't going on globetrotting adventures with their Uncle Scrooge (Webby is downright estatic at having her birthday party there in the series finale). And on a more important note: Magica is later forced to get a job there as a party magician when she loses all her powers, the guy in the mascot costume is the Phantom Blot, and the whole thing is actually a front for F.O.W.L. with a secret lair in the basement level that's accessed via the ball pit (they figured it'd be the one place that Scrooge would never go).
Subverted in The Loud House. The entire family (teens and adults included) get really excited about the chance to win a night at Spunk E. Pigeon's Pizza Palooza Paradise in "Read Aloud".
Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! has "Pizza O'Possum's," haunted by a haywire animatronic mascot (much to the dismay of Shaggy, a longtime fan of the place.)
The SpongeBob SquarePants episodes "Mid-Life Crustacean" and "Old Man Patrick" feature "Bunny Buns", which the latter episode gives more development.
An episode of Johnny Bravo features a place called Droppings, where the animatronic band is so run-down that one of the musicians bursts into flames.
The Back at the Barnyard episode "Arcade of Doom" has "Donk E. Cheese's", where the gang goes to compete against Eugene (Snotty Boy) to win a Z-Box 360. Freddy falls in love with one of the animatronics.
The We Bare Bears episode "Pizza Band" has "Papa Bear's Pizza Cabin", which the bears initially think is a normal pizza restaurant until they arrive. Despite the broken animatronics that the bears end up replacing after they catch fire one too many times, the pizza there actually tastes good (Which is what motivates the bears into forming the titular band in the first place).
In the Total DramaRama episode "Having the Timeout of Our Lives", Duncan shows Owen a secret arcade called "Chunk E. Cheddar's" when he gets his first timeout. They have a lot of fun there, but Owen needs to get another timeout to be there again. Pretty soon Owen has a lot of timeouts, but on the downside, he loses most of his friends.
Bruno the Kid has "Sauce E. Sausage", owned by the episode's villain, Lazlo Gigahertz. It's a decent enough place, except for the animatronics, which Lazlo programmed to serve as kidnappers and assassins.
Pig Goat Banana Cricket has "Greasy Gus's". The animatronic band is visibly malfunctioning and Gus himself sings about the ball pit being full of germs and the customers being at risk of getting worms.
Mad Jack the Pirate: One episode about Jack's birthday involves him going to one of these at Snuk's insistence. The only drink there is grape soda, and the only entree is pizza, much to Jack's annoyance. On top of that, the animatronics are run-down, and malfunction...hilariously, once Jack pours water into one of them for kicks.
Jellystone!: In "Catanooga Cheese Explosion", Yogi wants to go to the titular children's restaurant/arcade for the sole purpose of eating pizza there. However, the manager refuses to let adults in without a child accompanying them. Since Shag needs an adult to take him to Catanooga's to help him win 1,000,000 tickets so he can buy its top prize; a car with pizzas for wheels, Yogi gets Shag to pretend to be his son. Yogi's obsession with pizza and forgetting to help Shag win his tickets causes the two to argue, and the animatronics based on The Cattanooga Cats try to stop their argument at any cost, even to the point of turning aggressive.
The Momma Named Me Sheriff episode "The Case of Sad, Sad, Sheriff" has "Honky B's" which used to be the site of Sheriff's birthdays until it is shut down by the town not only because of a sugary drink called "Sugar Smash Soda" that drives him super insane, but also the adults created a brainwashing serum to make him forget the event. So in order to have a great birthday that he will never forget, Sheriff and Dispatch go track down another Honky B's located on top of a mountain.
The Angry Beavers episode "Easy Peasy Rider" at one point has Daggett take a biker gang to "Chunky Cheeks Quiche" featuring a fat pig as the mascot.

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Piggy's Pizza Palace

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