Monster Clown / Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "You Say It's Your Birthday", Cruella attempts to sabotage the Dearlys' surprise party for the pups while under the impression that it's Anita working for her competitor. She infiltrates it while disguised as a clown. As if she wasn't creepy enough.
• Adventure Time:
  • The clown nurses from "Another Way". They aren't bad at first, but after Finn constantly objects to their touchy-feely bedside manner, his clown nurse tells him "IT'S THE ONLY WAY!" in a creepy voice, complete with a red demonic face and a Scare Chord.
  • Parodied when Finn invokes his worst fears in "King Worm", including the sea, the Lich-King, Princess Bubblegum having tea with the Lich and dismissing Finn as "too yoooung" in a demonic voice, and his own infancy, all coming out of his bellybutton... and then a little x-eyed clown in muted greenish colors pops up and sneers halfheartedly, "I'm a clooown."
• The Adventures of Figaro Pho
  • One episode focuses on coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. In it, the main antagonist is a sadistic clown who enjoys playing cruel pranks on Figaro. Most of his "lines" are laughing. Said clown is also featured in the show's opening sequence, where he towers over Figaro and laughs.
  • Downplayed in the episode "Waltergeist", where Figaro meets the ghost of a clown named Walter, who is an Expy of the clown mentioned above. Walter is Chaotic Neutral more than anything else, as he pranks everyone from Figaro to the Jerkass ghost hunters. Also, his pranks are much less sadistic than the other clown's.
• Played with in American Dragon: Jake Long, wherein Spud spends half an episode paralyzed by his fear of clowns. After finally realizing that the fear is irrational, he joyfully asks a troupe of clowns to make him laugh. Cue the clowns eating some magicked cupcakes, which transform them into hideous scorpion/clown/demon monsters. Nightmare Fuel all around!
• Amphibia: Anne and Sprig spend the climax of “Sprig’s Birthday” in a runaway monster clown hot-air balloon; justified, as it’s a leftover promotional piece from a thinly-disguised parody of a certain horror movie.
• In Animaniacs, Wakko Warner had an irrational fear of clowns, which often caused him to apply his Hyperspace Mallet before he ran screaming.
  • One episode revealed that studio boss Seymour Plotz is also afraid of clowns and sees Dr. Scratchnsniff about it regularly. Unfortunately, the doctor neglected to tell him about Wacko's own clown phobia before Plotz sent a Jerry Lewis-esque Non-Ironic Clown to the tower for Wacko's birthday. Hilarity ensues as Plotz spends the rest of the cartoon watching the two torment each other with morbid glee.
    Dr. Scratchnsniff: Wakko, repeat after me: "A clown is my friend. A clown will not bite me and throw me in the basement... A clown is not a big spider."
• The version of Joker from The Batman has wild hair, a grin filled with horrible yellow teeth, bright red eyes and is constantly hunched over. All in all, he barely even looks human. It gets worse when he becomes "Vampire Joker" in The Batman vs. Dracula.
• The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. As if being a monster clown every day isn't bad enough, the episode "Be a Clown" has him disguised as a slightly less creepy party clown to deliver a cake with an explosive as a candle to a party full of kids. Arguably the goofy, baggy clown-outfit made him look even creepier than his normal purple tux, since it twisted his reasonably normal human proportions into the depths of Uncanny Valley. This episode also, weirdly, proved that the Joker is actually an outstanding children's performer when he wants to be...just don't let him near the birthday cake.
• Batman Beyond has the Jokerz, a group of criminal biker gangs (not truly a single organization) that at first are only inspired by the Clown Prince of Crime. Their motivations vary widely. Some are no different than other violent bikers other than the clown makeup, others are just delinquent kids who do it for fun, and a few are actually competent and malicious villains (but they're rare). They become a serious threat in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker when the real Joker returns, killed the leader of the biggest gang, and takes over. The same story even introduces two female members, Delia and Deidre Dennis (who call themselves Dee-Dee as a team), Harley Quinn's granddaughters. (Who their parents are is not known, and Harley clearly does not approve of them being crooks, scolding them harshly after bailing them out of jail.) The Jokerz are far worse in an alternate future shown in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Time, Warped", in which Chronos recruits them as enforcers and upgrades them with radically advanced technology and weapons, giving them actual superpowers. In this reality, Dee-Dee not only kills Terry, but also Kai-Ro. (Fortunately, this timeline is erased due to the actions of the present-day League.)
• Zombozo from Ben 10 is both a creepy clown and a Repulsive Ringmaster who gains power from the laughter he causes in others, basically draining their life away while they just laugh.
  • He gets even worse in Omniverse, to the point where he looks like an actual zombie clown.
• Scuzzo the Clown (sometimes assisted by his large mute brother Fuzzo), in Beetlejuice, is the Ghost with the Most's (im)mortal enemy. BJ is actually the lesser of two evils there, as Scuzzo lacks any of BJ's redeeming features. In one Baseball Episode, Scuzzo was the manager of a whole team of crazy clowns.
• The main clown in the 3D short animation Bingo. The whole short uses surrealistic imagery and dialogue to tell the story of an ordinary man who is surrounded by characters who insist that he is someone named "Bingo the Clown", even though he is not.
• In season four of BoJack Horseman, Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter irrationally decree that since kids hate going to the dentist but love clowns, they should have clown dentists, that is, train some dentists to be clowns, and teach some clowns the art of dentistry. Unfortunately, this business does not work out and Todd sends them all into the woods, where they become rabid zombies.
• Clownfoot, a villainous clown from a Captain Caveman episode of The Flintstone Comedy Show probably qualifies here, complete with a Circus of Fear (which he uses as a hideout for his robberies and to lure Wilma and Betty into a saber-toothed-tiger filled trap).
• Daniel Spellbound had to spin the Wheel of Punishment. The slots ranged from Instant Death to freedom. However, the wheel landed on the most dreaded option possible: the Tickle Pit. Daniel along with Hoagie and a random tracker who wasn't even supposed to be punished fall into a hole and get strapped into chairs. They are Forced to Watch a clown performance. If they laugh, the clown goes over to them and personally eats their soul. The victim has the color drained from his body and is later used as a corpse marionette during the show. The performance only ends when either every single viewer gets drained to death or if the clown dies.
• Freakshow from Danny Phantom. Freakshow (a parody of The Joker) is the ringmaster of the Circus Gothica, as well as the only fully human villain in the series. An entertainer for the Gothic audience, Freakshow is eccentric, full of showmanship and creativity. His family have used ghosts for their circus for years.
• Darkwing Duck
  • Paddywack has beady red eyes, long grasping limbs, fangs and a bottom of the well voice. He was an otherworldly evil entity that fed on fear or chaos or some other kind of metaphysical claptrap and had poltergeist powers galore.
  • Quackerjack once made a Monster Clown toy that features Spider Limbs wielding cleavers to boot. It was probably the creepiest thing Quackerjack ever made. The kicker? It was made by an Alternate Universe counterpart who was actually a good guy.
• Dexter's Laboratory: "The Laughing" had Dexter get bitten by a pair of dentures belonging to a clown performing at Deedee's birthday party, which causes him to turn into a mischievous "were-clown" whenever he starts laughing. Deedee has to stop Dexter by learning the ways of an order of benign mimes.
• DuckTales (2017): "The Beagle Birthday Massacre" introduces the Tumblebums, a trio of Beagle Boys with an "evil clown" theme. They follow the standard Big, Thin, Short Trio of their brothers, and consist of a tiny little Beagle in a top hat and a ringmaster's coat using stilts and hand extensions to tower over people, a long-snouted skinny Beagle in a black leotard who usually adopts a Primal Stance, and a burly Beagle in a jester's suit with a second face painted on the back of his hood and who likes to get around by bending over and running around on all fours whilst upside-down, leaving his grinning face smirking up at his victims. And for the added creepiness factor, they never speak, instead using whistles and demonic laughter to communicate with each other and to spook their prey. They're so creepy that even their own brothers and mother don't want anything to do with them. Their brothers openly speculate that they're adopted.
• The Beast Which Dares Not Speak Its Name, from the Earthworm Jim episode "Evil in Love", is a giant four-armed fang-jawed cyclopian demon clown. Far too powerful and evil for the titular hero to hope to defeat, but fortunately thwarted by bureaucracy.
• An episode of Extreme Ghostbusters had the Ghostbusters hunting vampire-like monsters who feed on laughter and disguise themselves as clowns, because as this page tells us, there's nothing funnier than an ominous clown that can only speak in Evil Laughter following you by night. Unless there's a whole pack of them looking to recruit you.
• Family Guy:
  • Peter Griffin dresses up as "Pee Pants the Inebriated Hobo Clown" in one episode. This being Peter, it goes horribly wrong. Considering that Peter accidentally killed the man he thought was his father (Francis, not the town drunk from Ireland) while performing as Pee Pants, nothing could have gone right.
  • Chris is afraid of Ronald McDonald. ''I wish that scary looking clown at the end of my bed would go away!"
  • According to one of the cutaway gags, Gary Busey apparently sees himself as one of these, with medusa-style snake-hair to boot!
• The Lobe in Freakazoid! tried to deliberately invoke this via using a mysterious cloud to turn ordinary people into Monster Clowns to take over the world, on the premise that clowns are readily invited into homes. Freakazoid shoots the idea down as stupid and makes the Lobe turn off the cloud, only to agree that it was a brilliant idea once the Lobe was out of earshot.
• Binky The Clown from Garfield and Friends isn't really evil, but he is incredibly obnoxious and somewhat creepy, and provides a recurring source of irritation for Garfield. While annoying, Binky is for the most part a Non-Ironic Clown. In the episode of "Binky Goes Bad" he is framed for a multitude of crimes by a genuinely evil clown.
• In one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Billy displays a fear of clowns, thinking they're out to conquer the world and "Destroy us all! Destroy us all!^note I'll have the chicken Destroy us all!" After much prodding from Grim and Mandy and a trip to his Happy Place, he eventually gets over his fear... by becoming homicidally angry with clowns instead of afraid. This doesn't save him from the giant clown monster Grim made earlier, which proceeded to eat them all.
  • "So, it's agreed? We all hate clowns."
• Jimmy Two-Shoes had the recurring Rodeo Clowns. However, they were pretty much monster clowns only in the sense that they were literal demons dressed like clowns. They were otherwise Villainous Harlequins, being a gang of jerkasses who pulled mean-spirited pranks on the people of Miseryville.
• King of the Hill briefly featured an old clown doll named "Mr. Giggles", with a dead-eyed, grinning stare. Bobby is quickly reminded why he was afraid of it, complete with a Scare Chord.
• In an episode of League of Super Evil, the team revives Doktor Frogg's first invention, Chuckles the Robotic Clown, for his birthday. Frogg later reveals that he invented Chuckles when he was a kid to ruin all the birthday parties he was never invited to and then Frogg's own birthday came luckily they managed to survive until midnight in which it shuts itself off, only for it to reactivate because Voltar's birthday was the day after Frogg's.
• In the Legion of Super Heroes (2006) episode "Fear Factory", Lightning Lad is terrified of a clownlike doll from his childhood called "Captain Howdy".
• The MAGI Synthavision computer animation demo reel from 1984 opens with an evil juggling clown so scary, he has the power to terrify even those not normally afraid of clowns!
• Dr. Rockzo, the rock n' roll clown (he does cocaine!) seriously, dude; a lot of cocaine from Metalocalypse. He's a clown that's designed to be scary (in more ways than one). Ironically, Toki loves him despite being the most childlike of Dethklok's members.
  • Toki was shown to have a long-time love of clowns - there was a shot of him as a child sitting on John Wayne Gacy's lap (shudder). Besides, it's metal to like clowns! Apparently it all stemmed from his childhood, where a clown doll he kept hidden from his parents was the only toy he had.
• In The Midnight Gospel, Clancy visits Clown World, a planet in which puppeteer parasites rule over Meat City and grind wildlife into meat slurry. The parasites look like adorable baby clowns in their juvenile form and spider-like monsters with cylindrical clown heads in their adult form.
• Mighty Max had an episode (and a micro playset) involving Freako the Clown, who abducts children and mutates them into monsters to populate his Circus of Fear.
• Minoriteam has Halfpint, the evil gangster clown.
• Coco Demento from ¡Mucha Lucha! isn't exactly evil, but he is a Masked Luchador who's also a clown. (And he was in a class for heel wrestlers in one episode, possibly because, as his father explains in another episode, he once hung out with a group of mischief-making clowns.)
• Although Pepper Ann didn't feature any actual monster clowns, there was one episode where Pepper Ann watched a movie that revolves around this trope: Gutter Clowns. (An obvious shoutout to IT) She had nightmares about that movie.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) had Rainbow the Clown. He's somewhat of a subversion though, since he's neither scary, nor evil. His Superpowered Evil Side on the other hand, most certainly is.
• Punch!: In one episode, when discussing Mimes, David Suzuki states that Mimes' natural predators are clowns, which are shown as human clowns with sharp teeth.
• Episode "Station Identification" of The Real Ghostbusters has a giant monster clown with a very creepy laugh as main antagonist.
• ReBoot has The Funhouse game with a monster clown as the User character. In the one game that's supposed to be impossible for sprites to win. Since the sprites that lose a game turn into nulls, this just adds to the creepiness of the character.
• Rugrats:
  • Chuckie is extremely coulrophobic, and in one episode he kept having nightmares about clowns, in which he would approach Tommy (who was facing away from the camera) and tap him on the shoulder, only to have Tommy turn around to reveal the most Nightmare Fuel-rific clown face and declare in the most disturbing voice ever, "I'm not Tommy!" * giggles* The end of the episode had Mr. Finster walk out of Chuckie's room after tucking him in and noticing Stu turned away from him. He says, "Stu, I didn't know you were coming over," only to have clown faced Stu turn around and do the exact same thing that the clown faced Tommy did except he says, "I'm not Stu..." * laughs*
  • Another episode called "The Trial" featured a creepy clown lamp with a giant perpetual grin and an evil countenance.
  • Or the episode "The Mysterious Mr. Fiend" which had a talking clown doll depicted here◊.
  • The episode "Clown Around" had plenty of Monster Clowns for all.
  • In a moment of Characterization Marches On, in an early season 1 episode it is actually Didi who is scared of clowns. A clown at a carnival sneaks up behind her and scares her, albeit accidentally.
  • To keep this list from getting longer, lets just say that Rugrats was very fond of Monster Clowns.
• Scooby-Doo has featured various such examples, among others including Zombo the "clown ghost" (from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo). What's New, Scooby-Doo? even retconned Velma into having had a fear of clowns. (Awesomely tying A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as canon while doing so)
  • The original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! had villain of the week Harry the Hypnotist used a clown getup as both a gimmick and a way to mask his identity. Throughout the episode, he's referred to simply as Ghost Clown, until he's finally caught by the gang, and identified by his boss.
    • Harry hypnotised Scooby into walking a tightrope and then snapped him out of the trance when he was halfway across. Later, he hypnotised Daphne into dressing up as a ballerina princess and ride on a unicycle. And then hypnotised Shaggy into being a lion tamer:
    Ghost Clown: When I blow this whistle, you won't be a lion tamer. Just food for a hungry lion! (Evil Laugh)
    • Eventually, however, they used a mirror to trick him into hypnotizing himself. Likely the funniest way a villain was apprehended in the series.
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo gave us the Ghost of Zombo, the disguise of a Joey Jipner, who wanted to scare his brother away and take over his theme park.
  • In What's New, Scooby-Doo?, a clown animatronic at a mini-golf course comes to life, resulting in Velma's fear of clowns resurfacing. The reason she hates clowns? When she was a kid, a clown accidentally destroyed her birthday gift, a brand new encyclopedia, during a party trick gone wrong.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated also gives us Crybaby Clown, a giant fat clown in a diaper who drives around in his huge car bombing buildings and neighborhoods with grenades shaped like milk bottles.
  • The Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Into the Mouth of Madcap" had the gang investigate an amusement park being menaced by Madcap the Killer Clown.
• One Man Circus from Scruff. A crooked clown, he is obsessed with kidnapping Scruff because he is a rare breed of dog. He wants to make him into the star attraction of his circus. He is voiced by Don Rickles.
• Frankly, there are countless times (not including that stint in Treehouse of Horrors) that Krusty the Klown of The Simpsons fits neatly into the oversized shoes of this trope. Point in fact he is scary enough to provoke heart-attacks in patients with heart conditions (namely Homer).
  • "What's wrong? Oh right... My grotesque appearance!"
    • Also, in "Homer's Triple Bypass": "Well, I got news for you, buddy: this ain't make-up!"
    • He tried broadcasting his show in High Definition without testing it first; BIG mistake.◊
  • There are even times when Krusty serves as the villain of the episode — most notably in "Yokel Chords" and "My Fair Laddy" — and gets his comeuppance in the end.
  • The haunted Krusty doll from "Treehouse of Horror III".
    "Hi, I'm Krusty the Clown and I don't like you." "Hi, I'm Krusty the Clown and I'm going to kill you."
  • Krusty's monster clown credentials reached their peak in the season 34 episode "Not It", which features him as a Pennywise parody called "Krusto" and ends with a montage of fan-submitted artworks depicting monstrous versions of Krusty.
  • Bart's clown bed in "Lisa's First Word". "If You Should Die Before You Wake!"
    "Can't sleep, clown will eat me..."
    • In the DVD Commentary of that episode, members of writing staff discussed this trope, coming to the conclusion that, "Adults hate clowns and children are afraid of them, so what the hell good are they?"
  • In the supplement book Flanders Book of Faith, one of Ned's Humble figurines has a little girl being frightened by a clown. The title: First visit to the Circus.
  • Sideshow Bob. Okay, he's more like a Monster Ex Clown, but still, he tries to murder multiple characters and gets involved in semi elaborate revenge schemes after Bart and such foiled his framing of Krusty for armed robbery. This aspect was turned up to eleven in "The Bob Next Door". In one of his escape attempts, Bob visibly surgically removes the face of one of his cell mates and then switches it with his own, while still being fully conscious and screaming. The worst part is when Sideshow Bob stops at a rest stop and a waitress who takes an interest in him manages to pull off a loose thread used to keep his face on, causing his entire face to flap down, exposing all of his muscles and tissue. And then moments later, it happens again with the cellmate he switched with.
• In the South Park episode "The Poor Kid", social services have a special room for kids with posters of grinning clowns. Kenny and his siblings sit there, all looking rather unnerved. Later, Cartman enters the room. He looks just as uncomfortable. This is Cartman we're talking about.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Mining the Mind's Mines", a team of ensigns from the Cerritos and the Carlsbad are disposing of some strange green orbs that turn their fantasies, and later their nightmares, into reality. One such nightmare is a pair of Klingons in clown make-up with bat'leths for arms.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • In "Bon Bon The Birthday Clown", Ludo ambushes Star and Janna by disguising himself as Bon Bon. The real Bon Bon is actually really nice.
  • According to The Magic Book of Spells, one of the spells invented by Queen Skywynne could temporarily raise the dead. She found that while most undead were friendly and helpful, "dead clowns" were nothing but trouble.
• Steven Universe: The Movie has Spinel, a gem court jester driven mad through trauma whose Rubber-Hose Limbs allow her to move in unsettling ways. She was a Non-Ironic Clown before her trauma and after being hit with Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• A later-season episode of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! features villains who are members of a circus possessed by Big Bad Skeleton King, which features not one, but THREE evil clowns, who end up merging into one really big, really creepy one. This is then subverted at the end when the circus is freed from evil and it turns out all the performers, including the no-longer-evil clowns are actually pretty nice people.
• Madkat from SWAT Kats. The spirit of an evil jester from medieval times that merged with a failed comedian whose hardships mirrored Madkat's own. For a one shot villain, he's pretty effective, and came damn close to winning.
• The Birthday Bandit from Teamo Supremo.
• The Tick featured the villain Proto-Clown, a rampaging superpowered brute of a clown created by a genetic experiment intended to create a perfect Non-Ironic Clown. Notably, he was barely sentient and spoke only in Hulk Speak, and was only scary due to his Unstoppable Rage and ability to tear buildings asunder with his bare hands. As it turns out, he was completely harmless once calmed down, but he hated it when people laughed at him.
• Subverted in Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! with "Steve Mahahanan's Child Clown Rentals", which combines natural terror of clowns with the horror/pity of CHILD SLAVERY. Child Clowns are rented out as SERVANTS rather than entertainers, and besides a disturbing advertisement in the usual Tim and Eric style, there's an overly-long, creepily realistic VHS-edited "Care for Your Child Clown" video how-to in a later episode. Details include the care, cleaning and storage of your Child Clown.
  • Good to know: Child Clowns eat only Steve Mahahanan's Child Clown Wet Food Logs.
• Darph Bobo, and the entire Clown Empire, from Tripping the Rift.
• Referenced in The Weekenders.
  Tino's Mom: He said he's not coming out of his room until the city's been cleansed of its unholy clown infestation.
  Tino (from behind a closed door): The hour of purification is at hand!
  • The reason he's afraid of clowns? When he was little, a surprise visit from his aunt, whose makeup made her look like a clown, freaked him out.

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