No Sympathy / Western Animation

No Sympathy in Western Animation.

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• The woman in front of Stan in line to the doctor in the American Dad! episode "Less Money, Mo' Problems" refused to let Stan cut in front of her, despite the fact that he was clearly heavily wounded and bleeding to death because "My elbow feel funny. My elbow feel strange."
• Every Animaniacs "Buttons and Mindy" short ends this way. After practically killing himself to save the life of his owners' careless daughter Mindy, Buttons would almost always get a verbal dressing-down for some minor fault incurred along the way, plus the loss of a treat. Shortly thereafter, Mindy would usually lavish a bit of toddlerish affection on Buttons, which seemed to comfort him at least a little. The earliest shorts didn't even have that silver lining but luckily, in the movie he was rewarded handsomely with a big 'ol plate of steak.
  • Relatedly, a lot of the Warner Bros. animation stable relies heavily on our Karmic Trickster lead(s) having no real boundary when it comes to revenge or just being jerks.
• Arthur:
  • In "Arthur's Big Hit", Arthur gets punched by Binky after the latter gets goaded by his Jerkass friends into doing so. When Arthur's parents hear about this, their response is to tell him that it's a justifiable punishment for punching D.W. (he did so after she thoughtlessly destroyed his model plane), even though they previously told him violence is never justified.
  Arthur: And the next thing I knew, I was on the ground! It hurt, and it was embarrassing.
  Mr. Read: Well, maybe that's how D.W. felt when you punched her.
  Arthur: "Maybe"? But what's that got to do with this?
  • In "Nerves of Steal", Buster gets grounded for stealing a Cyber Toy. When he tells Brain the story, Brain's response is that it was a good thing he was able to get it for his birthday.
  Buster: And that's why I'm inside on a perfect Sunday afternoon - all because of a toy I just had to have!
  Brain: Well, I'm glad I got mine for my birthday! See you in school tomorrow!
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", Temple Fugate's Start of Darkness begins after he arrives late to his hearing and the judge ruled against him for being late. Even when Fugate’s clothes were soaked and torn and he was obviously distressed and disheveled. (And what made it even more unfair was that Fugate had always been on time for appointments up to this point, and was only late this time because Mayor Hamilton Hill (then a lawyer) had suggested he take a break for once.) When Fugate looked at his lawyer, he simply shrugs it off and retires.
  Fugate: No, you can't, I'll be ruined!
  Judge: Then perhaps this will teach you to be on time for a change.
• Big City Greens:
  • In "Fill Bill", the jerkassy waiter shows no remorse nor sympathy over Bill when he starts to get violently ill from the outlandish seafood, to the point of almost completely passing out.
  • In "Green Christmas", when a crying toddler complains to the Mall Santa that Cricket cut in front of him, Cricket just waves him off.
• Bob's Burgers: Anytime Bob gets the short end of the stick on something, other characters will either make wisecracks about it or not make a big deal out of it like he does. Played for Laughs of course.
• Camp Lazlo: In "Dirt Nappers", when Samson gets a new vacuum cleaner, he cleans up all the dirt in Camp Kidney, leaving the other Bean Scouts unable to do any activities on the leftover bedrock. Making matters worse is that without dirt, Chip and Skip will go into a century-long hibernation, so they need to get it back before that happens. When they see that the dirt was taken by the Squirrel Scouts for use for mud treatments, they explain their situation to them and Patsy cheerily informs the boys that they don't care.
• Carl Casagrande in The Casagrandes is only eight years old, yet he is the only Casagrande who doesn't care when he sees Bobby upset, even though Bobby himself is nothing but nice to him. Two examples that stand out:
  • "Missed Connection": The Casagrandes find Bobby bitterly weeping over the prospect of his Long-Distance Relationship with Lori failing. But instead of trying to comfort him, Carl, who's trying to give himself a clear shot at Lori, tries to convince Bobby that he and Lori should split up. Later, Carl even sabotages one of Bobby's attempts to help his relationship with Lori in an effort to make Lori like him.
  • "Stress Test": After four failed attempts to pass his Achievement Test of Destiny, Bobby returns to his apartment with tears running down his face. While everyone else tries to comfort Bobby, Carl, who only wants to eat some celebratory cake, tries to slap Bobby silly with a newspaper, which earns him a Shoe Slap courtesy of Abuela Rosa.
• Lucien from The Cramp Twins suffers an allergic reaction from the vest he's wearing while in class, and takes it off to reveal a huge red rash covering his torso. Miss Hissy, Lucien's teacher, responds by giving him a detention for removing his top.
• In one episode, Doug was goaded into throwing a rock at a house scheduled for demolition and this small rock ends up collapsing the entire house. Patti comes by and when Doug brags to her about the good shot she tells him he's "terrible" and walks off angry. For most of the episode Patti avoids Doug like the plague without giving an explanation and Doug is left wondering why she would be angry at him for wrecking a house that was going to be torn down soon anyway, even Bebe won't answer him when he asked her to find out why Patti is mad at him. He doesn't find out why until Skeeter off-handedly mentions that it was the house Patti lived in when her mother was alive, something which Doug would not have known since everybody knows he'd just moved to Bluffington. Subverted in that Patti actually apologises after Doug gives his side of the story.
• The Dragon Prince: Rayla is angry at Callum for using dark magic despite his saving her life, and spends her time in the last two episodes chastising him for doing so. Subverted when she realizes how serious Callum's fever dream, or dark magic coma, actually was; she ends up clutching Callum in a bone-crushing hug, begging Callum not to die. Rayla's initial reaction is justified by the fact that dark magic is very Serious Business for elves; the current divide in setting between humans and the mystical beings of Xadia is rooted in humanity's discovery and usage of dark magic to begin with, as it explicitly involves killing magical creatures to harvest their Life Energy and has severe corruptive effects on users. Humanity was exiled from Xadia for such things, so seeing a friend use dark magic would be incredibly upsetting for Rayla from a cultural standpoint.
• A (likely unintended) driving pivot of the feud in The Dreamstone. Most of Zordrak's Urpney minions (especially Frizz and Nug) hate their job, only going through with it due to Sgt. Blob and Urpgor press ganging them, or Zordrak threatening to execute anyone who defies him. The heroes seem aware of this (and the Urpneys are rarely shrewd about how unwilling they are) but still see the Urpneys as evil scum for trying to steal the Dreamstone and give them nightmares, usually handing them a righteous verbal lashing and cartoonish beatdown. Later episodes at least tried to make the heroes' treatment of the Urpneys more proportionate to the peril they put them through, but they remain firmly in this trope, their unwilling nature never remotely acknowledged.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In the episode "Little Ed Blue", Ed, who is usually a Nice Guy, is in a bad mood and terrorizes the cul-de-sac kids. Edd and Eddy go to cheer him up, but with different ways. Whereas Edd tries to cheer Ed up kindly, Eddy really doesn't seem to care about Ed's predicament. He belittles him, shows him very little in the way of patience or empathy, and even causes him to reach his Rage Breaking Point by smacking him upside the head and telling him to get over himself. Eddy's reaction afterwards shows he regrets acting this way and pushing Ed too far.
• In the Family Guy episode "Herpe, the Love Sore", Peter and friends run away from the guys who bullied them out of their booth. This earns them the scorn of the town and their families. Their attempt to take it back fails with them getting beat up. Even when they get the booth back, it's only because the guys who bullied them reveal themselves to be soldiers who are shipping back to duty the next day. Said guys are hailed as heroes, while Peter and the gang still get no respect.
• In the Futurama episode "I Second That Emotion", the crew became so annoyed with Bender's lack of sympathy for anyone, that they installed an emotion chip to his head, which made him feel everything Leela (whose pet, Nibbler he flushed down the toilet) felt. Also applied to Leela herself that very same episode, as she showed no concern for Bender nearly getting cut by the can opener, getting angry at him for scolding Nibbler for the predicament, or Nibbler eating the cake Bender had made (which may not seem like much, but Bender had spent ages making it, and Nibbler ate it before anyone else had seen it), which partly led to the critter's flushing.
  • Given the kind of show it is, the characters tend to show little to no sympathy for each other, depending on the situation. One can usually tell if a line has seriously been crossed, because one or more characters will feel sorry for another.
  • In "The Why of Fry" Fry is in the middle of trying to pick up Nibblers monstrously heavy dark matter droppings when Officer Smitty orders him to pick it up. When Fry proves he clearly can't the officer still gives him a ticket.
• Max Goof on Goof Troop Zig-Zags this in regard to his best friend, PJ, the kind but maltreated son of Pete. In the pilot episode, he explicitly shows him sympathy and goes out of his way to give him a chance to be happy and have fun. Later episodes have a mix of that, seeming obliviousness to his feelings—that is, not noticing why (or even that) PJ might be upset at being treated inconsiderately, nervous about a plan (especially one involving his dad), or annoyed that Max complains about his (much nicer) dad in front of him—and actively accusing him of being a bad friend based on circumstantial evidence when PJ is either obviously contrite or actively denying the betrayal. When the last one shows up, Goofy tries to get him to be more sympathetic.
  • It's fairly obvious that Max is the Ferris Bueller to PJ's Cameron Frye, and we're supposed to sympathize with Max more simply because he's way more fun and cool.
• In Invincible (2021) this ends up being the cause of Mark and Amber's breakup, as she constantly holds his refusal to disclose his secret identity against him and acts like it's some kind of betrayal despite how obviously he's torn up about it. When he's hospitalized after losing a fight to a villain (with his cover story being that he was hit by a bus), she shows little concern for his well-being when he eventually gets out and instead complains about not being told which hospital he was at. She does get better about it though, as she breaks into tears when seeing him get beaten to a pulp by his Archnemesis Dad and takes him back.
• In the Justice League episode "Twilight of the Gods" this is Batman's reaction to Superman's initial refusal to help Darkseid due to what he did to him in Superman: The Animated Series.
  • Batman's non-stop trash talking of Superman after the fact later comes back to bite him in the ass.
• King of the Hill: In the Grand Finale "To Sirloin With Love", Bobby joins a meat grading team. He is initially regarded as a prodigy. At the team's state qualifying tournament, he answers almost every question and single-handedly pulls his school into second place, thus qualifying for the state championship. He answers the last question of the tournament incorrectly, thus dropping his team into fourth place, which is still high enough to qualify for state. His teammates and coach immediately turn on him, declaring him an incompetent choke artist who will drag the school into the gutter. When a rival team hijacks their bus, Bobby is the only member of the team at the finals and performs flawlessly, but when the rest of the team shows up they shove Bobby aside and tell him to sit out before he ruins their chances. It isn't until Bobby asserts himself and keeps the rest of the team from making a tourney-losing mistake that they accept him again.
  • A major snag with Hank and Bobby's relationship is that Hank often has trouble sympathizing with Bobby over any of his problems. It's played a bit more realistically than in many other examples on this page; Hank isn't necessarily being cruel or a Jerkass (at least not intentionally), but he and Bobby are so fundamentally different that Hank just can't understand it when Bobby is upset. When Bobby hates being a towel-boy for the football team, he hates it because he's yelled at by the coach, laughed at and mocked by the players, and stuck doing thankless, disgusting grunt work while everyone celebrates. Hank is happy he's at least "part of a team" and convinced the hard work will make him a better person, and is utterly baffled when Bobby quits. When Bobby is being stressed out to the point of having a panic-attack from studying for a Quiz Bowl, Hank finds him stressing over such a trivial thing ridiculous, stating that Bobby's life is so easy there's nothing for him to feel stressed about.
• The Legend of Korra: This is the root of the estrangement between Toph Bei Fong and her daughter, Lin. Toph's Hands-Off Parenting combined with her refusal to speak of Lin's father, who Lin wanted to know, drove them apart. The nail in the coffin was when Toph destroyed a police report to protect her other daughter Suyin from jail time then sent her away from Republic City, when Lin was the one that arrested her and earned a nasty scar in the process of doing so.
• One episode of The Littles had a one-off character whose father (an implied "education parent") had threatened to send her to a private school where her "friends (wouldn't) be such a bad influence on" her if she didn't get straight A's on her report card. After seeing one B and one C on her report card, she decides to run away from home, fearing that her father would give her this trope.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The Season 4 finale has Lord Tirek, who is obviously this due to his greed. As he is overly focused on stealing all the magic from Equestria he insists that everyone surrender to him, ignoring any consequences that his enormous ego has caused.
  • A minor example comes from the episode "Secrets and Pies", where Rainbow Dash laments over deceiving Pinkie Pie regarding her pies, but Twilight and Applejack don't offer their condolences on the matter, as Twilight points out she's not only lied to Pinkie, but the others as well. This prompts Applejack to ask Rainbow if she's lied about anything else, and the latter sheepishly admits she couldn't think of anything off the top of her head.
  • Pretty much anyone who doesn't believe in The Power of Friendship gets zero sympathy from the heroes. They were willing to let everything Discord, Starlight Glimmer, and Queen Chrysalis did, which was a lot, slide without consequence if they gave friendship a try (though Chrysalis soundly rebuked the offer), while they gave Cozy Glow permanent incarceration in Tartarus without a second thought and later laughed about sealing her in stone for all eternity after she effectively said "screw friendship" when her evil schemes were foiled.
  • The Evil Doppelgänger of Twilight Sparkle in "The Mean 6" does not show any sympathy over Fluttershy when Pinkie Pie finds her crying in the forest from the animals chastising her, leaving Pinkie to shout at her for not caring about her friends needing help and would rather just "stay on schedule", albeit she gives this to the real Twilight and doesn't even notice a single difference.
• Zig-zagged in The Ren & Stimpy Show. This was John Kricfalusi's original concept for Ren, and he is portrayed this way in some episodes, but Executive Meddling on the network's part forced him to tone Ren down into a more empathetic character in other episodes (especially in the infamous Son of Stimpy episode). Ironically, after Kricfalusi was removed from the production, this mandate was removed, with Games Animation regularly playing Ren's callous antipathy for Stimpy at full throttle. Often to the point that even Kricfalusi himself thought their dynamic had gotten too mean spirited.
• In one episode of Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat Baba Miao repeatedly makes Dongwa write scrolls without giving him any sort of break. Later, when he catches Sagwa doing Dongwa's work, he accuses Dongwa of making his sister do his work (despite the fact that Sagwa could have refused, but being generous, didn't) and worse, accuses Sagwa of "helping [Dongwa] decieve me", and then grounds them both. He never apologizes to Sagwa and only apologizes to Dongwa after a nightmare about his childhood in which, ironically enough, he was treated the same way.
• Even more so is Homer Simpson in The Simpsons who routinely abuses his son Bart almost every season with very little signs of changing for the better.
• In the South Park episode "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", the girls challenge the boys to a sled race. They needed Cartman's weight for their sled to even move, and when he gets wrongly thrown in jail, the girls start gloating and saying that they'll never win without him. And even after Kenny gets killed by a pile of bricks, the Alpha Bitch in charge continues to mock them and call them names.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Dying For Pie", this is initially quite averted with Squidward, who is quite guilt-ridden to learn that SpongeBob will supposedly die at sunset because of him and willingly joins SpongeBob in a variety of ridiculous (and even dangerous) activities to make his last hours as meaningful as possible. However, when SpongeBob does not explode as expected, instead of being happy, Squidward is angry because his time was wasted.
  • "One Coarse Meal" has Plankton being driven insane by Mr. Krabs's relentless torment by dressing up as a whale (Plankton's biggest fear). Karen shows absolutely no sympathy whatsoever to Plankton's situation, instead acting like her usual Deadpan Snarker self. Averted with SpongeBob who actually does feel sorry for Plankton and calls out his boss for taking this way too far.
• This pretty much happens almost every time in Thomas & Friends as well as in The Railway Series novels. Whenever there's an engine who laments about their unpleasant situations to others, they will always make belittling and smug insults to them about it. However, this mistreatment on the engine depends either if the engine brought it upon themselves due to their misbehavior or that the unsympathetic engine is being rude for their own sake, in which case something will likely lead them to get A Taste of Their Own Medicine shortly afterwards.
  • Henry often got this problem following his increasing illness in the first season. Other engines usually ignoring his moaning until he starts effecting their own work schedule (Thomas in particular chewed out Henry for making him late, and only saw his ill bout as an opportunity to pull his train in his place). Only his crew and Sir Topham Hatt shown concern for his health and took measures to repair him, leading him to get the last laugh on some of the apathetic engines from before when he starts to outclass them. Subverted in later seasons after his sickness reappears, where the others are usually shown to be very concerned about him.
    • Reused and reasoned in "What's The Matter With Henry?". When Henry moans he is sick again, Thomas and Percy mock him and even give him their own workload as a prank. Emily is concerned about Henry however, and upon investigating, discovers he has broken down. When Thomas and Percy realize this, they are remorseful, explaining they thought it was just Henry being his usual self. The engines learning to treat Henry's wavering health more seriously is among the few Aesops that have stuck since then.
    • There are times where he'll dish this to the other engines. In "Something in the Air", after Thomas explains that his lateness was due to some fish falling into his boiler and the high tide was damaging the rails, Henry brushes off this reason and rudely tells him to attach the other vans to his Flying Kipper. He does apologize to him for this in the end, however.
  • In the earlier episodes, Thomas himself often displays this treatment towards other engines who were late for his passenger trains. Along with the example with Henry as mentioned above, he shows this to Henry and James in "Better Late Than Never", dismissing their reasons for their lateness due to the viaduct being in repairs and believes it's just an excuse for laziness. Then in "Woolly Bear", he berates Percy for being late and brushes off his excuse being the hay.
• Total Drama: Courtney gets no sympathy from her fellow contestants after Harold tampers with the votes to get her kicked off. Her teammates simply wave goodbye while brushing off the fact that most of them didn't vote for her, and the ex-players straight up don't care and tell her to get over it. The kindest thing she gets is Lindsay telling her that she'd have been voted off legitimately in a different challenge for being bossy and rude. Little wonder she Took a Level in Jerkass in later seasons...