Too Bleak Stopped Caring / Western Animation

• Allen Gregory's overwhelmingly cynical attitude led to it getting cancelled after just seven episodes. The main character (a pretentious, whiny 7-year-old who falls in love with his elderly principal and doesn't even sound like a 7-year-old) and his father (a gay man who forces a straight man to leave his family and have a relationship with him) are both completely unsympathetic. Nearly every character in general is tremendously hard to like, and even those one can sympathize with have unfortunate baggage.
• Word of God is that Ben 10: Omniverse being Lighter and Softer is partly due to executives viewing Ben 10: Ultimate Alien as too dark: The basic problems are with the first arc, which features the protagonists being unable to do anything to defeat Aggregor until his last appearance... at which point he is replaced by an Ax-Crazy mutated Kevin, which results in the characters running into the exact same problems as earlier, but Ben decides, for whatever reason, to kill Kevin. The second season has a little less of this, but many, many subplots and arcs end without resolution (due to the unfortunate passing of Dwayne McDuffie), which results in some characters being worse off than before. The show also starts to push the limits on just what you can get away with via a Gory Discretion Shot. Human-on-human outright murder, Mind Rape-loving Eldritch Abominations... even grittier cartoons like, say, Young Justice: Outsiders tell a joke now and again and show the bonds between the characters, but these two seasons of a show that, remember, started out being about the hijinks of a ten-year-old learning to be a better hero, can get unrelentingly dark for long periods of time. It's at its darkest during the Ultimate Kevin arc (all this, and the hero Took a Level in Cynic).
• A frequent criticism of Brickleberry is that the show tries too hard to be as outrageous and offensive as humanly possible, and as a result quickly desensitizes the viewer to its brand of humor unless they were already a fan of it. Besides that, everyone of the characters are either malicious and/or self-centered jerkasses, punching bags, or racial stereotypes. (Or all three at once.)
• Season 3 of Castlevania (2017) drifted into this in the season finale in particular. By the end of the season, Trevor and Sypha have their failure to save even a single person on their consciences, their only ally is revealed to be a child-targeting Serial Killer, Alucard is in mental shambles after killing two people he genuinely came to care for because they betrayed and tried to kill him, Hector has been made a slave to Carmilla's sister after she seduced him into falling in love with her, and Isaac has enough corpses to build an army of Night Creatures without any opposition. Even for a show with an already bleak and gritty tone, a lot of fans felt like the season finale went a bit too far with the Darkest Hour, making them unsure if the heroes could turn things around in season 4. Thankfully, the creators listened and season 4 course corrected drastically towards a more hopeful "things are bad, but they can get better if we try" tone, ultimately ending with every character with sympathetic motives getting a happy ending.
• The Cramp Twins was largely seen as off-putting via its generally cruel nature and obnoxious cast of characters. The Bad Guy Wins is in play too often, with Lucien, our protagonist not really being any better than his brother Wayne at times. So you don't really have anyone to root for most of the time.
• F is for Family: Although the show strives for a Crosses the Line Twice approach to The '70s, some viewers have found its decidedly cynical tone too off-putting, and the abundance of abrasive characters makes it difficult to relate to any of them. You can always bet that when anything good happens to any member of the Murphy family, something bad is just waiting to spoil it all.
• Family Dog flopped, among other reasons, because it was too bleak and cynical. In the series, the Binsfords constantly disregard the well-being of their dog to the point that it borders on Black Comedy Animal Cruelty.
• This is part of why Fraidy Cat failed, as it can become quite a chore to constantly witness Fraidy having to go through so many bad things and never catching a break. That the other lives and Cloud Nine always show up without fail at least once per episode only makes things worse.
• The Groovenians: The pilot failed in a very bizarre way. Jet, and Glindy come across as a pair of unlikeable, selfish bums while the "antagonists" such as the parents and Norman are exaggerated and unrealistic caricatures of human behavior, it's hard to find anybody who is genuinely likable.
• While Kid vs. Kat does have a very devoted fandom (media reviewer Mr. Coat put it among his top 10 best Canadian animated series; the only one from the 21st century to make the list), one of the biggest criticisms many haters threw at the show was its mean-spirited tone and lack of likeable characters (with the exceptions of Dennis, Fiona and Coop themselves). Coop is constantly abused by everybody around him, his family are rather one-dimensional jerks, and all-in-all they just never win in the end. Season 2 did rectify some of this, however, though it still popped up occasionally, especially in the show’s final episode.
• Madeline: Well, not so much as bleak, so much as frustrating. My Fair Madeline isn't very well-liked among fans due to the main character getting put through the wringer for almost no reason whatsoever as well as the conflict relying on You Have to Believe Me! and Adults Are Useless tropes as very tiring. It was also blamed for possibly killing the franchise.
• Mr. Pickles: Everyone is a complete moron, there's blood and gore everywhere, and the "satire" doesn't have enough subtlety to justify any of it. And to top it off, the show doesn't put much effort into make it humorous.
• Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" was canceled after only six episodes because it was simply impossible for any viewer to relate to the characters. Most people can agree that their personalities were exaggerated to the point that they became unpleasant. That, and the significantly higher amounts of Comedic Sociopathy, Black Comedy, Kafka Komedy, and sadism. This show was so shocking and poorly received that many people, including co-creator Bob Camp, thought it tainted the series' legacy to the point that Nickelodeon would forever refuse to make a revival. (John Kricfalusi's own issues temporarily got the entire franchise Unpersoned, and even when plans for a continuation without any involvement from Kricfalusi whatsoever were made public in 2020, Comedy Central took over hosting duties.)
• One of the biggest criticisms of Santa Inc. is that nearly every character is completely unlikable and selfish that it's hard to root for any of them, with the main character Candy herself being regarded as the worst of them. And the only character that people rooted for is portrayed as the villain. As some reviewers put it, "it's a Christmas series made by people who hate Christmas."
• Sheep in the Big City: While it wasn't without its fans when it was airing, part of the reason the show didn't take off was because the amount of abuse and misfortune that Sheep endures every episode was considered off-putting by some (considering Sheep is barely anthropomorphic).
• This is one of the biggest reasons why Season 4 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil is disliked. Season 4 was considered the point where it was difficult to find anybody worth rooting for, with the characters either becoming too unsympathetic, turning against each other, or just straight up act antagonistic to one another. The actual story itself also kept going From Bad to Worse; Star and her family become pariahs for turning over the throne to Eclipsa, whose reign doesn't really do much to improve Mewni thanks to the populace hating her for giving monsters more rights, and Mina Loveberry eventually stages a war against Eclipsa with the help of Moon so that Mewni will remain in its anti-monster state.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) got hit with this for some fans.
  • Due to April constantly losing Kirby O' Neil, fans have found it hard to care whether or not April and her father reunite at all since he'll just be taken out of her hands sometime afterward. While he was presumably saved offscreen in "Earth's Last Stand", he did not appear at all or get referenced in season four until "Owari".
  • As a result of their Adaptational Wimp status, it can be slightly difficult to care about the fights that Turtles have with their enemies (animation aside) as a result of them usually losing against them.
    • The fact that Shredder constantly defeats the Turtles without them gaining a single victory over him has made some fans tired of how the TMNT in this adaptation Can't Catch Up with the Shredder even after four seasons. It's gotten to the point where Shredder has surpassed even the 2003 version (Ch'rell) in being an Invincible Villain who wins almost all the time and can never be stopped.
  • The entire arc about Splinter and Karai, who is really his daughter Miwa, that's been going on since the first season ends up resulting in this because no matter what happens, things always keep them apart and make the both of them more miserable than before, such as Karai getting mutated and becoming Brainwashed and Crazy or Splinter getting badly injured and even killed at one point. To make matters worse, when things finally started to look up as a result of Karai being freed from her control, mastering her mutation, and becoming an ally again, Splinter ends up getting killed for real with no reset this time, putting things through a giant case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
  • This trope is part of the reason the fans regard the "Raphael: Mutant Apocalypse" three-parter as non-canon to the series; it effectively renders almost everything the Turtles did across the five seasons null as a majority of their friends and family are dead and almost everything they've fought for has been destroyed.
• Tom Goes to the Mayor flopped as hard as it did because of its oppressively cynical atmosphere. Seeing Tom constantly suffer at the hands of every other character is fairly amusing the first few times, but after several episodes of it non-stop it can get incredibly tiring.
• Much of the backlash against Velma stems from the complete lack of likable characters and the show's overall mean-spirited tone. The eponymous Velma is a borderline misanthrope who is judgmental of everybody around her, Daphne is an Alpha Bitch with no regards for the feelings of anybody but herself, while Fred is a spoiled Manchild who is openly racist and misogynistic. Norville is the only character even remotely likeable, but comes across as too much of a pitiable loser to find all too endearing. The fact that characters other than the killer tend to engage in equally extreme violence with no consequences also tends to detract from the seriousness of the killer's crimes, and makes them come off as no better in the grand scheme of things.

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