Web Animation / The Cyanide & Happiness Show

The Cyanide & Happiness Show is a web series based off the daily webcomic, Cyanide and Happiness. Since 2010, animated shorts based on the comic have been produced, gradually increasing in production quality until 2014, when the first season of a weekly ten-to-fifteen-minute series was announced and successfully Kickstarted, reaching three times its goal of $250,000. As a stretch goal, for the entire year of 2014 shorts were produced on a weekly basis (excluding weeks in which full episodes were released). Each episode of the series tends to have one of two main sketches that take up most of the run time, and a few shorter sketches that act as interludes between them.

The first season of the show began airing on November 13th, 2014, yet due to a contract following the release of the second season, the long-form series is no longer available on YouTube. You can watch all three seasons on VRV. However, the shorts are still available and can be viewed here.

For more from the creators, also see The Stockholms, a show about a bank robber forming a familial bond with his hostages, and Purgatony, where a downtrodden man known as Tony judges souls that enter the afterlife in the office-like purgatory.

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The Cyanide & Happiness Show contains examples of:

• Affectionate Nickname: Samantha's dad in "Dinner with the Folks" lovingly refers to Charlie as "Chester" every time after they first meet.
  Dad: And this must be Charlie! Chuck, Chaz, Chester? Chester Cheetah! Ha, lay off those cheese puffs, you!
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Tolerator won't stand for any form of intolerance or stereotype, including people eating food associated with their respective cultures, or even its own intolerance of other people's intolerance.
• Ambiguously Gay: In "Rudy It's a Bitch Ass Life", Rudy's son is seen with his kid and another man visiting Rudy's death bed.
• And I Must Scream: The announcer in the Painbot commercial gleefully explains how the titular robot feels nothing but unimaginable levels of pain all day, every day, for all eternity.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Used for comedic effect in the "Star-Spangled Bastard" sketch; at the end of the sketch, the titular hero uses a handgun to shoot out his bedroom light (the bullet then ricochets and hits Eagle).
• Automaton Horses: Played for laughs in The Cowboy Funeral. The cowboy viking astronaut Tex's funeral consists of placing his body on a galloping horse, which is then set on fire with a flaming arrow before it boards a space ship and flies off into the stars.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Painbot is a machine which feels excruciating pain beyond human comprehension, being sold to the general public. In the commercial, a guy asks why he'd need something like Painbot; the announcer dodges the question by saying he doesn't need one. He needs two!
• Ax-Crazy: The grave digger and the fire fighters in "Opposite Day".
• Bad Boss:
  • The director of Ted Bear and the eponymous program "Ted Bear Survivalist". During one part of the production, the director orders him to literally bite his own penis off. And when Ted refuses, he gets fired for it. He got fired just for trying to stay safe. Even James Cameron wasn't this cruel to his subordinates.
  • Stevie, after opening his own company in "Stevie McBusinessman", would kill anyone who says words related to 'small' and 'short', even in the most innocuous and different context, as he has serious complex about his height. Subverted when one of his executives presses his Berserk Button multiple times in a rant at how the company is a sham, and Stevie promotes him to CEO for his honesty. Double Subverted when the new CEO is thinking of a raise, and Stevie kills him for it.
• Bait-and-Switch: "Who Is Mothman?" focuses on a news reporter interviewing "billionaire entomologist Morton Mothson" about the identity of the superhero Mothman. His entire house is decorated with moth symbols, his hair looks like moth antennae, and he has a Mothmobile in his garage and an underground cave system beneath his mansion. He claims the idea is preposterous, and all these things are just managed by his butler Milfred. Then we see Milfred, and it becomes immediately obvious that Milfred is Mothman.
• Barbershop Quartets Are Funny: Used a couple of times, once with a barbershop quartet of surgeons and again with a skit where a barbershop quartet hits on a woman from a passing taxi.
• Bathroom Brawl: "Public Bathroom" has two men fighting over toilet paper in the mens room, which spills over into the ladies room.
• Because I Said So: The Lights Out Saga reveals Shark Dad has weaponized the saying, as he uses it to kill the Drunk On Power Flashlight Dad and also uses it to make Billy spend quality time with him.
• Berserk Button: Do not call Stevie short or even use words like short or small in his presence. He is very sensitive about his height...and will make you explode like a balloon full of kool-aid with his incredible psychic powers.
• Black Comedy: A staple of the series
  • The opening of Episode 3, where a man places a baby in the trunk of a car alongside a bowling ball, before driving crazily through a forest with extremely sudden Soundtrack Dissonance.
  • Pretty much the entire "God as a next door neighbor" sketch.
• The Blank: Harry the Handsome Butcher deliberately and stupidly cut off his own face and he uses various items and another person's face to replace his own. After being arrested and working as a mole, his skull gets removed and he just has a hole in his head.
• Blinded by the Sun: In the short "Staring Contest", two men decide to have a staring contest... with the sun. It ends with their eyes melting, and the sun declaring itself the winner.
• Bookends: The first episode of Season 1 ends with a human uprising after a nuclear explosion wipes out all of the sentient bugs. The final episode of Season 3 ends with the bugs becoming sentient after all of humanity dies from eating paint.
• Brick Joke: In Episode 2, the pirate from the Buttshark sketch returns at the end of the episode, once again ordering two whiskies.
• Brain Transplant: The surgeon who performed one for Mr. Mackie apparently didn't consider that when replaced his brain with somebody elses, he wasn't saving the life of his patient as much as he was reviving the idiot who killed himself in a suicidal stunt....which he uses his new chance at life to do again.
• Brainless Beauty: Harry the Handsome Butcher is seen as very attractive to all his lady customers but he stupidly cut off his own face after misreading an innuendo. Harry tries to get other jobs but fails for stupid reasons and because people are understandably horrified by his lack of a face, he even misread a wanted poster for a job advert.
• The Bus Came Back: After 6 years, Ted Bear makes an unexpected comeback in "The Prison Break Part 2: The Clean Getaway".
  • And in Prison Break 3, where he escapes!
• Clark Kenting: John Battman, who is only involved with billionare Broots Waymb because they both hate criminals and have dead parents and for no other reason.
• Comically Inept Healing: In "Sad Larry Begins", the doctor delivering Larry outright states that babies shouldn't be crying after they're born, since they should be "happy to be alive".
• Comically Invincible Hero: Lunk, a hulking warrior who is by all appearances completely invincible and superhumanly strong. Most of the humor in his appearances comes from him being so strong that he resolves any and all threats by simply lumbering his way through any given obstacle and then brutally murdering anything that opposes him. His biggest foe is Stormy Thorncastle, who is about a tenth his size and a hundredth his threat.
• Corrupt Politician: Jimmy Williams is equal parts this and inept. He should be in prison for life, never mind running for office. How bad is he? His opponent's campaign ad campaign is two minutes of pure slander about him that Jimmy actually admits being a hundred percent true, including the part about him being the zodiac killer. He's so terrible that even he didn't vote for himself, is shocked when he wins, and shames everyone who helped him into office by bluntly stating they screwed up, and whatever things he does to ruin the country, they basically asked for it.
• Cosmic Plaything: Sad Larry, a perpetually depressed man who seldom feels a ray of sunshine in his life, mostly because his friends' (and his family's) "methods" of cheering him up are to kick whatever's on the table into his face when he doesn't immediately smile or just yell at him to stop being "ungrateful".
• Couch Gag: The whiteboard during the opening of every episode. Doubles as a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
• Credits Gag: "Waiting for the Bus, Pt. 2" is a short video followd by extremely long credits that mention the most unnecessary things, including "Not Starring Miley Cyrus", "Baby Shaker Louise Woodward", "Awful Music Red Hot Chilli Peppers", "Please by: Our Book", etc.
• Darker and Edgier: The third season of the long-form series is one giant storyline involving a world takeover conspiracy by an evil MegaCorp which culminates in Humanity's Wake.
• Death by Gluttony: The future version of the kid in "Too Much History" dies from "too much privilege" after eating more than a dozen Christmas turkeys by himself. Even his past self watching the vision questions why his future self would need to eat so much turkey.
• Death by Racism: The white people aboard the bus in the past segment of "Too Much History" insisted that the black man sitting in the front move to the back, despite the fact he was in the front because he was the driver, causing the bus to crash.
• Deconstructive Parody: "The World's Greatest Detective" is one for Murder on the Orient Express. After the detective correctly reveals that everyone in the train killed the victim together, making them all accomplices, he asks them to politely turn themselves in when they get to the station. Instead, the other passengers murder him and pass it off as a suicide. In the original novel, however, Poirot goes along with the murder plan and agrees to keep secret, agreeing that the murder victim deserved it.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Cliff's diagnosis in "The Man Who Could Sit Anywhere".
  Doctor: You have ass cancer.
  Cliff: Ass cancer?!
  Doctor: It's, uh... It's when you have a cancer in your ass.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: The balding executive in "Stevie McBusinessman" who hits his Rage Breaking Point at the whole sham of a company, and goes into a long tirade which presses Stevie's Berserk Button multiple times. This despite knowing that Stevie can and will kill anyone who says such words even in the most innocuous context. To his and Stevie's credit, his honesty got him promoted to CEO of the company.
  Executive: And you're just a small man with tiny ideas and a minute grasp of economics! Only you could bring this company so low!
• Disproportionate Retribution: The wife in "Breakfast" goes to some extreme measures when she suspects that her husband is cheating on her.
  Husband: What are you cooking for breakfast? That smells heavenly!
  Wife: It's your favoriiiiite~! I'm just cooking up your... COCK AND BALLS, YOU CHEATING BASTARD!!!
  • And then, in The Stinger...
    Husband: Ah, what's for dinner, honey?
    Wife: Oh, you know, just your... LYING, CHEATING ASS!!!
  • "Mr. B*tch" takes this trope, cranks it to 500%, and rips the knob off.
• The Dreaded: Once everyone realizes what Stevie McShortstuff is capable of, they all tremble at his presence, being EXTREMELY careful not to say anything that could potentially piss him off.
• Driven to Suicide: The intro to each episode has a man who appears to electrocute himself to death. Also happens in the depressing episode.
• Eagleland: Parodied with the gun-loving American hero, the "Star-Spangled Bastard", in the main sketch of Episode 4.
• Evil Counterpart: Inverted (probably); in order to quell Half-Off Oscar's threat to the universe, the Cosmic Arbiter sends a message to another salesman named Two-For-One Todd, who's able to make two of one thing (wheels, women, failing hearts) by clapping his hands.
• Expy: Stevie McShortstuff could possibly be one to Anthony Fremont, considering there both seemingly normal citizens who also happen to be The Omnipotent tormentors of their hometown and will punish anyone out of line.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In Aeris, Sephiroth is disgusted at Cloud using Phoenix Downs on Aeris while she's still impaled on his sword, outright calling him "sick" and telling him to let her die in peace. Keep in mind, he's the one who killed her in the first place.
  • If the viewers choose to Vote in Jimmy Williams as president, as bad as he is he will be shocked that the people chose to vote in someone as terrible as himself into office. Even telling the audience that they made a stupid decision and whatever he does now, they asked for it.
• Exact Words: In "That's It", a father tells his kids who are arguing in the backseat that's he going to turn the car around if they don't calm down. Naturally, they don't listen and the father makes good on his threat... Turning the car around and driving backwards, causing traffic accidents as he goes much to his children's horror.
• First Rule of the Yard: Subverted in "Prison", where a new prisoner plans to beat up the biggest, meanest looking guy around to gain respect. He lands a series of sucker punches on a huge, heavily tattooed man... and finds out that the guy he attacked is Big Hug Bill, the most beloved and nicest man in the prison. All the other prisoners promptly attack the new guy in outrage.
• For the Evulz:
  • The grinning man in "Seriously" completely ruins a man's life, stealing his parking spot and dinner table when he and his wife try to have their anniversary, then stealing the man's wife and assets in court, and even goes as far as to fake his own death to trick the man into killing himself. All with that same shit-eating grin glued to his face the whole time.
  • It seems to be a family trait, since all his relatives at the funeral share the same look, with one going as far as to steal the tears off another's face.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Throughout season four a Grandpa God can be spotted for a frame at least Once an Episode. It isn't until the mid-season episode "The Animator's Curse" that this is explained as a stop motion artist in frozen time stop motion animating everything.
• Freudian Excuse: The "Let's Get Fucked Up Grandma" sketch (of the "Christmas Episode") reveals through childhood pictures that the reason the teenager is being so ruthlessly frat-boyish to his grandma is because she did the same thing to him when he was a baby. Also doubles as The Dog Bites Back and Laser-Guided Karma.
• Funeral Cut: In one short called "The Man Who Could Sit Anywhere" Cliff Miller, the guy with the "comfortable ass," visits the doctor only to find out that he has "Ass Cancer." Just as he's about to ask how much longer he has to live, the scene cuts to his gravestone.
• Handicapped Badass: Suzy in the Gym Class short. And how.
• Here We Go Again!: The ending of Episode 2.
  Pirate: Aye, 'tis a sad story. But aye've got a sadder one! Two whiskies!
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Discussed and parodied in "Too Much Time".
  Narrator: Wait just a second, there! You were conceived in a Volkswagen. And Volkswagens were created in World War II. So if you go back and kill Hitler, how would the Volkswagen exist? And if there are no Volkswagen, where were you conceived? And if you were never conceived, then who killed Hitler?
• Honor Before Reason: Fart-in-a-Jar Martin, for his own inscrutable motives, insists that he only farted in a jar one time, ever! Even when it torpedoes a potential relationship with a girl in college, or getting himself imprisoned for refusing to admit an exonerating fart in a jar, and getting himself locked up for a decade for refusing to admit that he's Fart-in-a-Jar Martin.
• Hulking Out: One skit is about a mother who becomes a musclebound behemoth whenever her baby is threatened. She becomes a superhero names Mega Mom who keeps her baby on tether in battle so she can activate her powers. Once her son has grown up they learn he inherited her powers and hulks out whenever she is endangered. When she's old and retired, he becomes Mama's Boy.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Season Too, while being the show's second season, is named after the degree of intensity, and all of the episodes are titled to go with that idea.
  • Each episode of Season 3 is titled “Now That’s What I Call (blank)!”, parodying the compilation album series Now That’s What I Call Music!
• Infomercial: Parodied in the opening of Episode 4 with Not Doing That!
• I Am Not Shazam: Lil' Jil from the trilogy of shorts Tiny Style is never called Tiny Style in them. Granted she is almost never noticed by others and therefore there's no one to say her name but when she whispers into Chip Chapley's ear the name she gives him is Lil' Jil. Tiny style is the what she calls her "style" of doing things.invoked
• Innocent Bigot: White Knight doesn't seem to understand that he's being racist by arresting only black people.
• Interactive Narrator: The narrator's exchange with the Arsenist in "Too Many Superheros".
  The Arsenist: Do the title card thing.
  Narrator: I don't want to.
  The Arsenist: Dooo iiiiit!
• Jackass Genie: Season 4 episode "The Animator's Curse" is about an overworked stop motion animator discovering a genie in a prop lamp. He's very obviously duplicitous, but denies it when asked. When the animator wishes for "all the time in the world" to complete his project, he's given a magic clicker that can stop time, allowing him to stop motion animate anything. When he does complete his project, it disappears and the entire world freezes forever.
• The Juggernaut: The Link parody Lunk is a hulking beast of a man that either walks through every obstacle in his way or overcomes it in over the top fashion. He bypasses a Broken Bridge over a river of lava by bending the lava flow itself into the sky. He fishes by using the rod to pull the sun out of the sky to evaporate bodies of water and flash fry the fish. His father, who is utterly terrified of him, says he got that way from being overfed goat milk growing up.
• Just the Introduction to the Opposites:
  • The first episode of the TV series focuses on a world where humans and insects have switched roles, resulting in human-sized sapient insects being irritated by tiny humans that fly around and pester them. At the end of the episode, the insect society gets nuked, and the humans crawl from the wreckage and start standing on two legs, in an inversion of Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth.
  • One short skit features a man who tries to grab a milk bottle from the back of the grocery store fridge... only to be grabbed himself by a giant milk bottle, and find himself in a world where milk bottles consume refrigerated humans.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Silly's their sketches take the show from Black Comedy to Horror Comedy to outright horror. Subverted in Planet Silly Part 2 where it's revealed that despite being a terrifying cosmic abomination, Silly simply wanted friends to celebrate his birthday with after having lost his family.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Happens twice in the "Execution" short. The man condemned to be beheaded ends up going free after his executioner and then his guard crack lame puns and end up getting the chop instead.
• Literal Ass-Kissing: In the "Tunnel of Love" short, a couple kiss as they go in the tunnel of love and the screen dims. When the lights come back on, it's revealed that the man repositioned himself so his wife was kissing his ass instead of his mouth.
• Major General Song: "Lab Results" has a doctor explain to his patient all of his very serious and chronic health problems in a "Modern Major General" riff, with the patient happily clapping along. It isn't until the doctor finishes the song that he reads on his notes that the patient is also deaf.
• Nominal Hero: The titular characters of "The Globe-o-Rangers" spend the entirety of their first appearances drunk with power (except the Ma-Ti Expy), and their second appearance berating said expy as he dies of a heart attack. Even the villain seems more sympathetic to his plight.
• Non-Indicative Name: The episode names for the first season have absolutely nothing to do with the contents of each episode, save for "The Depressing Episode". The latter two seasons would avert this trope. Most notably, "The Christmas Episode" not only has nothing even remotely holiday-related, it also came out on January 22nd.
• Obliviously Evil: Bryce White, the White Knight. The telltale signs of him being a paragon of racism are there, from his KKK attire, to swastikas on the soles of his shoes, to a Confederate flag on his cape, to a burning cross appearing on his back when he activates White Flight, to putting so much cream in his coffee that all the coffee falls out the mug. However, all of this is just a fashion sense to him, and he doesn't arrest only black people because they're black. Rather, his White Sight blinds him to the truth and labels all black people as criminals. In reality, the White Knight doesn't care about what race you are at all; if only he didn't have his White Sight.
  White Knight: Why are you so upset?
  Chief: Because WE'RE supposed to arrest those black people! (solemnly) You're not leaving any for the rest of us...
  White Knight: (beat) ...THAT'S racist.
• Obviously Evil: Jimmy Williams does not even pretend to hide that he's the worst kind of person. He bluntly admits he's awful. When he wins the election he is surprised that people were dumb enough to vote for him and his inaugural speech starts off by saying they're going to need a miracle to fix the damage he'll do to the country.
• Political Overcorrectness: The Tolerator. "Are you making fun of the lazy Mexicans? That's racist."
• Power Limiter: Lunky Chunks, the monstrously powerful Lunk's breakfast cereal. Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Stormy Thorncastle thinks they're his Power-Up Food, only to be corrected by a villager after he's stolen them and eaten some - the people have been putting muscle relaxants and tranquilizers in the cereal for years to limit Lunk's horrifying strength. One morning without the cereal, and Lunk grows to the point of cracking the planet in two and eating the interior like a cereal bowl.
• The Reason You Suck: The balding executive in Stevie McBusinessman has spent the last twenty years pretending that their company is successful rather than floundering because their all too scared that their psychotic psychic boss will make them burst like paint-filled water balloons to tell him his every decision for the company is a horrible one. The guy angrily calls out Stevie for being a terrible business-man and repeatedly pushes his Berserk Button knowing full well he can and has constantly killed people for even saying that accidentally. He gets promoted to CEO for his honesty.
• Reduced to Dust: In "Granddpa's Storytime", this happens to Grandpa's storybook and then himself.
• Rubber Orifice: In the short "The ER Visit", a man explains how he put a mouse up his butt, and when it did not come out, sent a cat in after it and then a dog after the cat, as well as casually mentioning the chickens and women he put up there as well. Cue him walking out with a stretched, deformed anus shaped like animals and people.
• Running Gag:
  • The "Most Ancient Joke in the Book" sequences in Episodes 4-6, featuring a team of scientists travelling back in time in search of the titular jokes. Turns out it's a knock-knock joke.
  • Episode 6 has its own with a group of firefighters bursting into seemingly innocuous places and putting out things like candles in an over-the-top manner. The punchline is that they're psychics and are predicting fires before they happen.
  • Episode 5 seems to have an obsession with hot dogs.
  • Episode 11 repeatedly features a court jester trying what should be humanly impossible feats to entertain his king. He gets executed the third time around.
  • "Sad Larry" videos tend to end with someone snapping at Larry and kicking his food into his face.
• Sad Clown: The "La Comédie" short, with a heavy dose of Stepford Smiler.
• Satan Is Good: In "Dinner with the Folks", Samantha's parents being Satanists is initially treated as disturbing, until their ritual attracts Satan to their house, who turns out to be a cool guy.
  Satan: Ooh, man! This spread looks great, and smells great! You're a wiz in the kitchen, Debra! Who'd you have to sell your soul to to get this good?
  Debra: (chuckles) Oh, Satan!
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The '60s Narrator in "Too Many Superheros" quits after watching Wonder Percent brutally murder white collar criminals.
• Shout-Out:
  • To everything from Clifford the Big Red Dog to The Iron Giant to Captain Planet and, as of recently, Chicken Run.
  • The ending of "Stuck" serves as a dual reference to both Forrest Gump and Mary Poppins.
    Formerly Fat Man: (sitting on a bench) And that's how I lost all this weight! (chuckles)
    Businessman: I don't care! (floats away using umbrella)
• Singing Telegram: In the episode "Special Delivery", the Running Gag of a barbershop quartet in inappropriate situations continues with the quartet now delivering singing telegrams. In the short, they (comically and in song) inform a man that his girlfriend is breaking up with him, and has in fact been cheating on him with one of the members of the quartet.
• Stock Scream: The Wilhelm Scream is heard occasionally, particularly in episodes like "Killgore", where the clown gets pulled towards the bull and is shredded.
  • It is also heard in "Dante's Inferno" amongst some other sound effects being played during the wipeout after the man's death.
  • In "Serial Killer", it is screamed by one of the people on the trail in the park who got a knife stabbed into their eye.
  • An American soldier does this scream in "The TRUTH About War", when he is run over by a truck in the background during the conversation between the American and Nazi soldier on the battlefield.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "Fart in a Jar Martin" plays this trope to a T, with the titular Martin continuing to insist that it was one time in fourth grade. Except that he keeps bringing the jar to school every day and won't stop showing it to everyone. Then it's revealed that his bedroom is lined wall to wall with farts in jars that he's been collecting for years.
  Martin: I lied.
• Take That!: The first skit of Episode 11 is this to the concept of homeschooling and also most likely straw feminists.
• Tears of Blood: One of the guys in the curse support group has this whenever he becomes sad.
• They Just Dont Get It: The husband in "Dirty Dealings" loves to eat nothing but hotdogs. Nothing. But. Hotdogs. When his wife says she wants something different. He honestly thinks she means she wants mustard on her Hotdogs instead of ketchup.
• Villain Has a Point: The villain of season three wasn't wrong when he said people were dumb enough to drink paint is an ad told them to. As thats exactly what happens in the Cruel Twist Ending of season three as humanity goes extinct after everybody literally starts drinking paint.
• Waxing Lyrical: The bartender in "Drunk" quotes Semisonic's "Closing Time".
  Bartender: Closing time! One last call for alcohol, so finish your whiskey or beer! And get the FUCK outta here!
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The old Trope Namer of Captain Planet got a pretty textbook parody in "The Globe-o-Rangers", where one of the group gets the power of Monkey (summons a single aging, diseased monkey), and then has to upgrade to Heart when the monkey dies (which gives him a heart attack).
• With Friends Like These...: Sad Larry's "friends" are a textbook example of how 'not' to help a depressed person. If their "methods" of cheering up Larry don't work right away, they get angry and leave Larry to stay sad. Not even his guilt for getting his father into a fatal car crash stops his friend's family from kicking him out when he says no to... 'something.'
• Wrong Genre Savvy: "Mr. Bitch" serves as one relating to the "impossibly embarrassing substitute teacher" plotline. Throughout the episode, the sub is very much expecting at least someone to crack a joke at his expense....but nobody really does, mirroring how children never actually tend to treat subs poorly in reality.
• Young and in Charge: "The Delivery" takes this to extremes with President Baby.

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