Questionable friendships in Western Animation.
- American Dad!:
- Steve's friends ditch him the first chance they get when something out of the norm happens to him. He also fights with them a lot. In fact, his best friend Snot is the only one of the three who isn't a violent psychopath that wants him dead; Barry takes antipsychotics that mentally retard him and suppress his antisocial tendencies while Toshi typically hides his blatant distaste for Steve through his adamant refusal to ever speak English.
- Roger to Steve. In theory, Roger is Steve's alien friend but always ends up causing him trouble.
- Archer: Everyone in I.S.I.S. are their own worst enemy, they are either jerks to each other, do something that screws up their mission, and are quick to rat each other out.
- Arthur: Despite being in a best friend group together, Francine frequently makes fun of Arthur, with Muffy acting as her sidekick, as well as turning against him easily, but has shown to be a good friends on certain occasions.
- This happens a few times in As Told by Ginger, with a few cases described below:
- Courtney, despite being a drama queen, is best friends with Mipsy and Miranda, who take her role as Alpha Bitch far. Miranda even flat out admits she's friends with Courtney mostly to sponge off her popularity. It's not much of a stretch to imagine people wondering "Why are they still friends?!?".
- Ginger's friends. Granted; it's pretty much Dodie, as Macie only has a few Jerkass moments that are few and far in between. Dodie is willing to backstab her friends and only thinks of herself, while Macie has been too emotionally dependent on Ginger a few times, but Ginger's been there to help her. The sad thing is, Courtney acts as a better friend to Ginger.
- Deconstructed in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Azula does have an actual friendship with Mai and Ty Lee stemming from childhood, but due to her obsession with power and control, forces them to comply with whatever she wants, and not so subtly threatening them if they don't fall in line. In fact, during her second scene with Ty Lee (who just declined Azula's request to join her on her mission to hunt Zuko and Iroh to stay in the circus), while she's watching her performance, has Ty Lee's safety net set on fire, and then releases a menagerie of dangerous animals, and later implying that she'll continue to do this if Ty Lee doesn't join her; Ty Lee gets the message. This ultimately comes to a head in Book 3, when Mai chooses to save Zuko (whom she loves) over serving Azula, bluntly telling her that she loves Zuko more than she fears her; when Azula attempts to attack Mai, she's in turn disabled by Ty Lee. This betrayal later becomes the catalyst for Azula's eventual mental collapse.
- The Backyardigans: In the episode "It's Great to Be a Ghost!", Pablo and Uniqua force off Tyrone into being a ghost, when he tries to tell them that he is too nervous about the whole "ghost" thing, and just wants to play off something else. But Pablo and Uniqua WANT Tyrone to play ghosts with them, and apparently, throughout the whole episode, they want Tyrone to scare somebody. But Tyrone's too nervous and he wants to be friendly. Pablo and Uniqua, not knowing that Tyrone doesn't wanna play ghosts with them, force him out there anyway, in a Bedsheet Ghost-esque style upstairs in the haunted house. Poor Tyrone...
- Beast Wars: Rattrap and Dinobot. Among Dinobot's last words were a quote from Shakespeare and expressing a desire to be upwind of Rattrap. And Rattrap is glad about it (normally those were fighting words between the two). This could be interpreted as how their friendship trumps death, still... Yet Rattrap is also specifically tasked by Dinobot after his Heroic Sacrifice with making sure no one turns him into an overrated legend in the retellings. In this dislike, there is also trust. And in a scrapped episode for season three, Rattrap disobeyed orders and infiltrated the Predacon base in an attempt to download the original Dinobot's memories into his evil clone.
- The title characters of Beavis and Butt-Head. The latter often hits, insults, neglects, and is downright abusive towards the former. Whenever Beavis is getting beaten up or is in a life-threatening predicament, Butt-Head never cares about what's going on with him in the slightest, making it very ambiguous as to why those two are friends in the first place. One episode even shows that if Butt-Head wasn't in his life, Beavis would have been a still dimwitted, but much friendlier person.
- CatDog: The Greasers, despite being rather nasty bullies, are close and do stick together. However, at the same time, there are times when they are willing to turn on and leave each other when they see each other as weak and different.
- In the episode "Squirrel Dog", when Cliff gets Eddie the Squirrel stuck on his back, Lube and Shriek refuse to help Cliff and abandon him, because in their eyes Cliff is now a freak. They only take him back when Cliff accidentally gets Eddie off his back and Cliff shows he learned nothing by going back to being a bully.
- In the episode "Cliff's Little Secret", when CatDog find out that Cliff takes ballet dancing, they no longer fear him, and it drives him insane, with Shriek angry that CatDog no longer fear them. After being laughed at by CatDog during almost the whole episode, Shriek and Lube decide to leave Cliff, with Shriek telling Cliff she loves him like a brother, but she never wants to see him again, with Lube admitting the same. When Cliff begs them not to go and asks what will happen to him, Shriek admits she doesn't care. It's only when Cliff discovers why CatDog stopped fearing him and make them fear him again do Shriek and Lube take him back.
- Dan Vs.: Dan is often this towards Chris. He would often compel Chris into joining him on his vengeance spree and even uses him as bait in a few of them, not to mention how much Dan mistreats Chris. Whenever Chris gets injured, Dan would show little to no concern for him and is sometimes more upset that his scheme failed. There was even an episode where Chris mentioned that Dan used to bully him in high school even though the two first met and befriended each other in summer camp. Despite all of this, Chris remains loyal to Dan and forces himself to come along with him in his schemes.
- Danny Phantom: The A-Listers appear to be close friends, but it's shown that they are quick to turn on each other and are unsympathetic to each other when they have a problem.
- Daria:
- The Fashion Club. Sandi is the Alpha Bitch, and Quinn is her Beta Bitch...except that she wants to move up in the world, and Sandi knows it, so the two usually act incredibly sweet and polite while trying to backstab each other. Stacy, meanwhile, is constantly being cut down by Sandi, aided by some tactless comments from Tiffany. Despite all this, the four do seem to care about each other on some level: the Grand Finale ends their subplot with the four crying together when the club is officially disbanded, though with the implication that things between them will remain basically the same.
- Kevin and Brittany usually act friendly to Daria but seem to balk at actually calling her a friend, since she's so unpopular. (The exception is "The Lost Girl," when they wanted something from her.) While never really malicious, they're so clueless that they often make insensitive comments to her too.
- Dynomutt, Dog Wonder: Dynomutt is more often a hindrance than a help to his owner Blue Falcon, which Blue Falcon frequently complains about. Even the title song is essentially a long complaint by Blue Falcon about Dynomutt's "so-so" brain.Blue Falcon: Remember, he is my friend, they are the enemy.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: In later seasons, Eddy and the other two Eds. It finally entered deconstruction territory in The Movie Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show where Edd begins to question his friendship with Eddy. Eddy (and Ed) finally cross the line when they play a Dude, Not Funny! joke by pretending to drown. Edd and Eddy get into a fight and after Edd throws Eddy off of him, he snaps and says that he would rather face the consequences of his actions than hang around with a "so-called friend," thus ending his friendship with Eddy. Then finally enters Reconstruction with Eddy ends up feeling remorse for his actions and cries. Edd ends up forgiving Eddy and they both reconcile.
- Family Guy: A staple and these are just a few examples:
- Due to Peter Griffin basically being a selfish child in the body of a grown man (particularly in later seasons) anytime something different catches his attention, or he develops a new interest, he will readily turn on his "friends" for his own whims. To list off some examples, he brutally steals a dog rope from Brian resulting in Brian breaking his own face (later half-heartedly returning it when he realizes it doesn't do anything) and refusing to help afterwards, turns into Quagmire's abusive pimp after Quagmire decides to become a gigolo, steals Joe's wheelchair so he can get disability perks, and tries to destroy Cleveland's marriage when Cleveland pushes him to spend more time with his wife.
- "And I'm Joyce Kinney": A Season 9 episode where Lois and new Channel 5 anchor Joyce Kinney form a close friendship. In strict confidence, Lois reveals that as a teenager, she had starred in a pornographic movie. Joyce promptly betrays Lois's trust and reveals this on TV - justifying this as revenge for a long-ago prank in high school - causing Lois to be shunned by the community.
- "Into Harmony's Way": From Season 12, Peter and Quagmire - who have formed a successful singing duo - basically ditch Mort Goldman and abandon their friendships with him as their manager once they become successful.
- "A Fistful of Meg": A Season 12'er, Meg's friends tell her they are discontinuing their friendship with her because of the threat a bully - who has threatened to beat Meg to death - poses to them. This is but the latest example where these supposed "true" friends of Meg will drop her at the slightest hint of trouble.
- Glenn Quagmire. He constantly lusts after Lois despite her being his best friend's wife, slept with Loretta (destroying her marriage with Cleveland), shot Peter in the head (while the latter did it first, Peter did it inadvertently), broke into Peter's house so that he could beat Brian within an inch of his life, and asked Cleveland if he could have sex with Donna.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Bloo and Mac. To the point that there are even major inconsistencies in how far their loyalty to each other goes. One suspects that the creators are unsure how far they want to take Bloo's Flanderization.
- Goof Troop: PJ's relationship with Max can look like this, with Max dragging PJ along with him on basically every plan, sometimes explicitly not taking "no" for an answer, not taking him or his criticisms seriously despite his track record of being right and dragging him down when the plans he criticizes go wrong, using him, not acknowledging it when PJ is upset, and having absolutely no patience and blaming him the few times that PJ actually does appear to do something inconsiderate (which is, by the way, never his fault). However, Max will also act like a true friend to PJ at other times, and the second episode makes it absolutely clear why PJ has Undying Loyalty to Max: without Max's friendship, he'd be completely miserable due to his awful home life.
- The Hair Bear Bunch: In the episode "No Space Like Home," Bubi tells the inhabitants of the planet Taluria that Hair Bear is their leader so the inhabitants make him their leader. But when Bubi tells them that Mr. Peevly is their Earth leader, the Talurians usurp Hair and make Peevly their leader.Hair: With you as a friend, Bubi, who needs enemies?
- Josie and the Pussycats: Alexandra and Alexander (sometimes Alan as well) got the Pussycats more often in trouble than aided them.
- KaBlam!: Henry and June constantly argue, and if Henry's in trouble...don't expect June to help.
- Kaeloo: The four main characters, Kaeloo, Stumpy, Quack-Quack, and Mr. Cat, consider each other to be their best friends and care about each other deeply. They also mercilessly rag on each other, beat each other up, and throw each other under the bus as often as possible. A special mention goes to Mr. Cat and Quack-Quack since Mr. Cat is an Ax-Crazy psychopath and Quack-Quack often finds himself on the receiving end of abuse with actual weapons such as chainsaws and bazookas.
- King of the Hill:
- Dale Gribble and Bill Dauterive. On why Dale is a bad friend... how many times has he sold out his friends for his own gain? How many times has he gotten Hank in trouble, blaming him for an accident when he caused the problem? Too many times to count. However, while Dale can be an asshole sometimes, he's shown that he's willing to risk life and limb for his friends such as when he switched his oxygen tank with Hank's when they were firemen so Hank would have more despite the fact they weren't on speaking terms at the time or when he went toe to toe with his psychopathic rival who was holding them hostage. (Plus the fact that Hank and his other friends hid his wife's affair from him for nearly two decades earns him a little leeway.) Bill on the other hand openly lusts for Hank's wife and tried to poison him and his entire family once so he could keep nursing them back to health.
- Hank does give as good as he gets often forcing his friend to demean themselves or even outright risking their lives for his beliefs. This is the most blatant in "Patch Boomhauer" where Hank spent every second of the episode switching from rubbing the fact that Boomhauer's brother was about to marry the love of his life to believing the absolute worst in him. You have to wonder why Boomhauer didn't punch Hank in the face.
- Peggy Hill occasionally falls under this, but rather the case of "With Wives Like Her." In one episode, she accuses Hank of being a racist just so she can enjoy a Double Standard. Another good example would probably be "Hank's Dirty Laundry" where despite being married to Hank and knowing him since high school not once during the entire episode did Peggy believe that he wouldn't rent porn. She even went so far as to say that she was disgusted by his habit. Yet she kept wondering why he would try so hard to prove his innocence note .
- It is pretty much stated by everyone that the only reason they associate with Peggy is that she is with Hank. Dale at one point just comes out and states he hates her.
- Looney Tunes:
- The entire cast, most notably Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Daffy is this with pretty much any protagonist, due to his selfishness, overambitiousness, or just out-and-out screwiness. When not Bugs, Porky Pig or Speedy Gonzales are the ones to suffer.
- Sylvester has an orange cat named Sam that often co-stars with him. Even when the two are depicted as friends rather than adversaries, there's something that inevitably drives a wedge between the two (such as a mouse in Mouse and Garden).
- In three shorts from 1937, Porky had a "friend" named Gabby Goat, who was rude, grouchy, and short-tempered.
- The Looney Tunes Show:
- Daffy always qualifies, but he really goes into this category in this series, going so far as to lie to Porky that he needs money for a kidney transplant, and then use Porky's entire life's savings to buy a yacht to replace his parade float after it gets destroyed in a car wash.note He also does little else but sponge off of Bugs and act like a nuisance to the entire neighborhood.
- Yosemite Sam says in "Mr. Wiener" that he considers Bugs his best friend, although you wouldn't be able to tell by his usual behavior. It's also shown in the episode "Fish and Visitors" where he crashes at Bugs' house and does various inconsiderate/annoying things during his stay while genuinely thinking of Bugs and Daffy as friends, to the point that they are desperate to get him to leave.
- While Penny from The Mighty B! is generally a good friend towards Bessie and goes with her on her adventures, she frequently gets talked into joining Portia and Gwen's gang and occasionally isn't hesitant in torturing Bessie along with them, making it kind of ambiguous as to why Bessie's still friends with her after this.
- The Mighty Heroes: In an episode a citizen comments on the Heroes' collateral damage during a battle with a foe: "With heroes like these, who needs enemies?"
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Said almost word-for-word in the episode "The Return of Harmony"- but a rare case of it being Played for Drama. It's the Darkest Hour when the hero goes through a Heroic BSoD after the brainwashing of all of her friends.Twilight Sparkle: With friends like you, WHO NEEDS... enemies?
- The Proud Family: Penny's friends certainly count. They berate each other every chance they get for any kind of flaws and most of the time sponge off one another for their own gain. Oh yeah and not exactly the type to stick around to help when trouble rears its head. All friends have their Jerkass moments, Zoe's probably the least out of them, while Lacieniga is undoubtedly the worst...though she warms up as the series goes on. Penny herself isn't immune to this either, as there are moments she treats the others like crap.
- Rocko's Modern Life: Heffer and Filburt can be like this to Rocko in their less sympathetic moments. In "Speaking Terms", Heffer gives Rocko a truly horrible makeshift birthday present, and Filburt tries to exploit their ensuing feud on daytime television. In fact, there's actually an episode of the show named after this trope, where the two put Rocko through hell trying to prove which one of them was his "best" friend so he can take either of them to a wrestling match that he has two tickets for. The two don't just go after Rocko, either. Heffer and Filburt also frequently bicker with each other (perhaps even more often), most notably in said episode named after this. And that's not even getting into the fact that Filburt was willing to essentially sacrifice Rocko to a massive wallaby-eating eagle just so that he could swipe said eagle's toupee. Show's where that turtle's priorities are.
- Rugrats (1991): Phil and Lil DeVille can be like this at times, mostly to Tommy. Two stand-out cases were in the episode "Farewell, My Friend" and in The Rugrats Movie — in the former, the twins quickly abandon Tommy when he gets tangled up in what all three think is a snake (it's actually a water hose), rush to tell Chuckie, then lament that they've lost their friend when they remembered that Chuckie and Tommy weren't friends anymore; the latter actually drives the story — the twins are so fed up with Tommy's brother Dil that they attempt to take him back to the hospital to get a different baby. When Tommy's constant insistence on protecting Dil over the rest of them gets the better of them, they decide to leave them behind, Chuckie going with them. Thankfully, Laser-Guided Karma decided to play a close call on them to get them back together.
- The Simpsons: Everyone in the family has "friends" like these...
- Bart and Milhouse. While it's more a case of Depending on the Writer (they are genuinely close buddies in some episodes), Bart bullies Milhouse on a frequent basis, while Milhouse will weasel out on Bart at any appropriate opportunity. Among some of the most egregious examples, Milhouse left Bart and Lisa at the mercy of their bloodthirsty schoolmates in "Das Bus" while Bart once inexplicably set up Milhouse as a fugitive on America's Most Wanted, seemingly all just for a quick laugh.
- Other episodes depict Bart and Nelson in this light - close friends in some episodes, or Nelson trying to bully Bart in others. Bart has also tried to get one up on Nelson as well on more than one occasion, going so far as to trick him into becoming morbidly obese.
- Homer's regular friends are his drinking buddies (Moe, Carl, Lenny, and Barney) who couldn't care less if Homer is in trouble and would turn against him at the drop of a hat. Not to mention that Moe is constantly hitting on Homer's wife. This is deconstructed in "The Saga of Carl" where Carl betrays the rest of the gang because he felt there was never a real friendship between them.
- Marge sometimes hangs out with local women (Helen, Maude, Edna, or others) but all these are On and Off friends at best and frenemies at worst, especially in Helen's case who is often a Jerkass towards Marge and willing to spread gossip about her. In some episodes, Marge explicitly states that she has no friends.
- While Janey is the only friend Lisa has (if any at all), she is basically this in a nutshell. She is often seen hanging out with Lisa, but at other times she teases her along with the other children for her misfortunes or idealistic views. Like Marge, Lisa stated numerous times that she has no friends.
- Sonic and Antoine in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). Antoine acts like a stuck-up jerk towards Sonic a lot, and Sonic constantly insults Antoine. While Sonic does show that he cares about Sally, Tails, Rotor, and Bunnie, it's really hard to tell if he even cares about Antoine. In one episode, when Antoine gets captured, Sonic just labels him an idiot and outright refuses to go after him. Sally is unable to really retort that Antoine would actually save him if the roles were reversed, only coaxing him into the job by reminding him of the potential danger if Robotnik gets a hold of the power ring he had at the point of his capture.
- South Park: Eric Cartman versus everyone else. He takes this further than most cases of this trope, as Cartman has almost no redeeming qualities. Also uncommon for the trope, the other characters will flat-out tell Cartman that he is a monster.
- Not only do they state he's a horrible person but that they all hate him and the only reason he was ever with anyone was that they thought he was just always following them or that he was with someone else. After realizing this they decided to ignore him completely.
- The creators stated that Cartman's relationship with the others is based on their assumption that everyone has one friend that they don't really like. It's worth noting that in the early seasons, Cartman was just a Fat Idiot - his supervillainish disposition evolved over time.
- It's summed up in four lines when Stan and Kyle tell Scott Tenorman about Cartman's plan to have a horse bite off Scott's penis:Scott: How do you know?Stan: Because we're his friends.Scott: So why are you telling me?Kyle: Because we hate him.
- Both sides have used (and rebuffed) the "I thought we were friends" line several times over. They also frequently abuse or manipulate the other in a scheme or convenience and show out and out apathy when they get into trouble. Granted the boys' animosity towards Cartman is far more justified, but still they are willing to ignore all the horrible things he's done if they can profit from it at times.
- It's revealed in "The Damned" that Gerald Broflovski (a.k.a. skankhunt42) has no problem trolling Randy, one of his closest friends, anonymously on community message boards.
- Kyle has also done some pretty shitty things to his friends especially in the earlier seasons, at one point he stated that he hated Kenny despite Kenny never really doing anything bad to him and has mutilated his corpse during his deaths, he often bullied Cartman unprovoked, but by far his worst deed was in “Douche and Turd” in which he bullies Stan his best friend, into voting for his candidate The Giant Douche, when Stan refuses to vote he hires Puff Daddy and his men to try to kill him if he doesn’t vote, when Stan becomes the town pariah and is kicked out, Kyle shows him no sympathy and spits on him like everyone else, you kind of wonder how they stayed friends after that.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has two examples, Patrick Star and Squidward Tentacles:
- In the case of Squidward, SpongeBob ends up getting Squidward maimed, or in serious legal trouble by the end of the episode, despite considering him one of his closest friends. A claim that Squidward has passionately denied in numerous episodes.
- Patrick is a straighter example, especially after Flanderization set in. In numerous episodes that center on the two of them, Patrick's selfish attitude and lack of intelligence give SpongeBob grief to no end.
- TaleSpin: Played with a few times with Baloo and Rebecca. Baloo is slovenly, slow-witted business wise and occasionally self-centered, Rebecca is pompous, bossy and occasionally vindictive. They do ultimately care for each other however, Rebecca even labelling Baloo her best friend (and occasional hints to things going further).
- Tangled: The Series: Cassandra and Eugene dislike each other immensely, but are still technically friends and allies, with their relationship with Rapunzel being the glue holding them together. But, there are times Cassandra has tried to be a Shipping Torpedo on Rapunzel and Eugene. As of Season 3, not so much.
- The engines from Thomas & Friends are such assholes to each other, sometimes it's hard to remember that they're supposed to be friends. Especially evident in the earlier seasons. Examples include everyone teasing Gordon for his size, making insensitive remarks about Henry's condition, belittling Thomas and Percy for being small engines, jokes involving Edward and scrapping, having your embarrassing accidents brought up again and again, and so on.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- Despite Plucky Duck ostensibly being Hamton J. Pig's best friend, Plucky routinely forces Hamton into a reckless course of action, then promptly abandons him when things go south. One of the best examples of this is "Hog Wild Hamton", where Hamton's parents leave him in charge of their house while they go on their honeymoon. Plucky throws a Wild Teen Party behind Hamton's back, and the noise of the party disturbs Egghead Junior, who is trying to study, and retaliates by destroying Hamton's house with a missile. Plucky suggests that Hamton lie, which Hamton is against, and when Hamton is about to be punished, Plucky watches from a distance. Karma thankfully saves Hamton when a sweepstakes he entered at the beginning of the episode rewards him with a new house.
- Plucky himself has been sold out by Babs and Buster Bunny on numerous occasions as well, the ending to the Spring Break Special being a prime example. In it, Buster and Babs spend a majority of the special on the run from Elmyra, who thinks that Buster is the Easter Bunny and at the end, she's right. At the end of the special, Buster and Babs plant rabbit ears on Plucky, which results in him getting captured by Elmyra. Plucky wasn't doing anything particularly heinous, he was just trying to get a girl duck to like him. Not helping Buster and Babs' case is that they make jokes about the situation instead of showing concern for Plucky's well-being.
- Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race has two examples:
- Spud was one of The Load variety to Rock basically letting his partner do all the work and carry him through each leg of the race. He gets better later on.
- Josee gets away with a lot of abuse towards Jacques thanks to Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male. It comes back to bite her in the ass later on.
- Transformers: Animated: Sentinel Prime and Optimus Prime. To the point where it led to Optimus being reduced to an Elite Guard Washout as the captain of a Space Bridge Repair crew (which Sentinel never fails to use against Optimus). What makes it particularly hard to understand is the fact Optimus got demoted because he took the blame for the dumb idea that Sentinel came up with: going to a forbidden planet to look for energon. Even worse in the case of Blackarachnia/Elita-1, who Sentinel decides to kill not because she joined the Decepticons or what she did to Wasp, but because she was now a techno-organic (which he considers a Fate Worse than Death). The irony? Her "death" was the reason why Sentinel hated Optimus in the first place!
- Ultimate Spider-Man: Spidey's teammates often have their moments. One example is when they organized a party in Peter's house behind his back, not as a Surprise Party, but to have some fun of their own, as that house was the only one available for the purpose and they didn't even think for a moment about Peter's opinion.
- Wacky Races: Muttley to Dick Dastardly. Being Dastardly's much-abused assistant, he often mocks his downfall at any opportunity.
