Yank The Dogs Chain / Western Animation

The yanking of proverbial dogs' chains in Western Animation.

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• Steve in American Dad! always gets this when it comes to trying to pursue relationships. The most brutal example is a Halloween episode, "Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls", where he takes out his friend's sister for trick or treating and both are forced to go on the run when he goes over the time limit to bring her home and Toshi tries to hunt them down and kill Steve (Yes, he's that overprotective). Through the chase it seems the two are developing feelings for one another, but at the end, when they finally convince Toshi to back off, his sister proclaims she has a boyfriend, a nine year old boyfriend. He finally get together with Akiko in "Spelling Bee My Baby"... and Akiko essentially disappears from the show after that.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • "The Northern Air Temple": After hearing about flying people inhabiting the Northern Air Temple, Aang is briefly hopeful that a group of Air Nomads survived the Fire Nation's genocide and is soon after crushed to learn that they are Earth Kingdom natives and that all their flying is done with mechanical assistance.
  • Near the end of season 2, the Obstructive Bureaucrat who ran the Earth Kingdom's secret police has been arrested, the real leader has promised them support against the Fire Nation, Sokka's finally seeing his dad after two years, and his girlfriend's in town, Toph's mom wants to reconcile with her, Aang is going to train to master the Avatar state... But there's still two episodes left. And as soon as Sokka says "Everything's gonna be perfect, now and forever," you know something's gonna happen. Sure enough, before this episode is even out: the secret police are still loyal to the man they "arrested", Toph was tricked and captured by bounty hunters hired to drag her home and it's not Sokka's girlfriend that's in town, it's The Dragon in disguise, and the king, not knowing better, welcomes her with open arms. And in those next two episodes, things get worse.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn finally managed to kick her obsessive love with Joker after the latter died, and reformed herself. All the while, Harley made sure to not attract any more Bat attention because she knew any justice they brought her way was well-deserved for what she did to Tim. She settles down and starts a family. Forty years later, "Pudding" somehow finds her granddaughters and recruits them for his Jokerz gang, when she's too old to fight back or protect them and their parents are no longer in sight. In another timeline, they're also murderers. Karma is such a bitch.
• The Beatles: In "Money," John, Paul and George yank Ringo's chain by sewing their concert take in his pocket and then have him get chased by a mysterious stranger throughout Coney Island and losing the money. After the stranger is unmasked as George, John confesses that he sewed stage money in Ringo's pocket and kept the concert money. But it's John's chain who winds up getting yanked—he kept the stage money.
• This always happens to Brandy in Brandy & Mr. Whiskers when she is about to make it home.
• Camp Lazlo:
  • Done very cruelly in the final episode, when Lumpus has finally gotten praise and respect, when a Diabolus ex Machina undoes it all, and to rub salt into the wound, it turns out he was a fake who locked up the real scoutmaster and gets dragged off to an asylum.
  • In "Bad Luck Be A Camper Tonight", The Scoutmaster in the Sky allows Samson one last chance at using the slot machine that determines somebody's luck before birth in order to change his. He gets the good luck on his first try, but his ambition causes him to operate the slot machine again, this time ending on the bad luck he was born with.
• This is pretty much standard for the nerdy Butt-Monkey Tucker from Danny Phantom. He usually ends up getting the short end of the stick either through his numerous failures to pick up girls or constantly getting the most emotional/physical abuse due to his comic relief character setting. The best shown is "King Tuck" where he runs for school president in order to get some respect from others, including his friends. After Danny and Sam get a lesson that they should listen to Tucker once in a while, they promptly, in seconds, ignore it and walk off when Tucker rambles about his interests. Worse, for no reason other than to play up his Butt-Monkey status, the writer gets two popular girls to chase after him with intent to do some bodily harm.
• This happens to Dan in Dan Vs. frequently. For a few examples, Dan destroys an animal shelter in order to get some sleep, only to have a firing range built in its place, his favorite show gets pre-empted by baseball, and later basketball, and just when he thought he won the trip to an adult astronaut sleepaway camp after cheating on an obstacle course in a reality show, it turns out to be another reality show where he's trapped with coyotes.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • One of the most heartbreaking examples ever. After Magica De Spell is freed, Scrooge makes a deal with Lena: she helps him get his family back and she'll have a part in it. However Magica was listening and proceeds to trap Lena in her shadow. Later on, Lena is forced to sacrifice herself. But a brief scene establishes that she did survive somehow, and she returns partway through the following season.
  • After noticing Donald's health deteriorating from the ongoing stress of adventure and keeping his nephews safe from the chaos that ensues in McDuck Manor, his family decides to give him a full-paid vacation with the boys assuring Donald that Scrooge will take great care of them. Unfortunately, before the bus to the cruise arrived, Donald spots Della's spaceship landing. Excited to see his thought-to-be-dead sister for the first time in ten years, he races over to look for her... only to be locked inside the ship and accidentally take off, later crashing on the Moon and being captured by its inhabitants whom are planning an invasion. And his family has no idea any of this happened.
• The kids in Dungeons & Dragons (1983) spend every episode on the trail of some new possible way back to their own world. Not one of these leads ever works out, either because the route simply wouldn't work or because the kids are obliged to give up the chance in order to help others. Averted (sorta) in the Missing Episode. The kids are outright told by the Dungeon Master that they've done what he brought them here to do and that they can go home now if they want, but we don't see whether or not they do.
• Epically subverted in the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Fistfuls of Ed". After Edd being falsely accused of being a bully and subsequently ostracized by the entire school, and then beaten to a pulp by Jimmy. Things are looking up for Edd near the end, but then we smash suddenly into a typical episode ending where the Kanker Sisters pop out of the woodwork to set in with their usual "treatment" of the already pathetically tired and beaten-down Double Dee. Eddy, who has as usual been the main source of conflict in the episode, watches in disgust before giving the Kanker Sisters the most singularly awesome chew-out they ever get in the series. As they slink away in terror, he breaks up the lingering awkwardness by giving everyone hotdogs. Double Dee even Lampshades this trope.
  Edd: I'm touched! That you would interrupt a cliché plot ending for my sake!
  • Eddy is always a victim of this when it comes to his scams, even though he does deserve it most of the time.
• Happens repeatedly on The Fairly OddParents! to almost everyone.
  • Pretty much every time it looks like Timmy will finally win Trixie's heart. When Timmy had finally undone all of Norm's tricks, Trixie, who had been brainwashed to fall in love with several Timmy Turners, has finally showed up, deciding to give "the biggest, wettest kiss" to Timmy... only to have it wear off then.
  • Any time it looks like Timmy might finally be free of Vicky, she gets hired to babysit again. This was happening as far back as the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts.
• Meg in Family Guy was made to exploit the trope 100%. Any form of happiness Meg finds will be quickly taken away from her. Examples:
  • The B-plot in the episode "Road to Rupert" has Peter and Meg bonding after Meg becomes Peter's chauffeur when Peter's license gets suspended. Peter, of course, goes back to his abusive ways after he gets his license back. Played so straight that Peter tells Meg that he's going back to tormenting her to keep up appearances in front of the family. Meg is actually okay with this after Peter splashes a glass of juice at her, as if this is the closest thing to love that she can ever expect out of these people.
  • In the episode "Peter's Daughter", Peter vows to treat Meg better if she wakes up from a coma, which she's in because he made her go into the kitchen to save his beer when the house flooded. Meg gets a sweet, affectionate, (over-)protective father, as well as a boyfriend, because she starts dating a med student who was there when she woke up. Then Peter accidentally ruins her relationship ... then she finds out she's pregnant ... But then Michael (her boyfriend) proposes to her, saying he loves her and wants to be there for her. Ignoring the fact that her dad was there with a rifle. So Meg's going to get married... except on the day of the wedding, she realizes she isn't pregnant and isn't sure she can go through with it. Her mother tells her to do what she thinks is right, ("Thanks, Mom. I love you." "I, uh, you too.") and Meg tells Michael the truth when she gets to the altar, prompting him to run out of the church.
  • Meg gets her chain yanked again in ''Friends Without Benefits" where a boy she likes agrees to hang out with her, only to reveal afterwards that not only he is gay, but he is also in love with Meg's brother, Chris. Meg did not take this well.
  • In "Seahorse Seashell Party", she manages to chew out her family, but at the end, she learned she should be the family's "lightning rod" (if she's not abused, they will try to kill each other).
  • In "Yacht Rocky", she meets a guy named Chad on a cruise. When the ship gets hit by a tidal wave, he ends up getting decapitated by a boat oar, not that this stops her.
  • After nineteen seasons Meg goes to college and was fitting in well (with even a fellow Implied Love Interest student showing interest in her), only to get caught in an admissions scandal that she had no knowledge of and ultimately expelled after failing a likely impossible task. What's worse is that the architects behind it (Peter, Lois and Principal Shepherd) get off scot-free while Meg gets all the blame.
  • In "Hard Boiled Meg" she meets a guy named Seymour who despite being a criminal genuinely seems to love her. It turns out that he never existed and was just a combination of an E.Coli hallucination from contaminated mustard and her own loneliness. Chris was kind enough to take the blame for crashing the car at the end, at least.
• Futurama:
  • Fry is often victim to this.
    • In "A Fishful of Dollars", he gains several billion dollars from compound interest, and loses all his wealth to Mom.
    • In "Parasites Lost" He becomes super-intelligent, witty and charming due to intestinal worms, capable of playing a difficult to master instrument amazingly well, enough to seduce Leela. He throws it all away because he doesn't feel he's earned it.
    • In "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", He saves the Earth from the Brain-Spawn, but no-one else remembers or cares (save Nibbler).
    • In "Time Keeps on Slippin'", when time starts skipping he manages to impress Leela enough for her to marry him. She attacks him at the altar, then quickly divorces him. Also when he finally discovers the thing he did to make Leela fall in love with him, it's immediately destroyed.
    • In the first series finale, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", he manages to make a deal with the Robot Devil, and becomes a holophoner virtuoso... only to give it all up to save Leela, making his fame instantly evaporate. By the time of the first movie, Leela's ignoring him again.
  • The young, orphaned, physically handicapped robot, Tinny Tim, is also a frequent victim to this trope, in almost every single one of his appearances.
    • While searching for Bender's missing parts in the episode, "Assie Come Home," the Planet Express crew finds that Tinny Tim was given Bender's legs to replace his own broken ones. The scene is somewhat heartwarming, as Tinny is grateful to be walking properly for the first time. This is followed by the sound of Bender chainsawing his legs off Tinny and reattaching them to himself. The now legless Tinny Tim sadly drags himself back onto his wooden cart, to which Bender remarks "Nice cart." Cut to Bender riding the stolen cart, immediately getting bored with it, and tossing it into a dumpster.
  "You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir. Bravo!"
• Get Ace: Any time Ace's crush Tina becomes attracted to him, it will be over by the episode's end, going as far as a couple almost kisses and her briefly becoming Ace's girlfriend on separate occasions.
• Happens to Mina at the end of the Grojband episode "A Knight to Remember" as Trina chases her down after she becomes Trina's slave after they both regain their respective personalities.
• Thomas O'Malley and the Alley Cats in the show Houseof Mouse never get a chance to perform on stage.
• The Invader Zim episode "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom" has Dib finally achieve everything he wanted, including respect and acclaim, after being Touched by Vorlons, only for it all to be a fantasy created by Zim's Lotus-Eater Machine. To get back at him for throwing a muffin in his face, no less...
• Charlie Brown gets his chain yanked near the end of It's Magic, Charlie Brown, where he is unknowingly turned visible again by Snoopy and fails to kick Lucy's football this time. This doesn't bother him in the slightest, however, as he states to Lucy that he finally did it.
• Same in Jumanji: The Animated Series. Averted in the finale: Allen got his clue, solved it and got home legitimately with the kids. The final episode played it straight at the same time. Allen's challenge was to remove the thorn from the paw of a lion he met the second he was first transported into the game. Allen stunned, figures he could have left the game the second he came in all those years ago if he hadn't ran away.
• KaBlam!:
  • This often happens to Henry. In the episode "Won't Stick to Most Dental Work!", he gets tired of being the Butt-Monkey and quits the show. After the first sketch, he opens his own restaurant and then quits after seeing how heartbroken June was.
  • Also in "You May Already Be A KaBlammer!", he's upset over the fact that no one finds him funny, so June tells him that she'll be his sidekick as long as he's hers.
• Kaeloo:
  • Happens to Stumpy the squirrel almost any time something good is going to happen in his life.
  • Happens to Mr. Cat in Episode 57. Kaeloo sets up a lottery where the winner gets cool prizes, and Mr. Cat and Quack Quack participate. Each time, Quack Quack wins. Mr. Cat believes that Kaeloo is playing favorites and even gives a Call-Back to another episode where she cheated. Kaeloo walks offscreen and slides a giant box containing a "surprise" for Mr. Cat towards him. He makes a short speech saying how he's finally gotten lucky for once in his life... and Kaeloo, angry at having been accused of cheating, jumps out of the box and beats him up.
  • In the episode "Let's Play Air Pockets", Kaeloo forces Stumpy to take a plane trip on a plane where she is an air hostess, despite the fact that he's afraid of heights. Stumpy tries to calm down, and finally realizes that he can calm down by playing video games. As soon as he calms down, Kaeloo confiscates his console since electronic gadgets aren't allowed on the plane.
  • In Episode 4, the main four go to a library. Stumpy spends the whole episode searching for comic books, and finally finds some of his favorite superhero, Mr. Coolskin. He decides to show it to his friends. To his disappointment, none of them have ever heard of the Mr. Coolskin series. Then, Bad Kaeloo, on a Book Burning rampage, grabs the comic books and sets them all on fire.
  • One episode has the main four find a Portal Door leading to a Bizarro Universe. Kaeloo, Stumpy and Quack Quack want to go to the other dimension to check it out. Mr. Cat stays home. Just as he becomes happy to have finally gotten some time alone, the Bizarro Universe!main four, who are even more annoying than the normal main four, come to the regular universe and start bothering Mr. Cat.
• The main characters in 80s music cartoon Kidd Video. Particularly noteworthy example: As a reward for saving one of its citizens, a small village gives Whiz one free wish from the local Wish Genie. However, when about to make the wish, Whiz learns that the others are endangered, and he quickly wishes them to be "safe at home". The Genie, being a Rules Lawyer-ing Literal Genie, grants only the first half of the wish, reasoning that "being 'safe' and being 'at home' are two separate wishes."
• Kim Possible's Ron Stoppable never seemed to come out on top in the first three seasons. At the most extreme levels of yankage he somehow managed to get all of his 99 million dollars he got from Bueno Nacho stolen by keeping it all in his pants, leaving him with nothing (though most can't figure out what happened with the continued royalties after that payment). Drakken also has his leash yanked a few times more than comfortable.
• There have been a few times where Bill Dauterive from King of the Hill has started a relationship or found acceptance with an outside group, but every single time it happens, something comes up to ruin it for him. The last relationship he gets involved in turns into a case of him yanking his own chain, since he begins dating Reverend Stroup and both seem infatuated with each other, but he rejects her after she steps down as pastor of Arlen Methodist just to be with him, since he preferred the Forbidden Fruit aspect of their affair. It's almost like the writers did this just so we wouldn't feel sorry for Bill anymore when he gripes about his loneliness, since from that point forward it's clear he brought it on himself by being a selfish asshole.
• Looney Tunes:
  • While the TV short based on the reality series I Shouldn't Be Alive is mainly based on footage of the original Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner shorts, there is one notable scene of original animation at the end: Wile E. Coyote finally manages catch the Road Runner (simply by pouring birdseed and leaping onto him while he was eating), but he turns out to be so weak from not eating he couldn't even choke the Road Runner.
  • In Canned Feud, Sylvester, whose owners have left him without easy access to food, tries to retrieve the can opener from a mouse who seems determined to starve him. He does finally get it at the end of the cartoon, only for the mouse to simply padlock the cat food cupboard.
• Happens all the time to Tuck Carbunkle in My Life as a Teenage Robot. The most painful and gratuitous example is the very beginning of the episode “Call Hating”, where he is happily walking down the street, having gotten a snazzy new outfit and haircut, and narrowly dodging every single thing that would dare get it dirty like the pro he is... only for a giant slime monster to appear out of nowhere and pass over him, completely ruining it all. His anguished cry feels all too real. The actual main story commences as though nothing happened, and Tuck is never seen again outside of one very brief background appearance after Jenny defeats the creature.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz finally finds a nice evil girlfriend. They hit it off, Falling-in-Love Montage and all — and then in the last five seconds of the episode, the love-destroying satellite he built earlier crashes and zaps her, causing her to storm away with a declaration of "I feel NOTHING!"
  • Then there's Candace. Once per Episode she'll have solid proof of her brothers' schemes (which actually shares fun and joy to the neighborhood more than it harms), only to find that it's vanished or destroyed when she shows her mother. Other times, any special moment with Jeremy will be interrupted by something (possibly just by Candace herself), and any attempt to impress him will backfire in a humiliating fashion.
    • Then again, Jeremy seems to be as mellow and kind to Candace when she's disheveled with branches in her hair as any other time. Candace fears being humiliated in front of him, but he's so much of a legitimately Nice Guy that it may be impossible. You could say Jeremy is the personification of Throw the Dog a Bone for Candace.
    • Candace does get her mother Linda to see Phineas and Ferb's inventions multiple times, but they're all undone somehow. In "Invasion of the Ferb Snatchers", the "Linda" who sees the alien launch pad Phineas and Ferb built is actually a robot piloted by an alien. In "She's the Mayor", Candace uses her day as mayor to get her parents to see the pioneer town the boys built, but Doof's Accelerate-inator malfunctions and rewinds time to the beginning of the episode. In "A Real Boy", Linda sees the jumping machine her sons built, but Doof's Forget-About-It-Inator erases her memory.
  • Happens at the end of "My Fair Goalie" to Football X-7 creator Professor Ross Efrop, who was forced into hiding when it was discovered his name was a palindrome, as the British at the time were very anti-palindrome. He is about to come back out when he's still shunned for his name being a palindrome.
  • Any time when it looks like Isabella is going to a romantic moment with just Phineas, something happens to ruin that moment. Notable examples include "Summer Belongs to You" and "Canderemy".
    • She gets a combo yanked chain and thrown bone at the end of The Movie. When Major Monogram says that if the boys want Perry to stay with them, everyone must have their memories erased, Isabella takes the opportunity to plant a giant glomp kiss on Phineas before telling MM to start the memory eraser.
    • The "Act Your Age" special finally pulls the biggest one ever on her. Phineas actually starts falling for her in High School... right after she eventually gave up on him. They both finally manage to clear the air right before she leaves for college, but at least they made it.
• The Sad Cat cartoons directed by Ralph Bakshi are all about this trope. Every time it looks like Sad Cat is going to get a happy ending, he ends up in a worse situation than before. Luckily, when Bashki left Terrytoons, Sad Cat started getting happy endings.
• Samurai Jack has made viewers come to expect him to fail when attempting either of his two stated goals: going back in time, and destroying Aku. In a strange combination, either he fails to go back in time because Honor Before Reason dictates that he never leaves those in danger to harm to go back in time, or Aku tricks him into a MacGuffin Delivery Service. Aku himself is practically unkillable as well, despite Jack beating him to a paste several times.
  • There are basically only three different episodes of Samurai Jack: "Aku sends a new mercenary to stop Jack", "Jack frees innocents from the grip of Aku" and "Jack almost finds a portal but loses it to Aku who was disguised in an obvious costume." Once you've seen those, you've seen the whole series and you can walk away to stop getting your chain yanked. That said, the "filler" episodes like the one he goes "down the rabbit hole" and "learns to jump good" are a lot of fun, perhaps because in those he's not constrained to fail tragically.
    • Subverted in one episode, in which Jack appears to, yet again, suffer defeat when attempting to access an appropriate time portal, only for the episode to end showing an older Jack on the other side of the portal, and the implicit assertion by the portal's guardian that he will, eventually, pass through.
    • During their Training from Hell montage in Season 5, one of the Daughters of Aku (Ashi) sneaks away to marvel at the outside world. Her mother catches her and begins talking about how the beauty of the world was given to them by Aku and how that is what they are trying to defend... before she grabs Ashi by the throat, berates her for her lack of focus, and tosses her to a Giant Mook for "discipline".
  • The worst, though, comes from "XCVIII"; Jack and a trio of adorable sheep climb a mountain to find a working time portal. Jack gleefully jumps into the portal, only for Aku to drag him back out and destroy it, just before revealing that it was the last time portal left. To add insult to injury, Jack ends up killing the sheep in his rage after they are mutated by Aku, and loses his sword down the pit where the time portal used to be.
  • That's somehow still not the worst! The actual worst comes at the very end of the series, where Jack finally accomplishes his goal and goes back to the past with Ashi, now a trusted ally and more, to destroy Aku before his dark timeline can come to pass. Happy ending, right? Except, Ashi is the spawn of Aku, killing him in the past before she is born retroactively erases her. Even worse, this does not happen immediately after Aku is defeated, giving both Jack and the viewers some hope that Father Time might just have given up on keeping track of everything and that Ashi might still survive. Nope. Reality finally catches on to the glitch right in the middle of Jack and Ashi's wedding. This was so blatantly done to make the ending as cruel as possible (even at the expense of logic itself) that there exists a significant fan outcry against the ending.
• The Simpsons:
  • Frank Grimes in "Homer's Enemy". Mr. Burns sees a documentary about how Grimes went through a hard life and had recently earned a diploma in nuclear physics. Impressed, he tells Mr. Smithers to find him so he can make him his executive vice president. By the time Smithers returns with Grimes, however, Burns had seen a heroic dog on TV and now wants to make him executive vice president.
    Smithers: In the meantime, here's Frank Grimes.
    (Burns does not recognize Grimes)
    Smithers: The, the self-made man?
    Burns: What? Oh, yes, that fellow. Mmmm, put him somewhere out of the way, and find that dog!
    Smithers: Yes sir.
  • Gil, the unlucky businessman of Springfield, in "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II". The Simpsons let him stay in their house for one night, but he brought all his stuff in and made it into an extended stay. He got on the entire family's nerves, but Marge found herself unable to kick him out because she could not say "no" to him. After an entire year, Gil finally moved to Scottsdale because he got a job as a real estate agent. Marge still had to say "no" to him, so the family went to Scottsdale to talk to him. There, they discovered Gil was actually successful at this job, as everyone acclaimed him. But when Marge finally confronted Gil and shouted at him because of his being so annoying, Gil's co-workers thought was a miserable man, so he was fired.
• In The Spectacular Spider-Man, it really looks like Peter is the only superhero around, though naturally he's outnumbered by supervillains. One can hope that the supervillains are all local. So when J. Jonah Jameson's astronaut son and all-around decent guy gets superpowers and is willing to help, wouldn't it seem like the Big Apple finally gets another hero? No, because With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. Looks like the best Spidey can hope for are supervillains who aren't quite evil and won't stay local, like Black Cat, Sandman, and Molten Man.
• Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants. Sure he's an egomaniac and a jerk, but people start to feel sorry for him after a while.
  • In "Bubble Stand" he briefly learns how to play the clarinet well after using SpongeBob's technique to blow a giant bubble... until his house gets sucked inside said giant bubble, and it loudly pops, apparently destroying his clarinet skills.
    • It's implied that his skills at the clarinet are tied to his sense of self worth. When he's feeling good about himself, he plays better. When he's aggravated or depressed, his skill plummets, which just makes it all the sadder seeing how down he is all the time.
  • In "Squilliam Returns" he briefly impresses Squilliam when SpongeBob disguises the Krusty Krab as a fancy restaurant... until SpongeBob goes crazy due to Squidward's earlier Exact Words on forgetting everything that isn't about fine dining, including his name, and destroys everything.
  • Plankton's usually deserving of the trope, always trying to steal the Krabby Patty Formula and having it yanked out of his hands and all, but a particularly cruel example comes from "Plankton's Regular": the episode starts with a man that regularly eats in the Chum Bucket and refuses to even eat a single Krabby Patty. Because of Mr. Krabs being jealous of him, he and SpongeBob try everything to steal said customer from Plankton, to the point of trying to steal Plankton's recipe for chum. However, at the end of the episode, it's revealed that said customer was paid by Karen to eat in the Chum Bucket so Plankton would stop complaining about his lack of success, but he couldn't eat more chum anymore, regardless of the money (they already pumped his stomach many times). Plankton is left in tears while Krabs laughs at his misery. Note that, even having only one customer, Plankton immediately stopped trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula.
  • SpongeBob himself is often the victim of this trope as well, usually in episodes focused on trying to get his boating license. It seems that he finally is going to get it...but something random will always happen to prevent SpongeBob to pass the exam.
  • "Frankendoodle": In the beginning, a live-action artist at sea accidentally drops his only pencil into the ocean, and goes into a depression because now he can't draw; said pencil lands in Bikini Bottom and is discovered by SpongeBob as a "magic pencil". At the end, he gets his pencil back when SpongeBob sends it back to the surface, begins to draw... and breaks the tip on the canvas, not having a pencil sharpener. The episode ends with his anguished screams.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Much Ado About Boimler", after a season of being the show's primary Butt-Monkey, Boimler nearly gets lucky with the attendants on the Farm. However, since his transporter effect has worn off, he's outed as not being a freak any more and immediately shipped out.
• Rick and Morty: Poor Morty can't catch a break. In "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy, he sends Rick to take Jerry on an adventure just to get him out of the house...but still has to put up with Beth and Summer's mishaps with Rick's tech in the garage.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): After being tortured, mutilated, and reduced to a Brain in a Jar throughout the first three seasons, Baxter Stockman finally regains a whole, human body in the episode "Insane in the Membrane". Unfortunately, it's not long before Stockman's new body begins breaking down, and the doctor begins losing limbs. Worse still, he begins losing the one thing he'd managed to keep throughout his tribulations: his mind. It gets worse for him in "Good Genes, Part 1." Bishop effectively brings him Back from the Dead in a pseudo-body to continue their work. Stockman laments this development because he thought that he had finally found peace following his previous appearance.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: A rare comedic example exists in Season 2. Pidge and Lance find a store in the Space Mall selling Earth goods, and Pidge gets excited about seeing a video game she likes. She and Lance spend the episode scrounging up enough money to get the game, and once they take it back to the Castle of Lions... it turns out they can't even play it, since it's incompatible with Altean technology. Pidge gets a Twitchy Eye and lets out a Big "NO!" at the realization. Subverted later on, as she does get it to work a couple seasons later.
• Xiaolin Showdown: "Omitown" had Omi thinking he found his long-lost parents, only to learn at the end that they were fakes created by the show's Big Bad.

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