| abstract
| - Kids these days...they'll watch anything the TV shows 'em. Back in our days, we had nothing but crappy cartoons, and by gum, we liked 'em!
* The Batman Beyond episode "Out of the Past" is arguably one of the darkest and most depressing in the series...but it starts out with one of the most ridiculously-goofy examples of Stylistic Suck in a cartoon.
* The entire premise of the animated series The Mighty Ducks. The series was about a group of hockey-playing, crime-fighting anthropomorphic ducks. Unfortunately, no one seemed willing to give it much of a chance. And it was cancelled after only one season.
* All three of the Super Mario Bros.. cartoons fall into this, due to being loaded to the bursting point with outrageous animation errors, cringe-worthy writing, and Ham and Cheese acting, which helped turned these series into Fountains of Memes.
* The ending theme for the Super Mario Bros Super Show cartoon. Do the Mario!...the Mario being a dance where, as explained by the man himself, you "swing your arms from side to side", then "take one step, and then again."
* Captain N: The Game Master. A teenager enters the world of Nintendo games. Every character he meets - Simon Belmont, Mega Man, Pit (named Kid Icarus), is very unlike their in-game counterpart and has a terrible, exaggerated personality. Mega Man is short and green and says "Mega" in almost every sentence. Pit, I mean Kid Icarus, does the same with the suffix "-icus", which he needs to end most of his sentences with. Simon Belmont wears goggles and acts like a vain ladies' man. And that's just the characters. The plots aren't particularly good either.
* They couldn't even keep terminology right most of the time, such as insisting on calling planet Zebeth as "Planet Metroid" instead.
* The animated Legend of Zelda.
* WellExcuuuuuse Me Princess!
* Captain Planet and the Planeteers. A show about an earth spirit who gives five teenagers mystical rings that gives (four of) them badass Elemental Powers (and the fifth one gets, uh, something else) should make for some quality entertainment, right? Instead we get preachy aesops about environmentalism and why conservative white Americans suck. We also get idiotic villains who pollute the earth just for the sake of polluting it half the time and when the heroes combine their rings' power, we get a green-mullet-headed, blue-skinned superhero who spouts terrible puns every other second. A deep, rich source of Narm. But this ludicrous premise and execution has made it the reason to watch and has created many forum-based memes. Plus, in addition to using real guns and real drugs and real death, it remains the only children's cartoon in history to have an episode about AIDS.
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* Not true. AIDS STINKS!
* Captain Planet gets mortally wounded just by getting splashed with a little dirty motor oil. And there's that one episode where Adolf Hitler (seriously) beats Captain Planet by simply staring at him because his hate is so immense, Captain Planet just can't take it. Yeah...
* They didn't even get Hitler's mustache right!
* Or maybe it was Fu Man-Hitler?
* Hitler's mustache was most likely intentional, as a Hitler stache would immediately invoke a cryout from some people.
* I AM GOING TO HATE YOU TO DEATH
* As Spirit of the Earth, Gaia was enormously powerful and likely capable of beating the villains by herself... but she chose a group of children to do it for her, to teach them about the perils of pollution. That's more important than putting children in dangerous situations, it seems.
* "Alpha, they are polluting the Earth! Get me five teenagers with attitude!"
* "If it's doomsday this must be Belfast": the episode that presented The Troubles as the Jets Vs The Sharks, complete with lines like this:
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* Also perpetuated the belief that Irish people call everyone "Boyo".
* "That's a Protestant name if ever I heard one". To all who hated the "Oirish" accents in Heroes Volume 2, check this episode out on Youtube and see how lucky you were.
* And the Israel/Palestine subplot from same:
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* From the same subplot:
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* Wheeler utters the immortal line, "Okay, think Wheeler. If you were a zombie, where would you be? ...The vice-president's office!" Adam West would be envious.
* Take That Al Gore, or Dan Quayle whoever the case may be.
* Linka. If she's not your type, you can always laugh at the combination of Tsundere and Strawman Political.
* Both the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm cartoons fall squarely into this category; they're filled with Narm, plotholes, and all-around wackiness, and it's all in a way that's heartwarmingly amusing.
* The Street Fighter cartoon is a continuation of the live action movie, which is also So Bad It's Good.
* Take one of the most violent and overly innuendo-filled fighting game series of all time, attempt to make it family friendly, add a bespectacled tween magician for the young ones to associate with (before Harry Potter took off!), and you get the American Darkstalkers animated series, one of the best examples of unintentional So Bad It's Good ever. See for your self.
* Oddly enough, it has a strong bent toward intentional humor... and odder still, many of the jokes can be said to work. Probably not what you'd come looking for in a Darkstalkers adaptation, but there it is.
* Probably the least logical "action" sequences in the history of western animation (A laser beam that turns into a cloud of gas?)
* Every character, male and female has taken part in the running gag of saying "you are curiously attractive for a fishman" to the well, fishman. Really. Everyone wants to bone the fucking fishman! They often say it in very creepy ways, "You are curiously *breathe* attractive, for a fishman." "So I've been told..."
* Then there's this animation goof, where Felicia changes outfits between shots.
* Celebrity Deathmatch, anyone? Claymation versions of celebrities fighting each other to the death. Some of the most memorable have been Jim Carrey vs Mariah Carey, Madonna VS Michael Jackson, and David Letterman vs Jay Leno.
* Freddie the Frog was the strangest children's movie ever made. Made by the British during the Disney Renaissance, it had such strange plot devices as the Loch Ness Monster saving a prince from his evil witch aunt in medieval France. Then he suddenly grows six feet and becomes a Frog secret agent in twentieth-century Britain. It also features Brian Blessed as El Supremo, a morbidly obese Large Ham with a rockin' villain beard. He's playing himself. Watch the trailer here, at your own risk.
* Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos. Hilarious, at least the opening. But it has So Bad It's Good Moments with the zany fight scenes, horrible acting, and Super Ninja's (oh no, he's a ninja, and he's super?!) effeminate voice. Here are some of the "best" moments.
* John Candy's Celebrity Toon Camp Candy. And Rick Moranis' Gravedale High.
* The Little Shop cartoon.
* Jibber Jabber. The characters crawled out from the deepest pit in the Uncanny Valley. The whole series is ridiculously cheesy. That's what makes it so hilarious!
* There is a Mr. T. animated series. It features the T-man delivering live-action segments at the beginning and end. It's spectacularly Anvilicious...and the opening credits feature T. spinning a crocodile over his head. Consult The Agony Booth for more information.
* In one memorable bit, a bunch of grunts slide down a banister to escape Mr. T. Not to be outdone, Mr. T kicks the banister into splinters and jumps down after them.
* The time when a door spontaneously exploded to reveal Mr. T behind it? Supposedly he kicked it down like he always does, but the animation didn't suggest any kicking at all.
* The Magic Voyage documented the voyages of Christopher Columbus and his friend Pico the woodworm as they sailed with Columbus' crew of three or possibly four men to the New World to rescue Pico's girlfriend, Marian the firefly, enduring various hardships such as bizarre dream sequences and wacky musical numbers.
* Happily Ever After is a rather unique take on the "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" fable. The evil queen had an evil brother named Lord Maliss who lives in a desolate wasteland called "The Realm of Doom" and can shapeshift into a dragon at will, and the seven dwarves have moved away and left behind their cousins "The Seven Dwarvelles", who happen to all be female and all have special elemental powers given to them by Mother Nature. Oh, and the villain has a talking owl that smokes and a talking bat as henchmen, and the prince has a bizarre resemblence to He-Man. (Not surprising considering the people who made it.) The movie is Snow White teaming up with the elemental dwarvelles while she journeys to The Realm of Doom in an attempt to find out what happened to the prince after they got separated, unaware that the prince is now the creepy Shadowman that follows her. The movie bombed at the box office and was Filmation's last project, but since then, the movie has gained a small cult following that finds the movie delightfully entertaining in its cheesy badness. Watch the movie here, at your own risk.
* Mutilator: Hero of the Wasteland is an early 90s animation project in two parts. It is horrible in every way imaginable: the art looks like something out of Liquid Television that didn't age well with perspective and anatomical issues up the hole, the sound is poorly mixed (with voices barely audible), and the plot is even worse: a man with a mechanical arm kills things in the wasteland. Yet somehow, the combination of these poor elements is nothing short of hilarious today. A cursory look through the YouTube comments reveals a general attitude that this was Too Good to Last.
* Imagine, if you will, Rob Liefeld's drawing used as a starting point, and then animated by the same people who made the Philips CD-I Zelda games, on a shoestring budget, while everyone involved was high as a kite, and you'll get close to understanding the animation style.
* The video was posted by the guy who animated it. That's right, only one guy.
* To be fair this was done by a student as his college project. And the guy who made this is Eric Fogel, who went on to create Celebrity Deathmatch. So he's done better stuff since then.
* The Mel-O-Toons shorts from the early 1960s are yet another unholy union of low budget animation and voiceover. Like the Paul Bunyan and David and Goliath shorts. Just try to keep a straight face as you learn all kinds of amazing things about Paul Bunyan that they didn't teach you in grade school. When watching the latter, pay particular attention to Goliath's booming voice, frightening battle stance and grisly death.
* The Lion Men episode of the Mega Man cartoon. Just the concept of furries invading Mega Man's universe is hilariously stupid. And it gets better...
* Mega Man has some episodes so cool it's awesome, and some just So Bad It's Good. It's action packed, nicely animated in parts, funny, and faithful to the games, with good voice acting, topped off with a high octane theme song that gets you pumped! On the other hand, it's chock full of narm, cheesy one-liners, and amusing stupidity. Plus, Proto-Man is The Rival as a bad guy in this cartoon, rather than The Rival as a mysterious brother with good intentions. The Mega Man fan base has never been this polarized!
* "Lion Men" has a Youtube Poop-like remix (made before YouTube) that features A Team music, running gags (Wily's "Is it big enough?"), and a focus on Mega Man's strabismus.
* On Youtube Poop -- Gutsman's Ass.
* Dominator.
* Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Whoooooo boy. Where to begin? This cartoon suffers from horrible, Off-Model animation and terrible writing, thanks to a low budget and a five-days-a-week schedule that forced its creators to churn out more episodes rather than make better ones. This show lasted longer and had more episodes than its counterpart SatAM. But it is great riffing material! And those faces are so expressive. They make great reaction pics!
* Sonic the Hedgehog taught us about sexual harassment!
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* "SnooPING AS usual I see..."
* The four-part "Quest for the Chaos Emeralds" is considered not only the best of the entire series, but also almost as good as SATAM, complete with clever writing and decent animation, all wrapped into a four-part storyline of Time Travel where Sonic fights with Robotnik through the high seas, the Middle Ages, ancient pseudo-Egypt and prehistoric Mobius to collect four chaos emeralds, each of which grants a different power.
* The Holiday Special and the pilot episode weren't bad, either. This show wasn't a bad idea, but it was mishandled. Sonic fans call this series "Crudely made, but forgivable..."
* Speaking of that hedgehog's bastard children, Sonic Underground is divisive, but some consider it just ridiculous enough to be good. Maybe it depends on the episode.
* It does. The three-parters, for instance, are pretty well written and enjoyable in their own right (compared to the rest of the series, at least), but just try and watch Knuckles's debut episode with a straight face. Or, failing that, Cyrus (the lion...-ish dude)'s "NO!" face.
* The main appeal of the show is in fact, Dr. Robotnik, played by the gloriously hammy Long John Baldry, who clearly set his "act-o-meter" Up to Eleven, and then decided to keep going. The results are truly hilarious.
* G.I. Joe Extreme. Between the laughable live-action sequences, the hammy acting, and the pitiful animation, it has something for everyone to laugh at.
* The Beatles. Good, Lennon, you look kinda cool! Ringo's the incompetent, bumbling Butt Monkey, and John sounds American. None of the voice actors are played by actual Beatles, no matter what the credits may tell you. The cartoon feels wrong, and that is why it rules.
* Toxic Crusaders, which ditched the R-rated qualities of Toxic Avenger and replaced them with hilariously ridiculous dialogue, plots, and animation. Many things made no sense whatsoever: Toxie went to live in the town dump after his mom suggested it, even though she had no problem in later episodes visiting him or boasting that he's her son. He also mentions later that he and his friends need to "pay rent" -- to the dump?! All the mutants were called, every single time, "hideously deformed mutants of superhuman size and strength." There were constant ass pulls: when a Mad Scientist creates french fries that turn anyone who eats them into nearsighted, forgetful old people - his own words - it turns out that putting pepper on them turns the mutagen chemicals into bubble gum, which negates the process. There is also a Running Gag in which the Big Bad's main henchperson Psycho will predict, with eerie accuracy, exactly how their plans will be foiled. The Big Bad never listens; once, he tells Psycho to stop spoiling things for him. There's also lampshade-hanging galore.
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* After Killemoff loads a giant monster truck on a barge which predictably (Psycho said it would) sinks the whole thing to the bottom of the river:
* Colin's Bear
* Gene Deitch was quite brilliant in his 1950s stylized modern work; he took the stodgy, flagging Terrytoons in an interesting direction. But when he took on the Tom and Jerry franchise in the early 1960s, it went in a whole weird Eastern European-filtered direction.
* The hilarious stupidity of Rock-a-Doodle.
* The butchered versions of The Thief and the Cobbler, specifically the Miramax version. Half-hearted attempts at Disneyfication, dated Award Bait Song-ridden musical numbers, dialouge dubbed over characters intended to be silent, and sloppy filler animation interlaced with Richard Williams' much more fluid and detailed original work. Yeah.
* Most aspects of the French animated series based on Donkey Kong Country actually aren't all that bad. The characters are accurate to their game counterparts and have likeable personalities, some of the jokes written for the show are genuinely funny, and though the mere presence of singing in the show can be unsettling to new viewers, the songs themselves aren't bad. However, it still tends to be mentioned in these sorts of situations because the animation, perhaps the first thing people notice about cartoons, really is So Bad It's Good, and in some people's opinions has thus become by far the biggest reason to watch the show. The badly-deformed character models fall into the Uncanny Valley with such force, they bounce back out of its depths and end up looking hilarious, rather than scary.
* This video in particular has become very popular online for the reasons mentioned above. Try routinely pausing it during DK's singing to get some of the most hilariously-ridiculous facial expressions ever in a cartoon.
* The 1960s Spiderman cartoon counts. While the show did have many geniune fans, it also has a large So Bad It's Good fandom. All te camp of the Adam West Batman show (being as it, like the Batman show, crawled out of the goldmine of So Bad It's Good that was the Silver Age) add to that the most unsuitable voice ever for the guy who plays Spiderman, low budget animation, and stock footage used over and over again, and it's very difficult for most veiwers not to laugh at the hideous result. A monstrosity IN COLOR!
* The word "jewelry" spelled wrong in the title sequence and then fixed in the next shot.
* Funnily enough, unlike Spider-Man: The Animated Series, it had a lot less network watch, although there are still Unfortunate Implications, it remains funny, plus it gave us this gem...
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* And speaking of color, the garish splattering of mismatched hues thrown all over the place (especially the sky) made New York city appear more radioactive than the Fallout universe.
* An in-universe one happens in Rocko's Modern Life. You know the one I mean.
* The Legend of the Titanic due to its attempt to bring talking animals into a story based on a real disaster, make a plot tied to the disaster and altering the ending. Its sequel In Search Of The Titanic even more so with some of the strangest characters ever tied to a work related to Titanic disaster.
* Even worse is Titanic: The Legend Goes On
* The animated verson of The Return of the King is just so bad, the animation is awful, the voice acting subpar, it's enough to make Tolkien turn in his grave. It's saving grace? It's amazingly catchy songs. That's right they turned The Lord of the Rings into a musical. Even the Orcs get a song! Where there's a whip WHIZZ-CRACK! there's a way! Though the books included quite a few songs.
* My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has an In-Universe example. In "The Show Stoppers", the Cutie Mark Crusaders decide to perform an "epic rock ballad" for the local talent show. The performance is an unmitigated disaster, with off-key singing, poor choreography, many special effects failures, and costumes straight out of The Eighties. At first, the crowd watches in stunned silence, but howl in laughter when it's over. The group ends up winning an award...for "Best Comedy Act."
* A very similar thing happens in an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents.
* Could the scene in The Simpsons where Krusty the Clown tried to replace Itchy & Scratchy with a badly drawn Russian cartoon qualify, or is that just pushing it?
* Also related are the horribly half-assed European comics. Intentionally ludicrous translation aside, the plotlines tend to read like they were written by a six-year-old and the art seems to have been created by someone who had never seen anything of the show but the basic character models and somehow manages to land squarely in the Uncanny Valley despite being a cartoon. The result is an almost absurdist take on the setting involving things like the ponies playing soccer, Spike having the exact same expression all the time, and Pinkie Pie making "enchanted" cookies.
* The Barbie movies. Every single one of them. The last one included a kingdom called Gloss Angeles.
* Tony Hawks Boom Boom Sabotage. The villain is a demented circus ringmaster, and his dragon is a vicious, snarling midget pirate; they have many Ho Yay moments. The heroes consist of five teenage skateboarders and Damsel in Distress Tony Hawk. The storyline is utterly disturbed and often takes a backseat to skateboarding sequences, the subtitles often render dialogue as 'unintelligible', and the animation... is satisfactory. Only because of all this is it worth seeing (with the subtitles on for maximum amusement!).
* NFL Rush Zone: Guardians Of The Core. It reaches The Room levels of this. The animation sucks, the characters are either bland, or blatant stereotypes, and the plot is a muddled mess. But, it's so awful it becomes very entertaining, and fun to Riff on. Oh and the main character looks like Micheal Jackson, which is how it gained the nickname "MJ FOOTBALL"
* This Hercules movie. It is on par with Cd-i cutscenes in its animation quality and has some horrible voice acting and goofy moments like a snot blowing hydra, Hera's ridiculous laugh, and some serious Ho Yay between Hercules and his teen sidekick just to name a few.
* Johnny Test. The main character's an annoying douchebag (and is something of a Creator's Pet), the jokes mainly consist of Lampshade Hanging, it's full of cliches, stereotypes and nonsensical plotlines, and manages to get even the simplest math and science facts completely wrong. All of this is thrown together seemingly at random, coated with "X-TREME", and set so loud and fast that it surpasses raising questions about the creators' drug usage and instead becomes a drug in itself. The So Bad It's Good aspects may have been intentional, as recent episodes play them up.
* Once you strip away the Nostalgia Goggles, He-Man's appeal boils down to this. All the Accidental Innuendo and Ho Yay certainly help.
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