Kick the Dog/Western Animation

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Or, alternatively, torture the dog...

[Let's] go shoot some animals! That sounds like fun! —Jeff, from Family Guy

• Bugs Bunny and similar Looney Tunes characters usually wait until someone does this to start tormenting them.
  • Animaniacs once broke the Fourth Wall, in an episode featuring a nice but overbearing nanny who smothered the Warner Brothers and their Sister Dot. Wakko Warner almost hits her with a "funny" mallet, but then walks away dejected because he can't bring himself to do it. The story cuts to a father watching the episode with his son, and he explains this very trope.
    • Thankfully, Slappy Squirrel has no problem with kicking puppies. Or blowing them up. A rare example of Kick The Dog being applauded.
• In Rugrats, Angelica Pickles plays this trope very well, especially when torturing Tommy and his friends in some episodes. One of the worst examples is when she steals Chaz's CD, lets the babies take the blame, and when Chuckie feels bad about yelling at the others she tells him he makes everything worse by being there and that everyone would be better off without him.
  • The Rugrats Movie: Angelica Pickles, of course.
    • Rugrats in Paris: Coco Labouche plays this trope too.
• Spoofed in one of the episodes of The Tick, when the heroes pretend to be villains, up to a point where they are confronted and asked to literally eat some kittens to prove they are evil. They refuse, blowing the cover.
• In Family Guy, an evil corporate boss almost performs it literally. After saying his evil plans to instigate children to smoke out loud, he pets a dog and, seconds later, throws the dog out of the window and shoots it instead of kicking.
  • Stewie does this to Brian when Brian fails to repay a debt to him.
  • As does Quagmire after finding out his Transsexual father had sex with Brian. (And Brian didn't even know who it was until moments earlier!)
  • And let's not forget Carter's "orphan" joke from "No Chris Left Behind".
• The first act of the South Park episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one sustained kick the dog moment for Scott, particularly when he makes Cartman beg for his money back, then burns the money in front of him, while boasting that his parents give him a huge allowance. Of course, he doesn't exactly get off lightly.
  • In the Great Expectations parody episode, Pip shows Estella a baby bunny and tells her that a heartless person would break its neck. Estella proceeds to break said bunny's neck... and the necks of 26 others.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Princess Azula's very first scene and her memorable exchange of dialogue with her Captain served to support what the writers had announced about her before, that unlike her brother, Azula is no sympathetic Anti-Villain but a cold-blooded sociopath.
    • She actually first appeared (only, no dialog) during the story of how her brother got his scar. During the crowd reaction shot as daddy burns his son's face, a young girl can be smiling, unlike practically everyone else present aside from Zhao, Zuko's established rival.
  • A more classic dog-kicking (more properly, turtle-duck kicking) scene with Azula is a flashback to her as a young girl, throwing rocks at cute innocent little turtle-ducks floating in the palace pond. Given that even as late as the season 3 premiere, the turtle-ducks were shown still fleeing in panic whenever the older Azula walked near the pond, she seems to have done this a lot.
  • She also destroyed a sandcastle in The Beach Episode.
  • Jet was also subject to a visual kicking the dog (feeble old man) moment in his initial appearance.
  • When Mai was introduced, she agreed with Azula to back out of a hostage change for her own baby brother, making herself look like a cruelly Emotionless Girl who doesn't care about anything except obeying Azula because that's what she wants her to think.
    • Before Mai made her decision she looked at Sokka holding Tom Tom (who was perfectly happy with this). Perhaps she just realised that they weren't going to hurt him?
• Played straight with Pizzazz of the Misfits kicking a cat in the first version of "Take A Hike, Jack!" in the Jem episode, "Old Meets New."
  • Eric Raymond kicks the dog on a regular basis, from actually slapping Jerrica in the face to destroying the only known recordings of Jacqui Benton's (Jerrica and Kimber's mother) singing career.
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch's dog Max suffers many indignities at the Grinch's hand.
• In The Simpsons episode "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment", the detective Rex Banner has a kick the dog moment of sorts; he decides that before using a catapult to fire Homer out of town for breaking the law, he's going to test it on a harmless cat. This is probably to set it up so that you don't feel very sorry for him when he gets launched from the catapult a minute later.
  • In the Tree-House of Horror episode where the giant ads all come to life, Marge convinces Homer to return the giant donut to the Lard Lad in order to end the destruction. Lard Lad gets back his donut, smiles at it contently, and then KICKS THEIR DOG IN THE NEXT STATE and walks away down the street smashing the roofs of every house with his giant donut along the way.
  • Springfield's own resident evil, Monty Burns, literally punts the dog in "Last Exit to Springfield".
    • Not to mention he shuts down power to all of Springfield to try to force the striking power plant workers back to work in the same episode.
    • Or earlier in the episode, he laughs at a window washer hanging from a rope.
    • Burns has a LOT of these moments. He comes awfully close to literal in "Dog Of Death" when he has Bart's innocent, gentle pet dog strapped to a chair, and Forced to Watch several clips of animal abuse to turn him into an Angry Guard Dog.
    • Later in the same episode, when Smithers says to Burns "a sweet little boy is here to see you" Burns says "release the hounds." Said little boy is actually Bart.
    • Burns also sends a vicious Angry Guard Dog after Bart (who was hungry after running away from home) for trying to steal a pie which was left on the window sill. A pie that Burns would have otherwise disposed of ANYWAY.
    • There is also "22 Short Films About Springfield," when Burns and his most loyal assistant, Smithers, who has a life-threatening allergy to bee venom, are on a bicycle, Smithers gets stung by a bee, and Burns just yells at him to keep paddling and dishes out a barrage of vicious insults. Apparently, dialing 911 was out of the question.
    • "Homer vs. Dignity" is a full EPISODE of Burns doing metaphorical dog-kicking. Desperate for money, Homer asks Burns for a raise, and Burns instead decides that it's only under the condition that Homer be Burns' personal "prank monkey." These pranks involve a series of increasingly humiliating circumstances Homer is put in, and culminates in Burns dressing Homer in a panda suit and having another Panda rape him. Eventually Homer gets fed up with this and quits, using the money he already had to set up a parade to distribute toys to needy kids; Burns shows up to try to bribe Homer into throwing fish guts instead of presents; Homer is shown contemplating to it, and then it cuts to fish guts being thrown at the kids; but it is revealed that Burns is the one throwing it after all.
    • Curse of the Flying Hellfish reveals him and Abe to be the last surviving members of their WW 2 unit, and that a deal was made such that the last surviving member would get to keep a case of art stolen from civilians; Burns hires an assassin to kill Abe, but said assassin is not successful at it. Bart convinces Abe to go get the case anyway, and when Abe and Bart retrieve it, Burns shows up and takes the art at gunpoint. Bart calls Burns a coward, then Burns points the gun at his face; Abe says Burns can take the art as long as he does not hurt the boy. Burns remarks that he would rather do both, then kicks Bart into the empty case and kicks the case into the water. Note that he could have taken the art without drowning the child, he just tried to drown the child anyway, for no apparent reason other than that said child insulted him.
    • He once developed a project to block sunlight from reaching Springfield, to deprive them of one more alternative source of heat and light. His usually-unquestioning assistant Smithers STRONGLY objected to this, and was fired as a result. A town hall meeting was held about this, and Burns showed up JUST when the whole town was being shown what Burns' oil drilling operation did to Bart's pet dog, who was seen using wheels just to walk down the hallway.

Burns: Oh, those wheels are squeaking a bit. Perhaps I could sell him a little oil.

• • Homer has a few of these too.

Marge: (suffering from amnesia) You strangle your own child? Homer: Yeah, but he's cool with it... (looks at Bart shaking his fist) Right? Bart: (wheezing) It hurts when I swallow... Homer: Why you little.. (resumes strangling Bart)

• • Also, in the first clip show, Homer lands in a coma after Bart pulls a prank on him due to Homer playing pranks on him all that day (Bart hadn't expected him to wind up in a coma). Thinking Homer may die, Bart sadly confesses to the prank. Homer then procedures to wake up....and begin strangling Bart in revenge for the prank.
    • Not to mention that before that, Homer's pranks on Bart were pretty mean-spirited. He put duct tape on Bart's eyes (duct tape is the strongest tape available, and the eyelids are the thinnest layer of skin on the body), and he tricked Bart into drinking milk that was sitting next to the furnace for six weeks (so it was so curdled, it might as well have been poisoned). It's a good thing it only happened in a TV show; there's a difference between an April Fool's Day joke and attempted murder.
  • In the infamous "The Boys Of Bummer", Bart costs Springfield the Little League Championship and is being booed at. He runs out of the stadium and asks Chief Wiggum for safety. So what does do. He drive Bart back into the stadium where the angry spectators throw food and beer cans at him. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• Porter C. Powell of Transformers Animated at the start of season two. Sari's father is missing in action. What does he do? Steals his company, kicks Sari out of her home with nothing but the clothes on her back and informs the poor girl that there's no papers to prove she even exists. Particularly jarring since Sari was the first human sidekick that the audience actually liked.
• Ursula in the wedding scene of The Little Mermaid lays a classic one into Eric's Evil-Detecting Dog.
  • Not to mention when we're first introduced to Ursula, where she's munching on adorable, terrified little shrimp that squeal in her grasp.
• Syndrome in The Incredibles. First, he mocks Mr. Incredible for the apparent death of his family. Then, he encourages Mr. Incredible to kill his henchwoman Mirage. Mirage survives, but her respect for her boss doesn't.
  • Mr. Huph, Bob's boss at the insurance company, sees a man being beaten and mugged and thinks nothing of it besides "Let's hope we don't cover him!"
• Beauty and the Beast: "I Use Antlers in All of my DECORATING!" A man who hunts animals for sport would do something that evil!
• In Disney's version of Peter Pan, Captain Hook shoots one of his own men for singing off key. Later, when another mentions that Wendy made no splash after walking the plank (she got rescued by Peter), Hook tosses him overboard just to hear a splash.
• The Sheriff of Nottingham in the Disney version of Robin Hood (who, ironically enough for a Dog Kicker, is a wolf...) goes as far as to steal money from a disabled beggar (who is hiding the money in his cast and he beats his leg to get to it), children, and even from Friar Tuck's church. He does all this with an almost jovial countenance, as if he was just playing an innocent joke... and to top it off, he calls it "his job"!
  • Prince John also seems to cross this when he orders Friar Tuck to be hanged as bait to trap Robin Hood. Now, hanging anybody is pretty bad, but Friar Tuck is a man of the church. Even his advisor Sir Hiss seems horrified by this.
• In The Rescuers, Madame Medusa asks Penny, the adorable orphan she's kidnapped, "What makes you think anyone would want a homely little girl like you?" In a sickeningly sweet voice. After trying to get Penny to like her. The cruel manipulation in this scene is arguably more memorably evil than kidnapping Penny in the first place.
• Mina and the Count, a cult favorite from the What a Cartoon show on Cartoon Network had the count carelessly smacking a screeching cat away within the first minute of his introduction. Fortunately, he gets his comeuppance in the most hilarious way.
• Cruella de Vil, villain of Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians, has three in one scene. First, she crushes Nanny behind the door as she enters the house. A moment later, she stubs out her cigarette in Anita's cupcake, and follows by flicking ash into her cup of tea.
• Professor Ratigan of The Great Mouse Detective casually kicks, knocks over and generally abuses his mice minions while they're singing about how great he is. Mid-song, he EXECUTES one for calling him a rat, then frightens the rest into finishing the song.
• An episode of Batman the Animated Series, "A Bullet for Bullock," is a Day in The Limelight for Bullock that consists largely of Bullock kicking every metaphorical dog he sees. Prior to this episode he seemed like a sour cop who bent the rules a little too much (although he prided himself on never taking a bribe), but he established himself as an absolutely unsympathetic dick when a reporter offered to help him if he waited a few minutes, and he rummaged through her office instead of waiting. Heck, his treatment of his landlord is what prompts the landlord to try and kill him.
  • In Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Joker literally kicks an adorable (robotic) dog.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force — usually the crap Shake pulls is funny, but he crosses the line when he takes Meatwad's adorable pet kitten and fries it in a microwave. Fortunately all the animals he abused come back from the dead and try to ram him into the microwave.
  • He Crosses the Line Twice in "The Marines", where Shake decapitates a kitten with a jig saw.
• In Teen Titans, Starfire's sister tries to frame her for a crime and steal her boyfriend.
  • Slade injects the Titans with nanobots to blackmail Robin into being his apprentice.
    • Also, he literally kicks Robin while he's lying in pain on the ground in "Haunted".
  • Control Freak steals James Bond's gadgets, then pushes him off the Eiffel Tower.
• In Mulan, Shan-Yu captures a pair of Chinese scouts (and mockingly congratulates them on finding his army), then lets them go to tell their Emperor he is coming. As they flee, he turns to one of his henchmen, an archer:

"How many men does it take to deliver a message?" [nocks arrow] "One."

• • Later, after having his pet falcon steal a small item from a nearby village to confirm the presence of the Chinese army there, he orders the attack:

"Besides, the little girl will be missing her doll. We should return it to her."

• In the Gargoyles four-parter City of Stone, Gruach is forced into an arranged marriage with Gillecomgain, the murderous Hunter. At one point, Gillecomgain takes a flower and looks at her somewhat wistfully, but then crushes it. Greg Weisman said they were worried we might start to feel sympathy for Gillecomgain being stuck in a loveless marriage, so the flower-crushing was a somewhat manipulative signal that it was okay to hate him. Later, he holds a knife to Gruoch- taking his own wife hostage- to threaten Macbeth. All this made it easy to cheer when he fell to his death shortly thereafter (also a case of Karmic Death, as he'd earlier killed Macbeth's father by throwing him off the same castle wall).
• In Winx Club, the Trix do this on a daily basis. Some of their moments are: trying to murder Bloom's parents, crippling Galatea by destroying her wings (Icy), turning Mirta into a pumpkin (Icy again), threatening to kill Musa's father (Stormy)...basically, most of their heinous acts either border or are attempted murder. Counting all their acts of needless cruelty would make one hell of a drinking game.
• In the Futurama movie The Beast With a Billion Backs, the Robot Devil makes a deal with Bender on the condition that he takes Bender's first-born son. Bender leaves, finds his son, brings him to Robot Hell, and swiftly kicks him into a magma crater. This appalls even the Robot Devil.
  • Don't forget the much more literal Robo-Puppy Mistreatment Alert!
  • And in a similar vein, the cold open of an episode has the Professor announce that he's taught the toaster to feel love. Said toaster runs up to Bender and starts licking him like a dog, for which it gets backhanded across the room.
• In Clone High, Principal Scudworth frequently kicks the dog. He frequently conducts terrible experiments on (and kills) students. In the final episode, he rigs the prom so he can be prom king (to console himself from having lost the title in his own prom to John Stamos). John Stamos shows up and is awarded the title, but then sympathetically offers the crown to Scudworth. Scudworth then takes the crown, stabs Stamos in the eye with it, and then proceeds to wear it and take the title.
  • His villainy is overshadowed by his rival principal in "A Shot in D'Arc". They discuss how after last year's basketball game, the rival principal won Scudworth's first-born son, Brian. After discussing the terms of this year's wager (all the while the rival principal's eating a meal), Scudworth asks, "By the way, how is Brian?", to which the rival replies (slurping up some food), "Dee-licious."
• Used in universe in a Daria episode when Daria assures Quinn she shouldn't be scared of the town's "mass murderers, serial killers, torturers, cannibals... puppy kickers."
• Heloise and Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes do this pretty much on a full-time basis. Heloise has built prisions that offer the prisoners chances to escape, only to cruelly dash their hopes. Lucius, meanwhile, often forces Samy to do humiliating things for his amusement.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, when Gary swallowed a kitchen magnet and could attract coins, Krabs dragged him around town, continuously injuring Gary with the bombardment of magnetically attracted coins, all the while stealing from people. Finally, when we saw how injured Gary had became, Krabs didn't care and said he looked fine and went to attract a wave of coins before Spongebob arrived. This is actually considered a candidate for a Moral Event Horizon on Krabs' part.
  • Krabs also kicked the worm when he sold Squidward to repomen in Le Big Switch.
  • It's not like Squidward's above worm-kicking... For example, in the episode Jellyfishing, he gives SpongeBob and Patrick false hopes he would jellyfish with them, only to ditch them to go on his bike alone. Later, Squidward slams his captured jellyfish repeatedly... against a larger jellyfish. The episode The Lost Mattress has him threaten to murder SpongeBob and Patrick under his breath. Many episodes, however, forget that he needs to kick a worm for his Butt-Monkey status to work, making him a victim of Comedic Sociopathy.
  • In season 1, Squidward also had a tendency to be the worm that gets kicked; in Plankton, Plankton takes a moment to turn around SpongeBob's body with empty-looking eyes to belittle and taunt Squidward, calling him "mediocre", and in Pickles he is flung off-screen by Bubble Bass.
• In Total Drama World Tour, most of Alejandro's actions against other competitors are purely to get ahead in the game. Except for how he eliminated DJ, throughout the episode of his elimination he helped DJ get over his curse just to reveal that he faked the curse removal and DJ is still cursed by animals which causes him to lose the challenge. Considering that said competitor was a Death Seeker of sorts and likely would have eliminated himself soon, this seems to serve no purpose.
• In the Jonah Hex portion of DC showcase, Red (Jonah's curent bounty-waiting-to-be-collected) rides into town drunk and shoots a dog who bothers him. In the literal sense, not the figurative.
• In Around the World with Willy Fog, the villain Transfer is hired by Sullivan to impede Fog's progress and prevent him from completing his trip around the world. At one point, he disguises himself as Detective Dix and slips Rigodón a mickey to prevent him from informing Fog of a change in the departure time of the steamship he's supposed to take. But then when Rigodón and Tico end up aboard the steamship without Fog, he disguises himself as the first mate, accuses them of being stowaways, and spends the passage cruelly working them to the bone. As far as Transfer knows, he's already accomplished his mission of stopping Fog at this point. He's not getting paid to make Rigodón and Tico's lives miserable--he's just a jerk.
• In Season 3 of The Boondocks, eight year old sociopath Lamilton Taeshawn shoots a dog, hammering in how little he cares for anything or anyone.
• Instead of listing the occasions when Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame kicks the dog, try listing the scenes he doesn't do this even once... we'll wait.
• In the season 1 finale of Blinky Bill (The wedding picnic episode), Marcia bites Shifty Dingo.
• The Popeye cartoon "Protek The Weakerist" and its color remake "Barking Dogs Don't Fite" have the central action of Popeye having to walk Olive's cute little dog, only to run into Bluto and his massive bulldog who promptly chases him all around with every intention of mauling him with Bluto's approval. The plight of that little dog being victimized by that beast is so hard to see (while Popeye's not doing much better against Bluto) that is soooooo satisfying to see Popeye and his dog share a can of spinach and give the bullies what for.
• Gorillaz bassist and self-proclaimed mastermind Murdoc kidnapped their singer 2D to record the Plastic Beach album. That was cruel, vaguely disturbing and allover thoroughly unpleasant, but at least purposeful. However, in addition to assaulting and incarcerating him on the desert island, Murdoc also put 2D in an submarine basement complete with a huge porthole overlooking the open sea. Thing is, 2D has a pathological fear of whales, and now a gets wonderful view of them twenty-four seven. There was no real reason for doing this, other than to psychologically torture the poor guy, so the whole ordeal falls straight into Kick the Dog territory.
  • The reason for the whale was so that 2D didn't escape (Murdoc was somehow paying it to watch him, apparently); the real Kick the Dog comes from his fights with Murdoc, and he's even shown looking suitably bruised up here. Phase 3 has made many fans want to give him a massive hug.
• Cinderella's stepsisters do this when they tore Cinderella's dress to prevent her from going to the ball, even after she kept her end of the bargain of doing all the house chores. What made this moment even worse was that all the materials used on Cinderella's dress were things that they considered "trash" and they still made a big fuss over it, just so Cinderella wouldn't be able to go to the ball.
  • They learned well from their mother Lady Tremaine. She locked Cinderella up when she realized she was the one the Prince was looking for. And when Cinderella was able to escape with the help of her animal friends, she purposely tripped the footman carrying the glass slipper, causing him to trip and the slipper to break.
    • Bonus points for flashing an evil grin right after the duke implies that the king will have his head for this. Because, you know, she wasn't enough of a monster already apparently.
• Robot Chicken's parody of Grand Theft Auto advertises one of its features as "kick a puppy."
• Discord from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has a lot of these. In fact, everything he puts the Mane Cast through is simply for his own amusement, as he's a Reality Warper who could win with ease but just thinks making ponies suffer is fun.
  • In an earlier episode, Fluttershy bumps into Gilda the griffon while leading a family of ducks across the marketplace. Gilda flips out, mocking Fluttershy's apology and making her cry. That is just not on, you bitch. "This calls for extreme measures... PINKIE PIE STYLE!"
    • Though what's sad is that if the episode Putting Your Hoof Down is any indication, Fluttershy gets more crap from her neighbors on a regular basis.
• This is quite rare in the Strawberry Shortcake series, but one prominent example in the 2021 episode Peculiar Purple Partner kicks off the second half. After his transformation into her boss, the Peculiar Purple Pieman randomly claims that Strawberry Shortcake has a stain on her sleeve and therefore is fired, leading to his acquirement of her food cart.
• Remington Smisse from Wakfu often betrays his allies (especially Evangelyne), even when doing this inconveniences him.
• Benson does it in the Regular Show episode Replaced. He plans on firing Mordechai and Rigby and replacing them. However, when he did it, he took their pictures just to look at their faces.
  • If that weren't bad enough, the episode prior, Best Burger Ever, instead of punishing the two with his usual way (making them clean the mess up and threatens to fire them if they don't), he steals their burgers and eats them.