Happy Tree Friends (Web Animation)

Happy Tree Friends is an American series of web-based (and, at one point, televised) flash animated shorts and one of Mondo Media's longest-running shows, premiering in 1999 and currently consisting of five seasons. The series stars a cast of colorful adorable animals that live in a wonderful, bright and happy world...

...at first glance.

Actually, it's more like a candy-colored gorefest where each and every character is a Chew Toy (sometimes a Cosmic Plaything) doomed to suffer a nightmarish, gruesome, and/or absolutely disgusting demise. Expect to see a violent death at least Once per Episode, more often than not rife with Body Horror and/or painful injuries galore. It is one of the most prominent and infamous among online series in wide circulation that Cross the Line Twice, since it's designed to horrify people to such extremes that we laugh. Subverted Kids' Show doesn't even begin to describe it.

After you pick up your jaw from the floor, you'll likely be laughing your guts out (not literally, though the show does do that a few times). It doesn't help that the Sickeningly Sweet characters and setting so perfectly emulate a number of children's shows (they even have Care Bears-esque hearts for noses) or that the poor critters are endlessly resurrected between episodes to die in new ways that even Kenny McCormick would wince at.

No new episodes were produced following the conclusion of the show's fifth season in 2016. Although the show wasn't officially declared ended or cancelled, no further updates on its status were made, leaving it in limbo...until 2023, when Mondo Media's YouTube channel began posting messages and releasing videos teasing a return for the show, which led to announcements of both a crossover with The Crackpet Show in a DLC and the first new episode since 2016, both are set to release on September 27, 2023.

Platform-exclusive games

Multiplatform games

General examples

Tropes with their own pages