The final page of "Hokum's Heroes", depicting a new "much funnier" sitcom set in Buchenwald during the Holocaust, is so brutal that it spawned a huge amount of reader mail (divided into "pro" and "con" in the letters page) and would be cut from the later compilation Mad About the 60's over concerns of tastelessness. As a Jewish-American who got captured behind enemy lines in WWII and was singled out for abuse from the Nazi guards, this was Larry Siegel's intent when writing it — that, like Hogan's Heroes was to him, such a thing WOULD be a profoundly tasteless premise.
"You Can Never Win With a Bigot", which makes fun of bigots' contradictory prejudices. Has a family of new German immigrants moved in? They'll just sponge off of welfare. Wait, isn't one of them an electrical engineer? He's taking jobs away from the natural-born American citizens! It's a rather effective bit of satire that shines a light on how hypocritical bigots can be.
In another comic about racism, a white woman and a black woman are talking:
White woman: I don't like the color of your skin! Black woman: Neither do I, but they won't sell me a more popular shade at the cosmetics counter because I'm black!
Genius Bonus: While most characters in parodies are given a name that sounds a bit like their actual name, in the Dirty Harry parody, the Scorpio Killer is named Libra. For those who know their astrology, that's the last astrological sign one would associate with the character.
Growing the Beard: For the original Kurtzman comics, the first few issues got off to a decent start, but sold rather poorly. But come issue #4, with its landmark Superduperman story drawn by Wally Wood, and the series officially made its mark.
One of MAD's predicted headlines of 1962 was Marilyn Monroe checking into the hospital for a minor ailment, as a Worst News Judgment Ever joke. Monroe died in 1962, and her death was one of the biggest stories of that year.
"When Beavis and Butt-Head Grow Old" from 1995 had a joke about Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley celebrating their 50th anniversary together, with Jackson having not been seen in public since his face exploded onstage in 2018, along with Tito having 28 multi-platinum albums. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley divorced a year later, and Michael and Lisa Marie died at age 50 in 2009 and age 54 in 2023, respectively. The year choice of 2018 is also very close to the release date of Leaving Neverland, the documentary that brought Jackson's alleged pedophilia back into the public consciousness, which came out in early 2019. Also, Tito only released one album in 2016, which came and went without a trace.
The "Dumbest Thing of 2019" was the assumption that MAD would stop publishing new content entirely. Just eight months later, they did.
I Am Not Shazam: Those not too familiar with the magazine may assume that "Mad" is the name of the mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Tom Richmond's art style is criticized by some fans as being too similar to that of Mort Drucker.
Memetic Mutation: Alfred E. Neuman is ararepre-Internetexample; his image can be traced to as early as the 1890s and in several unlikely places from Europe to America. He seems to have originated as the titular character in a stage play from 1894, "The New Boy". The poster for the play had a striking illustration of the smiling jug-eared kid with a missing tooth, which was plagiarized for other posters and other uses like political cartoons and advertising dentists' clinics, gradually mutating under different artists. As early as the 1910s, the kid's distinctive facial features had already become virtually identical to the Alfred of MAD, and the catchphrase "What, me worry?" was attached to him by this time. Over the years he's been used in diverse ways like as a soft drink mascot, for funny postcard art, and for political paraphernalia mocking opponents' supporters. It's even been alleged that he was used in anti-Semitic posters in post-World War I Austria. MAD just named him and chose him as their mascot. In the 1960s, they won a copyright lawsuit after the widow of an earlier artist who made such artwork of the kid sued them, with the kid being ruled to be public domain. But he's long since been indelibly identified with MAD.
Basil Wolverton loved hideously pock-marked, hairy, blemished women, and occasional Body Horror.
Tom Bunk is fond of Basil Wolverton-esque women, as well as gags relying on blood, guts, puke, snot, pus, eyeballs, et cetera. This is especially true if he's being paired with writer Michael Gallagher (who is usually very tame when working with other artists).
Al Jaffee loves drawing grossout gags and obese people.
Spy vs. Spy has become considerably more visceral since Peter Kuper took over.
Seasonal Rot: After briefly being reduced to a quarterly issue (but then brought back to a bi-monthly process shortly after). Other events that led to MAD magazines Seasonal Rot include: when the comic went from black and white to color, when William Gaines died, when the magazine was adapted to MADtv (the FOX sketch show that was set up as a rival to Saturday Night Live, not the Cartoon Network one made after the FOX version got canceled), when the magazine started accepting advertisements and "sold out", and when they switched to reprints.
Seinfeld Is Unfunny: MAD taught a generation of kids to take nothing too seriously and to question social norms, a role that the Internet and satire media influenced by MAD have filled all too neatly.
Shallow Parody: See the page for examples, some of which are based off early drafts, and others involve getting things wrong or not doing the research.
Strawman Has a Point: In one "The Lighter Side of" strip, a born-again Christian man talks about how he was saved after he gave up his sinful ways, and demands that a woman do the same, lest she go to Hell. When she insists that she's never sinned and has nothing to repent, he contemptuously says "Then there's no hope for you", and walks off. He's meant to come across as a self-righteous fundamentalist, but many Christians believe that everyone has sinned, and are unworthy of salvation unless they repent and accept Jesus into their hearts. From their perspective, he's not wrong to think that the woman is blind to her own failings, or that her attitude will keep her from being saved.
Tear Jerker: The October 2018 issue "updates" the classic children's ABC book The Gashlycrumb Tinies for modern audiences, but notes that unfortunately there seems to be only one way for children to die nowadays - in a school shooting. The end result is satirical in the darkest way possible, pulls absolutely no punches, and exactly as heartwrenching as it sounds. It doesn't help that it was in one of the last issues before the magazine stopped publishing new content.
E is for EVE, who's idealistic. F is for FRANK, more than a statistic. G is for GREG, who was caught unawares. H is for HIRO, who needs more than prayers.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ask longtime readers when MAD went downhill and you'll get answers ranging from "When it became a magazine" to "When Kurtzman left" to "When Gaines died" to "When they started accepting ads" to "When they switched to reprints". Art director Sam Viviano says that MAD was funniest "whenever you first started reading it".
"The second issue of MAD goes on sale on December 9, 1952. On December 11, the first-ever letter complaining that MAD 'just isn't as funny and original like it used to be' arrives".
In "Star Roars", their parody of A New Hope, Barstool (R2-D2) refers to Cree-Pio (C-3PO) as a "fag robot". Acceptable in the 1970s when the issue came out, but not so much nowadays. Some reprints change the line to the less-offensive "gay robot".
In the parody of Tim Burton's Batman, "Battyman" says that he doesn't want to hear people say that his costume is "faggy".
In their parody of the Pokémon anime, the parody of the opening song has the following lyrics, which contains an ableist term that wouldn't be published today.
Our Game Boy junk and trading cards Sell across the map All bought by parents of retards Who "have to" own this crap!
Similarly, issue #396 ran with two different covers lampooning the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The cover art featured Alfred holding up signs in front of each candidate's name to make them spell "BUmbling SHmuck" and "GOofy REtard" respectively. A similar cover running in later years would no doubt use different words. (Gag writer Duck Edwing's original concept art, as seen in MAD Cover to Cover, had "BUll SHit" and "GO home... REtire" instead. While it's obvious why the former was changed, it's not known why the latter was too.)
A lot of their movie parodies relied on Queer People Are Funny, where the simple "reveal" that some male characters were gay and in love was treated as something inherently shocking and funny (such as in their Beauty & the Beast, Spider-Man and Shrek parodies).
Lampshaded in a disclaimer preceding their 2020 reprint issues, saying that some material was unedited and may be offensive to some readers.
YMMV tropes related to the TV series (the Cartoon Network one, not the FOX one):
Adaptation Displacement: Good luck finding anyone that will talk about the FOX TV series or even know that there even was a "MAD TV show" before Cartoon Network. Any talk with a "MAD TV show" will always be with the Cartoon Network version.
Bile Fascination: The Latin American Spanish dub's first three seasons are infamous due to its overall poor joke adaptation and the circumstances behind itnote The dubbing studio, Sensaciones Sónicas, was undergoing a rebranding under its new owner, which including cutting costs for its dub department like getting rid of directors; this caused several voice actors that worked at the studio to quit due to the adaptation difficulties, while the studio's new owner placed herself and her family (most of who had little experience) in charge of "helping" production, resulting in the same voices repeatedly being used in every episode. Despite this, they still got a cult following in LatAm, to the point that there are MAD videos on YouTube in Spanish, and the show itself is considered a great source of Hispanic YouTube Poop material.
Crossover Ship: The cardboard cut-out anchorman has sometimes been shipped with Dora Smarmy of Crashbox due to their similar art styles.
"Gaming's Next Top Princess" shows that they are very definitely One of Us (or, at the very least, actually did research on female characters in video games). They even got Samus Aran's birthplace right!
The "And That's What Superfriends Are For" sketch features countless B-list & C-list DC characters.
And for actual Genius Bonus points, in the episode with "Undercover Claus", the sketch with the boy who got a time machine has him knock out the boy who becomes his dad with a "Titor" aluminum bat. It sounds like an example of Brand X, unless you remember the guy who posted on various internet forums under the name John Titor - who claimed to be a time traveler from the future.
Downplayed in "Yu-Gi-Bear!". Ranger Smith challenges Yogi to a duel to stop him from stealing a picnic basket. While the rules are largely ignored, nobody mentions magic or trap cards and Yogi summons fictional bear-themed monsters (one of which is a combination of Boo Boo and the Blue-Eyes White Dragon), the monsters that Ranger Smith uses are real, being the Amazon of the Seas and Gigaplant.
In the "Koopa Soup" skit, the powers given by the respective flavors match their effects in Super Mario World when consumed by Yoshi; Playing with Fire for red, Flight for blue, and Ground Wave for yellow.
In the "Franklin and Crash" skit, Sonic accuses Crash Bandicoot from being a copy of him; this becomes funny because during development Crash Bandicoot (1996) was called "Sonic's Ass Game" as its Working Title.
Growing the Beard: Season 2 saw this with more features from the magazine and a new look for Spy vs. Spy along with less use of gross-out humor and more variety in their sketches.
In "I Hate MyTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", Leonardo says his mom looks like a "creepy Kardashian", specifically (as she was known at the time) Bruce Jenner. Her date, Shredder, later says that she's as beautiful as Bruce Jenner. If this sketch was made today, people would assume a more offensive joke at the expense of the transgender woman we now know Caitlyn Jenner to be.
In "Outtagascar", the Hollywood exec judging the performance is Harvey Weinstein. When the show was made, he was a respected Hollywood executive, but was outed as one of the most infamous and depraved sexual predators in pop culture history several years later and certainly not someone who would be depicted in a kids cartoon.
John Lasseter forcing Pixar characters to become 3-D against their will in "TakingNemo" becomes a lot worse after allegations of sexual harassment came out against him in 2017 and he eventually left Disney and Pixar the following year.
Diary of a Wimpy KidIcarus reflects the video game culture at the time. Mega Man is seen as one of the popular kids, because when the episode premiered in 2012, Mega Man 9 and 10 had come out pretty recently and gotten good reviews. Unfortunately, Mega Man's popularity would fall off almost immediately, with him only getting another game in 2018. Pit's eventual rise as being one of the popular kids also didn't hold up, as he has yet to have a game since 2012.
The double-length 100th Episode contains a segment called "In Madmoriam" that honors characters who had died in previous episodes while assuring viewers that their spirits will live on in reruns. The show would end up getting canceled just 3 episodes later and be quickly removed from Cartoon Network's schedule.
The teaser for the episode featuring the Once Upon aToon sketch includes a crack at how Cartoon Network was now 20 years old but "still [wasn't] old enough to stay up past 9:00". The joke got a bit awkward in the following decade when expansions to [adult swim]'s hours meant that, eventually, Cartoon Network could no longer stay up past 5:00, either. Although a two hour block of [adult swim's] increased run-time would be dedicated to the positively received "Checkered Past" block that showed reruns of past Cartoon Network shows, fans nevertheless became worried that the current Cartoon Network itself was becoming devalued in the eyes of the network executives.
Season 3, Episode 10 had a Drake and Awake (2012) parody called "ADrake", where the second and final scenes involve Drake being in a high school, with the first one having the line "I'm a wheelchair bound character on a Canadian teen drama.", all of which aged poorly in 2024 after allegations of pedophilia against Drake became popular during his feud with Kendrick Lamar.
Ho Yay: Accidental, but the PokéHarmony skit features a male Machamp hooking up with a Hitmonchan, which is an all-male species.
MAD predicted shitpost ExplanationFans consider MAD to be a show ahead of its time because of its very weird humor and storylines which are comparable with modern-day memes. It helps that back in the day the show was hated for its intense stupidity.
Fake MAD screenshots ExplanationIn March 2024, due to its Vindicated by History, people on X started drawing fanart of non-existent parodies by combining two different medias, imitating the show's animation and style; mostly towards its Clip-Art Animation via Bunko Studios and Gary Doodles. One user named Colonelluizh, manages to use all the show's different art styles; Mike Wartella, Tom Richmond, Mark Marek, Jorge R. Gutierrez and Steven K.L. Olson and combining them in one animated video ...but only be posted on April Fools' Day after the trend ended.
*Niega con la cabeza* (*Shakes his head*) ExplanationIn January 2025, the Spanish dub of the "MAD of Steel" segment from the 100th special was meme'd by having people on Instagram; Latin America, redrawing the part where Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) notices a tipped school bus but his dad, Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) nods his head in disagreement with other characters from different media.
HULK WANT MORE SCREENTIME!!
Nausea Fuel: The two adaptations of Tom Bunk/Michael Gallagaher back cover gags from the magazine: the first involves a boy who deflates and spews goo and guts all over the place after popping a zit, and the second, a fat woman who says that her kids "eat like a bird" — which she then demonstrates by vomiting up worms into their mouths.
Older Than They Think: A sketch show based on MAD magazine's parodies, cartoons, and random doodles is nothing new (besides MADtv [which had the TV and movie parodies and the cartoons on occasion, but the doodles were phased out after season three], there exists an unsold pilot/TV Special of a MAD-based sketch show in the 1970s that included parodies of Columbo and The Godfather; the pilot was never picked up and made into a series).
While sometimes they're able to get the actor voices of the characters, when they don't the impressions tend to be rather hit-or-miss, though the latter might be intentional. Kevin Shinick's impressions of Manny, Kermit, Melman, Phineas, Shaggy, and Marvin in particular are pretty lousy.
"Naru210": The writers apparently only saw the first three episodes of Naruto. "Why do all these Naruto fights happen off-screen?" The relationship between the Genin, which is similar to a group of high school students' interacting, is also skimmed over.
"PokéHarmony" (a parody of Pokémon and the dating website eharmony) depicts a female Hitmonchan pairing up with a male Machamp. Anyone who knows their Pokémon would know that it should be the other way around—Machamp has a 25% chance of being female, but Hitmonchan is an exclusively male One-Gender Race.
"Kung Fu Blander" depicts Reshiram and Zekrom as small enough for Po to hold in both hands◊, although by the episode's premiere (October 2011) Reshiram and Zekrom had already been known for at least a year ahead of time to be as big as the vast majority of their fellow cover legendaries up to that point. Though given their appearance in the sketch amounts to little more than a two second sight gag as one of numerous black and white objects and characters Po tries unsuccessfully to use against Shen, it's possible that this may have been deliberate.
Hamm is depicted as having a high-pitched girl's voice in the "BuzzIdentity" sketch. Those who have seen the Toy Story films would know that Hamm has the distinctive voice of John Ratzenberger, and even those who know little-to-nothing about the franchise would at least assume that Hamm was a male.
Special Effect Failure: The CGI, whenever it's used. This appears to be deliberate, though.
The Twilight Saga, Jersey Shore, many celebrities and musicians, along with some ofCartoon Network's very own series are made fun of, especially the first in the series' early episodes. These date the series fairly specifically to the early 2010s. Many of their celebrity sketches also parody a specific outdated image of that celebrity, such as making fun of Justin Bieber's bowlcut hair, Lady Gaga's extravagant outfits, or Kristen Stewart's stoic attitude (back when she was only known as Bella Swan). Several of the shows and movies they parody were largely forgotten by the mainstream by the late 2010s, such as I Hate My Teenage Daughter or Escape from Planet Earth, making it more obvious that they were parodied when the works were still fresh in people's minds.
The internet meme references that the show uses firmly date the show to the early 2010s as well, with sketches (such as ThunderLOLCats, most notably) being chock full of references to then-current memes such as LOLCats and Rage Comics.
The final episode has a bit that was instantly dated upon release, which contained an extended parody of the sitcom We Are Men. That episode aired on December 2, 2013... almost two months after the sitcom it was based on ended, having crashed and burned after only two episodes.
Bunko Studios' (Animation company who did each first segment all in every episode) Clip-Art Animation, along with their CG animation can be weird looking.
Tom Richmond's caricatures can be this for being fully Flash-animatednote sometimes animated by Toon Boom Harmony and oddly reused into other Richmond-based sketches in the show. Richmond drew the character designs while Renegade Animation and later Adam Gault Studio (Now as BLOCK & TACKLE) animated them in the final airing.
Vindicated by History: In the 2020s, MAD has an unironic fanbase of young adults. Since a lot of the jokes were based around pop culture kids probably wouldn't be familiar with, and the ones that did were extremely dark, fans can appreciate the show more now that they're older. The younger adult crowd also gets nostalgia for the early 2010s and remembering all the things that came out when they were kids (e.g. Adventure Time and Regular Show).
, is so brutal that it spawned a huge amount of reader mail (divided into "pro" and "con" in the letters page) and would be cut from the later compilation Mad About the 60's over concerns of tastelessness. As a Jewish-American who got captured behind enemy lines in WWII and was singled out for abuse from the Nazi guards, this was Larry Siegel's intent when writing it — that, like Hogan's Heroes was to him, such a thing WOULD be a profoundly tasteless premise.