Anti-Barney humor

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Anti-Barney humor pieces often depict Barney as sadistic and violent, as demonstrated by this clip from the popular newgrounds flash When Barney Goes Bad

Anti-Barney humor is a form of humor that targets the children's television program Barney & Friends. The show's optimistic feeling has made the program a target for parody by older children and adolescents all over America, as well as many adults, and a few famous entertainment personalities.

Children were the first group to practice anti-Barney humor. Children wrote songs about Barney being killed such as "I Hate You" and "Barney Got Shot By G-I Joe" and many others. Eventually, adults contributed to anti-Barney humor. This included some parents and a few famous entertainment personalities.

Well Known Anti-Barney Humor

One of the first well known anti-Barney songs was "Barney's On Fire" by Tony Mason. Another well-known song was released on "Weird Al" Yankovic's Alapolooza record. "Jurassic Park" (a parody of "MacArthur Park". The song featured the lyric "I'm afraid these things might harm me/cause' they sure don't act like Barney". The music video featured a scene in which a dinosaur bit Barney's head off and spat it out.

Since 1995, when the website newgrounds.com was established, several fan-made cartoons demeaning Barney have appeared, some of them depicting Barney as a drug addict or terrorist. One of the most popular includes "Barney Busdriver", which depicts Barney as a drug addict/alcoholic/sadist who is driving an elementary school bus. Another animation portrays Barney as a friend of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and depicts him sexually assaulting a young girl. A group on Newgrounds called "the Barney Bunch" has submitted endless movies to the site making fun of Barney —- usually depicting him and other children's characters (e.g. Drew Pickles from Rugrats) as homosexuals.

An online video combines clips from Barney and Friends with Tupac Shakur's song "Hit 'Em Up," making it appear that Barney and other characters from the show are rapping. Although legal action by the show has forced the removal of the video from some sites , the video is still available on others.

Many cartoons targeted at older children have made fun of Barney directly or not. Most cartoons do not mention Barney directly. Instead they using a parody and depict the Barney parody as being mean. Some examples of shows that have done this include Rugrats, Spongebob Squarepants, Animaniacs, and The Powerpuff Girls.

The science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research published in its January/February 1995 issue an article called The Taxonomy of Barney, including X-rays of his skeleton. It is freely available on the magazine's website.

Anti-Barney humor emerged from the modability of early 90's computer games, namely the popular first person shooter, DOOM. Numerous "mods" circulated the Internet and third party mod collections would replace specific monsters. One such mod would replace the Baron of Hell with Barney. Other similar mods were released, replacing one or more monsters with Barney, often with new sounds as well.

Z100 Prank Call

The New York City based Top 40 station WHTZ, better known as Z100, received a prank call during a morning radio show from a person who claimed to be Barney. When one of the DJs asked Barney what he does on the weekends when he's not filming the show, he admitted that he had "a severe crack problem" and that he "just can't stop smoking this stuff".

The people who made the crank call are believed to be high schools students from northern New Jersey, this is still uncertain though.

The call received semi-national re-recognition as a user at newgrounds.com used the audio from the station and created an accompanying Flash Animation, he even depicted the baby stealing Barney's crack at the end.

Print Media

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The cover of Kill Barny Again, published by Parody Press

A small comic book imprint, Parody Press (an imprint of Eternity Comics), released an anthology comic book entitled Kill Barny in 1994, a collection of short stories and one-page strips depicting the death of the purple dinosaur. One multi-page story depicts "Beaver and Butt-Chin", characters drawn to resemble Beavis and Butt-Head, playing "Dinosaur Baseball" and setting the purple dinosaur on fire.

Several months later, another issue was released under the name Kill Barny Again!, reprinting most of Kill Barny but with some new material pages and a new cover.

Internet Fiction

A group of adults wrote fiction revolving around not only killing Barney, but portraying him as a demonic force to be defeated in an epic tale. The most highly regarded of these were a series of short stories by writer Brian Bull including the Day of The Barney novel, and the cult hit Batman versus Barney. The popularity of stories by Bull and others elicited the attention of the producers of Barney and Friends who moved to shut down the sites, although the stories may still be found on the internet.

Anti-Barney songs

"I Hate You" is the best known of the elementary school written anti-Barney songs. It is a parody of the show's closing song "I Love You", which is itself played to the tune of "This Old Man". There are many variations, all of which start with the lyrics "I hate you, you hate me, let's get together and kill Barney" and then change into something different.

Here are 7 of the most popular variations.

I hate you, you hate me

Let's get together and kill Barney

With a great big machine gun and a sword for me and you

Won't you say you like Kung fu? (Hyah!)

I hate you, you hate me,

Let's gang up and kill Barney

With a great big blast, and a bullet through the head,

Sorry, children, Barney's dead!

I hate you, you hate me

Let's get together and kill Barney

With a knife and a gun and a bullet through his head

Don't throw up 'cause Barney's dead

I hate you, you hate me,

Let's gang up and kill Barney

With a shot gun Bang! Bang!, Barney's on the floor

No more purple dinosaur

I love you, you love me,

Let's team up and kill Barney

With a .8 millimeter shot in his head

Now that purple freak is dead

I hate you, you hate me,

Let's get together and kill barney

With a .357 and bullet through his head

One more shot and Barney's dead

I hate you, you hate me,

Let's go and kill Barney

With a great big axe, and chop off his head,

Sorry kiddies, Barney's dead

Other popular anti-Barney songs include "Barney Got Shot By G-I Joe", "Killing Barney", and "God Bless America that Barney's dead".

One variation of the "Barney Got Shot By G-I Joe":

Here we go

Oh wow

Barney got shot by a G-I Joe,

Mommy called the Doctor,

And the Doctor said,

Yay! Barney's dead!

There is another song called "Killing Barney" sung to the toon of "My Meatball".

On top of a mountain

All covered with blood

I shot Barney

With a rifle gun

I went to his funeral

I went to his grave

Some people threw flowers

I threw a grenade

And when I found out

That he wasn't dead

I got a bazooka

And shot off his head

(lyrics repeat)

There is another version:

On top of a mountain

All covered with blood

I murdered Barney

With a 2-40 Stud

I went to his funeral

There was a parade

Some people threw flowers

I threw a grenade

When I looked in his coffin

He wasn't quite dead

So I took a bazooka

And blew of his head

Another song is a parody of God Bless America, an American patriotic song, which is called "God Bless America that Barney's Dead", this seems the most morbid of all since it references that God will bless America if Barney's Dead. Note only the refrain of the song was only parodied and remade. It also references some other Anti-Barney songs.

God bless America, that Barney's dead

We killed him with a shotgun and shot him in da head

We stuffed his body in the toilet

After it has its swirly we foiled it,

Then we turned into a pinata and whacked it,

God bless America, that Barney's dead.

Character Spoofs

• Baloney the Dinosaur from Animaniacs
• Barnaby from The Mask: The Animated Series
• Blarney from The Powerpuff Girls
• Bonky from Recess
• Boney from Weinerville
• Doughie the Whale from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
• Georgie the Hippo and Blarney (a puppet) from Dinosaurs
• Goober the Gopher from Rugrats
• Humphrey the Hippo from The Critic
• Lester the Lizzard from Hangin' with Mr. Cooper
• Rigby the Rhino from Full House
• Smoochy the Rhino from Death to Smoochy
• Thingy from The Proud Family
• Swarmy the Dinosaur from Johnny Bravo

See also

Barney & Friends, the article about Barney, features a small section about Anti Barney Humor

External links

Here are some examples of Anti-Barney Humor from the internet, most from newgrounds.com.

• The Canonical List of Ways to Kill Barney
• Evil Barney: Bus Driver, one of the Flashes mentioned above.
• Barney's Crack Problem, based on a Z100 crank call.
• 1UP Barney Haters Club A club for you and me to kill Barney! But you have to be a member of 1UP
• The Taxonomy of Barney article, at the Annals of Improbable Research website.
• Barney Shakur Video Barney rapping to the 2pac classic "Hit Em' Up"
• Elmo Vs. Barney A flash that is both anti-Barney and Elmo
• Most Wanted: Barney Barney Depicted As Terrorist
• When Barney Goes Bad Barney Depicted A Sadist
• Barney the Molester A crudely animated flash featuring Barney as a pedophile.
• Barney Vibe A flash comic-cartoon that shows a female bounty hunter throw a vibrator into Barney's head, causing it to explode.
• The Barney kazaa virus V2 Features Barney as a downloadable computer virus. Also features Homer Simpson.