Butch Hartman (2015-present)

	"YOU WINNNNNN!" —Patrick Wayne This article has been featured on Terrible TV Shows Wiki!

Butch Hartman

A religious nut-job who created your childhood can destroy it in a heartbeat.

Nationality:	American
Gender:	Male
Born:	January 10, 1965
Occupation:	Animator
Years active:	1986–present
Notable works:	The Fairly OddParents Danny Phantom T.U.F.F. Puppy Bunsen Is A Beast

Elmer Earl "Butch" Hartman IV (b. January 10, 1965) is an American animator and storyboard writer who is best known for creating four television series: The Fairly OddParents!, Danny Phantom, T.U.F.F. Puppy and Bunsen Is A Beast for Nickelodeon. Despite those shows being great (with the exception of Bunsen Is A Beast), he is an awful person in general nowadays.

Why He Sucks Now

He is no longer the person who everyone thought he was. Instead, he's become a stuck up, irresponsible, egotisitcal, selfish, religious extremist who sort of takes everything from God and the Bible for granted, no matter what he does. Mind you, the Bible never was meant to be taken for granted and literally.
He is painfully egotistical (as mentioned above); he draws himself very macho-like when several other artists have been known to draw themselves self-deprecatingly.
He's a huge liar who frequently pins the blame on others for his own wrongdoings, particularly the reason why Danny Phantom got cancelled. He stated that it was Nickelodeon that cancelled the series because the network wanted to put more attention on Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it wasn't meeting up the same ratings as SpongeBob SquarePants. But in actuality, the show's cancellation was due to Butch making the show go so overbudget through switching to a more expensive animation style, hiring voice actors without Nickelodeon's consent, and deciding to heavily advertise and promote the TV movie "The Ultimate Enemy" with Burger King toys and a video game tie-in from THQ using millions of dollars that he requested from Nickelodeon for that purpose, which resulted in Nickelodeon only making fifty thousand dollars in return after paying royalties to Burger King and THQ. After getting fed up with the show being so costly to produce and not being profitable enough, Nickelodeon decided that unless Butch can acquire merchandising rights for Danny Phantom, it will be cancelled. Butch tried reaching out to merchandising companies, but the marketing failure of "The Ultimate Enemy" caused merchandising companies to turn him down. Thus, since Butch still had a two year contract with them over producing the show, Nickelodeon cancelled the series in early January 2006 while also allowing Butch to make a finale for the show. However, the third season of Danny Phantom was not officially finished in terms of production until early 2007, when the finale, "Phantom Planet", was made before being released to television several months later in the same year.
- It does not help that before the third and final season of Danny Phantom had officially began production, Nickelodeon fired many of the show’s original writers who were the main driving force for the show in its first two seasons, leading Butch to take full control of the writing and hiring many new writers as replacements, thus, leading to the show declining in quality in its third and final season.
- This was also a similar case with The Fairly OddParents!' cancellation, but he only partially lied about that. He stated it was because it wasn't meeting up to the same ratings as SpongeBob, and that's it. The real reason why The Fairly OddParents! ended up renewed for a new season many times is because it always came in second in the ratings behind SpongeBob. But once The Loud House came along, it became so successful in the ratings that it managed to rival SpongeBob and The Fairly OddParents! ended up canceled after being knocked down in the ratings by The Loud House.
After Danny Phantom was canceled in 2007 and The Fairly OddParents! was revived in 2008, Hartman's writing quality gradually declined during his final years with Nickelodeon.
He completely ran out of ideas for The Fairly OddParents! altogether by the time Nickelodeon approved production of the show’s ninth and tenth seasons. At that point, he sidelined a good portion of the characters and flanderized the remaining ones in that show. To make matters worse, he recycled various elements from its previous seasons whilst completely disregarding his own structure (Da Rules) that he established for the show in the first place, just so he can bring in ideas that he otherwise wouldn't. Lastly, he removed Poof from season ten and only made him appear in one episode of that season.
- Although to be fair about that first point, creators running out of ideas when their show goes on for a long time isn’t uncommon though it doesn’t excuse him flanderizing his characters.
He always refuses to develop any of his own characters past their stereotypes, especially The Fairly OddParents!. He tends to flanderize all of the characters in that show and never wants to break from this mold. Even when he does, it’s generally only for a brief time to make you think they have depth when they really don’t and immediately goes right back to flanderizing all of the characters over and over again for no other reason than comedy.
On his YouTube channel, he likes to make clickbait videos very often, with his video "ENDING my channel..." being the worst offender.
He often tries too hard to be hip and cool, as seen on his YouTube and Twitter accounts, but he fails every single time and ends up being cringeworthy in the end.
He is a major hypocrite:
- He once said that all his shows have Christ in them, but magic and ghosts are considered Satanic according to the Bible of Christianity. With that logic, his two most popular shows, The Fairly OddParents! and Danny Phantom, would be satanic because of their main motifs being magic and ghosts, respectively.
- Despite apologizing for The Fairly OddParents! episode "It's a Wishful Life" for its mean-spirited tone and moral, he approved production of later episodes like "Vicky Gets Fired" and "Lights Out", which are even more mean-spirited than the aforementioned episode, and have equally bad morals as well.
- He once called introverts "selfish people" without any evidence or reason.
He's an implied homophobe:
- Back when he had his own forum on his now defunct website, he didn't allow users to make slash fanart and fanfics of his shows. To make matters worse, despite various users not posting slash content on Butch's forum, the forum's moderators would stalk the forum's users in other forums or DeviantArt and if they found out the users shipped LGBT pairings, the users would be banned from his forum with no warning.
- During a stream he did, he purposefully ignored questions about LGBT representation on Oaxis.
  - This can be excused as "representation" has obnoxiously consumed the present day media.
- He wrote The Fairly OddParents! episode "Love Struck!", in which it is implied that the only kind of true love that exists is heterosexual, and Cupid later shrivels up from lack of said love.
  - Though this can be excused by the fact at the time this episode was made (2002) LGBT representation wasn’t as big compared to how it is today as well as the fact that LGBT representation wasn’t allowed back then to be on children’s programming.
He made a Kickstarter to crowdfund a "family-friendly" streaming service called Oaxis Entertainment. Despite this, the campaign was very vague; after it was fully funded, The Rise and Fall of Nickelodeon uncovered a video where Butch is speaking at a seminar and reveals that Oaxis is a Christian streaming service, which was never mentioned in the campaign and meant he basically scammed and swindled people out of their money. Not to mention, he's also a practicing Christian, in which he violated the Eighth Commandment, which is "Thou shalt not steal".
- Worst yet, not listening and doing nothing about the negative feedback is one thing. According to Vailskibum94, one of his videos showed a message for his so-called fans and supporters of his streaming service, and that he also thanked all the people that he himself swindled their money after the service was fully funded. This is also made even worse by the fact that his most recent animation, The Garden, had a price of $130 for six (claiming to be seven) episodes, all of which are 5 minutes long.
In the Speech Bubble podcast episode with Tara Strong, he noted that Mary Kay Bergman (who was a good friend of Tara) didn't get the part of Timmy Turner (which she did in the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts) and, in an insensitive manner, joked about her suicide by saying that "he thought Tara actually had something to do with that" without consideration, implying that Tara getting the role caused Bergman's suicide. Besides being mean-spirited, this simply didn't make any sense since Tara is a mostly nice person and that Bergman already died before Tara replaced her for the part of Timmy.
A cartoonist named Nico Colaleo revealed that Butch doesn't care about his fellow artists; at one of his champagne toasts, he only thanked himself and God, not any of the other staff members, which proves another example of Butch's selfishness.
He thinks that the media causes suicide, which is not even close to being true. Suicide usually comes from mental illness, substance abuse or bullying.
- He also claimed that suicide didn't exist back when he was little, which is, again, absolutely not true. In fact, cases of suicide go all the way back to Ancient Greece.
He is very cowardly about answering questions. For example, despite all the backlash he has received, he still hasn't issued a public apology to his backers.
He trashes his fans during livestreams.
During the aforementioned stream, he literally said that if you don't create cartoons as he does, you are not allowed to criticize him, which proves that he can't take any ounce of criticism.
- He also shows this kind of behavior by "hearting" every single comment that praises him on YouTube and ignoring or deleting any comment that is against him.
To add insult to injury, he is also disrespectful to people with autism or with autistic traits; he poked fun at people with autism by saying that God will cure them of autism. This goes against current medical theories that autism is a disorder, not a disease. It really shows he has no acceptance or respect for all people with autism or autistic traits, as even if autism WAS a disease, you still are ought to help such people, not to mock them.
Despite being a good artist who commissions artwork from by requesting him to draw your original characters or favorite characters from movies, shows and/or video games in his own style, he is also lazy at times, up to the point where he is a tracer. For instance, there was one time when somebody commissioned Butch to draw Female Ranma from Ranma ½, to which he instead traced over a photo of her instead of drawing her in his own style. Another person who commissioned him to draw Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan also suffered from this.
- Worst of all, the picture he was tracing was from an actual artist, leading to the logical conclusion that he was stealing art and charging for it without the original artist's permission.
- Now, you may be thinking, "Well, it's drawn in his own style, so it isn't copying the original!". Then again, the fact that he just became lazy and traced over someone's artwork and that he referenced from it so heavily is enough to call it stealing. Plus, since he is a professional artist, why not draw the character without copying? He could use the official character artwork but then again, you have to make it original to the point where it's not copying.
In a disgusting turn of events, he scammed an artist and animator named Rob Ophelia, better known online as Kuro the Artist, that he worked with and broke his contract of paying him. Instead of showing generosity, he ignored the #PayKuro movement on Twitter and outright blocked the artist on Twitter. Ophelia was infuriated about this and even sued him for breach of contract. Eventually, the case was dropped after Hartman compensated him at the last minute. After this ordeal ended, Rob Ophelia stated on his YouTube channel that he condemns Butch Hartman for this incident and wants nothing do with him ever again.

Redeeming Qualities

Despite his wrongdoings, he is still a good animator who made great shows, mainly The Fairly OddParents! and Danny Phantom.
- In fact, if it weren't for him, the 2000s era of Nickelodeon's cartoons might not have been as successful as hoped by everyone.
Some of his speedpaints are also nice to look at.
- As previously mentioned he's still good enough to commission artwork from by requesting him to draw your original characters or favorite characters from movies, shows and/or video games in his own style.
He used to be an actual nice person who cared about others during the early days of his career.
- He used to rock back then before his controversies.
His channel does have some decent videos that are worth a watch, with his TTG trailer reaction video as well as his The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run trailer reaction video being good examples.
He apologized for two things:
- For writing the infamous "It's a Wishful Life" episode of The Fairly OddParents!, as mentioned earlier.
- For writing the script of Doogal (the American-English dub of the 2005 French-British film The Magic Roundabout).
Understandably, he dislikes the Rule 34 cartoonists who draw porn based on his shows, referring to them as not "true fans" to the point he accused a toon porn artist on his forum of being a pedophile for trying to seduce a female member of the forum.

Trivia

He is good friends with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, and is the namesake for the character Dr. Elmer Hartman.
He was a contestant on the 1980s shows The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour (December 22, 1983, shown on January 3, 1984) and later Body Language on April 1, 1985.
Before Nickelodeon, he used to work for Hanna-Barbera cartoons throughout the 1990s, the first time he worked for Hanna-Barbera as a designer, alongside MacFarlane and Steve Marmel.
He was involved in the development of the original Crash Bandicoot game back in 1996.