World of Snark

A type of comedy series cast where every character is either a Deadpan Snarker (who falsely believes him/herself to be the Only Sane Man completely Surrounded by Idiots) or, rarely, a Ditz of any kind. These shows usually lie far on the Cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, and most of their humor comes from the characters' reactions to what they perceive as their crappy lives and constant snarking matches.

This is not to say that this world is incapable of having genuine, tender moments. Half the cast may be jerks, but the rest may be jerks with hearts of gold.

Examples of World of Snark include:

Anime And Manga

• Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru has a cast that is equal parts Cloudcuckoolanders and Deadpan Snarkers, with a Genius Ditz main character.
• Yu Yu Hakusho especially in the English dub, with the somewhat simplistic dialogue replaced with witty and sarcastic comments/insults. Especially Hiei and Yusuke, but also Kurama, Genkai, Shizuru, Kaito, Koenma, Jorge Saotome, Koto (when the idiocy around her gets too much, especially towards Chu and Jorge), Shishiwakamaru (in the final season, at least), Sniper, Atsuko, Toya (when he's not being stoic), hell even Kuwabara shows this very rarely.
  • Also note, the snark doesn't stop with the heroes and their supporters. Some of the major villains such as Sensui and Sakyo had their moments.
• As the characters of Hayate the Combat Butler know that they are in fact characters in a manga/anime it typically results in literally almost every character being sarcastic or witty if they have any lines at all. Nagi and Hinagiku tend towards snarking at villains and some of the more ridiculous weirdos that pop up, but the Student Council Rangers, Ayumu, Wataru, and even Maria all make remarks at the expense of the plot or craziness around them. Hayate himself probably takes the cake, especially in the manga where he is a lot more cynical than he usually appears and has had exasperated reactions to just about everything and everybody.

Fanfiction

• Part Right, Half Wrong, a Third Crazy, in its entirety. Even a lamp manages to be a Deadpan Snarker, due to everyone being some form of Cloudcuckoolander as well as sarcastic.
• Uninvited Guests, thanks to all the absurdly nonsensical events that happens all the time, even the most unlikely characters, like Kenpachi, snarks at some point.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to the extreme.
• In Of Love and Bunnies, the characters are all former Power Rangers, and they snark to take attention away from the strangeness of their lives.

Film

• The Social Network, and many other things written by Aaron Sorkin.
• Anything written by Kevin Smith.
• Easy A.
• Star Wars and its Expanded Universe. A scary accurate rule of thumb is the more snarky someone is, the more important they'll be.
• North by Northwest
• The Thin Man series. Really, a majority of the comedy from the Studio System era, and a good deal of the mystery and suspense, falls into this trope.
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Last Boy Scout, because of Shane Black.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe is wall-to-wall snark, so it's amazing that putting all the heroes together under the directorship of Joss Whedon in The Avengers doesn't lead to people having snark overdoses in the cinema.

If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have that drink now.

• • The next movie on the docket for the MCU? Iron Man 3, written and directed by Shane Black. The snark is about to get cranked Up to Eleven.
• 1776

Literature

• David Eddings
  • The Belgariad isn't a comedy or very cynical, but you're lucky to go two pages in the series without two characters snarking at each other or nothing in particular.
  • The same holds true for The Elenium.
• The Artemis Fowl series. To the extent that, if a character isn't snarky, they're either insignificant or incompetent. Usually both.
• Dragaera, especially the Vlad novels. Pretty much every character is either a Deadpan Snarker or someone who Vlad can make snarky comments about.^[1]
• Percy Jackson The powers that demigods and gods are born with must include snarkiness, because well, they are. Even the chapter titles are snarky!
• The Nightside series is chock full of snarkers, as it's set in what's probably the most jaded place on Earth.
• Harry Potter. There's Snape, McGonagall and Phineas for the starters. Much humour, especially in the later books, comes from the characters snarking each other. In the core trio of Ron, Hermione and Harry, snark is passed around like a hot potato.
• The Skulduggery Pleasant series has three kinds of dialogue: Exposition, snark, and snarky exposition.
• Most of Pratchett's work is this trope.
• Frequent in The Dresden Files since the main character is a massive Deadpan Snarker and almost every other character has at least a few snarky moments. Even Michael gets a moment or two, particularly when borrowing Harry's name for the Denarians.
• The Wodehouse 'verse fits the bill nicely. Much snark is had at the expense of Upper Class Twits—many of whom can, in fact, be pretty snarky themselves.

Live Action TV

• Mash. Even the blatant idiots get off a few good wisecracks, just not as many as Hawkeye and company.
• The main cast of the first four Star Trek series qualify, in a relatively restrained way, adding more to the "high-class" image of Starfleet and Trek humans than anything else.
• My Family
• Married With Children
• House: we have a protagonist who practically cannot exhale without snarking, we have his team who eventually learns to snark back at him (enabling 2-4 player snarkball ping pong matches), we have his best friend who normally is unsnarky but at times cannot resist it, we have his boss who breathes sarcasm (possibly as a reaction to the snarking protagonist)...
• Arrested Development
• Fawlty Towers
• Red Dwarf
• Veronica Mars. It's easier to list who isn't a Deadpan Snarker, and the only main character on that list is a dog. The rest of the list is two minor recurring characters.
• Everything Joss Whedon has written, ever.
  • Firefly
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Dr. Horrible
  • Angel
• Hogan's Heroes. The only main characters who don't get to snark at least Once an Episode are Carter and Schultz, and even they get their chance at snark sometimes.
• Gilmore Girls
• Wizards of Waverly Place
• iCarly
• Victorious
• Big Time Rush
• That '70s Show
• The cast of Blackadder changes every season, but it tends to be divided almost evenly between the snarkers (Blackadder, Melchett, and so on) and the people who are too dim to notice when they're being snarked at (such as Baldrick, George, Baldrick, Queen Elizabeth, and Baldrick).
  • Did we mention Baldrick?
• The Middleman is an interesting example, as the title character himself is too earnest to be particularly snarky. Everyone else, on the other hand...
• Blakes Seven, set in a Crapsack World where snark is universal, having such uses as:

distraction (anyone in need of a getaway; Vila)
defence (anyone being held prisoner, tortured, shot at, etc; anyone dealing with Avon)
coercion (snark-to-snark combat; Blake)
everything (Avon)

• • The more idealistic characters (Gan, Cally, Dayna, Blake) entered the series with a relatively low level of snark. Their snarkiness grew on a par with their cynicism, especially with Blake.
• Lost—snark is basically how everybody communicates in this show. If you look it up, basically every Wham! Line is snark.
• Supernatural: Are there any non-snarky hunters? Demons? Angels? Apparently, all characters are either snarky or Comically Serious.
• This turns up in Doctor Who, since the main character snarks on a semi regular basis, and when he isn't doing it, he gets snarked at. Three, Six, Ten and Eleven are among the snarkier Doctors, while Tegan, Turlough, Captain Jack, Donna, Amy, Rory and River Song are among the snarkier companions.
• Seinfeld
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• The Big Bang Theory
• Two and A Half Men
• Basically everyone in Frasier. In their defense, they have to be this way: anyone who can't hold their own in a snark-off would get eviscerated by the Crane brothers, who are probably the deadpan world champions.
• Corner Gas
• Sherlock
• Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the main characters actually have to constantly snark in order to keep their sanity.
• The X Files, starting with both protagonists and their boss.

Newspaper Comics

• Garfield. Mainly the title cat, but Jon (on the strip's early months), Dr. Liz Wilson (during the 1980's) and Odie (sometimes) have got plenty of it. Special mention goes to the bathroom scale ^{[dead link]} .

Video Games

• Endless Frontier is a more lighthearted example. There's always somebody available to hang a sarcastic lampshade on the absurd levels of Fan Service, pointless violence, and anime/RPG cliches present, but they all seem to enjoy living in their crazy little world(s).
• Dragon Age is filled with a good deal of Deadpan Snarkers, particularly party members Alistair and Morrigan. That is, whoever isn't a Large Ham, The Woobie or a Complete Monster (though some of these cross together).
  • It gets even more extreme in Dragon Age II, where everyone is sarcastic, regardless of any other tropes they fit. Even Merrill and Fenris get in on the action occasionally.
• The Sims. Maybe not exactly a world full of Deadpan Snarkers, everyone in the thing speaks gibberish, but near everything else is snarky, sarcastic or fuelled by Schadenfreude.
  • The Sims Medieval is even snarkier. Active Hero Sims and Royal Advisors, especially, nearly always have something snarky or critical to say.
• In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, pretty much every major character except the Silent Protagonist gets in one or two snarky lines.
  • And thanks to the emoticon responses, the Silent Protagonist can be played as a Silent Snarker. Yes.
• Nearly every party member (except perhaps Miranda and Jacob) in Mass Effect 2 gets one or two snarky lines:

Kasumi: Trapped in a Reaper. Could be worse. Don't know how. (Beat) I guess it could be full of rats.

• The world of Kid Icarus: Uprising is very much a World of Snark. This is compounded with the game's lack of a fourth wall, since the characters will lampshade and snark about video game conventions.

Webcomics

• Basic Instructions
• Order of the Stick
• Out There
• The world of Antihero for Hire is rather silly, so every sane character has become a Deadpan Snarker as a coping mechanism.
• Questionable Content
• Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery
• Schlock Mercenary
• Something*Positive
• Sluggy Freelance
• Eight Bit Theater
• Rumors of War straddles the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, and its more cynical characters (read: the main cast) are pretty snarky.
• Homestuck. Even ditzier characters like John and Feferi have their moments of snark, and the snark levels go through the roof when Rose, Dave and Kanaya are involved.

Web Original

• Donkey Kong Country site DK Vine used to contain the most bitter, sarcastic and unsocial people on the internet, thanks to eleven years of waiting for a new Donkey Kong Country game. The announcement of Donkey Kong Country Returns helped a lot.
• That Guy With The Glasses
• Red vs. Blue
• Cracked.com had a Photoplasty contest If Sarcasm Ruled the World.
• Zero Punctuation

Western Animation

• Archer exists in a world where even enemy secret agents are as likely to engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat as any other kind.
• Much of the Silver Age Warner Bros animation catered to this.
• The Simpsons can be this at times.
• South Park. Even the people who are being made fun of on the show are snarky.
• Even the Disney Animated Canon has some entries with this quality, namely |Hercules and The Emperors New Groove.
• Ben 10 Ultimate Alien has the main trio snarking at one another every episode.
• Teenage superhero teams often result in this. Teen Titans and Young Justice are prime examples.
  • Adult superhero teams can also have this, as evidenced by Justice League and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
• Everything in The Venture Bros, whether it be human or otherwise, is prone to sarcasm.

1. ↑ Of course, given that they're presented as transcripts of narrated recordings and Vlad is a known Unreliable Narrator, it's possible he's just projecting.