Hey everyone! Robwaah here, and about to begin the first part of a short stream of proposals for characters from the Annoying Orange franchise. This candidate in particular was listed on the site's "proposals needed" section, so I figured I'd give him a shot before I move onto the other candidates from the series.
What is the Work?
The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange is a live-action/animation hybrid comedy series from 2012 based on the Annoying Orange web series, and aired on Cartoon Network for two seasons before its dramatic two-part finale in 2014 (oh wow, my second CN-related proposal and it's also from a show that lasted only two years, because I guess we can't have nice things forever). The series revolves around Orange and his friends, who live together on a fruit cart at a grocery store called "Danboe's”, which is run by a human character that talks to fruit (and thus is friends with our sentient food protagonists) named Nerville. Together, our heroes have adventures all across the land to solve conflicts that tend to involve some kind of threat of death.
Who is He? What Has He Done?
"It's juicing time!"
Teddy Juicer is the main antagonist of the 16th episode in the series, "Welcome to My Fruitmare". He is a murderous dreamweaver that kills fruit in their sleep.
The episode begins with Orange waking up in a dark room, before suddenly hearing a creepy laugh. We then see Teddy Juicer approach Orange, much to Orange's horror, and begins to chase him. Orange reaches a dead end and becomes paralyzed with fear, but before Teddy can get him, Pear wakes him up, saving him from Teddy Juicer. Orange explains to Pear that Teddy Juicer was out to get him, but Pear doesn't believe him (wow, my second CN-related proposal, and it also features the more serious main character disregarding the less sane hero's claims of a legendary evil monster being out to get them, it surely won't end well). According to Orange, he had "a friend whose cousin's brother's uncle's mother knew someone's sister's friend's mutual acquaintance who had a Teddy Juicer dream" and got killed, which Pear still doesn't believe (Pear's really tempting fate in this episode, isn't he?). In response, Passion mentions that her Aunt's cousin's coworker also got juiced by Teddy Juicer, then Coconut mentions Teddy had also gotten to his great-grandfather's ex-wife's friend's stepfruit, then Old Banana mentions he "knew a bunch of guys who knew a bunch of guys" that also got killed by Teddy Juicer, and then the unnamed grapes mention they also heard stories of Teddy Juicer's kills through the grape vine. Pear once again, claims those were just stories and there isn't any actual proof of Teddy Juicer's murders, very shortly after which he gets disproven when Grapefruit suddenly starts to become mushy on the inside, before a spigot appears on his side that causes him to leak out into a glass cup, still alive but as a liquid, only to be slowly and painfully sipped away by an unaware Nerville, who spits out Grapefruit's remaining seed, which almost immediately gets eaten by a bird (this is arguably one of the most dragged out deaths in the entire franchise, let alone in this adaptation).
After Grapefruit's absurdly dragged out demise, Nerville notices the former's mushy corpse and starts randomly guessing what could have done this to him, before Orange tells him that Grapefruit was killed by a dream monster. Orange then comes up with a plan to avoid Teddy Juicer altogether by staying awake forever, after which we cut to all the fruits dancing on the fruit cart to some sick dubstep music in an effort to avoid sleeping while Orange acts as the DJ. Seventy two hours and a minute later, almost everyone has gone to sleep while Orange is struggling to even stay awake himself, leaving the fruits vulnerable for Teddy to kill them in their sleep, draining two fruits of their juice and slicing Pineapple into bits. After realizing Teddy Juicer's back, Orange gets everyone else to wake up by pouring cold water onto them, before continuing the party as usual, only for the water to short-circuit the entire party setup, leaving them with no music to keep themselves awake. Grandpa Lemon claims he's not scared of Teddy Juicer and has met him in his dreams many times before yet still survived, before promptly falling asleep and getting horrifically drained of his juice while screaming in agony, all while realizing he was referring to the wrong guy.
Orange then comes up with a plan to get rid of Teddy Juicer for good. If everyone falls asleep together, they can gang up on Teddy and fight him in the dream world as a team, after which, EVERYONE ELSE falls asleep. Orange makes a failed attempt to force himself to go to sleep, after which Teddy strikes once again by slicing Apple in half, slicing Tomato into many bits (a death which I'm pretty sure is meant to be a reference to Pinhead's defeat in the original Hellraiser), with pretty much all of Orange's remaining friends besides Pear and Passion now dead. Orange decides to finally make himself go to sleep and face Teddy Juicer by slamming his head into one of the speakers. Orange then wakes up in Teddy's lair where Pear and Passion are left dangling on chains (oh wow, my second CN-related proposal, and it also involves the more serious hero getting captur- yeah, the joke has run its course), after which Teddy Shows up and declares Orange is just in time for his "Pear, Passion Fruit, Orange smoothie". Teddy then starts singing a song to Orange titled "Pain is My Vocation", which is about how he enjoys tormenting his victims. At the end of the song, Orange is dropped onto a chain just like Pear and Passion.
As Teddy Prepares to juice his friends, Orange starts annoying him with his usual brand of humor, before Guava shows up with a pair of human legs to remind Orange that he's in a dream and can have anything he think of in the dream realm. Orange then dreams up a bunch of random stuff he wants, before dreaming Pear and Passion some butterfly wings and dreaming himself up a pair of beefy arms. In response, Teddy dreams up some Limb Removal Spray to get rid of both Orange and Guava's limbs, after which he grabs guava and blends him to death, much to Orange's horror and dismay. Orange decides to continue annoying Teddy, which causes Teddy to lose his appetite and angrily tell Orange to leave, before Orange causes a giant weight to fall on him in typical AO fashion, finally killing the bad dream weaver for good, causing all of his victims from throughout the episode to revive.
Mitigating Factors
He's a parody of Freddy Krueger, did you expect him to have anything redeeming? His villain song initially starts with him claiming he doesn't intend to be cruel… before immediately admitting that was a lie and proceeding to sing about how much enjoys bringing pain to others.
While he does let Orange go without killing him right before his own death, this isn't redeeming since he only spared him because Orange's sheer annoyingness spoiled his appetite and ruined his mood to kill.
Heinous Standard
"No! Not Guava! He was lovable!"
Okay so, while the The High Fructose Adventures does seem to be divorced enough from the original web series to have a completely separate heinous standard, the show still has a lot of particularly bad characters that commit some really heinous crimes, from villains that attempted genocide in one episode such as the Big Rock Candy Monster and Grapefruit (as Magnefruit), to Broccoli Overlord's repeated attempts at genocide on all fruit kind, to the Fresh Check Computer (another HFA character I plan to propose) and her horrific dystopia that labels anyone that grows old or questions the future's policies as expired and has them either brutally killed or vaporized as well as her attempt to blow up the entire food civilization out of spite, and even Coconut (a mostly heroic character) once got mutated into a King Kong parody in one episode and began devouring the other fruits en-masse.
So what makes Teddy stand out among the crowd if mass murder is seemingly so common in this show? Well for one, Teddy doesn't exactly operate on the same kind of playing field. With most of the other villains in the show, they already have the means to commit their worst crimes under ANY circumstances, plus some of the absolute worst like Broccoli Overlord have pretty high resources. Teddy on the other hand, is ONLY able to kill under the specific condition that his victims are asleep, so he technically has far less resources than a vast majority of the other villains. While he can create anything he wants in the dream realm, he still can only use whatever he thinks up of against victims that are asleep, so he physically can not reach the same caliber of heinousness that other villains in the show achieve.
As for his actual rapsheet? Teddy Juicer is portrayed as an actual serial killer, one that murders his victims in incredibly brutal and painful ways, such as when he leaks Grapefruit's juice out so that Nerville will unknowingly drink him (an incredibly dragged out and painful way to go I might add), when he slices Pineapple and Tomato into many bits, or his most common and genuinely horrific method, sucking his victims completely dry as they scream is pure agony. In addition, Teddy manages to acquire a pretty decent body count (largely consisting of the show's main characters I might add, with the only survivors being Orange, Pear, and Passion), and it's pretty blatant from how all of the fruits are actively trying to avoid sleeping that he will target ANYONE that dares to fall asleep. Hell, even before he manages to kill anyone onscreen, it's confirmed that Teddy had also gotten to people loosely related to Orange, Passion, Coconut, and Old Banana, and while these particular kills were offscreen, they still establish a pattern indicating that Teddy had already been killing others in the same brutal fashion long before he began targeting Orange and his friends. While his kills do get reversed, that was only after HIS OWN DEATH, so the weight of his crimes still stand.
With that in mind, I think he easily stands out enough to pass.
Is He Silly?
"Pain is my vocation, good thing I love my WORK!"
I mean, it's the Annoying Orange, of course he's gonna be silly. He's a blatant parody of Freddy Krueger represented as a blender that kills sentient fruit and is given a hammy voice by Tom Kenny, Orange attempts to drive him off by hosting a dubstep party, he has a goofy villain song where he's just further emphasizing that he loves causing pain because he's sadistic and evil, he at one point uses Limb Removal Spray to get rid of the limbs that Orange and Guava gave themselves in their dreams, he begins getting annoyed by Orange near the end like any other antagonist, and he ultimately dies by getting cartoonishly crushed by a massive weight.
That being said, Teddy is taken completely straight in-universe for the most part. The cast all treat him with horror, even Orange himself, who only starts annoying him near the end of the episode as a last resort to get rid of him.
Verdict
A very easy yes to our very first AO candidate.