Rejected is an animated surrealist short comedy film directed by Don Hertzfeldt that was released in 2000. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the following year at the 73rd Academy Awards, and received 27 awards from film festivals around the world.

The film takes place over four segments and is initially introduced as a collection of unaired promo interstitials for the fictional "Family Learning Channel." The "advertisements" are surreal, feature non-human characters, are often gruesome, and have nothing to do with the product. The second section is introduced as a collection of rejected advertisements for the fictional "Johnson & Mills Corporation" and features the same surreal dark and absurd humour as the earlier section. The third section is introduced with an explanation that the animator had begun further rejecting the norms of animation and a single shot is then shown which was apparently animated with Hertzfeld's left hand only. In this short, the audio is garbled and the characters speak only complete nonsense.

The fourth and final segment is introduced with a title card explaining that the "rejected" cartoons began falling apart. Various characters and elements from the earlier shorts then appear in disjointed succession as their world literally falls apart: clouds and stars fall from the sky, killing characters; the paper the cartoons are drawn on crumples and destroys the animations; characters attempt to break out of the screen or are sucked into holes in the page. A close-up of a distorted, screaming character ends the short which abruptly cuts to end credits scored with dramatic classical music.

Hertzfeldt's first film after graduating from college, Rejected was photographed on a 35mm rostrum camera he purchased in 1999.

Rejected features simple hand-drawn artwork, featuring mostly black pen animation on a white background with occasional use of color. As the film progresses and the fictionalized animator begins to fall apart, the drawings become more crude and the animation becomes more erratic. As the film concludes, the paper the animation is drawn on begins to crumple and tear, and the characters are seen struggling to evade the destruction.

Besides the iconic Allegro ma non-troppo from Beethoven's 9th that plays in the text introductions to each segment, a particular segment with the "Fluffy Guys" uses background music from the Swedish Christmas song Nu är det jul igen.

Although the film is fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done any advertising work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon received international attention and acclaim. In appearances, he would often tell the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, run off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually, this became the germ for Rejected's theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.

Hertzfeldt has never accepted "real" advertising work and has stated numerous times on his website and in public appearances that he never will, as he feels advertisements are "lies" and he does not want to lie to his audience.