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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Aesop's beast fables do not teach us to be wise or honest or kind. They simply show us what will happen if we dick around with talking animals.''
|'''Peter Chiykowski,''' ''[http://rockpapercynic.com/strips/2009-03-06.jpg Rock, Paper, Cynic]''}}
When a writer intends to simply write a piece of fiction without [[An Aesop]] but someone [[Misaimed Fandom|reads something into their work that they didn't intend]]. This can also happen when the creator did intend [[An Aesop]], but the one people pick up is completely off tack from the one they intended.
This seems to stem from some people always assuming [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]], which leads to them gasping "[[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]" when you tell them as such. This also generally requires the [[Word of God]] to clear things
Like [[Misaimed Fandom]] (where readers fail to catch the moral or satire intended by an author), an
See also: [[An Aesop]], [[Broken Aesop]], [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]], and [[Death of the Author]]. Occasionally these unintended Aesops have [[Unfortunate Implications]]. However, [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]; just because a text wasn't ''intended'' to be a commentary doesn't mean it can't work perfectly well as one.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* At first, ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'''s disturbing depiction of the horrors and abuses its innocent little girl protagonists faced and how their lives were completely destroyed was lauded by many fans as a brutal [[Deconstruction]] of the lolicon genre and/or a commentary on the use of [[Child Soldiers]]. Nope. Turns out it's straight-up [[Author Appeal]]. Many of the more subversive elements and [[Fan Disservice]] of the early part of the series were apparently to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience and probably weren't even the creator's idea. As time went on and the series' popularity grew, the creator gained [[Protection From Editors]], and it became decidedly more [[Fan Service]]-y and disturbing for totally different reasons.
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** A tract on abortion assures you that your aborted baby is in heaven. Numerous other tracts make the point that everyone is born in sin and will go to Hell if they don't convert. So if you want to be certain your child goes to heaven, abort it!
* A lot of comics written by [[Mark Millar]] seems to have pro-family messages. Several of his characters have issues that can be traced to their family lives. For example, Ultimate Red Skull and Spider-Girl in [[Bad Future|Old Man Logan]] are both despicable psychopaths because they had an absentee father, toward whom they hold a grudge. [[Kick-Ass|Hit-Girl]] is completly messed up because of her psychopath father. ''[[The Unfunnies]]''' Troy Hick has a [[Freudian Excuse]] for being a [[Complete Monster]] in the mental breakdown he suffered after his wife left him, and Millar's run on ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'' portrays Reed and Sue Richards as perfect and extremely happy with their lives. However, Millar has said he never intentionally put any sort of message into his works, so all of this is completely accidental.
* [[Warren Ellis]] was once accused of advocating fascism in ''[[The Authority]]''. He responded by saying that he wrote the Authority as [[Villain Protagonist|villains facing even worse villains]], not heroes people should look up to.
** He was also accused of having anti-George W. Bush messages in ''[[Black Summer]]'', which starts with superhero John Horus murdering the president who was clear stand-in for a Bush, but story doesn't realy deal with the reason Horus did it but the consequences of his actions. If anything, the real aesop seems to be "Even if everybody hates your president, you shouldn't murder him." And even ''that'' seems to be accidental, as Ellis thought of the story as a [[Deconstruction]] of the [[Superhero]] genre more than anything else.
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* The film adaptation of ''[[300]]'' is often interpreted to glorify secular, westernized countries standing against the religious extremism and intolerance of the Middle East. However, some critics pointed out that in the film, Persia is a massive, wealthy empire bent on expanding its influence throughout the world, while the Spartans are a small group of dedicated, zealous fighters who are willing to break the rules of war and martyr themselves to resist the invaders. Some viewers interpreted Persia as representing the United States and Spartans representing the terrorists.
* [[Word of God|According to]] [[Mel Gibson]], the intention of ''[[Apocalypto]]'' was to draw parallels between the Modern and Mayan civilizations, and how the latter collapsed because of its greed, political corruption and environmental destruction before being finished off by the Spaniards; however, more than one person interpreted the final scene as that the Mayans were so vile and savage that they deserved to be conquered and subjugated, because they needed to be saved from their barbaric ways by [[Mighty Whitey|the white Europeans]].
* This trope grew to absurd proportions between about 2004 and 2007, when the Iraq War became a major point of controversy worldwide. For a while, it seemed as if ''every'' work of fiction was interpreted as an argument either for or against the war. The final ''[[Star Wars]]'' film (''Revenge Of The Sith'') was taken to be a veiled condemnation of the Bush Administration, with Darth Vader as George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine as Dick Cheney. Seriously.
** There have been conflicting or even parallel arguments for what, if anything, ''Revenge of the Sith'' was trying to be anvilicious about, ranging from the Bush and Nixon administrations to the rise of Nazism in Germany to [[Starring Special Effects|oh, hey, look at those awesome digital effects!]]
** This continued on after 2008 with a change in tone, where suddenly many critics began projecting hopeful, wondrous aesops onto movies. One reviewer went so far to claim that the 2009 ''Star Trek'' movie was now "light, fun, and inspiring" because Obama was now President, supposedly contrasted against the "dark, militaristic, despairing" ''Star Trek'' movies made during the Bush administration. Nevermind that the 2009 movie features the ''near genocide of an entire species'', as well as protracted gun battles and dogfights... Obama! Hope! Things changed!
* ''[[WALL-E]]'' is often interpreted as having a rather [[Anvilicious]] [[Green Aesop|environmentalist]] or anti-consumerism message, but [[Word of God|the director stated that]] there was not supposed to be any political message, and the setting was created to justify the story. Fred Willard also ad-libbed the line, "Stay the course," causing some people to assume the film was commenting on the Bush administration.
* ''[[Batman Begins]]'' has Batman go out of his way to not kill someone because he deserves a fair trial, then ends with him refusing to save Ras Al-Ghul from a crashing train. The Aesop here is "If I have a personal grudge with someone, it's perfectly fine to let them die even if I have the means to save them easily." (note: In this universe Ras Al-Ghul probably isn't immortal, and even if he is then Batman still doesn't know it.)
** Alternately: "Everyone deserves a fair trial unless they know your secret identity, in which case you should just let them die."
* In the film ''[[The Object of My Affection]]'', the main character (a white woman), ends up with a black man at the end. Apparently, the reason for this was to show that "one should be able to date whomever one wishes." But in practice, the message that came across was more like: "Can't find a white man? Get yourself a black man! Black men will love you more than white men ever will!".
* If ''[[Crash (film)|Crash]]'' had an aesop, it was probably "Racial stereotypes are stupid; everyone sucks." However, some deduced that the lesson was "If a guy rapes you, it's okay if he's a cop."
** Furthermore, "Every single person in America is a racist", "Scary black men are going to rob you", and "If a man rapes you, don't report it, because he may save your life someday."
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] claimed to despise allegory, which didn't stop people seeing the One Ring in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' as an allegory for the atomic bomb. The key difficulty with this and any other theory that takes ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' as an allegory for [[World War II]]: the major plot details were planned out well before the war even started. Also, as Tolkien himself noted, if it ''had'' been about [[World War II]], they would have ''[[Downer Ending|used]]'' the Ring.
** But not [[World War
** This is why Tolkien made such a distinction between ''allegory'' and ''applicability''. You can ''apply'' as many meanings as you like; you just can't presume to [[God Never Said That|put them in the author's mouth]].
** It's also a very popular theory that Gandalf was an allegory for Jesus, as he died while fighting against sin for the good of his fellow man (and hobbits, dwarves, and elves), only to be resurrected in a "pure" form. This was specifically denied by Tolkien in a letter, who considered it offensive, and said Gandalf's death and resurrection were as relatively unimportant as Lazarus' beside that of Christ.
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*** To clarify, in the story, the narrator eventually gives in to trying the green eggs and ham. The message appears to be more positive, as in, it's good to try new things and it's ok to admit you changed your mind instead of being stuck in your original opinion.
* When [[Tom Clancy]] wrote ''[[Rainbow Six]]'', it was almost certainly intended as an [[Author Tract]] against environmentalists, especially the extremist fringe. But the only way he could make them into a credible threat was by putting them in charge of a [[Mega Corp|mega-corporation]] with near-limitless resources and political influence. Since anyone with extremist views could have done what they did with the resources they had, this turns the story into an Aesop about the dangers of corporate power, which is almost certainly not what Clancy had in mind given the strong conservative tone of his works...
* ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'' is almost universally interpreted to be about government censorship on literature being used to control the population. As late as the 1980s, Bradbury himself stated that the book is about censorship. In his old age, however, Bradbury has come out insisting that [[Flip-Flop of God|he'd always intended]] the book to be about [https://web.archive.org/web/20131106001211/http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/ how crappy television is]. Critics have wisely chosen to ignore Bradbury's assertions, and a UCLA class drove him from the room by telling him to his face that [[Death of the Author|he's simply wrong about his own book]].
** In all fairness the [[New Media Are Evil]] vibe comes across very strongly throughout the novel, perhaps it's just a question of where different people see the emphasis...
* The eighteenth century critic Thomas Rhymer said that there seemed to be two possible Aesops in ''[[Othello]]': either [[Values Dissonance|"Don't elope with blackamoors"]] or else "Take better care of your laundry." (The latter being a reference to Desdemona's handkerchief, which convinces [[Too Dumb to Live|Othello]] that his wife is cheating on him.)
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The series finale of ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* The ''[[Bones]]'' episode "The He in the She" featured a transgender woman killed while swimming {{spoiler|by the jealous ex-wife of her lover}}, with a subplot about her life as a male preacher and her estranged son. Booth took away an Aesop about the transforming love of God and the way it can heal people's souls. Temperance concluded that the [[Aesop]] was "always swim with a buddy".
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Unquiet Dead" was perceived in some quarters as an attack on immigration (since the episode features aliens who come to Earth on the pretense of finding a new home after their planet was blown up, but are actually attempting to invade), even though the subtext was entirely unintentional.
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** It's possible to sympathize with the man without sharing all his views; he's ignorant and bigoted, but he also tends to be the [[Butt Monkey]] of a lot of the plots.
** The fact that he was never actually ''hateful'' towards minorities, just ignorant in a "he doesn't know any better" kind of way probably helped audiences sympathize with him. Not to mention that he was portrayed as an otherwise decent guy, albeit mildly abrasive. This is, of course, a case of YMMV.
** It probably didn't help that he was portrayed as hardworking, dedicated, and serious, while the intended sympathy characters were frivolous, flighty, and a bit ridiculous to anyone that was used to working for a living.
* [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|Genetic engineering]] is shown as a viable technology in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' in the person of Julian Bashir. On the other hand, there's the Jack Pack. Lesson: If you prohibit genetic engineering, people will go to [[Back-Alley Doctor|Back Alley Doctors]], with possibly disastrous results.
* In [[True Jackson, VP|True Jackson]] Ryan hangs out at a boys-only skate park and True and Lulu want to go so they can get an idea of what skaters like to wear for a new fashion line. Ryan refuses to accompany them so True and Lulu disguise themselves as boys so that they can get in. They talk to one of the skaters there and he says Ryan is a poser, so True and Lulu sign him up for a competition to prove he isn't one. When Ryan finds out, he freaks out and fully admits that he's a complete and total poser. So then True, Lulu, and Ryan concoct a plan and Ryan cheats at the big competition by getting famous skater Ryan Sheckler to take his place, and he wins the competition and the skaters' respect. Nobody says anything like "You shouldn't pretend to be something you're not just to be popular" or "Cheating is wrong." Instead, he becomes super popular with the skaters and never faces any consequences. The moral? "Cheat, lie and misrepresent yourself and you'll get your way."
* The episode "Darkness Falls" of ''[[The X-Files]]'', where a logging company accidentally releases a marabunta of man-eating bugs, was praised and even received an award for its never intended ecologist message against deforestation. This is even funnier if you consider that every death in the episode could be blamed on the actions of an [[Animal Wrongs Group]] in continuous possession of the [[Idiot Ball]], and that the bugs' release was going to happen anyway since they were originally [[Sealed Evil in a Can|trapped in a very old tree]] that was going to fall more sooner than later.
* The original ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' episode "This Side of Paradise" is explicitly stated to be a modern take on the Lotus Eaters and the arrested development drugs and complacency can have, but to a modern viewer the Aesop appears to be about date rape when Leila Kalomi knowingly drugs Spock so that he will fall in love with her.
** ''The Next Generation'' had an episode where the ''Enterprise'' encounters a colony that's been practicing enforced eugenics and social engineering for centuries. Geordi rather passionately argues at one point about how he has value, something to contribute, and a right to live despite being the exact sort of person this society would never have allowed to be born... causing some people to get a Pro-Life aesop out of the episode. The creators were outraged at this interpretation... apparently they'd rather side with the eugenicists who would have aborted Geordi rather than ever speak a word against Pro-Choice.
* [[Quantum Leap]]: Sam can leap to any day in his own lifetime. In two episodes, he leaps to days that are a few months before his birthday. The obvious message? Life begins at conception.
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* The Christmas carol "I'll Be Home For Christmas" was originally written by 16-year-old Buck Ram and is about a homesick college student, but has more recently become associated with soldiers away at Christmastime. At least one version of the song even includes soldiers wishing their families a Merry Christmas during the bridge. Touching, yes, but not the original intended message.
** Adding to the misconception is the fact that the song tends to be associated with the [[World War II]] era (as do so many popular Christmas songs), so many listeners assume that the narrator is an American soldier in Europe or the Pacific.
** Though this is likely nitpicking, considering both aesops are still "People who are away from home wish they could be at home for Christmas." Trying to narrow it down to being only about college students because the creator was a college student seems unnecessary.
* The Crash Test Dummies Song, "Mmm mmm mmm mmm," is VERY frequently interpreted as being about child abuse, with the eventual message that brainwashing your child and forcing your child to hold your own beliefs is worse than physical abuse. [[Word of God]] says the message is that [[Kids Are Cruel]], and the song is to be taken at face value.
* [[Minor Threat]]'s "Guilty Of Being White" is often mistaken for having a pro-racist message: Ian MacKaye specifically was writing about a time in his life when he was in the minority in a black neighborhood and would get beaten up for being white. Even so, the song's rejection of the idea of white privilege is still sort of of a touchy subject.
* [[Iron Maiden|Iron Maiden's]] The Number of the Beast was thought by many religious extremists to be a song praising devil worship, when it was actually based on a nightmare by the author, who is, along with all band members, a christian.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* Charles M. Schulz's ''[[Peanuts]]'', due to its popularity and long run, often ran into this [[Trope]]:
** Schulz said he only created the [[It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown|Great Pumpkin]] as a fun idea: "What if someone believed in a Hallowe'en Santa Claus?" Many saw Linus's efforts as a mockery of the foolishness of religious people, but Schulz himself was quite religious, at least in the early years.
** There's a strip where Linus asks Lucy about what would happen if a baby was in heaven waiting to be born but its parents decided that they didn't want any more children. Lucy points out his theological and scientific ignorance. It was meant to be a parody of people who ask really weird hypothetical questions, but people on both sides of the abortion debate seized on it as proof that Schulz supported them and asked him if they could have permission to reprint it in their literature. He said no.
** In an anthology, 1960s letters written to Schulz about his new African-American character Franklin are reprinted; because he was introduced during the [[Civil Rights Movement]], people assumed Schulz was trying to make some sort of statement. No, he said. Franklin's just black by coincidence.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* The racist FPS ''[[Ethnic Cleansing]]'', as well as its [[Spiritual Successor
** Alternatively: if these are the best games that the racists can come up with, then they clearly have no idea what they are doing, and shouldn't even be trusted to run a newspaper route.
* [[Word of God]] is that the Aesop of ''[[
* Thanks to Capcom's [[Executive Meddling|inability to make new main characters]] the ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' series argues in favor of capital punishment, and possibly the dangers of racism. Because Dr. Wily was not executed after he was captured by the [[Fan Nickname|BlueBomber]] in ''6'' (the intended end point of the series), he {{spoiler|built Zero}}, causing a chain of events that, as of the ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' series, has {{spoiler|killed more than half the population of earth, and has left the planet itself almost scorched beyond recovery, which oddly enough involved another human villain that also wasn't executed once captured by our robotic heroes, which only made things worse when said villain came back}}. Also, because Capcom hasn't continued the ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'' series, it's implied that in the ''[[Mega Man Legends]]'' series, {{spoiler|humanity has ultimately gone extinct}} because the legal system in this world couldn't put down a [[Mad Scientist]] who had certainly caused enough chaos to warrant such a punishment.
** ''[[Mega Man 7]]'' also has an accidental aesop found only in the English version. In both versions, the blue bomber prepares to shoot Wily and Wily reminds him that robots can't hurt humans due to being [["Three Laws"-Compliant]]. In the japanese version, Mega Man puts his blaster down with no argument, while in the English version we get "I am more than a robot!! Die Wily!!" but still hesitates long enough for Wily to escape. This not only supports the above message about capital punishment but can also be seen as condemning pacifism or that there are exceptions to principles like do not kill.
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** YMMV, since the player's own architecture may well be just as grand. . .
*** Because the game is just THAT open ended, it's very possible that quite a few accidental Aesops my just pop up at any time. Another easy one could be that creepers are taken as a representation that all work is transitory, here one point and gone the next, or that some people just can't accept what you have built.
* The original Japanese script of ''[[SaGa 2]]'' involved a smuggling ring of illegal opium in Edo. The 1991 official English localization could not mention such drugs, so changed opium to "bananas". An NPC [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by asking why bananas have to be illegal in the first place. It's obvious to most players that criminalizing bananas is silly, and the sheer organized crime involved might not exist without a legal ban on bananas. In the [[Truth in Television|real world]], this is an increasingly vocal argument against the [[Drugs Are Bad|War on Drugs]], especially after a 2011 [[United Nations]] commission declared the international War on Drugs to be a costly, violent
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* From a [[Nezumi Man]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXO9FsERhwg&feature=channel review] "GAH! See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Smoke, and all your skin falls off".
* If the way reincarnation works in the Reincarny webgame series is to be believed, the safest way to prevent criminals from committing crimes again for a long time is to give them life imprisonment without parole, since executing them will just allow them to escape from Hell and be reincarnated as adults who immediately start doing the same things they did before. (The game series is at least 90% of the way toward the cynical side of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]])
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Some fans perceived the moral of the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S1
** Likewise, the episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S1
** "The Mysterious Mare Do-Well" was also problematic in that it came across to some fans as effectively saying, "It's totally okay to go behind your friends' backs, show them up and sabotage them if they act in a way that you don't like," as opposed to, you know, just talking to them about it like friends." The message the episode was supposed to have about how one shouldn't be boastful or a gloryhog is completely lost because, firstly, the Great and Powerful Trixie showed this lesson far more effectively and, secondly, because the other ponies ''do'' boast and brag about how awesome Mare Do-Well is and gladly receive accolades and talk up all their own successes. So, ultimately, the episode just comes across as the ponies being smug and hypocritical and contradicting the friendship message central to the show.
** In ''Winter Wrap-Up'', Twilight searches in vain for a way to help with the town's winter cleanup activities, but only comes into her own when she realizes everyone else needs organization and management (which are her specialties). The obvious aesop is that you should play to your own strengths rather than trying to fill anyone else's shoes, but some interpreted it as saying that the "elite" (Twilight, in this case, being from Canterlot) have to boss around the stupid common folk because they're too pathetic to do it themselves. Much like ''Feeling Pinkie Keen'', the people who saw this aesop didn't do so to agree with it, but apparently just so they could be outraged by it.
* An episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' had [[Granola Girl|Lisa]] taking part in a competition wherein the other team cheated (by using glow sticks, expressly against the rules) and won. She spends the rest of the episode appealing to progressively higher authorities until finally then-President Clinton himself overturns the results. The Aesop in this case is pretty explicitly spelled out: if things don't go your way, you can always whine to someone until they do. Thing is, it was clearly meant to be a [[Spoof Aesop]]; Marge points out that it's not a good moral to take away from this, and Clinton simply replies that he's not a very good president. Be that as it may, "Calmly and logically appeal to authority figures when faced with an injustice" isn't really that bad a moral.
* Parodied in-story in ''[[South Park]]'' episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs," the kids decide to write the most offensive book ever written, which to their surprise becomes an instant bestseller, even though people can't stop throwing up when they read it. Almost immediately, people start reading political messages in the story, only for others to angrily insist that the book says ''the exact opposite.'' The kids, who only wanted to be offensive, find this all very annoying.
* ''[[Family Guy]]'' every single time it tries to be pro-gay rights. One episode was pushing for gay marriage where the couple trying to get married was a human and ''a dog.'' A dog that acts like every [[Camp Gay]] stereotype you can imagine. Oh, and a deleted scene near the end shows that the person he's getting married to doesn't even speak English and doesn't know what's going on, with another character (Stewie) commenting in English that the human is going to be raped. The episode is supposed to be pro-gay rights but it instead comes off as "Gay people have sex with dogs, forcibly marry other people for their bodies and WILL RAPE YOU." You couldn't have messed that up even more if you ''tried.''
** The same thing happens when they try to mock religion. Brian turns just about everything into an anti-theism rant, and gets openly pissed off at anybody who has any religious beliefs (mostly because [[Hypocritical Humor|religious people are intolerant]]). He is genuinely meant to be seen as the [[Only Sane Man]]. The problem is, Jesus and God are both characters in the show. Brian has met both of them. Any time Brian mocks religion, [[Flat Earth Atheist|he's blindly ignoring what's clearly right in front of him]].
*** Except for the episode that ended with Jesus himself saying all religions are "pretty much crap", but that comes off more as [[Mary Sue|the universe contorting itself to make Brian right]].
** And then there's the pro-marijuana legalization episode which, of course, uses every "stupid stoner" joke and stereotype in the book. Basically, any attempt by Seth MacFarlane and the other writers to advocate their liberal views is always going to wind up backfiring because the humor is so incredibly ''lazy''... they either don't feel like (or aren't capable of) writing more subtle and clever humor, or they think the people watching [[Viewers are Morons|are drooling idiots]] (which says something about the sort of people they think are vulnerable to their intended messages).
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Home Page/YMMV]]▼
[[Category:An Aesop]]
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
[[Category:Unexpected Reactions to This Index]]
[[Category:Accidental
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