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{{quote|''"I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit."<br />
''"Perhaps it hasn't one," Alice ventured to remark.<br />
''"Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."''|'''[[
The episode ends with a moral ''a la'' [[
Since some shows seem to contractually require one moral per episode, you often end up with a [[Broken Aesop]].
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For times when a lesson is learned through a moral conflict, see [[Moral Dilemma]].
In some quarters [[An Aesop]] delivered to another character, often a child, directly is referred to as a "You See, Timmy" from the frequent use of that line to deliver the [[Aesop]] in the television show ''[[Lassie (TV series)|Lassie]]''. This definition was put forth originally in the movie ''Speechless''.
Variations:
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* [[Alternate Aesop Interpretation]] - a meta-trope where the viewer finds a different moral to be more obvious than the one the story actually states outright.
* [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]] - [[The Tag]] devoted to some sort of moral.
* [[Anvilicious]] - The moral is so heavy-handed and lacking in subtlety it is like an [[Anvil
* [[Broken Aesop]] - when the moral does not match the events of the story.
* [[Captain Obvious Aesop]] - an aesop that should be obvious to almost everyone; e.g mass murder is bad, cancer is bad, yet is still treated as revolutionary and insightful by other characters.
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* [[Very Special Episode]] - The show takes a more serious tone to tackle a more serious issue.
By the way, <s>in literary circles</s> [[All
Ironically, Aesop probably doesn't deserve the dubious honor of having this trope named after him. In their original forms these stories likely did ''not'' end with heavy-hitting moral [[Anvilicious|anvils]]. The listeners (for Aesop would have been an oral storyteller) were probably left to sort out the meaning for themselves; the one-liner morals (such as "slow and steady wins the race") were likely tacked on by modern compilers.
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* ''[[Princess Tutu]]'': Don't be afraid of being yourself. {{spoiler|even if you are "only a duck" you don't need to become a "beautifull swan" to be loved. [[Take That]] Hans Chistian Andersen}}!
* ''[[Michiko to Hatchin]]'': Let go of your past.
* The main theme running through the ''[[
* A recurring Aesop in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' is that regardless of how one was born/created one has the ability to choose whether to do good or evil.
* At the end of each volume of ''[[Oishinbo]]'' there are cautionary tales that teach a lesson. At the end of "Japanese Cuisine" there is an Aesop about simple values, at the end of the volume "Sake" there is one about sobriety and at the end of "Ramen and Gyoza" there is one about racism.
* ''[[Monster (
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': Courage and vigor is the power of humankind.
** And with great power [[Comes Great Responsibility]].
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* ''[[Franken Fran]]'': Though there are exceptions, the dominant aesop to be learned is that death is not something to come back from, especially via science.
* ''[[Super Gals]]'' has the ironclad rules for girls which are general aesops, mainly circling around: [[Be Yourself]].
* The entire tenth episode of ''[[
* Despite being mostly comprised of Aespoic-moments, the 32nd episode of the original 1969 series of ''Himitsu no Akko-chan'' plays that straight towards the heroine. When the kind-hearted Akko-chan meets a new deaf kid at school, she hurriedly wishes her magic mirror to [[Be Careful What You Wish For|turn her into a deaf-mute version of herself]], enabling her to empathize better with her plea. Her magic mirror [[Literal Genie|takes her literally]], taking her speaking voice again too, and refusing to change her back on the premises that, needing a clearly worded wish to act, it can't understand or obey a deaf-mute mistress. Only when Akko-chan, distraught and terminally scared, is starting to resign to her fate, the mirror changes her back on its own accord, moved by her tears and pointing out how her owner has now learned that a disability is nothing to be wished for, and how her new friend was more brave and resourceful than she could think.
* The English dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' often ended with a "Sailor Says" segment.
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* ''[[Gunnm]]'' delivers an especially hard-hitting Aesop in volume five: Be a little considerate of people's feelings. Allways treat others with respect, even if you think they are cowardly, selfish jerks. You may not like the result if you don't.
* ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' shows us that [[Just Like Us|teachers are human beings too]]. They have feelings and they deserve your respect. They do care about you and are willing to help you if you let them. There ''are'' bad teachers but they are the exception and not the rule.
* ''[[The Idolmaster (
* ''[[
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== Fan Fic ==
* This is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in [[Script Fic]] ''[[Calvin and Hobbes: The Series
{{quote| '''Hobbes:''' [[Medium Awareness|"This is gonna be one of those moral shows, isn't it?"]]<br />
'''Calvin:''' "Eh, we gotta have a few of those every once in a while." }}
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== Film ==
* Lampshaded in ''The [[
{{quote| '''<nowiki>SpongeBob:</nowiki>''' You're right, Plankton. I am a kid. But I've been through a lot in the last six days, five hours and twenty-seven minutes, and in that time, I've learned that no amount of mermaid magic, or managerial promotion, or [[Rule of Three|some other third thing]] can make me any more than what I am inside: a kid.<br />
'''[[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain|Plankton]]:''' Very impressive. Now, back against the wall...<br />
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{{quote| Hamm: I guess crime doesn't pay.}}
* The [[Aesop]] in ''[[Reefer Madness (Film)|Reefer Madness]]'' is this: if you smoke marijuana... sorry, "marihuana"... even once, you'll instantly become addicted and as a result you'll go crazy, become a sex-crazed lunatic, and murder your girlfriend in cold blood.
* ''[[The Wizard of Oz (
{{quote| If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, l won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there I never really lost it to begin with.<br />
[and after Dorothy returns to Kansas] There's no place like home! }}
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== Literature ==
* In [[How Kazir Won His Wife]], a sorcerer in the [[Framing Story]] identifies the moral of the story he tells as being "not to rely on general principles and routine mechanical methods"
* Every Oompa-Loompa song in ''[[Charlie and
* The moral of ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' is to live life, take the good and take the bad and remain true to yourself. There might be other lessons scattered about the book concerning [[Author Tract|not manipulating others or belief in God,]] but the big message is to take the ups and downs and keep on. It comes off as [[Bittersweet Ending|bittersweet]] mostly because of all the events that had to take place for the protagonist to come to this conclusion.
* The poems "Maxims of Baloo" and "The Law of the Jungle" from [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''original'' ''[[The Jungle Book (
* Isaac Asimov's ''[[Foundation]]'' Trilogy shows that everything can be solved without resorting to violence in a incredibly clever and fascinating way, after all: "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
* ''[[War and Peace]]'': There are no [[Magnificent Bastard|Magnificent Bastards]], only [[Smug Snake|bastards who think themselves magnificent]]. Told via an [[Author Filibuster|entire part]] just in case you didn't catch it in the plot.
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== Live Action TV ==
* Every of ''[[Full House]]'' episode ended with a [[Full House Music|sappy musical score]] while Bob Saget explained the moral of the story to one of the girls.
* Most of the episodes of ''[[
* For more than three decades starting in the early 1950s, there were a number of Christian anthology dramas populating the airwaves. Each episode was fairly straightforward in formula: An off-screen narrator or on-camera host (always a clergyman, either real or played by an actor) will introduce a story and a situation/dilemma one or more characters are facing, along with a hint of the Christian doctrine that is about to be illustrated. The story unfolds, with the situation reaching its peak as the characters try various ways to resolve the situation; finally out of options, the characters turn to their Bible or a clergyman for advice, and the situation reaches its resolution. The [[An Aesop|moral]] would be told in the final act, with the host reviewing the situation and providing both commentary and appropriate Scripture. The best-known of these shows was "This is the Life," a Missouri Lutheran Synod-underwritten program that dated from 1952 (on the old [[
* ''[[Highway to Heaven]]'', the Christian drama starring Michael Landon and Victor French as itinerant workers who help the people they encounter deal with situations using a (though not explicitly stated) Christian solution. Said [[An Aesop|moral]] would come usually toward the end of the episode, after which the person gets a chance to apply what he/she learned and/or any villians are defeated.
* The intention of the [[
* Vehemently [[Averted Trope|averted]] in ''[[Seinfeld]]'' where the credo was "No hugging! No lessons! No point!"
* ''[[Strangers
* Every episode of ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'' ever devised concludes with Earl dropping an Aesop on the viewer's head in a voiceover.
* ''[[The Weird Al Show]]'''s staff were so annoyed by the fact that they had to shove a moral down children's throats every week, they actually started each episode with the lesson to be learned written on parchment and narrated in a fancy voice. It was then torn in half to start the show.
* ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' has this in spades.
* Every episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'' ends with J.D. reciting the theme of the episode over a musical piece. Often, though not always, an Aesop.
* A great many ''[[
** Subverted in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', ''The Two Doctors'' was an allegory about meat-eating, hunting and butchering, ending with the Doctor announcing to Peri that, "from now on it's a healthy vegetarian diet for both of us!" Writer Robert Holmes was a vegetarian.
** There are some Aesops about inner turmoil in "Vincent and the Doctor" from the Fifth Series. The episode explains that there are differences in how different people deal with depression or anxiety (the Eleventh Doctor is shown to be more resilient than Vincent Van Gogh). The Doctor also delivers a particularly touching Aesop at the end, when Amy discovers that their intervention failed to stop Van Gogh from killing himself: "The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things."
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* The whole concept gets parodied in a [[Running Gag]] on ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson''. Every episode ends with the "What Did We Learn on the Show Tonight, Craig?" segment, which ranges from a [[Spoof Aesop]] to a complete non sequitur with no relation to morals or lessons whatsoever. On at least one occasion, the "lesson" learned was a ''Spanish vocabulary word''.
* ''[[Sister Sister]]'' was full of these, ranging from the typical (such as stranger danger and the value of wise spending) to the more complex (such as Lisa dealing with her fear that she cannot compare to Ray's dead wife).
* [[Community
* ''[[Home Improvement]]'' frequently had these, and they were usually delivered by the character Wilson, who would dispense advice to help the other characters with the issue of the episode.
* One episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' played with the notion of the Aesop: Mister Feeny assigns Corey, Topanga, and Shawn a seemingly impossible task. After trying and failing, the [[Genre Savvy]] kids come to the conclusion that Mister Feeney was giving them a [[Secret Test of Character]] to teach them a lesson about teamwork. Unfortunately they were wrong: Mister Feeney was actually trying to teach them a lesson about never giving up, and ''wants'' them to complete their seemingly-impossible task, and so he sends them back out again.
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* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' has one in "Sonic and the Black Knight". It ended with Sonic teaching Merlina how life simply works:
{{quote| '''Sonic:''' Merlina, every world has its end. I know that's kind of sad, but... that's why we gotta live life to the fullest in the time we have. At least, that's what I figure.}}
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
** Similarly ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** And ''[[Majoras Mask]]'' tells us to "Have Faith", but you kinda forget it when doing all those sidequests as it's only outright stated at the first two temples.
* ''Persona3'': Live your life to fullest and don't let anything to regret. Also, : Help your friends, that what friends are for.
* [[Ogre Battle]] 64 is about what it truly means to be noble. Will you rule by power alone {{spoiler|Yumil}}, or will you rule based on what is right {{spoiler|Magnus, but only if Lawful.}}
* ''[[
* In-universe example: The Harrowing in the Mage origin of ''[[Dragon Age]]'' is designed to teach apprentices who are ready to become full mages that you should never judge anything in the Fade by appearances alone.
* In the [[Framing Device]] of ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' the Seeker Cassandra is trying to find out who is responsible for starting the conflict between the Mages and Templars that threatens to tear the world apart. The message that Varric is trying to get through to her (and by extension the player) is that no one person -- not Hawke, not Orsino, not the Arishok, not Meredith, not even Anders -- was wholly responsible. It was simply the unfortunate result of a bunch of well meaning people with different ideas of right and wrong being pushed beyond the point of compromise. Moreover, these tensions have been building up for centuries and any possible solution would be both horrific and necessary, with the status quo being just as intolerable. Sometimes there is no [[Big Bad]] whose defeat will solve everything.
** Another major Aesop of the game is that prejudice is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you oppress, harass, or treat a group of people as an enemy by default because of what they ''might'' do, [[Then Let Me Be Evil|they WILL become your enemy in truth]] because you've given them a reason to hate you.
* The teaching of tolerance is a big theme in the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' series but nowhere is it more clear than at the end of {{spoiler|"Priority: Rannoch" in ''[[
* The Aesop of the ''[[
* ''[[
== [[Visual Novels]] ==
* In ''[[
* ''[[
** After release it turns out that a more important [[Aesop]] is [[You Are Not Alone]]
* Arcs 1 & 3 of ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
* At least two are present in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
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* Made into a Super Hero in [http://xninjared.deviantart.com/art/Lysistrata-Gambit-152865735 this comic]
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' decide to drop an aesop about [[Be Careful What You Wish For]] in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2182.html this] strip, [[Anvilicious|anviliciousy]], with links to this AND that page.
* See [[The Rant]] of [http://www.bmoviecomic.com/?cid=333 this] ''[[The B
** And [http://www.bmoviecomic.com/?cid=445 these] [http://www.bmoviecomic.com/?cid=446 two] pages.
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== Western Animation ==
* The first season of ''[[
* ''[[South Park]]'' often features an Aesop at the end. Many times Kyle starts a speech by saying, "I've learned something today..." The morals are sometimes humorous - though as often as not - these speeches really are didactic.
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** At the end of the episode where Homer is an overly mean food critic. At the end after narrowly escaping their [[Disproportionate Retribution|murder plot]], he says "The important thing is I never got my comeuppance, and never will" followed by "merely" getting beaten up by all of the chefs he insulted.
* ''[[Taz-Mania]]'' often featured the characters saying at the end "What have we learned from this?", and usually concluding that they hadn't learned anything.
* The original ''[[He
* ''[[
* Subverted in ''''[[
* ''[[The Proud Family]]'' had a tendency to overdo this at times, with some episodes being particularly Anvilicious(most notably the one about how [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]])
* Disney Channel's ''[[Lilo and Stitch: The Series]]'' is another one of those animated kids shows that works by rote, it's usually a [[Stock Aesops|lesson]] about the power of friendship and tolerance and honesty, to the point of being cloyingly cute.
* On ''What It's Like Being Alone'', Aesops are usually provided by one-off characters that are on the verge of death. They then die, violently.
* ''[[Jem]]'' did this in practically any episode about the Starlight Girls -- one of them would do something stupid (anything from stealing to drugs) and have to have [[An Aesop]] explained to them. A few featured other characters, such as the one where Roxy got screwed over again and again because she couldn't read.
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** From another episode:
{{quote| "It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"}}
* Lampshaded in ''[[
* ''[[
* Roughly 1/3 of all ''[[Kim Possible]]'' episodes ended on [[An Aesop]] (sometimes due to [[Aesop Amnesia]]), roughly a third of the episodes ended on a [[Subverted]] Aesop, and the remaining thirty took the aesop and twisted it about as far as possible to create fantastic aesops (don't buy mutant toys) [[Space Whale Aesop|Space Whale Aesops]] (Eat healthily or your DNA will mutate you into a mini-Hulk) or just outright lampshading them for comedy value.
* ''[[Fat Albert and
* Subverted on ''[[Teen Titans (
{{quote| '''Beast Boy:''' So, I guess it is bad to watch too much TV.<br />
'''Starfire:''' But, we were only victorious because you watches too much the television.<br />
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* Lampshaded in ''[[Danny Phantom]]'': when Jazz tries to organize a plan, Danny tells her, with a bored expression on his face, that the plan is to go try and beat up the bad guy, get beaten up yourself, run around for a while trying to fix things, finally beat the bad guy, and go home having learned a lesson about how the world works. Whoopie. This is also a slight breaking of the fourth wall, as it's the basic layout of each show.
* Remember, kids--now you know. [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]]!
* The whole point of ''[[
** ''[[
* ''Nina's Little Fables'' is a new short program on PBSKids Sprout featuring fables narrated by show hosts Nina and Star. Some of them are actual Aesop's Fables.
* Common among [[Spark Plug Entertainment]]'s CGI [[Mockbuster]] cartoons.
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* Before he went to Disney, ''[[Doug]]'' had [[An Aesop]] in almost every single episode. You could tell the Aesop after a couple of minutes already, often even before the episode title.
* Although the ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]'' doesn't have many episodes strictly made to teach a moral, there's one where the moral is thrown in the viewers' faces with a case of breaking the fourth wall: "And sometimes the best weapon of all is to say you're sorry." Que screen where the phrase MORAL OF THE STORY pops up.
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
** Averted in episodes 1 and 2 (since they're two-parters).
** While most shows would treat these as throwaway morals, these actually are ''a plot point'' in [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E2 The Return of Harmony Part 2|"The Return of Harmony, Part 2"]]: {{spoiler|Celestia sends all of them back to Twilight to remind her why she should be fighting for her friends, instead of giving up, packing her bags and leaving Ponyville and Equestria to Discord's mercy. Also, the aesop of the episode ends up being used in Twilight's [[Shut UP, Hannibal]] speech.}}
** The aesop becomes a [[MacGuffin]] in [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E3 Lesson Zero|"Lesson Zero"]], where Twlight panics because she doesn't have an Aesop of the Week to report to the Princess.
** Subverted in ''The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000''. The usual "letter to the princess" aesop-delivery is set up... and then Applejack points out that she knew the aesop already, and didn't need to learn a thing.
* ''[[Adventures
* Played straight with ''[[Birdz]]'', although they're not heavy-handed since they're often skewed to the avian universe (e.g. {{spoiler|Eddie learning the hard way that he should study the map and pack properly during migration season}}).
* Happened quite often in the early episodes of ''[[Recess]]'', though they were ''never'' in-your-face about it. Then morals came from time to time later on, and season six became [[Anvilicious]].
* ''[[
* ''[[
** In the 1973-74 season, the Aesops were usually one of three types. Many episodes used all of them.
*** Even when you're acting in a good cause, always obey the law.
*** Try to solve problems by thinking instead of using brute force. In "Menace of the White Dwarf" this was specifically stated as "Brainpower is superior to brute strength."
*** Don't harm the environment.
* ''[[
{{reflist}}
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