Broken Aesop: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

The desire to end a story on [[An Aesop]] is natural and strong: it's often the [[Author's Saving Throw|only thing that elevates the story]] above a piece of insubstantial fluff. The trouble, however, is that it doesn't always work. It might be [[Executive Meddling]], a [[Writer on Board]], the writers [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|being high]], the writers thinking the [[Viewers are Morons|audience won't notice]], or just plain bad writing, but the moral of the story feels awkwardly tacked-on; as though somebody else wrote it and added it at the end after the writers were already done.

# ''"Why is this movie/TV show/song telling us about how [[Horrible Hollywood|the entertainment industry]] [[Music Is Politics|is evil]]?"''

 

* [[Aesop Amnesia]]

* [[Ambition Is Evil]]

** There is also the theme of [[Revenge]], [[Cycle of Revenge|that it's bad and will lead to more revenge]]. However, the [[Brilliant but Lazy]] Shikamaru breaks that {{spoiler|by killing Hidan in revenge for his master}}. One arc later and {{spoiler|Naruto}} finds himself in the same spot ({{spoiler|Pain killed his master, along with nearly killing the woman who just confessed her love to him, and pretty much anyone that ever cared for him}}) of taking revenge. {{spoiler|He does not go with the revenge, much to the dismay of the audience}}.

* ''[[Code Geass]]''. Remember the show-capping aesop about how those that would kill should be prepared to be killed, using {{spoiler|the main character as an example}}? Tell that to the likes of {{spoiler|[[Karma Houdini|Villetta, Cornelia, and Ohgi]]}}, characters who accomplished much less for peace and somehow get to reap the benefits instead. Or how about the people who don't hurt a fly {{spoiler|like Princess Euphemia and Shirley}} and still get killed.

** In a ''very'' [[Early Installment Weirdness|early episode]] of [[Pokémon (anime)|the anime]], an Aesop about finishing what you started and not making up excuses for stuff and whatnot is broken. The first thing that happens is that [[Unwitting Instigator of Doom|this episode's character-of-the-day]] pulls a sword on Ash just when he's about to catch a Weedle. Because Ash "didn't" finish what he started, the Weedle gets away and warns a swarm of Beedrill, which come out and attack everyone, and seize Ash's Metapod. Now Ash goes out to fetch Metapod, making his best effort, when Team Rocket shows up to harass him. In the end, his last "excuse" is that he got sidetracked, and then he admits that everything was his fault, when in fact, NOTHING was. So, what we're really given is a case of [[Never My Fault]] by nearly everyone ''except'' Ash.

** The Trubbish episode had a teacher trying to get rid of a Trubbish, which is a living garbage bag. The kids in her class scream and disobey their teacher because they want to keep it. We're supposed to see Daniella as a mean, stubborn teacher who wasn't listening to their concerns. But the kids just demanded they get their way, and Daniella was concerned about the kids ''playing with living garbage that spat out toxic fumes.''

* ''[[The Prince of Tennis]]'': The theme of on-court violence. Tezuka loses his cool a few times in order to deliver this very aesop, yet some of the strongest players such as Kirihara employ this very strategy with [[Karma Houdini|few repercussions]].

* ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' is ''big'' on the [[Power of Friendship]]. So much so that many a third of the battle can't be won without it. Lucy gets half her powerups because spirits like how friendly she is with them. Sticking it out for your friends is always the right thing to do... unless you're Jellal, in which case doing so gets you tortured and {{spoiler|brainwashed}}, hated by everyone, and robbed on any semblance of life or freedom.

* Being that it is essentially an [[In Space]] retelling of ''[[Seven Samurai]]'', ''[[Samurai 7]]'' naturally lifts a lot of its material from the original film. This, unfortunately, includes Kanbei using his movie counterpart's line about how, with the bandits and the samurai having slaughtered each other, the peasants are the only ones who have truly won, at the series end. In contrast to the movie, though, not only are the samurai portrayed here as genuinely heroic, sympathetic characters, but the peasants themselves genuinely care about and trust the samurai.

 

* ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Marvel's Civil War]]'' storyline featured the superheroes favoring registration fighting the superheroes opposing it. Apparently, the two sides were supposed to be presented evenly but due to the clear Aesops of the last century saying that [[Secret Identity|secret identities]] are ''good'' and government oversight of superheroes is ''evil'', it was hard to sympathize with the Pro-Regs. Especially since [[Iron Man]], the Pro-Reg leader, became a borderline Fascist Nazibot for most of the storyline. The whole thing was basically a titanic [[Idiot Plot]] where everyone held the [[Conflict Ball]].

** The X-Men in particular stayed out of the entire debate surrounding the Super Human Registration Act since in their own comics, government registration of mutants was always portrayed as the first step towards state-sponsored internment/genocide of anyone with an X-gene.

* ''[[One More Day]]'' breaks the [[Comes Great Responsibility|aesop]] that [[Spider-Man]] is supposed to embody, as instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he dodges it by making a [[Deal with the Devil]] against the wishes of its main beneficiary and guilt-tripping his own wife into going along with it. However, in ''[[One Moment in Time]]'' (popularly known as [[Fun with Acronyms|OMIT]]), this is retconned so that ''Mary Jane'' is the one to have made the deal. [[Word of God]] is that the aesop is meant to be "It's heroic to do whatever you can to save a life" but to readers, rewriting history just to save the life of a single person who, in addition to wanting to die anyways and was telling you to let go, let's face it, is likely to die of old age in a few years is simply asinine. The message then becomes "the ends justify the means", and that instead of learning how to cope with loss and move on with your life, you should hold on to what you have and never let go, even if the cost of doing so might be too high; for you and for others.

** What makes this even worse is that the "whatever you can to save a life" wasn't selling their souls, give any kind of favor to the demon, or even their love, but he wanted them to give up their marriage. So Peter Parker had to face the consequences of... a chance to get back with Black Cat.

* ''Sam Wilson - Captain America'' 10 has two broken aesops for the price of one. The issue starts with a supposedly evil pundit denouncing Sam Wilson as "radical, highly partisan and anti-American" in a poor attempt to attack modern political talk. Given that Wilson's ''first'' official act as Captain America was to beat up border patrol volunteers, assist illegal immigrants, then '''order birds to shit on the arrested volunteers''' before mundane agents have to handle the men covered in bird crap, the pundit's claims are '''completely true'''. The main plot of the issue is the "Americops", [[Supercop]]s that have caused a double digit reduction in violet crime rate, being accused of "police brutality". As mentioned before Wilson, under the same author, has '''initiated violet conflict then covered the victim in shit after they no longer posed a threat''' makes him attacking "police brutality" completely hypocritical at best. Worse the "abused" protesters are clearly throwing things at the cop and the "brutal" response is... knocking the man who '''assaulted a police officer''' to the ground and cuffing him while he suffers minor injuries from the fall? There is also no refutation to the claim that crime has dropped double digits.

 

** Thus making it's OWN Broken Aesop --- "don't fix your mistakes."

*** The Aesop would seem to be more "don't let ''other people'' fix your mistakes", which is Broken or not depending on how much and where you apply it. Never letting anyone help you ever even if you wreck yourself in the process, bad. Eating the costs of your own stupidity rather than accepting a bailout from others so that you don't make other people pay for your carelessness, not so bad.

* At the end of ''Barbie as the Island Princess'', the queen has just given permission to Ro to marry the prince, despite her not being royal. Immediately after she declares this Ro(sella) reveals her full name and her mother finds her (and they sing their little song) thus revealing that she is royalty after all which completely cancels out the "you don't have to be royal" moral they brought up two minutes prior.

* The movie ''[[Fern Gully]]'' has an incredibly anvilicious environmental aesop. Too bad, then, that the bad guys polluting and destroying the rainforest are stopped by the fairies living in it. So the aesop becomes less "help the rainforest, it can't help itself" and more "don't worry about it, the fairies can take care of themselves". Another issue with the fairies is that they're in the movie just to add an element of human interest to the story. The first problem with this is that it's implying that ''actual'' rainforests, where such creatures do not exist, aren't worth the attention of conservation. What's worse, though, is that the fairies live in a society based upon human ideals, which doesn't gel with the film's intended aesop that [[Humans Are Cthulhu]]—though arguably that aesop ''deserved'' to be broken.

* ''[[Care Bears]]: Share Bear Shines'' opens with Oopsy needing to be rescued because he went to a dangerous place all alone. The other bears, including Share, admonish him for this, but not to long after that, Share goes off on her own, without telling anyone, to help a baby star get to Glitter City, where she's never been before and only has a vague idea of how to get there. The fact that she did exactly what she told Oopsy not to do is never brought up, not even when the others find her.

* ''[[We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story]]'':

** The guy who brings them back from the past has a time machine. And food that can increase the eater's intelligence vastly (though it may only work on animals with sub-human intellect). [[Reed Richards Is Useless|He uses this so that kids can meet dinosaurs]]. This might not be so bad, but he then leaves the dinosaurs to just wander free in the city, potentially causing panic and devastation.

* ''[[The Lion King]]'': The moral feels less like "respect all living things" (which is what the writers intended) and more like "respect all living things, except for hyenas, [[What Measure Is a Non-Cute?|which are evil and deserve to starve to death]]".

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

** Well, of course. If you're not obsessed with winning every game, you'll be under a lot less stress and won't make as many mistakes - and, if you're just that good at the sport, [[Sweet and Sour Grapes|more often than not you]] ''[[Sweet and Sour Grapes|will]]'' [[Sweet and Sour Grapes|win]].

*** The problem with “don’t take sports too seriously” is that the heroes rarely have as much in stake as the antagonists. They can often afford to lose simply because they won’t sink lower than they already are and, even then, they’ll get points just for getting so far. The antagonists, on the other hand, will be lectured for getting too worked up; ''never mind things like reputation, sponsors and contracting opportunities''. Things that, in the real world, put some serious pressure on sportsmen. As for the “have fun” message…[[Underdogs Never Lose|how many times have we seen the protagonists getting utterly trashed in a “big game”?]] How did they deal with the aftermath of such event? ''Were there lots of “the important thing is you did your best” speeches?''

* ''[[American Pie]]'': Near the beginning of the movie a bunch of friends make a pact to get laid before the school year is over. Then near the end of the movie, they decide that was a dumb thing to do, since sex shouldn't be a goal in itself, but something you do with a person who's important to you and when you both want it. That's a nice moral. But ''then'', they all get laid the same night anyway! Alternately, you could read the aesop as "good things will happen if you stop obsessing over them."

** To make matters worse, when Jim wakes up and finds Michelle (whom he does not particularly care about at this point in his multi-movie arc) has already gone, his response is "I got used. '''Cool!'''" and completely ruins the aparently intended Aesop.

** While the movie is meant to be a negative portrayal of Colonialism and a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] warning against the historical mistreatment of natives...but then the movie ends up showing the most straight example of [[Mighty Whitey]] since ''[[The Last Samurai]]'', with an "enlightened" ex-colonial soldier taking over an entire tribe, exploiting their folk law and getting with the chief's daughter. And then there's the scene in the Special Edition where a dying Eytukan explicitly tells Jake that "You must lead us, now."

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' implies that looting is bad. The hero [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|insists that he's an archaeologist who never loots.]]

** The first problem is that Rosemary, the main love interest and the intended study in how it's what's inside that counts, isn't born deformed; she isn't even [[Hollywood Pudgy]], [[Hollywood Homely]] or even a [[Big Beautiful Woman]]; she's morbidly obese. We're talking on the verge of a heart attack any second. Such an example backfires in an Aesop about inner beauty, because this sort of obesity is in need of medical help.

** The third, and possibly ''worst'' problem with the movie, is that nearly all of its humor consists of jokes ''making fun of'' fat people. Hypocrisy; thy name is Farrelly.

*** Then, there are bits of the film's warped world view that just ''make no sense.'' For example, a beautiful woman who smokes appears to Hal as an ugly woman--never mind that many decent people smoke, and picked up the habit from peer pressure that wasn't really their fault; never mind that she might be very sweet, she's judged entirely by the fact that she smokes. There's also a male cross-dresser that appears to Hal as a beautiful woman, which has no correlation between what the plot said happened to Hal--inner beauty and gender are two entirely different things.

*** Furthermore, the film gets so down on Peter that it makes everyone else into a [[Karma Houdini]]. As rash and, at times, infamously-obnoxious as Peter's behavior was, at least he had a plot-centric explanation for it. Sandman, despite {{spoiler|not intending to kill Uncle Ben, has no qualms whatsoever about killing guards who stand in his way, even after it's obvious they can't do anything to hurt him.}} Meanwhile, Mary Jane inexplicably gets her [[Character Development]] from the second movie retconned, turning back into [[Jerkass]]; yet the film only blames Peter for returning the slights. It's one thing to vilify vengeful actions when they involve killing people, but quite another when [[Straw Man Has a Point|somebody is just embarrassing a partner who started souring the relationship]], and again; Peter is getting revenge on her because he's infected by Venom and she was a jerk to him first; Mary Jane was a jerk for no perceivable reason to the guy who saved her life on multiple occasions!

* The [[Lifetime Movie of the Week]] ''Stranger In My Bed'' tries to empower women to leave their abusive husbands. The main protagonist, Sarah, leaves her husband by faking her death in a cave accident and flees across the country from Washington to West Virginia to get away. Aside from the apparent aim of stuffing as many [[Domestic Abuse]] cliches as they possibly can in one scene, it sort of accomplishes this goal...had the movie ended with her leaving. Her escape is only the beginning, as her husband tracks her down and inexplicably becomes a serial killer, killing her friend for no reason, her new boyfriend's father for even less reason in what is basically a [[Non Sequitur Scene]], and then trying to kill Sarah herself and said new boyfriend, which isn't better but more logical. This is absolutely mangled, as the first half tells abused women to leave, but the second half says that if you ''do'' leave, your husband will ''kill everybody you've ever cared about.''

* ''[[Swimming with Sharks]]'' has a Buddy Ackerman, being tortured by Guy whom he had mistreated, unleash a speech about how one has to suffer to earn good things and be willing to work for Them and how he endured it too. It would be nice except that Buddy was not simply a demanding or strict boss but a complete and utter sadist who took extreme pleasure in mistreating everyone he could and even blatantly stole a brilliant idea Guy had. The film spends so long showing Buddy as a monster and Guy as a dogged employee that the sudden shift to make Guy the bad one for committing these acts just feels like a last minute apology. If Buddy's speech is the intended aesop, the moral of the story is "If you endure suffering, you have every right in the world to make others go through the same and anyone who says otherwise is a naive spoiled brat".

* In the film ''What's Your Number'', a woman reads a magazine which claims that any woman who sleeps with more than 20 men will not be able to marry. Being on her 20th, she panics and decides to go back to all her exes and see if any of them are marriagable. Naturally, hi-jinks ensue, she learns to respect herself and that the number of people she's slept with doesn't matter, falling in love with her playboy neighbour (her 21st). Then, in the very last scene, she gets a phone call from one of her exes... [[Technical Virgin|she'd passed out drunk during foreplay and never actually had sex with him]]. Realising that this means her neighbour is now her 20th, she celebrates the fact that she can now marry him! The message is therefore less "[[My Girl Is a Slut|It doesn't matter how many people you've slept with as long you respect yourself]]" as "[[My Girl Is Not a Slut|It doesn't matter how many people you've slept with, as long as it's less than this arbitrary number!]]"

** Considering the movie is an exceptionally dark comedy with tongue planted firmly in cheek from start to finish, attempting to take any aesops it may espouse seriously is probably an exercise in frustration.

* ''[[Accepted]]'' is an example of this. The moral of the movie is clearly intended to be that everyone wants to be accepted for who they are, even if they don't meet the expectations set forth by society. However, at the end, {{spoiler|[[Loser Protagonist|Bartleby]], who was able to open his own college, get his dream girl Monica, the attractive girl who was accepted to the prestigious college that Bartleby was rejected from.}} So it seems that the actual moral of the movie is that if you are able to elevate yourself from loser to the successful hero of the story, [[Give Geeks a Chance|you too can win the girl]].

* In the film adaptation of ''[[Contact (film)|Contact]]'', the rather [[Anvilicious]] [[An Aesop|Aesop]] seems to be something along the lines of: "We ''all'' have faith in what we believe, and just because your beliefs are in science (rather than religion) that doesn't give them more credibility." Except, of course, that the very last exchange between [[Jerkass|Kitz]] and Constantine completely blows that premise out of the water in Ellie Arroway's specific case:

** Frustratingly for science- or justice-minded viewers, Constantine and Kitz apparently never even let Arroway know {{spoiler|that she's got ''evidence'' of her experience (as opposed to just ''faith'')}}. They just quietly give her a dream job to make it up to her.

* The anti-rock propaganda movie ''Rock: It's Your Decision'' comes off less like a young man finding his moral path and more like he's been brainwashed by his parents and pastor into abandoning his friends and personality.

* ''Buddy'' features a woman who takes a baby gorilla home and raises it among her multiple pets. As the gorilla ages, it becomes more destructive and inconvenient to keep and she sends it off to an ape sanctuary. The moral, involving the problems of keeping exotic pets, is ruined because she already has ''two'' pet chimpanzees, who are portrayed as lovable little pets with no problems. It's not as if chimpanzees have been known to maul their owners and be destructive pets, [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/nyregion/17chimp.html right?]

 

== Literature ==

* The aesop of "The Tortoise and The Hare", is "Slow And Steady Wins The Race". While "slow and steady" is certainly a good approach for a number of things, racing is ''not'' one of them even in the story. The tortoise did not win because he was going slow and steady. He clearly won because of the hare stopping to rest. The aesop can more accurately be described as "Don't Be Cocky". Or even moreso "Whatever you do, do with all your might". As Lore Sjöberg put it, "Slow and steady wins the race if your opponent is narcoleptic".

* [[Older Than Print]]: Chaucer [[The Parody|parodies]] this trope in ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'', by having the despicable, avaricious pardoner's tale turn out to be a Broken Aesop about how terrible greed is.

* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s ''Empire'' is about the dangers of divisiveness in American political discourse and the evils of extremism at both ends of the political spectrum. Fair enough. Unfortunately, it's fatally undermined by the fact that the heroes all unambiguously share "Red State values" whereas the villains are a bunch of [[Strawman Political|craven liberals.]] Er, if the message is that people of both political opinions should work together, you probably shouldn't have all the protagonists be on one side of the aisle, and all the villains on the other like that...

* Racial prejudice is a recurring theme in ''[[The Icewind Dale Trilogy]]'', ''[[The Dark Elf Trilogy]]'', and the ''[[Legacy of the Drow Series]]'' by R.A. Salvatore. Drizzt Do'Urden is a [[Chaotic Good]] dark elf who rejects the ways of his otherwise [[Exclusively Evil]] people and goes to live among the "good" races. He is subjected to [[Fantastic Racism]], which would work better as an analogue to [[Real Life]] racism if ''every'' other dark elf in the series weren't evil and if drow society as a whole were portrayed as misunderstood by the "good" races. However, the racists are still right 99% of the time. If you replace dark elf with "Jew" or any other real-world minority in the second sentence of this example, you'll basically see why there might be [[Unfortunate Implications]].

* In ''The Poky Little Puppy'' by Janette Sebring Lowrey, we learn that if you are both disobedient ''and'' slow, two thirds of the time you can not only escape any punishment whatsoever but also eat all the food that your siblings have been punished from.

* The four book series ''The Dreamers'' has a powerful one at the end. The series appears to build on the [[Aesop]] that the gods are supposed to barely affect people and use their powers sparingly and let things go naturally; so, after the gods are given children, {{spoiler|who are their replacements}}, who are said to be able to save the world, they collect people from around the planet to help them fight off a [[Hive Mind]] force of super insects. How is the [[Aesop]] broken? During the last two chapters of the last book, {{spoiler|the new gods in turn go back in time, render the original Hive Mother infertile, and give the man who almost single-handedly won the war because the loss of his wife caused him not to care about dying and made him want unending revenge his wife back. All this actively Unmakes all four books, and the main character's life is removed from existence. }} Now, that is first-class meddling!

* ''[[Warrior Cats]]'': When Firestar has to choose between reinstating his old deputy, Graystripe, or keeping Brambleclaw, StarClan tells Leafpool that Firestar should make his decision with his head, not his heart (oh so subtly hinting at Brambleclaw), completely ignoring all the times in the series characters have been told to listen to their heart or do what they feel is right. In fact, the whole reason Firestar chose Graystripe in the first place was because he was told to follow his heart.

* One of the lessons in [[Dr. Seuss]]' ''Daisy-Head Mayzie'' is "What good is money without all your friends?". Wait, friends? You mean those [[Kids Are Cruel|bratty children who taunted her]] in school about her daisy (which was ''every single one of them'', by the way. No one defended her!). All the adults in town singled her out too. Oh, but suddenly they all love her again once she's back to normal, so... yay for conformity? I think there's a reason Dr. Seuss didn't get this published initially.

** Another big problem (in either version) with delivering an Aesop about valuing family and friends over material commodities, is that the Grinch didn't just steal the overpriced, over-hyped luxuries; he ''[[Moral Event Horizon|stole all their food]]''. If you truly value your friends and families, you will object to someone threatening to starve them to death, and in this case, arguably the appropriate solution is ''not'' to go on celebrating despite it; it's to apprehend the thief and recover your belongings, for the sake of everyone you care about.

* Bowman, Kestrel, and Mumpo spend the first ''[[Wind on Fire]]'' book learning that if they work together, they can make things happen and nothing can hurt them. In the book's two parallel plots, their father convinces downtrodden people that they need to stand up and peacefully insist on being given their rights, and their mother makes her views heard and gets the town to listen to her and consider her ideas. Then... the [[MacGuffin]] shows up and makes it all better. Or at least makes them happy for the remainder of the book.

* In the ''[[Disney Fairies]]'' book, "Beck Beyond the Sea," Beck shirks her duties to follow the Explorer Birds, using [[Forbidden Fruit|special dust]] from [[Designated Villain|Vidia]] in order to fly fast enough. Turns out that Vidia tricked Beck twice over, first by not giving her as much dust as promised, and second by using Beck's absence to pluck feathers from Mother Dove. At the end of the book, Vidia is punished for this, but Beck is not even reprimanded for leaving her post.

** According to [[Word of God]], the Bella/Edward/Jacob love triangle was intended to show Bella's choice in the matter of love, namely that she had the option of Jacob but chose Edward. The "love through choice" moral is shot to hell through most of the other couples though, particularly in the case of imprinted couples (the guy can't ''help'' but feel attracted to the girl and while the girl technically is able to refuse him, there is a ton of pressure not to). Especially egregious is the case of Jacob, who made a number of speeches about how imprinting is essentially the loss of free will and he hopes to never have it {{spoiler|and then finds himself happily imprinted on Renesmee, even though he absolutely hated her not five minutes prior.}}

** One aesop seems to be that a girl as plain and unassuming as Bella can find true love, but Bella's flaws fall mostly into the category of [[Informed Flaw]], {{spoiler|and are almost entirely removed at the end of the series.}} Not to mention, though Bella is intended to be plain and unassuming, nearly every man she runs into falls for her and Edward himself states that most of the boys in the school find her attractive. Clearly, not so plain. Bella's depiction on the film does not help, either... However, maybe the intended [[Aesop]] here was that if you hold off on sex until you get married and then {{spoiler|die in childbirth,}} you will become a saint and absolutely perfect in every way.

** There's also the issue that the Cullens value morality and human life and preach the aesop that it's wrong to kill humans...but every one of them except for Carlisle has killed humans at least once in their pasts. That's not to mention the fact that they let vampires that ''do'' eat humans visit their house, and even loan out cars so that they can get humans to eat more easily.

* ''Naked Empire'', eighth book of the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series spends a good chunk of time preaching that you have to work for things, and that knowledge doesn't just come to you when you need it. In the last pages of the book, Richard's dying of poison and the knowledge of how to make the antidote basically just shows up in his head. Another particularly obvious one is the repeated exhortation to live your own life and think for yourself - but if you don't think Richard is right you're wrong, probably evil, and are going to die.

* In ''[[Little Women|Little Men]]'', Nat is caught telling a lie, and this is treated as a very serious issue and resolved with a cruel and unusual punishment. The problem is, a much older boy was threatening to beat the crap out of him if he'd ran through the boy's veggie patch - which he'd done because he was being chased by another older boy - so Nat got scared and denied it. And ''neither of the other boys were punished or even given a talking-to'', leaving us with the message that lying to get out of a dangerous situation is not only wrong, but so much worse than threatening and bullying little kids who aren't able to defend themselves. Whoo, moralizing.

* Peter F. Hamilton's ''Night's Dawn Trilogy'' is most infamous for its Deus ex Machina ending, but the story (particularly the third book) also attempts to promote an anti-racism message, with the Possessed as a metaphor for victims of bigotry. Unfortunately, this message is sort of lost when the victims of oppression are body-snatching ghosts who use rape and torture to increase their numbers.

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' ''[[Young Jedi Knights]]'': [[Hot Amazon|Tenal Ka]] makes it a habit of relying as much as possible on her own physical abilities, relying on weapons or The Force only as a last resort (which kind of makes one wonder why the hell she wants to be a Jedi to begin with.) In the series' 4th book, "Lightsabers" emphasis is placed on her reminding herself of this while constructing her lightsaber, so she doesn't put enough care into constructing it. {{spoiler|resulting in her losing her arm in a lightsaber training accident}} Afterwards, she feels ashamed that she let her pride cloud her judgment. Good lesson. Except her actions afterward don't show ''any'' regret. If she regretted it, it'd make sense for her to make at least a few minor exceptions to her code of honor and realize that sometimes [[Combat Pragmatist|you have to be realistic when it comes battle]] and use those so called "[[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty|not as honorable tactics]]". Instead, what does she do afterwards? Not only in the same book but just several hours later? {{spoiler|Refuses to wear a synthetic arm replacement}}. Why? Because ''she think it's dishonorable.'' [[Aesop Amnesia|And the story clearly treats this as the right decision]]. Face? [[Face Palm|Meet palm]].

* The ''[[Sweet Valley High]]'' series (and its numerous spinoffs) basically ran on the power of [[Hypocrisy]]. If "bad" twin Jessica dated a different boy every night, she was blasted for being promiscuous, but if "good" twin Elizabeth cheated on her boyfriend, it was glossed over to the point where HE was apologizing to HER. If Jessica acted stuck-up, she was a heartless bitch, but if Elizabeth did the same thing, she must have a good reason for it. Additionally, Elizabeth would practically demand that HER friends be forgiven for their misdeeds and given a chance to redeem themselves. Needless to say, she had no such compassion for any of Jessica's friends—not until big brother Steve blasts her for this does she even realize how insensitive and hypocritical she's being. An even better, if not outright literal, example of this trope is the fact that Jessica never once learned her lesson. She'd try to pull a zany scheme which would fall apart and leave her with egg on her face, but by the next book, would be doing it all over again, despite everyone under the sun warning her about what happened the last time.

** With Jessica, the writers often seemed to confuse being mischievous with being a sociopath.

* The book ''Lady in Waiting'' states first that a single woman was encouraged to pursue a doctorate, and that the spirit-filled woman is interesting and has goals for herself. But later it says that seeking fulfillment through a career is wrong and that a single woman should only seek fulfillment in serving God in whatever way, method, location, and time God wants.

* There's a children's poem about a little girl whose father brags that men are better drivers and are "built with speed and strength". He ends up driving his car straight into a truck and the poem starts to make a gender equality Aesop...which then gets completely broken by having the little girl remark "men are built with speed and strength but hardly any brains" showing she's just as sexist as her father.

** One of the inventions Larry Niven puts into pretty much every science-fiction setting he writes is genetically-engineered tobacco that removes the harmful side effects of smoking.

 

** In short, the fears that many people have against vampires are legitimate, not just the result of ignorant prejudice. This is entirely deliberate on the part of both the show ''and'' the novels it's based on. Which makes the resulting Aesop... [[Jerkass Has a Point|maybe the bigots were right all along]]?

* An episode of ''[[Sex and the City]]'' had an Aesop about how you can't change a man. However, in this same episode, every male character who appears changes in some way.

* An episode of ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' has the Yellow Ranger (Who is Asian of course) being talked to about honor. Most notably, how she should fight monsters all on her own because it's honorable. Besides of all the other things wrong with this aesop, this episode was very closely placed to an episode about teamwork, which had literally the exact opposite aesop. And between the two, on a show where 5 super heroes usually beat up on one monster, the whole honor thing just doesn't make as much sense.

** The lesson in the ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force]]'' three-parter "Dark Wish" is supposed to be "don't take shortcuts, do the work you're supposed to", demonstrated by having the Rangers try to wish away the bad guys through the resident genie and having it backfire horribly. This is undermined by A) the Rangers have been encouraged all season to embrace their magical gifts, so "don't cheat with magic" rings hollow, B) the bad guys get the chance to use the genie themselves, and their wish to depower the Rangers is completely successful, and C) the Rangers' reward for learning not to use magic is ''even stronger magic'' that fuels their [[Super Mode]].

** In ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]]'', the Red Ranger stays behind to train on his day off while all the other Rangers go to an amusement park. His master says that in order to master his weapon, he needs balance in his life and should have more fun. The Ranger shrugs him off and eventually masters the weapon with more training, even after all these hints that in order to master his weapon, he needed to have more fun.

** In one "Message from the Power Rangers", a kid encounters Paul Schrier (the actor who plays Bulk) in a park, and is shocked to learn that even though he plays an arrogant, dimwitted bully on TV, in real life he's an [[Mean Character, Nice Actor|intelligent, good-hearted guy]] with a niece who adores him, and that Jason Narvy (who plays Skull) is actually his best friend. The message about the difference between reality and fantasy is perfectly valid...but the portrayal of the "real" Paul Schrier is fictionalized as well. While he ''is'' a very nice guy, he doesn't have any siblings in [[Real Life]]. The bit about him having a niece is completely made up.

* In an episode of [[The Equalizer]], eponymous character Robert McCall, whose client has been shot, delivers a blistering screed against private ownership of firearms. He's standing in his private arsenal at the time. (Satisfyingly, sidekick [[Deadpan Snarker|Mickey Kostmayer]] points this out.)

* In ''[[Glee]]'', near the end of Season 1, the show tried to promote a [[Gay Aesop]]. [[Big Man on Campus|Finn]] learns to his shock from his mother that they're moving in with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend happens to be the father of [[Camp Gay|Kurt]], who has a crush on Finn. The two have to room together, and Finn's homophobia causes tension between the two. Eventually at the end, Finn has to learn to respect others despite their differences. Sounds simple enough, but the way they go about achieving this aesop made it broken. Kurt, both in this episode and over the course of the season, '''had''' a blatant crush on Finn and the rooming situation was part of his plan to seduce Finn in hopes of him becoming his boyfriend. In other words, despite the aesop, Kurt never did respect Finn's boundaries.

** In the Christmas episode in season 3, the club is given the choice between volunteering at a homeless shelter for the holidays and filming a christmas special. They arrive near the end and We are clearly supposed to see it as a noble heartwarming moment which ignores the fact that They filmed the special anyway and arrived later. It wouldn't be as troubling but for the way the writers obviously want this to be seen as a selfless moment on Their part. The message comes across "Do the right thing but only if it doesn't cost You anything".

* One episode of ''[[Zoey 101]]'' involved Zoey and Logan starting a web segment that quickly became popular in school. However, the dean bans them from doing it, so they fight back and win, the moral being "censorship is bad". Which would be fine, except for the fact that the show was causing full-scale riots in the halls during school hours. That kind of response ''is'' a valid reason to ban something.

* ''[[Boston Public]]'' had an incident from a previous episode's Aesop altered to fit the Aesop of the current ep. An academically-overachieving girl suffers a stress-related panic attack meant to open Lauren Davis' eyes to the intense pressure she puts on her students with her [[Death Glare]], high standards and stern attitude. In the next episode, which is about students using performance-enhancing drugs, the hospitalized student is revealed to have been on a Ritalin-esque drug that caused her attack. Lauren still struggled with it in later storylines but the girl's speech to Lauren about how her students really see her falls flat. Furthermore, it's implied that the teacher's techniques ''work''.

* On ''Strong Medicine'', perennial [[Jerk Sue]] Lu Delgado is constantly ranting and raving about the evils of rich people and acting holier-than-thou because she isn't. However, she's horrified when her son's girlfriend (whom she's been incredibly nasty too, despite the girl being nice and polite) insinuates that Lu dislikes her for being ''white'' (Lu is Hispanic), and distressed that her son thinks she's racist. So, automatically disliking and judging people because of their race is wrong (which it is, of course), but automatically disliking and judging people because they have money is perfectly fine?

* On ''[[The West Wing]]'', the two-parter "24 Hours in America" ends with Donna eloquently scolding Toby and Josh for politicizing everything, telling them that, in all the time they were traveling from Indiana to D.C., no one brought up the Bartlet vs. Ritchie election except them. It's a nice speech, but it's not true: at several points along the way, when Toby or Josh merely mentions working for Bartlet, whoever they were talking to would immediately shoot back a surly, "Didn't vote for him the first time, don't plan to the second time."

* In the ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'' episode ''Here She Comes, Miss Amphipolis'' Xena has to go undercover in a beauty pageant, and finds that one of the other contestants has only entered because she wants to get a winter's supply of food for her village. At the end of the episode, (along with the other girls) she quits, stating that winning the competition isn't worth losing her pride and dignity. First of all, (according to her) she's already lost it, so she may as well have hung in there and gotten a winter's supply of food to go with it. Secondly, endangering the lives of hungry children over the winter isn't a particularly good reason to quit a competition for the sake of one's dignity. Thirdly, it doesn't seem to occur to her that she had her pride and dignity ''all along'' considering she only entered the pageant in the first place for the sake of others. For an episode that was meant to demonstrate that beauty pageant contestants aren't just pretty faces, they really missed the boat with this one.

 

== Music ==

** More to the point, "Born This Way" is a song about against bigotry... that uses racial slurs. "Orient" is for rugs, not people, and unless [[N-Word Privileges|you are Hispanic]], you shouldn't use the word "chola".

* [[Jennifer Lopez]]: Jenny from the Block. She wanted to convey humility and staying true to her roots; the music video clip did the exact opposite.

* The music video for Pink's "Stupid Girls" contradicts the song's message by associating stupidity with make-up, fashion and anything pink, and implying that playing football makes you smarter and a better person while playing with dolls makes you stupid. The song teaches girls that they should be smart, not physically strong and unfeminine.

* The [[So Bad It's Good|infamous]] Double Take song "Hot Problems" is about two girls "singing" that even though they're hot, they're still imperfect and have their fair share of struggles. At the very end, they laugh and say, "Just kidding; we're perfect!"

* "Escape" (The Pina Colada Song) ends with the guy rekindling his romance with his wife...by answering a personals ad, thinking he'd end up with a new girlfriend. So, it's OK to take out ads in the personals because your marriage is boring, because it just might show you what you had in front of you: a great spouse who was perfectly willing to cheat on you.

 

== Myth And Legends / Folklore ==

* There are countless legends (as well as other types of works) that feature the story of a young princess who is in love with a commoner but cannot marry him because he is not of noble blood. Different stories end differently, but in the majority of cases, this "commoner" will be revealed to have noble blood by the end of the story. The often spontaneous discovery that the commoner is a prince will [[Suddenly-Suitable Suitor|suddenly lift all boundaries]], put a satisfied smile on the king's previously-angry face, and be followed by the sound of wedding bells. In other words, while the intended Aesop is usually that "[[The Power of Love|true love conquers all]]", it is in fact social status that conquers all, and must be properly matched before true love can do its magic. Now, this may have been fine in the days when most societies on Earth had a strict class structure - even commoners held the misconception that the nobles were somehow innately more elevated than they were, and thus should look after their bloodlines. In today's world however, these stories continue to be told just the same, despite [[Unfortunate Implications]] that true love only works when social stature is compatible. In fact, it's not uncommon for ''new'' works to be written based on the old ones without the writer even realizing how misguided this is.

* The boy who cried wolf. Amazingly parodied [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SQKEf7UIs here.]

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

'''Dad:''' Another show extolling love and peace interrupted every seven minutes by commercials extolling greed and waste. I hate to think what you're learning from this.

'''Calvin:''' [[Shut UP, Hannibal|I'm learning I need my own TV so I can watch someplace else.]] }}

 

== Professional Wresting ==

* A little more understandable but still troublesome is [[John Cena]]'s current "Rise Above Hate" slogan. Of course, [[Kane (wrestling)|Kane]] is ''[[Enforced Trope|deliberately]]'' trying to get Cena to break this Aesop and "Embrace the Hate"...but if you examine the two characters of John Cena and Kane carefully, you'll see that a problem has existed there from the very beginning. After all, Cena is hardly brave for refusing to surrender to feelings of hate when he is world-famous, absurdly successful, fabulously wealthy, and is loved by at least a bare majority of the WWE Universe - and thus, has no reason in the world to experience hate. Conversely, is Kane really such a monster for being so full of hate when [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|he was nearly burned to death as a child, suffered years of psychological trauma that left him unable to speak for a long time, accidentally killed his high school sweetheart in a car crash, lost the unborn child he fathered and was betrayed by his wife, was tricked into causing the death of his father, and in general is loathed and ignored by the better part of the human race]]?

 

** Of course, the "Lazy Mouse" moral only becomes broken in more recent and softer-hearted retellings, where adults apparently decided that children wouldn't appreciate the point if the industrious party was "mean". In most of the original versions, the lazy party simply freezes to death.

 

** And then there's Angel: percussion genius, representation of unconditional love... and canine-killer-for-hire.

* ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'':

* ''[[Starlight Express]]'':

** Richard Stilgoe, the show's lyricist, knew full well that steam engines polluted the environment; he claimed that it was far easier for audiences to sympathize with a steam locomotive than a diesel or electric one, since steamers had more of a historical precedent. But the finale, according to him, is meant to symbolize the triumph of "old-fashioned craftsmanship" over new technology. Take a moment to consider why a steam locomotive is not a suitable representative of "old-fashioned craftsmanship."

* [[Molière]] often has stories involving young people in love, wanting to marry despite being rich/poor, or noble/commoner, and most time at least one has his parents planning an [[Arranged Marriage]] for him. Stories always end with the poor revealed to be actually rich, the commoner a noble. In ''Les Fourberies de Scapin'', he also makes ''2'' pairs of people revealed to be actually brother and sister. Remember Molière was playing for the king, so the twist endings can be interpreted of means to [[Get Crap Past the Radar]]: the whole story is about refusing the parental [[Arranged Marriage]], last five minutes have the parents agree with the true love marriage.

 

== Toys ==

* ''[[Bionicle]]'''s Vakama was ridiculed by his fellow heroes-in-the-making for his weird dreams and visions. He always misinterpreted them, seemingly leading his friends into danger, which lead to him going emo over his situation, calling himself a "cross-wired freak". Yet in a [[Tear Jerker]] scene, his former hero, the wise Turaga Lhikan persuaded him to have more confidence, both in himself and his visions, and after he followed his feelings, he ended up saving his people. The aesop was somewhat broken when he became so reckless that he almost undid all the good his team had done so far, and then some. However, when the story began following a [[Doing In the Wizard]]-path, trying to squeeze in as many "all your beliefs will be turned upside-down" plot-twists as possible, it became permanently broken, since we learned that these visions were nothing more than glitches in his artificial intelligence, and he really ''was'' a cross-wired freak, who "lucked out".

* Toy Biz (Parent company of [[Marvel Comics]]) has argued to the US Government that "[[X-Men]] are not human" for the purpose of escaping stupid tariff laws that make humanoid toys taxed more than non-human ones. For people living under a rock, the point of ''X-Men'' is to prove they are human.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Crusader of Centy]]'' has one of the most broken, spindled and mutilated Aesops in gaming history. It's mainly broken by the [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]. In expressing a message of tolerance and understanding, it attempts to convince the player that humans and monsters are [[Not So Different]], could easily get along if they tried, and that the only reason humans fight them is because [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]]. And because most monsters [[Everything Trying to Kill You|attack humans on sight]]. But the constant preaching of tolerance is always directed solely toward and against the humans, as if they were the only ones who did anything wrong. The hypocrisy arguably reaches its peak in the Heaven section, when [[God]] himself chastises you for "bringing bloodshed to this peaceful place" by defending yourself against a flying lizardman who [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere|came out of nowhere]] and attacked you for no reason. Even the Aesop it attempted is broken in the ending; rather than peace being established between humans and monsters, it is revealed that {{spoiler|monsters were all trapped on Earth from another world. After going back in time and killing the creature trapping them there, all the monsters leave before humanity is born and history is changed to make human society a peaceful near-[[Utopia]]. The real moral of this story seems to be "Segregation is the way to go, because minorities are the root of all evil, even though it's not technically their fault".}}

* In ''[[Chrono Cross]]'', the overarching moral of the story: that humanity should be able to create its own future, rather than be coddled and manipulated by higher forces. {{spoiler|FATE's only goal, in summation, was to protect humankind, although it believed [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]. This is painted as wrong, but come the end of the game, we learn that all of FATE's actions (and the actions of ''many millennia's worth of events during and preceding the game'') were all orchestrated by [[The Chessmaster|ONE MAN]] in order to save the universe. Sure, it all worked out in the end, but so much for manipulating destiny being a "bad" thing.}} The game is, however, ambiguous enough that whether or not said Chessmaster is [[Alternate Character Interpretation|meant to be sympathetic]] is open to interpretation.

* In ''Sudeki'' working together seems to be the moral of the story: the [[Big Bad]] exists purely because the resident God split himself in half. Therefore, it's odd that you get to use your full party for four notable story sessions and in only one boss fight, about a third of the way through the game. Generally your party is split in half, and oddly enough (and unfortunately enough. Tal and Elco don't have healing skills) it's men in one group, women in the other.

* In ''[[Star Ocean: The Last Hope]]'', the Aesop is apparently that you shouldn't help anyone or let anyone help you or you'll be helping the [[Exclusively Evil]] [[Big Bad|Grigori]]. Somehow. Of course, this is contradicted not only by the fact that you previously saved the universe by meddling in one planet's affairs, but also by the plot of ''every other game in the series.''

** Selvaria is a Broken Aesop in and of herself; the player is meant to sympathize with her because of her tragic plight, despite the fact that she's an unapologetic mass murderer. It's okay, though! Because [[A Million Is a Statistic|she only kills faceless Mooks that no one cares about]].

** Welkin makes a dramatic speech about how Squad 7 doesn't need to rely on {{spoiler|Alicia's}} Valkyria powers to win the day and beat the Marmotah, continuing the game's thematic Aesop of "teamwork always beats individual excellence", but the only way Squad 7 is able to even get onto the thing is after ''those exact powers'' have been used to blow a hole in its armor plating; before that happens, it's completely hopeless. We're also shown that the villains are strongly individualized and none of the generals work together or have any mutual bonds to each other, and that's why they can be beaten one at a time by a unified [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] like Squad 7. But Squad 7 has Alicia, who is [[Game Breaker|Mary-Sue levels of powerful]] even before {{spoiler|she gets her Valkyria powers}} and can complete several missions alone.

** While it is pay for DLC, they actually portray one of the Gallian commanders as a heartless bastard. Having him use a poison forbidden by their "Geneva convention" against his enemies, and after he loses the commander tells his higher ups that his squad had the poison used against them.

** Given something of a [[Shout Out]] in ''Fallout: New Vegas'' with finding a new Sheriff for the town of Primm. The two real choices are a slow, run-down Protectron and a former NCR soldier in jail for rage issues. If you make the robot the sheriff, he's basically just barely able to chase most criminals off (often after they've committed their crime), while the former soldier apparently occasionally kills people that in no way deserve it.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' catches considerable flak for its message of independence being constantly subverted, as your characters repeatedly do exactly what the bad guys tell them to do over and over again right up until the ending (at which point the predictably apocalyptic scenario that comes from the villains ''winning'' is stopped by what might be a literal [[Deus Ex Machina]]).

** Alternatively, it can easily be interpreted as ''hatred can be a powerful motivator and an excellent source of strength, if and only if you can control its energy effectively and use it in a positive manner.''

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank Future A Crack In Time]]'' gives the aesop that the past can't be changed, and you should take responsibility for your actions and move on instead. However, at several points in the game, you ''have'' to go back in time to try and fix things to progress, resulting in none of [[The End of the World as We Know It|the end of the space-time continuum as we know it]] problems you're warned would happen if you try it, making it a case of "You can't change the past, but only when [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] disallows it."

* The Dreamcast game ''Death Crimson OX'' puts a lengthy one in at the ending. {{spoiler|After defeating the final boss, it's spirit goes on a long rant about the evils of the gun and how we would all do better if we just got rid of the darned things. Did I forget to mention that this is a ''light-gun game''?}}

* ''[[Ultima Underworld]]'' has the Taper of Sacrifice, a candle and part of a set of virtue-themed artifacts. It teaches self-sacrifice, because a candle only brings light through its own destruction. And since the artifacts are necessary for the plot, it never burns down. In fact the player can leave it alight and never worry about light sources again.

** Controlling the Reapers is presented as an option, despite it being made abundantly clear throughout the entire game<ref>Literally right up until this option is presented, even.</ref> that controlling the Reapers is impossible, and will always, without exception, end in indoctrination.

** Synthesis is presented as the “final evolution of life”. It involves rewriting everyone’s DNA into a homogenized, organic/mechanical hybrid DNA. This is done without the galaxy’s consent, and completely disregards the omnipresent themes of Free Will, Diversity and the balance of Culture and Technology.

* ''[[The Wotch]]: Cheer''. The main character does not want to undo his/her and his/her friends' [[Gender Bender]] because he/she feels ''they now have no reason for being dicks''. Apart from the fact that they had none before either, her speaking about how they became good people after that is disturbing because a) it has a Ginormous [[Unfortunate Implication]] ([[The Unfair Sex|Man= Jerk, Woman = Good]]) b) he/she is making his/her decision ''for his/her friends too'', who don't remember who they were before and thus can't properly decide. In ''[[The Wotch]]'', it was suggested that the other friends had some recollection of their actions as boys and were very ashamed of it, to the point at which they described the "bullies" (their former selves) as "jerks of the lowest caliber". That was probably an [[Author's Saving Throw]] though, and still has the initial [[Unfortunate Implications]].

** This is actually remarkably common in [[Gender Bender]] fiction; guy is a dick to a woman, and is turned into a woman as "punishment" or to "learn how women feel". [[Rule of Sexy|For some reason]], they tend to end up staying as a woman forever. It's rarely explained how the new woman is supposed to survive with no prior records, no money, and thus no legal existence, nor are the psychological issues examined, though [http://fav.me/d2e36gj this story takes a run at it].

* The ''[[Achewood]]'' story arc where Philippe finally gets to live with his mom again ends with the moral that nothing lasts forever and everyone has to grow up sometime. But as readers have emphatically stated, Philippe will always be five!

* ''[[Sabrina Online]]'' had a series of strips in December 2010 which were a reference to the sequence in ''[[Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back]]'' where the two heroes go on the road and beat up everyone who ever criticized them on the Internet. It works in the film because it's entirely in-character. In the comic, however, it's a series of [[Take That]]s against the strip's critics. One notable strip involves Zig Zag, the viewpoint character for this sequence, beating up a guy who said mean things about her because he thinks he can say anything on the Internet without consequences. This isn't exactly true, but that's not the Broken Aesop. What's broken is the fact that Zig is the owner and star of her own porno company. You know, ''the industry that has historically relied on First Amendment rights to stay in business''? And the "consequences" bit doesn't work either, because legally, Zig Zag committed real-world, premeditated, first-degree assault against a guy who knows her name, her face, and could easily press charges. The implication in the comic is that she'll suffer no repercussions at all.

* In ''[[Ctrl+Alt+Del]]'', the comic makes it clear it's wrong to be a "console fanboy," in one strip even having God personally squash one. Fine. We'll buy that; a bit Anvilicious, but an adequate Aesop of its own. However, there are issues with this, since the the fanboys are always gamecube fans, the evil Gamer King in an early strip used a staff with a golden Gamecube controller on top (versus Ethan's Xbox one), Ethan playing a Gamecube is referred to as a "sin against the gaming gods," he mentions that turning the Gamecube into a robot would result into a girl robot, and doing the same to a Playstation would produce a gay one while the Xbox appears to be perfect and sinless.

** To sum up, Tim Buckley thinks the aesop is "It's wrong to wage the console wars... because XBox already won, ''''''HAIL MICROSOFT'''''! [[Memetic Mutation|Now bring me an underage girl to show my penis to.]]"

* Jade from ''[[Homestuck]]'' is introduced as being a [[Furry Fandom|furry]], but she is explicitly [[Doing It for the Art]] and her interest is never portrayed as a perverted fetish. The author stated that he did this to represent furries as being people, which sounds like a great idea...but Jade's interest in anthropomorphic animals is quickly dropped after her introduction and never brought up again ([[Irony|immediately after a panel where she explains why she would never give up on it]]), and if you took out all the references to Jade being a furry, the story would be exactly the same, other than the slight [[Continuity Nod]] when she creates a dog-girl version of herself, and later herself becomes a dog-girl. While Andrew ''was'' able to portray nonsexualised furries later with Nepeta, his first attempt comes across as little more than lip service to the concept.

** Additionally, the comic arguably portrays an unintentionally [[Justified Trope|justified]] example of [[Fantastic Racism]]. The trolls have different-coloured blood ranked on a spectrum; the closer your blood is to purple, the more power you have in society, while the closer it is to red, the less authority you hold, the rationale being that highbloods are superior due to the fact they're viewed as stronger. If memory serves, the author stated that he made the opposite ends of the spectrum so close to show how meaningless the whole thing was, and true to form, the audience is clearly intended to view the practice as wrong and side with the trolls opposed to it...except trolls do ''not'' differ only in blood colour, it is shown that highbloods are actually stronger, more psychically resilent, and longer-lived, albeit more violent (which [[Proud Warrior Race|the trolls]] would probably consider a ''good'' thing anyway) and having less powerful psychic abilities, than lowbloods. The highbloods are treated as being superior beings...because they ''are'' superior beings in several ways. If the Aesop was "it's wrong to treat people superior for being stronger alone", this might have worked, but the intended message seems to be "it's wrong to treat people as superior by the colour of their skin - er, blood", which backfires if having the right colour of blood gives you superhuman attributes. It's like saying it's racist to believe that [[Superman]] is stronger than an ordinary human.

"Everyone's a hero in their own way / You and you and ''mostly me'' and you" }}

* As seen on ''[[Superdickery.com]]'', [//www.superdickery.com/buckle-up-kids-then-go-play-in-traffic/ in this PSA] "The Kool-Aid man tells kids to buckle up, and then proceeds to walk right into the path of a moving car." And here's [//www.superdickery.com/war-on-drugs/ another one], about the War On Drugs:

'''kids''': But Cap, didn't you get your powers from [[Super Serum|drugs]]? }}

** No, because something that causes permanent physiological and genetic<ref>Various What-Ifs and Marvel Next have shown that Cap's superpowers are inheritable.</ref> change with one dose isn't a drug, its a mutagen.

* ''[[Family Guy]]'':

** One commonly-found Broken Aesop is parodied—that of the strong, empowered woman with an important job who's unfulfilled without a man. It features one such character meeting a man who says "In the next ninety minutes I'll show you that all your problems can be solved by my penis."

*** Generally, whenever Family Guy tries to say something about homosexuality, it comes off as [[Not That There's Anything Wrong with That]]. The writers insist to be pro gay rights, but every gay character is ridiculously stereotypical. Brian's cousin Jasper, a flaming, [[Camp Gay]] talking dog that wants to screw a guy who doesn't speak English and doesn't know what's going on, is not only the worst example, but comes from one of the worst episodes showing this. You see, Mayor West makes gay marriage illegal in Quahog, just about the time that Jasper wants to marry his boyfriend. So in the end, Brian ''takes the mayor hostage at gunpoint and forces him to overturn the law''. Surprising nobody, Brian faces no consequences for doing this, coming off as "It's perfectly OK for you to commit acts of terrorism, as long as it's to fix a law you think is wrong."

*** The thing there is, though, Mayor West put the ban into effect [[Sleazy Politician|only to distract the town from a personal scandal]], and would have gotten away with it if not for Brian. Not to say that two wrongs make a right, but West was more at fault here.

** Perhaps the worst example, once you think about it, would be "New Kidney in Town". In this episode Peter kidney fails and Brian offers to donate a kidney to Peter, except because [[Talking Animal|Brian is a dog]] it would kill him. This is supppose to show the bond between Peter and Brian when Brian offers to give his life for Peter. However, a missing kidney is not fatal, Peter would need to be on dialysis (not pleasant, but plenty do it IRL) but would otherwise live a normal enough life. It was implied Peter couldn't rely on dialysis because [[Too Dumb to Live|he kept do stupid things that would kill him without a kidney]]. So Peter would rather choose to allow his best friend to die for him then to stop doing recklessly stupid things for fun. So the Aesop goes from "sometimes you have to do make major sacrifices for someone you love" to "sometimes you need to make a [[Stupid Sacrifice]] for someone who has clearly proven he is too much of a selfish [[Jerkass]] to deserve it". If this wasn't bad enough, it's [[Fridge Logic|far worse if you know anything about kidney donations]]. Any of Peter's family, despite not being compatible, could have signed up to be part of a daisy chain where they agree to donate a kidney to someone else if Peter gets a kidney. This would have effectively gotten Peter a kidney almost as fast as Brian's own surgery could be arranged. Which means every single member of the main cast would rather let Brian die then donate their own kidney, which for them would be a safe procedure with essentially no long term side effects.

* ''[[Ben 10]]'':

** She is also guilty of a Broken Aesop in the opposite direction. The first season episode "Lucky Girl" revolves around her becoming a superhero based on a magical charm she finds. After losing it and finding out that the [[Big Bad]] of the episode possesses many similar charms to augment his magical power, she opts to destroy them rather than use them herself, justifying it as a decision to "just be me". Unfortunately, this Aesop is broken for two reasons. First, her stance on not relying on such power tends to be overshadowed when her cousin keeps using that Omnitrix thingy, especially since she benefits from it as much as everyone else. Second, what does she do in later episodes? She readopts the persona briefly after finding an even better charm. Then she learns that she is capable of using magic, and (with a few tools stolen from one villain) starts regularly using it herself. In fact, in the future-based episodes, she carries and uses '''the exact same charms that she destroyed in that first episode'''! It seems those powers ''are'' just too cool to pass up after all.

* A couple of episodes of ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'' ended with one of the girls' parents learning an aesop about how they should trust their children, right after the girls pull off a [[Zany Scheme]] to [[Masquerade|keep anyone from finding out the truth]].

** "The F-Word" is about the attempts of the kids to get the word "fag" to be allowed if it's not used as a hateful slur against gay people. This is heavily undermined by the fact that a few seasons previous, "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" ended with the Aesop that white people can't know what it's like to hear racial slurs even when they aren't used in a deliberately hateful context and should respect that.

** And "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" itself seems to contradict the Aesops of [[The Movie]] (people overreact over offensive language) and "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000" (offenses to racial minorities shouldn't be considered any worse than those done to white people). Its Aesop is also broken over the fact that Randy actually was ''not'' being racist; even the black cameraman thought the word on ''Wheel of Fortune'' was the N-word.

*** You may want to watch that episode one more time.. Them trying to make the environment a better place was akin to the idea of improving Mexico. The idea being that its not a realistic idea to just let all the time (Mexican) Immigrants come here but we could improve the future (Mexico) so that their time (place) would not suck so much. In the context of the show this was by improving the world around them, but it was not an environmentalist message, just that if you wanted to improve the world in the future it would include cleaning up the environment.

* Frequently, ''[[American Dad]]'' will deliberately break its own Aesops for the sake of humor. An example is in the episode "Threat Levels". Francine begins a career in real estate, and Stan becomes jealous when she starts earning more income than he does. Stan tries to sabotage her career, but by the end of the episode, he comes to understand that you shouldn't be jealous of your partner's success and that you should take pride in their triumphs. However, even after learning this, he still sabotages her career anyway.

* In ''[[An American Tail|An American Tail: Fievel Goes West]]'', Fievel learns that he can be a hero by being [[Just the Way You Are|just who he is]]. Tanya learns that she doesn't need make-up or fancy dresses because she's beautiful [[Just the Way You Are|just the way she is]]. Tiger, meanwhile, learns that in order to get his girlfriend to love him he has to act like a brave dog, something he absolutely ''isn't''.

** [[Completely Missing the Point|Uh, no.]] The reason ''why'' Tiger was trained to "act like a dog" wasn't because that was the only way to get his girlfriend to love him again (though, it did help. She just said she wanted someone brave like a dog), but rather because Wile E. Burp was getting old and he needed someone to train to be his Deputy Sheriff in case he was unable to participate in the fight. The Aesop for Tiger wasn't broken, because his Aesop was a completely different one from the others. IE: "One should learn to be brave and stand up for what is right."

* The movie ''[[The Adventures of the American Rabbit]]'' suffers from this big time. The [[Big Bad]]'s henchmen are a biker gang called The Jackals, who are..[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|jackals.]] Several times during the movie, characters mention that no one should assume all jackals are evil just because of the actions of a few bad apples. All well and good, except that there are no good jackals in the movie-everyone is a member of the biker gang and is working for the main villain.

* ''[[Redakai]]'' has several clumsy morals in it, one of which is their mishandled [[Green Aesop]]. In one episode, the heroes [[Designated Hero|Team Stax]] are trying to protect a large tree in the middle of a forest in a slightly arid land. One of them, Maya, does this by hurling a [[Kill It with Fire|huge fire tornado]] at the bad guys who are standing right next to the tree. She is then congratulated for taking the initiative in saving "nature". [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|"Save the forest, throw fire everywhere?"]]

** Another one seems to be "Attacking civilians and cheating are okay when you're the "[[Designated Hero|Good Guys]]" and nobody is looking".

** It's even worse because at the start of the episode Lion-O has the right idea of fleeing and living to fight another day rather than facing immediate defeat and certain death, while Tygra gives him endless grief about this. Later when Lion-O changes his mind they are (sure enough) almost wiped out. The lesson seems to be "Lion-O is always wrong. It doesn't matter why." This is by no means the only episode to do this.

* In ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', Vlad is treated as in the wrong for thinking of his imperfect clones of Danny as cannon fodder. However, Vlad is the only one to feel sad when {{spoiler|the unfinished perfect clone is killed}}

* One episode in ''[[Allen Gregory]]'' has Allen hold a play in school that is extremely racist to Hispanics, which naturally gets Allen booed off the stage until a Hispanic student gets on stage and explains why racist views presented are wrong, which gets the kid cheered. Allen is forced by his teacher, Gina, to go to the people and apologize for the racist remarks, but he is met with cheers and applause instead because they thought the Hispanic student's speech was a part of the act. Allen rolls with it and learns nothing from his actions, frustrating Gina.

** In ''The Secret Of My Excess'', Spike ends up growing larger and more powerful due to being greedy from getting so many gifts on his birthday. He returns to normal after remembering how he generously gave Rarity a rare gem that he found and decides giving is better than receiving. That's fine, until you remember that Zecora explained that hoarding things is ''normal'' for a dragon's growth. So...being greedy is bad, but not if you're a dragon, except if you happen to be Spike? Wait, what?

*** Given that we've never seen another dragon go full-on incoherent psychotic break like Spike did, even teenaged jerkass dragons like the ones in 'Dragon Quest', we can't really draw the conclusion that Spike's change in this episode was a ''normal'' part of the dragon growth curve. At best, he was having some kind of growth disorder that completely exaggerated a normal process.

** On "Hearts and Hooves Day", the Cutie Mark Cruisaders are show to be in the wrong when they use a love potion to ship Big Macintosh and Cherilee. In "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1", Princess Cadence was shown making two ponies that were breaking up love each other again in a flashback, with no implication about there being anything wrong with this.

*** In the very same scene Cadance explains her magic as working by 'reminding people of the feelings they had for each other', meaning that it cannot force love between two ponies where love does not already exist. And indeed, the main effect of her spell was to calm down two quarrelling ponies and remind them that they actually did love each other even if they were having a marital spat at the moment. The love toxin the CMC used, on the other hand, is explicitly described by its own recipe book as not only completely overriding free will but also having harmful side effects that drive the ponies under its influence completely insane with prolonged exposure. So no, the show's fairly good about showing the difference between magical couples counseling and magical date rape drug.

** How useless are they? Instead of scoping the area thoroughly for evidence, they just hunker down wherever Lance was hanging out and wait a few minutes. If the guy doesn't show up, the kid must have been lying! despite the fact that one of the racers is using gear that must have come off the black market and this kid says he saw a black market guy, he must be lying!

** Though the first big one of the series was in ''Pride of the Hero''. It starts with Artha's ego yet again getting over-inflated. Then we see Fan-Favorite [[Anti-Villain]] Moordryd suddenly stopping Wraith Dragons after what looked like a fight with his [[Big Bad]] father. While we admit it seems a bit abrupt for a [[Heel Face Turn]], at least Artha's getting called out for the fact that [[What the Hell, Hero?|the main reason he doesn't trust Moordryd is because he's jealous.]] In order to make a point, and possibly because he sense the good in him, Beau then lets Moordryd get on his back, shocking Artha into admitting that maybe there is good in Moordryd...only for Moordryd to whip out an [[Artifact of Doom]] and spill his whole evil plan.