Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Family-Unfriendly Aesops in Western Animation include:

King of the Hill

  • King of the Hill has a jarring Family Unfriendly Aesop in season 2's "Husky Bobby." Bobby becomes a male model for a husky boys' clothing store and loves it. Hank is horrified at his son's newfound hobby and wants to him quit so he wouldn't be humiliated. Hank and Bobby actually get into a argument right before Bobby takes the runway to a husky boy fashion show, with Bobby finally confronted his dad about him not being supportive to which Hank simply dismisses. In the end, Hank succeeds in pulling Bobby out the show... right before hooligans start pelting the husky boy male models with donuts. And Bobby thanks his father for pulling him out the show and keeping him from being embarrassed. The moral? "It's not worth doing what you like or being different if you're subject to humiliation." This is especially jarring considering all the difficulties Hank and Bobby have building a relationship and Hank's disapproval of almost all of Bobby's activities.
  • The episode where Bobby becomes the school mascot certainly applies. Basically, in the episode, Bobby becomes terrified and wishes to quit when he finds out that it's a tradition for the mascot to be beaten up by the other team. So, how do the other characters react? They verbally harass him and call him a coward, up to and including the teachers at his school. So the moral is "Tradition and commitment are more important than the physical and mental well-being of a child." The hell?
  • Another one that should have taught Hank religious tolerance: "Won't You Pimai Neighbor?" Hank, who continually says he's not a redneck, refuses to allow any religious freedom in his house when Bobby is thought to be the reincarnation of lama Sanglug, and tries to force the Buddhists to stop making him a religious figure. This is made all the more upsetting by the revelation that Bobby may actually have been the re-incarnation of the lama.
    • It was actually BOBBY who forced them to stop treating him as a religious figure, essentially by cheating on their final test. The senior monk clearly saw through it (and was even questioned on it by one of his subordinates who did as well) and simply passed it off with "It was my call, and I made it."
  • In "Business Is Picking Up," Bobby is late to sign up to job-shadow program, and ends up being left with the one local business person no other kid signed up to work with: a man named Peter Sterling (played by guest star Johnny Knoxville) who owns his own waste removal service, cleaning up dog droppings and similar. Hank is horrified when Bobby takes to the apparently very profitable work and even has plans to start his own business based around vomit removal that seems to have promise. He convinces Sterling to help dissuade Bobby because he doesn't have Sterling's charisma and might be ridiculed for it.
  • In yet another episode Bobby starts reading tarot cards and hanging around some people who did the same. Hank is horrified and tries to get Bobby to stop because he thinks people will laugh at him for having such an unusual interest. So the moral is "If other people disapprove of something you do, you MUST give it up no matter how much you enjoy it."
    • It also provides the family-unfriendly aesop of "If someone likes something unusual, it means they're freaky cultists that engage in creepy activities".
  • In one episode, Hank is upset that Bobby and his teammates leave the football team which has a blantantly abusive coach to join the soccer team. By the end of the episode, Bobby realizes how wimpy soccer is and says, "C'mon guys, let's play some football!" The only apparent moral is that football is better than soccer.
  • To be honest, somewhere between one and three quarters of all the Aesops shown in KotH fall somewhere between Broken, Family-Unfriendly and Spoof. In fact, a lot of the time that it would seem to be actually promoting something, it's laden with the subtext of "This is the way a well-meaning but somewhat ignorant person thinks." Thus perfectly in synch with the "everyday average person" schtick of the entire show...
  • As a counterpoint, most of the ones based on Hank can be chalked up to Values Dissonance. If you are a strongly Christian man, then your son converting to Buddhism and saying that he's a reincarnation of Buddha is as dangerous to his soul as playing with dynamite is to his body. Same goes for tarot cards.
  • In the series finale, Hank and Bobby finally bond when Bobby finds out he has a knack for testing meat for flaws to near perfection, despite it all, the only thing Hank openly felt proud about his son doing was something he thinks is perfection, the fact that Bobby enjoyed it is a sweet bonus footnote, but still doesn't mesh well with all the other stuff he shot down.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • The Giggle at the Ghosties song has An Aesop about how you're supposed to laugh at your fears... So if a scary looking guy comes up to you you should laugh at him.
    • More accurately, it was about laughing at the scary things kids see in the dark.
  • Later, Luna Eclipsed, for which Luna spent most of the episode trying to win over the population that was irrationally afraid of her, ends with her instead deciding to instead go along with it and be the pony who scares other ponies to entertain them. A lot of viewers compare this to the concept of a deformed character joining a freak show just to try to get more approval from society.
  • Even later, The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 has the moral of "Sometimes it turns out that you were right all along and the other guys were wrong." Which is entirely true, but also entirely atypical for for a kids' show.
    • The whole episode is somewhere between Broken aesop, Space Whale aesop and idiot plot since the only reason the Apple family could beat the Flim-Flam brother's machine was because they got help from another 5 ponies who worked to exhaustion, the machine would have eventually defeated them if there was no time limit, and the whole town was going to let a couple of strangers to take over the city's main food supply. Not to mention that the whole conflict could have been evaded if someone had the insane idea of negotiating a fair price for both sides.
  • The episode Dragon Quest has one at the end. At the end of the episode, Spike adopts a phoenix he names "Peewee" after refusing to smash the egg when Teenage Bully Dragons make him go on a raid. This is supposed to parallel how Spike was adopted as an egg and raised by something outside his species (IE: Ponies). One tiny little problem. No one knew who Spike's parents were and it's explicitly stated that they just found him as an egg implying his parents either died or abandoned him long before Princess Celestia found him an gave him to Twilight Sparkle. Spike, on the other hand, is well-aware who Peewee's parents are and knows where they live (IE: The Everfree Forest). Plus, he had plenty of time to go after the Phoenixes and return their egg to them. So, erm, kidnapping is fine as long as you intend to raise the child as your own?

Thomas the Tank Engine

  • In the episode "Daisy," the title character makes up a lie to get out of doing work, and gets away with it.
    • "Daisy" comes as a two-parter...in the first story, she gets away with lying, but then in the very next one she gets called out on her bullsh*t and warned that she can either shape up or ship out. "Escape" is technically kinda dodgy, morals-wise...but Oliver *was* going to be scrapped if he didn't escape.
    • In their backstory, the Scottish Twins had resorted to the same kind of trickery to keep themselves from being scrapped. "Escape" is more about the situation with Oliver pressing their Berserk Button trigger than actual mischief-making.
  • Many episodes also feature lessons like "It's okay to get revenge on somebody if they annoy you" like in "Percy and the Signal." And in the episode "Escape," Douglas basically steals another engine from a different railway by deliberately fooling a signalman, and nobody seems to question the morality of it, not even the Fat Controller.
    • Plus, given the "revenge on the annoying one" aesop used in "Percy and the Signal", it's pointed out toward the end that Percy thought the big engines were being silly on the subject of signals, quite possibly implying that Percy could somehow tell that they were teaching him a lesson the wrong way. Furthermore, though the same kind of aesop was used in the very first episode of the series, the US version of the episode more or less makes Gordon's motives for getting even with Thomas even less justifiable by having Thomas say "Maybe I don't have to tease Gordon to feel important", which may imply that he didn't even know that Gordon was trying to teach him a lesson and probably wasn't even listening when Gordon said "Now you know what hard work means, don't you?"
    • Older Thomas stories do require historical context. At the time the book was written, British Railways (Britain's rail system was nationalized in 1948) was having to scrap engines they couldn't use and move to lower-maintenance diesel locomotives. Sodor's main railway, the fictional North Western region of BR, maintained operating independence and continues to use steam traction. It would have been the work of a phone call to arrange for Oliver to be officially transferred to the region. British Railways was glad of circumstances like this. They didn't want to scrap so much of their massive steam engine fleet, it was a Shoot the Dog situation.
  • "Breakvan." The Scottish Twins confronted and then (accidentally) destroyed a piece of rolling stock that kept mouthing off. The other engines thanked them. The Breakvan really was a Jerkass, but the moral of this story appeared to be, if someone's bullying you, just beat the crap out of them!
  • "Calling All Engines": People will force you to cooperate with those who are different from you, just remember that they're evil and would kill you at the first chance they had.

Other works

  • SpongeBob SquarePants has the episode abrasive side, in which the aesop is that spongebob should just let himself be pushed around.
  • "Family unfriendly" aesops on The Simpsons are usually just parodical; and the aesops they actually mean are typically more family-friendly than the show itself; but over the long span of the show various episodes have had some rather controversial messages. Many of these are connected to the reputed liberal tone of the show, which yields messages that from time to time offend viewers of more conservative persuasions.
    • Played for laughs on one Treehouse of Horror segment of The Simpsons parodying ET the Extraterrestrial. When Bart befriends Kodos, he tries to defend his alien friend from government agents who think he's evil, oblivious to the fact that he actually wants to conquer Earth. In the end, as the heroes triumph over the alien and prepare to dissect him alive, they reflect that Kodos was just as evil as he looked, and conclude that sometimes it's perfectly fine to judge a book by its cover. As Homer points out, the inside cover of a book does tell you an awful lot about what it's about...
    • The moral of "Lisa the Drama Queen" came across as "The real world is supposed to suck, deal with it, and any form of escapism or fantasy is wrong".
      • Also, "Your grades are more important than your friend's mental health".
  • American Dad: S4 Ep 19 has Terry's dad coming to visit him, then discovering he's gay and disowning him. After the characters scramble to convince him to accept homosexuals, he basically says "I know it's not dangerous. I know it isn't something that can be changed. I just don't like it." The moral is, "Bigots will be bigots no matter what you say to them, and sometimes they're people you love."
  • Family Guy: one that just happens to be rather "politically incorrect," occurs in the recent, controversial "Down's Syndrome" episode, which is supposed to remind people that being disabled doesn't prevent you from being an arrogant sack of shit. While sadly true, it was far too Anvilicious and awkward to be even remotely effective. The constant "retards are funny" jokes probably didn't help.
    • The episode "Holy Crap" has Peter continually try to make his hard-working and religious father, Francis, accept him, even going so far as to have the Pope vouch for him. The moral is that Francis never will accept how Peter lives, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love Peter. After a moment's reflection, Peter realizes that's the same way he feels about Francis too.
    • The episode "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven" has the aesop "Discrimination against atheists is bad..." Okay, fair enough. "...and Christianity makes you a book-burning fundie!"
    • "Prick Up Your Ears" endorses pre-marital sex, asserts that vaginal sex is "just tops," pushes for schools to teach about contraceptives, and, most controversially, says that abstinence is "just wrong."
    • "Seahorse Seashell Party" ends with the aesop that it's okay to be an abused (mentally and physically), depressed sack of shit living with a horrible family and taking all the blame just because if you don't, they're going to rip each other apart.
  • Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars #2: in an early episode, a guy named Al Negator tries to get a job on the Righteous Indignation. As he's a shifty-looking reptile, the crew is generally suspicious. But Captain Bucky O'Hare hires him on anyway, making a big point of mentioning how he trusted the gunner Deadeye Duck, despite him being a pirate with somewhat questionable morals. So it looks like a "beauty is on the inside" or "different doesn't mean bad" kind of Aesop... until Al betrays them, steals classified info, and sabotages the ship, and it becomes "if they look evil, they are evil." On the other hand, Deadeye never did a Face Heel Turn, so Bucky was right about him...
    • This could also be an Aesop for Bucky about trusting his crew and taking the advice of subordinates seriously, which may or may not qualify as a case of The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
  • Children's cartoons in the Eighties such as The Get Along Gang instilled a message that children should always go along with what the rest of their circle of friends thinks; if they disagree, there's obviously something wrong with them. Years later, the creators of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon would bitch about how they had to constantly portray one of their characters as a whiner due to pressure from parents' groups. Arguably, the real lesson to be gained from The Get-Along Gang is "never associate yourself with a compulsive gambler."
    • The movie was one big anti-competition message, basically stating that it's not possible to engage in competition against your friends and that anyone you compete against must be your enemy.
  • One of the most ridiculous examples is the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "Wheeler's Ark": The Planeteers have developed a habit of picking up injured and endangered animals on their missions and bringing them back to Hope Island. Gaia, naturally, finally tells them this is impractical and orders them to take them all back. Fat chance — they just pick up more at every location, all while Wheeler tries to tell them this is bad idea. Instead of the others learning what could have been a perfectly valid Green Aesop about how you shouldn't take exotic species out of their natural habitat, Wheeler just learns "If you don't want to take a wild wolf pup home with you, you're a heartless jerk."
    • The episode "The Numbers Game" is perplexing already (Wheeler learns a lesson that he already knew, while his friends disagree with him and learn nothing), but even that aside, it's an episode about how it's wrong to have more than two kids. Aimed at little kids. Now, imagine watching that if you're the third child in your family...
  • Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! has the occasional moral that is a bit off. For example, the Aesop of The Grass is Always Plaider is supposed to be something akin to "there's no place like home," but plays out more like "places other than your hometown may seem interesting, but are actually boring once you get there."
    • In the episode "A Tale of Tails," the moral appears to be the standard "it's okay to be different" moral, right up until the end, in which the title character uses his "kooky" tail to prove himself better at all the games the other kids play, at which point they all change their minds and love him. This seems to change the message to "it's okay to be different if that difference gives you an advantage" or "if you're different you have to prove yourself better than everyone else to be accepted." Then the closing song changes the moral yet again, this time implying that if you're not different in some way, you're not cool at all. "Don't conform ever" isn't necessarily a bad aesop, but it is a little unusual.
  • Daria has a lot of these. Notable is the fifth season episode "Prize Fighters," in which Daria has to be interviewed in order to gain a scholarship. However, she learns the company offering the prize has a rather sexist and racist history, so she feels uncertain about dealing with these people. Furthermore, she doesn't want to obtain the money by acting in a false manner: acting friendly, attentive, and interesting. When she is finally interviewed, she behaves as she always does: honest, sarcastic, and clipped. One might expect her to win the scholarship based on an Aesop of being true to oneself and not putting on false pretenses. But no, the interviewer is shocked by her crass behaviour and she is refused the money after all. The real Aesop runs along the lines that in the real world, which is often unethical and imperfect, you cannot always expect to win out if you stick to your own principles.
    • The entire show had a basic principle of "Everyone sucks in their own way, and adulthood is not a cure for immaturity."
  • Bob the Builder had a scarecrow trickster as a main character, which is fine on its own, but he is always "forgiven" and never even has to say he's sorry. Not a great character for a show for young children.
  • The Thundercats episode "Pumm-Ra" ends with the arguably true but surprisingly cynical moral "If someone says they want to be your friend, you shouldn't automatically trust them." Especially if their name is only one letter different from your arch-enemy.
  • The 1934 Disney short film The Flying Mouse has a plot similar to The Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings above plus an extra dose of What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: the birds fly away from him (one baby bird who sticks around is quickly dragged off by its mother), his family runs terrified into their house and barricade it against him... only the creepy-looking bats call the bat-winged mouse "Brother" and he whimpers, "I'm not your brother!" (the insulted bats mock him with the song "You're Nothing But a Nothing")-- further, when he looks in a puddle, he sees his reflection change to that of a bat, causing him to try to pull the wings off, and telling the fairy who granted his wish that he wants to die!
  • The Critic has a hot actress (with an upcoming movie) crushing on Jay which he and the rest of the cast see as blatant pandering for a good review... at first. She ignores Jeremy (a Mel Gibson Expy) and seems to genuinely endear herself to everyone, steering the episode to being "Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover" while Jay procrastinates about seeing her movie. He finally does, realizes she's god-awful and puts his integrity as a critic above romance... and she immediately turns nasty. Ironically, if she put that much effort into her movies, she'd have more Oscars than Tom Hanks.
  • The Adventure Time episode "His Hero" applies. Finn and Jake are convinced to practice nonviolence by their hero Billy. After a while they realize that violence is necessary sometimes and use force to rescue an old lady that's in peril. They go back and explain that to Billy and we all learn a valuable lesson.
    • Also counts as a Spoof Aesop, since the actual lesson they learned was "Don't listen to old people." The old lady told them so.
    • In "Crystals Have Power", Finn gets hurt roughhousing and Jake is afraid to use violence, remembering his greatest failure when he knocked out his brother Jermaine and their dad congratulated him for it. After getting knocked out trying to save Finn with nonviolence, Jake's dad appears as a Spirit Advisor, saying Jermaine is fine and if Jake had let him finish talking that day, he said Jake would only hurt everyone who's bad. Jake promptly snaps out of it.
    • At the end of the genderbent episode, Fionna learns that she doesn't need a man to make her happy, unless that man is the Ice King.
    • In "Conquest of Cuteness", Finn and Jake teach the Cute King that he'd be better off manipulating others with his cuteness instead of making blatant threats ("Just be righteous about it.")
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: It's okay to steal, as long as it's from pirates. Lampshaded in the episode.
    • Avatar looked for awhile to be building up to a very Family Unfriendly Aesop: that sometimes, Violence Really Is the Answer. Aang spoke with all of his past lives and each one told him, indirectly, about how many lives they could have saved if they had "acted decisively," or how they were willing to do "anything" to save the lives of millions of people, and that as Avatar his duty was to put the well-being of the people of the world over his own path to enlightenment. But at the last minute the show pulled a deus-ex-machina out of the bag and allowed Aang to save the day without killing.
      • Which, to some, let to yet another one of these: Never take responsibility or make hard decisions; magical turtles will solve all your problems for you.
    • There is nothing wrong with scamming people as long as the scams don't draw too much attention to yourself.
  • The Inspector short "London Derierre" was written around the idea that British policemen are a bunch of idiotic fools for not carrying weapons and that real police officers carry guns at all times and use them whenever the opportunity presents itself. While you can make arguments for and against British police officers being unarmed, the way the cartoon depicts things rather undermines its own argument, because the Inspector opens fire at a burglar who has done nothing to directly threaten the Inspector himself, and does it in the middle of a crowded building. This has the effect of making the Inspector look like a trigger-happy maniac, even though he's the one we're supposed to sympathise with, while the obstructive British police officers come off like they're preventing the Inspector from hurting any innocent bystanders.
  • Hey Arnold! episodes featuring Helga's mom tend to teach that parents are sometimes idiots. This is not the kind of message that parents usually want their kids to be exposed to.
  • A Christmas special based on For Better or For Worse taught us that people will only appreciate what you do for them if they think you've died.
  • The Proud Family had a fairly standard episode where Penny got bullied, right up to the last minute. She eventually got the bullies to leave her alone by becoming their money manager and ends the episode happily waving her cut of the stolen money. "If you can't beat them, join them" is a fairly standard Aesop, but usually isn't applied to criminal behavior.
  • Though this probably wasn't intentional, the first episode of Justice League can fairly easily be seen as having a pro-nuclear weapons slant.
  • In an episode of Yogi Bear, Yogi and another bear begin fighting over Cindy, and she tells them that whoever brings her the best present gets to be with her. Yogi and the other bear proceed to steal not only food but TV's and radios, Yogi eventually wins by bringing her a freaking car. Ranger Smith finds out but see's he stole it for Cindy, and decides not to turn him in because "it's spring." So the moral? "Stealing is okay if it could get you laid."
    • Also, material possessions buy love.
  • In Winx Club, there's the Official Couple of Bloom and Sky. Sky has been courting Bloom for most of Season 1. But then, wait! Sky was already engaged to Princess Diaspro! Thus he would be cheating on both girls at the same time. But no one ever points this out as a bad thing. Kids, when you grow up and get a significant other, it's okay to cheat!
    • Not only that, but Bloom sneaks into Red Fountain and attacks Diaspro, believing her to be one of the Trix! While it's understandable that Bloom would be hurt, Diaspro didn't even have any idea that she existed! Because it's always the other person's fault if YOUR significant other cheats on you...
      • It gets worse in that after Bloom finds out the truth, she decides that she doesn't want to be a fairy anymore and leaves Alfea. Let me restate that: She decides to give up all her dreams just because she got her heart broken! Yeah, because your dreams are totally worth giving up over a broken heart. And when her friends attempt to talk her out of it, she barely even considers what they're saying. Really, Bloom? That's how you treat the people who have been your friends since day 1?!
    • Many fans also feel that Bloom calling Mike and Vanessa by their first names instead of "Dad" and "Mom" gave the message that adoptive parents will never replace biological ones, regardless of how much they love you.
  • Redakai seems to be showing up on several of these lists. While flinging fire around in a forest is more of a Broken Aesop in context, there are family unfriendly ones, as well. In one episode, both the good guys and bad guys are betrayed by a Paleontologist who is trying to get his hands on a resurrected Pterodactyl. In the end, the heroes catch up to him, then attach him to a rope tied to the pterodactyl so he is dragged through the air like someone being dragged by a truck while the heroes laugh. So..."Lynching is an acceptable form of retribution to someone who betrays you?"
  • Parents frequently bash Caillou for teaching that whining to get your way is good.
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episode "Ultron-5" begins with Ant-Man annoyed with his teammates' constantly fighting criminals in order to resolve conflicts. While he prepares for quitting the Avengers, he talks to his robot, Ultron, about how there must be "a better way" to reduce crime. What does Ultron do afterward? Since Ant-Man deemed humanity responsible for all the violence, Ultron decides to Kill All Humans to rid the world of fighting! Feeling responsible for nearly causing the extinction of everything, Ant-Man never seems to find a better way by the time the first season ends, which could leave some viewers wondering if violence really is the answer...
    • It probably doesn't help that Ant-Man decides to quit after his suggestions for the Avengers and the Serpent Society to talk things out instead results in the battle escalating, and the other heroes' blaming him for the Serpent Society ultimately fleeing the scene of the crime.
    • In the second season, The Wasp tries to urge Hank (Ant-Man only goes by his civilian name now.) not to give up trying to help the Avengers find a better way to resolve conflicts, though she might just do this because she doesn't want Hank's depression to interfere with their love.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas had the intended Aesop of "we all have our own talents, which we should be proud of." It can also, however, be fairly easily read as "never try anything new; you'll just fail miserably."
  • The Berenstain Bears series from the 1980s had one episode called "The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Mansion" which was about a old woman that Mama Bear knew as a cub just died (they never go out and say it because mentioning death on a kids' show was forbidden at the time) but lo and behold, she's leaving them inheritance! The catch? They must trudge through her old, dilapidated mansion in the middle of the night to claim it (did I mention there are frogs and owls and bats and spiders that now live there?). So they do that, and what is the inheritance? Is it a pile of money? Keys to a new car? An all-expenses-paid vacation? Actually... it's a note that says by making them do this, she's granting them the gift of courage. A normal person would curse the old bag out and leave, and probably order the mansion demolished the next day. But not here; the family is very happy with all this moral goodness. It seems like the moral here is "It's okay if you make people waste time and energy, get scared, and risk getting hurt all for a hypocritical display of virtue (did she plant it there?), or worse: "It's okay if someone is treating you like crap."
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