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Lost Aesop (view source)

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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider... The Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead. Well, our ship should be regenerated; we'd better get started."''|'''Eros''', ''[[Plan 9 From Outer Space (Film)|Plan 9 Fromfrom Outer Space]]''}}
 
In [[An Aesop]], the writer has a lesson to teach to the audience. In a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], the writer has a rather unconventional and possibly offensive message to give to the audience. In a [[Broken Aesop]], the writer is aiming for an Aesop without realizing (s)he's undermined that Aesop in the course of the story.
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== Anime & Manga ==
* In an example of how making an issue too complex can result in confusion, the second season of ''[[Kaleido Star]]'' couldn't decide whether ruthless competition was a ''good'' or a ''bad'' thing. Sora's non-confrontational manner and own self-doubts cost her her position as Kaleido Star, as she was usurped by the ambitious May and the icy Leon. Later, she decides to compete against the two of them to prove her worth, with the help of ex-Bad Boy now [[The Atoner]] Yuri Killian. At the Circus Festival itself, {{spoiler|however, Sora realizes that achieving her own dreams in the contest means crushing everyone else, and ends up throwing the competition away rather than winning such a polluted and underhanded event}}. Yet Layla berates her for her unwillingness to compete, May is ''genuinely'' hurt (to the point of ''tears'' and a borderline [[Heroic BSOD]]) when Sora openly refuses to compete with her as well, and their viewpoint is presented to the audience as correct...when just a short while ago, Sora's decision not to step on other people on her way to the top was seen as a noble sentiment. The series tapers off into [[Take a Third Option|the middle road of "competition]] ''[[Take a Third Option|does]]'' [[Take a Third Option|encourage everyone to do their best"]]... but it ''does'' leaves some of the implications the show itself raised unanswered (Is it all right to trample over people who are polite and gentle? Are merciless tactics acceptable in the pursuit of stardom? Is it noble or weak to try and avoid a fight? If a rival who poses a good challenge has his/her wish rejected, is it valid for him/her to be upset or not?).
* ''[[Chobits (Manga)|Chobits]]'' completely lost its Aesop as it navigated the issue of human-Persocom relationships. Hideki begins the series with the belief that Persocoms are machines, and a relationship with such an object is no substitute for human interaction. We meet Yumi, who suffers from an inferiority complex because she feels that she, as a human girl, can't compete with "perfect" persocoms. We also meet Minoru, who has built a persocom as a [[Replacement Goldfish|replacement]] for his dead older sister. This is presented as understandable...but unhealthy. So far, so good, since everything lines up with the original message. As the series progresses, however, Hideki falls in love with his own Persocom, Chi, and the "robots can't replace humans" sentiment goes flying out the window. At the end of the story, all the moral and social implications of a society that finds companionship in machines rather than other people are quickly swept under the carpet in favour of a rather rushed scenario where the message seems to be "it's okay to love an object, because the fact that you love it makes it worthy of love."
** [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|Aside from the fact that Chi is quite obviously more than just a mere "object",]] it could be that the ''real'' message is that it isn't healthy to live in your own personal echo chamber: i.e., '''what 90% of people on the internet do.''' [[Fridge Brilliance|Considering persocoms are basically sexy computers, criticizing internet circlejerks seems like a far more valid message.]] [[MST3K Mantra|Or maybe it's just a robot girl love story with no message at all.]]
** Sadly, the [[An Aesop|Aesop]] was completely lost in the [[Anime]]. But, in the end, [[Tropers/Eevee Lord|this Troper]] believed the moral was the question of if it was possible to {{spoiler|[[Robo Ship|love]] [[Robosexual|someone]] without the physical act of [[Can't Have Sex Ever|Sex]].}}. This is certainly something that comes up in [[Real Life]], with some couples having to make similar medically relevant choices in their relationships today.
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== Comics ==
* Because the Marvel ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' crossover was written by multiple authors, most of whom didn't agree with the direction Marvel was going, the moral behind the story seems to jump from book to book. It's okay to sacrifice liberty for security, especially when dealing with superpowered individuals -- except wait, no it's not. America means freedom and righteousness and all that is good -- wait, it means [[My Space]] and [[YouTube]]. Allowing the leaders to do their jobs is a perfectly legitimate course of action -- wait, you'll get drafted into a superpowered army and made a slave of the state. Iron Man is cool -- wait, he's a douche!
* ''[[JLA: Act of God (Comic Book)|JLA Act of God]]'' is confusing and written by only one writer. Is the moral of the story that powers leads to arrogance? You're only a real super hero if you don't have super powers? You should work inside the system? Other than "Batman is awesome," it's never really clearly told.
* ''[[Wild Cards the Hard Call]]'' seems to be making a statement on acceptance, beauty, and medical experimentation but what that statement is couldn't be more opaque.
* In "Countdown to Final Crisis" Trickster and Piper went on a Journy that was intended to lead to Trickster overcoming his Homophobia and learning a lesson, but the story deevoled to the point where Trickster received a bullet to the head due to attack unrelated to the intended moral, no lesson was ever apparent from this resolution.
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== Films -- Live Action ==
* As suggested at the top of the page, ''[[Plan 9 From Outer Space (Film)|Plan 9 Fromfrom Outer Space]]'' positively revels in this to the point where, while you're sure the creator intends for you to take home some kind of message, it's impossible to work out just what that message is supposed to be. The aliens come to Earth to stop humanity from blowing up the universe, but they do this by, well, animating corpses and having them kill a few people. About the time you think old [[Ed Wood (Creator)|Ed Wood]] expects you to side with the aliens (not destroying the universe seems good), their destruction by the humans is presented as a happy ending. It doesn't help that all the characters are as incompetent as their creator. In the end, the only real moral you can take home from this film is that there are some films best watched with friends so you can laugh at them. It's a pretty good moral, but probably not what Wood intended.
* ''[[Westworld]]'' is an odd case in that the Aesop is still ''present'' till the end, but isn't ever ''explained''. We're given that people are living out their fantasies by committing horrible deeds against robots, and that the robots are now killing them, but are we supposed to sympathize with the robots? Are we supposed to think they've gone too far? Are they just supposed to be [[The Scourge of God]], with no true thoughts of their own? And let's not get into [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|the Black Knight on his throne]].
** There are two or three aesops that might be plausible from ''Westworld'', one would be 'Don't let fantasy take over too much of your real life', or 'Even if you're living out evil or bad deeds in fantasy, it's still wrong.' Or it would be just as plausible to read the aesop as 'make sure your machines are properly designed and maintained and that you _understand how they work_.'
* ''[[Terminator]]'': not any individual entry in the series but the franchise as a whole jumps between [[Screw Destiny]] and [[You Can't Fight Fate]] with regard to whether or not the heroes can stop Skynet from being built and initiating [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|Judgment Day]] in which it kills off most of the human race. The first film has Skynet create a [[Stable Time Loop]] when Cyberdine uses a recovered piece of the Terminator it sent back [[You Already Changed the Past|to build what will become Skynet]]. The second film [[Screw Destiny|cancels this out]], as the heroes have become [[Genre Savvy]] about the [[Stable Time Loop]] and do everything they can to destroy all Terminator/Skynet technology that could be used to build Skynet. The 3rd film <ref>and the beginning of the post-Cameron canon that was intended to end with Terminator 2</ref> has Skynet activate and start Judgement Day later than originally fated but [[You Can't Fight Fate|the message is it will still happen nonetheless]]. ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' fleshes it out even further, showing Skynet using [[Time Travel]] to [[Tricked-Out Time|help create itself in the present day]] and sowing the seeds for Judgment Day to ensure that no matter how many alternate realities/futures are created by the heroes changing things in the present, Skynet is still the [[Big Bad]].
* ''[[The Invention of Lying]]'': A world without lying is a sad place where everyone everyone is bluntly cruel and shallow. In a world ''with'' lying, however, religion becomes the opiate of the masses, tricking people into feeling good about life, but it's all a sham. So are religion and lying good or bad for us?
** Perhaps that there's a time when lying is the better option, but that we should also value the truth, and know when to stop a lie before it goes to far? [[MST3K Mantra|Or maybe we're all just reading too far into it.]]
* Deliberately invoked in ''[[X-Men (Filmfilm)|X-Men: The Last Stand]]'': Is the mutant cure right or wrong, and is it ok to use the cure on [[Person of Mass Destruction|dangerous mutants]] against their will? The X-Men can't agree on whether the cure is just a matter of personal preference that should at least be an option for mutants [[Blessed Withwith Suck|who can't live a normal life otherwise]] or [[Person of Mass Destruction|have powers that are hazardous to others]], or if these justified applications are only the first step as a tool for the government to suppress mutants everywhere. The message is especially muddled when you consider that the series has frequently drawn parallels between discrimination against mutants and discrimination against real minorities such as Jews and homosexuals. Yet Storm, the mutant who insists the loudest that they (as in ''all mutants'') don't need to be "cured" because there's "nothing wrong with them" has neither the [[Power Incontinence]] nor the inhumanly freakish appearance (which Beast even calls her out on) that prevents other mutants from living a comfortable existence among non-mutant humans. In the end, there is no simple answer {{spoiler|Magneto getting depowered is played as good, removing his powers without killing him. However, it is played as a tragedy for Rogue.}}
** The latter is [[Your Mileage May Vary|extremely debateable]]: It's more of a tragedy for {{spoiler|Rogue}} ''[[Adaptation Decay|fans]]'' than {{spoiler|Rogue herself: Although Bobby seems disappointed with her choice, she basically holds her head up and says "I did what was right for me and I'm not going to apologise."}} [[Word of God|Brett Ratner]] indicated the intention was to contrast with Angel refusing the cure earlier in the movie, showing it should be down to the individual and both choices were equally valid. Perhaps likening it more to the abortion debate than ethnic prejudice makes more sense in this case (should it be illegal? should it be left as an individual's choice? should there always be a legal exception for dangerous/medical cases?). Still plenty of [[Unfortunate Implications]] abound and no clear stance is taken in the film
* The movie ''[[Showgirls]]'' seems to be trying to prove ''something'' but neither the viewers or the movie itself seem to grasp just what that message is. At first it may seem like it's trying to say that a person should never compromise their morals, where Nomi is shown refusing to put ice cubes on her breasts to make her nipples stand up and refuses to do something that's implied to be prostitution.... But this would only work if the character were a legitimate [[Hooker Withwith a Heart of Gold|Stripper With A Heart Of Gold]], in that stripping was the worst thing she did. She had no problems pushing the lead dancer down the stairs to injure her, sleeping with her boss to get higher in the position to be said dancer's understudy. She seemed to be very happy with the idea of doing ''extremely'' graphic things on the stage of the old strip club. So "don't compromise your morals" can't work because the character's morals are borderline psychotic. Her interactions with other characters seem to indicate that the message is something about how Nomi really ''is'' a bad person at heart, that Cristal was right and Nomi really was a whore, who while at first denied it, began to accept it willingly or not. But then every other character in the entire movie acts as if Nomi is an absolute saint, no matter what she does. Even the girl she pushed down the stairs calls her a whore as if it were a compliment.
* ''[[Limitless]]'' for awhile seems to aim at a moral of "You don't need drugs to improve your life and if you do it'll collapse", the protagonist's girlfriend refusing to continue using the drug and evidence of people collapsing and dying who use it if they can't continue the addition and obvious side effects seem to work that way. But in the end the protagonist ends up just subverting this and develops a way to keep getting a source of the drug and his life is all the better for it. The real message one seems to take is [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|you can manipulate people to your own means and completely get away with it if you do it right.]]
* ''[[Fly By Night]]'' is a film that doesn't know whether to praise hip-hop or condemn it. It tends to flip flop when it comes to criticizing [[Hardcore Hip Hop]], but it also seem to chastise [[Conscious Hip Hop]], and [[Political Rap]] as well.
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** That last was said jokingly. Also, put all together... well, one person who seemed trustworthy wasn't, and one who seemed untrustworthy was. So... don't be paranoid but do keep your wits about you. The person who repeatedly tried to blow you up probably didn't get over it in one day, but with any given human it could go either way.
* The [[Doctor Who]] serial "The Rebel Flesh" really feels like it should have a moral. Good look figuring out what it is, though; [[Fantastic Racism|bigotry prevents peace]]? [[Broken Aesop|You shouldn't kill non-humans unless you're the Doctor?]] [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|You're dispensible if there's an identical copy of you around?]] [[Unfortunate Implications|Don't worry about being different because there's a cure for everything?]]
* The ''[[Star Trek: theThe Original Series]]'' episode "Obsession" is a monster-hunt story that revolves, for the most part, around Kirk's titular obsession with the monster. When the creature first attacked him and the ship he was serving on, 11 years earlier, he hesitated to fire at it and the creature killed half the ship's crew. In the episode itself, a young security officer on the Enterprise also hesitates when faced with the same creature, and the creature ends up killing several men. Both Kirk and the young officer blame themselves for their crew-mates' deaths, and there is plenty of angst over the matter. How is this solved? Turns out that the creature is immune to phasers, and neither of the two men could've stopped it when they had the chance. The Aesop that was being set up is that "humans hesitate by nature, sometimes it can't be helped, and you can't spend your life blaming yourself for it". This is even outright explained by Spock. However it ends up being something like "failure is sometimes okay in hindsight" - which is no Aesop at all. Needless to say, once the creature is revealed to be nigh-invulnerable, the episode proceeds with the monster-hunt and never touches on any of the above in any way.
 
 
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Bob and George]]'': ''[[Mega Man (Videovideo Gamegame)|Mega Man]]'' [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/000428c starts out warning against violence], [[Hypocritical Humor|lapses into firing at Roll]], and [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/000429c ends up warning against ice cream].
 
 
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode "Blood Feud" deliberately invoked a [[Lost Aesop]], when the family considered various morals to the story, and then realised that no, something happened that didn't fit, before eventually concluding "It was just a bunch of stuff that happened."
** Another ''Simpsons'' episode with a [[Lost Aesop]] can be the 10th season episode "Lisa Gets an 'A'". This episode was about Lisa getting sick from having Homer shove her into a supermarket's ice cream freezer a little too long. Marge makes her stay home from school and she does so with Marge's advice that she forget about trying to learn and play some of Bart's video games. Lisa does so playing a ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'' spoof to the point she is hooked. In the process she gets a homework reading assignment: her class started reading ''[[The Wind in Thethe Willows]]''. She spends the duration of her sick leave playing the game. When she goes back to the class, she had not read the book and her class is now being tested on it. Finally with some urging from Bart and Nelson Muntz, Lisa takes a cheat sheet and attains a very high grade. Later Principal Skinner calls her to the office to discuss the test: her lone test grade brought the entire school's GPA up to its minimum standard and the school now qualifies for a grant. Even after Lisa deliberately confesses to having cheated, Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers try to have her stay quiet long enough so the school can get the grant money, feeling it would do a lot of good for the school. In the end Lisa fixes her grade in the privacy of her own home, while the school staff gets the grant money and they cash it at a liquor store. What... exactly is the message of this episode? [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|It's okay to cheat as long as it helps?]] No, that's not right. Could it be "[[Space Whale Aesop|Don't worry about your grades Lisa, you're surrounded by idiots]]"? No, measuring intelligence on nothing but academic achievements is rather asinine. Maybe it's [[Captain Obvious Aesop|Do your homework and don't abuse your sick leave?]] Eh, too blatant. Maybe it's... you know what, forget it. I'll just say the message truly lies in the subplot with Homer and his pet lobster Pinchy: If you adopt a lobster as a pet, don't give it a hot bath for too long or you'll accidentally cook it. There, satisfied.
** Yet another example in ''Itchy and Scratchy The Movie'':
{{quote| '''Homer''': You know, when I was a boy I really wanted a catcher's mitt, but my dad wouldn't get it for me. So I held my breath until I passed out and banged my head on the coffee table. The doctor thought I might have brain damage.<br />
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* The fourteenth episode of ''[[Star Wars]]'' ''[[The Clone Wars]]'' seemed to be all over the place with its moral. Half the time, the moral seems to be that it is wrong to try and force pacifists into a war, but the other half of the time, it seems to be saying [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|pacifists are cowardly pussies and if war comes your way, you should pick a side, like it or not.]]
** The episode really had two protagonist groups who each learned a different lesson ("Don't drag other people into your problems" for the Jedi and "Once you've been dragged you into a problem, ignoring it won't make it go away" for the pacifists). It's a problem shared by most non-propaganda war stories where the good guys need to look like heroes without glorifying war: ultimately, the moral comes down to "Fighting is bad; losing is worse."
* The ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'' episode "Walk on the Wild Side" seems to start out with a "girl power" message, as the female mutants form a crime-fighting team after they get fed up of not being apreciated after Scott's [[Chronic Hero Syndrome]] causes him to act like a shining knight and unthinkingly ruins the Aesop Jean was trying to teach Amara. Towards the ending, Cyclops and Nightcrawler decide to spy on the girls as they track down and confront a gang. The girls finally call it quits when a female police officer tells them that what they're doing is wrong... But after they leave, the policewoman turns out to be Mystique in disguise.
* A ''[[The Weekenders (Animation)|The Weekenders]]'' episode opens with Tish distraught that her report card has a negative comment about her being too much of a perfectionist. Later, the other guys ask her to paint a seaweed statue for an auction. She paints the statue, saying, "It's not perfect, but it's good enough..." but then she decides that a different kind of seaweed would work better for the statue, and she ends up returning the statue unpainted because she didn't have time to paint the rebuilt statue. After the auction, Tish is disappointed at her perfectionism streak screwing up the job... and then one of the teachers buys up the statue. The ep ends with her [[Medium Awareness|straightening up the shot]] before the usual "Later days!" So... is perfectionism supposed to be good or not?
** It could be taken as saying not to get too hung up on being perfect, because the finished product is still good. That would be a better message to send than just "don't try too hard to be perfect", I think, because some perfectionists try so hard because they think they'll outright fail otherwise. If Tish's statue hadn't sold, it would have confirmed that not being perfect made it a failure, but as it is, it shows that Tish still succeeded while managing to let it go.
* ''[[Recess]]'' had quite a few of these in its time:
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* In ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Stew-Roids", the [[Alpha Bitch]] Connie D'Amico starts dating Chris as part of a [[Pygmalion Plot]] bet, but when he treats her kindly and with respect she abandons the bet and starts dating him for real. Chris gets spillover popularity from dating Connie, which results in his [[Acquired Situational Narcissism|becoming an asshole]] and breaking her heart. Rather exploring this idea (that pretty people aren't always jerks and that popularity can go to anyone's head), the rest of the plot focuses on Connie trying to win back her popularity purely for comedic purposes.
** There are way too many other episodes of ''[[Family Guy]]'' with Lost Aesops to list here.
* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', it's part of the premise that each story has an aesop stated outright at the end. The writers can usually handle this pretty well, even though the episodes can be about anything, but they can't all be gems. Sometimes, perhaps, the story would work better without the obligatory aesop, and it shows. ("Lesson Zero" even has a plot revolving around Twilight Sparkle going crazy over not having found any aesop to report to her mentor like she's supposed to.)
** In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", [[The Smart Guy|Twilight Sparkle]] is repeatedly skeptical and repeatedly surprised at correlations between [[Cloudcuckoolander|Pinkie Pie's]] physiology and imminent future events; depending on the series of nerve sensations and muscle spasms, seemingly unconnected events can be predicted. Twilight defaults to being an [[Agent Scully]] for most of the episode (although, it should be said, she does at one point try and fail to get the kind of data on the phenomenon that she could handle), until at the end she's forced to accept the phenomenon she's actually been seeing all the time with her own eyes "on faith". The point is actually stated as being that you can accept some things even if you don't understand them, but Twilight wasn't even ''trying'' to understand anything for most of the time, just to deny it.<br /><br />After people noted the apparent [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]] that science can't explain everything and therefore you should believe in some paranormal things or something similar, [[Word of God]] admitted that the aesop had got lost along the way. Then again, the comment by [[Lauren Faust]] about what it was really supposed to be about still sounded like a lost aesop, not really making the matter much clearer. Perhaps more to the point was the mention that it was supposed to be a funny episode about the characters' personalities interacting.
** "Over a Barrel" is about a conflict between settler ponies and Native American themed buffalo. The historical treatment of Native Americans certainly can't be discussed in it, so the conflict is one of misunderstanding and conflict of interest between equally powerful parties. But really it just seems like an excuse to put the ponies in a [[Wild West]] setting for some reason. Pinkie Pie tries to solve the situation by singing an extremely naïve song about how "You gotta share, you gotta care" that only escalates the conflict. However, the parties are actually quite willing to compromise as soon as they figure out how. The conflict is solved mainly because it wasn't that bad to begin with. The official aesop at the end, then, is pretty vacuous, and ends with "You've got to share; you've got to care." (Pinkie Pie: "Hey! That's what I said!") If that wasn't a stealth [[Spoof Aesop]], it's kind of confusing; is it good to assume everyone can just be nice and get along, or not?
* In the end of the first ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' story arc, Jack abandoned the Autobots for a normal life, only to then rejoin as they battle Decepticons, which he does little to nothing to really help due to the fact he can't. Then Arcee gets injured and Jack stays because she was his first bike. Not really clear if their was an aesop, but it feels like there was one somewhere. Maybe its 'don't leave your friends?' No, 'You can't abandon your calling?' No, How about 'Being pals with Optimus Prime and a bunch of Robots is cool.' Yeah, I'll take that, but that's the aesop of every Transformer episode, hell, that's just what we figure out for ourselves when we watch it.
* ''[[Adventure Time (Animation)|Adventure Time]]'' is full of these; intentionally, as often as not, especially one episode where Jake explicitly declares that there was a lesson to be learned and he avoided it.
* ''[[Wizards]]'' is often assumed to have [[An Aesop]] that technology is bad, even though the good guys have no problem using it (namely, guns). [[Ralph Bakshi]] has actually had to state that it's about propaganda.
 
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