Shown Their Work/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Avatar: The Last Airbender often does this in regards to the Asian culture behind the show, most prominently with the martial arts from which the Bending arts are derived. The staff actively took lessons in the various arts in order to get a better feel.
    • Also all the Asian script in the series actually says what the characters read. An expert in ancient Chinese calligraphy was part of the staff.
    • Also, the various bending arts are inspired to actual martial arts: Waterbending is Yang Style Tai Chi Ch'uan, Earthbending is Hung Gar (Toph's style, being self-created, is a different art, Southern Praying Mantis), Firebending is Northern Shaolin (with the ancient Dancing Dragon form being based on the Dragon Dance technique of Northern Shaolin), and Airbending is Baguazhang with a hint of Hsing Yi.
    • There's a tumblr devoted to pointing out the ludicrous level of loving detail the show's creators and animators put into even background things. The architecture, the furnishings, the art, the meanings of names, clothing, hairstyles, foods... The night sky in "The Waterbending Master" matches the star map from "The Desert". It's astonishing.
  • Transformers Animated has won over many of its detractors not only with a well-written plot and episodes, but also through lots of shout outs, small and large, That show that the writing and animation teams do in fact know and care a lot about the series' that came before.
  • Kung Fu Panda was so well praised in China for getting their culture so dead on in a great movie that the Chinese government set up meetings that essentially asked "Why can't we make an animated film about China that good??"
    • In fact, one of their lead animators was a martial arts expert and eventually all the animators actually took kung fu courses to help them better draw the moves of the various characters and stay true (for the most part) to the different styles. Other research shows in the authentic Chinese landscape, art, and architecture.
    • For even more evidence of this, Exhibit A: The Art of Kung Fu Panda. You'll be blown away by the extreme attention to detail in absolutely everything. There's the landscape (example: the visual team looked to the works of traditional Chinese paintings for inspiration, and when designing the sugarloaf mountains in the Valley of Peace, they made sure to choose the right number of peaks to represent both openness and security, as well as emphasize mist because of the Chinese concept of beauty in emptiness). Then there's the architecture of the Jade Palace, where the roofs are not only properly designed to allow maximum light in any season and for rainwater runoff, but there are even dougongs, or interlocking wooden brackets, tucked up under the eaves that the audience will never even see. And there's the character designs, such as Tigress's stripes being incorporated into her costume, Mantis having a real Chinese robe design put on his carapace, and Viper's coils being tattooed with Chinese poetry. For added fun, listen to the directors' commentary where they wax eloquent on the color theory and symbolism of different parts of the film. All in all, it does seem to be crossing over into Doing It for the Art territory.
  • Freakazoid!'s "villain" Fanboy once drove the eponymous hero nuts with gobs of detailed information about Disney movies.
  • It's minor and the Critical Research Failure of the rest of the movie cancels it out, but in Pocahontas, the animators added the detail of using the Union Jack that was the English standard from 1606-1800: the modern one, but without the red stripe on the cross of St. Andrew. For those who don't know, the Saltire (St. Andrew's Cross) with the red St. George's Cross superimposed represent the union of Scotland and England. The second red cross added later represents Ireland (now just Northern Ireland).
  • Another small Disney moment: apparently, the animators watched chefs preparing food at a local Benihana to properly animate Long John Silver preparing food in a short animation in Treasure Planet. Disney may not always do perfect research, but when they do, they do it right.
  • The commentary for Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas claims a lot of this. From the rigging on the ships to the design of the lock and dam system, a lot of details were taken into consideration.
  • In Turtles Forever, several details about the continuities are thrown in. Such as the fact Mirage Leonardo's dialogue is peppered with actual dialog used in the first issue. There are a few other noteworthy examples, such as that thing that sniffed out the Turtles lair actually is from the old show, most of the other continuities also get a Shout-Out, in the form of [[spoiler:a hologram made by the Technodrome, showing almost every continuity, (yes, even the OVA's) with notable omissions being Ninja Turtles the Next Mutation due to Laird's issues with it and the various video games, as well as that, Tokka and Rahzar also make an appearance for a few seconds. While the 1987 Turtles personalities were exaggerated, though, the Mutagen's effects are still quite accurate, with a fly mutating to Hun turning into, as he calls "Mutant Turtle FILTH!"
  • One scene in Titan A.E. shows that the producers did their research on vacuum exposure.
  • The Wild Thornberrys is actually a very insightfull series that puts great detail into describing the behaviors and facts of animals (female lions do most of the hunting, elephants can communicate through infrasonic rumbles, komodo dragons use their tongues to smell, basengi dogs cannot bark and are used by the tribal Pygmies of Africa to hunt more stealthly, emus are hunted by wedged tailed eagles, hippos have to keep themselves submerged in water during the day because they have no sweat glands and are also the most dangerous animals in Africa and not the cute, lazy bums as Eliza's friend, Shane, erroneously thought).
    • Not only did the show go out of its way to teach kids facts about animals, it also attempted to accurately depict the various peoples and cultures the family encountered around the world, such as the !Kung and Maasai of Africa in the episode "The !Kung and I" and the Incas of Peru in the episode "Nigel Knows Best". In one episode, Marianne and Debbie are puzzled to find the coastal town of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam deserted and shops closed. After a weary day of walking aimlessly around the town, three total strangers invite them into their house in the middle of night and are given flowers, food and gifts, to their confusion. In the end, it's revealed that it was a lunar new year called the Honor of Tet (or Tết Nguyên Đán) where all first visitors after ten get food and gifts in hope that they bring the family good luck for the rest of the year.
    • Hell, they even put historical geography right in the freakin opening credits by pointing exactly where the family is on Earth right down to the local counties!
  • The Penguins of Madagascar actually delved into this a lot, usually brought up by Kowalski, the most intelligent penguin of the group and the most analytical. In one episode, a raccoon scares the usually fearless penguins into running away when he shouts "leopard seal!". Assuming they are adelie penguins, they are a common source of food to Leopard seals in the Antarctic. Another episode had the penguins betting against King Julien and his lackeys in a game of catch the flag, and fail every time. They finally get the upper hand when they realize the lemurs can move so quickly because lemurs travel by the tree-tops, rather than on land.
    • One monkey on the show uses sign language. The staff has consulted with sign-language experts to make sure that each sign and facial expression is accurate.
  • All Grown Up!, "Runaround Susie": Part of the plot, Susie participating in a language competition seems to be begging for As Long as It Sounds Foreign. To be fair, some of the words we hear do sound like such. But the overwhelming majority of them are correct.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog has one episode where Murial suddenly de-ages into a 3-and-a-half-year-old girl from being sucked into a tornado. Courage's snarky computer tells him that the only way to turn her back to her original age was by throwing her into a tornado spinning in reverse. When courage asks if tornadoes do spin in reverse, the computer replies, "only in the Southern Hemisphere, you twit." While the de-aging powers of tornadoes is total fiction, the fact that tornadoes in the North and South Hemisphere spin in opposite directions (counterclockwise and clockwise, respectively) is generally true.
  • Somewhat surprisingly, South Park. For example, the episode "Le Petit Tourette" actually goes out of its way to point out excessive cursing is only one possible symptom of the disorder and shows characters with other tics. Episodes addressing controversial issues like politics and religion are also generally well-researched, as are their numerous parodies. Though of course, Rule of Funny can cancel anything out.
  • Say what you will about the old Mega Man TV show, they did a fairly good job at researching the games; most of the character designs, while changed quite a bit, at least kept most of the unique design aspects, and sometimes the entire design. Designs aren't where they stopped, Mega Man's name was "Rock" before he became, well, Mega Man; this fact is somewhat more wellknown nowadays, but it wasn't back then. Heck, it looks like they paid attention to the fingers of the characters, as in a Bad Future episode, a Mega Man fan actually does this, at about 0:09. People deride the show for being inaccurate, but that's incredibly far from the truth.
  • Gargoyles was very accurate and detailed in many of the mythologies it referenced, though it changes a lot. Scottish history is also heavily important to the show's backstory--Macbeth's flashbacks, for example, basically combine the historical king's real life with some elements of the famous play (mainly the Weird Sisters) and the show's own themes.
    • Barring, perhaps, the episode The Hound of Ulster. Good episode, and while not entirely inaccurate, anyone with a passing knowledge of Irish mythology will be scratching their heads.
  • Futurama: Writing a mind-swap episode is way too easy. Let's create a real mathematical theorem and prove it to explain our body-swap episode. This sort of thing is what happens when one of your writers has a Ph.D in Applied Mathematics.
    • Futurama may have the most highly educated writing staff on TV (there were at least 4 Ph.Ds on staff during the original run).
  • Metalocalypse's animation is often carefully synced to the music, with the chord positions and fingering of the guitar parts shown in some detail.
  • Especially before its original cancellation, Family Guy would often work in references to people, places, products and events that one could only truly appreciate if one was a native of Rhode Island or had lived there for a length of time.
    • On the other hand however, the show's never been too good on getting the shape of the state right on maps.
    • This clip with a Bewitched parody was clearly made by a fan of that show; the set design is almost perfect, the one mistake being the fireplace, which should be white, not brown.
  • Surf's Up lists multiple surfing consultants in the credits. Who would have thought that a CGI film on surfing penguins would go the extra mile?
  • Some of the background animals in Almost Naked Animals include a furless tiger with faint stripes imprinted into his skin and a furless bear with black skin and whitish hair strands all over his body.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, for all its Funny Animal-laced nature, goes well out of its way to depict all the animal movements as realistically as possible. Even the ponies move like real horses, and pick things up with their mouths instead of their hooves as the ones from the show's predecessors did. (although quite often Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and ESPECIALLY Rainbow Dash will use their hooves instead. For info on specific details, go to Tropes Q to Z and scroll down to the Shown Their Work bullet point.
  • Despite being a PBS Kids show, Dinosaur Train is more accurate than most documentaries.
  • Rather an Enforced Trope for Fireman Sam, seeing as it delivered An Aesop about fire safety or something related Once an Episode. If they deviated from reality at all it was only as a concession to the limits of their special effects and/or to provide a subtle PSA about what the viewer should do in that situation.
  • A language consultant was brought in to invent the Atlanteans' language in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It has a full vocabulary, at least one relevant to their culture, a character system, and consistant grammar and syntax. The only time in the movie this ever becomes relevant is the fact that Milo can read ancient Atlantean whereas the Atlanteans themselves have long forgotten how.
  • The Tinymon episodes of Johnny Test. The first episode grasped a great many mechanics from Pokémon such as evolving by happines. The second episode has referneces to more obscure Pokémon games (most notably Pokémon Colosseum), fandom terminology, and even Digimon.
  • In some episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, the title character and Patrick have body parts ripped off. However, the duo isn't alarm by this because their healing factor, as in simply regrow the missing body part. In real life, both sea sponges and starfish has this ability.
    • Squidward squirts out an ink-like substance in the film, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water”, explaining it happens when he's scare. In reality, squids actually do this as defense mechanism since it temporary causes a predator to blind, allowing an escape. [1]
  1. ↑ Stephen Hillenburg has a background in Marine biology, which explains their abilities.
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