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* [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]] - when an attempted Aesop glamorizes something it meant to denounce.
* [[Double Aesop]] - when ''two'' characters learn their lesson in one story.
* [[Family -Unfriendly Aesop]] - a moral that is unexpected and highly questionable.
* [[Fantastic Aesop]] - morals and metaphors that are poorly adapted to [[Speculative Fiction]].
* [[Gay Aesop]] - morals that deal with acceptance and tolerance for gay people.
* [[Glurge]] - a [[Tastes Like Diabetes]] [[Broken Aesop]] full of [[Unfortunate Implications]].
* [[Green Aesop]] - Because pollution is bad.
* [[Long -Lost Uncle Aesop]] - A character introduced for no other reason than the sake of the Aesop and is forgotten about when the Aesop is fulfilled.
* [[Lost Aesop]] - Wait, were we supposed to learn something?
* [[Monster of the Aesop]] - When the [[Monster of the Week]] eerily coincides with the Aesop.
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* [[Very Special Episode]] - The show takes a more serious tone to tackle a more serious issue.
 
By the way, <s>in literary circles</s> [[TAll VtropesThe Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary|everywhere outside of this wiki]], [[An Aesop]] is properly known as a moral. The original Aesop was a Greek slave of the 6th century BC. A collection of allegorical tales (including "The Tortoise and the Hare", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", and others) attributed to him have survived to the present day and are known as ''[[Aesop's Fables (Literature)|Aesop's Fables]]''.
 
Ironically, Aesop probably doesn't deserve the dubious honor of having this trope named after him. In their original forms these stories likely did ''not'' end with heavy-hitting moral [[Anvilicious|anvils]]. The listeners (for Aesop would have been an oral storyteller) were probably left to sort out the meaning for themselves; the one-liner morals (such as "slow and steady wins the race") were likely tacked on by modern compilers.
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[[An Aesop]] is among the [[Tropes of Legend]].
{{examples|Examples:}}
 
== Animé & Manga ==
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* ''[[Franken Fran]]'': Though there are exceptions, the dominant aesop to be learned is that death is not something to come back from, especially via science.
* ''[[Super Gals]]'' has the ironclad rules for girls which are general aesops, mainly circling around: [[Be Yourself]].
* The entire tenth episode of ''[[Cowboy Bebop (Anime)|Cowboy Bebop]]'' consists of each of the members of the Bebop giving [[An Aesop]], which is [[Lampshaded]] by the use of caption cards reading 'lesson'. The entire concept gets more and more twisted as the episode goes on: Jet starts out with a straight Aesop about how hard work is the only thing that pays off in the end and those who trust in their luck get theirs eventually (after having lost his savings in an attempt to gamble with Faye). Faye follows up with a [[Family -Unfriendly Aesop]] about how humans are always playing each other and trusting people is for fools (after it's revealed she was cheating). Ed delivers a [[Broken Aesop]] about how, [[Word Salad|if you see a stranger, you should follow him]] (after it turns out there's a stowaway poisonous creature on board that's attacking the crew). Finally, Spike finishes it off with the episode's ''real'' lesson... {{spoiler|[[Spoof Aesop|Don't leave food in the fridge]]. The poisonous creature [[It Came From the Fridge|had mutated from a lobster left in the ship's backup refrigerator too long]]}}.
* Despite being mostly comprised of Aespoic-moments, the 32nd episode of the original 1969 series of ''Himitsu no Akko-chan'' plays that straight towards the heroine. When the kind-hearted Akko-chan meets a new deaf kid at school, she hurriedly wishes her magic mirror to [[Be Careful What You Wish For|turn her into a deaf-mute version of herself]], enabling her to empathize better with her plea. Her magic mirror [[Literal Genie|takes her literally]], taking her speaking voice again too, and refusing to change her back on the premises that, needing a clearly worded wish to act, it can't understand or obey a deaf-mute mistress. Only when Akko-chan, distraught and terminally scared, is starting to resign to her fate, the mirror changes her back on its own accord, moved by her tears and pointing out how her owner has now learned that a disability is nothing to be wished for, and how her new friend was more brave and resourceful than she could think.
* The English dub of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' often ended with a "Sailor Says" segment.
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'''Squidward:''' I think I know what you're going to say. After your life-changing journey, you found that you really didn't want what you thought you wanted. What you really wanted was inside you all along.<br />
'''<nowiki>SpongeBob:</nowiki>''' Are you kidding? I was just going to say that your fly was down. Manager? This is the happiest day of my life! }}
*** Which is funny, since Squidward [[Half -Dressed Cartoon Animal|doesn't wear any pants]].
* Subverted in the Coen Brothers' dark spy comedy ''[[Burn After Reading]].''
{{quote| '''FBI Chief:''' So, what have we learned?<br />
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* ''[[Home Improvement]]'' frequently had these, and they were usually delivered by the character Wilson, who would dispense advice to help the other characters with the issue of the episode.
* One episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' played with the notion of the Aesop: Mister Feeny assigns Corey, Topanga, and Shawn a seemingly impossible task. After trying and failing, the [[Genre Savvy]] kids come to the conclusion that Mister Feeney was giving them a [[Secret Test of Character]] to teach them a lesson about teamwork. Unfortunately they were wrong: Mister Feeney was actually trying to teach them a lesson about never giving up, and ''wants'' them to complete their seemingly-impossible task, and so he sends them back out again.
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' justifies this because a sizable chunk of the premise is Future!Ted lecturing his kids about his mistakes when he was young. However, they're frequently [[Spoof Aesop|spoof]], [[Family -Unfriendly Aesop|family unfriendly]], [[Broken Aesop|broken]], [[Space Whale Aesop|space whale]] (i.e., "I won't bother telling you not to fight, but don't fight with Uncle Marshall. He's insane."), [[Lost Aesop|lost]], lampshaded [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]], or otherwise humorously subverted, usually with Future Ted giving an aesop, but admitting that in real life, back when the events ''actually'' took place, he and his friends didn't learn their lesson right away. However, when one of the characters gives an aesop in the present, it's more often played straight.
 
 
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== [[Visual Novels]] ==
* In ''[[A Profile (Visual Novel)|A Profile]],'' building on the [[Family -Unfriendly Aesop]] of 'Your friends will lie to you directly to your face, so be careful,' it then turns it around and says 'but you should trust them anyway. They're your friends.'
* ''[[Katawa Shoujo (Visual Novel)|Katawa Shoujo]]'': People with disabilities are just that, ''people''. Considering this is a doujin [[Eroge]] [[Visual Novel]] than began on a certain image board this is surprisingly deep.
** After release it turns out that a more important [[Aesop]] is [[You Are Not Alone]]
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== Western Animation ==
* The first season of ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender (Animation)|Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' was pretty notorious about this. Although some of those were along the lines of "[[Family -Unfriendly Aesop|Stealing is wrong unless it's from pirates]]."
 
* ''[[South Park]]'' often features an Aesop at the end. Many times Kyle starts a speech by saying, "I've learned something today..." The morals are sometimes humorous - though as often as not - these speeches really are didactic.
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* Before he went to Disney, ''[[Doug]]'' had [[An Aesop]] in almost every single episode. You could tell the Aesop after a couple of minutes already, often even before the episode title.
* Although the ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]'' doesn't have many episodes strictly made to teach a moral, there's one where the moral is thrown in the viewers' faces with a case of breaking the fourth wall: "And sometimes the best weapon of all is to say you're sorry." Que screen where the phrase MORAL OF THE STORY pops up.
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' has one of these about friendship at the end of each episode, given in the form of a letter from Twilight Sparkle to Princess Celestia.
** Averted in episodes 1 and 2 (since they're two-parters).
** While most shows would treat these as throwaway morals, these actually are ''a plot point'' in [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E2 The Return of Harmony Part 2|"The Return of Harmony, Part 2"]]: {{spoiler|Celestia sends all of them back to Twilight to remind her why she should be fighting for her friends, instead of giving up, packing her bags and leaving Ponyville and Equestria to Discord's mercy. Also, the aesop of the episode ends up being used in Twilight's [[Shut UP, Hannibal]] speech.}}
** The aesop becomes a [[MacGuffin]] in [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E3 Lesson Zero|"Lesson Zero"]], where Twlight panics because she doesn't have an Aesop of the Week to report to the Princess.
** Subverted in ''The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000''. The usual "letter to the princess" aesop-delivery is set up... and then Applejack points out that she knew the aesop already, and didn't need to learn a thing.
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