What Measure Is a Non-Human?/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of What Measure Is a Non-Human? plots in Western Animation include:

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Other Examples

  • Optimus Prime has a very clear opinion on this, with his famous "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" motto. The series, though, have sometimes defined sentience in an unsatisfying way - not having a spark renders you a 'drone' even if said 'drone' clearly thinks and feels. In a non-canon series of Transformers Animated comics (with a few Out of Character moments, though mostly confined to Megatron being generically evil instead of a Magnificent Bastard) Bumblebee is told by Optimus not to mourn for Afterburn because he was a sparkless drone, and it's not clear who is right ( Afterburn appears to think and feel, and Bumblebee cared about him and it sure seems a Jerkass move to callously tell him that the friend he just saw torn in half was just a drone and thus not worth any worry, but he was a Decepticon infiltrator, only pretending to be friends with Bee or anybody, was killed by Megatron in a You Have Failed Me... moment, and could well have been acting according to the "make nice with the mark" programming you'd expect an advanced but nonsentient infiltration-bot to have. And since whether he was real or not, any friendship he had with the Autobots clearly wasn't, he kinda isn't worth crying over either way. Still, be nice to poor Bee, huh?)
  • Human characters who don't regard Transformers as sentient beings are, in general, not treated sympathetically by any series in the franchise. However, it's apparently okay for younger viewers to see a Transformer die, even in a time slot where killing off a human character would bring down the wrath of the Media Watchdogs upon all involved. This may be more of a method of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
    • The Dinobots in Animated. After the incident that gives them the ability to function on their own, Prowl is the only one to suspect that they're truly alive. They are huge, lumbering, and destructive, and Prowl is shocked when, after their defeat, Optimus Prime agrees with the decision to melt them down. So he and Bulkhead sneak out in the middle of the night and transport the Dinobots to a forested island where, concealed by holograms, they can live peacefully. Later, Porter C. Powell argued that since Transformers have no legal status, it's not a crime to do anything to them. (He's a villain, and we're not meant to agree with him.) Later they use their lack of legal status to threaten (and eat) him with impunity. (Don't worry, Grimlock spits him back out unharmed; these are the Autobots we're talking about.)
      • It has more to do with the fact that Grimlock has good taste, and with all the hair product necessary to keep his rockin' mullet in place, Porter C. Powell probably tastes horrible.
  • Darkheart is a demon and the Big Bad in Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation. From scene one, there's absolutely no doubt that he is profoundly evil, as he tries to kill off all the Care Bears when they are babies. During the course of the movie, not only has he added further attempts to kill the Bears to his evil resume, he has also turned a campground full of children into a den of evil and bound the little girl Christie to a Faustian bargain; he'll make her a Born Winner if she aids him in his evil plans. About halfway through the film, Darkheart joins Christie in a rowboat shortly after capturing a significant number of the good characters with her help. Darkheart falls out of the boat and Christie rescues him, leading to the quote above. The incident messes with Darkheart's head as well, and later on, when he hurts Christie, he vows to be a good guy (probably the fastest Heel Face Turn ever) if the Bears will save her.
    • The "Care Bears Family" series had a Big Bad named No-Heart (creative writers, these) who was darn near identical to Darkheart. The thing is, nobody questioned whether or not he had a good side.
      • Well, he was named No-Heart.
  • In Samurai Jack expendable robots have variable intelligence, so despite Jack meeting all kinds of bizarre races the audience doesn't feel bad for them. A significant portion of the enemies faced by Jack appear to be completely organic, sometimes more so than actual organic beings, and only prove to be robotic when sliced open.
    • A strange and very bleak exception is one late Film Noir episode featuring a troubled but sympathetic robot-turned-hitman who conveniently gets an Emotion Chip, building up to the inevitable but stark ending where he fails and gets dispatched by Jack - who isn't even aware of it.
      • There's a fantastic moment at the end of the episode when, with his last breath, X9 asks Jack to take care of his dog. Jack looks back over his shoulder and a brief look of doubt crosses his face.
    • There was also an episode where two young siblings and their charming robot servant are brought to Aku. When the demon orders the kids around and their robot protests, he casually destroys him and the deed is treated by the kids with as much horror as any coldblooded murder.
    • This strange double standard results from the arbitrary censorship rules that the cartoon makers had to work within. It's okay to show suffering and death, even of sentient beings, so long as nothing actually bleeds. Thus, anything that has to be dispatched handily will ultimately prove to be robotic or otherwise nonliving. The point is clearly made in the pilot, where Jack shows his baddassery by cutting off a mercenary's hands, which, naturally, were bionic. Later in the same pilot, he destroys an army of gigantic robotic scarabs. Each bug he slices open sprays a wealth of black oil everywhere, culminating in a scene that is extremely brutal and gory while, technically, no living things are hurt.
    • When Jack does fight organic creatures, such as a group of bounty hunters that were definitely not robots, they are generally killed by a bloodless slash from his sword or their fate is obscured by an explosion.
    • Jack has never turned down anyone in need due to species. Human, Robot, Ape, Alien, Talking Dog, no matter. The only thing important was that someone needed his protection. He's reacted with horror at seeing a village of robots destroyed just as much as one of organic creatures.
    • Still, the extent of carnage and violence Tartakovsky indulged in under sole excuse of this trope is unsettling. It's not just that robots can be killed on-screen - they can be killed in horrifying ways on-screen. They are burned, dissolved in acid, disemboweled in slow-mo, cannibalised and devoured alive by a huge monster. At this they sometimes clearly express emotions, namely pain and horror, and other times they look exactly like living beings right until the moment of death.
  • In the penultimate episode of Danny Phantom, this issue became a plot point in more ways than one since the subject in question is both a Half-Human Hybrid and a clone:

Danny: She's not just a ghost, she's also a girl. And if Vlad destroys the ghost half, the human half is destroyed along with it.
Valerie: No, that's not my problem. She is a ghost, and I destroy ghosts!
Danny: Fine! Destroy ghosts! But can you really take part in destroying a human?

    • Also called up in Danielle's premiere episode- Vlad became fully irredeemable when he treated her as less than human in the climax-

Vlad: You! Exist! To serve! ME! JUST! DO IT!

      • Also played straight in the same episode when both Danny and Danielle had no qualms seeing the perfect clone die in their hands. Considering said clone is a step above Danielle and clearly shows conscience as he dies, this is a rather jarring matter.
  • Megas XLR will never kill off humans, and will only very rarely have any kind of organic being die. The giant robots that are frequently the enemies though, are cannon fodder, regardless of their level of sentience. One particularly extreme example is when Coop accidentally blows up a planet of sentient robots (although they were Ax Crazy and sort of fascist). If they could get away with it, the writers would also have plenty of humans killed to (and a few still are).
  • Ben 10 is horrible about this. You can accurately predict how much violence is inflicted on an enemy based on how humanlike they are. Actual humans are merely subdued and non-humanoids are dismembered, exploded, or something else particularly deadly. This becomes especially awkward when you realize that, thanks to the very nature of the powers of the Omnitrix, Ben himself isn't human half the time!
    • A rather jarring example occurs in an episode where an alien bride at a marriage between a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers has to help Ben kill her parents so she can marry her human groom. She makes a disturbingly nonchalant joke right afterwards. As if to bring the thing home, she assumes a form that looks far more humanoid than the evil members of her family.
      • It is mentioned that her race are incredibly tough and difficult to kill with the implication that the parents will be fine until the ceremony is over.
    • In the time skipped Alien Force, Gwen scolds Kevin that "You hit him too hard!" when he decks a guard. Kevin placates her with, "Not him. It." and removes the holographic mask disguising the alien as a human. This could be potentially problematic, as a later episode reveals that these aliens are in fact humans taken over by alien parasites, and the Omnitrix is capable of reversing the transformation.
      • In the Season Finale Ben states that they never actually kill any of them for that reason, and he then starts using the Omnitrix to cure them on a large scale (why he forgot about that until now is anyone guess).
      • He did remember it once before the season finale. The difference is he didn't have the Master Control unlocked, letting him do whatever the fuck he wanted with the Omnitrix. He was limited to skin contact before that.
  • A tip of the hat to The Brave Little Toaster, the movie that made some of us feel just a little guilty about replacing old household machines with new ones.
    • To be fair, the people in the movies are unaware of the appliances being alive. Thomas the Tank Engine, on the other hand...(see below).
  • Populated, as it is, by humans, robots, sewer mutants, talking animals, and aliens of all varieties, Futurama naturally takes this one on with tongue firmly in cheek. To wit:

Fry: So we're going to an uninhabited planet?
Bender: No, it's inhabited by robots!
Fry: Oh... you mean like a garage is inhabited by boxes.

    • Furthermore (and possibly as a tribute to The Brave Little Toaster) Professor Farnsworth "teaches the toaster how to love". In a dream sequence he goes so far as to bring it to life, turning it into a raccoon. Everyone else still treats it like an old toaster... might have something to do with the two slots and heating coils that are still in its back.
    • Mix Carnivore Confusion into the issue, and you've got yourself The Problem With Popplers episode.
  • Pixar seems to like this trope. To wit:
    • Toy Story has Woody react this way when he sees what Sid did to the other toys. Especially when they drag a wounded Buzz off ...
    • Jessie's song in Toy Story 2
    • Remy the rat has to fight hard for respect in Ratatouille.
    • WALL-E. End of discussion.
      • Actually, no. The inhabitants of the Axiom generally treat the robots as cruise crew (which is understandable given that they're on a cruise) or as video game characters (which... is a product of lazy ignorance more then anything). This is probably a general BnL stance; convenience before ethics. However, McCrea gets a major wake up call in the form of the A113 recording, and from that point on treats robots as people. It's shown at the end that all the humans are genuinely shocked and dismayed at WALL-E's mangled form, so...
      • Continuation Fan Fics generally have a lot of deep probing questions about this trope; whether a robot is considered criminal, defective, or insane, how robot marriages would work, the exact question of robot children, should robots and humans even live together...
  • In the WITCH episode "H is for Hunted", Will is brought to tears after unknowingly trying to absorb an Astral Drop (normally soulless) that Nerissa has transformed into a living, feeling Altamere.
  • The Venture Brothers: Brock Sampson has a code against killing women and children. He was curious if there were any circumstances in which that would be dismissed. Eventually, his mentor accepted "Lady Dracula", as undead don't count.
    • And in the two-part Season 3 finale, "The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together" (Part 1, to be specific) once The Monarch has infiltrated the Venture Compound, he reviews the plan with his team. # 24's part is to "Subdue the Venture robot" to which Monarch replies, "Subdue? You can kill the robot, it's a robot."
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has hordes of robot drones that are just there to be shot (granted, they don't appear to possess any brain function). More Egregious examples are NOS-4-A2 (a to-all-outward-appearances-sentient robot and the only non-drone villain to be actually killed) and XR, the Plucky Comic Relief Robot Buddy who spends much of his time getting blown up, crushed, dismembered and tortured in various ways- and none of the protagonists seem to care, despite the fact XR displays myriad human traits and emotions (having outbursts rivaling those of a hormonal 13-year-old girl) and has just as well-rounded a personality as any organic character on the show. As a result, a far amount of Fanfic looks at him as a victim. It may just be because XR gets better every time. Still, he seems to feel pain, and react to it accordingly.
    • XR is designed to be completely indestructible, so it's not like he has much to worry about.
    • And NOS-4-A2 is a robot vampire, making him doubly subject to this trope.
  • Played straight in Kim Possible, where the only beings to die is a too human drone and two aliens (at least according to Word of God).
  • The way this applies to giant monsters is partially subverted in Invader Zim, when Zim transforms a hamster into a giant monster. Even though it's on a rampage, people still stop to gawk at how cute it is.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants feeds a talking worm to his adopted baby scallop.

Spongebob: All we have left is this apple! [a worm emerges from it]
Worm: Hello sea creatures! I bring you greetings from Apple World! [the scallop approves and jumps up for it]
Spongebob: Of course! Scallops love worms! [picks up the worms]
Worm: Huh, wait! We will bury yooooou! [drops it in the scallop’s mouth and it eats it]

  • She-Ra: Princess of Power was inconsistent on how sapient Hordak's Mecha Mooks were. In some episodes, they showed intelligence and emotion, while in others they had no lines, and the heroes would blow them to scrap without a second thought. Hordak, however, being the Bad boss he was, would junk them whether they showed emotion or not, and they often showed fear when he was angry at them.
  • The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 animated series gave the Turtles a chance to actually use their weapons as forces of deadliness by turning Shredder's foot soldiers into robots.
    • Possibly the most WTF example of this is the episode "Donatello's Duplicate", where Donatello creates a clone of himself specifically to have it do his chores for him, and treats the duplicate as his slave. When the clone turns against him and becomes evil, it gets wiped out of existence. And it's apparently perfectly okay by all the others. You know, the good guys.
    • And there's also Metalhead, the robotic Ninja Turtle, who has no rights. For this to be more acceptable, it has a tendency to go berserk (or switch sides), thereby destroying the illusion that it has real sentience or "free will".
  • Anything by Don Bluth. Generally, the less human a character looks, the cartoonier their animation, the less respect they receive from the story. Non-human minor characters (unless they are effectively human due to Rotoscoping) are prone to be splatted at any moment, without a death scene to drum up audience sympathy.
  • In the Disney Fluppy Dogs Pilot Movie, Stanley, who is a humanoid dog-like alien posing as a dog, is about to turn in for the night. His human friend, Jaimie, is asked by Stanley where he is going to sleep and the boy is about to tell him to sleep on the floor like an animal. Fortunately, Jaimie realizes just in time that he was about to humiliate his intelligent friend and invites Stanley to sleep in his bed with him.
  • While not necessarily Non-human, Disney's Pocahontas seems to address this with the song "Savages".
    • "They're savages! Savages! Barely even human!"
    • "They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil! We must sound the drums of war!"
      • Note, that those two lines are used by both sides, not just the Europeans or the Indians.
  • The Disney Animated series of Aladdin, in the episode "Garden of Evil" with the villain Arbutrus. He is a plant like creature that makes art by controlling and growing plants, and who voices his dislike of humans for destroying them. In the end the killing of Arbutrus by Aladdin is played as a mistake and the flower cut from his body (which kills him) is replanted in the ground.
  • Despite being completely sentient and regularly conversing with their humans, the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine are thrown out in the scrap pile and essentially killed when they stop being useful. Some of the books and episodes even hint that managers of certain railways wouldn't blink an eye at scrapping an engine with lots of life left in it, if it helped their bottom line. Cue lots of Nightmare Fuel. Couldn't they make some kind of retirement home or something?
    • In one book, a real engine comes from a heritage line in South East England to visit (the book was especially written to promote the line) and in another Thomas visits the National Railway Museum in York. Those could count as retirement homes.
    • It gets even worse with this series when one realizes that, canonically, the show is set in the 1950s and real-life railways in Britain started to scrap all their steam engines in the 60s.
  • In Kong: The Animated Series, the only characters to possibly die are Set, Onimous, Harpy, and Chiros - all of whom are evil monsters. Ramone De La Porta is just as evil and power-hungry as any of them, yet he is not killed (though suffers a Fate Worse Than Death brought on by Chiros). Main characters attempt to save him whenever he is in mortal danger, even though they know how evil he is, and it would save them a lot of trouble and having to foil his evil plans if they just let him die one of these times. The same goes for Andre, the arms dealer, in one of his two major appearances.
    • It could be argued that Onimous survived his sinking into quicksand (but remained trapped there), Harpy (who was struck by a lightning bolt) was merely turned to stone through magic rather than death (and could be changed back with some magic spell), and Chiros's stone being destroyed (after he was imprisoned inside it) did not kill him but prevented him from ever being awakened again. As this is the last we ever see of them, there is no way to tell.
  • In Phineas and Ferb, Night of the Living Gelatin, while the monster is dying it calls out to it's master. And Doofenschmirts is upset at it dying and in fact chases after Perry when he is leaving.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the same problems with battledroids and sometimes Clone Troopers as shown in the films, but the show went to absurdly lengths with the Geonosians from Attack of the Clones. Like in the film they get casually sliced in halves by Jedi and Clones even use Flamethrowers to set them on fire with them even screaming and running away, all of it ON SCREEN. It is never explained why they get so brutally treatment in comparison to like every other species. You see Jedi cutting off heads and arms of clone troopers in Revenge of the Sith, but nowhere they explain why they have to slice Geonosians whole body VERTICALLY.
    • At least they got zombiefied in the last two episodes of the Geonosis arc, but it still is no excuse for before.
  • While ReBoot tries to treat the Binomes like actual people, the show falls victim to this trope. Whenever someone needs to die, Binome. Need victims for a lost game, Binomes. Need someone to play Red Shirt against Megabyte, Binome.
  • Played sadly straight in My Life as a Teenage Robot. Although no one, not even her creator, questions the fact that Jenny is a sentient robot teenager deserving of love and respect, most episodes have her killing or pummeling non human looking robots such as the villain robot's insect-like minions. Note that the main villain herself looks like a very alluring, feminine robot who's usually allowed to get away from harm with hardly a life-threatening scratch. The fact that Jenny usually has her own body blown to smithereens is Played for Laughs.
  • When Buster from Arthur fantasizes about himself as a superhero named Cat Saver, he encounters a villain with some... unconventional mooks. He prefaces his fight with a disclaimer to the audience: "Kids, hitting and punching people is wrong." But that's no person! It's a giant ham!"
  • In an episode of Young Justice, Miss Martian "killed" the robotic mannequin controlling Mr Twister. The others complained that they didn't know he was a robot and once they did, they let the matter drop. It was ironic since one of their mentors Red Tornado is a robot and played a prominent role in the episode. It wasn't sapient like Red Tornado but Miss Martian didn't know that and she just assumed that it wasn't.
    • Played With in recent episodes, where Miss Martian is getting to be very comfortable with using Mind Rape as a solution to a problem, leaving her victims drooling, comatose, and with rolling eyes. And it's hinted that's what ruined her relationship with Superboy.
  • Played with in Family Guy. Brian, along with a few other dogs in the series, is sentient, walks, talks, drives, and has romantic relationships with other humans. Despite this, he's still treated like a regular dog. This is referenced in a few episodes, one where he gets in a legal battle to prevent from being euthanized and to have the same rights as a human, and another where he accidentally hits a dog with his car and grows upset when he learns it isn't a crime to kill a dog.
    • There was also another episode where a talking, sentient cow is about to be slaughtered for meat, but Brian and Peter break him out. Like with Brian, it hits this trope because overall, the cow does behave like a human but is still treated like an animal. Said cow does end up winning a lawsuit against the fast food company that was going to kill him and the other cows.
    • In one cutaway gag Mayor Mc Cheese gets shot instead of John F Kennedy, with his head bursting up and Jacky Kennedy starting to eat it. Which leads Stewie and Brian to lampshade this:

Brian: "That joke's not in bad taste, right?"
Stewie: "Who cares? He's a cheeseburger."

  • The Owl House; In season 2, poor Hunter combines this with Sins of Our Fathers when he finds out that he is a Grimwalker, not only questioning whether or not he counts as a person, but whether he has the right to be counted as one. It gets worse in season 3.
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