Unfortunate Implications/Western Animation

A long-banned scene from Fantasia. Even in 1969 this was unfortunate.

Important Note: Just because a work has Unfortunate Implications does not mean the author was thinking of it that way. In fact, that's the point of it being unfortunate. So, please, no Justifying Edits about "what the authors really meant." The way an author handles a trope is an important factor here; handling a trope in a clumsy manner can certainly create unintentional impressions for readers. Likewise, if a work intends the offensive message (for example, a piece of Nazi propaganda about Jews), it wouldn't count. Also, for something that may not be offensive to you personally but may offend others in a different culture or time period, see Values Dissonance.

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Disney Animated Canon

• Fantasia:
  • The "Pastoral Symphony" segment included a centaurette servant named Sunflower (pictured), who is part African human, part donkey, performing menial duties for the Aryan centaurettes, and two attendants to Bacchus who are part African Amazons, part zebra. Sunflower has been Orwellian Retconned out of all prints in circulation since 1969, while the zebra centaurettes have always remained in the film; possibly because the zebra-girls are simply exotic, while Sunflower is the sort of big-lipped, pigtailed caricature that modern audiences find embarrassingly outdated at best and highly offensive at worst.
  • Additionally, each centaur pairs up with a centaurette of exactly the same color: white with white, tan with tan, yellow with yellow. The one left over after the others have found their soul mates is a lonely blue centaur, who mopes until the little Cupids find him a blue centaurette. Because sexual implications are fine, as long as there is no centaur miscegenation?
• The crows from Dumbo. They're better than most examples, as they're Jerks With Hearts Of Gold who are helpful and sympathetic to Dumbo. Still, their depiction is filled with Minstrel Show stereotypes, were voiced by white actors, and the only named one is called Jim... You know. Jim Crow.
• The Little Mermaid:
  • A woman who has spent only two minutes with a handsome man in her entire life will desperately want him just because of his appearance, to the point that she'll even sacrifice everything that really matters in life (home, family and friends, her voice). What softens the blow is that Disney did Ariel obsessed with human culture with a desire to be a part of it before seeing Eric. Even then, the only reason she went through with the deal was because she was sweet-talked by Ursula while she was emotionally vulnerable and not feeling very fond of her father (who had just violently destroyed all of her favorite possessions for the "sin" of saving someone's life). However, it's still easy to see how this could rub some people the wrong way.
• "A Girl Worth Fighting For" in the first Mulan: The song clearly wasn't intended to be a view the audience is supposed to endorse - Mulan is put off by the song, the cheeriness of its tone if struck down by Mood Whiplash not long after, and it's implied that the guys had to rethink their views somewhat.
• The Lion King:
  • In Mufasa tells a young Simba that all animals are part of the Circle of Life and must be respected. Ok, so why does he force all the hyenas to live in the Elephant Graveyard where there's no food, no water, and the possibility of extinction is very real? What kind of "respectful" king would do that to an entire species? Could it be that despite being labeled as "slobbering, stupid, mangy poachers", the hyenas are in fact the one predator species that could threaten the lions' lofty position as rulers of the Pride Lands?
    • This ecology may have been Accidentally Accurate: In Real Life, lions do drive hyenas out of fertile territory in this way. But certainly, hyenas are not scavengers.
  • There's also the slight issue of their voice actors: Shenzi is voiced by a black female, Banzai sounds Mexican, and Ed is obviously completely insane.
  • In the movie, the only evil lion, Scar, has darker colored fur than the others. However, the implications are reversed when you realize all of the lighter colored lions are voiced by people of African descent at some point during the movie. Yes,even Simba: Young Simba's singing voice was an African-American boy. Scar is the only lion to only be voiced by Caucasian people.
  • And in the Broadway musical, the good lions are all played by African-Americans, while Scar remains an Evil Brit.

Other Disney

• Suzy Johnson in Phineas and Ferb and her Big Brother Attraction. Her obsession with her older brother Jeremy and being his favorite girl (about 8 years older) goes into Yandere grade territory, driving away any girl that tries to get near him, resulting in some twisted Brother-Sister Incest undertones.
• In an episode of Jimmy Two Shoes, Beezy makes several insulting Fantastic Racism comments about weevils, stating that they're all nothing but trouble. He's then shown to be correct. It gives this vibe that racism is good...
• The Schoolhouse Rock video "Elbow Room" justifies the expansion of the United States of America by claiming that the Americans needed living space for an expanding population. Manifest Destiny is already troubling, but "Elbow Room" takes it to Lebensraum levels.

Non-Disney

• Total Drama
  • The choice of main antagonists for each season. Heather (Asian) in season one, Justin (Hawaiian) and Courtney (Hispanic) in season two, and Alejandro (Also Hispanic) in season three. Fortunately, that is no longer the case with season 4's antagonist, Scott, who is Caucasian.
  • The Trent/Gwen/Duncan/Courtney love rhombus could also be read as unintentionally saying that if your partner has a best friend of the opposite sex they'll end up cheating on you.
  • Every interracial couple on the show (Harold/Leshawna, Duncan/Courtney and arguably Heather/Alejandro) permanently broke up. In D/C's case, this involved Courtney quickly falling for Al, the only other Hispanic cast member, while Duncan hooked up with Gwen, who's also white.
• Capitol Critters:
  • All the characters were different Talking Animals. The major characters we were asked to identify with, including the hero who'd just left the family farm and moved to the big city, were rats and mice. All the rodents lived on certain floors of the White House and were portrayed as mischievous at worst. Other floors were the exclusive domain of the cockroaches. The cute, furry rodents didn't get along with them, especially if they happened to enter rodent territory. Weirdly, several episodes seemed to suggest that the roaches should stay in their designated territory. Additionally, the mice were complained about vocally by the humans, but the roaches were met with immediate attempts to kill them. Standard What Measure Is a Non-Cute? situation, right? Well, yes, but consider the one thing that makes the show so irredeemably warped: The cockroaches all had blatant stereotypical minority personalities. They spoke with black slang and wore ethnocentric clothing. And their territory looked like a ghetto. Wow.
  • Black stereotypes are not the only ones thrown around; the demimonde cockroach couple trying to move in at the beginning, who get targeted by a regular little "Save the Neighborhood" posse, seemed decidedly Jewish.
  • The coding of roaches as people of color is intentional and meant to be satirical, which would be simplistic and stereotyping, but only that, if the first five minutes of the linked ep were all they went on. Once upward mobility of minorities is established as a good thing, the roaches lay thousands of eggs that fill up the rats' living space (the EXACT fear of people who try to keep neighborhoods all-white) and the episode is one gem after another. "Let's step on 'em." "I think I remember why my parents hated [roaches] so much." "It's like Hong Kong up there." A conversation about how people always talk about living together but "we're not people, what kind of people have 500,000 kids?" In the end the roaches are liked due to having saved the very Caucasian rat from a cat (who he tormented needlessly while he was in a body cast) but move out anyway, and it's generally established as a mistake that people of different ethnic groups try to live together. There are no words.
• "Dr. Rabbit's Bright Smiles World Tour" (an animated short about oral hygiene sponsored by Colgate). One might suspect that the real reason Colgate-Palmolive tried to get YouTube Poops featuring the cartoon off YouTube is not because of copyright infringement, but because of all the ridiculous foreign stereotypes in the cartoon.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • It's Multinational Team: Word of God says Numbuh 5 is half-French. The good news is she doesn't follow any French stereotype. The bad news is since she's also black, she follows an entirely different stereotype. Uptight British Numbuh 1 and fat American Numbuh 2 come off the as the least stereotyped compared to the others: the dumb-and-tough Aussie (Numbuh 4), the excited and ditzy Japanese (Numbuh 3), and the already mentioned Numbuh 5.
  • Somewhat compensated for in 5's case, as she's usually the straight man to everyone else.
  • It is shown when Numbah 4 grows up he's still just as tough and even graduated Harvard Med, and his wife Numbuh 3 is in charge of The Rainbow Monkey Corporation, which has got to require some smarts. And Numbuh 2 won't always be fat, his possible teenage self is quite skinny and considered attractive.
  • Scottish Numbuh 86 is constantly angry, violent, and generally unpleasant. She gets some Character Development, but wow.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers:
  • Wheeler. Brash, loud-mouthed, wielded the mostly destructive power of fire, and was specifically designed to complain and raise objections only to be shot down by anyone else on the team, even when he had a perfectly legitimate argument. He's the only American and white male in the group, so he's the designated Butt Monkey.
  • As long as we're discussing Captain Planet, was anyone else reminded of those Nazi propaganda caricatures of Jews whenever Verminous Skumm appeared in an episode? The fact that Jeff Goldblum voiced the character in his first few appearances didn't help at all...
• While nobody could fault the Tom and Jerry license holders for trying to get rid of Mammy Two-Shoes, a racial archetype that just comes across as offensive by today's standards, why did they swap her out for an Irish woman? Turner has subsequently swapped her out again, this time for a modern black woman, giving her lines in a straight modern reading (with attendant modern recording quality, resulting in an odd sort of audio-temporal version of Conspicuously Light Patch). This is of course completely period-inappropriate, and, further, a real-life Revealing Coverup.
• In the first aired episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Angelica refers to a white girl in a Sheena costume as a "jungle bunny"... apparently the writers figured: "bimbo girl on the beach = beach bunny", "bimbo girl on the slopes = ski bunny", "bimbo girl in the jungle = jungle bunny", without realizing that was an old, racist term for those of black descent. The Edited for Syndication version of this episode corrects it to "jungle rabbit".
• I Am Weasel:
  • There was an episode which had I.M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon both create microscopic versions of themselves from their DNA. Predictably, Weasel's mini-people develop civilization at an accelerated rate while I.R.'s never move beyond Stone Age level. The Unfortunate Implications come when both micro-civilizations make contact, interbreed and promptly collapse; leading to Weasel and Baboon agreeing to never marry. This was so close to the old racist belief of "keeping the White race pure" lest Western Civilization collapse from the introduction of "impurities" that it falls straight into Dude, Not Funny territory. The creators probably thought they were on the safe side since Weasel is voiced by black Michael "Worf" Dorn. Given the nasty eugenics echoes, it seems they were wrong.
  • Alternatively, the lesson is that everything that makes Weasel successful and Baboon a failure is In the Blood, which in a way is even worse.
• Transformers Generation 1:
  • It had the nation of the Socialist Democratic Federated Republic of Carbombya. Yes, Carbombya, the apparent capital, Carbombya City, has a population of 4,000 people and 10,000 camels (they even list this on the sign). The entire population is an Arabic stereotype always swearing on their mothers' camels. The voice actor Casey Kasem was so disgusted that he left the show.
  • A little more backstory: Kasem is Lebanese, and upon seeing the script he asked that they at least include a sympathetic Arab character to balance out all the annoying stereotypes in not-Libya. He only left after they refused.
  • The name *might* have been tolerable... if they didn't use it at every single opportunity! Seriously, the name comes up over a dozen times in a twenty two minute episode.
• Transformers Animated:
  • It has taken a Unicron-sized step back when it comes to the role of women. The major female bots roles all revolve around Distressed Damsel status. It's worse when you compare them to previous incarnations of said characters. It was thought we were supposed to become more progressive as time went on, but The Powers That Be clearly disagree:
  • Exhibit A: Arcee. Ratchet's failure to save her, resulting in her being mindwiped to prevent her data, which turned out to be the codes to control Omega Supreme, falling into the wrong hands, was his tragic backstory. She returns in the present offline most of the time (why is never stated - it's [admittedly logical] fan speculation that the Autobot bigwigs' attempts to restore that data damaged her further) and is pretty much a plot device until restored midway through the last episode.
  • Exhibit B: Blackarachnia. The Dark Action Girl from Beast Wars is back! How awesome is that? The answer: Not as awesome as you'd hoped. This Blackarachnia is driven by her hatred of her beast-bot status, which she tries to cure. All of her episodes revolve around this, with her never getting in on other Decepticon plots that might've brought out any Beast Wars Blackarachnia-esque moments. Self-hatred drives everything she does. Also, she invariably becomes a Distressed Damsel, needing to be rescued by Optimus from her every attempt at villainy due to betrayal or plans backfiring. Even the one time this appeared to be averted, it was retconned into such: After being flung off of the Ark in one episode, she turns up later, and it turns out that the Dinobots rescued her and brought her to shore. This means that her brief appearance in the premiere is the only instance of her appearing and not having to be rescued by a male. They even managed to throw a moment into her final appearance, with Optimus pulling her out of the way when a supercharged Waspinator tried to blast her - having her remain on her feet and jump aside is too much to ask, apparently. She also relies heavily on seduction - cool in a female villain that is also otherwise effective, but since she's not, it all adds up to someone who wants to be tough but winds up tied to a railroad track every time she tries to do more than smile at men.
  • Exhibit C: Elita 1. While Animated Blackarachnia used to be Elita One, she still counts as separate because that form has its own name and history too. Unfortunately, she doesn't live up to it any better than she went on to live up to Blackarachnia's. Like the horror movie victim who trips or hurts her ankle for no good reason on flat ground, Elita's power-stealing ability cuts out much faster than it'll be shown to at other times, causing her to fall back into the clutches of the alien spiders. (Her attempt to use her absorbing power on the organic spider creatures results in her becoming Blackarachnia.) This makes being Optimus' tragic backstory failure her major role, as Arcee is for Ratchet.
  • Exhibit D: The others. Other female bots exist, but their roles are very brief. Slipstream gets to be snarky but not play a major role, and is the least-seen of the Starscream clones. She reappears near the end of the series out of freaking nowhere to try to kill what she thinks to be Starscream for no discernible reason and then flies away when it turns out to not be him, making her return a Big Lipped Alligator Moment that added little to the proceedings except to prove Optimus' flying needs work - something we'd figured out already. Red Alert's a girl, and gets pounded on, but then, so do the rest of her team. Mind you, each of the males got to attack Strika and company, while Red only got to get attacked while tending to a wounded Hot Shot. Strika herself was a Decepticon team leader and quite Badass, but again, only in that one scene. Flareup gets to join the rest of the civilian robots in being grossed out by an organic. Oh, and one bot seen briefly and none too clearly in that episode is apparently Glyph, a character from a rather obscure comic. The prominent females of TFA have one role and one role only: that of a victim for a male to either save or fail to save. However, The Powers That Be are somewhat redeemed by having a girl as the main "human" (She is a trans-organic with a Cybertronian protoform) sidekick, and making her pretty awesome. Somewhat redeemed.
• Starchaser: The Legend of Orin:
  • Animated B-grade Space Opera has, as a subplot, a a secretarial android in a very female chassis being captured by the local Han Solo Expy. Initially, she is quite combative, until he locates her personality circuits inside her posterior and reprograms her to be arm-drapingly infatuated with him (that's gotta be a trope, in itself). He then sells her to a slave auctioneer at the next civilized port, and only grudgingly buys her back when the No Social Skills hero manages to get himself put up on the block, too. Also, after the hero's initial girlfriend is rather shockingly killed, the hero finds a new chick to fall in pretty-much-instant love with, and the new girl uses the same voice actress. Women are completely interchangeable!
  • He uses the female android as a BULLET SHIELD when he kidnaps her, she protests against the forced reprogramming the entire time, and when the spaceship reveals the location of her personality circuits, she becomes very scared and tries to escape. The guy gags her with duct tape when she starts yelling for help and for him to stop, and while reprogramming her she twitches and convulses and gives muffled shrieks as if the mind invasion/reprogramming is PHYSICALLY HURTING HER. On top of that, her human-like design gives her the appearance of being nude as she is bent over the guy's lap, mind-wiped, and subjugated. Kind of a little creepy as hell.
• In King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, Merlin summons twelve guys to replace the captured knights of the round table, King Aurthur included. Queen Guinevere isn't in on this and while this is a kid's show and no signs of a lip kiss (let alone hanky pankey) are shown, it still does bring up a lot of questions.
• There are quite a few in the very bizarre Very Special Episode Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue ("Hey kids! Do drugs and you'll get to meet your favorite cartoon characters!"), but the worst is that the only black person seen in the special...is a drug dealer. Made much worse by the fact that urban blacks were hardest hit by the 1980s increase in crack usage.
• In "Xmas Marks the Spot", a Yet Another Christmas Carol episode of The Real Ghostbusters, the guys inadvertently go back to Victorian England, and find themselves at Scrooge's place. They round up the ghostly trio of Christmas, and head back home... only to find that everybody has adopted Scrooge's attitude in the wake of the publication of his book decrying Christmas. No individual personalities, just people like him. So they get the ghosts from containment, take them back and release them, and all is well. To summarize, in order to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control, you need Christmas. Which is obvious, right? Those of us who don't celebrate it don't have those, qualities, do we? Thanks for the Aesop, guys.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • It has Him, who is a clear Expy of the Satan, who is the embodiment of everything evil, be Camp Gay. Make of that what you will.
  • A disturbingly creepy running gag in The Powerpuff Girls is that villain Mojo Jojo is raped when he goes to prison by fellow inmates. The first example was the ending of "Cootie Gras", where in a large inmate glares meaningfully at Mojo as Mojo displays a worried look, while the narrator significantly says "Love is in the air! Can't you just feel it?"
  • A similar scene happens in "Monkey See Doggy Two", only as Mojo is turned into a dog and sent to the pound, with another Dog. Most recently, the 10th anniversary/final episode special "Powerpuff Girls Rule!" had one last shout-out to this running gag, as a fellow prisoner embraces Mojo much to Mojo's dismay.
• Futurama:
  • The episode "Amazonian Women In The Mood" has Fry, Zapp and Kif sentenced to death by snu-snu. The snu-snu part is encouraging, but the death part is less so. However, Fry and Zapp are exhausted after several women, to the point where Fry pleads with an Amazonian woman "Can't we just cuddle?" and even Zapp, a large, womanising git is requesting a breather. That's right, Fry and Zapp got raped by women about 12 feet tall. And it was Played for Laughs.
  • Just to increase the show's count of Double Standard Rape (Female on Male), the episode "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela" ends with Leela raping Zapp. (Aliens Made Them Do It; neither of them wanted to.)
• Family Guy:
  • "You May Now Kiss...":
    • The episode deals with the topic of gay marriage, in which Jasper, Brian's gay cousin (which is a dog like him, obviously), wants to marry his boyfriend, who's human, and despite the fact that gay marriage is heavily discussed, nobody bothers to mention that a man is going to marry a dog (albeit an anthropomorphic one). This trope comes in effect when you realize that many gay marriage detractors said that this would lead to people marrying their dogs.
    • Since it's Family Guy, that's obviously not the only unfortunate things about the episode. Brian holds the mayor hostage and forces him to make gay marriage legal and faces no consequences because the writers thought he was right. Chris breaks up with his conservative girlfriend because she opposes this. Removed scenes imply that the guy Jasper was marrying doesn't understand English and doesn't even know that he and Jasper are getting married, implying that gays only marry for sex, sometimes even against other people's will.
    • They also threw in a random joke about child abduction victim Elizabeth Smart. The punchline is that she was permanently traumatized by being raped. Ha-ha. Clever, eh?
    • What's particularly baffling is the fact that Jasper was meant to appeal to the gay audience, he, and every other gay character from Family Guy being very stereotypical. If it was meant as parody, they didn't do a great job at it, apparently not realizing that parody is not supposed to be unironic.
  • Speaking of things like that, you get The Cleveland Show episode where Cleveland says that no women are lesbians after college. Cue to a scene where after a bunch of women graduate from college, they immediately break up with their girlfriends. There's ton of unfortunate implications to this, not the least of which is that all women in lesbian relationships need to grow up and get in a "real" relationship. (As in, one with a man.)
  • There's also "Blue Harvest", where R2-D2 (Cleveland) opens up a "window" of the Millennium falcon, takes out a gun and shoots at a TIE fighter and destroying it, and after shooting it down shouts "YEAH! That's how we do it in my neighborhood, bitch!" The implications in that scene were that R2-D2's neighborhood was full of drive-by shootings, something that should not be glamorized. The fact that R2-D2 was played by a black character for this special makes the already unfortunate implication even worse.
  • According to "Dog Gone", having mentally challenged people reading your book apparently is the worst possible thing than can happen to a writer.
  • Viewers have noted that female characters have a greater chance of being abused or killed off. Combine that with the frequently misogynistic humor (where the above is usually Played for Laughs) and it's clear a few of the writers have serious issues with women.
  • "Seahorse Seashell Party" has am extremely disturbing implication: "Victims of abuse should stay in their abusive relationships/households for the good of other people, especially their abusers". Meg did the right thing telling her family off, but by the end of the episode she apologizes and is back to being a good little doormat.
  • "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" has Meg find religion and Brian be shunned by the town for being an atheist. Brian, who has always been a pretentions asshole about his atheism, is portrayed as a poor persecuted hero who eventually gets his way via the show portraying all Christians as book-burners, then having him "redeem" Meg by telling her that her beliefs are bullshit and that there is no God because she's ugly and her family hates her. She tearfully comes to her senses, thanks him for showing her the way, and walks home with him. It's little wonder this episode is loathed by even die-hard fans of the show.
• Thomas the Tank Engine:
  • Supposedly, subtle communist propaganda.
  • Or the ravings of an unapologetic British imperialist.
• The episode of Dexters Laboratory where Dexter goes to live with an Amish family. They were depicted as having no understanding of the concept of fun, believed technology was some form of evil black magic, and regarded Dee Dee (who travels to their farm from space camp via rocket) as some kind of angelic being.
• Looney Tunes has the classic one, Pepe Le Pew's films are essentially him stalking females who make it clear in no uncertain terms that his attentions are not welcome. The fact that he is too romantically entranced to realize it, or he sometimes he is being chased in turn by those females does not change that.
• Justice League featured a Japanese assassin named Tsukuri, who fit many stereotypes of a butch lesbian and was even implied to harbor an attraction towards her fellow villainess, Aresia. Given that the show features virtually no queer characters, it is unfortunate that the coded lesbian had to also be a violent killer.
• Young Justice:
  • It has an early episode where Aqualad is appointed leader of the team. Despite saying he feels honored, Aqualad immediately states that he only considers his position temporary, and that once Robin is ready, he will give command of the team over to him. So basically, the team's black leader thinks of himself as little more than a placeholder for the white kid who was earlier admonished for his reckless behavior and inability to work with his teammates.
  • Traditionally, the Young Justice/Teen Titans teams have been lead by Robin since he's done the hero thing the longest of the group. Indeed, in the show's (and canon comic book) continuity, Robin is established in being the most experienced when it comes to superheroics. Even more than friends who are older than him such as Aqualad & Speedy/Arsenal. So Aqualad's comment could just be a "I'll lead the team until the guy who has more experience than me realizes that HE'S the one who should be the leader.
• Batman the Brave And The Bold features Killer Frost, who tries to kill Batman and Firestorm and endangers dozens of innocent lives....because Firestorm dumped her back in high school. Additionally, Batwoman is portrayed as reckless and nearly gets a group of innocent people killed, whereas Batman and Robin are shown to be cool, competent heroes who ultimately think of it as a good thing when Batwoman is unmasked and humiliated, thus bringing an end to her crime-fighting career. Of course, there are plenty of competent female heroes on the show, such as Huntress, Black Canary, etc.
• Transformers Prime has the Ambiguously Gay character Knockout. At a convention, fans asked the show staff if Knockout was gay. At first they dodged the question playfully, saying things like the Decepticons have a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Then one of them said that on the day Knockout was born, the Allspark (source of Transformer life) had a "glitch." Yikes.
• A common criticism about animated series Punky, about a girl with Down's Syndrome, is that it makes people with Down's look like idiots. In the first episode, the pharmacist tells Punky's mother to go home and rest, so after her mother goes to bed Punky goes around the house shutting up everything that makes the slightest bit of noise, including her brother listening to music on his headphones at the lowest volume possible besides mute.
• The Simpsons:
  • In episode "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", prohibition is introduced after a particularly rowdy St. Patrick's Day. During said St. Patrick's Day celebrations, while everyone is cavorting around drunk, an English fish and chip shop (imaginatively called "John Bull's Fish and Chips" and festooned with Union Flags) gets blown up and everybody cheers. This is unfortunate in that it not only implies that IRA Terrorism during The Troubles was something funny and/or acceptable, but also implies that all Irish people are terrorists who support the IRA. Which they're not.
  • The episode "Flaming Moe" seemed to imply that all gays are camp perverts who hit on every guy, and have no personality other than being gay. And this episode was about supporting gay rights. And also, the writers apparently think transgender people and gays are one and the same. There are no words.
  • The episode "Homer The Heretic" can be interpreted as having a very anti-atheist/anti-agnostic message.
  • The episode "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays" portrays anybody who doesn't have kids of their own as a borderline Complete Monster who hates kids and is wasting their life.
  • The episode "Lisa the Drama Queen" has a particularly Family-Unfriendly Aesop: "The real world is supposed to suck, deal with it, and any form of escapism or fantasy is wrong." As was mentioned elsewhere, some anvils need to be left in the blacksmith shop.
  • The episode "The Monkey Suit" in which Lisa fights against Ned Flanders in the evolutionism/creationism debate can be seen to fall into this category. Not only does it present a very Hollywood Science view of the evolution debate, but it portrays every Christian character as being arrogant, close-minded fanatics with no capacity to even acknowledge other people's views. Also when Lisa holds the secret evolution lessons, the people there are her, Martin and Database (Milhouse is there too, but he doesn't count) - in other words, the "smart" people, implying that one cannot be clever if one believes in creationism.
  • One episode had Marge at home alone with Maggie, who she purposely wakes up so she can comfort her and feel needed. Some creepy, Münchausen syndrome by proxy-esque implications there.
  • In-universe example in the episode Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy. Lisa gets a Talking Malibu Stacy Doll and when using her, hears her make vapid statements, one of which is her saying "Don't ask me, I'm just a girl" as well as giggling vacantly. The biopic's use of the line in the ending of the biopic implied that the phrase was meant to indicate that Malibu Stacy was reacting humbly, but it was so poorly done it caused Lisa to assume it was meant to belittle girls.

Narrator: And what does Stacy think of her thirty-five years of success // and millions of friends worldwide? // Stacy: Don't ask me, I'm just a girl. [giggles] // Narrator: [chuckles] She sure is.

• Averted with The Smurfs Animated Adaptation of the comic book story "The Black Smurfs" when the production company decided to recolor the infected Smurfs as purple.
• In an episode of Wakfu Sadlygrove gets kidnapped by a quartet of princesses who were cursed; for being bitchy and shallow, they were turned various varieties of ugly, and would remain so until they inspired a man to give one of them a genuine kiss. Any man that kissed them under duress would be turned into a frog, and also the curse wouldn't be broken. Their tower is full of frogs. The least deformed of the four eventually has an attack of conscience and lets Grovy go before the other three can force him to kiss them like they did the others, and, moved by the honor he sees in her heart, he blows her a kiss, which is totally good enough for the curse. Then they go right back to the behavior that got them cursed in the first place. So...once a shallow bitch, always a shallow bitch?
• The The Fairly Odd Parents episode "Twistory" has Timmy accidentally alter history causing the US to remain a British colony. Not too bad. But, then the episode portrays nearly everyone as being stereotypically British with over-the-top Cockney accents, poor hygene, and somehow being stuck in the 1700s. When you combine that with the stereotype that American's think they are the reason anything good has happened in (relatively) modern history, the episode can get rather awkward. (Incidentally, this episode is almost never shown in reruns.)
• Teen Titans had a similar episode involving Mad Mod turning Jump City British. Of course, it was dissuaded a bit by Cyborg saying "Man, I bet REAL British people hate that guy!" and the fact that the episode was one big Shout-Out to The Beatles and Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• G1 My Little Pony had a pony named "Gypsy". She's an orange mare with tambourines for her Cutie Mark who never appeared in the cartoons. However her British description is rather stereotypical: Gypsy entertains the ponies with her dances - twirling around as she taps out of the rhythm on her tambourine. As she runs past, her ribbon leaves a colorful trail for all to see.
  • There's a G3 pony called "Fiesta Flair" who premiered in the cartoon. She has a (sort of?) Mexican accent, a Spanish-themed name, plays maracas in the cartoon, and her a maraca themed Cutie Mark. Due to the Unfortunate Implications of all this Hasbro never released her toy.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has occasionally used species as an allegory for race, which is problematic enough when the message they're trying to send is "don't be racist" or "can't we all just get along?" But the episode "Dragon Quest" has the Aesop "What you are doesn't define who you are", and in order to not break this Aesop, they take some pains to establish that dragons as a species are complete dicks and don't have much of a cultural identity beyond that.
  • Sapphire Shores had some...controversy. As did Derpy.
  • The Season 1 episode, "Feelin' Pinkie Keen" had the aesop "sometimes you just have to choose to believe, even if you have no proof". This lead many fans to be annoyed at what sounded creepily close to a lesson on ignoring scientific facts in favour of beliefs. So much so, Lauren Faust had to point out that that was not what was intended at all.
• The TV special adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas had the titular character at one point giving a slasher smile before stealing a Who child's candy cane. Modern audiences would easily mistake it for something even worse (which explains why that brief scene is often edited out in syndication).
• The TV Series DreamWorks Dragons: Riders Of Berk and Netflix exclusive series DreamWorks Dragons: Race To The Edge are supposed to explain as to why in How To Train Your Dragon 2 Hiccup thought he could change Drago Bludvist as several villains such as Alvin, Dagur and Viggo in the show end up turning good. The problem however is that Dagur and Viggo both crossed the Moral Event Horizon just like Drago. Viggo tried to starve Berk to death and tried to cause an outbreak of a deadly disease by infecting a bunch of his own men which they die from and almost killing Astrid due to her catching the disease from one of the men. Although Viggo does go through a Redemption Equals Death. Dagur basically ended up killing Heather's adopted parents so he commits basically the same sort of crime Drago committed but unlike with Viggo, Dagur doesn't die when he redeems himself flat out becoming a full on ally, marries Queen Mala by the end of the series, gets no real comeuppance for killing Heather's adopted parents and is Easily Forgiven for this even by Heather herself. So its a bit jarring to see Hiccup is willing to give Dagur a second chance despite his crimes but with Drago immediately gives up and decides he doesn't deserve as second chance after causing Stoick to die from a brainwashed Toothless. Also worth noting Drago had a Freudian Excuse (which clearly left him with some level of mental trauma) unlike the other villains which ends up never being mentioned or discussed again as Hiccup ends up not really taking Drago's traumatic past into account nor shows Drago any empathy for what dragons did to his village and himself when he was a child by burning it to the ground, slaughtering everybody there including Drago's family and tearing off his arm leaving him as the only survivor. Even giving him a Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse despite that what happened to Drago's village is what was also once happening on Berk with an evil tyrannical dragon being the root of the cause. Lastly all of the villains who become good are Caucasian skinned just like Hiccup and the rest of Berk while Drago's skin is non-Caucasian appearing to be either medium tan or olive. This ends up giving off some racist implications that Caucasian skinned people are capable of change and should be given a chance to change even if they already crossed it or no matter how horrendous their crimes are even if they had no sort of traumatic experience growing up. But non-Caucasian skinned people are not capable of change regardless if they had a traumatic experience growing up, their traumatic experience should be ignored and don't deserve any sort of second chance if they cross it or commit a horrendous crime.
  • This also applies to Eret in the second movie as he is also Caucasian skinned who started off working as a dragon trapper for Drago but later betrays him to Berk which Hiccup ends up forgiving and accepting him on Berk. However, he never does anything extremely horrendous or crosses it like the above examples so this is more justified as to why Hiccup would forgive him.