What Do You Mean, It Needs Fixing? (Cleanup thread for pages on the What Do You Mean, It’s Not An Index? index)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has this.

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being an overall child-friendly game, there is no apparent profanity filter for the characters nor the player; while there is one for letters and bulletin board messages, in which typed-out offensive words are rendered as an asterisk, there isn't one for anything beyond that. Due to this, there have been some hilarious mishaps where islanders have picked up and reiterated inappropriate words used by players. You can also name your island pretty much anything due to the lack of a filter. And let's not get started on non-English cuss words, romanized from non-Latin alphabet or otherwise, which the game seemingly ignores^note ironically, this is how people in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore are used to cussing online — by typing out the pronunciation of the cuss word with Latin characters instead of in their native scripture. And the less said about the accuracy of Michelangelo's David sculpture, the better (the fact that cranky villagers can comment on the matter certainly doesn't help).

I don't think a single soul would doubt Animal Crossing being child-friendly just because of some fairly mild Video Game Perversity Potential that got overlooked.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 26th 2020 at 10:55:05 AM

Chop-chop. Most of it can be moved under Video Game Perversity Potential.

Found this on YMMV.Marvels Avengers.

• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The game began development several years before release, so none of this was intentional, but the game features an infectious disease that causes mass panic and paranoia, a government body using blatant lies and manipulated facts to spread disinformation, and a great deal of social unrest, including protestors and others to be wrongfully arrested and placed in camps where they're subjected to medical procedures they didn't want. A lot of this feels Ripped from the Headlines considering what was going on in America at the time of release, but the story was almost definitely written well beforehand.

It's like someone saw we were cracking down on those types of Hindsight entries and thought they'd sneak it in another way.

This is on PBS Kids:

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While some shows, such Arthur and Sesame Street, tackle mature topics, they're mostly still family-friendly. The examples listed below will have you wonder how these were approved for preschool television at all:
  • In the Mix takes this to its logical extreme by being the only PBS Kids program to date to have a rating higher than TV-G (TV-PG).
  • The Noddy Shop - Let's see: one of the characters is a beer mug, another character has large breasts, the show references adult works like Sudden Impact, the "Special" song is pretty much about sex (and drops the word "hell"), and the series finale has a man trying to turn NODDY's into a cigar store. It's a wonder that this show was approved for preschool television at all. Then again, Canada's censors are pretty lax compared to American ones.
  • Odd Squad has some pretty dark moments for being a kids' show, and has more Getting Crap Past the Radar and Does This Remind You of Anything? moments than most might believe. Among other things, it has strong implications of abuse, PTSD, child marriage, Global Warming, and alcoholism — and that's just in its first season. Despite this, the show has been a consistent part of the block for 6 years, and is still going.
  • While Ready Jet Go! is not the most inappropriate kids show around, it has quite disturbing undertones to it^note Take Back to Bortron 7 for example. It is implied that if Jet, Sean, and Sydney didn't improve Carrot and Celery's presentation, they would have never gone back to Earth ever again., and instances of Getting Crap Past the Radar. Not to mention that one of the main child characters was almost killed by a weather balloon in an episode, Jet's own cousin is pretty much a racist bigot (at least until Character Development kicked in), and there are implications of self-loathing in another episode.
  • On Wild Kratts, so far, we've heard talk of cannibalism, seen a Secretary bird kill a snake (complete with minor blood spillage), saw a coyote marking Martin-the-Tree as his territory (although we just saw the wet spot and not the genitals nor the stream), seen animals frozen alive with full consciousness still intact, saw T-Devils eating an ambiguous dead thing… are we sure this is on PBS? The brothers actually ended up naked in one scene, though their modesty was covered up by gigantic leaves.
  • Liberty's Kids covers topics such as war, and several characters are killed off, including one of the main character's cousins. It also has no qualms with covering slavery, with one of the main characters being a former slave.
  • Redwall is based off the books of the same name — but shies away from virtually none of the Family-Unfriendly Violence that makes its source material so infamous (see its entry under Literature for more details on the books), instead simply hiding behind Gory Discretion Shots and Bloodless Carnage to obscure characters being tortured, maimed, stabbed, and killed in a variety of awful ways with the deaths of named characters in almost every episode. Even then, the show didn't always employ its discretion shots; characters were shot dead with arrows and stabbed fully onscreen numerous times (the bloody aftermath of Cheesethief's death and Badrang being gutted with Martin's sword being just two instances of this) and even threw in a few moments of gratuitous cursing in the first season that wasn't even in the source material.
    • What makes this even more astonishing is the fact that Redwall aired on PBS at all. While it can be argued that shows like Wild Kratts and Liberty's Kids have to cover some disturbing topics as a result of their educational subject matter (i.e. the unsavory aspects of American history, the sometimes violent and scary parts of nature), Redwall doesn't. In fact, it's one of the few—if not the only— non-educational cartoons ever to air on PBS (though it is believed that it did have a slight Aesop of Reading Is Cool, thus allowing it a free pass). Given PBS's normal aversion to violence in its cartoons, it's odd that this would be the exception.
  • Some early episodes of Adventures from the Book of Virtues contain mild violence and even murder. Yes, this is a PBS show.
  • Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum and its accompanying book series Ordinary People Change the World can slip into this territory at times due to covering topics not a lot of other preschool shows/books do such as racism^note In "I Am Rosa Parks", "I Am Martin Luther King Jr", "I Am Jackie Robinson", and "I Am Harriet Tubman", slavery^note "I Am Harriet Tubman" again, sexism^note "I Am Marie Curie", "I Am Susan B. Anthony" and "I Am Billie Jean King", war,^note "I Am George Washington" (book only, not the episode) etc, to the point where Moral Guardians and Heteronormative Crusaders deemed the series inappropriate for kids. Also, in the I Am Madam President special, Berby dies and drifts off into space. You read that right, a PBS Kids show killed off one of its main characters. She did come back though.

Found this on YMMV.Spider Man PS 4:

I find it very hard to believe that these were not intentional, especially the first one.

On What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?, I found really long list of bullets of why Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) are too intense for children. While I do agree they're more violent than the games and there are some Parental Bonuses, I wonder if we really need that long list of reasons. Some are really ridiculous, such as Ixis Naugus' design being "scary", Sonic and Fiona Fox "hooking up" as 15 and 16 years olds^note they're old enough if "hooking up" refers to what I'm thinking of and the age difference is too small to be problematic, Scourge, Metal Sonic, and sometimes Robotnik having red eyes and black sclerae reminiscent of Sonic.exe, and Mimic's Nightmare Face being "not kid-friendly at all"^note It just looks like a skull. Somehow, they forgot the LSD reference and how Sonic the Comic has more violence than the other comics themseleves, the word "damned", and depiction of alcohol.

Bump

I remembered something, and I wonder if it'd make a good example of What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?

• Wii Karaoke U. A karaoke game published by Nintendo, with graphics that make it look just like their family friendly games like Wii Sports. Miis sing along to your choice of song... which do not have censored lyrics, and they can get very explicit◊.

Oh, like how Just Dance has suggestive songs? *clicks link* ...Oh, wow.

I think you should outright say that the game says "fuck" to be clear what "explicit" means, but this seems more like a case of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? because it's marketed as a game for the whole family.

This is on Trolls:

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The film was made for children to watch, but some think that it contains subliminal messages about the dangers of becoming addicted to psychedelic drugs that induce happiness (as in Bergens see Trolls as those drugs).

Cut. That's on the level of "Cartoons promote Satanism".

I've seen that metaphor pointed out (I think the Nostalgia Critic joked about it?) but not in the context of the film not being kid-friendly (since anti-drug messages on kids' shows are quite common). It's more of an Accidental Aesop.

This is on https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DetectiveConan.

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being published in a Shonen Magazine meant for preteens and teenagers and shown in evenings slot for the duration of its run, the series holds no boundaries with it's violent content, with subject matter like murder, suicide, bombings, etc; all of which would make it impossible to air on children's programming in the West.

Seems like this needs more reasoning behind it. Any ideas?

Edited by mrSonic056 on Mar 1st 2021 at 2:38:47 AM

It also have grammatical errors, especially with the it's-its confusion.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 1st 2021 at 10:55:00 AM

This is in the Advertising folder on the main page of What Do You Mean, It's For Kids?:

• Another series of milk ads that played before movies in Canada featured a cow popping out of the logo, letting out a deafening moo. It got worse later on, when the cow stared straight into the camera. Combined with how loud cinemas tend to be, this was pretty jarring. When the ads played before 3D movies, they were downright TERRIFYING. The ads were thankfully taken off the air eventually.

Edited by ChillyBeanBAM on Mar 31st 2021 at 1:57:39 AM

I recently added this to Caillou's YMMV page

• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The imagination sequences can be this at times. For example, the one from "Caillou Goes Apple Picking" has Caillou trying to pick an apple from a tree, only for it, the tree, and the ladder to grow and grow and grow until it looks like Caillou is the size of a small bug.

Is this example ok, or should it be cut?

Nuke that.

Did the audience actually think that the scene was made on drugs, though? What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? is misused a ton, with if often being used in the context of just “this scene is trippy”.

Ok, I'll cut it. I thought I did misuse the trope.

Edited by DenoTheSaur on Mar 31st 2021 at 5:13:42 AM

Could it fit more as Disney Acid Sequence?

I don't think so.

WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids.Video Games has this example:

Fortnite's Battle Royal mode often gets hit with this. Sure, it looks like an afternoon cartoon, but behind the facade it's still a shooter where the only goal is to murder everyone else until only one player is left standing, leaving many people (parents in particular) wondering how it managed to get a kid-friendly rating despite its premise.

I have clarified it to as below:

Fortnite's Battle Royal mode often gets hit with this. Sure, it looks like an afternoon cartoon, but behind the facade it's still a shooter where the only goal is to murder everyone else until only one player is left standing, leaving many people (parents in particular) wondering how it managed to get a comparatively kid-friendly rating of Teen despite its premise.

Bolded for emphasis

I don't know if Teen-rated games belong on this page, especially given that Teen is the highest unrestricted ESRB rating.

But again, there are a few Teen-rated Zelda examples.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Apr 9th 2021 at 12:15:44 PM

Sorry to derail, I just found this added to Popee the Performer:

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The series was meant for all ages, yet it has a lot of violence, blood, and death. The nightmarish imagery doesn't help.

I know the anime is infamous for the surreal horror and bloody violence that it has despite being for kids, but that's mainly from the west. There was an old entry for WDYMIFK that was deleted and replaced with Values Dissonance, which I feel is more accurate. Popee's content isn't a big deal in Japan because the low budget animation and surreal elements defang the horror enough for it to be seen as perfectly acceptable for children.

Do we keep the current entry for WDYMIFK because it's less exaggerated than the old one, or do we delete it for better fitting VD?

Edited by RainbowPumpqueen on Jun 22nd 2021 at 5:11:13 AM

Bump.

If Popee a valid example, its entry currently lacks context. Thankfully, the Values Dissonance entry gives some.

• Values Dissonance: The fact that this show is intended for children might be initially very shocking, given the relatively constant blood and more-violent-than-usual Amusing Injuries, Black Comedy and elements of Surreal Horror. However, it's important to keep in mind that in Japan, the show's home, extremely stylized and unrealistic violence isn't typically treated the same way as graphic, realistic violence; in essence, the show's bizarre art direction and surreal elements defang the violence enough that in Japan, the show is seen as perfectly acceptable for children.

I'm not sure how accurate My Anime List is with broadcast information, but they say the show aired on Kids Station at 20:53, or 8:53 PM. Kids Station's Wikipedia page points out that they would air shows intended for teenagers at night. If that's true, it might actually have been aimed at an older audience. I'm having trouble finding broadcast information or age rating information.

• The advertising campaign for Kellogg's Fruit Wind-Ups consisted of CGI anthropomorphic fruit killing their normal-shaped but sentient brethren in extremely sadistic and cruel ways in order to make the product. This leads to things like innocent fruit desperately begging not to die; one involved the evil fruit sucking all the juice out of an orange, leaving his dead empty skin laying in the street. If anything, it's Sausage Party meets Danganronpa.

What does "Sausage Party meets Danganronpa" mean? The rest of the entry does seem accurate, although the violence is extremely cartoony. I can't find the one about sucking juice out of an orange, but that seems like an ad for Screamin Fruit Squidgers, a pouched juice that used the same marketing assets.

On It's Not for Kids:

• Archive of Our Own often has inappropriately low ratings in order to attract a greater audience, hosting terrifyingly insane works such as Silver-furred Secrets.

I'm cutting this one for being a general example. Presuming I found the correct Silver-Furred Secrets (a Warrior Cats fanfic), it's rated as "Not Rated", which the site treats like a "mature" or "explicit" rating, asking the reader to confirm they wish to see adult content before viewing.

Edited by VerySunshine on Sep 14th 2021 at 3:19:28 AM