History BrokenAesop / WesternAnimation

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ultimate Spider-Man}}'' focuses on Spider-Man having to learn sense of responsability and teamwork, with NickFury as TheMentor. Both very respectable aesops, but it's quite hard to not sympathetize with his tendencies to [[IWorkAlone work alone]] when his teammates are mostly obnoxious {{Jerkass}}es who forcefully insert themselves in his life, constantly mock or insult him (despite the fact he often ends up as the OnlySaneMan) and, in Nova's case, outright insult his real-life bestfriend Harry Osborn. As the for the responsability aspect, not only does it feel unnecessary since the whole Spider-Man origin (confirmed to be the same in this version) was supposed to be about Spidey learning responsibility of his own, but Fury, being an AntiHero with several CreateYourOwnVillain in his backstory, leaving no personal space to his recruit (he sets up security cameras in Spidey's house) and willing to break his promises, [[DesignatedHero hardly appears as a suitable authority figure.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "Swarm of the Century," Pinkie's seemingly pointless quest for musical instruments turns out to be the perfect way to get rid of the town's parasprite infestation, and things would have gone a lot smoother if everyone had just helped her rather than wasting time on other methods, with the intended lesson that you should listen to your friends' ideas, even if they may not make complete sense to you. Except that Pinkie never makes any attempt to explain what she's doing; she just demands everyone help her on a mission that doesn't seem to make sense at all, and expects them to go along with it just because she says so. Plus, one of those other methods almost works until Pinkie herself screws it up. So the message becomes more about the importance of explaining yourself properly.

** With Twilight [[spoiler: becoming an alicorn and being promoted to Princess, the reasons for which are kept secret]] the rest of the Mane Six are gradually becoming less significant than they were in the first two seasons. [[BigDamnMovie Equestria Girls]] has her solving all their problems with a single common sense question, and they spend the rest of the movie as Twilight's (literal) cheerleaders, and then [[spoiler: leaving, dumping the responsibility for Sunset Shimmer's rehabilitation on her new friends, fully intending never to see them again, ''after'' proving that Magic is the only one of the Elements of Harmony that is actually physically necessary.]]... which means all that stuff about how every member of the team is equally important, and how blessings can cause more harm than good when there aren't enough of them to go around, and being honest with your friends, all of which are lessons from earlier episodes, fall a bit flat.

** Kirk and Luane Van Houten's divorce in "A Milhouse Divided" was all just one big aesop about Homer needing to respect his wife, which is what Kirk tells Homer after losing his home, his job, and his car. But the way losing Luane caused those was [[DeusAngstMachina utterly contrived]]: he lost his home because he apparently got absolutely nothing in the divorce settlement, he was fired ''[[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity for being single]]'', and his car was stolen by a woman he met on the rebound (which ''was'' his fault, but was more general incompetence as he was dumb enough to hand over his keys to someone he just met while waiting in a bar).

* ''Wolverine and the X-Men'' showcased Cyclops grieving over the disappearance of his DesignatedLoveInterest Jean Grey and being annoyed at Professor Xavier demoting him while promoting Wolverine to leader. The series seemed to initially pitch the idea that Cyclops had to learn to let go of his resentments and move on with his life, including but no limited to hooking up with his then comic current girlfriend Emma Frost. 26 episodes later... he ended up back together with Jean anyway after waiting for the odds to change in his favor. Great moral for the kids - don't learn to move on from the loss of your loved ones, just sit around being depressed in the hopes that they'll eventually come back to you.

** The morality of mind control goes right out the window when Kim's own father brainwashes her. Or the previous episode where Shego having her MoralityDial switched to good is a... um, good thing.

* Arguably occurs in the episode "The Fugitive Flowers" in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyAndFriends''; while the ponies do explicitly state that the reason they believed the [[CuteIsEvil Flories]] (mobile sapient invasive weeds) were good and the Crabnasties were bad is because [[BeautyEqualsGoodness the Crabnasties are ugly and the Flories are pretty]], one can't ignore the FridgeLogic that the Crabnasties really didn't make themselves come off as "good guys" even ignoring that they're ugly-looking {{Giant Enemy Crab}}s. The Crabnasties make themselves known to the ponies by ripping a swathe of destruction through Dream Valley; cutting down or tearing up trees, flipping over boulders, ripping up plants and generally making a mess. When the ponies complain, they brush them off and wander off, still tearing the place apart. If they had apologised for the destruction and explained that they are police officers out to stop the Flories, who [[WalkingWasteland drain the life from the earth and create deserts wherever they go]], they could have elicited enough understanding to prevent the ponies from assuming "Flories Good, Crabnasties Bad".

** ''A Dog And Pony Show'' tells us that being ladylike doesn't make a girl weak, and being smart and keeping her cool counts just as much... but apparently ladylike strength is acting whiny, spoiled, and annoying, and it only works against weak-willed morons. Equestria is ''full'' of serious villains who wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior, let alone be foiled by it on any level, and all the ones who use social skills to do harm in other episodes (and the movie) are ultimately beaten by force. So, not weak, just weaker than everyone who isn't an idiot.

** In the controversial episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy Homer's Enemy]]", WordOfGod said they wanted to show that a real person could not survive in the show's universe, except they did it [[TookALevelInJerkass by making Homer look worse]] [[{{Flanderization}} than he really was]] in order to make [[OnlySaneMan Frank Grimes]] look better. What's worse is that Frank's breakdown [[spoiler:and death]], which were supposed caused by Homer, was really ''his own fault''. Homer had offered to make amends with Frank, but he didn't want anything to do with it, and he immediately put everything into destroying Homer. It doesn't help that they made Frank's life [[DeusAngstMachina excessively miserable]] before he even met Homer.

** ''A Dog And Pony Show'' tells us that being ladylike doesn't make a girl weak, and being smart and keeping her cool counts just as much... but apparently ladylike strength means acting whiny, spoiled, and annoying, and it can only work on the most idiotic, weak-willed morons. By itself, the idea wouldn't be bad, except that Equestria is ''full'' of real villains, and the tactics the episode promotes wouldn't work with anyone smarter than a box of rocks.

** The most contentious by far seems to be emerging via the Season 3 finale. The episode was about the characters' cutie marks getting switched by accident, and how you will be unhappy if you let something tell you what your destiny should be instead of finding it yourself. That's all well and good, except that [[spoiler:Princess Celestia rewards Twilight Sparkle by unilaterally transforming her into an alicorn and making her into a princess, all while singing about how this had been her plan for Twilight since she was a child and never once asking her if this is what she actually wants]]. The episode pairs this with a message about finding your own destiny instead of having one handed to you, without a shred of irony or self-awareness. The writers have stated that the episode is actually part one of an arc that won't be resolved until next season, so it's unknown whether or not it will be addressed later.
*** All that stuff about teamwork, accepting your friends for who they are, and sharing special bonds sounds a little hollow with the reveal that [[spoiler:Celestia had an ulterior motive in urging Twilight to make friends all along, and Princess Twilight can apparently use the Elements of Harmony by herself.]]
**** Though to be fair, the main aesop of the episode was supposed to be about helping friends in areas in which they are not good at. It just somewhat became lost and overshadowed by the [[AlternateAesopInterpretation whole destiny thing]].

* SpongeBob with "Ditching". The moral of the story is stay in school. Just one [[SarcasmMode small]] problem... Spomgebob had the ''best'' day of his life after ditching boating school to go hang out with Patrick. He got to meet Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy (again) to get his MM & BB origins comic book autographed, gets free ice cream for the rest of his life, got to go jellyfishing, and bested Sandy at badminton. So the moral is don't skip school, but if you do, [[KarmaHoudini you will have the best day of your life?]]

*** One episode has Pinkie apparently learning that some people would rather be left alone... so she reunites the friendship-resistant curmudgeon with the girl he's been searching for his whole life, and earns his friendship. So you really can make anyone your friend, if you just do the right favor for them.

**** There's an entire episode devoted to the standard bullying morals (two wrongs don't make a right, bullying is a symptom of other problems in the someone's life, et cetera), but Diamond Tiara's and Silver Spoon's cutie marks imply that being mean, shallow, stuck-up snobs is their destiny and special talent.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "The Last Roundup", four members of the Mane Cast leave two of their friends stranded behind in an unknown place. Which totally goes against the morals of friendship (such as loyalty and kindness) that the show seems to promote in every episode. It's even [[LampshadeHanging implied]] that Rarity's going to give Rainbow Dash a [[WhatTheHellHero hefty chewing out for deserting her and Pinkie Pie]] when they get back to Ponyville.
** In "Swarm of the Century," Pinkie's seemingly pointless quest for musical instruments turns out to be the perfect way to get rid of the town's parasprite infestation, and things would have gone a lot smoother if everyone had just helped her rather than wasting time on other methods, with the intended lesson that you should listen to your friends' ideas, even if they may not make complete sense to you. Except that Pinkie never makes any attempt to explain what she's doing; she just demands everyone help her on a mission that doesn't seem to make sense at all, and expects them to go along with it just because she says so. Plus, one of those other methods almost works until Pinkie herself screws it up. So the message becomes more about the importance of explaining yourself properly.

** Perhaps the worst example, once you think about it, would be "[[Recap/FamilyGuyS9E8NewKidneyInTown New Kidney in Town]]". In this episode Peter's kidney fails and Brian offers to donate a kidney to Peter, except because [[TalkingAnimal Brian is a dog]] it would kill him. This is suppposed to show the bond between Peter and Brian when Brian offers to give his life for Peter. However, a missing kidney is not fatal, Peter would need to be on dialysis (not pleasant, but plenty do it IRL) but would otherwise live a normal enough life. Of course, Peter wouldn't be able to rely on dialysis because [[TooDumbToLive he kept doing stupid things that would kill him without a kidney]]. So Peter would rather choose to allow his best friend to die for him then to stop doing recklessly stupid things for fun. So the Aesop goes from "sometimes you have to do make major sacrifices for someone you love" to "sometimes you need to make a StupidSacrifice for someone who has clearly proven he is too much of a selfish JerkAss to deserve it". If this wasn't bad enough, it's [[FridgeLogic far worse if you know anything about kidney donations]]. Any of Peter's family, despite not being compatible, could have signed up to be part of a daisy chain where they agree to donate a kidney to someone else if Peter gets a kidney (in fact, Lois was notified that she was compatible with a different kidney-transplant patient, but she naturally declined). This would have effectively gotten Peter a kidney almost as fast as Brian's own surgery could be arranged. Which means every single member of the main cast would rather let Brian die then donate their own kidney, which for them would be a safe procedure with essentially no long term side effects.

** There's also [[Recap/FamilyGuyS7E12Episode420 the "Legalize Weed" episode]], in which they unsuccessfully tried to juggle the "legalizing weed will have no negative consequences on society" aesop with "stoners are morons" jokes. For example, the scene where Brian states that ever since legalizing weed worker productivity is up over 100% doesn't really fare so well since only a scene away we get Peter being so stoned all the time that he can't even set up a flashback gag and instead shows a LongList of all the celebrities he hates.
** There's also the infamous "[[Recap/FamilyGuyS7E11NotAllDogsGoToHeaven Not All Dogs Go to Heaven]]" episode, which tells us that we shouldn't discriminate against atheists, and that being an atheist does not automatically make you a bad person. Accepting others' beliefs is a fair Aesop, although this is severely undermined by the parts of the very same episode that [[BeliefMakesYouStupid take brutal shots at Christians]], in addition to [[AuthorAvatar Brian's]] several chiding remarks about religion across other episodes.

** The most contentious by far seems to be emerging via the Season 3 finale. The episode was about the characters' cutie marks getting switched by accident, and how you will be unhappy if you let something tell you what your destiny should be instead of finding it yourself. That's all well and good, except that [[spoiler:Princess Celestia rewards Twilight Sparkle by unilaterally transforming her into an alicorn and making her into a princess, all while singing about how this had been her plan for Twilight since she was a child and never once asking her if this is what she actually wants]]. The episode does not acknowledge the irony of pairing this with a message about finding your own destiny instead of having one handed to you, although the writers have stated that the episode is actually part 1 of an arc that won't be resolved until next season, so it's unknown whether or not it will be addressed later.

*** Though to be fair, the main aesop of the episode was supposed to be about helping friends in areas in which they are not good at. It just somewhat became lost and overshadowed by the [[AlternateAesopInterpretation whole destiny thing]].