History Main / BrokenAesop

** The whole "abandoning your friend, makes you [[InsultToRocks worse than trash]]". Almost everytime a friend/comrade was saved/spared bad things happened. Hashirama tries to spare Madara… Madara is the BiggBad. Hatake Sakumo saved his team… Konoha suffers from heavy losses. Kakashi goes to help Obito… Obito is now the BigBad. Hiruzen spares Orochimaru… he ends up dying fighting Orochimaru.

** In the Ghostfreak two-parter, tries to do an Aesop about teamwork. Unfortunately, this fails when TheHero is armed with one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe; try as they might, Gwen and Max ''really'' [[WeAreTeamCannonFodder don't compare]]. It's like [[Manga/DragonBall Tien and Yamcha trying to teach teamwork to Super Saiyan Goku]]. Also, at the beginning of Part 2 ("Be Afraid of The Dark"), Gwen tells Ben "We don't need your help". Frankly, the story makes it seem like she's jealous of the Omnitrix, and having {{sidekick}} issues. Max has a lesser case, but, not being ten, he knows when to shut up and get on with things. At the end of the second episode, Ben ends up learning his aesop about teamwork after...he uses his Omnitrix to save Gwen and Max's asses as they plummet from space to Earth.

*** JamesMacavoy said he kept this in mind while portraying Xavier in ''Film/{{X-Men First Class}}''. He pointed out that Xavier is a well-meaning, but ultimately misguided liberal, as he still has tons of societal advantages given that he's white, heterosexual, male, and extremely wealthy. He certainly doesn't have to put up with the same bigotry many mutants receive, which causes his message of peace to ring false to many.

** In the first episode, Tuxedo Mask tells Sailor Moon the crying won't solve anything. Not ten seconds after saying this, Moon manages to stun the MonsterOfTheWeek long enough to kill her by using highly amplified crying. Granted, it was probably unintentional, but still...

* Every parent tells their kids to not swear. When kids catch them swearing, all these terrible, terrible parents say "Do as I say, not as I do", to which all thinking children reply with a roll of the eyes and a sardonic, "Hey, why don't you practice what ya preach [[spoiler:sometimes with an under-their-breath "you cunt]]".

* In ''Webcomic/CtrlAltDel'', the comic makes it clear it's wrong to be a "console fanboy," in one strip even having God personally squash one. Fine. We'll buy that; a bit Anvilicious, but an adequate Aesop of its own. However, there are issues with this, since the the fanboys are always gamecube fans, the evil Gamer King in an early strip used a staff with a golden Gamecube controller on top (versus Ethan's Xbox one), Ethan playing a Gamecube is referred to as a "sin against the gaming gods," he mentions that turning the Gamecube into a robot would result into a girl robot, and doing the same to a Playstation would produce a gay one while the Xbox appears to be perfect and sinless.

** The episode ''The Game'' attempted to make an aesop that [[NewMediaAreEvil video games are EVIL]]. However, the game in question (a weird "put disc into bad CGI tubes" game) was actively programmed to brainwash who ever plays it. Also, holodecks are video game final form (can simulate ANY scenario imaginable, and stimulate all the senses while doing it), and nobody had a problem with them.

** Or [[GoodIsDumb ""good countries should do nothing when their citizens get abducted by terrorists."]]

* ''Atlas Shrugged: Part I'' has John Galt describe himself as "Someone who knows what its like to work for himself and not have others feed off the profits of his energy". Which makes zero sense as industrialists by Their very job description feed off of other's energy: Their employees, engineers, experts, etc. A major business cannot function without the work of others.

* Alice in the [[Film/AliceInWonderland Tim Burton movie]] learns that she doesn't have to do what everybody tells her to by slaying the Jabberwock. What is exactly what everybody was telling her to do since she set one foot into Underland.

* ''Film/{{Limitless}}'' has a drug which whilst you are on it makes you superhumanly intelligent. The protagonist discovers to his horror that other people who have taken it have had fatal experiences with withdrawal (the only survivor of withdrawal he finds is a complete burn-out). His girlfriend points out that whilst he's on the drug he's a different person. Plus when he is off the drug he finds himself completely unable to cope and so desperately seeks to continue his supply, there are even escalating side-effects of headaches and missing time when he's on the drug. Seems like a fairly clear Aesop about not relying on artificial crutches to succeed and a metaphor for steroid hormones. However in the end [[spoiler:He uses the drug to solve all of his problems (although it's ambiguous if he's actually off the drug at the end or just used the drug to concoct a beautiful lie) and becomes a US Senator, who is clearly destined for the Whitehouse. Implying that drugs are infact good as long as you use them wisely.]]

** But then again, [[spoiler:Everyone, college students included, who gets caught up in their paranoia winds up dying, so the aesop could be interpreted as: "Nobody, hillbilly or college student, should judge based on appearances.]]

** The third, and possibly ''worst'' problem with the movie, is that nearly all of its humor consists of jokes ''making fun of'' fat people. Hypocrisy; thy name is Farrelly.
*** I think the biggest problem with the movie is that it re-enforces the opposite of the point of the movie because Hal develops an opinion of people based on the appearance of the person when he knows nothing else about the person aside from appearance.
** A male cross-dresser that appears to Hal as a beautiful woman, which has no correlation between what the plot said happened to Hal--inner beauty and gender are two entirely different things.

* Sacha Baron Cohen's ''Film/{{Bruno}}'' has taken a lot of flak for arguably breaking its own Aesop about how Americans have a lot of homophobia to conquer. The declared purpose of the movie is for Cohen to act like a homosexual to get an idea of how people react to homosexuals, but the problem with that is that he really isn't acting like a homosexual. He's acting like a [[ComedicSociopathy blatant and rude]] [[CampGay stereotype of homosexuals]].

* ''Film/INowPronounceYouChuckAndLarry'' is about how you shouldn't discriminate against gay people... but every gay character in the movie is [[CampGay a flaming stereotype]].

* ''Anime/CodeGeass''. Remember the show-capping aesop about how those that would kill should be prepared to be killed, using [[spoiler:the main character as an example]]? Tell that to the likes of [[spoiler:[[KarmaHoudini Villetta, Cornelia, and Ohgi]]]], characters who accomplished much less for peace and somehow get to reap the benefits instead. Or how about the people who don't hurt a fly [[spoiler:like Princess Euphemia and Shirley]] and still get killed. In other words, consequences for your actions and/or paying for your crimes. Clovis, Mao, [[spoiler:Charles, V.V., Marianne, Rolo (remember Shirley, let alone his other assassination targets) arguably Schniezel (he essentially had his life taken from him without killing him)]]. One could say Lelouch, but that might not be fair to him; he may have caused a lot of damage, but some of that stuff was on account of necessity, and even so, he did a lot of good for the world against the Britannian empire; he was [[CosmicPlaything a near-constant victim of Murphy's Law]], which, all combined, made his final act excessively destructive towards [[DeathSeeker himself]] and [[InferredHolocaust the rest of the world]], even though other options may have existed. Yet in the end, some of the people who committed horrible crimes, or who should have had some form of comeuppance for their actions (the names [[spoiler:Villetta [war crimes], Cornelia [even worse war crimes], Ohgi [the betrayal that led to Lelouch's GenghisGambit and death], and Nina [''trying to set off the series' equivalent of a nuke in the middle of a heavily-populated city'']]] spring to mind again) just got away with it, and had some of the happiest endings [[spoiler:particularly Oghi and Villetta]].

** The whole "abandoning your friend, makes you [[InsultToRocks worse than trash]]". Almost everytime a friend/comrade was saved/spared bad things happened. Hashirama tries to spare Madara… Madara is the BiggerBad. Hatake Sakumo saved his team… Konoha suffers from heavy losses. Kakashi goes to help Obito… Obito is now the BigBad. Hiruzen spares Orochimaru… he ends up dying fighting Orochimaru.
** Hidden Aesop: Sometimes, you must learn to let go? (Even referenced to the annoyance of Naruto by Jiraiya in reference to Naruto never giving up on his quest to save Sasuke.

** YMMV. Eugene's suicide in many ways reinforces the film's Aesop by showing that prejudice works both ways - the Invalids believe they can't achieve anything and are therefore worthless, and the Valids believe that they're worthless if they ''don't'' achieve anything. And by "anything", we mean "absolute perfection". It's this attitude that leads to the BuryYourDisabled scenario, as the guy in question feels so inferior that he might as well die, just because he came second and not first in a race.

* ''Disney/TheLionKing'': The moral feels less like "respect all living things" (which is what the writers intended) and more like "respect all living things, except for hyenas, [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute which are evil and deserve to starve to death]]."
** DougWalker points out another one: [[TricksterMentor Rafiki]] tells [[RightfulKingReturns Simba]] that he can't dwell on the past (in this case, his responsibility for [[SacrificialLion Mufasa]]'s death), just accept it and learn from it. However, Simba's heroic resolve still collapses once [[EvilPrince Scar]] brings it up, and he only gets over it when Scars admits that he killed Mufasa--Simba didn't have to get over his past because it turns out it was all a lie to begin with.