History Main / BrokenAesop

** Characters learn not to do something, but [[StatusQuoIsGod go back to doing it in later instalments]].

* One ad for a type of candy called Gushers was supposed to encourage kids to eat them, except it had the heads of kids who ate them turn into fruit.

** Trying to teach a PrejudiceAesop, when the "prejudice" is actually based on a rational fear (e.g. a mouse afraid of cats is seen as prejudiced), when most of the group being discriminated against ''are'' obnoxious or scary, just not this one particular one (common in MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch situations), or when another group (usually the ones being prejudiced) [[AlwaysChaoticEvil are portrayed as universally reprehensible/bigoted]].

# ''"Why is the producer who was criticized for not paying their actors decently telling me about the importance of treating my employees fairly?"''

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16815221470.78122100 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16815221470.78122100 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

* ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'': In the episode "Seeing Stars" Loona's speech to Octavia about parents not getting everything right when they try to be good parents rings hollow considering the show had never really shown Blitzo's failures as a father, always showing him as a over-doting and loving parent that gets a little too affectionate sometimes. On the flip side, Loona was the one who is always acting abrasive, having beaten the crap out of him for telling her to adjust her attitude with their clients at the beginning of the episode and even after the speech, she proceeded to kick Blitzo in the groins when he tried to apologize and hug Loona for threatening to replace her. Even acknowledging her backstory revealed in this episode, Loona comes off as hypocritical telling Octavia to cut her dad some slack when she herself refuses to. It's also hard to say why Loona would extend this empathy towards Stolas, given they have never had a conversation and from her perspective it would be easy to conclude Stolas is sexually exploiting Blitzo in exchange for the book, but she can't extend the same understanding to Blitzo who she does know and he does care for her.

* The original story of TheBluebeard by Charles Perrault seemed to be going for an Aesop of if you get too curious you may not like what you find. Here's the problem: Bluebeard's wife may not have liked what she found, but it still probably ''saved her life'' in the end, if what she found is any guide. If she hadn't looked in the forbidden room, she probably would have wound up getting on his bad side when her sister and brothers hadn't been around. The true moral should be ''please'' be curious. Or, "Be curious and not clumsy."

* During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the anti-independence (No) campaign ran a video called ''The Woman Who Made Up Her Mind'', which featured a woman talking to a camera in her kitchen about how this talk of independence was all very well, but did the pro-independence (Yes) campaign really know what they were talking about? Did they really know what would happen? She comes down against independence because she "just doesn't think" it will work out, but the lesson that the Yes campaign hadn't done the research and didn't know what would happen is lost, because although the No side was trying to present itself as the party of common sense, the woman doesn't have any facts to back herself up; her own doubts are entirely based on gut instinct and [[AcceptableTargets knee-jerk distrust of politicians]]. It was widely perceived as sexist and patronising for its portrayal of women as incapable of doing a basic Google search, and in the wake of it being shown on TV, the Yes campaign briefly overtook the No campaign in the polls.

** ''Film/MichaelJacksonsGhosts'', according to WordOfGod, is a story of how TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside, and how just because a person is "different" from others doesn't make them bad. Unfortunately, the two characters Jackson plays both break the aesop. The bigoted Mayor -- a fat, middle-aged white guy -- is presented as an {{Acceptable Professional Target|s}} throughout, with no redeeming qualities. The ostensibly good Maestro -- effectively Jackson himself -- magically imprisons the angry mob confronting them and tortures the helpless Mayor, proving he really was the dangerous "freaky boy" the Mayor accused him of being! Even if you ignore the Mayor and the mob of paranoid parents, the Maestro is still a necromancer who regularly summons a bunch of undead to do his bidding. That's a legitimate concern for an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood.

* ''Theatre/WeWillRockYou'' depicts a future where people have become mindless consumers who all consume the same band fashions, music and lifestyles. Our heroes are the Bohemians, underground rebels who oppose the mainstream and wish to reclaim the old ways. At the end of the show our heroes realize that to defeat the villains they have to perform an awesome song, mainly Queen's "We Will Rock You". They decide to also broadcast the performance so that the whole world will see and then become Bohemians too. So, mindlessly following trends was bad when it was [[AcceptableTargets pop music]] and bright colors, but it's okay when the stuff ''you'' like is what is being consumed. Nice.

** After watching the B2 players fall victim to [[SugarApocalypse Trickster Mode]], subsequently using it as a shortcut to progress in their quest, and then dealing with Caliborn demanding they do it again, [[AuthorAvatar Hussie]] tells him that the characters can't just wave a magic lollipop juju around and solve all their problems. He compares it to [[VideoGame/SuperMarioBros Mario]] grabbing a starman and plowing through the level with no challenge, making the argument that it's terrible for his personal development. True enough, the players are worse off afterward, but at least they're still on the road towards their CharacterDevelopment. The aesop falls apart when the biggest WhamEpisode in the comic is simply written out of existence by using another juju to bring [[SpotlightStealingSquad Vriska]] back to life, and have her bully the other characters out of their personal problems and into action, all while simultaneously inflating her own ego. The biggest offense is that Vriska being alive was completely unnecessary, John simply needed to use the juju to keep the ring of life out of Aranea's hands. Fans who were waiting for the other shoe to drop (i.e. the biggest BreakTheHaughty session for Vriska, followed by John and Roxy returning to the old timeline and fixing things there) were disappointed; the comic ends with only John and Roxy completing their character quests, [[KarmaHoudini Vriska avoiding karma]], and the other characters followed throughout the story dead, while alternate versions who had an easier way out finish the story for them.

Not to be confused with a HardTruthAesop, where the lesson is followed, but it's a lesson that parents probably won't want their kids to learn. Also not to be confused with a SpaceWhaleAesop where
the [[AnAesop Aesop]] itself is strange and/or non-standard, though the two can overlap. Compare AnalogyBackfire, which is when an analogy (which may or may not contain an Aesop) makes a point that is the opposite of what it was supposed to. DoNotDoThisCoolThing is when the Aesop of "this thing is bad" fails due to clumsy presentation. See also ValuesDissonance. For ''intentional'' Broken Aesops PlayedForLaughs, see SpoofAesop.

# ''"Why is the director who was criticized for not paying their actors decently telling me about the importance of treating my employees fairly?"''

NOTE: This doesn't exactly make the product bad.

** Another looks at a tendency for girl empowerment franchises to still be gender restrictive. The protagonist is often a courageous and powerful young woman who despises various oppressive gender roles, but she's only allowed to be mad about ones that were already outdated by the time of release, still upholds contemporary expectations of femininity, and almost exclusively faces opponents that are gender nonconforming in some way.

* ''The Christmas Shoes'' by [=NewSong=] gets a lot of criticism for the [[UnfortunateImplications less sentimental]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq10bz3PxyY interpretation of its message]] , but the message itself is broken just by the events of the song. The opening lines paint the narrator's obligate gift-buying as being against the spirit of Christmas, but the whole point of the story is that the little boy is spending Christmas Eve trying to buy a material gift for his dying mother so she can look beautiful when she meets Jesus... instead of actually spending time with her.
* Coven's ''One Tin Soldier'' is an illustration of the perils of using a moral ideal to justify mistreating others, sarcastically encouraging the audience to go ahead and be an asshole "in the name of Heaven" because you'll always be able to say you did the right thing (and there won't be anyone to call out the winner if they make sure all the losers are dead). Unfortunately, the actual story being told to the children is a fable about the Valley People sacking the Mountain People's castle to steal their treasure, only to find that the treasure is just the idea of peace. The moral fails because the Valley People demand literal gold, and rather than just saying that there ''isn't any'', the Mountain People offer to share their treasure and just never send anything back. Sure, the Valley People are greedy dicks, but the conflict was a matter of PoorCommunicationKills, not a moral issue. It also fails because the Valley People never actually try to justify their actions and their motives are nakedly "take their stuff because we can".
* Music/HarryChapin's iconic ''Cat's in the Cradle'' is about a [[WhenYouComingHomeDad neglectful father who is always working too hard to spend time with his son]], whose son nevertheless grows up idolising him and swearing to become just like him. At the end of the song when the son has grown up and the father retired, the father tries to connect with his son now that he has time to spend, only to be brushed off by the son who's too busy with his own work now, leading to [[PerspectiveReversal the father realising]] [[IronicEcho "He'd grown up just like me"]]. Except rather than [[TroubledAbuser growing up to neglect his own kids the way his father neglected him]], one of the reasons the son actually cites for having no time for his father is "the kids have the flu", so it ends up being less about a cycle of mistakes being perpetuated, and more about [[LaserGuidedKarma the father being treated the same way he treated his son]], who grew up to be the ''opposite'' of his father, despite the repeated line "I'm gonna be like you, Dad, you know I'm gonna be like you".

** Killing and eating animals is decried as preying on the weak and defenseless, however, this doesn't stop stronger vegans like Rohit from beating up on weaker non-vegans in order ttoint or misplace their anger on them.

** One examines the tendency for adventure franchises to learn that a villain has broke bad [[FreudianExcuse because they were mistreated by various societal structures]], and while they do take down the villain and plan to make a better future, they often just topple the villain the same way that villain suffered and never address the strucures that drove the villain to lash out in the first place.
** Another looks at a tendency for girl empowerment franchises to still be gender restrictive. The protagonist is often a courageous and powerful young woman who despises various oppressive gender roles, but she's only allowed to be mad about ones that were already outdated by the time of release and still upholds a lot of modern expectations for girls and almost exclusively faces opponents that are gender nonconforming in some way.

* Many MarySueHunter stories, most famously ''WebOriginal/ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum'', present the moral of "OP self-inserts are wrong, because overpowered characters who have too much focus and exist as vehicles for the author's fantasies rob the original story of its tension and come off as insulting to it." The problem is that, by definition, the "hunter" character has to be even more powerful than them, they're almost invariably the main focus of the story rather than the actual original protagonists and their job is seen as essential and all-important, they're always {{Author Avatar}}s to some degree, their victory is a ForegoneConclusion and their targets are treated as SmugSnake {{Hate Sink}}s who [[CurbStompBattle lose the moment]] they don't have PlotArmor, and their entire existence is based on [[TakeThat taking someone else's character and murdering them.]] Sometimes this gets lampshaded, subverted, or justified, and often HeWhoFightsMonsters is introduced, but just as many introduce a sparkly elven princess with a dumb name who deserves nothing but scorn and disgust, and then treat the dimension-hopping, shapeshifting, universally-ordained hunter dripping in technology who shoots her through the head as without fault.

* In ''Webcomic/CtrlAltDel'', the comic [[AuthorTract makes it clear it's wrong to be a "console fanboy," in one strip even having God personally squash one]]. However, there are issues with this, since 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.

* Music/{{Queen}}'s song "Radio Ga Ga" is all about how music video is ruining music and we should all just listen to the radio instead. The accompanying music video features lavish sets and costumes, footage from the film ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' and a montage of clips of music videos from earlier Queen songs.

* In the fluff of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', a beloved minor character was Ollanius Pius, the name given to an unknown guardsman who sacrificed himself by heroically charging at [[SatanicArchetype Horus]] in protection of his Emperor and defiance of the Dark Powers. Though Pius was immediately vaporized, he was held up as a shining example of a BadassNormal and what makes the Imperial Guard what it is (and the sight of Horus eliberately destroying a man who was objectively no threat to him is what finally convinced the Emperor that Horus could not be saved). Until he was [[RetCon retconned]] as being a superhuman SpaceMarine, and then a member of the Adeptus Custodes (who are to the Space Marines what a Space Marine is to a human). When he was eventually brought back into canon, he was turned into a Perpetual, a sort of Super-immortal who can regenerate FromASingleCell that had been alive since ancient earth. Needless to say, this kinda undermines the idea of him being a normal man who bravely spat in the face of Chaos.

* The extremely popular Dhar Mann videos are all about this trope. Even though they are intended to be inspirational and "life-changing", almost every scenario is heavily stereotyped and simplified to make one side of the argument right, and the other side wrong, even if that is not the case logically speaking. An egregious example is one where a guy stole his own mother's money to compete in a Call of Duty tournament, and [[DesignatedVillain the mom is depicted as the villain for getting mad at him and taking his console away.]]
** Another example is the one with the white mother thinking her son's black friend is an uneducated, poor thief. It turns out the black friend is actually rich and smart and the message is to not judge a book by its cover or before you get to know them, but the execution makes it seem like [[UnfortunateImplications black people have to be rich and smart to have the respect of whites]].
** At least three times, he has made videos about adopting children outside a person’s race. In the first two, because the parent is black, he/she is accused of kidnapping the child, and in the third it is a white parent being made fun of for being cheated on (because apparently a white parent having a black child has no other explanation). In all of them, when the truth comes out, the accuser questions why the parent didn’t adopt a black child. The parent then gives a long-winded sob story that gives them a “special” reason to adopt said child, like it being the last wish of their friend who passed away. Basically, the message is supposed to be: “don’t judge people too quickly”, but instead comes off as: “it is only socially acceptable to adopt outside your race if you have a sob story to justify it”.
** In general, Dhar Mann depicts racism as a simple misunderstanding that can be solved in one short conversation, rather than a systemic issue and core belief that many people hold.