History WesternAnimation / GodTheDevilAndBob

[[quoteright:205:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goddevilbob.PNG]]

* AnAesop: Delivered at the end of every episode. It was surprisingly good at showing a message without getting overly {{Anvilicious}}.

* AnAesop: ''Bob's Father'' has several Aesops:
** [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse Just because someone suffered in the past, it doesn't make it alright for them to inflict suffering onto someone else.]] Bob's father was an asshole to Bob for his entire life, the end result of his own father (Bob's grandfather) being a horrible monster to him. They make a point even if that's true and he really is good enough to get into {{Heaven}}, what happened to Bob still wasn't OK, and Bob is ''not'' in the wrong to be angry at him for it.
** A person's past trauma can completely change and warp what [[BlueAndOrangeMorality they view as right and wrong]], even if they genuinely make the effort to be better than than those who came before them. Bob's father's abusive behavior, while treated as genuinely bad, is portrayed as being the end result of [[DarkAndTroubledPast his own father's abuse]], and that despite genuinely making the effort to not be as monstrous, he was still negatively affected by his past trauma in a way that manifested in harming his family, especially his son.
** It's important despite your own pain and trauma to, if not completely avoid causing harm, [[TheChainOfHarm then at the least to reduce the harm you cause to your loved ones and do better than what happened to you]]. For all of Bob's father's failings, the one thing that does stand is that he DID make a genuine effort to be better than his own father, to the point of actively avoiding talking about his own father. And despite the abuse, Bob did turn out to be a better man than his father or even his grandfather in spite of his own problems, something that is shown when he apologizes to Andy for snapping at him while in the middle of his own conflict.

* AngerIsHealthyAesop: ''Bob's Father'' talks about domestic violence as Bob's father dies in the hospital and Bob is upset that his father got into heaven despite being abusive for all of Bob's life. This causes Bob to have a crisis of faith because if Bob's abusive dad can get into heaven, then why should Bob be a good person and this eventually leads to a conversation between God and Bob. Rather than tell Bob to forgive his father for all the crap he put him through, God tells him that Bob is right to be mad at him and explains that Bob's father did, in fact, love him and his harshness was simply passing on a "softer punch" because his father (Bob's grandfather) was worse than him. God ultimately tells Bob that it's not Bob's decision to forgive him for his abuse, that's God's choice, Bob just needs to understand his father's side of the story and make up his own mind.

* FriendToAllChildren: When God enters a nursery of newborns, he wishes them good luck.

* HumansAreBastards: Why God wants to destroy earth in the first place; it's hard to find any speck of decency among them.

* JerkassHasAPoint: In "Bob's Father", Bob has every reason to hate his father, the verbal abuse he spewed even on his death bed, even laughed in his son's face when he faked his heart monitor going flat line. Even Bob telling his father to go to hell, while extremely harsh in most circumstances, is completely understandable, even God tells him he has every right to be mad at him.

* PartingWordsRegret: In "Bob's Father" just before Bob's father dies, Bob tells him to go to Hell. When given a chance to talk to his spirit at the end, he metaphorically tells him how he wished he could have said how much he meant to him. [[PetTheDog Bob's father hints to him that he gets the idea.]]

* AbusiveParents: Bob’s father was abusive to him, and his own father was ''even worse''. The episode about their relationship delves into the cycle of abuse and how to stop the ChainOfHarm.

''God, the Devil and Bob'' (2000) was a [[ShortRunners short-lived]] American animated series with only 4 episodes out of 13 shown in its first run.