Adults Are Useless / Western Animation

Useless adults in Western animation.

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A-F

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Adults are either never around (most of the parents), completely stupid (Jimmy's dad) or don't get onto the kids until the end. The quite possible worst example of this is probably one episode where Jimmy was being beaten up by a bully repeatedly at school. His parents assumed it was a girl and that he had found a girlfriend, even though he was coming home with bruises! It eventually got to the point where Jimmy had to invent something to protect himself.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Some episodes have it stronger than others. The only consistently competent adults in the show are Nicole (though she does have her wild moments) and Larry (though he sometimes gets crazy because of all the work he does).
• American Dad!: Every adult is either incompetent, apathetic, psychotic, or all of them at once. Special mention goes to Principal Brian Lewis, who outright encourages bullying and doesn't care when the school is under attack unless it catches his interest.
• Amphibia: Subverted in the third season. While Anne assumes her parents will be of no help getting the Plantars back to Amphibia, since they've been overprotective of her since she returned, they end up playing a key role in keeping the frogs safe from the FBI throughout the first half of the season.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Zig-zagged. The number of times the main characters have encountered useless, ineffectual, or just plain stupid adults (Lao Bei Fong, General Fong) is about equal to the number of encounters with scarily competent and powerful adults (Iroh, King Bumi). Some are marginally useful but rarely affect the plot directly (Hama, Piandao).
• Beavis And Butthead: The titular characters are left unattended at home; the adults are either irresponsible, ignorant, or helpless when it comes to managing them.
• Big City Greens: Officer Keys shows shades of this time to time, combined with Police Are Useless as well. He doesn't attempt to give Cricket a penalty for scaring his horse, is forced to patrol during a Heat Wave despite risk for his health, and most importantly, he doesn't do anything when he sees Chip Whistler about to kill Cricket.
• Big Mouth: Not all the time, but some of the wackier antics that the Bridgeton Middle School kids get into would be shot down just from mentioning them by any responsible real-life adult. Lampshaded in "Rankings" at Devin and Devon's child wedding when Lars — the minister — says they're there because "No adult has stopped them". This is given a lot more focus in season 6 when Nick and Andrew have to fix their families problems after swapping bodies with Marty and Nick's grandpa.
• Brady's Beasts: Most adults have a close-minded attitude towards monsters, or are just plain incompetent when it comes to dealing with them.
• Brickleberry: If an adult isn't an unscrupulous sociopath, they are a complete idiot who frequently causes more harm than good with their incompetence and recklessness. While Ethel is technically the only responsible adult in the show, even she gets roped up in the others' shenanigans every now and then and has little control over their antics.
• ChalkZone: Most of the adults are either villains (Vinnie Ratton, Terry Bouffant, Mrs. Tweaser), jerkasses (Mr. Wilter), or completely oblivious (Joe and Millie Tabootie and Principal Stringet).
• Clarence: The title character's stepfather, Chad, has even less common sense than his step-son and doesn't have any idea what others think "causing trouble" means. This is justified with Mary, the mother, because she usually has too much work to be able to watch her son carefully.
• Code Lyoko: Played with. At first, the middle school heroes won't tell any adults about their virtual battles with XANA because they think (probably correctly) that the first thing the adults would do is shut down the Supercomputer that's causing all the trouble, which in turn might kill Aelita. Yumi later lampshades and tries to subvert this trope when XANA threatens to cause a nuclear meltdown, saying that they're in way over their heads and need to tell somebody what's going on. The group narrowly decides to do so, but the adults are too distracted to do anything more than dismissing her with "you're Just a Kid". Still later, some of the teachers, particularly their P.E. teacher Jim, prove to be resourceful and heroic once they're pulled into the fight, but the show's Reset Button premise ensures that the Masquerade's always back in place by the end of each episode. Meanwhile, the middle-aged creator of Lyoko would probably be tremendously useful, if he weren't The Ghost; as it is, he appears only through flashbacks, impostors, or by triggering the occasional Deus ex Machina from off-screen.
• Codename: Kids Next Door would take this trope to logical extremes, featuring an all out war with the kids and adults:
  • Almost all the characters over thirteen (including teenagers) are either malicious, ignorant, or incompetent. This is excusable since as the title implies, it's a show for young children. But older viewers who can't take the show for what it is may try to overthink it and see the adult villains as criminals; perhaps even omnicidal maniacs because a few villains wish to eliminate every child in the world. Heck, one episode taking place in a possible future has the president of the United States of all people about to sign a bill stripping kids of basic human rights. Then again, this was really Numbuh 1 being placed in the Happy Headband, and thus, it never happened.
  • Subverted when one of the Operatives' fathers (namely Nigel aka Numbuh 1's) turns out to be The KND's greatest agent, Numbuh Zero, and was briefly recommissioned to help the KND fight against Grandfather and his legion of Senior Citizombies.
  • There's also Numbuh Two's mother in her first appearance when she defeats the Common Cold after the Kids have been unable to do so. This was fairly early in the series and Mrs. Gilligan has a completely different personality in all subsequent appearances.
  • A few adults have aided the KND, like Lasso Lass, Dr. Sigmund Teeth, and especially Moosk, but Numbuh One can't help but be suspicious of them, at least at first.
  • Adults that aren't involved in the conflicts between the KND and their enemies tend to be this in spades. The most glowing example being the KND managing to convince the military that they succesfully blew up the moon with a (live-action) recording of Numbuh 3 poking a balloon labeled "moon" with a dart.
• Darkwing Duck: Herb and Binkie Muddlefoot. They are complete morons who do nothing to reprimand their eldest son Tank for bullying his younger brother Honker. In the episode "You Sweat Your Life", it is even implied by Herb that Tank once dismembered his grandfather with a chainsaw when he was an infant, yet he describes the incident as if it's perfectly normal.
• Doug: Roger is pestering Patty, disrupting class. It annoys Doug so much but Ms. Wingo doesn't even lift an ounce of effort to stop the bullying. When Patty finally loses it since Roger's disrupting her homework, Ms. Wingo then sentences Roger to detention... and Patty despite her being the victim. Truth in Television as most school systems in America have a Zero-Intelligence Zero-Tolerance policy of fighting where the aggressor AND the student defending themselves receive more-or-less equal punishment.
• The Dragon Prince: The adults often drive the conflict forward and forge intrigues against each other. On the other hand, there are two teenagers and one child who want to end the war and go on a dangerous journey. In the third season, however, it is largely inverted when humans and elves fight together against an army of monsters.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy is probably one of the best examples in media. Aside from the fact that the adults are never shown physically throughout the series, the titular trio's parents also don't seem to be cognizant of their troubles.
  • Ed's mother apparently favors his little sister over him, and his dad is implied to be little more than apathetic of his kids, let alone his son.
  • Edd's parents are hardly ever there for him due to their work^note Though the few times they are, they’re shown to be rather caring and attentive to them and only communicate through sticky notes.
  • Eddy probably has the worst parents of them all. His brother has bullied him all his life, and their parents did absolutely nothing to stop him, possibly due to obliviousness^note That said, they do show Tough Love for them and are shown to discipline him to not be his brother.
  • On top of all that, the kids seem to take great pleasure in unnecessary cruelty towards the Eds, and the adults don't seem to punish them in any way for their troubles. This is taken further in the movie, where the kids actually tried to murder the Eds due to what their scam did to them. With all of that, one has to wonder where they are when chaos inevitably happens.
• Ewoks: While the adults are not exactly dumb, they rely on their adolescent cubs to save the day, more often than not.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Every adult (or anyone above 10, really) is either incompetent (Mr. Turner, the Mayor), clueless (Mrs. Turner, Principal Waxelplax), indifferent (the Dinklebergs, the Buxaplentys), cowardly (Vicky's parents), or flat-out evil (Crocker, Doug Dimmadome). Even on Yugopotamia, Mark's parents are utterly useless in an emergency (such as the Gigglepie invasion or the attempted assassination of Grippulon). Fairy adults (bar Cosmo) seem fairly competent, albeit eccentric. The Show is a parody of abusive, negligent, self-centered modern parents, after all, to the point that Timmy has to dream up fairy godparents since he's functionally an abused orphan.
• Family Guy: All of the adults are complete idiots who will follow anything anyone with a microphone or megaphone says, even if it's really dangerous or completely idiotic. Even Lois has become incompetent, turning Brian into the Only Sane Man; he too flip-flops between that and this trope with startling regularity.
• Fangbone!: Pretty much all the adults (including from the original Fangbone! Third Grade Barbarian books) are either oblivious or apathetic towards Fangbone and Bill's numerous daily battles against the monsters and magical beings sent to Earth from Skullbania by Venomous Drool to get his Toe of Evil. And as far as they are concerned, Fangbone is just an overimaginative kid playing dressup 24/7, so none of them ever take his claims seriously or ever question his eccentricities.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Mac's Mom zig-zags this trope. Unlike most adults in animation, she is not oblivious to the bullying Mac goes through at the hands of Terrance. However, she is usually is too busy working to do anything about it, and her solution to the problem is forcing Mac to get rid of Bloo. Nor does she notice Mac's visits to Foster's.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "Teenage Mutant Leela Hurdles", when the cast is reverted back to being teenagers, Leela requests that her parents ground her, arguing that she never had such an experience. She then sneaks out through the window.
  • "The Route of All Evil" plays this trope straight when Hermes and Farnsworth continually act condescending toward Dwight and Cubert.
    Dwight: Why do they always treat us like dumb kids? We're practically old enough to find the Fox Network infantile.

G-Z

• Gravity Falls:
  • Grunkle Stan is pretty much oblivious to anything Dipper and Mabel are up to. The police are vastly incompetent at their jobs as well. Stan as of season two avoids this trope when he saves the kids from a horde of zombies and proceeds to reveal to them that he's always known about the supernatural stuff in Gravity Falls, but pretended he didn't so they wouldn't get in trouble.
  • It is revealed that the obliviousness of the townspeople was the result of a secret society erasing their memories so they wouldn't be haunted by the supernatural occurrences. It's implied that the mind-wiping ray also affected the sanity of the community too, leaving them not only ignorant but brain-damaged. But with the society disbanded, it appears that this may start to change.
• Hey Arnold!: The nine-year-old kids in have all sorts of misadventures without any adult supervision. No adult ever does anything about older bullies like Wolfgang, and the kids can go anywhere they want, underground sewers included. Hey Arnold! The Movie takes this to the extreme, when Arnold, Gerald, and Helga infiltrate a building riddled with security guards without too much effort. Escaping that same building doesn't end up being too hard either. Zigzagged in Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie, when Simmons' class is kidnapped by pirates, Simmons goes insane with fear and the kids are able to send a message out to the other adults, who come and save them from the pirates.
• Inspector Gadget: The action in every episode revolves around the comically inept title character unknowingly putting himself in grave danger while his ten-year-old niece and canine sidekick have to protect him from himself and solve the case all by themselves. Other adults (e.g. Da Chief) tend to be competent and intelligent, however, so Gadget is the exception in this universe, not the rule. Possibly his idiocy stems from having a helicopter in his head. But if Penny's in danger and he knows it? He'll suddenly become way way more competent.
• Invader Zim: Every single adult (and most of the children, for that matter) is completely oblivious to the fact that Zim is an alien, despite being, as Dib points out, green, with no ears. Mrs. Bitters, however, isn't useless... she's downright sadistic.
• Johnny Test: If an adult isn't the main character's parents or Albert (a certain villain's butler), then they'll be either incredibly incompetent (Mr. Teacherman, the mayor), nice but unhelpful (the school principal, the president), an antagonist Depending on the Writer (The General), or useful but eccentric (Mr. Black and Mr. White). The parents have a big Depending on the Writer personality, since some episodes they're total badasses (whether or not they're preventing the problem) and others oblivious, too scared to do anything but rely on the kids, or, at least in the case of Johnny's dad Hugh, are incredibly abusive and the cause of the problem.
• King of the Hill: Subverted where Hank and Peggy are always willing and able to get Bobby out of any trouble he might find himself in, and can even handle any problems that they themselves start. The other adults on the show, however, particularly Bill and Dale...
• The Mighty B!: With the exception of Hilary (Bessie and Ben's mother), adults are fairly indifferent/incompetent, particularly when it comes to Bessie's problems. Mrs. Gibbons, the underhanded head of Honeybee Academy, takes the cake, however.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Pick any adult, and more often than not they'll be this trope.
  • Lieutenant Raincomprix is the epitome of Police Are Useless who sees nothing wrong with the abusive friendship his daughter is in.
  • Ms. Bustier is seen as the Cool Teacher by her class, but she employs a teaching philosophy that leaves the class bully completely unchecked and is easily duped by Lila, leading to a lot of hardship for Marinette.
  • Principal Damocles shares Ms. Bustier's problems and is easily cowed by Chloé's Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! routine.
  • Andre Bourgeois easily caves into his daughter's selfish demands (turning her into a Spoiled Brat) and has proven ill-suited for his mayoral job time and time again.
  • Gabriel Agreste and Audrey Bourgeois are both abusive to their children; the former is even the show's Big Bad.
• Moral Orel: Pick any adult and you'll find some degree of uselessness or Jerkassery.
  • Topping the list, however, are Orel's parents. His dad Clay injured Orel on a hunting trip and got so madly drunk that even Cheerful Child Orel was forced to see his father for what he was; Orel's mother, Bloberta, took over 10 episodes to realize their younger son Shapey got switched with Block, the younger son of their Distaff Counterparts the Posabules. Then there's the overall neglect of Shapey and Block, which consists of doing nothing while they play with any dangerous device you can imagine (and some you can't).
  • The episode "Innocent" lampshades this by having the adults realize their careless advice is often what causes Orel (who takes things literally) to do the crazy things that he does. They're forced to acknowledge that maybe they don't actually know what they're talking about. Their "solution" isn't much better. The adults, including Orel's dad, try to avoid Orel entirely and, failing that, try to avoid giving advice and passes him off on someone else. The end result: Orel tries to prove to God he is "innocent" by bathing in his friends' blood.
  • Later on in the show, however, Reverend Rod Putty and Coach Daniel Stopframe subvert this, actually doing their part to help Orel.
  • Also if the show wasn't cancelled, Orel's grandfather would have joined the family and became Orel's father figure. And in Beforel Orel he tried to be this, but at the end of the special Clay forbade Orel from ever seeing him again.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic would have episodes featuring the Cutie Mark Crusaders will often feature this to one degree to another:
  • The episode "One Bad Apple" tries to subvert it, but fails. Throughout the episode, Sweetie Belle keeps trying to get the other two to appeal to a Reasonable Authority Figure for help against Babs Seed's bullying. Applejack later explains that, had they done so, she could have told them what Babs had been going through at home, which the Crusaders immediately realized explained why she had behaved as he did. Applejack had initially held this information back to avoid getting Babs feeling singled out by the kids and reminded of what she was getting away from. However, Applejack could have avoided the problem completely by sharing that bit of info, seeing as Applebloom knows from personal experience how it feels to be bullied about your blank flank. Also, she knows that the Cutie Mark Crusaders are completely obsessed about cutiemarks. Does it make sense to hand over a filly who's extremely uncomfortable about the subject to them without a quick explanation? Additionally, the subversion gets subverted when Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon show up to bully the CMC at the very end. The whole "telling an adult when you're bullied" thing loses a lot of weight when the bullying happens right in front of the adult who does nothing more than simply frown.
  • Ironically, Babs deals with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon in "One Bad Apple" by threatening to tell their mothers. Come "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", Tiara's mother Spoiled Rich is revealed to be nastier than she is, so this really wouldn't be a valid solution. The same episode has adults be useless again; Cheerilee does nothing about Tiara's rude behavior, nor Spoiled's abuse over her, and in the end, the one to stand up to Diamond Tiara's mother is Diamond Tiara herself.
• Paradise PD: While the titular police force are already corrupt, irresponsible idiots, the other adults don't come off as much better, being equally stupid and amoral. Even Mayor Karen Crawford is a Corrupt Politician who is eager to legalize meth and narcotics as long as it increases her profile.
• Peanuts: Adults are so useless that, outside of a handful of scenes in the animated specials, they never appear onscreen or have any lines. Their voices are simulated by a muted trombone. That is taken from the comic strip, which was done that way to keep eye-level with the kids. Taller adults would have not worked in that format. For those keeping score, adults were shown in the comic strip a grand total of three times: the first two times, only their legs could be seen due to the perspective of the panel being drawn at the height of Charlie Brown and Lucy, and the third time showed them as indistinct figures in the background. The first few years of the Peanut strip did occasionally feature speech bubbles from off-panel adult characters, however. This trope was always played straight in the strip, however, as the general message is that the kids are on their own to fend for themselves — particularly via their various philosophical musings and Lucy's "Psychiatric Help" stand.
• Pelswick: The only adults of any prominence are two old ladies caught up in a rivalry with each other, the father who only cares about being politically correct, and the vice principal who is both a Cloudcuckoolander and overprotective of his students. Guest adults are generally even worse. The wisest adult on the show manages to be the weird guardian angel.
• The Proud Family:
  • In "Enter the Bullies," the Gross Sisters went as far as to create a toll gate to bully and steal the kids' money and even stole lunch from the other kids. The adults aren't even around to do anything about it. Subverted, however, when Penny tells the Principal of their misdeeds.
  • In "Thelma and Luis", where LaCienega's Papi is sent to a nursing home that is actually a front for an illegal okra plantation where the residents are enslaved, the adults don't believe the kids due to the nursing home staff having removed any and all evidence supporting their claims... at least not until the very end of the episode. Bonus points LaCienega's police officer mother. Suga Mama, however, subverts this trope, being the only one of the adults who believes the kids, and works with them to free Papi.
• A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: The kids end up chasing a lot of people in costumes committing a number of illegal acts. Yet adults never seem to step in on any of the cases, even if minors risk getting injured and will sometimes actually hire the kids themselves. This was lampshaded in at least one episode when Fred asks a client why they aren't going to the police instead.
• Recess:
  • Adults tend to vary between the primary antagonist (at least for the episode) to recurring obstacle to often siding with the children. And nevertheless, they are frequently portrayed as being worthless. In a startling realistic scenario, Ms. Finster actually tells a bully to leave Gus alone only for him to flat-out ignore it and she is nowhere to be seen for the rest of the episode. (And neither is Randall, who you would think would find prime tattling material except for that he is afraid of them too.)
  • Really; we can add a lot of things done by some of the kids on that playground to this list. Half the stuff people do in Recess on a regular basis seems to be ignored by adults. Doesn't help that Ms. Finster is more keen on looking for kids chewing bubble gum or bringing outside toys in.
  • Miss Grotke usually subverts this trope, as she's usually always standing up for what the kids believe in and giving them advice, but at the same time, she can be pretty oblivious to the gang's plans.
  • Weirdly, the only consistently Reasonable Authority Figure is King Bob — the child-appointed sovereign of the playground. He's in 6th grade, so is only 11 or 12.
  • Subverted in the movie. It starts out like this, but then the kids bite off more than they can chew trying to stop the Evil Plot™ and the faculty have to rescue them. Played straight with the police officers who don't take any of the claims regarding the suspicious goings-on at the school seriously until the very end.
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964): With the exception of Mrs. Donner, Yukon Cornelius, and King Moonracer, every adult is rather unsupportive towards Rudolph regarding his problems. Comet in particular shuns Rudolph after the latter is made into a laughing stock due to his exposed red nose. Even Santa Claus himself isn't innocent, as he openly shames Donner for Rudolph's disorder.
• Rugrats is one of the biggest offenders of this trope:
  • The adults are criminally unaware, social services level unaware, of the whereabouts of their children. This is particularly bad in Season 1. Then again, who would imagine that babies would be the main characters?
  • Taken to an extreme in "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", where Chuckie is the only one preventing Angelica and other babies from turning the town into a dystopia.
  • In one episode the parents visit a plant nursery, put the kids down in the middle of the store, and walk away like it's normal, proceeding with their shopping. The babies were also wandering around the entire store riding/pushing a shopping cart along, often threatened by falling plants and mean-looking dogs. Did none of the other customers or employees take notice of this?
  • The PBS show Arthur does a Take That! to the Rugrats in one episode, where baby Kate is watching something similar to it, and questions where the parents are at. She switches the show to one like the Teletubbies, which she approves of.
  • Cracked parodied it with the kids doing things like smoking and sticking scissors in their eyes, while their parents left for Mexico. The parody ended with them being taken to court for criminal negligence, but getting pardoned because the judge thought the kids were so ugly, no sane person would want them.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Taken to extremes that got more disturbing every episode. Fred's dad actually expressed joy at the thought of him and the gang being attacked by a swarm of cicadas that had put three people in the hospital.
• The Simpsons:
  • While not every adult is useless, most are fairly incompetent. Matt Groening talks about many of the adult characters as morons. He said in an interview that authority isn't always quite as smart as it should be, and people like teachers and doctors all have flaws.
  • Invoked in "Nightmare Cafeteria" where Bart and Lisa tell Marge about the cannibalism going on in their school, and Marge promptly dismisses them telling them that she cannot fight all their battles and they should forcefully tell the teachers to not eat them.
• South Park:
  • A source of much of the humor (at least through the first half of the show), where it is always up to the kids to save the day while the adults run around either clueless, panicking, or distracted. Stan Marsh's father Randy in particular is wonderfully stupid and easily led.
  • Stan's mom Sharon used to be this but eventually became one of the few responsible adults in the town.
  • In "Cripple Fight," a crowd of adults allows the title event to occur until both children are beaten and worn to exhaustion... and THEN an adult comes forward, saying, "Alright, boys, break it up..."
  • The movie is a particularly good example of this trope. The opening song even includes the line "Off to the movies we shall go/where we learn everything that we know/'cause the movies teach us what our parents don't have time to say".
  • Taken to extremes in the season 6 episode "Child Abduction Isn't Funny" when the parents, in response to sensationalist news feel the only way to keep themselves from kidnapping their kids is to send them off into the wild. 4 days and a Mongolian invasion later, the parents think the kids have somehow become Mongolians and forgotten civilization. Kids are not amused. On the other hand, Mongolians themselves were quite helpful.
    "I know our parents have done some stupid crap before, but Jesus Christ."
  • Mr. Adams is a subversion. In "The Poor Kid" he acts as the caseworker to the McCormick children when they are taken from their parents. He is a dimwit who would prefer to tell Penn State jokes rather than help the children adjust, but when he finds the foster home to be terrible too, he is very ashamed for having put them there, which is more than we get from the average adult. He did send the children back to their original homes but only because he felt the system couldn't help them.
  • Another subversion is Nathan's mother at the end of "Handicar". While she is very much aware that Nathan hates summer camp and doesn't want to go there, she and her husband unfortunately had already made plans to vacation in Italy while their son's at camp. Hence, she pretends to not understand what Nathan is saying (despite it being clearly understandable to the normal person) in order to say "no" to his request of staying home from camp without having to explain the reason why.
  • Liane gradually subverts this over the years and becomes less tolerant of Cartman's jerkassery. By season 19, she forces Cartman to go to bed with a gun.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In the episode "The Bully", SpongeBob asks Mrs. Puff to intervene, but she stupidly misinterprets Flats as just wanting to befriend SpongeBob. Then he runs into Flats' dad and finds out that he's being bullied as well.
• Storm Hawks:
  • The entire free world is at risk of being overrun by a teenage supervillain... and the only people who can save the day are a bunch of plucky teen heroes. The only adults seen are either tiny elderly folk or cannon fodder.
  • Plenty of other Sky Knight squadrons are seen, but they rarely end up being useful. It's partly because they tend to stick to their own terras, whereas the Storm Hawks have no ties to any place in particular and are free to roam the world and get into crazy adventures.
• Superfriends: Many times in the original series, it was the kids Wendy, Marvin, and their Wonder Dog that got in contact with the Villain of the Week and manage to figure out their plans and sometimes even talk them down, leaving the actual superheroes with mop-up duty.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Subverted, where the title characters are accident-prone morons. True, their dad isn't very useful, but that's more because he doesn't care rather than any real incompetence. Brock Samson more than makes up for anything Doc Venture is lacking in.
  • Doc Venture is more cynical than incompetent, being a traumatized-adult parody of Jonny Quest (in addition to "Action Johnny"). In fact, it's unknown which part of the Rusty Venture cartoon-show is real since it's implied that all of his childhood-adventures actually happened.
  • After season 3, Doctor Venture is forced to care about his sons now that he can't just keep cloning them. Orpheus, having gone into his mind, finds an army of Hank and Dean zombies wandering around inside Venture's mind looking for their father to love them. Orpheus mentions that they're the manifestation of Rusty's guilt of being apathetic enough toward his sons to clone them so he doesn't actually have to take care of them.
• WordGirl: Played pretty straight through the first six seasons of, and part of the reason we root for the heroine is that she really is the most sensible person in the cast (in fairness, most of the other kids are just as ditzy as the adults). The seventh and final season abandoned this and more frequently had Becky needing the help of the adults around her (occasionally even from the villains).

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