Allegorical Character / Western Animation

Allegorical Character in Western Animation.

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• In Adventure Time, The Lich's origin, use of plutonium, Walking Wasteland status, affinity for sickly glowing green colors, long half-life, and goal of total annihilation all make him seem like the personification of nuclear war at first glance. However, given that it's later revealed that his prior "life" was one of the Catalyst Comet that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, he's more like an allegorical character for the concept of mass extinction.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: The Copycats act as personifications of plagiarism. To be more specific, they're living parodies of the show Miracle Star, a real-life Mockbuster of Gumball.
• Amphibia's true Big Bad, The Core, embodies the cycle of abuse, how abusers turn their victims into yet more abusers. The Core is quite literally hundreds of Abusive Parents turned into one cohesive entity, one that molds each of its successive generations into just another addition to the whole. "The Core & The King" shows how Aldrich, its latest assimilee, groomed Andrias to become a fanatically loyal servant of the Core willing to do anything it asks of him, something that presumably happened to Aldrich himself too. Andrias treatment of Marcy is also done on the Core's orders, showing how abuse leads to more abuse down the line. The Core can speak to Andrias through his crown, meaning that he has had the voice of his ancestors constantly telling him what to do for a thousand years, which is a literal version of how children of abusive parents often find themselves pressured to do what their parents wanted even when they escape their grasp. The Core is only defeated when Marcy Wu, its latest victim, defies it and breaks the cycle by refusing to let Aldrich manipulate her, which in turn gives Andrias the strength he needs to defy it himself.
  • As well, the Core serves as one for colonialism and its legacy. The Core is the embodiment of Newtopia's prior colonialism, an amalgamation of the minds of numerous leaders and scholars who had pushed and continue to push for an agenda of expansion across the multiverse. The Core views newts as inherently superior to all others and much of its stated goals heavily resemble Manifest Destiny: expanding to new territories and consuming their resources with complete disregard for the native population.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Fire Lord Sozin represents how a well-intentioned ruler can turn their nation into an imperialistic, war-mongering empire. He started off as a caring best friend to Avatar Roku and a someone wanted to spread prosperity of the Fire Nation to the rest of the world. But over time, such well-intentioned goals devolved into a need to conquer and control as Sozin had a fallout with Roku and eventually betrayed him to make imperialistic dreams come true. His fear of the Avatar's return eventually morphed into a fear of an ethnic group, namely the Airbenders, whom the Fire Nation wiped out under his orders.
  • The Big Bad Fire Lord Ozai is less of a character and more of a personification of the Fire Nation's corruption since the start of the Hundred Year War. He was raised during wartime and thus gained a warped sense of the world where Might Makes Right and the weak should perish. Under his regime, the Fire Nation is at its most destructive, culminating into a war of annihilation against a nation for the audacity of resisting at the series' climax. Additionally, Ozai serves as a personification of gaslighting and parental abuse, raising his children to be weapons and not caring about their well-being (especially with Zuko) because it was seen as "normal" in a corrupt society (since it's implied that his own father was abusive to him).
• Big Mouth:
  • The Hormone Monsters represents one for puberty as a whole, and represent the teenager's Id and most base instincts of fighting and screwing.
  • Kitty Beaumont Bouchet represents depression. She isolates Jessi from her friends and family and tries to keep her in a constant state of lazy indisposition. Even when she is defeated, Jessi still admits she needs to see a therapist.
  • Jessi's Department represent the various facets of human beings.
  • Tito Taylor Thomas the Anxiety Mosquito represent anxiety. She tells the main group about their insecurities of the world, whether they're rational or not, and induce nervousness, and for Nick, panic attacks. She also has a long history of working with the Depression Kitty, as depression and anxiety are often linked together.
• BoJack Horseman
  • Tom Jumbo-Grumbo represents the attitude of sensationalistic media willing to exploit any possible coverage for viewership and propaganda. Their oft violation of personal privacy and disregard for the damage caused also underscore how much does Hollywoo respect the individual and real life problems.
  • Hank Hippopopalous might be considered an Expy of Bill Cosby or David Letterman due to allegations against those two men involving sexual assault, but in a way, he is a stand-in for all A-list celebrities that do nothing more than gratifying themselves at other people's expense and mask themselves as good guys while letting their notoriety and popularity cover all of their sins.
  • Vance Waggoner a stand-in for all male celebrities who have maintained a career despite accusations (and sometimes evidence) of abusive behavior, with one or two references to specific celebrity controversies (such as his drunken rant at the police officer a la Mel Gibson's 2006 arrest tape).
  • Biscuits Braxby has perfected the penitent interview, and thus represents the forgive-and-forget mechanisms of Hollywood for its problematic celebrities. She also doubles as an embodiment of access journalism, as "The Reason You Suck" Speech given to her by Paige Sinclair makes quite clear.
  • Just like Tom Jumbo-Grumbo, A Ryan Seacrest Type represents the attitude of sensationalistic media willing to exploit any possible coverage for viewership and propaganda. Their oft violation of personal privacy and disregard for the damage caused also underscore how much does Hollywoo respect the individual and real life problems.
  • Corbin Creamerman was the heir of Creamerman Cream-based Commodities, makers of daily products including ice-cream, a dessert Beatrice was never allowed to have. During their short courtship, Corbin struggled with getting through to Beatrice, who remained ambivalent toward him until the end where she discovered his Hidden Depths, which did attract and interest her. After getting pregnant and losing her wealth, one of Beatrice's bigger regrets, not marrying Corbin, is linked to ice-cream: one of the many sweet things in life she was never allowed to taste.
• Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix: The show's incarnation of Rayman represents blissfully ignorant supporters of dictatorship willing to voice their approval until they're lined up against the wall themselves after they start becoming a liability.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Eco Villains, the main villains of the series, are a small group of villains and their subordinates who wreak havoc on the Earth with pollution, wildlife endangerment, or shady business dealings; each represent the root causes of societal and environmental problems, whether directly or indirectly.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Whereas the KND represent childhood rebellion against adult authority, the Delightful Children represent "good kids" who side with adults over their kids and does whatever they say without question. The fact that they were originally KND members that were made Brainwashed and Crazy implies that they are what happens when rebellious streaks are broken systematically, turning them into "perfect little kids" while robbing them of their individuality and their childhoods, and that without the KND, this is what will happen to all children.
• The Cuphead Show!: King Dice represents rigged games shows that lure in rubes with the promise of great prizes while taking advantage of them.
• DuckTales (2017): General Lunaris, the Big Bad of Season 2, is meant to represent the two worst possible qualities that any leader can have: paranoia and imperialism. Lunaris sees the Earth only as a mass of potential enemies, and is obsessed with proving himself and his people as being superior to Earthlings. He eagerly inspires fear and anger in the Moonlanders, leads them into a pointless war, and would sooner sacrifice all his loyal followers than admit defeat.
• Molly of Denali: As Trini Mumford's the new kid to Qyah, she's meant to represent the kids in the audience who think that all Alaskans live in igloos, which couldn't be farther from the truth.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: The suit represent the dark side of Jenny's goals for social assimilation: Loss of Identity, stifling conformity, and heinous apathy to the people she's climbed past on the social ladder.
• In Over the Garden Wall, the Beast can be read as a representation for depression and/or suicide. When people either pass the Despair Event Horizon or are close to death, he turns them into trees, which he then burns in his magic lantern. This makes more sense when you realize that the show borrows heavily from The Divine Comedy, where suicides are punished in Hell by turning into trees.
• The Owl House:
  • The series gradually but firmly portrays Emperor Belos as the embodiment of religious extremism. Though his persona as a theocratical tyrant who forbids people from doing things based on arbitrary rules via Divine Right of Kings is nothing more than a front for his real agenda, his true backstory reveals that he is the result of Gravesfield's terrible witch hunting tradition; his attempts to fit in with their society twisting his impressionable mind into that of a zealot willing to kill his only family to uphold the town's values. His interactions with Hunter are also a mirror to religious Domestic Abuse and its survivors.
    • As more of his Transhuman Abomination nature gets brought to light, the more it showcases him to be symbolic of illness and terminal sickness, along with the repercussions these can have on the loved ones of the infected. His presence in the Boiling Isles is a metaphorical blight on the land, steadily corrupting its inhabitants into falling more in line with his perceptions of how witches and demons should be, and thus being more antagonistic towards each other. Every relationship he has is parasitical in nature and has negative consequences for those who interact with him, and his ultimate aim was to kill everybody living on the Titan's body, before leaving to continue spreading his sick views and opinions to others. His toxic body is ultimately revealed to be corrosive to the touch, and he proves capable of virulently infecting multiple bodies, both human and animal, to sustain himself, steadily weakening them as he consumes their life force until he has to move to a healthier host. He recovers from being turned into a fist-sized splatter of goo to eventually become a living cancerous mass that steadily consumes the Titan's body and ultimately causes his lingering spirit to finally pass on after persisting for millennia, akin to how cancer cells can resurge if not thoroughly purged. The effect on the Titan's soul even looks akin to a mass of cancer consuming his heart, and calls back to how Luz lost her own father to illness after he supported her weirder interests, informing her antagonism towards him.
• Rick and Morty
  • The fuzzy blue thing Rick kept hidden in a potted plant. Toxic Rick pampers it in a shallow manner, which solidifies its loyalty to him while also turning it into a monster. Toxic Rick then uses it to attack a target he considers beneath him. While it wasn't given an official name, that blue thing is a pretty good allegory for Beth.
  • The Story Lord from Season 4 is a meta two-fold of this, in which his desire to farm Rick and Morty's "endless storytelling potential" and refusal to accept that there's a limit to them (Rick even says they'll burn out before he gets what he wants) is representative of executives that want to make the series their Cash-Cow Franchise, while his desire to make the episodic show into an epic reflects fans that want that direction to the show despite the creators saying that is not the direction they're taking.
• South Park
  • Eric Cartman's the embodiment of bigotry. His numerous racist conspiracy theories are filled with holes and logical fallacies and he's generally pretty stupid, but he's stunningly persuasive and able to rally countless people to his way of thinking and aid his plans. He'll also cloak his true intentions behind a veneer of good intentions, while secretly being motivated entirely by spite for whatever group he's targeting and wanting an excuse to torment people.
  • The show's version of Mickey Mouse represents Disney as an amoral soulless corporation willing to do anything for the sake of personal profit, ranging from exploitation of their artists and franchises to cooperating with China and their standards in order to broaden their audience base.
  • ManBearPig is one for global warming and climate change. It was first introduced as an imaginary danger that Al Gore was obsessed with, due to the show's creators seeing him as just an attention-seeking alarmist. Years later, it's revealed that ManBearPig was very much real, the product of older generations making a deal to allow them to enjoy the benefits of their time in return for letting it wreak havoc on later generations (with the kids being forced to personally apologize to Gore). By the end of the episodes when they try to make another deal with MBP they found themselves unable to make the sacrifices needed (soy sauce and Red Dead Redemption 2) and instead choose to let him wreak havoc years later.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In episode "Curse of the Blood Moon", The Blood Moon itself appears to be a representative of the shipping fandom in the show. Both Star and Marco are individual characters with their own thoughts and feelings but an external force makes them feel something for each other and it's something they aren't comfortable with or happy to have. They want to be in control of their lives but a third party is forcing them to present themselves as something they don't identify with. Star and Marco try to meet halfway by saying that their relationship can develop naturally and on its own when it's not forced by an external narrative.
• In Steven Universe, Steven Quartz Universe and Connie Maheswaran's fusion Stevonnie serves both as an allegory for a first relationship and entering puberty.
  Rebecca Sugar: [Stevonnie] serves as a metaphor for all the terrifying firsts in a first relationship, and what it feels like to hit puberty and suddenly find yourself with the body of an adult, how quickly that happens, how it feels to have a new power over people, or to suddenly find yourself objectified, all for seemingly no reason since you’re still just you...
• Tuca & Bertie
  • Pastry Pete is an allegory of systemic and abusive patriarchy. Pastry Pete appears to be a well-liked, well-behaved celebrity chef at first, but he's actually a manipulative abuser who thrives off exploiting his—exclusively female—employees, taking physical and sexual advantage of them as a means of exerting his power over them. Pastry Pete gets away with all of this not only because he's rich and famous but because—as repeatedly implied earlier in the series—society expects a powerful man like him to get away and even be rewarded for his predatory behaviors.
  • The moss is one for gentrification. It spreads all through Tuca and Bertie's apartment building as people are being forced to move out, and is used more generally to show corruption affecting the lower-income people of Birdtown, like it lobbying for moving the money that would be used to help the citizens after a flood to revitalization.
• The Butt Witch in Twelve Forever is an allegory for the fear of adulthood. She has a full feminine figure she shows an excessive amount of pride in, seems incapable of moving without looking like she's modeling for the cover of a magazine and has a deep male voice representing a child's voice changing. Everything she does is destructive and disruptive towards Endless Island's childhood wonderland, as Reggie sees adults as existing for little more than to ruin her fun, and she serves as a constant reminder that even in her escape to Endless Island, Reggie will, one day, have to grow up.
• Lord Dominator in Wander over Yonder is an allegory for comparatively more serious cartoons compared to purely comedic and episodic series. Dominator is big, has more resources than the heroes will ever get, and even to the last episode can crush them with ease, similar to more serious cartoons having well liked narratives and bigger budgets. Wander and co.'s struggle against Dominator is taken as a plea that comedic cartoons do have a place on television— and in the end, Wander doesn't even hate Dominator at all.

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