Be Yourself / Western Animation

Examples of Be Yourself in western animation.

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• In the 101 Dalmatians: The Series episode "Swine Song", Rolly tries various attempts to woo his crush, Dumpling, however she doesn't reciprocate. At the end of the episode, he gives up and starts acting like himself again, saying that he'd rather pig out on corn fritters for the rest of the night. This is finally what gets Dumpling to like him, as she loves corn fritters as well.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: In "My Fair Jeanette", Alvin tries to make nerdy Jeanette into a beauty queen to compete against Brittany in a pageant. However, she realizes that she's not cut out for being glamorous and admits as much to everyone during the show, taking down her hair, etc. — and ends up winning.
• Angel Wars: One of the aesops of the series: demons are corrupting a scientist into trying to please a vain fashion executive by reinventing himself and using a supernaturally-cursed and unstable cosmetic formula. The angel snaps him out of it by telling him to be himself.
• Babar: This is the aesop of the second episode, City Ways. Pom is very concerned about impressing some older kids, and that is when Babar tells him about when he came to the city and lived over there for a while. The climax of the story is that he once almost screwed up a dinner party by acting like a "sophisticated" snob, which nobody liked. When he started to act like himself, he managed to win the guests over.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In the episode "Sideshow", Killer Croc escapes from a police transport and stumbles across a little group of former circus performers, who welcome him as a friend and tell him that he can "be himself" among people who don't see him as a freak. Unfortunately, he finds out that they have a large stash of retirement savings, and tries to kill them and steal the money. The episode ends up deconstructing this trope, with Croc showing a remarkable (for him) degree of self-awareness as he is taken back into custody:
  Billy: Why, Croc? Why'd you turn on us like that? We could've helped you. We could've done something.
  Croc: You said you could be yourself out here, remember? I guess that's what I was doing. Being myself.
• This is a common aesop on Beat Bugs. Because, as noted by the show's adoptive theme tune, "All You Need Is Love," "Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time / It's easy!"
• In one Bluey episode, the kids go see a movie of the "Chunky Chimp" show. Bluey's dad can see the "Be Yourself" plot coming a mile away, and lampshades it:
  Bluey: Dad? Am I different, like Chunky?
  Dad: Huh? Uh, yeah. Well, uh, no.
  Bluey: I think I am different. I'm the only one of my friends who doesn't watch movies^note because she's easily frightened, not because her parents won't let her. I wish I wasn't different.
  Dad: Look, mate. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the movie, everyone will like that the monkey was different.
• Bob's Burgers: In the Halloween episode "Full Bars", one of the marauding teens taking part in the "Hell Hunt" starts flirting awkwardly with a girl he likes — the Belcher kids look on from behind shrubbery:
  Gene: That guy's totally dying.
  Tina: He should just be himself.
  Louise: No, he really should be someone else.
• Care Bears (1980s): This is the moral of the episode, "The Best Way to Make Friends". Treat Heart is recording a video about the best way to make friends. Champ Bear says the best way to make friends is to show how strong you are. Cheer Bear says it is to show how pretty you are. Bright Heart says it is to show how smart you are. Treat Heart laughs at them, but they were being serious. They leave, but they come back and ask Treat Heart to continue being funny. The four characters find the moral: the best way to make friends is to Be Yourself.
• On CatDog, tough-acting tomboy Shriek tries to make herself "a real woman" so that Dog will take notice of her. It backfires when every guy except Dog ends up hitting on her.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: In the episode "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", Tammy tries to impress Chip by going to Fat Cat's hideout to recover the stolen Maltese Mouse. Gadget eventually finds her and seeing that she's jealous to tears of Gadget, informs her that she doesn't need to do anything impressive to get Chip to like her; she just has to "be Tammy".
• In "Captain Blah" from Creative Galaxy, Captain Blah steals all of the artwork in Arty and Annie's art show because he was unable to make a paper bird like theirs, and feels that so he's not an artist and if he can't have art in the show, then nobody else should be able to either. The two point out that he doesn't need to make art like theirs to be an artist; that really the whole point of art is making something that expresses yourself in your own way.
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: This is the aesop of "You Are Special / Daniel is Special". For example, O wants to do a magic trick because he thinks it'll make him special like Prince Wednesday, even though he doesn't really know how to do magic. Teacher Harriet tells him he doesn't have to do a magic trick to be special.
  Teacher Harriet: I like you / I like you / Just the way you are.
• Danny Phantom: When Tucker tires of his geeky (and for that episode, unlucky) lifestyle, his friend Sam suggests a change and makes him a Goth like her. Tucker however finds the experience horrifying, refusing the dreary make-ups and accessories, causing him to revert to his original self. Subverted the entire time because Sam tricked him into accepting who he is by making his short-lived experience as a Goth as terrifying as possible.
• Dragons: The Nine Realms: Invoked by Jun in the finale. When main character Tom has lost all hope in defeating Jörmungandr following the Apex Predator tricking him, Jun reminds Tom that he is not just a descendant of Hiccup but of Astrid, too, and goes on to tell him that he has much more in common with her than Hiccup. Thus, she suggests he should stop trying to be Hiccup and start channeling his inner Astrid thus embracing who he really is and try to solve the problem his way rather than Hiccups.
• At the end of the Ed, Edd n Eddy movie, Eddy realizes that being a jerk to others was what was keeping him from being liked by the other kids. He starts being himself, and he finally gets accepted by the kids with his friends.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In the episode "A Wish Too Far", Timmy wishes for clothes and things like the popular kids due to getting fed up with being unpopular. It takes Timmy (nearly) losing his fairy godparents to realize that his new popular friends didn't like him for who he was, and only what he was pretending to be.
• Family Guy:
  • The show has fun subverting this trope, using Meg.
    Meg: I don't get it. The harder I try to make friends, the more people hate me.
    Peter: Listen. Meg, you're a one-of-a-kind girl with a mind of her own. Now, see, that's what people hate.
    Meg: Really?
    Peter: I'm telling you, just be the girl you think everyone else wants you to be.
    Meg: Wow, it's so obvious. Thanks, Daddy.
  • Stewie Griffin defies it in a special episode. While the whole episode is dedicated to making him realize that his sophisticated way of talking is an act and making him drop it, he eventually decides that he is better off faking his accent, acting superior to everyone and keeping his insecurities to himself.
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids subverts this in the episode "Clean Is Keen": Suede Simpson stunk because he never showered. At the end, Suede starts taking showers.
• Futurama:
  • Multiple episodes end with a character learning a Be Yourself aesop, despite "themselves" not being the greatest of people. In general, they run with the humorous twist that "being yourself is the right thing, even if it's not the best thing for everyone," or as Hermes put it:
    Hermes: When push comes to shove you gotta do what you love, even if it's not a good idea.
  • This comes up directly in an episode where Philip J. Fry gets parasites from a rancid sandwich and they improve his body and mind. Leela says "I love what you've become," which worries Fry and causes him to get rid of the worms so he can see if she likes him or just what they made him. She rejects him, but they become an Official Couple later on.
  • Played with in "Hell Is Other Robots", where Bender goes to Robot Hell after first joining a robot religion and becoming annoyingly good, then going overboard with hedonistic acts after Fry and Leela decided they wanted their jerk back and tempted him back to his old ways. After Bender attaches robotic wings to his back and escapes Robot Hell by flying away, carrying Fry and Leela with him, he promises that he'll never be too good or too evil again, he'll just be himself.
    Leela: Um... do you think you could be a little less evil than that?
    Bender: That depends. Do you think you could survive a 200-foot drop?
  • Zig-zagged in "The Cyber House Rules": Leela, frustrated at being labeled a freak for having one huge eye, meets a surgeon who offers to implant a cosmetic second eye. While discussing the procedure with her co-workers, most of them approve, but Fry uses the "Be Yourself" principle to argue against it. The trope is defied in the following exchange:
    Fry: You guys are crazy! Leela doesn't need surgery! [turns to Leela] You look great the way you are.
    Leela: Awww, that's so sweet, Fry! But for once in my life, I just want to look normal.
    Fry: But you're better than normal! You're abnormal! If you ask me, you shouldn't care what other people think.
    Leela: You're right! I'll start by not caring what you think! I'm getting the surgery!
    • Played straight towards the end when Leela (who had been dating the surgeon) proposes that the two of them adopt an orphan with an ear in the middle of her forehead. The surgeon agrees, but only on the condition that he remove the ear and make her normal. Leela is offended, finally realizing that there is no shame in being different. She demands that the surgeon reverse the procedure, restoring her one-eyed face.
• A major theme of the Holly Hobbie and Friends films, particularly "Marvelous Makeover."
• Ultimately ignored in the episode "To Helga and Back" of Johnny Bravo. In it, Johnny gets a blind date with a girl who turns out to be a plus-sized woman instead of the skinny ladies he's attracted to. Johnny gently attempts to dissuade her by taking her to things he normally likes that he thinks most women wouldn't. However, his date also enjoys them and ends up having a lot of fun. After a chance meeting and discussion with Carl, Johnny realizes that this might be the first relationship with a woman he's had with the potential for real romance. Unfortunately, Johnny slips back into his ultra-aggressive macho man behavior when he gets serious about trying to charm her, causing her to dump him as a result. While it was always hinted that Johnny would have better luck with women if he were to drop his misguided notions about how to interact with women and just acting like his usual self, this is the episode that makes it most clear.
• Kaeloo:
  • In Episode 133, Kaeloo is not invited to a party everyone else was invited to because they all thought she was weird. Mr. Cat tells her not to worry about being labeled and tells her that all she needs to do is be herself, and she goes back to the party and spreads the same message to everyone else. The episode ends with everyone, Kaeloo included, throwing another party and "being themselves" there.
  • In Episode 184, Kaeloo finds out that no matter what she does, she can never be "perfect", so she starts doing things like eating junk food, swearing out loud whenever she feels like it, and not holding her farts in, and notices that her life is much better now. Mr. Cat tells her that now, since she has accepted herself for who she really is, she is truly perfect.
• The Aesop of every single Kim Possible episode where Ron Stoppable gets to be special for one episode. It is discussed in "The Cupid Effect", where Wade suggests the idea, yet Ron dismisses it: "That only works in cartoons."
• From King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Mr. Wizard's regular end-of-episode advice to Tooter Turtle:
  Be just what you is,
  Not what you is not.
  Folks what do this
  Are the happiest lot.
• King of the Hill: In "Orange You Sad I Did Say Banana?", Kahn gets a pool as a way to impress Ted Wassanasong, only to have Ted criticize him for being too Americanized and call him a "banana" (yellow outside, white inside), even though Ted himself has gone out of his own way with Americanizing himself. Afterwards, Kahn goes to extremes in making his family reconnect to their Laotian roots, e.g. turning their new pool into a reflecting pond and only eating Laotian dishes. However, when he's talked into joining a guerilla squad planning to overthrow the communist government, Kahn remembers he left Laos because he wanted to escape people telling him how to live, so he tells Ted off and embraces his American lifestyle again.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • This is Tenzin's lesson near the end of season two: he'll never be his father and shouldn't try to be. You wouldn't think a man in his early fifties would need this, but when your dad was a hero who ended a 100-year war and you have to carry on his nearly-extinct culture...
  • He later gives a similar lesson to Korra, who had just lost her powers and connections to her past lives, saying that Wan, the first Avatar, became a legend for who he was, not what, shaking her out of her Heroic BSoD.
  • Bolin's shtick of trying to act cool to impress girls generally annoyed them apart from some fangirls the audience usually only heard about in passing, but when he meets Opal Bei Fong he doesn't consider her to be his type, meaning he acts much more naturally around her and she almost immediately starts crushing on him. When he does try to act smooth later, she tells him to be himself and they start going out.
• Watch this excerpt from The Little Mermaid TV series. Sebastian provides the perfect Theme Song for this trope: "You Got to Be You".
• In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode "Scooter's Hidden Talent", Scooter is tired of being the klutzy nerd, so Gonzo tries to help him create a new persona. However, when the skills he already has turn out to be just what's needed to fix the exercise bike the babies built for Nanny, he realizes his nerdiness can be a good thing.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • "Discordant Harmony": After Discord offers to host his next tea party with Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie advises him to "make Fluttershy feel comfortable". Discord misinterprets this to mean "be normal", removing the bizarre features of his house and suppressing his chaotic nature. This causes him to nearly fade from existence during the tea party, and Fluttershy helps save him by restoring his house to its original chaotic state. Discord learns that Fluttershy had always liked him for who he was, chaos and all.
  • "Common Ground": Quibble Pants is dating the mare Clear Sky, and trying to win the approval of her daughter Wind Sprint. He attempts to impress Wind Sprint (a big fan of buckball) by pretending to be an athlete, which fails miserably. After dropping the act, Quibble Pants asks Wind Sprint to teach him about buckball, and he shows her how statistics can be used in sports — forming a connection based on Quibble's true self.
  • "She's All Yak": The School of Friendship is hosting an event called the Amity Ball, and Sandbar has asked Yona to be his date. Yona is concerned over the fact that this ball is based on a pony tradition, and asks Rarity to help her fit in with pony culture. Yona shows up wearing a dress and wig, and attempts a traditional pony dance. While dancing, she trips on her dress and her wig falls in front of her eyes, causing her to make a mess of the Ball. She runs off to the treehouse in embarrassment, and Sandbar follows her. He then explains that he never wanted Yona to be anything other than the yak she is.
• The premise of My Little Pony: Princess Promenade, in which the dragon, Spike, tries desperately to get Wysteria to be a proper princess. She does her best to go along, but really just wants to be herself, and eventually ends up standing up and saying so, finding a way to still be a princess while being herself.
  • Also the key theme of "Come Back, Lily Lightly," in which Lily Lightly thinks that her friends will shun her because she glows. "Yes, I guess, we have to say, we all shine in a different way! And that means... me too? No one shines any brighter than you!"
• In an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger explains that the secret of his popularity is, "I've just got to be me!" Unfortunately, Eeyore misinterprets this by trying to just be Tigger!
• The original philosopher of this trope, Popeye the Sailor — "I yam wot I yam and that's all wot I yam."
• Played for Drama in the Ready Jet Go! episode "My Fair Jet". Jet wants to go to the DSA Open House with Sean and Sydney, but Sean and Sydney will only let him go if he behaves like a regular Earth kid. He can't say he's from Bortron 7, he can't use his "tool-armed backpack thingy" (which doubles as a jetpack), and he can't sing. However, at the Open House, the DSA weather balloon flies away in some bad weather, carrying Sean along with it. So, Sydney convinces Jet to be himself, so he can save Sean. He ends up rescuing Sean with his jetpack and sings a song about how he is Bortronian. If Jet wasn't himself, Sean probably would've been killed.
• Recess:
  • In "The Beauty Contest", after being tricked into entering a beauty contest tomboy Spinelli is taught to be a "beauty queen" by her friends — but ultimately wins by being herself.
  • A, very rare for kid's show, deconstruction in the Randall's Friends episode: Randall is ashamed to admit to his father that he has no friends, but his father tells him he was proud of him for using his time to spy and tattle on kids rather than helping them and building personal relationships, because he was that way himself at that age (and still is), and he just wants Randall to be true to himself.
• In the Rotten Ralph episode "Percy in Love", Percy develops a crush on Lulu's cousin Lola and asks for Ralph, Fleabag, and Bones to help him win Lola's affections by teaching him to act more like them. In the end, Percy finds that Lola actually has the same interests he does and that he didn't have to hide his refined nature to win her love.
• On Rugrats, the Deville twins are tired of people getting them mixed up and decide to take on new personas. Lil becomes more like Angelica, a heartless bully, and Phil becomes more like Chuckie, a timid coward.
• The Sheep in the Big City episode "Going Off the Sheep End" has Sheep try new looks in an attempt to court his love interest Swanky the Poodle, only for Swanky to not be interested. He first tries rearranging his wool into a stylish hairdo, then tries using plastic surgery to turn his snout into a humanoid nose, and finally becomes a grotesque mass of muscles using Oxymoron muscle powder after an unsuccessful attempt at bulking up at the gym. In the end, Sheep realizes he doesn't need to change his appearance to win Swanky's affections and deflates his muscles to return to normal.
• The Simpsons:
  • Marge gives this advice to Lisa Simpson in "Summer of 4 Ft. 2", in which she's feeling particularly down about having no friends. As soon as she's gone, Lisa angrily points out she's been herself for eight years, and it's not worked. Reconstructed later on in the episode, when Lisa does make some friends while pretending not to be her normal self. Bart spills the beans, but her friends don't mind (although when he tries to tell her this Aesop, it hits Lisa's Rage Breaking Point and she justly points out that Bart has just ruined the greatest friendship she'd ever had for the sake of petty revenge and almost does something horrible to him with maple syrup before Marge walks into the room and Lisa puts everything back in order immediately). It turns out that what really endeared her to them were the qualities that reflect her original smarty-pants personality (i.e., she was the one who taught them "not to drink seawater"), which they didn't have.
  • The ending of Moe's storyline in "Bart Sells His Soul" mocks this trope. Realizing he's not making any money catering to the same handful of drunks every day, Moe decides to rebrand his bar as "Uncle Moe's Family Feed Bag" and turns the place into a theme restaurant à la Applebee's and T.G.I. Friday's. The problem is that Moe institutes a bunch of policies that wear him down (like telling people their meals are free if he doesn't smile while giving them their bill, or having to personally do a humiliating routine for someone's birthday) and he eventually snaps at a little girl. As the place is turned back into his bar, Moe decides he shouldn't pretend to be something he's not and is happy to go back to his old routine. At which point Homer bluntly points out Moe's entire problem was his old routine, and obliviously mentions Moe probably lost a lot more money refurbishing and dismantling his establishment. Moe is not happy.
  • One episode has Homer "correcting" Lisa on the moral of Moby-Dick, claiming it's Be Yourself.
• Sonic Boom: In the episode "Tails' Crush", Tails gets a crush on Zooey and wants to ask her out. Sonic advises him to act cool and aloof. Knuckles advises him to act macho. Amy advises him to be poetic. Sticks advises him to do a bizarre mating dance. None of these approaches work and they just weird Zooey out. Eventually, the villain Dr. Eggman, who said watching Tails suffer felt wrong, tells him that girls don't like fakes and he should just act normal. It works.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In the episode "Big Pink Loser", Patrick Star imitates everything SpongeBob does so he can win an award. At the end, Patrick ends up getting an award for something he himself is good at: doing absolutely nothing. This convinces Patrick to stop copying SpongeBob, and go back to doing what he does best.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The episode "Face the Music" presents this in a negative way. Star Butterfly, hating the Princess Songs, both she and her songstrel Ruberiot believing they are awful and unrealistic portrayals and they want a song that conveys the real Star. The song in question reveals Star has not only lost her family's book of magic but also reveals her crush on Marco. Star is confused why the song causes a panic. Her mother explains that the people of Mewni don't want to get to know the real Star, the songs are meant to convince them their future queen is someone perfect and that the truth is sometimes worse.
• A subplot in one episode of Sushi Pack. The crabby Kani decides to be mellow, even though everyone likes her the way she already is.
• Total Drama: Although initially upset at first from her true colours getting exposed online, Julia came to the conclusion to stop being her ingenious Granola Girl persona and start being the Alpha Bitch she always is. It also helps that after losing all three hundred thousand of her followers, she eventually gained over three million overnight who absolutely adore this new side of Julia and her villain arc.
• In an episode of the first season of Transformers: Animated, Big Guy Bulkhead accidentally destroys almost everything in his path due to his size and clumsiness. The Lancer Prowl offers him some advice to control his strength, by accessing the situation before acting, but this causes him to freeze up in battle. Prowl finally tells Bulkhead to do what'd he do, and not what Prowl would do, thus saving the day.
  • After spending most of his debut episode blindly listening to what he's been told, Wreck-Gar is told by Ratchet to be whatever he wants to be. Wreck-Gar decides he wants to be a hero, and this portrayal sticks the next time he shows up. Too bad Wreck-Gar is still easily tricked.
• Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: This is the moral of "I Am Ella Fitzgerald". Brad is nervous to go to a dance party because he's self-conscious about his dance moves. Ella Fitzgerald and her unique way of singing show Brad that he should be himself.

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