Central Theme / Other Media

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: The uncertainty of life and the limitless bounds of imagination.
• For Better or for Worse: Life has its hardships but for better or for worse things will turn out fine.
• Peanuts: Losing is okay, the world won't come to an end. The point is to keep trying.

Manhua

• Infinity Game: Isolation and the importance of real connections between people.
• Universal Love Grocery: Love, specifically relationships. Each episodes' lesson has something to do with having or maintaining a relationship, from having the courage to confess, being truthful, leaving a bad relationship so on and so forth.

Multiple Media

• BIONICLE:
  • Unity, Duty and Destiny — people working together despite differences like cogs in a machine, placing others' interests before theirs and accepting their responsibilities.
  • Benevolent secrecy and lies can be good but the truth has to come out. Even if your worldview is based on untruths (one of the writers summed up the story's running theme as "people being wrong"), life lessons you learn from others are still important.
  • Deities/leaders should depend on and care for their people, not the other way around.

Professional Wrestling

• WrestleMania: A recurring theme throughout many of the matches at WrestleMania XL is "obsession" and how it can lead to one's downfall or glory.
  • Drew McIntyre and Seth Rollins call each other out for their obsessions during the buildup — Drew with CM Punk and Seth with dismantling the Bloodline — that led to them both losing the championships. Drew would've been more alert to Damian Priest cashing in if he didn't waste precious minutes mocking CM Punk. Meanwhile, Rollins' obsession with stopping the Bloodline, while it resulted in him losing the title he had been defending for almost an entire year, ended with him being a key factor in Cody Rhodes pinning Roman Reigns.
  • Speaking of Roman, Roman's obsession with trying to move past the "There's always a Plan B" moment 10 years prior ended up being his downfall. When Rollins, dressed in his Shield attire, arrives to save Cody, Reigns, steel chair in hand, has two choices: he either uses the chair on Cody or gets one last chance of vengeance against Rollins. He chooses the latter, and this ends with his undoing. His obsession with being acknowledged also has numerous wrestlers from his past charging in and dismantling the Bloodline. On a lighter note, Roman's tunnel vision on Cody made him unable to stop himself from spearing The Rock on Day 1.
  • Jimmy Uso is still obsessed with being better than Jey. Even after Jey wins their bout and wishes to bury the hatchet with his brother, Jimmy refuses to move forward. This culminates in Jey returning the favor during Cody vs Reigns at Night 2 and Jimmy's desires to fight his brother makes him rush out of the ring and onto the ramp, where they both get wiped out, costing Reigns one Bloodline member.
  • Damian Priest is so obsessed with retaining the RAW Tag Team belts that he ignores Referee Jessica Carr trying to warn him that the ladder he's using will break if he does another stunt. While he focuses on Miz also climbing that ladder, R-Truth takes the time to slip into a new ladder and then toss Priest overboard before getting the belts for himself. In another match involving a member of Judgement Day, Santos Escobar and Domink Mysterio are obsessed with beating Rey Mysterio up for different reasons, Santos for what he believes Rey is overshadowing him and Dominik hating his dad in general by being a Spoiled Brat, but they are blindsided when Rey and Andrade gain extra help on their side. Take note that the only victories The Judgment Day had in the event were when they went beyond their personal obsessions and focused on finishing their jobs - Rhea defeated Becky clean and Priest later redeems himself by capitalizing on Drew's bitter obsession with Punk to make his cash-in and leave Mania as the World Heavyweight Champion.
  • Damage CTRL's desperate need to prove they are the strongest woman group in WWE makes them powerful enemies - in special, Asuka's quick ascension to power alienates the former leader of the stable to the point Bayley makes a Heel–Face Turn and goes against IYO, managing to triumph in the end, whereas the other women of the group get beaten swiftly by Naomi, Bianca Belair, and Jade Cargill.
  • The Final Testament and Bobby Lashley's plus the Street Profits showdown is motivated by the obsession of both groups to get rid of each other - Kross's group as a statement of power and Lashley's to get vengeance because the Testament just keeps screwing their chances to gather more power in the card.
  • AJ Styles is annoyed with LA Knight being a cocky hotshot and wants him silenced, which is further aggravated by how they kept getting in each other's way during their Fatal Four match against Roman and Randy in the Royal Rumble. The annoyance goes to the point that in the build-up to the feud, AJ traveled to Australia to screw Knight in the Elimination Chamber.
  • iShowSpeed couldn't help but taunt Randy Orton throughout his match against Logan Paul and Kevin Owens and eats an RKO for his troubles. Logan Paul averts this, despite his cockiness: While he kept being a smug asshole, he takes care to put himself in theoretically superior positions to Owens and Orton, utilizing the fact that the two were fighting each other to get title to pin Kevin after he takes an RKO.
  • The Rock crows that he's the Final Boss and obsesses over the power and dread he gives to everyone, even beating Cena with a Rock Bottom. He quickly gets blindsided by The Undertaker, the true boss of WrestleMania. Undertaker defies this by simply going after the Rock then vanishing since he's already gotten his revenge on the Bloodline (and Paul Heyman by extension). Meanwhile, Solo's obsession with being the enforcer of the Bloodline and constantly kicking Cody to support Roman when he should stay out of the way has him taken out by John Cena.
  • And you could argue Cody is the Ur-Example for positive obsession: his main goal since his return two years prior was to conquer the title his father never obtained and never really lost focus of this goal, although he had to deal with occasional obstacles along the way. However, he didn't let this obsession dominate his life, and never stepped out of bounds against Roman or anyone from the Bloodline even when they did it constantly and his heroic acts made him respected by many in the roster - including former bitter rival Rollins, who ends up being the key in ending the Bloodline's reign of terror.
  • In parallel with the obsession theme, there's also an interpretation about "keeping your eye on the prize." The A-Town Down Under team (Grayson Waller and Austin Theory) wasn't as great as the other five teams of more experienced tag wrestlers, but their focus and opportunism allowed them to nab the Smackdown Tag Team Titles under everyone's noses. GUNTHER ends up losing his record-breaking Intercontinental Championship streak to Sami Zayn because he ends up playing around too much with him, which allows for Sami to mount a comeback and seal the deal after applying a Brainbuster into double Helluva Kick combo. Likewise, while Seth loses his World Heavyweight Championship match against Drew because of his focus on ending Roman's tenure as a champion resulting in him being heavily damaged by the time they fight at Night 2, he manages to reach the latter achievement by playing a key part in the Bloodline's downfall. And Drew, by mocking CM Punk after winning the championship, finally gets punished for it, which allows Damian Priest to ambush him and cash-in the Money in the Bank contract to steal the title right under his nose.

Web Animation

• Among Us Logic: The use of hard work and perseverance to succeed in the face of impossible odds.
• Autodale: Mindless social conformity is dangerous, and a tool for authoritarian leaders to control people's lives.
• Bee and Puppycat: Facing the adult world with idealism.
• Gaming All-Stars
  • For The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, to what extent will villains go to to display their dominance over others?
  • For 2, the power of great human beings (and other Earthlings) when they unite against those who wish to enslave or annihilate humankind.
• Hanazuki: Full of Treasures: The importance of expressing your true feelings, and how a varied emotional lifestyle is the healthiest one.
• Hazbin Hotel: Anyone can become a better person if they try.
  • Helluva Boss: Trying to to survive in a toxic (or even dangerous) profession with coworkers, clients, or competitors who are cruel, crazy, and/or stupid.
• Happy Tree Friends: Life is unfair.
• Inanimate Insanity:
  • How people attempt to cope under pressure.
  • Is it worth sacrificing your moral integrity in order to succeed?
• Madness Combat: Violence and how it can be both meaningful and meaningless.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Should friendship and cooperation develop naturally or intentionally?
  • Peoples' reactions to learning harsh truths about themselves.
  • Coping with the cruel absurdities of life: arbitrary conflicts, doomed loves, false friends, etc.
  • The value of humanity.
  • The nature of faith, and dangers of it turning into blind fanaticism.
  • The importance of forgiveness and moving on from the past.
• RWBY encourages people to discover who they are and what their place is in the world without setting unrealistic expectations for themselves and others.
  • Adults/Elders aren't perfect, make mistakes, and shouldn't be blindly trusted, but they can still be valuable role-models, teachers and guides.
  • Acknowledge and have compassion for the strengths, weaknesses, failures and personal struggles of both yourself and others.
  • Any struggle can be overcome with support, guidance, team-work, trust and good communication.
  • Never forget You Are Not Alone.
• SCP Confinement: Coping with a life of (completely involuntary) imprisonment, isolation and loneliness, and being denied any true freedom or human rights.
• Xionic Madness: How far will you go to be free?

Web Original

• SCP Foundation:
  • Just how necessary is it to conceal the truth behind all kinds of terrible secrets, just because most people would be completely unprepared for them?
  • Can the extreme methods and moral costs undertaken (ostensibly) for the sake of protecting "the greater good" ever be necessarily justified? Or could doing so just be making an already bad situation even worse than before?
• Welcome to Night Vale: Community. Even if the various citizens disagree, or outright menace each other, Night Vale is still a group of people committed to getting through their imperfect lives as best they can with their fellow citizens.
• The Whateley Universe seems to be fundamentally about prejudice. In a super hero world, there's prejudice against mutants and their powers, but in a lot of ways the stories are at least as much about prejudice against LGBT people, since every one in Team Kimba is a mutant who is LGBT in some way, perhaps against their will.
• Worm: People need to learn to communicate with each other, lest we tear each other apart.

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