Deconstruction / Western Animation

Deconstruction in Western Animation.

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The following have their own pages:

• Batman
• Family Guy
• Mighty Max
• Rick and Morty
• Spider-Man
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
• Steven Universe

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A-D

• Adventure Time is a deconstruction of fantasy elements applied in a positive way. Characters go through trouble, the world is in danger every day, and very few people have good values.
• The American Dad! episode "Pulling Double Booty" has a rather humorous exaggeration of Teens Are Monsters trope by having Hayley go on a destructive Unstoppable Rage. However, people react to it by fleeing the mall as if there was a crazed gunman on the loose, there is a considerable amount of property damage and several people end up getting killed. It's gotten to the point where the police gave Stan an ultimatum: one more rampage and she goes to jail forever.
• Amphibia
  • "True Colors": Of the concept of adventure. Not everyone will treat it with a sense of excitement and wonder. In Anne Boonchuy’s case, having to be thrust into life-threatening danger isn’t something she’s welcoming of, and it’s been very traumatic for her because she missed out on her 13th birthday, her family, and her quiet life.
  • "Spider-Sprig": Of superhero battles in public. While media won't shy away from showing destruction of public property in superhero battles, more often than not they'll happen in the Conveniently Empty Building district, or hand wave it away as the civilians being completely unharmed and out of danger. Sprig's battle with Otto however sees tons of civilians running in terror of both of them and the destruction they're causing, and Molly Jo nearly gets hit by a car thrown aside, and then nearly crushed by the lamp post it hit after she dodged, not to mention the crashed cars caused by drivers swerving to avoid the two of them, with people still in the cars when they start cleaning up.
• The series finale of The Angry Beavers "Bye Bye Beavers" was never filmed because it broke two of Nickelodeon's rules. One being that a show doesn't acknowledge an episode is the last episode, so kids keep watching and hoping for new episodes, and the other rule being a show doesn't break the fourth wall. "Bye Bye Beavers" did both. However, a recording of the actors reading the script exists online. This episode, even only as an audio, is one of the most unique deconstructions ever made. It starts off somewhat normal, with Norbert explaining to Daggett that they're fictional characters in a cartoon, that has just been cancelled. The insanity begins when you hear the voice actors laughing as they're reading their lines, and then having a conversation. Norbert and Daggett are talking to each other about how their lives are just a show, joking about common tropes in cartoons, while each character's voice actors are talking to each other about other shows and their future plans. This doesn't just break the fourth wall, it completely deconstructs the show in a bizarre meta way.
• Arthur: You would think that a series that is founded on the "Reading Is Cool" Aesop would support programs on the vein of Book Adventure. However, S16's "Buster's Book Battle" points out serious flaws: the program is not guaranteed to have listings on "the classics" or books children actually want to read; the prizes might be lackluster; the participants would try to "game" the system: most importantly, the program would not teach people to read for the fun/utility of reading itself, instead reading just to earn prizes.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • "The Frond Files" features a deconstruction of Designated Villain. Each of the Belcher kids' essays (basically just Affectionate Parodies of various media) depicts Wagstaff guidance counselor Mr. Frond as the villain^note although in the last story he's not so much a villain as he is just a Hate Sink Jerkass, which Bob lampshades. Mr. Frond genuinely has no idea what he's done to get on the kids' bad sides... and then he realizes that it's as simple as they just don't like him. He didn't do anything at all (besides confiscate Gene's keyboard), he didn't antagonize the kids (not this time, anyways), they just dislike him enough for them to make him the villain. It's then taken further with his reaction—Mr. Frond is so upset about it that he starts crying.
  • "Father of the Bob" deconstructs Technician Versus Performer by showing what happens when two people with different work ethics (Bob, the performer, and his father Big Bob, the technician) work together—namely, it's only a matter of time before their differences split them apart, leading to Bob Belcher starting his own restaurant independent of his father.
  • Teddy is a deconstruction of Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male. Teddy was frequently mistreated (and cheated on) by his ex-wife Denise, but he treats it like no big deal and quickly brushes past it, and the episode it's introduced in ("Bed and Breakfast") does in fact play it for laughs. However, it's later shown that Teddy's view of his abuse is an unhealthy way of coping, and the plot of the episode "Sea Me Now" sees the Belchers trying to tell Teddy that in no world was Denise's treatment of him justified, a concept Teddy has genuine trouble realizing.
  • Louise Belcher is arguably a deconstruction of Daddy's Girl. Louise adores and idolizes her father, and it's clear Bob adores her right back. However, their strong bond comes at the cost of Louise neglecting her relationship with her mother, meaning Louise and Linda aren't as close and even start out at odds. Additionally, Louise and Bob's bond does not go unnoticed—Linda is painfully aware that Louise likes Bob better and displays jealousy over it, and her first major attempt to improve her bond with Louise (in the episode "Mother Daughter Laser Razor") quickly devolves into a case of My Beloved Smother.
  • Tammy Larsen is a deconstruction of Alpha Bitch. She starts out as the queen bee of the school, being a Rich Bitch and key part of several extracurriculars (including the ever-cliche cheerleader squad). As she continues to act like she's the top of the world, however, everyone begins to dislike her, and her few remaining friends can barely tolerate her (to the point that they outright tell her it's not okay to act like such an asshole). By the later seasons, Tammy isn't popular or cool, she's instead treated like the jerkass she is, relying on her extracurriculars and the friends of her friends (as well as Tina's desperation to belong) to seem like she's still on top.
  • Linda's mother Gloria is a deconstruction of Obnoxious In-Laws. Namely, she shows the exact kind of person it takes to be that obnoxious to everyone around her—Bob isn't her only victim, he's just her most frequent. She also shows that Bob isn't just falling into standard sitcom cliches by disliking her—if anything, he's being generous, and is either way completely justified in his hatred.
• Centaurworld
  • The Elktaur's backstory revealed in episode "The Last Lullaby" is one big deconstructed variation of the "Beast and Beauty" storyline. He was a half-animal creature who had self-loathing for what he was, she (the Princess) was a beautiful woman. He fell in love with her and (unknown to him at the time) the feeling was mutual. But his self-loathing got in the way of accepting that love, to the point where he banished his animal half (the Elk) just to have a happy ending as the changed human suitor (the General). The problem is, the Elk still loved the Princess, and the General locked him up so as not to risk losing his "Happily Ever After". This set off the domino effect of the Elk becoming a manifestation of the Elktaur's self-hatred, leading to the war that ruined the lives of both Centaurworld and humankind. Not to mention how the Beauty-stand in turns cynical at learning her husband lied to her and essentially abused his animal half.
    • Generally, the Elktaur is a heavy deconstruction of Insecure Love Interest. All this began because he became infatuated with the Princess. But he was too self-conscious about ever confessing his feelings for her because he didn't think someone like her could ever like a centaur. As such, it set off the Elktaur separating his elk half from his human half. This was the cataclysm that would lead to years of war and conflict. And the worst part? It's many decades before the (former) Princess has to spell it out for him that she would've loved him as himself.
• To an extent, Season 3 of Code Lyoko can be considered as a deconstruction of the show's concept of Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World by showing us the long term consequences of a bunch of kids trying to prevent a highly intelligent AI from taking over the world while keeping a normal life. The result? Their grades start dropping due to the time taken from them by XANA's attack, XANA actually outsmarts them and ends the season with Team Rocket Wins, gradually destroying their virtual world in the process, and their attempt to get a new recruit ends up creating a Sixth Ranger Traitor. Even the relationships get deconstructed, as, after two seasons of Unresolved Sexual Tension, Yumi gets sick of it and decides that Ulrich and she are Just Friends.
• Daria: Later seasons make attempts at deconstructing Daria herself, and her attitude towards the world and others, mostly in order to show that, despite her aloof attitude, smarts and conscience, she isn't as above others as she'd like to think, or at least how the viewers were led to think. She is still a teenager who doesn't always know better, is prone to being selfish and undecided, and can be just as bad as her classmates. The Series Finale, "Boxing Daria", shows that her antisocial attitude was a challenge for her parents too in her youth. This is reconstructed in several episodes, with the last example in particular re-iterating that though challenging, her parents are still very proud of her intelligence and conscious attitude, and never considered her a burden.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Mark Beaks and Waddle are this for Benevolent Boss and laid back culture associated with tech companies. "The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!" shows that underneath the surface of the cool tech, free swag, and "zany" office features, Beaks and the company are just as cutthroat and unethical as the more old fashioned big corporations that they reject and make fun of and only care about the bottom line.
  • Louie Duck has been known throughout Season 1 as a lazy, greedy, cowardly liar who sometimes puts his own lazy and greedy tendencies ahead of others in spite of the serious implications. The premiere of Season 2 shows him struggling to keep up with the others who have special applicable skills while his special talent is "talking his way out of it" and becomes afraid that will soon not be enough.
  • Scrooge McDuck's miserly businessman attitude, long list of enemies, and old fashioned hard work attitude aren't given a pass like in other adaptations. It's eventually revealed that his conflict with Santa that's been a series running gag was the very idea of giving away toys on Christmas for free. He had wanted to use the artifacts and labor that allowed Santa to deliver gifts to everyone in a single night to establish a coal delivery business, as he abhorred not making a profit and saw no point in giving gifts that weren't practical. A later episode establishes that, though he thwarted Magica as she was extorting a village by turning its citizens into livestock, after defeating her he never bothered to find a way to restore them, instead opportunistically seizing the land and them as a new business venture in dairy farming. He was also so busy taking Magica's treasure, which again was wrongfully extorted from innocent people, for himself that he didn't help her when she pleaded anything for him to stop her transformed brother Poe from flying out the window, making an enemy for life. In summary, it's established that Scrooge may claim to have made his money "square", what's technically legal to do wasn't always ethical. Like most billionaires then and now, there was no small amount of exploitation along the way to accrue so much wealth.

E-M

• Ever After High lovingly pokes fun at the horrible implications of the fairy tale universe while being very upbeat and cheery about it.
• The Flintstones TV special Flintstones on the Rocks deconstructed Fred and Wilma's relationship with each other from the original series. While Fred and Wilma would normally be seen bickering with each other from time to time in the original series, this special showed how their bickering led to them having problems with their marriage, with it going as far as to show Fred and Wilma attending couples therapy at the beginning of the special.
• Gormiti: Nature Unleashed: This series is a deconstruction of the Gormiti franchise's previous iterations' formulas. Unlike the Gormiti: The Lords of Nature Return from Venture Falls or the ones they're based on, the Princes argue very often and their clashing personalities tends to cause tensions, without being seen as too much of a bad thing unless the situation calls for it. The tribes also show reluctance letting four kids with great power take the reins in stopping a war with the lava tribe, while the Lava Gormiti themselves are depicted more sympathetically (without excusing their actions. Namely, the main goal of the Princes becomes not to defeat the Lava tribe, but bring peace to all elements of Gorm, fire included.
• The Ghost and Molly McGee: "Carbon Zero Heroes" is a deconstruction of the Green Aesop. Molly and Ollie decide to go carbon neutral to stop climate change, but they find that it takes a lot of sacrifices to do so. They bike to Andrea's party to avoid using gasoline, but most of the route is uphill, so they arrive late. Giving up meat and dairy means they can't enjoy pizza for movie night, and to try to avoid using the fridge or the gas stove, they end up eating raw turnips. And once they achieve carbon neutrality, they find out that it has made almost zero impact on the environment. In the end, they realize that it takes mobilizing the entire community to actually make a difference.
• Hey Arnold!: Arguably for shows like Arthur and Recess. For in those shows, there is a memorable/colorful cast of characters, all with their own personality quirks. While that is present here in Hey Arnold, the quirks and traits that make the characters more or less memorable, are usually the result of some hidden neurosis, or psychosis. Some characters have even received therapy for said problems; only to regress to their former problematic ways at the story's end.
  • Ironically, this receives the same treatment in "Deconstructing Arnold". Helga starts the episode by calling out on Arnold Shortman that he is too much of a Nice Guy that ruins fun for everyone but the problem is that Helga's only good at this because she is a Jerkass and merely uses this method to bully him. What results is a short life without Arnold who IS the only one who kept everything in order and that includes the school. Once he stops helping his friends, they began to suffer from their foolishness. The kids then turn to Helga for help but she lacked the wisdom and any sort of social skills(minus Phoebe) Arnold has causing the problems to grew even worse such as Curly humiliating Rhonda, Sid losing his friendship with Lorenzo and Harold and Stinky injuring Eugene. She even lampshades how much of a terrible person she is. Who are the kids going to hate more? Arnold or the Unwitting Instigator of Doom.
  • "Helga On The Couch" wound up being one for Helga G. Pataki Hilariously Abusive Childhood. Before, scenes of Helga's home life were used as gags to counterbalance her Jerkass behavior. However, the episode re-contextualized how a life of living with Parental Neglect and being the Unfavorite directly contributed to how she interacts with her peers, especially Arnold.
• Hey Good Lookin' by Ralph Bakshi (who else) is one big Deconstruction and Take That! against anyone who believes that the 1950s were really just like Grease or Happy Days. The main character is ostensibly as cool as The Fonz but actually a Dirty Coward who can't back up his bragging, the Plucky Comic Relief is actually a racist sociopath, their gang aren't really True Companions despite looking like one, the supposed Big Bad never explictly does anything really bad and the ending's Broken Aesop is intentional about the "romance" between the main character and Rozzie.
• The first season finale of I ♡ Arlo, "The Uncondemning", is the deconstruction of Arlo's journey from the swamp to the city in the original movie Arlo the Alligator Boy. When Arlo left the swamp, while it did please Edmée, it completely ticked off a wicked Eldritch Abomination called the Bog Lady, who couldn't stand Arlo's departure due to secretly protecting him since he first came to the swamp as a baby after Ansel disowned him at birth. Thanks to losing the one thing she enjoyed caring over, the Bog Lady unleashed a curse on the swamp which turned it drab, gory and thorn-like, and hatched a plan to get Arlo to return by hiring his old rivals Ruff and Stucky to trap Edmée as bait and send a ransom letter to lure Arlo to her. Arlo realizes these awful results too late and admits repeatedly if he had never left the swamp, then none of this would've happened.
• Invincible (2021): The series deconstructs the mentality of Long-Lived characters in fiction, pointing out how someone who is both long lived and from a culture or species separate from another, shorter-lived group would likely see the shorter-lived group as lesser because they seem inconsequential in comparison. Though Nolan makes a lot of arguments about why Mark should help him conquer earth, the main argument he hits Mark with again and again is that Mark will outlive the rest of the people he knows and loves by several magnitudes and is thus above them. Mark - who, raised by humans, only has a human perception of time - is aghast at Nolan's lax attitude towards killing humans by the cruiser-load, since he doesn't see humanity the way Nolan sees humanity. Nolan ultimately likens Debbie to being a beloved pet at best, and only relents on his conquest of the world because of his concern for his son, the one person on earth he knows will outlive him.
• The Legend of Korra Repeatedly deconstructs the The original series, especially with its morally ambiguous villains and scenarios versus the Fire Nation. Unfortunately, bringing balance to the world is not as simple this time around as defeating the Evil Overlord who wants to Take Over the World (not that that was ever easy either). Basically, it's a deconstruction of any action show in general.
• Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones often used deconstruction on his cartoons. The best known example is Duck Amuck: First the scenery changes, forcing Daffy to adapt. Then Daffy himself is erased and redrawn. Then the soundtrack fails, then the film frame, and so on until Daffy is psychologically picked clean. Another example is What's Opera, Doc?, which takes the base elements of a typical Bugs Bunny cartoon and reassembles them as a Wagnerian opera. (Conversely, you could also say that it takes the base elements of Wagnerian opera and reassembles them as a Bugs Bunny cartoon.)
• Masters of the Universe: Revelation: The series deconstructs a number of tropes.
  • Secret Identity: Teela is deeply hurt by the revelation that Adam was secretly He-Man and is furious that she alone of He-Man's companions (who were in the room - she's never told that all their other companions didn't know either) was kept in the dark about it. King Randor isn't at all pleased either, to find out his subjects and his wife were keeping this from him and expresses it.
  • Big Bad Wannabe - Harmless Villain: After his apparent death, Skeletor is mocked by several of his minions/allies as a raging egomaniac who failed so often that it was hard to take him seriously. However, it's noticeable that this mockery only started after the demon mage was gone, and within the show itself Skeletor is depicted as being surprisingly dangerous when given the opportunity: he successfully infiltrates Castle Grayskull, kills Moss Man, and nearly destroys the entire universe in the first episode and makes a nightmarish return at the end of episode 5.
  • Enemy Mine - Evil Versus Oblivion: Evil-Lyn and Beast Man ally with the heroes to save magic/Eternia, since magic fading would kill them along with the rest of the world; but once magic is restored and Skeletor returns from the dead, they turn against their temporary allies. Then in part two, Skeletor allies with the Masters after Evil-Lyn snaps and decides to destroy the universe; but once Teela and Evil-Lyn take the fight away from Castle Greyskull, he immediately goes back to trying to kill He-Man.
  • Butt-Monkey: Orko's magic misfiring constantly has left him with deep seated self-esteem and confidence issues. This has become a perpetuating cycle; he believes no spell he casts will work, so they often don't.
  • Arch-Enemy: Part 2 really goes into how much of a hindrance Skeletor's single-minded obsession with killing He-Man is. He is capable of some incredible planning and is implied to have had grand ambitions at one point, but all of that gets tossed out the window just so that he can remain continually locked in battle with He-Man until the day he finally kills him in a manner he thinks will be suitably grandiose. Naturally, such circumstances would be nearly impossible to occur even with planning, so this just leads Skeletor to constantly giving He-Man ways to win. Coupled with discovering just how vast and random the universe really is, the fact that Skeletor has no grand ambitions beyond his petty feud with He-Man leads Evil-Lyn to turn on him. Skeletor also ends up interfering with the plan to save all of existence in the end just for another shot at killing He-Man, which leads He-Man to pointedly tell him that the universe doesn't revolve around their feud before defeating him for the umpteenth time.
• Miraculous Ladybug episode "Gang of Secrets" deconstructs the Secret Identity. Marinette Dupain-Cheng has had to keep her secret from every single person in her life and having to lie to her friends, family, love interests and even fellow heroes. Having to hide this has done horribly on her mental health and self-esteem to the point she forces her friends out of her life and thinks it would be better if she was only Ladybug.
• Moral Orel deconstructs The Moral Substitute but presenting a culture where all media is Christian fundamentalist propaganda, and showing just how messed up and disturbing it would be.
  • By the third and final season the show starts deconstructing itself, as the show (for the most part) stops all pretense of being a comedy and starts examining all of its Straw Characters and what made them such deeply dysfunctional people, with some characters either bettering themselves by the end of the series or (in the case of Orel's parents - especially Clay) simply continuing to wallow in their misery and become irredeemable.
• The first episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's second season, "Lesson Zero", deconstructs the Once an Episode lesson-learning nature of the show. Twilight Sparkle realizes that she hasn't learned a lesson this week, and she only has a day left to write her weekly "friendship report" to Princess Celestia. After futile attempts to find some problem to solve, she ends up cracking under the pressure and creating a Conflict Ball for her to resolve, which quickly escalates beyond her control.

O-W

• It's Oppo, a student film made by Cal Arts student Tyler Chen, deconstructs Nick Jr., as well as preschool television programs and morally unscrupulous media companies in general. Watch the (NSFW) video here.
• The Owl House takes a sledgehammer to tropes associated with portal fantasies.
  • Usually, the narrator steps through a portal, gets trapped and is deemed The Chosen One to stop the Big Bad. That doesn't happen here: Luz Noceda thinks she came to the Boiling Isles for a reason and is told she's a chosen one to wield a special staff. Eda tells her that as the notorious thief of the Boiling Isles, she would have found such a staff ages ago, and probably a scammer is messing with Luz. The Owl Lady is proven right: Adeghast is a scammer who preyed on Luz's desire to be special to lure Eda into a trap. In addition, said Big Bad is a Villain with Good Publicity that pragmatically doesn't want to kill Luz and he's not someone who would be overthrown easily. At best, you can raise a public outcry against his actions.
  • It turns out no one on the Boiling Isles knows a lot about humans and the ones that do have no interest in spreading the information, unlike when most characters step into a fantasy world and are treated as special like in The Chronicles of Narnia. Gus runs a pro-human club but mislabels items from Earth easily, as he finds out with mortification. Indeed, Luz's Token Human status attracts the interest of the antagonists more than the heroes in terms of her potential: Emperor Belos corners her to get the Portal Key to Earth, and is impressed when Luz fights back. It's implied he lets her go because she may be useful in the future.
• The episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) Town and Out about them moving to "Citysville" deals with what would happen if their brand of heroics was applied to a real life city. For example, they stop some bank robbers, but in the process, they cause so much property damage that it outweighs the amount of stolen money they recover.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show deconstructs every trope from Golden Age cartoons, especially those having to do with morality and chaos, either by exaggerating them to the point they become disgusting, or by showing just how unpleasant it would be to live through such events. The character of Ren could easily be a deconstruction of Butt-Monkey villain characters like Daffy Duck for example. While many of his schemes and plans seem to be immoral and self centered, they're usually motivated by survival, like in the short "A Yard Too Far", he tries to steal food, only because he's starving. On numerous occasions, Ren either breaks down into tears, or explodes into homicidal anger over the intense suffering he has to endure. Whereas Ren could be seen as a deconstruction of a cartoon bad guy, Stimpy on the other hand could be seen as a deconstruction of good guy characters in general. He often suffers through the same misfortune as Ren, and is unusually upbeat about it, but only because he's not smart enough to understand the trouble he's in, and despite the fact that he seems to have more of a sense of right and wrong than his counterpart, he is still easily manipulated by Ren into immoral activities, because, again he's not smart enough to understand.
• Samurai Jack The final season of the show deconstructs the series. This season is more than just Darker and Edgier. It clearly shows the consequences and cost of being a warrior stranded in the future fighting an immortal creature that is a personification of evil. Many elements of the first four seasons that had uncomfortable implications are explored in depth as well as the toll it would take on Jack and those involved. To wit:
  • Jack is fine with destroying robots in brutal ways with fluids and parts flying everywhere, but this season makes it clear that in all that time, he never knowingly took a human life. This didn't matter so much at first, as it was primarily Aku who was after him, and Aku prefers sending machines and monsters. This season shows what would happen if others besides Aku wanted to come after him and DIDN'T use robots or machines but real people. When Jack takes his first human life in self-defense, he is horrified and disgusted with himself and even when he resolves to kill in self-defense, he is still haunted by his actions and victims.
  • Jack and Aku learn the hard way that by some fluke, Jack has been rendered ageless and therefore continues to live no matter how many centuries pass (provided that nothing physically harms and kills him). It was fine for Jack being in a stalemate with Aku for only a few years and provided that there was a chance to go home. With the last of the time portals destroyed and Aku effectively withdrawing from open conflict, Jack has to wander around playing the good Samaritan putting out small fires while the overall inferno (Aku's subjugation of the world) blazes unabated. Saying that this has not been good for either Jack or Aku's mental health, would be an understatement.
  • While things were shown to be bad under Aku's rule in the previous seasons, this season in particular doesn't pull any punches about what a Crapsack World the Earth is ruled by Aku. The new opening of the show is downright bleak and when Jack fights his first serious villain, the audience can clearly see the butchered corpses of the villagers Jack went to save. Jack is later forced to show Ashi a good hard look at how bad the world of Aku is when he shows her a single beautiful tree that was once part of a grand forest. Aku destroyed every tree but that one because he wanted people to despair at what once was. Later Ashi kills a torturer who was using brainwashed children as weapons.
  • Spending 50 years going around fighting the forces of Aku using any and every weapon you can find may make you an unbelievably skilled warrior, but it will also take a toll on your mind. What's more is that Jack was only going through the motions without any resolve or determination behind his actions. Add that to the fact that he's suffering from some very serious internal turmoil and guilt lead to a very strong but also mentally unbalanced protagonist.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Of the original 1980s She-Ra: Princess of Power. The show gives characters much more moral ambiguity and overturns tropes from the original series. Adora learns that Etheria was weaponized by her ancestors for evil ends, and that being the "chosen one" isn't necessarily a good thing. Hordak and Catra are three-dimensional villains with complex motivations. Glimmer's efforts at protecting her people have dangerous ramifications for the universe. Several of the characters have moral shades of gray. Stories do not always have happy endings, and friendship does not always fix everything.
• The Simpsons:
  • The famous episode "Homer's Enemy" is a deconstruction of the general weirdness and insanity of its setting, based around the premise of What if a real-life, normal person had to enter Homer's universe and deal with him? Frank Grimes, a relatively humorless but hard-working man who is still forced to live cheaply despite working almost his entire life, encounters Homer on the job at the nuclear power plant. You can imagine what happens next—the result is funny, but also disturbing and very dark upon further reflection (one of the darkest Simpsons episodes ever made).
    • At one point, Homer is about to drink a beaker of sulfuric acid when Grimes stops him. Grimes reacts exactly as we would expect a normal person to react—he's visibly freaked out, and when Homer blows off the danger with laughter, he shouts "Stop laughing, you imbecile! Do you realize how close you just came to killing yourself?!" while Homer just smiles at him blankly and dumbly, completely unable to understand not only the danger he just put himself in or why Frank is so upset with him. A series of such incidents, and everyone else's indifference to Homer's stupidity ultimately drives Frank Grimes into insanity (and death).
    • Superintendent Chalmers ends up being a deconstruction of Frank himself, also being a relatively hard-working everyman from outside Springfield. Chalmers frequently has to contend with the antics of Springfield's citizenry (usually Skinner), he's learned not to ask too many questions or push issues too far; at some point, he simply accepts the weirdness for what it is and lets it go, as demonstrated in the internet-famous "Steamed Hams" short, and he's for the better of it. This way, unlike Frank, he actually preserves his sanity and his wellbeing, even if sometimes he is utterly baffled by the things that go on around him.
  • The Simpsons Movie deconstructs Homer Simpson's Flanderization into a Jerkass by having his friends and family actually react to it.
    • Him dumping a pig waste silo into an environmentally clean lake? Gets the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency, the town sealed off from the rest of the world (and nearly blown up), and everyone out to kill him and his family.
    • His treatment of Bart Simpson? Actually hurts the boy, causing him to find confinement in Flanders (even reaching a point where he flat-out admits he'd rather be Flanders' son).
    • To a lesser instant, his daughter Lisa Simpson is through with his behavior.
    • His refusal to save Springfield even after everything? His entire family abandons him (with not even Marge Simpson finding a silver lining in his behavior this time. It ultimately takes an epiphany for him to realize how badly he screwed up and make up for his actions.
• Solar Opposites First episode "The Matter Transfer Array" ends up being a deconstruction of a typical Rick and Morty episode, specifically the love that people have for amoral characters.
  • Normally when Rick engages in science-fiction shenanigans, he talks gleefully about how he can always avoid the consequences. The Schlorpians know that they aren't above Earth consequences for their shenanigans; Korvo bluntly says they need to ditch the destruction that Funbucket caused or they'll get arrested, and the kids are trying not to be expelled. What's more, their wanting Pupa to mature and destroy the planet is Played for Laughs but gives enough time for the audience to realize how serious that is.
  • Terry and Korvo love how Funbucket is amoral and doesn't care about anything while spouting multiple catchphrases. When they recreate Funbucket down to his DNA, he quickly gets tired of their fanboy nature. What's more, he gives them a What the Hell, Hero? for taking him for granted and not considering he has feelings. When he actually does start going on a rampage, the aliens seriously consider giving him a Mercy Kill.
• South Park, as well as deconstructing everything else on the planet, has a fine line in deconstructing itself:
  • In "Kenny Dies", the Running Gag character they had killed over seventy times already gets a terminal disease and slowly expires while Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski react with utterly realistic grief and despair. That is further deconstructed in the "Mysterion Trilogy" with Negative Continuity.
  • "Fatbeard" deconstructs how pirates are often romanticized as swashbuckling rogues. Believing that news of Somali pirates is the return of the golden age of piracy, Cartman convinces several of his classmates to run off to Somalia with him. But what they fail to realize is that Ruthless Modern Pirates are often forced to do what they do because the only alternative is them and everyone they care about dying. One of the pirates, a teenager named Guleed, even points out to Butters and Ike exactly how much being a pirate today sucks.
    Guleed: Every day, I dream that I can go to school. Learn about the world. But my mother... She is dying of AIDS, and there is no money for medicine. My father was killed trying to find food for us. Do you know how I feel every time we try to capture a boat? Scared! And not just scared because I might get killed, but scared because if I don't get something out of it, my family and friends are going to die! I don't want to be a pirate! I don't see how anybody would!
  • The episode "You're Getting Old" deals with the consequences of having Randy being over-(re)active combined with the Reset Button. The result is Stan's parents divorcing and Randy moving away from South Park. On a deeper level, Stan starts deconstructing everything around him, finding that everything is ultimately meaningless, or "just crap", as the episode portrays it.
    • Rather notably the episode also deconstructs deconstructions by pointing out how a person completely ignoring the MST3K Mantra or Bellisario's Maxim would be widely viewed as an obnoxious, cynical Jerkass who judges everyone for liking things they don't and spends all their time complaining about pointless stuff. Indeed, most of Stan's problems come from the fact that he refuses to consider that other people could like the things he constantly bitches about.
  • South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid: This episode can serves as one towards Cartman's character in the series. Cartman was a bigoted jerkass who committed appalling acts either for petty reasons, selfish gain, or to humiliate his "friends", and was too lazy to apply his talents for anything else. However, it is shown in the Bad Future that if Cartman chose to forgo these evil tendencies, change his ways, and apply to them to himself, his life would have been much happier and fulfilled. It contrasts with the "good" future where Cartman stayed the same awful person he was a child, none of his selfish, bigoted, petty, and lazy tendencies would help him in his adulthood, while his toxic behavior drove everyone away, leaving Cartman as a drunk and miserable hobo who's all alone and has accomplished nothing in his life.
• Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Episode “The Solitary Clone” turns the usual Clones vs. Droids setup on its head. Rather than the clones liberating a world from Separatist control, they're taking the planet to install an Imperial occupation. The Separatists this time around aren't led by profit-seeking corporate tycoons, but by a governor of the people who is trying to defend her planet's independence from a hostile takeover, and it's the Battle Droids who are fighting to protect the people from hostile invaders. There are a few moments where the episode takes musical cues from The Clone Wars but they're undercut by the fact that the clones are not the good guys this time, and none of the troopers involved come out of the mission for the better. In fact, Crosshair's unfettered adherence to the Empire drives Commander Cody to go AWOL, leaving Crosshair alone once again. The Clones don't even get to enjoy their victory before they're shuttled off-world and replaced by recruited Stormtroopers.
• Tex Avery enjoyed deconstructing story clichés and tired conventions in every cartoon he made at MGM. It's because of this that Looney Tunes grew the beard and many other studios began to imitate his style.
• Undergrads: College dorm life is deconstructed to counter its inspiration Animal House; Rocko's fratboy behavior is looked down on heavily by his frat brothers, who view him as a source of grief. Nitz' everyman status really puts only a grade above Gimpy, the resident Hikikomori of the four of them.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • There can be a very good case made for the show being a deconstruction of Jonny Quest and Doc Savage-style Two-Fisted Tales. Some say spoof, some say deconstruction, some say both.
  • The series has always been one for the "boy adventurer" genre, but Self-Medication takes it up to eleven. Rusty is still jaded and impotent, Action Johnny still battles chemical dependency, the Hale brothers are (murderously?) resentful of what their father put them through, Wonderboy was forced into retirement when he grew too old and developed an eating disorder, and Ro-Boy battles PTSD from his many battles. It all serves to make the actual Venture Bros. seem well-adjusted by comparison.
• Wander over Yonder
  • Episode The Hero feels like a deconstructed take on "Super Mario" plotlines. You have "the Hero" (Brad Starlight) who is trying to save the Princess (Demura) from the monster (King Draykor) who wants to marry said-princess. Oh where to begin? For one, King Draykor is a nice dragon and Demura genuinely loves Draykor. So our Mario stand-in is no more a hero than he is a party-crashing nuisance wants to rescue the Princess on the grounds that he's "prophecied" to have her. Not to mention that as a legitimate groom, Draykor is stressed out over the prospect that some delusional wedding-crasher is trying to destroy his wedding to the woman he mutually loves. The cherry on top is when Brad shrugs off his final chance at redemption, obstinate at fulfilling his "prophecy" rather than recognize it's getting in the way of Demura and Draykor's happiness together.
  • Season 2 is all about this trope. Everything that the crew stands for and does to achieve it is put to the test when they all come across Lord Dominator, a new foe that has taken over most if not all of Hater's territory... as a direct result of his chasing Wander across the galaxy. A good number of Hater's subordinates don't actually respect him, and it looks like Peepers is on his last wits watching his boss hold off conquering the galaxy. Wander's methods of befriending don't actually work on their new foe, and his distracting tendencies don't actually put Dominator off of their goal, and in the end defeats him easily. He also came really close to actually hating someone for the first time in the series. Sylvia just can't blast her way out of the situation like she usually can because Dominator's army is tougher, more powerful, and easily outnumbers them all. In the end, Dominator is revealed to be an extremely childish woman who appears to be spreading terror all over the galaxy for fun, combining elements of both Hater and Wander together. Craig McCracken himself stated that the Season was trying to examine Wander and Hater's interactions in different ways while still getting their basic plot line (Hater wants to destroy Wander, Wander escapes and lives another day) across.

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