Remember kids! Knowing is half the battle! And the other half is shooting somebody.
-Ansem Retort
The episode of your cartoon series is over already, and the kids haven't yet had
An Aesop or a science lesson? Well, we can't have that!
This trope is the practice of encapsulating the moral of the story in
The Tag. It often has
No Fourth Wall, and has the characters of the show directly lecture to the audience. It allows a show that went 22 minutes wantonly breaking stuff to get that coveted "
E/I" rating, by telling the kids not to eat the pretty candies in the medicine cabinet. Most times, the moral laid out in
The Tag is a summation of what should have been learned from the story, encapsulated in an
Anvilicious manner. Other times, it's just a generic safety tip added to an otherwise purely entertaining episode.
Sometimes it wasn't even a moral lesson, but a science fact related to the
Sci Fi setting. The first season of
Sea Quest DSV, in a rare live-action variant, had real life ocean expert Robert Ballard from the Woods-Hole Oceanographic Institute give a one minute lecture on the science of the episode next to the credits; this segment vanished when the series jumped the shark in the second season. Schlock Rankin-Bass
Sci Fi cartoon
Silverhawks had something about the planets framed as a lesson to the crew's
Plucky Comic Relief / Robot Monkey. A variant on this could be seen in the short segments in prime-time that recommended the viewer to consult his local library for selected books related to the preceding program.
The name comes from the moral tack-ons from the end of
GI Joe episodes, with their own internal
Catch Phrases:
This was most common in
The Eighties, and has all but disappeared. Likely a side-effect of "The Great Communicator"
Ronald Reagan and his media-centric educational programs. (Quite the opposite: at one time, due to FCC regulations, broadcast networks were required to devote a certain amount of time each day to "educational" programming; these tacked-on moral lessons were included to satisfy that requirement. The FCC under Reagan ended the practice.) In other words, a
Dead Horse Trope.
Contrast
We Havent Learned Anything Yet, where the writers try to wedge something like this into the actual duration of the show.
The quote is referenced in
this
Order Of The Stick strip.
Examples:
- Super Friends -- safety tips, magic tricks, science projects, you name it. Probably set the tone for all the others.
- GI Joe -- never related to the episode
- Several PSA segments were prepared for Transformers, another Hasbro property produced by Sunbow concurrent with GI Joe. The segments even used the "and knowing is half the battle" line, but they never aired. These were placed as unlockable bonuses in the Armada-based PS 2 game.
- Inspector Gadget
- Jem has a few. Called "Super Star".
- Captain Planet And The Planeteers -- Either the whole show, or just the "Planeteer Alert" at the end, depending on how cynical you are.
- Heathcliff and Pound Puppies -- Always about pet care or pet safety
- Animaniacs -- Subverted with reckless abandon as the "Wheel of Morality"
Yakko: "Hey come on, the Wheel of Morality adds boring educational value to what otherwise would be an almost entirely entertaining program."
- In the early seasons, all episodes of Power Rangers ended with "a message from the Power Rangers." Though not as frequent as before, Rangers doing a public service announcement or two has made a comeback in recent years (apparently, listening to your parents is an important factor in being a hero as far as the Overdrive Rangers are concerned... even though their Red Ranger became a Ranger by ignoring his father's prohibitions against his putting himself in danger that way.)
- This troper's favorite Power Rangers "message" is the "reality check" from waaaaaaay back in the first season, where David Yost and Amy Jo Johnson (a.k.a. Billy and Kim) show what goes into the making of an episode and explaining that the stunts on the show can't be performed by children.
- He Man And The Masters Of The Universe plus its Spin Off. It was halfway-used in one episode of the 2002 version, where the Masters needed Orko to help lure a colony of dragons to attack monsters under the control of Skeletor. After that task was successful, the episode concludes wtih Orko admitting to his chagrin that he's still scared of the species, but the heroes reassure him that a proper respect for a fierce and powerful creature is the mark of a wise person. Here, the lesson flows relatively naturally from the plot and the fourth wall is kept intact.
- She Ra Princess Of Power
- Static Shock -- On a few Very Special Episodes
- Clerks The Animated Series parodied this with a number of post-episode shorts, such as having Jay and Silent Bob present a Mr Wizard inspired magic-from-science segment. They showed a simple sleight-of-hand trick, with the twist that a key element of the trick required invoking the power of Satan.
- Making it better, the third segment didn't do much but have Charles Barkely try to do the segment, then Jay and Silent Bob kick the crap out of him and leave.
- Sailor Moon -- the "Sailor Says" segments which were created out of whole cloth for the North American dub
- Sometimes subverted when the editors managed to sneak in deleted scenes in the edu-clips which were otherwise cut or altered from the original anime. One of the more notable examples was a baby urinating on a villainess, otherwise cut from the dub, appearing completely uncensored in the Sailor Says about childcare.
- Particularly amusing to this troper was the "Sailor Says" for "Day of Destiny, Part 1". With all the care DiC put into removing actual character death, the segment included a deleted scene of Usagi clearly talking to the spirits of the fallen Senshi.
- Spoofed in an episode of Disney's Dave The Barbarian. "Remember, children, brush your teeth every night or evil plaque goblins will invade your mouth! And remember, STAY IN SCHOOL!!"
- South Park subverted and parodied this in various ways.
- Care Bears, usually a lesson about sharing or not lying, or how bad it is to shoplift, etc.
- Possibly related to the NBC 'The More You Know' segments (which featured stars of the time in a Public Service Announcement), parodied in Family Guy.
- Similarly, at one point Flint popped out of a bathroom stall to inform kids that drugs were bad.
- Also present and parodied (at the same time!) in the animated series based on Sam And Max Freelance Police.
- Parodied on Homestar Runner, where the Cheat Commandos do an educational cartoon called Commandos In The Classroom.
- The "science lessons" in GunBuster and Martian Successor Nadesico may have been partly meant to parody such tags in series imported from the US, as they are something rarely if ever seen in anime as it is broadcast in Japan.
- The closest things this editor has seen to this in anime would be certain eyecatches/intros that say to only watch TV from a large enough distance and in a well lit room to avoid eye damage or epileptic seizures. These can be seen in Hayate The Combat Butler and Steel Angel Kurumi, among others.
- The show Dinosaurs parodied this at the end of a parody of a Very Special Episode, with Robbie exhorting viewers to "end preachy Sit Com episodes" by not using drugs.
- This was used in The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon series (but not the one that aired on Saturday mornings) with a short 'Sonic Sez' segment every episode, where Sonic explained some sort of lesson (often safety related) to the viewers. Disturbingly, Sonic once took it upon himself to explain "good touch vs. bad touch" to the kids at home ("There's nothing more cool than being hugged by someone you like. But if someone tries to touch you in a place or in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, that's no good!"). The Internet being what it is, this has spawned various edits and parodies, such as "Sonic Gives MC Hammer Advice", which is the "touch" speech with parts of "Can't Touch This" edited in.
- The Simpsons played with this as early as the first-season episode "Bart the General", and later had guest star Joe Namath break the fourth wall to deliver an inspiring message.
Namath: Heh heh. Poor Bart. You know, we had a lot of fun tonight. But, theres nothing funny about... vapor lock. It's the third most common cause of stalling. So please, take care of your car and get it checked. I'm Joe Namath. Good night!
- A somewhat-recent internet phenomenon was the spoof redubs of the original GI Joe shorts by Fensler Films, which usually turned them into something utterly incoherent and surreal ("Give 'im the stick!" "Doooon't give 'im the stick!").
- Spoofed at the end of the Kim Possible "Grande Size Me", where Ron delivers the moral of the episode to the audience at the end -- with Kim and everyone else wondering who on earth he is talking to...
- One of Drawn Together's many running gags.
- The tabletop RPG Cartoon Action Hour is designed to evoke the feel of action cartoons from the 1980s. In fact, players can earn bonus experience points by role-playing their characters in an After-The-Show Message.
- The Mysterious Cities Of Gold featured mini-documentaries on South American history and culture at the end of each episode. Unlike most entries on this list, they were actually interesting.
- The Magic School Bus had a segment at the end of each episode responding to "viewers' phone calls", which explained all the things the episode had glossed over because it made a better story. Fair enough, since it was intended as an Edutainment Show.
- The books did this too, ending with a couple pages that addressed complaints about inaccuracies and safety/physics violations.
- Thunder Cats more or less averted this by not having end of episode segments where the cast breaks the fourth wall and talks straight to the viewer, but some of the morals the episodes themselves are trying to teach come over as obvious anyway. This is sometimes pushed a bit too far when one of the Thunder Cats practically spells out the moral in a piece of dialogue in a very anvilicious way (such as one time when Tigra makes a small speech about rules and how they should be obeyed, otherwise they are "just words". The delivery and pacing of the scene makes the moral that is trying to be taught overly obvious).
- Silverhawks had a similar segment at the end of each episode where Copper Kid got in a space simulator, where he was put against a simple astronomy quiz. Given the nature of the show, it was actually quite appropriate to have a segment about astronomy at the end of the show.
- The Centurions -- Same as above, except lecture style
- Mighty Max had a segment at the end of each episode with Max giving a brief fact related to the subject of the episode. One two-part finale, with Max still out with Virgil and Norman in a hellish setting, had Max's mother remarking on her son's choice of Dante's Inferno as reading material.
- Non-animated example: One of J.D.'s fantasies in Scrubs parodies NBC's "The More You Know" segments with J.D. telling the audience why it's wrong to smother your kids.
- Spoofed in an Ambiguously Gay Duo animated short, from Saturday Night Live, in which the Duo present unintentionally double entendre -filled home safety tips. ("Grab the plug firmly by the male end and shove it right in. Don't play with it.")
- As long as we're on the topic of SNL...
Mr. T: "If you believe in yourself, drink your school, stay in drugs, and don't do milk - you can get work!"
- Parodied by Legendary Frog, who had a transforming toaster warn Kerrigan about the dangers of electric shock.
- Has happened at least twice in the FOX series 24. Most notably, a PSA was created in the fourth season where Kiefer Sutherland talked about the plight of Middle Eastern residents in the country, just before an episode where his character, Jack Bauer, met two Middle Eastern gunshop owners in Los Angeles. The pre-show announcements for season two and four also had Sutherland promoting corporate sponsors (i.e. Ford sponsored a commercial-free airing of the season two premiere).
- The otherwise obscure Animated Show of Back To The Future was most remembered for that funny guy at the end -- a young Bill Nye doing a science-related stunt, usually a do-it-yourself, at the end, sometimes related to the episode's events. This troper wonders if that didn't lead into his being granted his own show.
- Niea Under 7 featured a short live action "educational" segment after every show with bizarre statements about life in India.
- Parodied in this PVP comic that suggests what "the other half of the battle" is [1]
- Also parodied by Overcompensating here.
- In one early morning commercial on Nickelodeon, Katara from Avatar The Last Airbender gives a lecture about swimming safety, and how you should always have an adult around (in this case Iroh). This is a horribly, horribly Broken Aesop considering these are the kids who do everything with the oldest member being fifteen, from world travel, to swimming, to fighting, to completely unpunished insurance fraud. Also Toph farts in the pool.
