Anvilicious - Television Tropes & Idioms

The game's all about...we've run out've natural resources on Earth, we've gotta go to the other planets and crack them, and take all their valuable minerals, and that's...y'know there's a life lesson in that. "Use up natural resources, don't recycle, everyone turns into zombies."
- Jonathan Drubner, Comedian, in Sci vs Fi: Dead Space

A portmanteau of anvil and either delicious or malicious, depending on the usage, anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head. Frequently, the element becomes anvilicious through unnecessary repetition, but true masters can achieve anviliciousness with a single stroke.

Heavy-handed for the new millennium. (Extreme polar opposite of subtle.)

Common in kids' shows, since they're less aware of subtle nuances, though not as much as writers and directors seem to think.

Bonus points awarded if the supposed message or moral has only but the most tenuous connections to the actual plot, story, or the events of the episode; or, if the consequences brought about to tell the moral are blatantly arbitrary or don't even make any sense (see examples below).

If the work of art goes beyond anvilicious into hectoring lectures, then it has become an Author Filibuster.

Please note that Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped.

Examples:

Live Action TV

Full House invariably ended in someone learning a lesson.
Boy Meets World had many anvilicious aesops, particularly of the Cant Get Away With Nuthin variety. Perhaps it was the force of all those anvils that led the main character to be so unhinged in the final seasons.
Virtually anything written by Ben Elton feels the distinct need to tell rather than show.
Pick an episode of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Surprisingly, the Animated Adaptation is far less so. The format allowed a lot more outrageous situations, which actually make the moral of each episode make some sort of sense.
The Star Trek episode "Let That be Your Last Battlefield", concerning a race where people who were black-skinned on the left side of their face and white-skinned on the right, were persecuted by the people who were white on the left and black on the right. Anviltastic!
- Similarly, a Star Trek Enterprise episode was such an Anvilicious AIDS parable that they went and plugged an AIDS website after the episode. To be fair, UPN made all of their shows do Anvilicious AIDS-related episodes as part of an Viacom HIV awareness campaign in 2003. So Enterprise was not alone...
- Then there was the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone," which went anvilicious against the capitalists of the era on its way to demonstrating through Picard's actions that what Kirk did in the corresponding TOS episode was wrong. Gets Funny Aneurysm Moments from later events; Data proudly announces that the Federation has no television—but it will eventually come out that holodecks are, in their way, worse. And the Federation, proudly without money, needs to reinvent it when they start diplomatic relations with Ferengi.
Norman Lear practically pioneered the trope for American prime-time TV. All In The Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford And Son, One Day At A Time, and The Jeffersons were all thick with Anvilicious plots and Points To Be Made. So were his later series, but by then people had become less tolerant of his anvils. Then again, All In The Family, Sanford And Son, and The Jeffersons had highly sympathetic bigots, which lightened the intended anvils in those series.
The New Zealand TV soap Shortland Street does this all the time.
You can include the entire Degrassi franchise in this, the result of creator Linda Schuyler trying to make a series that would showcase the effects of certain issues on children. Famous examples of Anvilicious behaviour in the franchise include Dwayne having to deal with AIDS and Shane (a.k.a. "Canada's national baby daddy") dropping acid and jumping off a bridge in Degrassi High, and Manny getting an abortion in 'Degrassi The Next Generation''.
J Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame was very blunt in how he much he hated children or anything cute that would supposedly ruin the show, evident by how they were all instantly killed in quite jarring ways. Even a teddy bear given to him as a joke. To be fair, the children shown generally last for at least most of the episode that they appear in before dying in a suitably dramatic manner, and two of them survived In The Beginning's framing story intact.
"Green Is Universal", a concept so heavy-handed and self-righteous that it couldn't be contained on just one network. Indeed, this bi-yearly theme appears on every cable and broadcast channel owned by NBC. NBC in turn is owned by General Electric, a polluter so massive and frightening that even Captain Planet would fear to confront it. The irony is so thick and juicy that you could cut it with a steak knife.
- Bonus points awarded for extending it to, of all things, their sports casting when they thought it was a good idea to make the guys sit around in the studio with their lights off.
The "Pangs" episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, featuring a Native American ghost who showed up and started killing people, and the main characters argued back and forth whether it was right to stop it because the natives had their land taken away from them.
- "Beer Bad" was also anvilicious, but at least had the decency to hang an amusing lampshade on that aspect of the episode:
  Xander: And was there a lesson in all of this? What have we learned about beer?
  Buffy: Foamy!
  Xander: Good. Just so that's clear.
- The drugs/magic episode, "Wrecked", is probably the most blatant metaphor in the whole show. And so badly handled to some fans that they would rather forget it existed.
The Doctor Who Season 4 finale has Daleks. Speaking German. AT ~~NUREMBERG~~ NÜRNBERG! Just in case you forgot they were based on Nazis. It's meant to be funny more than anything else, but still.
- Also of note is "The Two Doctors". Eating meat is as bad as electrocuting a human alive!
24 often runs afoul of this, whenever the show is focused on anything other than Jack Bauer kicking ass. Yes, thank you for introducing a preachy side character, but we know not all Muslims are terrorists, thanks.
The (very short-lived) Weird Al Show, thanks to a rampaging case of Executive Meddling, had one specific lesson for each episode to teach, and that lesson was mercilessly repeated to the point of drawing attention to it in voice-overs before each commercial break. Half of the enjoyment of the DVD release comes from the scathing commentary of Al and others on the anvilicious display of insipid points.
Now And Again lasted only one season but it still had its own offender, "There Are No Words", about how good it is to read (and write). It features characters who comment at length about their affection for books, and an obligatory book-burning scene.
Supernatural: "Life sucks, get a helmet."
House is miserable? Really? We had no idea!

Anime

Earth Maiden Arjuna is pretty much the anime version of Captain Planet, with the "awesome" superhero replaced with a Magical Girl as with more psychological angst.
The ending of Welcome To The NHK has some Anvilicious elements about how to deal with life's hardships.
Card Captor Sakura has an ending segment in the first season of the original Japanese version (and in some dubs) called Leave it to Kero-chan, which (after putting Sakura's Outfit of the Week on display) basically hits the viewer over the head with things that Sakura learned in the episode you just saw. It was thankfully averted in the English broadcast (that is, everywhere except the US), where it was just a review of the costume.
- In one episode of Card Captor Sakura, Sakura is troubled because she thinks her house is too small, but the Little Card shrinks her down to the size of a grain of rice, allowing her to appreciate the size of her house more. At the end of the episode, she claims to be "through with large houses".
- In another episode, Sakura had waited until the last day of summer vacation to get started on her homework, which complicates things when the Move Card runs off with the shortest book on her list of reading assignments, forcing her to track down and seal the card before she can complete her homework.
Dancougar Nova got pretty Anvilicious in one episode, which made oblique references to the War on Terror being fought solely over oil, and featuring a nearly rabid, transparently American commander crushing the titular robot while declaring that because his nation is strong, it gets to decide what justice is.
Being about how war affects humanity, the Gundam franchise has dropped many anvils over the years.
- The original Mobile Suit Gundam, including its subsequent sequels had a minor subversion by dropping opposing anvils at the same time.
- The Gundam SEED-verse has just about every character drop anvils every time they open their mouths, with painfully mixed results. These become more and more annoying every time they are repeated in a flashback (which happens repeatedly).
- Gundam Wing involved a single aesop about pacifism presented by every single character in all out blatant ways, namely huge explosions or long speeches followed by someone yelling out pacifism. The one sided manner; however, made this more of a script wank and pseudo-author filibuster. It could be argued that was totally broken in The Movie, where the Earth was conquered by the only military that was left after the disarmament in short order.
- For a case of necessary anvil, we present Gundam 0080. War is not a game, and a Zaku can never beat a Gundam.
In Zero No Tsukaima, the episode in which Colbert-sensei dies was a very thinly-veiled message about why war is bad. Then again, since the entire second season is about war being bad, this may have been necessary. Your Mileage May Vary.

Comic Books

Jack Chick. Granted, evangelical tracts are Anvilicious by nature (as their purpose is to convert people), but Chick manages to make some of the others look almost subtle.
Pretty much every Very Special Issue written by Judd Winick.
Apparently Marvel's Civil War isn't supposed to be Anvilicious. Who'd guess?

Film

The "educational film" Reefer Madness is notorious for the sheer ludicrousness of the anvils it drops against marijuana - or as it spells it, "marihuana". Apparently, pot makes you a horrible driver, can drive you insane... and lets you play the piano really fast.
- The film was recently parodied with Reefer Madness: The Musical. It sends up the original by going even further (for example, claiming marijuana causes cannibalism)... but then turns around and drops its own anvils against censorship with the last number. (Yes, real subtle with the book-burning cheerleaders...)
Every single Soviet kids' movie or series, ever. Sadly, some new series, started long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, continue the tradition to this day.
The animated film Quest for Camelot. Though the film is cute, after watching it, one can't help but wonder "could they hammer home the lessons about teamwork and The Power Of Friendship any harder?"
- Yes, after watching Quest for Camelot I realized that blind people and women weren't worthless lumps of carbon. Nice message but lighten thou hand.
Platoon. Just in case we didn't get the subtle subtext involved in Stone placing an eeeeeevil sergeant and a good sergeant in charge of plastic-faced Charlie Sheen's raw recruit as the devil and angel on his shoulder, Stone has Sheen provide a wildly anvilicious voiceover monologue at the end of the movie. "I felt like a child born of these two fathers..."
- Just about everything Oliver Stone has ever done drops at least a few anvils.
The scene at the end of The Fifth Element where Leeloo is looking through the encyclopedia and hits the 'W'. War is bad, mmkay?
- The Fifth Element being Love, or possibly Life, depending on which Troper you side with.
  - Thinking about possible ways to activate it makes it amusing, in a way.
- War is bad but is it THAT much worse than all the myriad horrors beginning with A-V?
The Happening. Just in case you didn't get the environmental message pervading every second of the film, there's a crazy scientist on TV at the end whose sole purpose is to drill this into the audience. Oh, and The Power Of Love can subvert nature.
The Poseidon Adventure. Christian symbolism list: Climbing a Christmas tree to salvation? Check. Religious figure in charge? Check. Other religions make a heroic sacrifice? Check. Lake of fire? Check. Crucifixion scene? Check.
The "coming of age in the hood" parody Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood lampshades the anvils by having the postman, played by producer Keenen Ivory Wayans, pop up whenever a character is delivering a particularly anvilicious speech to loudly exclaim "Message!" directly to the audience.
- In itself subverted when the main character gives a long-winded, confusing speech that pretty much summarizes every other anvil up to that point in the longest way possible, the Postman arrives, looks at the camera confused, and then says "The fuck is he talking about?"
The film Pleasantville is guilty of this in one pivotal scene, where a shop keeper hangs a sign that reads "No Coloreds."
Ridley Scott in the Kingdom of Heaven doesn't hold back from hammering viewers with the evils of organized religion. Every clergyman will either be questioning the existence of God, or more likely a Jerkass. Having the leading bad guys as secular nobles in a region teeming with Church Militants would have been confusing for viewers, so it called for a Historical Villain Upgrade making Guy of Lusignan and Raynald of Châtillon Knights Templar.
The documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices, makes some good points, and is in general for a good cause, but it does so in an incredibly anvilicious manner, including a montage of people celebrating celebrating their efforts to keep Wal-Mart out of their town being successful (not very anvilicious) combined with loud gospel music about "Victory", plus the words "Victory" flying every which way on the screen along with names of towns over people dancing and singing with joy, leading up to FLAMING LETTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN saying "VICTORY". (This scene actually ends the shortened version of the film)
The Saw movies. Apparently some people don't appreciate their lives enough, and waste them doing things like shooting up or mourning their dead kid.

Literature

Even good authors aren't immune from the temptation to be Anvilicious. Witness Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Men at Arms, in which the first gun invented in his medieval-fantasy society is turned by the Power of Belief into an Artifact Of Doom that infects anyone who touches it with a vicious bloodlust. Oddly enough, later gun-like weapons in the same world don't have the same problem; this could be seen as a subtle Authors Saving Throw (although the reasons why the "gonne" is something new don't strictly apply to the later "spring-gonnes" and it's still mentioned the Assassins' Guild come down heavily on any "weapons of a firework nature").
- This troper thought that the reason that he wrote Men at Arms in that way was because the "gonne" reminds everyone of wizards, more specifically the events of Sourcery. Besides, Terry Pratchett has almost outright stated that the entirety of Discworld is powered by the Power of Belief, and an alternate explanation is given in Pyramids, in that the Assassins' Guild is incredibly gentleman-like, and the "gonne" is shown to have greater range and lethality than any other nonmagical weapon, it just wouldn't be sporting, would it?
- About the "springonns", which Inigo Skimmer and Mister Pin used. Both are said to need a lot of force to be loaded, are dangerous to carry since they could get of any time, have a limited range and have only one shot before the difficult reloading process needs to start again. This way being just more concealable version of the normal crossbows in Discworld. While the gonne was easy to reload (a lead bullet and some gun-powder in each tube), could fire six shots in short time and had a range higher than any crossbow.
  - This troper also seems to recall Vimes stating to Inigo Skimmer that if Vimes had caught him with a "springonne" he would have been arrested and that would have been far nicer than what the Assassins Guild would have done to him.
- Pratchett in general has made several comments about modern weapons in Discworld. For example in one dialogue between Lord Vetinari and Leonard of Quirm (the creator of the Gonne and someone who constantly switches between creating super weapons and coffee machines in his teatime), Leonard mentioned a device so horrible that it will end all wars, because nobody would be insane enough, from Leonard's point of view, to use it. A clear nod towards what many said about the Nuclear bomb.
  - Alfred Nobel and dynamite came up to this troper's mind.
  - The device in question is indeed a nuke:
  Leonard: "That? Oh, something of a toy, really. Makes use of the strange properties of some otherwise quite useless metals. They don't like being squeezed. So they go bang. With extreme alacrity."
  Vetinari: "Another weapon..."
  Leonard: "Certainly not, my lord! It would be no possible use as a weapon! I did think it might have a place in the mining industries, though."
  Vetinari: "Really..."
  Leonard: "For when they need to move mountains out of the way."
- As another example of Discworld anvils, Jingo is a fairly obvious Aesop against racism, specifically against Arabs. Then again...
The novels of Ayn Rand, such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, are basically thinly disguised screeds on Objectivism shoved down the reader's throat. As are the Sword Of Truth novels, by Terry Goodkind, who—yup—is an Objectivist and considers Rand the most important philosopher since Aristotle.
- At least Rand had the decency to make The Fountainhead a legitimately good novel before loading her magnum opus with multiple chapter-length speeches explicitly defining her world view. Of course, none of Rand's novels have gained any critical acclaim except from those who agree with or are sympathetic to her views. Many literary critics consider her to be an outright terrible writer.
- Anthem is possibly the most unrelentingly Anvilicious of her works, starting with its very first sentence: "It is a sin to write this."
The Phantom Tollbooth has certain Anvilicious aspects in terms of how it presents the "Learning is fun!" message, that and all the Parental Bonus content stuck in.
This is Older Than Dirt. Aesop's original tales were very straight-forward, actually just as anvilicious as the original Greek fable was. Mostly the tales don't go longer than a single paragraph before the moral. When confronted with the much subtler La Fontaine et al modern novelizations, one can surely feel the weight of the aesops...
The character Clarisse in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Actually, never mind, just count the whole book.
The Mercedes Lackey School of Heavy-Handed Social Commentary. 'Nuff said.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood most definitely qualifies, in a very feminist way. Our narratress is in a society where her role is to give birth or else, and it's clear that this is the end result of white male religious fanatics taking over the world.
- Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped. Have you heard of the Quiverfull movement?
The first book in His Dark Materials clearly has some anti-Catholic elements, but manages to be a bit subtle about them. The anvil count goes up in the second book, and by the third book any subtlety at all in regards to its anti-religious slant is abandoned.
Much of the work of John Ringo tends to be somewhat on the unsubtle side, to put it mildly, but his latest work, The Last Centurion, isn't an anvil, it's an M1 Abrams tank (about 70 tons, for the record).
In David Weber's Honor Harrington series, Haven goes through a revolution [it's first of three in the same few centuries] that sees a man named Rob S. Pierre head of the Committee for Public Safety, which is now running the whole country. "Rob S. Pierre". THE COMMITTEE FOR PUBLIC SAFETY. DO YA GET IT? ROB PIERRE? [The place's capital is called Nouveau Paris in case ya didn't get it.] Also, every Liberal, Conservative, or anyone with anything but loyalist or centrist credentials except... I think... about one or two tends to be textbook Strawman Political with the subtlety in delivery of several bomb-pumped laser warhead anvils.

Western Animation

"One Beer", a mini-episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, does a send-up of heavy-handed Cant Get Away With Nuthin cartoons about the dangers of underage drinking. They have a can of beer. Hampton notes they usually wouldn't touch such a thing. Buster replies that they have to act out of character for the plot to work. The single can of beer (split between Buster, Hampton, and Plucky, which means each got about four ounces) puts them into a foggy dreamland, in which they eventually drive a car off a cliff and die. Not surprisingly, the executives eventually refused to reair the episode, because they felt it was so heavy handed that it came off as sarcastic.
Spoofed mercilessly in a "U.S. Acres" short from Garfield And Friends. Roy got a job on "The Buddy Bears", an obnoxiously cheerful kids' Show Within A Show, where part of his role as "Big Bad Buddy Bird" was to have sixteen-ton safes dropped on his head for not agreeing with the singing, dancing ursines. The quite literally anvilicious moral, according to the Buddy Bears: "Always go along with the group, or someone may drop a sixteen-ton safe on you."
It could be said that the premise of Captain Planet And The Planeteers was anvilicious. A group of eco superheroes who command the powers of nature to fight evil polluters. Yup, bad guys who don't produce anything; just pollute. Though in its defense, if they had written it as a cyberpunk story about a bunch of eco-terrorists fighting against the overwhelming power of the corporate menace, it wouldn't exactly have been able to appeal to children now would it? That's the lesson here: if it's US Children's television, it must make use of anvilicious aesops. Removing them makes the show no longer acceptable for children!
Sometimes happens in South Park, such as in one episode where a character explains to another character about how there is no global warming, climaxing with "What are you, a retard?"
- Each episode in which the denouement dialogue begins with, "You know, I learned something today..."
- Another episode brutally parodied this trope. Stan, Kyle and Kenny attempt to illegally download songs of the internet for free. They download one song and almost instantly, an entire FBI squad busts into the house, holds the kids at gunpoint and arrests them. This was also a Reef Blower. When Stan asks what's wrong with downloading music, the officer responds that an artist will have to buy a slightly smaller island for his kid, or wait a few days before buying a gold plated swimming pool.
- In the episode "Canada on Strike!" they brutally attacked the Writers' Guild of America strike with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the knee. Given the fact that Parker and Stone seem to hate everything that anyone else approves of, this isn't particularly surprising.
Practically every episode of The Proud Family, with its politically correct suburban upper-middle-class conservative African-American family learning some lesson. Especially the episode where the scriptwriters manage to slam The Matrix movies (the "bad kid" is black, named Morpheus, and dressed like Morpheus did in the movies) and hit the audience over the head with a story about how illegally downloading music and spending time online is bad, and nice kids don't do it. Oh, and it visually equates illegal file-sharing to drug abuse. Seriously.
Parodied on the Animaniacs cartoon, where the final sequence to many episodes was the "Wheel of Morality", a Big 6 style wheel the characters would spin to randomly determine the moral of the episode, along with the rhyme "Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson we should learn!". One short played up the randomness and gameshow / gambling aspect by having the result be a prize in the form of a free vacation.
Does anyone else remember the Pound Puppies cartoon? It was so bad that at one point, the adult puppies (?) tell one of the child puppies (?) a story about how a kid lying about breaking a vase causes the death of everyone they know and the destruction of their whole fantasy world. Kind of harsh.
Cartoon All Stars To The Rescue uses healthy doses of Narm and Nightmare Fuel to create a special so Anvilicious that it may very well be a form of brainwashing. The show put the drug addict kid through what can only be described as a Cartoon Carnival of Souls as part of their anti-drug argument.
He Man And The Masters Of The Universe had 'What moral did we learn in this episode?' segments at the end of each episode.
One common complaint of the Futurama episode, "I Dated a Robot", is the strong anti-file sharing sentiment that seems to be pervasive through most of the episode. At least they had the decency to play it for laughs though.
GI Joe taught us all that knowing is half the battle. So now you know. The other half? Blowing shit up.
In later years, Popeye cartoons were sometimes used as a way to get kids to eat their vegetables, particularly spinach, as the title character uses it as a Super Serum. Sometimes, it worked.
Back in the old SEGA Genesis days, Sonic's cartoon series ended occasional episodes with a "Sonic Says" section which gave kids good advice.
Family Guy delivers its many, many messages with all the subtlety of a ten-pound sledgehammer. You could probably make a drinking game out of how many times the show makes a poorly veiled Take That against something. This reached a new low in a recent episode, in which a Nazi is wearing a McCain-Palin campaign button.

Web Comics

Pastel Defender Heliotrope was blatantly banging the readers over the head with ideas of the oppression of women and sexual identities and evils of religion...when it bothered to make sense.
- Then, just to make sure ALL the bases were covered, JDR reveals in the ending that the entire thing was started because some robots wanted to ask permission to do I'm-not-sure-what but no one was around to ask. Just to make sure that he's striking out against anti-piracy legislation in the most Anvilicious and crazy way possible.
This Nodwick storyline. Yes, Mr. Williams, we all know Microsoft is doing all that. Stop rubbing it in and switch to ReactOS already!

Machinima

The Leet World and Ahmed's addiction to hax, which has several parallels to real-world drug adictions.

Video Games

RuneScape recently made an Anvilicious quest about global warming, to the extent that the end of civilization was predicted because of one coal power plant.
And let's not forget the whole plot (and especially the ending) of Chibi Robo: Park Patrol...
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is often depicted as this, mostly depending on whether or not one buys into the Alternate Character Interpretation. If one does, then congratulations, you have a Anvilicious Wall Banger. If one does not, then it might wind up so because it's a moral that heavy gamers are apt to reject - "Excessive escapism is bad for you".
"Everyone has a right to life!"
- Let the record show that the actual anvil dropped was about racism rather than the obvious. It was more a sense of "It's wrong to commit genocide!"
World Of Warcraft recently got Anvilicious with the starting quests for death knights. Walking through the streets of your faction's main city with guards throwing rotten fruit and spitting on you because you look like you belong to the Scourge? Does This Remind You Of Anything?

Theater

The truly Anvilicious narrator in Blood Brothers not only shows up to highlight every moment of foreshadowing in the musical, but also appears at the end to let any terminally inattentive audience members know what the message was.

Music

The song "Because I Got High." Nothing else to say, really.
- Though given the last verse ("I'ma stop singin' this song 'cause I'm high/I'm doin' the whole thing wrong 'cause I'm high/And if I don't sell one copy, I'll know why/'Cause I'm high/'Cause I'm high/'Cause I'm high"), it's more likely that the song was a parody of the idea that smoking weed will destroy everything you hold dear. Yeah, it's not like anyone ever misinterprets what a song's really supposed to be about.
Parodied in the Weird Al Yankovic song "Don't Download This Song." "Cuz you start out stealing songs/Then you're robbing liquor stores/and selling crack and running over school kids with your car."

Anti Frustration Features

« Fan-Speak »

Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped

« Older Than Dirt »

« Tropemanteau »

⊗

« Bad Writing »

⊗