Family Unfriendly Aesop - Television Tropes & Idioms

Degrassi The Next Generation frequently has morals that are widely believed by teenagers but are unusual for adults. The episode "This Charming Man" has the moral that no matter how horrible somebody is to you, squealing on them to the principal is worse. Two episodes, "Take on Me" and "I Want Candy," are homages to 1980s John Hughes movies; both have the moral that breaking school rules is okay because Adults Are Useless. This may be a huge part of the show's appeal to teens. It has a double Family Unfriendly Aesop in "Queen of Hearts". Bitter Goth girl Ellie has to learn to trust people again after her boyfriend abandons her and sticks her with the rent. Specifically, she learns to trust both her new roommate — a recently reformed villain who wants to gamble with their rent money — and her mother, a recovering alcoholic who once burned their house down in a drunken stupor. Both of them turn out to be completely trustworthy. This is on the extreme idealistic end of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism, so idealistic that it can feel like "take candy from strangers".
Similarly, almost every episode of Radio Free Roscoe has the moral that Adults Are Useless, so teens should defy and disobey them whenever possible. What makes it even more interesting is that it's always played as an idealistic moral — not "adults will always screw you over," but "disobey adults and everything will turn out happy." An example: In "The Boxer", the jerkass principal is serving as a substitute history teacher on the Boxer Rebellion, which he knows nothing about. So his lectures are biased, inaccurate, and a bit racist... and in response, one of his students corrects every one of his errors, out loud, in front of the class. By the end of the episode, the principal and the student are teaming up to teach a better lesson. In a less idealistic show, the principal would have arbitrarily slapped the kid down with his authority.
In many TV shows, any hero who takes ruthless measures is instantly condemned to becoming a Well Intentioned Extremist or Jumping Off The Slippery Slope. So it was startling when Star Trek Deep Space Nine didn't do that:
- In "For the Uniform", Sisko is hunting a terrorist with the goal of attacking Cardassian planets with "Cobalt diselenide", a bioweapon which makes the planet uninhabitable to Cardassians but is harmless to humans, forcing the Cardassian population to evacuate and allowing humans to colonize the planet. Sisko's way of capturing him? Threaten to drop "Trilithium resin", a bioweapon which makes planets uninhabitable by humans, but which is harmless to Cardassians, on every planet in the demilitarized zone unless the criminal surrenders. He refuses to surrender? He thinks it's a bluff? Carry out the threat against a planet. It works and the bad guy gives himself up, creating the Family Unfriendly Aesop of "Sometimes stooping to the other guys level works". To be fair, it is portrayed as a morally ambiguous act and the criminal calls Sisko on his actions:
  Bad guy: "Can't you see what's happening to you? You're going against everything you claim to believe in. And for what? To satisfy a personal vendetta?"
  Sisko: "You betrayed your uniform!"
  Bad Guy: "And you're betraying yours, right now! The sad part is that you don't even realize it. I feel sorry for you, captain. This obsession with me, look what it's cost you!"
  Sisko: "Major! Shut that thing off! Commander Worf, prepare to launch torpedoes!"
- The Bad Guy in that episode romanticized his relationship with Sisko as being like the one between Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert from "Les Miserables." Once Sisko realized this, he played up to the role. Family Unfriendly Aesop: "If your adversary thinks you're the villain, it's best not to disappoint."
- In "The Darkness And The Light", the villain is murdering Kira's friends one by one to get revenge. The villain carefully avoids killing anyone else, including taking steps to ensure that Kira, who was pregnant at the time, would safely give birth before he killed her; this leads directly to his defeat. At the end, a shaken Kira says that the villain was better than her because he took this care and that his failure was due to him not being as awful as she could be.
- A Family Unfriendly Aesop for a different reason: In "The Abandoned", the moral is that some alien species are inherently evil, even if good people raise them. There is nothing inherently wrong or awful about this moral, but given that Star Trek aliens are almost always used as metaphors for dealing with other human cultures, it feels highly unfriendly.
- Compare with "Hippocratic Oath", in which a Jem'Hadar who is not addicted to the White is shown to be fair and respectful of life. Perhaps the Aesop was that if someone is meddled with enough, they can lose their free will — a recurring theme in "Hard Time". In any case, it's more complex than a justification for racism.
- In "In The Pale Moonlight", Sisko decides the only way to win the war is to get the Romulans to join their side. How does he do this? He lies, creates forgeries, bribes Quark, gives material to make biogenic weapons to a disreputable scientist, and is an accessory in six murders. But he succeeds. Garak leaves him with this, though: "You may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan Senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain."
  - This episode is the most controversial in all Star Trek history, the one that long-time Trekkers accuse of being the most at total loggerheads with Gene Roddenberry's vision of the human future. It is also one of the two most outstanding this troper ever saw on DS 9, alongside "Far Beyond the Stars".
  - It remains this troper's all-time favorite episode of DS 9 because it was at such loggerheads with Gene Roddenberry's vision of the human future. It goes to show that, in spite of how far they've come, human beings are still human beings, and when the chips are down, don't be surprised to see them cut a few throats to ensure their survival.
Sabrina The Teenage Witch episode "Geek Like Me". According to it, geeks can be just as ruthlessly oppressive as the popular crowd if given power, making them Not So Different. "What's inside that counts" reveals that Libby will always be a manipulative bitch and will never gain any empathy.
The entire premise of Hannah Montana feels pretty warped, though it might be an Accidental Aesop; to quote Entertainment Weekly's review of her first CD:
"The TV character leads a Superman-style double life: derivative pop star by night, undercover normal kid by day. Here, that duality results in tween-entitlement anthems about how totally awesome it is to be famous, yet go unrecognized at will —- a nice fantasy for Brangelina, but a weird one to push on little girls."
- That concept is also central to Daft Punk, and guess what the aesop is? Our current treatment of celebrities is something that should stop, and we refuse to be a part of it. Clearly, Hannah Montana got the execution horribly wrong.
Many people who hate the extreme Tastes Like Diabetes feeling of Barney And Friends also find it to contain many Family Unfriendly Aesops. For example, in one episode, children were told "A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet." Parents complained that it would be dangerous to tell that to young children, as it would make them vulnerable to criminals. The episode was never shown again.
- There is also a reoccuring theme of "everyone should be happy all the time!" The message is enforced to the point where more than one episode features Barney basically badgering a kid into cheering up after something bad happens. Most of the time, it's nothing major... losing a possession, or forgetting a homework assignment or the like. But there's one episode where the kid's pet passed away, and they just wouldn't let her be sad about it! Seems to teach a frighteningly blase lesson about mourning a loss.
- The overall moral Barney generally attempts to impart children with is that if something is upsetting you, being sad about it won't help, where as talking to your friends about it, approaching the issue with a positive attitude, and/or attempting to solve the problem will help. However, this lesson gets muddled when presented with the show's overly sugary dialogue and handling of matters.
- But the moral is wrong: being sad about a loss will help, at least psychologically, because grief is a necessary part of processing a loss. The episode taught that honest and unavoidable emotion is somehow wrong - and that the child who feels it is somehow to blame for not trying hard enough. It was an abysmally bad episode that should never have seen the light of day.
- The first example is actually pretty ironic, considering there was another episode much earlier that stressed the importance of not talking to strangers — the song that was sung about it was played again in the Barney Says segment.
- The status of the first example as a Family Unfriendly Aesop is itself ironic given that the majority of violent crimes are committed by a person who is known to the victim. In other words, strangers can be dangerous, but so can people that you've known and trusted for a long time ... like certain purple dinosaurs.
- If you don't care about a dead pet at all, you're either a sociopathic bastard or an optimist. Being unable to get along with it is in fact worse than seeing the good site about it (e.g., your pet is in heaven). However, if you are sad, overplaying your sadness with happiness or acting like you don't care about your dead pet is just contraproductive. In addition to this, this troper is disgusted by the amount of people who still know this freaking dinosaur, including himself.
24 has been criticized by some circles who interpret it as justifying torture as a tool of war by the U.S. Government. There's quite a bit of debate on that. It also seems to suggest that, even for the good guys, tasering your own employees to ensure their loyalty is good policy, and that you should expect them to go back to their cubicles immediately afterward without so much as a complaint. And, of course, Torture Always Works.
An episode of Touched By An Angel had the moral that, no matter how nice they are, atheists are fundamentally bad people with whom believers should not associate. The episode is also a sequel episode to a season finale that dealt with accepting the death of a child. The death episode is much better in its message, though it borders on Family Unfriendly for the crowd who do not believe in an afterlife. What that vast crowd of non-afterlife-believing people is doing watching a show about angels? Don't ask us.
Battlestar Galactica: Sometimes you have to Shoot The Dog, you can't always Take A Third Option, and you have to Know When To Fold Em.
The season one Veronica Mars episode Drinking the Kool-Aid seemed to preach the moral that freaky cults are actually filled with nice people. It was actually the very family-friendly Aesop that evil and danger don't necessarily advertise themselves. Too many young people think that it's possible to tell whether someone is evil or dangerous by their looks or their temperament. See this picture.◊ Notice how Churchill looks like a grumpy old man and Roosevelt looks like a skeleton. Stalin, however, looks nice, like he usually did. Now, which one of them came up with gulags... By the way, many people in freaky cults are nice people. Cults go out of their way to recruit nice people. This was one of the points of the episode: don't judge a group by how well their members treat you, judge it by its core values. Anyone can be nice.
- The whole underlying theme of this series seems to be to not trust law enforcement and take justice into your own hands - especially in Season Two. The biggest examples of this are when Veronica helps Duncan Kane kidnap his illegitimate daughter to avoid any chance of her custody going to her ultra-fundamentalist, abusive grandparents, then when Duncan has his family's security chief kill Aaron Echols because he killed his sister Lily but was acquitted. Of course, it was a noir show.
There is an episode of Scrubs in which the God-Awful Dr. Miller is dead wrong, yet manages to force Dr. Turk to apologize to her, just because she has girl parts. The Aesop here is 'Women are always right, even when they're wrong'.
- If that is the episode this troper thinks it is, Turk was worried Miller might be put off by the loutish and offensive behavior of the other surgeons and asked Todd to take it down a notch. She tore him a new one about how she didn't need to be considered or protected, which on the face of it is sort of okay. Sort of. Except that the moral of the episode- delivered by Carla to several of the men- was that men should accommodate and even roll over for women by putting themselves in a woman's shoes and treating them differently and basically bend over backwards for them. Given Turk was trying to be considerate, was painted as in the wrong, but then essentially told he should always do what a woman wants and still given the impression he had been an inconsiderate ass, that episode really, really sucked.
  - Here's the real kicker: the reaction of Dr. Miller to Turk refusing to apologise to her for trying to be considerate? To be an complete ass and assign Turk the most menial jobs possible as punishment! This is the woman that Turk had to grovel to!
- Let me paint a picture: JD has been recently told that his long-distance girlfriend suffered a miscarriage and has been subsequently dumped by her. He's been kicked out of his previous living arrangement by Elliot and is now living on his own in a tent. He continues to work twelve-hour shifts, continues to endure a constant barrage of abuse and disrespect from his co-workers, gets arrested for a DUI when he wasn't driving, and is under so much stress from his personal and professional life that he's developed a condition where he passes out when he poops. The moral of the episode? "It's inconsiderate to rely on your friends; instead, you should shoulder your problems by yourself." Wow.
  - That especially bugged this troper, considering the lyrics of the goddamned theme song ("I can't do this all on my own, I'm no superman.")which played at the start of every episode, including that one.
Oh, Greys Anatomy... Shonda must have some warped morals! What with the 'Marriage is nothing important', or the 'no matter how awful you behave, everybody will love you and your punishment will be nothing more than a slap on the wrist'?
Probably lifting Ms. Rand above advice to the letter, the famous "backwards" Seinfeld episode, "The Betrayal", showed Jerry and Kramer's first meeting, with Jerry insisting to Kramer that "what's mine is yours." So Yeah.
One episode of the short-lived anthology series Night Visions told the story of a Town With A Dark Secret where music is banned and anyone who breaks the rules is swiftly and brutally dealt with. A drifter comes into town, realizes something is wrong and starts investigating: it turns out that the townspeople are all convinced that they're under a curse, and playing or creating any kind of music within the town will summon some sort of monster to kill them all. Of course, the drifter thinks they're all nuts, and in the inevitable climactic confrontation he delivers a heroic speech about how they have no proof that the monster actually exists, and they've been committing horrific acts in the name of blind superstition. The townspeople realize he's right, and he leads them all in a rousing rendition of "Amazing Grace." ...And then the monster comes to kill them all. Moral of the story: committing horrific acts in the name of blind superstition is a really good idea!For the record, Night Visions was chock full of family unfriendly or outright broken aesops. It's the sort of show you watch expecting a story about an abused wife to end with her being beaten to death by her husband, followed by host Henry Rollins delivering an aesop along the lines of "Next time your husband tells you to shut up, you should do it."
- This troper watched that episode's end with great delight, having felt that the entire town was populated with The Scrappy — but apparently what moral we were supposed to get got cut off the showing this troper saw, since the moral gotten was "Just because it looks like a silly superstition doesn't mean it is," which is a rather good one. (There were some Conquistadors who got parasites dancing in puddles to disprove a superstition...which turned out to be right about the whole 'Bad Idea' thing. This, however, would not make for good TV.)
For a show that could get borderline anvilicious at times, Full House tended to fall into this trope frequently in plots involving Michelle getting away with just about anything, especially in the later seasons.
- The Disney episode was particularly egregious; after half an episode of being a horrible brat and getting everything she wants, Michelle deliberately runs off in Disneyland after overhearing her sisters (rightfully) complain about how she always gets her way. Then, she's found and the older girls apologize for being mean to her! Never mind that she's old enough to know better, still runs off on a tantrum, and gets to ride in the parade (and is in no way punished) in the end regardless.
Basically anytime a police procedural uses wanting a lawyer as evidence of guilt. No matter how innocent you are, always get a lawyer.
Is it this troper's imagination or do a lot of the commercials for Whale Wars show the Whale Wars team losing? Yeah, that's a good lesson for children.

A few Disney films have morals that are a lot less sugary than you'd expect from Disney:
- During the conclusion of 102 Dalmatians, a major character explicitly states, as an Aesop, "For people like Cruella, there are no second chances." Okay, sure she's obsessed with making a fur coat out of the pelts of adorable puppies, and she's nowhere near the first Disney villain to be irredeemably evil. But hearing it put so bluntly...
  - It gets worse. 102 can aim for that Aesop because, in the beginning of the film, she was Brainwashed into being an animal lover. This was rehabilitation, this was the second chance. It even works for a while, but the brainwashing had a release signal — Big Ben — and when she heard it, she was Not Brainwashed any more. The moral seems to be "Even if someone who used to be evil reforms, you can't know that they won't just go back to evil one day."
  - Having not seen this film, why would ANYONE assume she's never going to hear the sound of Big Ben in her life? "There are no second chances because morons set you up to fail," maybe? Then again, that is how America's rehabilitation "system" seems to work...
  - And why would a would-be brainwasher "program" their victim with a kill-switch anyway?
  - Mind Rape as rehabilitation is pretty darned family unfriendly all by itself.
  - That... that sounds like a Disney remake of A Clockwork Orange...
  - But with PUPPIES!
  - ~~IN AMERICA!~~ ~~IN CANADA!~~ IN BRITTANIA!
The Disney Channel Movie Brink: Andy "Brink" Brinker was the leader of a group of "Soul Skaters" who rollerbladed for the love of it. Then his family ran into financial troubles, and he joined a group of professional skaters who his friends disliked, and they cut him off. Later, he wound up in a race against one of them to determine who got to use a practice course, and to ensure his victory his team leader told him to "stay on the outside" of the turn, and proceeded to throw gravel on the inside. Brink was confused, but figured out what was going on at the last minute, yelled to his friend, but she ignored him thinking he was trying to trick her, and was hurt. He later quit, reconciled with his friends, and apologized for being a "sell-out." Let's count: 1) Even in the midst of financial difficulties, it's morally wrong to be paid to do what you love. 2) It's perfectly ok to cut off your friends because you don't like their co-workers. 3) You're personally responsible for the actions of all your associates, even if you didn't know about them and did everything in your power to stop them when you found out. 4) If you give someone advice and they chose to ignore it, you're somehow responsible for their injuries.
They never say it bluntly, but there's a pretty obvious lesson stemming from the conclusion of the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame : you can be kind-hearted, brave, selfless and virtuous, but the genuinely ugly guy will have to wait until the direct-to-video sequel to get the girl.
- That could be more of a side effect of Disney prettying up the novel, in which Esmeralda does indeed end up with Phoebus, all three main characters are much less sympathetic, and all three end up dying at the end, with Quasimodo holding Esmeralda's body.
The first The Little Mermaid film seems to teach that no matter how well-intentioned, if your Daddy seems to be unreasonably protective, he must be wrong. Sure, Ariel runs into trouble for disobeying, but if her Daddy hadn't been so overprotective none of the bad stuff would've happened. The Nostalgia Chick said it best: "I sold my soul for a vagina and a man I barely know!"
- She wanted to be human LONG before she knew who Eric was. The part where he smashed everything precious to her that she had collected at great personal risk to herself over the years is just a TINY bit abusive and would have certainly sent This Troper into years of therapy if it were her.
  - Exactly. Ariel's dad was wrong, dead wrong. Ariel didn't get in trouble due to her desire to be human, she got in trouble because she had to go to the evil witch Ursula to do it in secret. And we can safely say that Ariel's father was wrong from this simple fact: WE'RE human, we know humans aren't Always Chaotic Evil from personal experience.
- "You can break all the rules you want, as long as you kill the person who made them!" Nothing really made Ursula the villain in any objective sense other than her enchanting Eric. She honored the contract, then defended her property until she was impaled on the front of a boat.
  - That's got a funny definition of "honored the contract." Also:Mind controlling the Head of State is probably a crime.
  - Actually, it probably isn't a crime, per say, if only because no one thought it would ever come up.
  - Um, Ursula did everything in her power to keep Ariel from making an informed decision about a contract for essentially her soul if she failed to win Eric's heart, rushed her into signing, and then rigged the situation to make sure Ariel couldn't succeed (stole the one thing most likely to convince Eric, namely her voice), then when Ariel seems about to succeed anyway, Ursula directly interferes by using Ariel's voice to enchant Eric and steal him away, with the express purpose of making Ariel a part of her garden so she could take the king's Trident and gain control of the entire ocean under her tyrannical rule. Now granted, her villainy is somewhat easy to conceal as she goes through political channels and legal contracts, but it's still there.
In 'Beauty and the Beast', the exposition says that when the ugly old woman who needed shelter from the prince punished him by turning him into the Beast, she became a "beautiful sorceress". Why did she need to be beautiful? This seems counterproductive, since the message of the film is supposed to be that it's what's on the inside that counts. Why couldn't the ugly woman have punished him for being a total dick?
- She turned ugly in order to test him. If she was beautiful and looked important from the beginning he'd probably have let her in, but that wouldn't have told her as much about his character as knowing how he treats his inferiors.
  - That's not the point. The point is why must she be beautiful at all? It undercuts the whole moral that physical beauty is not what matters. That she had to turn into a "beautiful enchantress" to inflict punishment on someone for basing their views of people on physical beauty is kind of contradictory.
- It is even more unfriendly considering he was cursed at 11 years old.
- Wait, isn't this more of a Broken Aesop, not a Family Unfriendly Aesop?
The moral of Disney's direct-to-video Tinkerbell movie is probably supposed to be something along the lines of "Play the hand you're dealt and make it work for you," with a healthy helping of "Every job is valuable even if it's not glamorous." However, due to the caste system by which the fairies live, it comes across as "Keep to the role society assigns you and don't try to develop any skills that you weren't already born with."
- This troper thought it was worse that only Tink gets to go to Earth. Who knows how many other tinker fairies wanted to go but weren't the main character.
- Likewise, this troper was pretty offended by the morals in that movie. They were probably well-intentioned, but taking the above into account and the fact that Tinkerbell failed utterly at everything she tried that was outside of her assigned job, the film outright discourages children from taking chances or having ambitions. There's an almost-Communist ideology behind the whole "Don't try anything outside of your societal role" thing.
Given how Tyler Perry's Madea character, in the various films and plays she's appeared in, has advised a woman with an abusive husband to "Throw a pot of hot grits in his face and then hit him with a frying pan", reined in a young girl's bad behavior by repeatedly hitting her, and frequently suggests brutal methods of solving problems, the moral of everything she appears in is "Violence is always the answer".
Although not the central points of the film, one of the morals in Unbreakable, spoken by a mother to her son, is to beware of people who are different. This is not because there's anything inherently wrong with people who are different, but being different often leads to people being treated badly, which can make them Ax Crazy. Specifically, the mom thinks being disabled is the source of Samuel L. Jackson's eccentric behavior, and when he's later revealed to be full-on Ax Crazy, her caution is greatly justified.
- This makes it somewhat circular advice. If you want to avoid that, shouldn't the obvious advice be not to beware of them, and instead treat them like everyone else, so they do not become Ax Crazy? Just a thought.
Christmas With The Kranks was much maligned by critics, who realized that its message essentially boiled down to "conformity and commercialism are good". The plot involves the lead characters deciding to not expensively celebrate Christmas and thus incurring the wrath of their neighbors, who Roger Ebert described as "the Stepford Christmas-enforcers". For the record, we're supposed to be on the neighbors' side. Not to mention the Fridge Logic that hits you when you suspect that if a non-Christian moved into their neighborhood, those nosy neighbors would probably be planning a lynch mob Christmas party.
The film Mad Money seems to have the moral that "federal crime pays, a lot; do it".
Sugar and Spice has a high school cheerleader get knocked up by her boyfriend, so they decide to get married. Their parents disown them, and they both have to drop out. The girl is stressed because babies are expensive, but her husband isn’t making enough at his minimum wage job and she has to stay at home to take care of the baby. Solution to financial troubles? Rob a bank!
- Well it is a comedy. The real problem is that the parents were totally supportive of their decision to get married, but when she added she was also going to have his baby they went insane and then kicked them out... You would think that getting married entails also having children, so what's the big deal? If the big deal is "you're ruining your life by having kids too early", then they kinda overreacted by not helping them be successful and just ruining their life.
In Raise Your Voice, Hilary Duff's dad won't let her go to music school and pursue Her Destiny, so she sneaks in with the help of a sympathetic aunt, who her dad is made to think she's staying with. This would be fine if the movie didn't go out of its way to justify this and insist that the Hilary Duff character, in her own words, "did what [she] had to do". Put another way, the message seems to be that the end justifies the means. The really weird part is how everyone in the movie acts as though she won't have a future if she doesn't go to music school that particular year. Her character is seventeen in the movie, but apparently it's impossible for her to wait a year until she's a legal adult and can do whatever she wants.
Taken even further in the movie Catch That Kid: the 12-year old "heroine's" father is suddenly paralyzed and his only hope is an extremely expensive experimental procedure. What is her plan? Rob the bank her mother designed the security system for. The movie tries to cushion the glorification of this scheme by giving the impression the bank "deserves it" because they refused to give the mother a loan and having the protagonists caught, only to have the heroine's mother claim it was part of a test of the aforementioned security system, which causes the story to be broadcast on TV, flooding the family with donations for the father's procedure, yet has the protagonist not suffer any consequences whatsoever for the fact that she tried to rob a bank. So Yeah. Ends justify the means, kids. Remember that.
Speaking of Catch That Kid, the other moral seems to be "Girls, it's totally OK to lead on two different guys who like you, because then you can get them to do things for you." Wow....
Many people assume the Jet Li movie Hero implies its perfectly okay for a brutal totalitarian emperor to conquer villages because it will unite them and stop them from fighting each other; again, under totalitarian rule. The problem is the director wanted the story to be about peace following from war. The Historical Hero Upgrade of the king-becomes-emperor of Qin just muddled it, and the government of modern Communist China just made it look like the assumed aesop even more.
The little seen Walter Matthau-Robin Williams film The Survivors: Do what the professional killer says and everything will turn out all right. If you even think about trying to defend yourself, you will turn into a crazy survivalist.
In Mrs Doubtfire, Robin Williams' character quits a voice-acting job because he feels that the cartoon promotes smoking to children, and his morals won't let him voice the character. This is treated with derision by both his daughter and wife, and as just another facet of his irresponsibility; in fact, his wife divorces him immediately thereafter, tying the two together. The aesop: "If you don't compromise your morality and integrity, you'll lose your family." The other moral: if you really love your kids you should perpetrate fraud to violate your court-ordered custody arrangement. The most important moral: love means accepting that an irresponsible, passive-aggressive whiner who spoils his kid rotten and sabotages his spouse's attempts at discipline is a "good parent", while a responsible parent who sets consequences for bad behaviour is a big meanie who can only be redeemed by becoming a passive, supportive doormat for the whiner. The uber most important moral: point-blank refusing to talk out or work out your problems, actually discuss anything about your relationship problems, and in general being an uncompromising asshole is okay if you're the woman.
In *batteries not included, at the end of the film, one of the villain characters risks his life to save the life of one of the building tenants, and afterwards shows up with flowers and chocolates at their hotel room, indicating that they're trying to turn it all around. He winds up rejected and shut out, and as he walks off he dumps the flowers and chocolates in a trash can. Aesop: "Don't bother trying to change who you are, if you're born low and bad you'll always be low and bad." Not perhaps the interpretation that was intended — the old lady tenant was senile, and kept mistaking him for her son. When he shows up at the end he's trying to humour her delusion for the first time - and she recognises that he's not really her son, and that she's been fooling herself. The scene showed that she had grown able to face reality. Note that her husband did accept the reformed villain, and said villain does reappear at the very end when the Rileys return to their miraculously-fixed apartment building.
The Devil Wears Prada begins by suggesting the very audacious Aesop that if you take a job you don't especially care for, occasionally prioritise it over events in your personal life, ignore your friends when they passive-aggressively criticize you about your job, start to sympathise with your coworkers whom you'd previously viewed with scorn, and, horrors, enjoy some of the perks associated with it, life might turn out okay. Even suggests that the power of love might not conquer all in the case of a casual relationship. It ends up reverting to the Broken Aesop that if you do any of those things, you are a bad bad person who is selling out on her deepest ideals.
In When A Man Loves A Woman... If you an alcoholic female, you can be a huge bitch to your kids and husband, whine non-stop, not pay attention to the kids to the point of criminal negligence - but everyone will love and forgive you and you'll even get to keep your children as your martyr husband temporarily goes away due to work. This was most likely intended as a "love can conquer all and give a boost if it doesn't" Aesop, but it comes off more as "when you're the mother, you can get away with everything": no on would admit the same self-destructive, cruel, whiny behavior if the husband was the one with booze trouble.
Rom Coms are famous for their frankly bizarre portrayal of love and relationships, but Good Luck Chuck really takes the cake. After Charlie is dumped for acting like a creepy crazy stalker, the female lead's brother tells her that she 'over-reacted' and that 'sometimes when you love something, you just want to be surrounded by it all the time.' They are together at the end of the movie.
Woody Allen's Match Point has its main character state "it's better to lucky than good." He gets away with murder out of pure dumb luck.
The Iron Man movie, while awesome, teaches its viewers that an irresponsible weapons designer who allowed his products to fall into the wrong hands can atone for his carelessness by building more powerful weapons. And it turns out that terrorists only got hold of his weapons in the first place because he had a Lex Luthor wanabee on his staff, absolving him of all guilt.
- In fairness, the wrong hands haven't gotten said hands on the Iron Man tech...yet, anyway.
  - And Obadiah Stane's hands are the right hands for it?
- Additionally, the more powerful weapon was to be used to destroy the weapons the terrorists had. So...sort of responsible.
In Jim Carrey's Liar, Liar we learn just how necessary a little judicious fibbing can be for social living...and how unpalatable and offensive certain "truths" can be.
Lady: "Everyone's been so nice to me."
Reed: "Well, that's because you've got big jugs."
- Hardly anyone ever disagrees that telling the truth always everywhere is bloody stupid and often unnecessarily insulting or even plain cruel to others. I don't think this one really counts. Besides, it's not like good things don't come out of his inability to lie, too.
Crossing Delancey: After your dreamboat turns you down, settling for the nice schlub that your meddling grandmother has tried to pair you with is the key to happiness.
The Hugh Grant film About A Boy seems to have the Aesop that 'Listening to the latest hip music and wearing the trendiest designer clothes, just so you will fit in with the crowd, is a Good Thing'.
The first Starship Troopers has the message:
Rico: Someone asked me once if I knew the difference between a civilian and a citizen. I know now. A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.

That sounds somewhat reasonable at first, but it contains the unfortunate implication that non-military personnel are less patriotic and thus aren't even second-class citizens - they can't vote at all. However, the whole film is an affectionate parody of those wacky nazis, so one should keep the MST3k mantra in mind.

Starship Troopers is among the most misanthropic, anti-militaristic films ever made. Satire, people.
- Yes, the movie is a mockery of militarism. The classic book by Robert Heinlein, however, was quite serious in its glorification of the military and the described government, societal order and future warfare.
- But in the book, citizenship was attained through "public service," which wasn't exclusively military. That was one of the few pleasant surprises when this troper read it.
The third movie has the anvilicious aesop that religion is good, even if the god you've been talking to is actually the big bad bug. Having witnessed the possibilities, the fascist federation turns itself into a theocracy in the end. Um.. yay?

The primary message in the 1939 film version of The Wizard Of Oz is "Never dream of a better life. Just accept things as they are, even when your life is full of suck."
- The movie was shown to this troper's grade school every Christmas, following which the school principal would give a ten minute speech on the subject of "no place like home" and why small children should be grateful for family life... converting the ending into the ultimate Family Friendly Aesop.
Radio Flyer: Under absolutely no circumstances tell the police your stepdad's beating the shit out of your little brother, because they can't do anything. Especially don't tell your mom, because she's lonely and he's the only man she's got, and finding this out will make her sad.
The Hannah Montana film pretty much states that you need to be fake to be accepted. This is evident when Miley stops her concert to reveal who she really is, and a little girl politely asks her to "please be Hannah Montana".
The very premise of Final Destination. You can't fight fate. Even if you see your own death coming a mile away. In fact, if you try to cheat death, it will spite you by torturing you, and then making your ultimate death as painful and violent as possible.
Little Miss Sunshine? The moral appears to be "To hold your own against more experienced prematurely sexualised child beauty pagent entrants, you need to do an even more sexualised burlesque routine". To make matters worse, said burlesque routine is taught to the little girl by her Dirty Old Man grandpa. Squick.
- "Appears to be"? Of course that's the point, but it's not a moral point. The point is to show how immoral such pageants are.
- I thought the moral was if you hold a contest that basically requires little girls to dress up and apply make-up to the point that they look like a poor put together whore don't be surprised when someone shows the sexualization of children a bit less subtley. Basically the judges and others who were upset were complete hypocrites.
Any Coming of Age/High School comedy or drama where the lead is an outcast fringe-dweller who just wants to be accepted and popular, date the shallow Jerk Jock (who often then becomes the Jerk With A Heart Of Gold) or Libby, and/or get chosen as best in a popularity contest (Homecoming royalty, study body president, etc); and manages to achieve it by dropping his or her "weirdness" or nerdiness, turning away from the "freak" crowd he or she is hanging out with, and becoming a conformist and adopting the looks and/or attitudes of the popular crowd. Which is the vast majority of them, especially those aimed at a younger crowd. Often combined with an Unnecessary Makeover; it's usually a failed attempt at a Coming Out of the Shell plot.
The Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In gives some unfriendly (but effective) advice on how to deal with schoolyard bullies: "Hit back. Hard." To ends, tear them to bits.
Similar to the above example, the So Bad Its Horrible Godzillas Revenge has an ending moral of "beat up the bully and he'll respect you." But what warps it into the ULTIMATE family unfriendly aesop is the ending minute. Ichiro makes friends with the gang of bullies picking on him and goes around with them making mischief, including KNOCKING A POOR OLD PAINTER off his ladder and spilling paint in his face. He goes off to possibly be a deliquent.

Close Film

In Scooby Doo and The Samurai Sword, a character states "To Win, you must do what others are unwilling to do." This seems family friendly, but think about it. While right, it basically says "Do whatever you need to to win, allowed or not."
The 'Crazy Over Daisy' Disney cartoon has a HUGE Family Unfriendly Aesop, other than being full of suck; 'small creatures can beat the crap out of you for pure fun, but you can't retaliate. Or you'll get your comeuppance.'
- It's not wrong, though, especially in the case of children like the ones the cartoon is aimed at; big kids are usually expected to tolerate the various abuses of little kids because they don't know any better, and punished severely for responding in kind because they are supposed to know better.
There's a particularly astonishing episode of the animated series Caillou. The Aesop here goes well beyond Family Unfriendly and heads into the realm of Downright Insane. The mother reacted to her child's sudden and irrational fear and discomfort around a male neighbor by forcing her child to stay at the guy's house for several hours. Just the two of them. Alone. While the mom is out shopping or whatever. She didn't even know the guy!
As Told By Ginger has a particularly strange episode, "Stuff'll Kill Ya", in which Ginger is victimized by a teacher at her high school. In one particular scene, she bins Ginger's extra-credit assignment as she berates her. However, when Ginger's mother offers to go and speak to the teacher about her treatment of Ginger, Ginger hastily declines, maintaining that as a high schooler she has to face her own battles. Yet Ginger herself fails to confront the teacher, and the bullying continues to the point that the teacher continues to harass Ginger even when the student is visibly ill. This sends out a couple of peculiar morals — that bullying by an authority figure should probably just be tolerated rather than raising a fuss, and that teenagers shouldn't go to their parent for practical help, just for comfort.
- Alternatively, this could be seen as a more conventional Aesop: To have pride is good, to be ruled by is not. Ginger's problems in this episode clearly come from being ruled by pride. This is supported by the B-plot with Carl having problems with a teacher behaving unethically as well, and Lois does intervene.
- The above is particularly frustrating when the intended Aesop of that episode seems to be: coffee = drugs.
Many critics found the message in the Powerpuff Girls movie to be very xenophobic; the mutated monkey Mojo Jojo is helped by the Powerpuffs, despite his menacing appearance. He then goes on to try and take over the world. The moral here seems to be "if somebody looks evil, they are evil" — the exact opposite of what is usually taught in children's shows.
- The Powerpuff movie is a prequel to the series, so Mojo Jojo being evil is a HUGE You Should Know This Already. The movie isn't being xenophobic, Mojo's just in-character. If Lex Luthor pulls this shit in a Superman prequel movie, said movie isn't displaying a phobia of bald people.
Avatar The Last Airbender: "The Great Divide" has Aang solving an apparently legitimate problem between two rival groups by lying to them and claiming that the argument was started because of a game. In this case, the problem happened a century ago, and they've been fighting over it all this time; the Aesop seems to be that "Grudges, even if they're started for a good reason, aren't worth it".
- A more generous interpretation might be "If you can't remember why you're mad, it obviously wasn't important enough to be mad about."
- Indeed. The two stories the sides told were wildly different, to the point that the whole thing could have started out as a rumor with even less basis in fact than Aang's version. You can only assume that there was a legitimate reason for the two sides to be at each other's throats, and even then only one side would actually be justified, as each version of the story only had one wronged party.
- He also did that because the leaders of the groups had just decided to just straight up duel with each other, and that couldn't have ended very well.
- If you watch "The Runaway" you'd probably think the lesson was "Abusing your abilities to exploit people is wrong" like Katara kept telling everyone. However, if you pay closer attention you'll realize she wasn't bothering them because they were doing something bad but rather because it would draw unwanted attention, and doesn't have any objection to keeping the money. When even the Team Mom can't come up with a better reason not to steal from people than "You're gonna get caught!", you need to check the magnet in your moral compass.
  - Since the people they were stealing from were thieves, cheats and all around bad people, possibly getting caught WAS the only reason not to do it. Otherwise Robin Hood is a bad guy.
  - Except they weren't just 'cheating cheaters' or stealing from thieves, that's just how it started. They eventually started pulling elaborate cons on normal merchants and other such people. There was no indication that anyone they robbed in that episode was a bad person, except for the fact they were Fire Nation, which carries a whle other load of broken aesops right there.
  - The Gaang were a terrorist group defrauding people to gain funds to kill the Fire Lord. Why do people pick up on the fact they were stealing loose change from merchants but not that every positive authority figure in the story was pressuring Aang into killing the Fire Lord, something he clearly did not want to do.
Bucky O'Hare #2: in an early episode, a guy named Al Negator tries to get a job on the Righteous Indignation. As he's a shifty-looking reptile, the crew is generally suspicious. But Captain Bucky O'Hare hires him on anyway, making a big point of mentioning how he trusted the gunner Deadeye Duck, despite him being a pirate with somewhat questionable morals. So it looks like a "beauty is on the inside" or "different doesn't mean bad" kind of Aesop... until Al betrays them, steals classified info, and sabotages the ship, and it becomes "if they look evil, they are evil". On the other hand, Deadeye never did a Face Heel Turn, so Bucky was right about him...
- This could also be an Aesop for Bucky about trusting his crew and taking the advice of subordinates seriously, which may or may not qualify as a case of The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
  - But since Deadeye isn't a reptile, this could all just mean "only certain groups will betray you."
Tom and Jerry. Tom is an attack cat for the good of the house but is identified as 'evil', Jerry, however, being evil is identified as the 'hero' and does bad things to get Tom in trouble. Once, Tom was beheaded...
- Which made those few times Tom won all the sweeter.
- One particular Tom Jerry cartoon that comes to mind went something like this: Tom inherits a vast amount of money, but the inheritance comes with a clause that he will lose all the money if he ever harms a mouse. Jerry decides to be a complete prick about this: stealing Tom's money, eating the extravagant food right off of Tom's plate and even causing grievous bodily harm to the poor housecat, all because he knows Tom can't retaliate. Eventually Tom snaps and beats the crap out of Jerry, because there are some things more important than money. Like the happiness you gain from taking revenge on the little bastard that made your life miserable.
  - An even worse episode featured Tom dying and being refused admittance to cat heaven because he spent his life chasing Jerry. Who this Troper believes the cat St. Peter referred to as an "innocent mouse". The result is that Tom is temporarily sent back to Earth and can only get into heaven if he can get Jerry to sign a form by a time deadline. For the rest of the episode, Jerry refuses to sign his name on the stupid form and while he ultimately does, it's too late and Tom is chucked into cat hell where the cat devil throws him in a boiling cauldron with a pitchfork. Fortunately, it was all just a dream.
Woody Woodpecker is practically the poster child for zooming past self-defense and into outright malice. Jerry always went a little beyond the pale, but Woody would take extreme and violent offense to even minor perceived slights. "If someone wrongs you, it's all right to get them back... and then some!" and perhaps, "Physical injury and property damage are acceptable responses to social incivility." At times, Woody would even torment somebody without any provocation whatsoever, especially Wally Walrus. The Aesop here appears to be "it's okay to be a sadistic jerk as long as it's entertaining," or perhaps "unattractive people deserve whatever abuse you heap upon them."
Children's cartoons in the Eighties such as The Get-Along Gang instilled a message that children should always go along with what the rest of their circle of friends thinks; if they disagree, there's obviously something wrong with them. Years later, the creators of the Dungeons And Dragons cartoon would bitch about how they had to constantly portray one of their characters as a whiner due to pressure from parents' groups. Arguably, the real lesson to be gained from The Get-Along Gang is "never associate yourself with a compulsive gambler."
One of the most ridiculous examples is the Captain Planet episode "Wheeler's Ark": The Planeteers have developed a habit of picking up injured and endangered animals on their missions and bringing them back to Hope Island. Gaia, naturally, finally tells them this is impractical and orders them to take them all back. Fat chance — they just pick up more at every location, all while Wheeler tries to tell them this is bad idea. Instead of the others learning what could have been a perfectly valid Green Aesop about how you shouldn't take exotic species out of their natural habitat, Wheeler just learns "If you don't want to take a wild wolf pup home with you, you're a heartless jerk."
The 'Land Before Time' II' seems to have the moral "If someone is from outside your culture, they're much dumber than you are, and have evil impulses that are almost certainly beyond their control."
- Taken at face value it can be seen as the much more useful, enviromentalist aesop "predators and prey do not mix". Although this was ruined by future sequals and the TV series.
In the Arthur episode "Arthur's Big Hit", D.W. breaks Arthur's model plane, which he worked on all week, after he told her specifically not to touch it, does not apologize, and even acts as if the whole thing was Arthur's fault. Arthur punches her in the arm, hence the title. The whole rest of the episode is Arthur getting chewed out by his family and friends, but no one seems to care about what D.W. did. Arthur's parents don't even punish her! Apparently, if you're a cute little kid, you're off the hook from any punishment for, y'know, destroying someone's hard work.
- Which is a Truth In Television, just TRY and get anyone under the age of ten in trouble and you'll see what I mean.
- This troper still sympathizes with Arthur, and didn't understand Binky's subplot at all. Maybe it's cuz she has younger sibs but still...
  - You don't need any sibs; this troper is an only child and still sides with Arthur — and would be coming down hard of D.W. This tosses in the additional Aesop of "Go ahead and ignore it when you're told not to touch." Having worked in a lab and been taught lab safety, this troper would be treating a destroyed model plane as a good place for the lesson to be learned — before, say, D.W. goes for a used sharps box or the bleach.
Wow Wow Wubbzy has the occasional moral that is a bit off. For example, the Aesop of The Grass is Always Plaider is supposed to be something akin to "there's no place like home," but plays out more like "places other than your hometown may seem interesting, but are actually boring once you get there."
- In the episode "A Tale of Tails," the moral appears to be the standard "it's okay to be different" moral, right up until the end, in which the titular character uses his "kooky" tail to prove himself better at all the games the other kids play, at which point they all change their minds and love him. This seems to change the message to "it's okay to be different if that difference gives you an advantage" or "if you're different you have to prove yourself better than everyone else to be accepted." Then the closing song changes the moral yet again, this time implying that if you're not different in some way, you're not cool at all. "Don't conform ever" isn't necessarily a bad aesop, but it is a little unusual.
- And there's also the episode where the moral is apparently "don't open packages that aren't for you." Which is a wonderful aesop, but not a very common one.
Happy Feet was supposed to have the stock aesop "Be yourself, different isn't bad", which everyone involved with the movie reminded everyone of as often as possible in interviews and promo shows. Unfortunately, this aesop kind of wound up drowned out under "religion is hokey, silly nonsense that should be ditched", "people only care about you if you're entertaining", and, perhaps most mind-boggling, "if something new comes along that scares the establishment, everyone needs to conform to the new thing."
- Don't forget the leason: "Don't eat fish, you're starving the dancing penguins!"
Daria had a lot of these. Notable is the fifth season episode Prize Fighters in which Daria has to be interviewed in order to gain a scholarship. However, she learns the company offering the prize has a rather sexist and racist history, so she feels uncertain about dealing with these people. Futhermore, she doesn't want to obtain the money by acting in a false manner: acting friendly, attentative, and interesting. When she is finally interviewed, she behaves as she always does: honest, sarcastic, and clipped. One might expect her to win the scholarship based on an Aesop of being true to oneself and not putting on false pretenses. But no, the interviewer is shocked by her crass behaviour and she is refused the money afterall. The real Aesop runs along the lines that in the real world, which is often unethical and imperfect, you cannot always expect to win out if you stick to your own principles.
- Or, possibly, the Family Friendly Aesop that being a Jerkass to people offering to help you is a bad idea.
- The other two guys don't get the prize either, despite acting like they should. Because of this, the Aesop works.
- Another episode as the Lawndale High students volunteering at a nursing home. Expecting An Aesop about respect and care for the elderly? Nope, the retirees are as shallow and superficial as the teens. However, it's subverted at the end of the story that shows Daria continuing to volunteer there anyway on her own accord, showing just how noble she really is.
- Don't forget the highly realistic but no less depressing Aesop from the second movie: Even if you and your boyfriend have a lot in common, work through many problems together, like/respect each other to a great degree, and had to work hard to establish the relationship, you'll probably just break up after a while anyways and you won't get together with your original love interest afterall.
- The entire show had a basic principle of "Everyone sucks in their own way, and adulthood is not a cure for immaturity."
The Danny Phantom episode "Phantom Planet" seems to have the lesson that-"It's okay to abandon your former friend in a hostile environment in which he is surely bound to die a slow, agonizing, and VERY lonely death all because he pointed out it's YOUR fault he was a freak in the first place".
- In other words - "Murder is OKAY as long as you're the hero."
  - This could, of course, be seen as the Aesop of every single action movie/video game ever made.
- More like "If your friend turns out to hold a bitter grudge without saying anything, to the point of being willing to kill you several times without your knowledge, it's okay to leave him to die."
- Then there was the main story between Danny and Sam, which was supposed to be "With great power Comes Great Responsibility", but came off more as "If you don't cave in to your girlfriend's fetish, then you're kind of a douche."
- And in "Bitter Reunions" (and "Reality Trip"), we learn that no matter how accepting your parents would be, you must always keep your powers a secret.
In an episode of Bravestarr, a young boy from a poor family is told by Bravestarr that he should be thankful that his mother loves him enough to force him to constantly wear his expensive Sunday-best clothing instead of giving him a few pairs of cheaper but more comfortable & practical clothing like other kids his age wear. Because clearly it is way more important for the mother's pride not to appear poor than it is for the boy to be able to play with his friends as it would damage his fancy clothes to do so.
- This might be an actual Aesop, just an old-fashioned one about honoring your parents or something like that.
Star Wars The Clone Wars tries to deliver the aesop in episode fourteen that staying neutral during a war is okay, but being a pacifist doesn't mean you shouldn't stand up for yourself. However it does disturbingly come off at times as if they're saying that pacifism in war is a stupid idea and whether you like it not, you have to pick a side and join in the fighting if you expect to have any chance of surviving.
- Unfortunately, this is all too often Truth In Television. Historically, the neutral city-states and nations that survived were typically those capable of fighting off pretty much everyone else, like Switzerland. Pacifists had a tendency to die very quickly if they couldn't depend on someone stronger protecting them. Passive resistance also depended on an "oppressor" having a compatible sense of morality that was stronger than their greed/expansionism/paternalism. Contrast the fate of Mahatma Ghandi's passive resistance against Great Britain, and anti-Nazi religious and Jewish pacifists during WWII.
  - Non-violent resistance actually depends on an uncensored mass media to work. Gandhi's tactics wouldn't have worked against Great Britain prior to the 20th century.
One episode of Stargate Infinity has an aesop which, while entirely reasonable, especially in context, is rather surprising: the team learns about being flexible under adversity and being willing to change your approach when it's not working. The moral they announce out loud at the end of the story is, "If at first you don't succeed, try something different." What's strange about that? The very well-known moral, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," is the point of view of their enemies, who consider changing your strategy to be a sign of weakness, and therefore will repeatedly try exactly the same thing that has failed numerous times in the past without variation because they "know" that, thanks to their inherent superiority, their original strategy must have been correct. It is never made clear how they managed to become the dominant threat to galactic safety despite being quite plainly mentally handicapped.
The Fairly Odd Parents TV Movie, School's Out! The Musical tried to say that too much personal stifling and forced education and discipline on children is bad. Fair enough. The presentation, however, makes it seem like any education, discipline, and safety measure impressed by adults upon children is bad and boring. This is emphasized during the montage when the world changes from the bad one to the normal version where the school remains essentially unchanged.
Pretty much every single episode of Eek the Cat contained the same Family Unfriendly Aesop; trying to help people out can hurt. A LOT. If you don't want to get smashed through six consecutive walls, squashed by a steamroller and nearly eaten by a psychopathic, mutant canine with a fin on its back, then for goodness sakes, don't try to be helpful! What's particularly jarring about this example is that while the show and its characters were played strictly for laughs, the aesop was almost never subverted or mocked, and only rarely came off as a Spoof Aesop.
- Was never mocked? You didn't think that Eek having the catch-phrase "It never hurts to help!" just before he was once again horribly maimed might have had a satirical intent?
Satirized in an episode of Garfield And Friends when Roy Rooster joined a children's show called "The Buddy Bears" where basically, the three buddy Bears would make one decision and "Big Bad Buddy bird" would make a different decision which didn't blend in with the group, and a bad thing happened to him. Anvils, I think. Of course, he ended up going nuts and telling the kids that Conformity is BAD.
- The first time he worked with them, it was 16-ton safes falling on him. (Played with in another episode in which he was afraid of that happening, but they assure him that they don't have any...)
- Garfield featured the Buddy Bears in several episodes, and greater than half of them subverted or mocked stock family unfriendly aesops, while the other half mocked forced friendliness or forced educational content in children's shows.
The Simpsons episode "Viva Ned Flanders" has Ned reveal that he's actually 60 years old, despite looking much younger. The secret to his good looks? Being the ultimate Moral Guardian, never being angry (except for the one time the bottle bursts), and having such a squeaky clean lifestyle it's sickening. Yeah, let's have society learn from his example.
- That wasn't an example to live by. Even Flanders realizes how pathetic his life had become which was the basis for the trip to Vegas.
Family Guy is intentionally contraversial, and is written with almost no worries about who it might offend. It attracts this trope like a light attracts moths, which may be a good thing.
- The episode named 420 had the message that using drugs (specifically pot) would make the world a utopia.
  - It was clearly not a utopia. People were doing little more than lazing around high and that even Brian, who got pot legalized in the first place was easily willing to betray his cause.
- Not All Dogs Go To Heaven had the message that any amount of religion at all will turn people into Naziesque figures who will burn any book they can get there hands on.
  - Alternatively, the episode was parody with a core that was criticizing two things: the way atheists are seen and stereotyped in American society, and the way that religion plays on the emotional need of people (particularly lonely, depressed people like Meg Griffin) to feel accepted and wanted. It's actually an exceptionally meaningful episode, but it takes a lot of flack because it offends the sensibilities of many religious folk.
- You May Now Kiss The Uh Guy Who Receives. Moral of the story: being indecisive about gay marriage makes you as bad as a racist (see the Young Republicans Club from the episode).
  - Is that Family Unfriendly? How would you consider someone who is indecisive about whether blacks should be allowed near their children?
- You May Now Kiss The Uh Guy Who Recieves also carries the message that holding a mayor hostage at gunpoint is a legitimate way to get your point across.
- Brian did go through the proper channels the first time but the Mayor just said he was gonna do it any way to cover up making a Dig em' statue.
  - Well, in at least 2/3 of those episodes, the character making the point you're stating is the same. And guess who it is?
- Family Gay. It's perfectly acceptable to abandon your family of fifteen odd years because of Suddenly Sexuality. Said family should not only accept this change, but also be supportive of it, no matter how much it hurts them.
  - What? Which episode? I can remember a few that were similar but none that match up to that description.
- Half of all the entries on the Dethroning Moment Of Suck page are dedicated to Family Guy because of this Trope. Seth MacFarlane should be ashamed of himself.
Hey Arnold: One episode depicted Arnold and co. (and their parents) going camping. The truth is that no one wants to camp, but the children think their parents want, and vice-versa. And they camp right next to an expensive resort full of artists, pools, etc. After a horrible camp trip, they decide to go to the expensive resort and have a great time. The moral of the story: nature sucks, and you can only have fun in the wild by going to expensive resorts.
- To be fair, it was the camping trip from Hell.
Futurama has this gem...played for laughs, of course.
Farnsworth: "Cygnoids? On our block? Fie and foo! They should go back where they came from!"
Leela: "Professor! Please! Society's never gonna make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other."
The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog is a goldmine for various weird Aesops because of the "Sonic Sez" segments at the end of each episodes, but a fairly straightforward one involves warning children against running away from home. Coconuts, the Butt Monkey of the villain team, decides to run away because Robotnik doesn't love him; Sonic warns him against the dangers of the outside world. Thing is, Robotnik cares even less about Coconuts than he does his other idiot henchmen, and doesn't actually do any of the things that Sonic gives as reasons for him to stay, and so the Aesop becomes "Even if your parents are abusive and neglectful, it's still better than chancing it on the streets."
Thomasthe Tank Engine had some pretty bad Aesops too, such as in the episode "Daisy", where the titular character makes up a lie to get out of doing work, and gets away with it. Many episodes also feature lessons like "It's okay to get revenge on somebody if they annoy you" like in "Percy and the Signal". And in the episode "Escape", Douglas basically steals another engine from a different railway by deliberately fooling a signalman, and nobody seems to question the morality of it, not even the Fat Controller.
- Though you got to realize since they were essentially going to kill Oliver it kind of unwarps the aesop.
- "Breakvan". If someone's bullying you, feel free to beat the crap out of them!
- "Calling All Engines": People will force you to cooperate with those who are different from you, just remember that they're evil and would kill you at the first chance they had.

Close Western Animation

Pet Shop Of Horrors is based entirely on this, due to the dubious morality of the Pet Shop owner, Count D. While he maintains that he is only giving humanity what they deserve, a good heart is no guarantee of a good outcome — several of the Count's shadier customers escape unscathed from their deals with the Count, while softer-hearted clients can be "punished" for a minor character flaw. Even if a character undergoes a positive change through being with their pet, such as developing a sense of compassion, they often fall victim to a tragic twist.
Many Japanese films and anime seem to have the moral that children should hang out at will with whatever they find cool, even if it's really dangerous. The children in the Japanese superhero movies Prince Of Space and Invasion Of The Neptune Men, immediately come to mind. So do the children in several kaiju monster movies, who always seem to want to be as close to the monster as possible, even when it's tearing up downtown Tokyo. Yulie from Ronin Warriors is also a prime example. The moral of that show seems to be "No matter how weak and helpless you are, no matter how dangerous the situation, if you always stick close to the heroes, things will turn out fine no matter what."
Kaleido Star: "When everyone around you is treating you like dirt, if you just be really nice to them and generally act like a dogsbody, they'll come around eventually." While it's nice to see the genki girl's sweet personality overcoming all the odds and avoiding the risk of becoming a Purity Sue by having to work for her acceptance, some of the other Kaleido Stage performers could really have used a slap in the face, rather than getting away with some seriously obnoxious behavior. Specially, Layla's sort-of Girl Posse Julie and Charlotte, before their Heel Face Turn.
- And another one, from "Kalos Eidos' Guide to Managing A Circus": "When your cast members are trying to kill each other, just leave them to it. It's a learning experience for them. While you're at it, why not try putting even more pressure on someone who's already being bullied?"
- And a third from the White Haired Pretty Boy: "It's okay to put an acrobatics partner at extreme risk by forcing her into an incredibly dangerous maneuver with no rehearsal, provided the result will look really cool if it works." Fortunately, when we see this on-screen it only results in the local girl getting her shoulder completely wrenched out of its socket and broken, but it's implied he's done this before and killed people.
Bunta Fujiwara's parenting style in Initial D, if not his whole character, is a delivery vehicle for Family Unfriendly Aesops about skill and honor in illegal street racing.
"Honesty is the Best Policy" is one of the Stock Aesops — face it, how many shows have you seen where a little lie leads to bigger ones, and Hilarity Ensues? So it's a bit surprising that Digimon has one episode drop an anvil that little white lies are justified if lives are on the line.
- It's sad it's Anvilicious, but how is it "Family Unfriendly" ? It looks like "If truth won't be believed, lying is better than uselessly making a fool of yourself"...
  - Which it was, he knew he had to get Joe's help, but he couldn't explain the Digital World to the guy on the phone. If he didn't get all angsty about it, we wouldn't need this aesop anyway.
While the manga and anime itself has a Family Friendly Aesop, the creepy children's books in Monster were made like this purposefully by one of the characters to instill nihilism in children. They feature such lovely morals as "It doesn't matter whether you make a deal with the devil or not, because you're screwed either way."
- Or, my favorite, "everyone is really evil".
Bokurano, particularly in the manga, has characters explicitly state that it's all right to care more about people you know and love personally, even to the point of sacrificing innocents that you don't know for the well being of people you do. This is presented as an important truth, and realizing it is vital to one character's development.
''Higurashi's aesop is to trust your friends. Even if they're on a delusion induced murderous rampage,and are about to kill you.
- Actually, it goes on the opposite end. The actual aesop seems to be "If you feel scared and alone, confide and trust in your friends." which is a pretty good moral, and applies to most of the Answer Arcs. On the flipside, what happens when you don't trust your friends is what happens in the Question Arcs.
Mobile Suit Gundam: War orphans belong on battleships, not in orphanages! Followed up in Zeta Gundam, set seven years later: one of those orphans, Katz, is now a hormonal, irrational, bloodthirsty 13-year-old. Send him, with the full approval of his adopted father, to the front lines! This one didn't work out quite as well as it did in MS Gundam.

Close Anime and Manga

The Marquis de Sade wrote two books, Justine and Juliette, which are practically made of this trope. The message is, to an extent, "morality and virtue are overrated." Given that this is the man from whose name we get the word "sadism," it isn't that surprising.
Almost every children's fantasy book is about learning to Be Yourself and how special you are. It's a Family Unfriendly Aesop when they don't:
- The main character of Panda Ray is a young boy with amazing powers. After escaping from his overbearing mother, who threatens to "scoop him out", he enters a dreamlike parallel dimension, where he has all his secret fantasies made true; this makes him decide that he's "no better than" his mother, which, in turn, makes decide him go home, forsake his powers, and act like he's scooped out for the rest of his life. The moral: being special and different is bad, and the people who are trying to force you to be like everyone else know what's right.
- If you happened to be an imaginative child probably some well-meaning adult read to you the picture book, Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine by Evaline Ness. The message, in theory, was probably meant to be something like "remember to separate reality from fantasy". The message in practice is more like, "using your imagination — and it isn't like this is anything you can just stop doing — might inadvertently kill your best friend."
- There is some debate, particularly on the book's Amazon.com page, as to exactly what lesson we're supposed to get out of The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey. For some, it's "Be proud of what you are", which is fine. For some, it's "Be Careful What You Wish For", which is okay. For others, however, the message seems to be, "Don't try to be anything you're not", which seems workable until you realize that this is like telling children Status Quo Really IS God and you shouldn't aspire to be anything better than you are. And finally, several people have detected the truly Family Unfriendly, "It's better to Just Be Normal, because if there is anything that makes you different or special, your family and friends will shun and abandon you."
- The Dr. Seuss story "Daisy Head Maisy", which was never published until after his death and was subsequently made into a direct to video cartoon, was about a little girl with a daisy growing out of the top of her head. She becomes a minor celebrity for this, but eventually faces a good amount of hostility from her parents, teachers, peers, and even the local government to remove the flower since it is "unnatural" and strange. After the flower is gone, everything goes back to normal for her. This could be interpreted as "celebrity/notoriety isn't all it's cracked up to be", but it seems more like if you're different, you might get some superficial attention for being "exotic", but you are ultimately unacceptable as an actual person within your community and you must conform. This is probably why the story wasn't initially published, even though it was written several years before Dr. Seuss's death.
- In Dealing With Dragons, the first book in a series, the main character is a princess who want nothing to do with the traditional "princess" role, and lives with a dragon. There's plenty in the book that goes against traditional gender roles, such as how in the dragon's society, both "King" and "Queen" can be either gender. However, at the end of the book, the "be yourself" message takes a nasty dive when one of the dragons betrays the others, and is told he's "Not being much like a dragon", and then turns into a frog. So, princesses are allowed to be whoever they want, but dragons get turned into frogs when they don't conform to the standards of how dragons should act? That might just have been an unfortunate turn of phrase; we see other similar transforming rules such as using soapy water and lemon juice to melt witches and wizards which work not on how well the target fits their role, but on morality. Woraug wasn't really rebelling against being a dragon; he was just violent, ambitious, dishonorable, and selling his species out to wizards. He was also the subject of some serious and seriously disrupted magic just prior to his transformation, so the cause and effect are questionable - I got the impression the Aesop was loudly made up for the benefit of the audience. Granted, that phrase "conduct unbefitting a dragon" gets used in the second book, so if it's shorthand, it's tenacious shorthand.
- This Troper got the feeling that the dragon was accused of "undragonish behavior" more because dragons were shown to have a high sense of honor which selling out their own species to a group of magic-stealing shady enemies and killing the King for a crown definitely violated. Sort of like how if a person does something particularly horrible they are said to be "inhumane".
In the famous science fiction short story The Cold Equations, the moral is "life is fundamentally unfair." This moral was a very deliberate Family Unfriendly Aesop, serving as a Deconstruction of stories where the day is always saved somehow. However, some people were not impressed, feeling that the writer created a very contrived situation to justify the aesop.
Some people argue that the moral of Joe Abercrombie's The First Law is "people never change, they only delude themselves into thinking they've changed or trick others into thinking they've changed."
- Others, of course, argue that the moral is "violence breeds violence", as the Homer quote in the beginning of The Blade Itself implies.
In Harriet the Spy, young writer Harriet learns that sometimes you have to lie to people to help them feel better about themselves so they won't hate you.
- There's also the fact that her mother forces her to "admit" she feels guilty about her friends hurt feelings after they read her private journal. Harriet makes a good point that it was her journal, she clearly forbade people from reading it, and that they had no right to do so. Mom seems to think that Harriet should feel guilty for writing the stuff down as well as for her friends negative reactions. Eventually, Harriet agrees with what her mom wants her to say, basically so Mom will stop with the badgering.
A particularly jaw-dropping one appears in a Ray Bradbury story. The narrator's sedate, tranquil, lazy (and Irish) chauffeur picks him up one night and drives like a bat out of hell before revealing that every other enjoyable night, he was driving completely drunk. The narrator forces money on him and demands he get blotto before picking him up next, browbeating him into breaking Lent in the process.
Most, if not all, of the works of HP Lovecraft emphasize the moral that life ultimately is pointless, and that the universe is a cold, unfeeling place. If there are Gods, they either do not care whether you live or die or are actively malevolent. Cheerful stuff.
- This doesn't exactly count as a Family Unfriendly Aesop, because that's exactly how Lovecraft himself imagined real horror to be like. In his opinion, the idea that humanity as a whole is just so beneath the notice of the greater powers in the universe that they could step on us and not notice was much, much worse than even the idea of an actively malevolent Devil, who at least cares about human souls and thus validates our existence. The idea that we are like ants looking at a mountain and that there is no one who can save us when the time comes is a large element of the horror in his stories.
  - The famous shout "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftaghn!" and the associated Cults are simply an extension of that sense of human insignificance. It's not an attempt to draw on Cthulhu's power, and it's certainly not an attempt to be reverant to a greater deity who happens to be asleep on our planet. We are the Whos down in Whoville, desperately attempting to convince Cthulhu that We are here! We are here! We are here!
- To be fair, Lovecraft himself wasn't the most cheerful person in the world.
- There's also a nice Aesop about cool nonhuman intelligences being mind-shattering by their very existence. Seemingly even more so for those with scientific knowledge and training. Because apparently Science isn't at all about new discoveries that change the way you see the world.
  - The idea there, presumably, is that the more you know about the world and the way it works, the more absolute mind-raping violations of everything that should be you actually see. Show a normal person your absolutely terrible painting, he probably will just say it sucks. Show the same painting to an accomplished art scholar, and he'll spew Pinot Noir all over your shirt before launching into a furious diatribe and beating you half to death with the bottle. Same concept.
  - This comes largely from Lovecraft's premise that humanity actually lives in a mindset that is more or less unsuited for the larger truths of the universe, like multi-dimensional aliens that just don't play by the same laws of physics our brain is made for. In Lovecraft's view, the effect would be like trying to force a square peg made of cheese through a round hole of iron: You end up mashed.
- A diffrent interpretation of the Aesop: "Discovering humanity is nowhere near being the coenter of the universe is so mindblowing, it will make you Go Mad From The Revelation".
- Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook has the moral that non-white people are innately evil, and if left to their own devices, will inevitably sink to acts of villainy and depravity that white men, with their superior morality, can't even comprehend, much less match. And no, this isn't a case of Accidental Aesop or Values Dissonance. Knowing Lovecraft, and reading his commentary on what inspired the story, this was clearly the intended message, and it would have been considered rather extreme, even in its day.
The perennial picture-book favorite If You Give a Mouse a Cookie seems to teach that you should never give anything to anyone, because if you do, they'll just keep freeloading off you until you stop giving them things. It's like Ayn Rand for kindergarteners.
- This was parodied in an incredibly over-the-top manner in Robot Chicken, where a mother tells her kid a version of the story where giving the mouse a cookie ended up cases a nuclear apocalypse. She then tells him she killed his dad for giving mouse a cookie.
C'mon, is there a more Family Unfriendly Aesop possible than Not Now Bernard? "Your family won't even care for you even if you're eaten by a monster"?
- Pretty sure the actual aesop is for the parents, namely "If you don't listen to your kids, something unpleasant might happen."
Perelandra, the second book of the Space trilogy by C. S. Lewis. The plot of the book is that the planet Venus is in the "Adam and Eve" phase and the devil has sent his agent — a man named Professor Weston — to corrupt "Eve". The angels send a man named Elwin Ransom to make sure that Tinidril chooses wisely. In the end, good triumphs over evil, but in an unexpected way: Ransom kills Weston and drops his body into a volcano.
- Though, to be fair, Weston was an undead, devil-possessed, rotting corpse with claws at the time and he only threw him in a volcano because Weston wouldn't stay dead. Which made the moral more like "Sometimes, you have to fight for your faith."
  - This is actually lampshaded by the protagonist, who assumed that the fight would be purely intellectual, that he would win by the sheer force of his argument; and was initially horrified at the idea that he'd have to make the fight a physical one. It was very much a Take That at the pacifists who opposed Great Britain's military opposition to the evils of Nazi Germany and promoted Neville Chamberlain's appeasment policy; and against the anti-confrontational passivity that was popular in much of the liberal Christian community.
A character in Slaughterhouse Five suggests that The Bible's Aesop is that you should make sure someone doesn't have connections before you kill them.
The Sword Of Truth series has some pretty screwy morals, especially in the eighth book, Naked Empire: apparently, killing and torture are evil if the Bad Guys do them, but they're okay if the Good Guys do them - because, by being Bad Guys, they brought it upon themselves.
- Over the course of the series Goodkind slowly works his way from formula fantasy to Objectivist philosophizing; culminating with Faith of the Fallen, which is in large part a re-writing of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. From that book onward, the characters' morals take on a distinctly Objectivist tone, with the good guys becoming Objectivist heroes bordering on Knights Templar, and the bad guys being collectivists and/or pacifists.
In book 2 of Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles, Laurie explains that she lies because "lying works" and nothing in the story contradicts this claim. This, from a book aimed at 6-12 year olds.
Pick a Robert Silverberg story at random, and it's got a 50% chance of belonging on this list. As an example, How It Was When The Past Went Away begins with a fellow giving Easy Amnesia to an entire city through a drug in the water supply. A religion forms around the mantra "drink and forget," and life becomes utopian as people can erase their memories of all the bad deeds they've done. Not necessarily a bad Aesop, mind you, but rather an unconventional one.
You remember that bit about Starship Troopers in the film section, above? Okay, now imagine it's not a satire. The book actually is a love letter to militarization. Unless you serve in the military, you are a second class citizen in the eyes of the government. What's more, not only does no one find this abhorrent, it's presented as some kind of great cultural achievement by the characters. Of course the movie flipped the aesop by taking away the power-armor, super-mechs, and tanks, and turning the MI into cannon fodder.
- Except it's made clear in the book that it's less pure military than what today is called community service and that you cannot be turned away no matter what your physical or mental capacity or job skills. It focuses on the military aspect of this because not many people would read a book based on the adventures of Johnny Rico, CPA.
  - On the other hand, it is made quite clear that actual "military" service, be it frontline or rear echelon, is significantly superior to other forms of service, which include first responder and civil service work. There's a shorter term of service for military than for either first responders or civil service, and Johnny and his squad get into a fight with merchant marines who resent not getting the franchise for their work.
  - Generally, the more dangerous jobs do come with greater benefits. That's more Truth In Television than anything. If you're willing to get blown up on some godforsaken alien planet for your citizenship, it only seems fair that you get it a little sooner than the guy who's just calling up people who are past due on paying their traffic fines.
- The internal political organization of the human Federation is an utterly trivial matter compared to the REAL Family Unfriendly Aesop of the book: "Racial survival is the only universal morality." In other words, life in the universe is essentially a zero-sum struggle for Lebensraum, and when that is at stake, no species has any rights that any other is bound to respect. Peaceful coexistence is not an option. This is actually part of the doctrine that Federation officer-candidates are taught at the Academy. It cannot be stressed enough that the book, unlike the movie, presents this without the slightest trace of irony or satire. It is plain, pure Author Tract on Heinlein's part.
  - Except that while this is the policy with regards to the Bugs, Humanity seems to live with the Greys without any sort of war of total extinction.
  - Indeed. Keep in mind they eventually ally with the Skinnies (another sentient race who were former allies of the Bugs) later in the book. The Aesop isn't as much "life in the universe is a zero-sum struggle for Lebensraum between all races" as "if a race doesn't want to peacefully coexist with you, then there's no reason that you should peacefully coexist with them." In other words, the Golden Rule, actually enforced.
  - The narrator also expresses the hope that by learning more about the Bug's society, humans can find some way of ending the war without committing (or suffering!) outright genocide. The climactic battle, where they try to capture a Brain bug was an attempt to set this in motion.
- An interesting wrinkle to ponder is that when Heinlein was writing a book about people of any race or creed being able to get the right to vote through public service, the "guaranteed" right to vote was denied to many African-Americans.
  - Whereas the Starship Troopers military was well in advance of the 1950s in admitting people of all races, and well in advance of the 2000s in allowing women to serve as combat pilots.
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is hilarious, but it has to be admitted that from the destruction of Arthur's house at the start of the first book, to the Vogon's destroying all possible Earth's at the end, that overiding theme, the overiding message, if any to be found, is that beauracracy is absurd, stupid, and not minutely evil... but always wins. Indeed, it is perhaps the most consistent theme of Douglas Adams' ouevre.
- Perhaps the message is more 'Good/Smart doesn't always win', basically disproving the converse of 'Might makes Right'. At one point during the series, one of the character remarks about "the incompetent malevolence of the universe." That little phrase seems to sum up the world of Hitchhiker's Guide perfectly.
Whatever the morals of The Giving Tree may be, a lot of people see it as having the family unfrendily aesop of "give the ones you love everything they ask for, even if it hurts yourself".
- Unless you're viewing it from the perspective of the man, in which case, the Aesop becomes even less family friendly "Walk all over the ones who care about you and be as demanding and selfish as you want with them, even if they suffer because of it."
- Strange, because I somehow got the very opposite Aesop out of it. From the eyes of the man, he, at the end of it all, had taken everything the tree had to offer, and realized he had given nothing back. And in the end he had destroyed the one friend who had been there through it all. So I got a very family friendly aesop out of it, that to take and never give anything back is no kind of love. Although given the presentation of the book, perhaps my interpretation is wishful thinking.
L. Frank Baum's fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz begins with Dorothy leaving home with the Shaggy Man, an unkempt wanderer she met only minutes before. Then when they're alone he offers to show her his Love Magnet...
Twilight has the wonderful aesops of 'It doesn't matter if your boyfriend belittles you, threatens suicide if you leave, removes the engine from your car to stop you from visiting your best friend, and just generally abuses you - if he's good looking and says he loves you, it's okay.'
- On the flip side it doesn't matter if a guy compliments you, carries your books, respects you, take you out on dates, and is all around a nice guy and a complete gentleman to you, it's okay to use him and call him names behind his back because he isn't beautiful and is a mere human.
- There's also "It's okay to drop your friends, family, and your humanity in general in exchange for a hot god-like soulmate boyfriend, a perfect baby, and rich, gorgeous, doting in-laws.
The original version of The Little Mermaid had this delightful message to children: "Obey your parents and behave, or an innocent girl will lose her soul." Is it any wonder most people prefer the Disney version?
The children's book Tootle is about a young (and sentient) locomotive who is learning to become a real train. However, he also enjoys going off of the rails and playing in the meadow, though this is considered taboo in his society. In the end, the townsfolk decide to teach him a lesson by waving red flags everywhere he goes when he leaves the rails. Eventually he stays on the track and never leaves it again. The main message of the book seems to be "It's not okay to do what you enjoy, unless it is approved by authority figures."
While it probably wasn't the moral Shakespear was trying to convey, Values Dissonance can cause the moral of Much Ado About Nothing to be "It doesn't matter if your boyfriend calls you out in public in a ridiculously over the top and humiliating manner as long as he still loves you in the end, and you should continue to love him too."
- Much Ado About Nothing has nothing on The Taming Of The Shrew, in which a lunatic psychologically abuses his unwilling wife (by starving her and refusing to let her sleep) until he's basically broken her mind and got her to agree that reality is whatever he says it is. The moral is that women should be perfect slaves to their husbands because that's their role in life. At the end of the play her father approves of what's happened to his daughter. Of course, there's been massive amounts of debate over whether this is serious or is meant to be interpreted as a farce.

Close Literature

In many old fairy tales and folk tales, the moral is "You have to lie, cheat and steal to save either yourself or your family. The more you do it, the better you are." Modern versions often Bowdlerize this, eliminating the original moral.
- Puss In Boots is an outstanding example. American McGee's Grimm seems to suggest that the lesson in Puss in Boots is that "Cats are sneaky little bastards, and humans can exploit this for their own ends."
  - Although in certain Bowdlerized versions where the cat is led purely by his own motivations and the ogre sometimes isn't murderous is that "Cats are sneaky little bastards and that's awesome."
- In the original version of Tom Thumb, Tom is saved from certain death by the Ogre's wife. He exploits her for all she's worth, and arranges for the ogre to murder his own children... but he's still the hero of the story, because it saves his family.
- In the Russian fairy tale "Prince Ivan and the Firebird," Ivan saves the kingdom by breaking every promise he makes.
- Many other fairy tales have what appears to be this moral, but is actually Values Dissonance.
  - Rumplestiltskin, for example. Not like any of the characters are particularly heroic, but the "happy ending" goes like this: The heroine got to marry the evil King and keep her child, while the fairy who had used his powers to save her life doesn't get paid for his kindness at all. There's no hint that he'd have done the kid harm... it appears that he deserved to get cheated out of his payment because he's a stranger, and strangers don't deserve to have their bargains honored.
  - In some versions, Rumplestiltskin has song which includes the lines "To-morrow I brew, to-day I bake/And then the child away I'll take", which implies that he planned to cannibalize the child.
  - Besides, when that story was first told, the mythology around faeries meant that being taken as a child by a faerie = bad is assumed. If not eaten, chances are the best they can look forward to is a life of enslavement.
  - Of course, in one version where he dies, he gets so pissy that he traps himself in the floorboards and rips himself in half pulling himself out.
  - This troper can't remember the actual source, so take it with a pinch of salt, but he did hear that the original, unbowdlerized moral of Rumplestiltskin was that... well... Masturbation leads to Infertility. Apparently, the girl left in the room with the gold to spin got bored and, um, seized upon a small round block of wood. She was, well, quite surprised when it turned into a tiny dwarf. The thread-spinning, etc, proceeded the same as the Grimm brothers version from there, but instead of stamping his foot so hard he fell into the earth, he turned back into a block of wood and... uh... Blocked the, uh, well, yeah. Ahem.
  - One could also argue that Rumplestiltskin, while strictly honest in his bargains, exploited a woman who was in a very bad situation by offering to save her life in return for a truly mind-boggling price. If he had asked for something more reasonable, the Queen might have been happy to honour her promise (though that wouldn't have made for a very interesting story).
- "The Tinderbox": Basically, the plot boils down to this: Hero encounters a poor, desperate witch who begs him for his help in retrieving her precious possession, a tinderbox. Witch tells hero how to safely retrieve the box, and offers him vast wealth in return. Hero retrieves box, after gathering as much gold as he can, and returns to witch. Witch thanks him and politely asks for her box, but hero decides to decapitate her instead. Later, he uses the box to kidnap a princess and murder her family/court. He and said princess are married and live happily ever after.
  - Note that the decapitation is cut from many adaptations, and the witch simply gives the hero her Tinderbox as a reward or something.
  - Some versions also strongly imply that the witch plans to leave him down there to die after he gets her the box, somewhat justifying her murder.
  - The versions that miss both those cop-outs basically boil down to the Aesop that "Witches deserve to die because they're witches, duh!" Which is pretty much the way things worked back then.
  - Well, yes. Back then, the base requirements for being a witch were 'evil magic-using female.' And the last was merely because a different term was used for 'evil magic-using male.'
Russian fairy tales, in general, tend to be rather cynical. One story in a collection by 19th century folklorist Alexander Afanasyev has the moral "Old favors are soon forgotten."
Deconstructed in the Sondheim musical Into The Woods: after Jack robs from and kills the giant at the top of the beanstalk, the giant's widow comes to seek revenge for her husband. The show's Aesop is the more family-friendly "Actions have consequences, and if you selfishly backstab people, it'll come around to bite you in the ass."
The original The Farmer And The Viper: "don't help Always Chaotic Evil creatures, they'll backstab you immediately".
Most mythologies were big on destiny. No matter what you do, no matter what you want to do, and no matter what kind of person you are, you can't change your fate. Was your fate to die in a fire, you will die in a fire, no matter what. As a matter of fact, if you try to fight it, your death will most likely be more painful. Poor Oedipus and his family never had a chance...
Similar to The Farmer And The Viper is The Frog and the Scorpion. The moral seems to be something along the lines of "Bad people do bad things, even when it doesn't make any sense".
- "I can swim."
The fable of John Henry seems to have the moral that it's better to die than give up. A different reading might be that using technology to make things easier is inherently bad, which is also rather creepy.
- Possibly closer to Values Dissonance. Working hard to prove yourself and not sitting idle just because the job could theoretically be made a whole lot easier is a value from the days before steam engines.
Considering that they were the creators of all existence, the various deities and demigods/goddesses in Greek mythology were surprisingly jealous and promiscuous. On the other hand, some versions of myths do have various gods or goddesses realize the errors of some of their judgements and reverse them or have a different sympathetic god or goddess aide someone under a deity's wrath.
- Of course, in Greek mythology, the gods weren't the creators of the universe, and were subject to the same base emotions humans were. Which probably makes it more of a satire than an Aesop.
Many fairy tales center around a hero who is poor in some way (an idiot third son, a tailor, a musician, etc) who wins a princess's hand in a perfectly legitimate way (guessing the colors hair on her head, offering the best gift for her birthday, guessing her riddle, etc). And instead of honoring her promise, the princess is a rhymes-with-witch and adds more conditions to the tests just so that she won't have to marry a peasant. These include sending him to find the Apple of Life, get a ring out of a lake, sort various types of grain, spend the night in a stable with a wild bear, and almost always the tests are on pain of death. And inevitably the prince will overcome these additional conditions and go ahead and marry the princess anyway! What aesop does this teach, if a girl is rich and beautiful it's alright to marry her even if she totally hates you enough to try to kill you?
- A better example of this is the original version of The Frog Prince. In it, the princess drops her golden ball into a pond and the frog agrees to retrieve it for her if she in turn promises to let him live in the castle as her friend. She agrees but when he brings her the ball, she takes it and runs to the castle, leaving the frog behind. The frog makes its way to the castle and tells the king about the princess's promise and she is forced to go through with it, letting the frog sit by her at meals and follow her everywhere. The entire time, she is obviously disgusted by it. When she goes to bed, the frog asks to be allowed to sleep in her bed and the princess is so disgusted that she throws it against the wall, whereupon it turns into a handsome prince and the two were married. Never mind the fact that the princess was completely horrible and only broke the spell inadvertantly because she'd rather kill something that helped her out rather than let it use her bed also.

Close Myth And Legend

An arguable implication of the editorially mandated last arc of the Batgirl series, and an inescapably blatant one in the Robin arc that supposedly followed up on it, was that no matter how much you try you cannot find redemption, even for "sins" born of ignorance, so of course you should give up on escaping your past and embrace it as your destiny. Several months later, this is revealed as a case of Brainwashed And Crazy, in a hasty Authors Saving Throw.
In the Marvel Comics Crisis Crossover Civil War, the moral, according to Word Of God, was that sometimes a little liberty must be sacrificed for security, especially when it comes to people who can potentially destroy the world with their powers. But many fans thought the Word Of God was being sarcastic, and didn't realize it was serious. Why? Because Marvel Comics has done stories for over twenty years in which treating super-powered mutants differently is the same as racism. In the context of Marvel Comics fandom, this is a very Family Unfriendly Aesop. To make things worse, some of the individual writers in the story didn't agree with the Word Of God. Their stories clashed badly with the central theme, and turned it from a Family Unfriendly Aesop into a Broken Aesop.
- You think that's bad? You wanna know Joe Quesada's rationale for Pete and MJ's marriage being cosmic retconned in One More Day ? That having Pete and MJ just get divorced would be a "bad example for the kids". As opposed to bargaining with Lucifer? "Remember, kiddos, divorce is bad, but dealing with the Devil himself is a-OK, because your friendly neighborhood Spider-man did it!"
  - Well, how often does that situation actually come up for most people?
  - While a litteral deal with the devil not ba all that likely, it's treatment as a metaphor for compromising one's morals should not be forgotten. In this specific case, consider that what Peter earns is the life of his Aunt May back, even though she asked him TO LET HER REST. So, if there's a message about euthanasia, there, you decide.
Chick Tracts generally have pretty screwy morals, which are usually some variation on "it's okay to be a bigot as long as you're a Christian", "Christians are automatically better people than non-Christians", and "Your life is worthless. Start preparing for the Afterlife now," but some specific examples that stand out:
- Catholics are worse than Satan. The Catholic church is based on false teachings even though we take all of our beliefs from them.
- Fat Cats: "Don't rebel against a genocidal dictator, you'll only make it worse."
- Lisa: "Child molesters should not be imprisoned." This one was so screwed up Chick himself ordered it recalled.
  - Also, pornography is worse than pedophilia. Seriously, the doctor said that it was the pornography ruining his life, not raping his toddler.
  - Raping his toddler? It's obvious it's screwed him up to the point that his mind is blurred.
  - And if you'd just slept with your daughter-molesting husband more often after you realized he was molesting her, maybe he wouldn't have given your daughter herpes.
- Gunslinger: "Being a Karma Houdini is a good thing."
- The Wall: "Interracial marriage introduces you to hokey cults."
- Little Bride: "Muslims are pedophiles." Chick noticeably glosses over the Values Dissonance with regards to the age of consent in this one.
- Some more general ones that can be found in a variety of titles: It is a wonderful act of selflessness for an innocent to bear the punishment of the guilty, justice or fairness be damned. It doesn't matter how good you are to your fellow human beings, God hates you unless you're a Christian. Conversely, no matter how horribly you treated people in life, you can still be joyously welcomed into heaven if you accept Christ with your dying breath. People who belong to non-Christian religions are not just mistaken, but wilfully and actively evil.
An issue of MAD Magazine once featured a choose-your-own-adventure comic strip that satirizes American elections, where the lesson appears to be if you stick to your morals and integrity, you will lose; but if you lie, cheat, and bribe, you will win. Then again, this pretty much is the aesop behind politics in general...
Dilbert intentionally has the moral that "trying to do your job is pointless — exploit the system instead." It is, of course, a satire of workplace bureaucracy which makes that viewpoint seem valid.
Most superhero comics have either the aesop that "vigilantism is awesome, especially if you wear a silly costume", or the moral that "life sucks, and you can't even deal with it, since Authorities Are Useless until they're against you".

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"Better the Devil You Know" by Kylie Minogue is about going back to the guy who treated you badly because "better the devil you know". This was probably meant to creep the listener out. Nick Cave called it the most disturbing song he had heard, in part because of Kylie's innocent image.
- Kylie and Nick went on to sing a duet, "Where The Wild Roses Grow," about a girl falling for a man who then bashes her head in with a rock so no one else can have her. Kylie is a very creepy soul in a very cute body.
Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is a really-very sarcastic song that, taken unironically, would have one of the most family unfriendly aesops ever. "If you're a girl who follows the Rule Of Cool and likes a taken boy, it's okay to throw yourself at the guy and steal him away because you know he likes you back, and his girlfriend is "like, so whatever". And the video points out it's okay to humiliate said girlfriend because she's a nerdy girl with glasses." Lavigne's Word Of God points out how it's criticizing shallow boy-crazy girls who act like that, but tell that to the song's Misaimed Fandom.
- Another song on the same album features the lyrics 'I hate it when a guy/doesn't get the tab/I have to get my money out/and that looks bad'.
The Bobbie Gentry song Fancy has the moral "prostitution is the way out if you're a desperately-poor girl who happens to be pretty". The way it's presented is pure privileged fantasy; in reality, rich and powerful men choose their mistresses from the ranks of the demimonde — women who are raised with the mannerisms and accomplishments that will let them fit in with the upper classes. They don't just pick up a street hooker from the slums, no matter what she looks like.
- Having read the song's lyrics, it's implied that Fancy managed to use her looks and the "pretty dress" from the first verse to start out in a slightly better area than the slums, high enough that with time and effort she was able to get the education she needed to become a "lady." Still difficult, hugely difficult, at best, and still a dubious Aesop, but not pure fantasy.
  - Madame du Barry lived this trope until she lost her head... La Paiva and Nell Gwyn even did it and lived out their lives in comfort.
- It's a Family Unfriendly Aesop, but not the one you think: it's difficult to see what the lyrics mean without the Reba McIntire video, which was written in consultation with Gentry and which reflects what she meant. Fancy is a beautiful Oklahoma teenager in the dustbowl 1930s who is given by her desperately poor mother to a rich man from the city in full knowledge that her daughter will be kept, but at least she'll be fed. Fancy returns to the deserted homestead thirty years later after a career as a successful kept woman in order to forgive her mother, who starved to death decades ago. The moral is, "it's better to sell your children into sexual slavery than to let them die slowly of starvation".
The moral of Miley Cyrus's song "7 Things" is that you should stick with your boyfriend if you absolutely hate everything about him aside from his hair and eyes, his old jeans, being hypnotized when he kisses, and sentimental feelings about laughing, crying, and holding his hand. His vanity, games, insecurity, and unfaithfulness are qualities she hates, but is willing to overlook because of the aforementioned things she likes about him, and it's implied that his vanity, etc. also make her love him.
Kingdom Hearts' opening theme song, "Simple and Clean," suggests some very dubious morals. For example, "Don't get me wrong I love you, But does that mean I have to meet your father?" suggests that the narrator's lover doesn't want to put out the effort to get acquainted with her family, and that, although the lover "wishes he could prove he loves her, he doesn't want to have to walk on water; when she's older she'll understand that it's enough when he says so." Apparently, "Hikari," the Japanese version of the song, makes much more sense, and is almost the complete opposite: "I'll introduce my family, You'll surely get along well."
- As far as relating the two - "Simple and Clean" and "Hikari" - they are not even translations of each other. At best, they tend to be vaguely similar.
The Script 's popular Ballard 'The Man who Can't be Moved' is about a guy who was left by his ex, and is willing to stand on the corner of the street until she comes back. Though it's certainly a desperate romantic gesture (which a lot of people go mushy about) others really wish that he'd get on with his life. There's absolutely no way she's coming back, he's probably going to make himself ill, the chances of the news picking him up are absurd and it's probably not his fault that she went away anyway.
These come up a fair few times in Lily Allen's music, prominent among them her singles "Fuck You" ("Conservatives are inherently tyrannical/hateful/war-mongering/generally terrible people who don't deserve to express their opinions") and "Not Fair" ("If your boyfriend is bad in bed, it more or less negates any positive traits he may have").
Michael Jackson's short film Ghosts (1997) tries to present the moral "Don't persecute those who are different from you." Michael's hero (Maestro) is a stranger with magical powers who secretly entertains children at his mansion, and doesn't interact with anyone else from the nearby town. When one of the kids tells the town's adults about it, they form a Torches And Pitchforks mob led by a bigoted mayor to run him out because Loners Are Freaks; Maestro uses his powers to terrify the crowd and scare the mayor away instead, when he proves to be the only person who doesn't ultimately want him to stay. Unfortunately, due in part to Reality Subtext (the kid's older brother even chews him out for not keeping the secret in the first place), this Aesop comes across as "Don't assume a stranger who has children keep secrets about what they do together in private has something to hide", not unlike the "Take candy from strangers" example mentioned in the trope description.
The message of Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" is basically "Be satisfied with your mediocre existence and don't try for anything better."
- The song is more of a satirical jab at socially mandated status/power-seeking; and the self-indulgent rockstar attitude that has resulted in so many burn-outs and OD deaths. A message that even if you're eating off silver trays, it doesn't make youa better person, and you're still going to die the same as anyone else. Word Of God from song writer Brian May would seem to confirm this.

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Warhammer 40000 excels at these, played straight in-universe, while players tend to find them darkly amusing. Books and video games are often littered with aphorisms and Thoughts For The Day such as "it is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself," "an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded," or "the loyal slave learns to love the lash."
- Not to mention that the Imperials are fervent believers of Dumb Is Good. Blame the aftermath of the Age of Strife for that, though.
With "Always Chaotic Evil", Dungeons And Dragons left us with the basic message "Some people are just innately psychopathic madmen hellbent on burning your corpse, pillaging your home city, and selling your family into slavery".
- Except that actual Always Chaotic Evil is reserved mainly for The Legions Of Hell and undead. Everyone else is usually Chaotic Evil, which is more to do with culture.
  - Well, from 3e onwards, anyway. In 2e and earlier, it was common for perfectly mundane races to be Always Chaotic Evil, just because.

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Death Of A Salesman: dreamers get crushed under reality's dirty heel. Deal with it.
- Dreamers who think they're better than everyone else and don't want to do any of the real work. Fuck Yeah Deal with it.
- Dreamers who have become totally disconnected from reality and are incapable of realizing that the world changes...
Avenue Q contains many such unconventional Aesops, though some are tongue-in-cheek. Examples include "The Internet Is For Porn" and "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist". Another Aesop in the show is "there's nothing wrong with being gay", which on one occasion is humorously expanded to "it's perfectly fine if you're gay, unless you're a Republican."
- I think the biggest Aesop in the play can be summed up in Lucy the Slut's line: "Everyone only has one revelation in life: they find out they aren't special."
- The overall lesson learned at the end by the main character is that it's okay to keep on dreaming, but sometimes you have to abandon them and sell out to survive, and hope you can reclaim them later.
- I thought that the overall lesson was that the best thing you could do is help others and be helped yourself. But maybe I'm just being overly optimistic.
- Princeton never had a clearly defined dream in the first place, he just had the vague notion of finding a purpose, a reason to be alive, something he was meant to do. He helps Kate realize her dream in life, and realizes that it's ok if you don't have a clearly defined "purpose"- the important thing is to help others and appreciate the good times you have in the here and now. Optimistic and realistic at the same time.
The musical Carousel contains one of these, personified in the immortal line: "It's possible for a man to hit you, hit you real hard, and have it feel like a kiss."
- Amanda Palmer did a cover of the song "What's the Use of Wondrin" as a creepy domestic abuse ballad...and didn't have to change a word.
Grease has the moral that you should be willing to change yourself completely for a guy. To be fair, it seemed like the writers were trying to show Danny changing himself for Sandy as well, through participating in wholesome sports and going out for a letter jacket, but this hardly shows up in the final version.
- "You're the One that I Want" mollifies this a little, but only a little. Significantly, this number didn't appear in the original stage show.
  - Sandy completely changes her personality to be with Danny. Danny joins a sport. I'd say the "Girls, change for your man" is the show's theme.
  - And because people tease you for not being an immoral Jerkass! So "Good Is Dumb" on top of that.
- The ending of the show so incensed this (male) troper upon first viewing the movie that he has deliberately not watched it again since.
Our House has the moral 'If you don't give yourself up after committing a minor, non-violent and non-malicious crime, a Corrupt Corporate Executive will burn your mother.
In The Wild Duck, the entire cast turns out to be one giant Dysfunction Junction that is only keeping itself together by repressing every one of their hidden sins and weaknesses through willful delusion. When the resident Wide-Eyed Idealist attempts to unravel some of these lies and bring about truth, the result is the suicide of the family's young daughter. As the man who attempted to keep all this under wraps at one point muses:
Doctor Relling: Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness.
The ending of Urinetown is pretty grim - the good guys who wrestle control away from the ruthless plutocrats eventually doom the city because they aren't authoritarian *enough*.
- The only real moral is the explicitly stated one: "Don't you think people want to be told that their way of life is unsustainable?" The "downer" ending of the show intentionally and comically sets up a False Dichotomy between harsh, corrupt and unaccountable corporations charging draconian fees for the most basic of human rights or else happy-go-lucky resistance leaders offering complete freedom with no plans for tenability w/r/t that water shortage. That no one can see the middle ground is one of the play's major jokes.
  - I told you, little Susie, this isn't a happy musical.
The opera Turandot. Princess Turandot executes all of her suitors that fail to answer her three riddles, and The Prince of Tartary falls in love with her at first sight despite watching one of her suitors beheaded before his eyes. He tries to win the Princess over in spite of his father begging him not to try for her. The Prince manages to answer all three riddles, but the Princess tries to go back on her word. The Prince, being the genius he is, gives her a proposition in which, if she finds out his name, he'll be executed. She promptly has his beautiful and extremely loyal servant girl Liu tortured in front of him to find out. The servant girl, refusing to say his name but revealing how deeply she loves the Prince, then suicides. The Prince's father cries out in anguish at this, and everyone leaves to attend to her burial. Everyone except the Prince and Princess Turandot. The Prince doesn't care that he has caused the loyal servant his father cared for to die, nor does he care that his father is in anguish. No, he still madly loves the insane psychopath Princess, and in the end, everything is somehow okay because he kissed her. Moral of the story: It's okay to sacrifice people's lives and your family's happiness if it means you can get with a hot chick.
- Or "nothing matters but superficial attractiveness". Which is the same Family Unfriendly Aesop as Twilight, and is also probably the reason why Puccini gave up on it.
  - Or that he died before finishing it. Either one.
  - Except that he gave it up some time before he died.
The kid's play The Magic In Me says that if you can't do something right off the bat, you'll never learn to do it.

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Jade Empire had the arguably Family Unfriendly lesson of "respecting the position of the Gods and knowing your station in life is more important than saving millions from drought and famine". Of course, the developers were probably going for "power corrupts".
- At one point, someone points out that the Sun brothers were able to save the Jade Empire from the drought, at the expense of causing a drought somewhere else. At the same time, the Water Dragon's absence prevented the dead from fully moving on to the afterlife, which after twenty years led to a serious problem with restless spirits. So Yeah.
In .hack//G.U. there is a player who first appears to be a brother and sister using the same character, but it actually turns out that the sister is a split personality of the brother. The game actually encourages you to convince the sister personality to stay, instead of letting the brother have full control of his body or receive psychological treatment.
- That's more of a Values Dissonance than anything. Is it better to kill one personality so that the other can have complete control, or let them both share the same body?
- The .hack series has a long running tendency to try and demonstrate that things that you wouldn't initially think as living beings should be considered as such, a big example being the A Is of the The World. By the game's normal standards, convincing Saku to surrender her own existence is essentially murder. Besides, Bo liked her and was comfortable with her around.
Some people believe that Tales Of Vesperia glorifies vigilantism and murder. Your Mileage May Vary on that.
Valkyria Chronicles. If you're overwhelmed by a major change in your ability to handle your problems, don't carefully examine your feelings, weigh your options, or take your situation and your resources into consideration; just jump to whatever wild conclusion comes to mind, because your boyfriend is just waiting for the right moment to bail you out with common sense.
- That one actually shows up twice. Alicia freaks out and tries to kill herself (and her friends) with her Valkyria flame, Captain Varrot almost murders a captured enemy officer because she's in a good position to do so; they both have to be talked out of it by their future husbands.
- The whole game has a thematic Aesop about the Power Of Friendship being able to overcome individual obstacles that are much stronger, which is fine. However, because the primary vehicle for this is Valkyria Powers, which are naturally latent and can be awakened, the Aesop becomes, "Natural talent is evil because talented people lose their perspective when they don't have to work hard to achieve, and because jealous onlookers will destroy themselves trying to match up."
- Blowing people up with lasers is horrible and puts a terrible burden on the souls of people who commit such atrocities; killing thousands of people with ordinary firearms is fine for everyone, and gets you a medal. If everyone does it, it's okay!

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