NO DOGS WERE HARMED DURING THE FILMING OF THIS EPISODE. THE CAT GOT SICK AND SOMEBODY SHOT A DUCK BUT THAT'S ABOUT IT.
"No animals were harmed" is a standard message displayed at the end of movies, and in Hollywood movies is awarded by the American Humane Association. It means
exactly what it says. Well, almost. Usually it isn't held to apply to the animals that were harmed quite extensively and systematically to produce the make up, food, or prop-meat used during the production.
In the early days of Hollywood, safety procedures were pretty lax, even when concerning actors. It would be a bit of a bore to find someone who looked enough like your leading lady at short notice. But unless you need your
Wild West hero to do some show jumping, there are a dozen bargain-bin nags which you could afford to risk damaging with trip-wires. It was very common for animals to get injured, and no great loss to anyone if they did.
Well trained animals were an exception, incidentally, often getting better treatment than the human actors.
After a while, sensitivities changed, safety improved and it became worth letting people know that the animals you used did not end up getting shot and used to make glue, so the "No animals were harmed" disclaimer is seen in most major works that use animals.
In particular, according to
The Other Wiki
, a scene in the 1939 film
Jesse James, wherein a blindfolded horse was ridden off a cliff to its death, is the direct cause of the founding of the American Humane Association (the trademark holder on the phrase "no animals were harmed"), and the "No animals were harmed" language dates directly to the controversy over that movie.
In a more recent example, in the first Friday the 13th movie, a scene where a camper cuts off the head of a snake is real, the owner and handler of the harmless bull snake was not told and reportedly had to be held back by several crew members upon witnessing the scene
More recently, parodies of the message have become a common
Credits Gag, often citing some other group who were not harmed, or making specific exceptions to the rule.
Compare
No Celebrities Were Harmed,
No Communities Were Harmed,
Our Lawyers Advised This Trope.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Samurai Pizza Cats had the disclaimer "No animals were harmed in the marking of this cartoon" in its closing credits.
Film
Live Action TV
- Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules The Legendary Journeys ended with mythical creatures in the place: "No Centaurs were harmed".
- Over the course of the seasons, the messages got increasingly bizarre, including abstract concepts like "Gabrielle's sense of self-worth".
- Sus' personal favorite: "The concept of linear time was harmed in this episode."
- Bill Nye once claimed "no science guys were harmed in the course of an episode".
- In one Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, one of the characters riffs, "None of the animals harmed, were harmed during the making of this film".
- At the end of the Penn And Teller Bullshit episode on PETA, Penn declares "No animals were harmed in the making of this episode"... then thinks for a moment and lists off the various animal products used during production.
- Common on MythBusters episodes that involve animals. This troper only recalls a formal notice in "Birds on a Truck", but it's mentioned during other animal episodes. Averted when they investigated whether cockroaches would survive a nuclear war — they state at least twice that the insects used were bred for lab work and would have been killed anyway, but they did kill most of their test subjects in that one.
- Played with in the "Demolition Derby Special". The episode ends with an announcement by the narrator that "Automobiles were hurt in the making of this program", over "In Memoriam" clips of each car getting smashed up.
- The announcer also often notes that that Buster, the dummy that serves as a human analogue in many experiments, has a family and humourously warns them to look away at moments of carnage.
- Notably, while the cast avoid killing animals during production, they have no problem with ordering large numbers of previously killed ones from butchers and other livestock supplies. They've even used actual human bones on a few occasions.
- An episode of My Name is Earl had copious turtle-throwing, after Joy lost Darnell's pet, Mr. Turtle. Before the end credits, a turtle told the "crackpot" viewers that no animals were harmed.
- A programme about mishaps happening to animals (I can't remember what it was called) would have the presenter say at the end of it (whilst focusing on a shot of a goat/sheep (can't remember)) "No animals were harmed in the making of this programme". The animal explodes. "Except for this one" adds the presenter.
- Parodied in a recent episode of Time Warp. "Several stuffed animals were harmed in the making of this episode. And to be honest, they had it coming."
- Parodied in Just Shoot Me. The cast helps Finch with a film for film class. They burn a birdhouse that's a substitute for a real house while the bird was still inside.
Maya: "Remember that thing in movies where they say "No animals were harmed in the making of this film? Well..."
- Parodied in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace:
Garth Marenghi: I do not believe that any form of life, be it human, animal, or plant, should be hurt in the making of a television programme. So I personally feel really bad about that cat we killed.
Music
Music Videos
- The Robbie Williams Body Horror-filled music video "Rock DJ" ends with the disclaimer "No Robbies were harmed making this video".
Newspaper Comics
- The comic strip Liberty Meadows parodied this once. The first two panels were of a character tripping and falling on a banana peel, and nothing else. The third and final panel said "No animals were harmed in the making of this comic strip, with the exception of" followed by an extremely long list.
Real Life
- The back of a carton of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream states that no monkeys were harmed in the making of this product, although a few bananas may have been roughed up a little...
Video Games
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Critic: "Celebrity voices were impersonated. No celebrities were harmed in the making of this episode."
Aversions
Film
- Apocalypse Now. That's a real water buffalo getting slaughtered.
- In the movie Old Boy, The main character eats a live octopus, yes a real live octopus. (As a matter of fact as many as four octopi gave their life for that scene.)
- The Inuit film Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) was panned by the American Humane Association because it featured characters cutting up real dead animals and whipping sled dogs. It's worth mentioning, though, that all animals killed for the movie were used in the traditional Inuit way, and no parts were wasted.
- The exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust is infamous for scenes of gratuitous animal death, among other things.
- To make a horse fall down the stairs in Andrei Rublev, the filmmakers shot it in the head. In their defense, they got it from slaughterhouse where it was due to be shot the next day.
- Killer of Sheep. Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- Unto A Good Land features a scene where Karl Oskar and his son are caught in a snow storm, and to keep his son from freezing to death, Karl Oskar kills the ox pulling their wagon, pulls out the insides and places his son inside the dead ox. The crew got a real ox set to be slaughtered and killed it for real on camera.
