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alt title(s): Spoof Moral Toki: Look, the wolves eat him.
Skwisgaar: Yes, Toki. And his body will nourish the wolves.
Toki: I believe the cycle of learning is complete.
Skwisgaar: Indeeds all of us should learns a lesson.
Pickles: Yeah, what lesson might that be?
Skwisgaar: I has no idea, but it is pretty metal that he is being eaten. — Metalocalypse
"Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn."
— Animaniacs
An Aesop is, increasingly, one of the most Subverted Tropes on television — to the point where parodies of them are becoming almost as repetitive as the morals themselves (though to some they will always be better than an actual Aesop). Aesops are too basic a tool to become a Discredited Trope, so new comedies will likely keep on spoofing them.
There are generally five ways to do this:
- Non sequitur morals, which get sillier and sillier.
- Backward morals, where the characters learn the exact opposite of what you'd expect them to.
- Morals that, although apropos and completely true, are extremely unlikely to become relevant again.
- Blatantly lampshaded lack of learning any Aesop despite the perfect set-up.
- A story which is intended to teach a character one certain lesson, but the character discovers that doing the exact opposite of the lesson—often doing something immoral, or sometimes simply something neutral and logical—would avoid any trouble and thus nullifies the lesson.
When adding examples, bear in mind that just because a work is a spoof and has An Aesop, it's not necessarily a Spoof Aesop
See also Broken Aesop. To add these to other works, check out Warp That Aesop.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Speedy Cerviche of Samurai Pizza Cats offered up possibly this troper's favorite Spoof Aesop after a battle: "Whoever said 'Violence never solved anything' wasn't a Pizza Cat!"
- In Bobobobo Bobobo, the titular character spends a great deal of the fight against Halekulani (a money-obsessed villain) trying to convince him that friendship and normal life is more important than money. At the end, he starts saying what the most important thing in the world really is, and just as he knocks out Halekulani, admits that it's money, after all.
- Gintama combines this with Idiosyncratic Episode Naming; each anime episode/manga chapter is usually something like "Stress can lead to baldness, but if you try not to be stressed then that will make you stressed, so there's nothing we can do."
- One episode of Magical Project S opens with Sasami and Ginji driving off a cliffside road into the ocean and getting stranded on an island because the latter fell asleep at the wheel. When Ginji explains to Sasami what happened (in an intentionally labored way), they then enthusiastically jump up in excitement, having learned nothing as they continue their summer vacation.
- Cowboy Bebop has Spike delivering an aesop that, despite not being an average lesson in morality, is probably more applicable to our daily life than any other TV aesop: don't leave food on your fridge for too long, or grossness ensues. Made all the better by how Jet and Faye had, previously, delivered normal Aesops ("Success only comes through hard work" and "You can only trust yourself", respectively); Ed tried, but Ed can't play anything straight.
- Ed: If you see a stranger, follow him.
- It may or may not be intentional, but much of the first-season Gag Dub of Duel Masters implies that in order to win at card games, you gotta have great hair.
- Ninin Ga Shinobuden had "Don't waste food" at the end of episode eleven, which up until that point had nothing to do with the subject and consisted of an (extraordinary inaccurate) retelling of the "Crane Wife" folk tale. Then in the last 2 minutes, everybody falls asleep and Onsokumaru starts sticking oranges on people's faces, only to get chewed out by Kaede's mom. The ninjas comment "Thats the first moral we've had since the show began."
- In the Full Metal Panic novel side story "Cinderella Panic!", it parodies the original fairy tale and gives a sort of backwards moral. Granted, the moral it gave was quite a bit more realistic than the original fairy tale's moral - "Don't always just rely on trying to find a "Prince Charming" who will bring you out of a bad situation, instead use your own strength and find a way out."
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- Douglas Adams did this masterfully in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. While trapped on Earth two million years before the 20th century, Ford pitches a makeshift Scrabble tile into a bush out of frustration. The tile then hits a fox which unbeknownst to Ford later dies in a nearby stream. Later Ford falls in love with someone who then dies suddenly due to drinking water polluted by a dead fox: "The lesson one should draw from this is to never throw the letter Q into a privet bush, but there are unfortunately times when it is unavoidable."
- Aesop's story "The Lion and The Elephant" borders the Broken Aesop realm with its nonsensical Aesop "The elephant is afraid of the mosquito".
- It probably made more sense in the original Greek.
- Isn't the aesop here supposed to be "even small things can cause severe annoyance to big things." Also, there's the simple rule of understanding Greek stories "if you're not sure what's going on, assume that Hubris is involved somehow".
- Or the always reliable "Man, those Greek Gods were '''dicks'''."
- Jane Austen (may her afterlife be one huge party full of clever handsome men) Loved This Trope:
- At the end of Northanger Abbey where the hero of the piece has proposed very much against his father's wishes.
"I leave it to the reader to determine whether it is the point of this story to promote filial disobedience or parental tyranny."
- Pride and Prejudice: What's the secret of living Happily Ever After? Breaking promises, telling secrets, and being deliberately contrary. The Official Couple point this out when they realize they ultimately got engaged because Elizabeth demanded her aunt reveal something Mr. Darcy asked her to keep secret and Lady Catherine added the Forbidden Fruit appeal.
Elizabeth: For what becomes of the moral if our comfort springs from a breach of promise? ...
Darcy: You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us were the means of removing all my doubts.
- Love and Friendship
 has a mock-Anvilicious scene at a dying friend's bedside that delivers the spoof Aesop, "Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint." Mind you, the whole thing is a rather wicked parody of late-18th-century sentimental novels, so all the over-the-top shows of emotion are kind of required.
- Hilaire Belloc's book of poems Cautionary Tales, written in 1907, parodies the little stories with morals that the Victorians loved to tell their children, in which dire consequences would befall any child who broke the slightest rule. The poems include Matilda, Who Told Lies, And Was Burned To Death (a retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf), and Jim, Who Ran Away From His Nurse, And Was Eaten By A Lion.
- Lewis Carroll threw a bunch into a single chapter of Alice in Wonderland, in which the Duchess responds to every piece of news with a moral, ranging from statements which are sensible but irrelevant to complete nonsense.
- Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater contains several folk tales which contain Spoof Aesops of the third type (e.g., "Never bet on an eggplant").
- In the last page of Daniel Pinkwater's Young Adult Novel, several Wild Dada Ducks ask what the story's moral is, and one of them answers that it doesn't have a moral — "it is a Dada story."
- This from Catch-22: Yossarian left his tent in Marrakech one night to fetch a candy bar, and was lured into the bushes by some unknown WAC, and wound up with a dose of the clap. Clevinger once suggested that this should have taught Yossarian the evil of sexual misconduct. "It teaches me the evil of candy," says Yossarian.
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: What valuable lesson in chivalry and virtue does Sir Gawain learn after failing his Secret Test Of Character? "Never trust women." — it really is a Spoof Aesop, not just a case of Values Dissonance. Gawain's short speech, in which he explains that, ever since Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit, women have been leading men into evil, was obviously a shameless attempt to excuse his own failure by blaming someone else. The Spoof Aesop is Older Than Print.
- Edgar Allan Poe's humorous short story "Never Bet The Devil Your Head": Exactly What It Says On The Tin. It expands upon it with the intentionally ridiculous Space Whale Aesop that if you do, he might eventually come to collect.
- In Jonathan Stroud's The Bartimaeus Trilogy, one footnote goes off on a tangent about how after being trapped in a bottle for several decades, he was released by a fisherman. Bartimaeus emerged in suitably spectacular fashion as a lightning bolt throwing giant, and offered the fisherman a wish. Guy dropped dead on the spot of a heart attack. Bartimaeus then says "I know there's a moral in there somewhere, but for the life of me I just can't find it."
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: In the fourth-season episode "Beer Bad," after a cursed batch of beer turns Buffy into a neanderthal, Xander steers us into a Spoof Aesop:
Xander: And was there a lesson in all of this? What have we learned about beer?
Buffy: Foamy!
Xander: Good. Just so that's clear.
- There was a real Aesop to this episode, too (namely, "Beer Bad"), so that the show could apply for funding from the National Office of Drug Control Policy. Though most fans dislike "Beer Bad" for its extreme anviliciousness, the show didn't get the funds because the feds thought that the episode wasn't anvilicious enough.
- An episode of Angel starts out this way, although there was a hidden moral. Cordelia has been impregnated by the monster of the week, and was surprised when her teammates helped her out:
Wes: What did we learn?
Cordelia: Men are evil? No, wait, I knew that. Sex is bad?
Angel: We all knew that.
Cordelia: Okay, fine. I learned that I have two people I can count on absolutely in my life. And that's new.
- In Diffrent Strokes, Arnold gets into a fight with the bullying son of the landlord's brother who is subbing for a short time. This leads to a loud confrontation where the brother confronts Mr. Drummond, threatens to evict the family and provokes Drummond to punch the blowhard out. This gives the landlord the excuse to exploit a lease violation that the brother found to raise the rent on the Drummonds, with a veiled threat of eviction to convince them to give in. The punchline is this: after the Drummonds cave in to this threat, the father tells the kids that this is the result of his act of violence. However, when asked if it was worth it, Mr. Drummond immediately remarks it was, for having the pleasure of shutting a bully up.
- The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air had Will yell at his uncle's political rival, which leads him to have a heart attack. When his funeral comes around, all the mourners turn out to hate him, with most of them showing up to make sure he is actually dead. Will — wracked by guilt — yells at them all for it, saying they should respect the dead. It seems like this will end the scene on An Aesop, but when they ask who he is, he answers "I'm the dude that killed him" to rapturous applause.
- As was mentioned in Berserk Button, the Aesop of The King Of Queens episode "Bun Dummy" is "Save the bun hairstyle for when you're an old lady, and if you're bold enough to wear it as a young lady, don't act like it's the greatest thing that ever happened to you".
- The Bernadette Peters episode of The Muppet Show, Sam the Eagle started reading the famous story of "The Ant and the Grasshopper". However, when winter came in the story, Sam was shocked to learn that the grasshopper drove his sports car to Florida, and the ant got stepped on.
- From a Saturday Night Live parody of the classic "Eye of the Beholder" segment of The Twilight Zone comes this demolition of Rod Serling's usual closing narration:
Serling: So, there you have it. Something that is beautiful to one is not beautiful to another. As this woman learned when she... well... she didn't really learn anything. And neither did we. Frankly, usually I try to have some kind of ironic twist or moral in these things, but... I got nothing this time, because that woman was hot! In the Twilight Zone.
- Another one from a TV Funhouse segment starring Tracy Morgan (later of 30 Rock fame) as Mr. T, complete with mixed metaphors:
Mr. T: Let that be a lesson to all the Gary Burghoffs, Joey Lawrences, Tina Yotherses, and George "Goober" Lindsays! If you believe in yourself, eat all your school, stay in milk, drink your teeth, don't do sleep, and get eight hours of drugs - you can get work!
- Even with its "No hugging, no learning" motto, an episode of Seinfeld does have a Spoof Aesop. In the episode "The Summer of George", George's plan to fulfill his personal goals during that summer (which he declared "The Summer of George", hence the title) go terribly awry. The Spoof Aesop here would seem to be "Never name a season after yourself; it will only end in tragedy".
- The Baywatch spoof Son Of The Beach ended each episode with a Spoof Aesop; usually of the non-sequitur and Broken Aesop varieties.
- On Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Dr. Bashir attempts to get Token Evil Teammate Garak to stop lying by telling him the story of the boy who cried wolf. Garak thinks about it for a minute, then hilariously concludes that the real moral of the story is "Never tell the same lie twice."
- The entire basis of Strangers With Candy was producing "backwards" Aesops.
- "You never really lose your parents, unless of course they die. And then they're gone forever, and nothing can bring them back."
- Weird Al Yankovic did these on his Saturday morning show, prompted by the E/I proposals.
- The fact that he literally learned the same lesson at least 7 times was made fun of in the DVD commentary. He never actually learned the lesson, either.
- From Top Gear, an example even this Yank likes: After the "$1,000 American Car" special, where they travel to the Southeastern United States and purchase a car for no more than $1,000 US in order to complete a few challenges (and after nearly crashing into a river due to bad brakes, getting chased out of a gas station by an angry mob for having such slogans as "Man Love Rules!" and "NASCAR sucks!", and witnessing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina which inspires them to donate their vehicles to local families), they learn a valuable moral lesson: "Don't go to America!"
- Don't forget that a woman who worked for one of the charities they went through to find people to donate the cars to approached them and threatened to sue them because one of the cars was two years older than she had been told it was... even though it was a charitable donation.
- "Every good deed goes unpunished"? "Don't believe the guess of a foreigner, especially one who comes from a country where the year of the car is on the license plates, when he guesses what year the beater he bought instead of renting a car is?"
- The Aesop delivered, seemingly with complete sincerity, at the end of The Twilight Zone episode "Stopover in a Quiet Town" is "Don't drink and drive, or you might get abducted by aliens on the ride."
- In an Adam Sandler comedy sketch, a driver ejects his friends from his car one-by-one as they accidentally reveal that they've each had sexual liaisons with sixty-year-old men. In the end, the driver is killed in a car crash. The moral, we are told, is, "If your friends have fooled around with a sixty-year-old man, do not throw them out of your car. Or you will die."
- At the end of every episode of The Sarah Silverman Program Sarah sits on her bed and discusses the lessons she has learned for the day to her dog. These lessons will always be completely incorrect or will have absolutely nothing to do with the lessons she should have learned. For example, in the episode "Not Without My Daughter", the lesson she should have learned was not to live her life through her children, the lesson she learned was that children are evil, and in "High, It's Sarah" the lesson she should have learned was that pot impairs your judgment and it is not a good idea to act on ideas you have while high, the lesson she learned was "bacon spelled backwards is 'no cab'... which is what black people get!"
- Dinosaurs once ended a Very Special Episode on drugs with one of the characters addressing the audience, telling them that drugs were the leading cause of crappy anti-drug episodes of your favorite TV shows. To paraphrase the end of it, "Put an end to PSA's, don't do drugs."
- The Father Ted episode 'The Old Grey Whistle Theft' centres around the events that transpire when Dougal falls in with a bad influence. After everything is resolved, Ted and Dougal discuss what had happened:
Ted: Dougal, don't put too much faith in people who are 'cool'. Most of the time, they're just on the fast track to a life of crime. Father Lennon will probably end up like that corrupt cardinal in The Godfather 3.
Dougal: Oh, you're right there, Ted.
Ted: So, have you learned something from your experience?
Dougal: ...No.
Newspaper Comics
- Calvin And Hobbes did it twice: after the duplicator incident, Calvin tried to say what lesson they'd learned, but decided "OK, we didn't learn any big lesson." ("Live and don't learn, that's us," quipped Hobbes.) The "moral" of the encounter with Calvin's 'Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons' was the extremely valid and helpful "Snow Goons are bad news." As Calvin noted: "I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification." Another Spoof Aesop appears at the end of the strip where Calvin gets sent to bed after spending all Sunday getting his chores done, following Hobbes's advice that it would give them more time to goof off:
Calvin (angrily): See if I ever listen to you again.
Hobbes (with subtle sarcasm): Never put the low priorities first.
- This◊ Bob the Angry Flower comic featuring wheelchair basketball.
- In Pearls Before Swine, we're treated to this exchange:
Zebra: So, Saint Peter wouldn't allow you into heaven?
Rat: No. He said I was bad.
Zebra: Well, now that you know your actions have consequences, what kind of things are you going to avoid from now on?
Rat: Death.
- The morals Rat gives for his "Angry Bob" stories tend to be absolute non sequiturs.
Radio
- Every episode of The BBC World Service's Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show ended with Austin Tichner asking the other two members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company what they'd learned. In a couple of episodes it was vaguely relevent to the events of the episode, but at no point was immediately useful, or anything to do with Shakespeare.
Adam: I learned people are animals too.
Reed: I learned you can't hug a child with nuclear arms.
Austin: And I learned never to ask Reed and Adam what they learned today.
- A sketch on a Monty Python record parodying fairy tales ends with a character being run over by a bus on his return from his quest to buy a packet of cigarettes for the King, with the end moral proving to be "Smoking is bad for your health."
Theater
Video Games
- From Baldur's Gate 2:
Jan Jansen: Well, there's a lesson in there somewhere, I suppose. Never whip a sick ogre? Never tell someone twice your size to pick something up? Never boss someone around unless you can run faster than they can? Aha! If you're going to hire ogres, give them sick days and benefits or they will kill you. Yes... that about sums it up, I think.
- Which is actually a rather useful Aesop, all things considered.
- In Earthworm Jim 3D, Jim just spent the entire game exploring his four worm brains repairing his sanity, defeating the villains affecting his mind, collecting marbles to rebuild his IQ, and defeat his suppressed feminine side trying to take over his mind and body. Jim's reflection on the whole ordeal:
Jim: I can't believe it's over I had no idea it would be so strange! ...But I think I learned something from all this. Nothing can destroy the Super-Suited worm hero! I am invincible!
- Some of Otacon's misinterpreted proverbs in Metal Gear Solid 2, such as how the concept of original sin means Snake has to take no responsibility for stealing and killing, and how the lack of profit in the fashion industry for pre-ripped jeans shows that no-one should subvert the natural order of things.
- In Psychonauts, Razputin accidentally sets loose the censors in Sasha Nein's brain during Psychic Blast training, and after Raz is forced to seal them away again, the following exchange occurs:
Sasha Nein: Young man, I hope you've learned a lesson here today.
Razputin: Yes I have. That shooting things is fun and useful!
- Spoofed in the same level after Raz defeats the grotesque Mega-Censor.
- At the end of The Secret of Monkey Island, you get to choose one of three spoof Aesops for Guybrush to say: "How to deal with frustration, disappointment, and irritating cynicism," "It's not the size of the ship...", and "Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game." For the curious, here are the reactions:
1.
Elaine: That sounds like something my husband would say.
Guybrush: Yikes!
2.
Elaine: Yes, I've heard that one.
3.
Elaine: A what?
Guybrush: I don't know, I'm not sure why I said that.
- Seanbaby said this about River City Ransom: "If you take one thing away from playing this, let it be that violence is the solution to all your problems. If you hit a gang member hard enough, he will become an honor student, and if you hit an honors student hard enough, he will give you his lunch money. This best goddamn game ever made!"
- Even funnier is the fact that, although not verbally stated, this is a pretty accurate summary not only of RCR's plot, in both the Japanese and English versions, but also of every Kunio-Kun game ever.
Webcomics
- 8-Bit Theater frequently uses the joke that Character Development cannot and will not happen to the main characters of the comic (who are the only ones smart enough to learn anything anyway), and much of the humor deals with them missing out on/ignoring/or sometimes straight avoiding Aesops and opportunities for growth.
- Several times, Black Mage has learned a valuable Aesop - such as that a path of violence and hatred will only cause himself suffering, or that use of evil spells will alienate White Mage from him - but they just can't stick to his teflon soul and one knife-worthy comment from Fighter and he's all but forgotten they ever existed.
- The Sluggy Freelance arc "Cannibals Anonymous," in which the cast forces Aylee to overcome her addiction to eating humans, concludes with Torg announcing that he was wrong to force Aylee to be someone she wasn't, and to make it up, he'd like her to eat all the cannibals holding him hostage. The aftermath prompts the following Aesops:
Percy the Mammoth: I've learned that I can be friends, even with people different from me.
Aylee: And I've learned that true friendship is worth more than eating even the tastiest human.
Torg: I've learned that I need to appreciate you more. I've been taking your friendship for granted when I should have listened with my heart.
Riff: And I learned it's OK to eat people if they're the bad guys.
- Also done in this strip. The Aesop's actually a decent one, but it's too much of a Space Whale Aesop to take seriously.
- From The Wotch ( http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2007-04-23 ) "Now Jennie, what did we learn again?" "That it's never okay to drop bowling balls on people's heads unless they are evil wizards hurting your friends."
- From Stickman And Cube: "Don't think too much or you'll disappear into nothingness. Especially if you're a cube."
- At the end of every issue, Dr Mcninja struggles to find an Aesop except the 5th. Or the 1st ever.
- In Gunnerkrigg Court, chapter 15, Antimony and Kat see that Red has become estranged from her friend, Blue; they blame her acerbic personality, but Red blames her hair. Annie and Kat humor her by taking her to get a haircut, but they also tell Red that it will take more than new hair to win her friend back. Then the new haircut does win Blue back. So the real lesson is that fairies are capricious and weird.Or alternatively, "No one is to happy to wang (throw) tomatoes".
Tom Siddell: Kids! Guys in forests are always willing to help!
- Another one in this strip: "Never let sixty angry kids use a herd of laser cows to take over your house."
- El Goonish Shive: Read or the owl will eat you.
- Commissioned teaches us an important lesson about donuts and arm pimples here: [1].
- This Order Of The Stick strip. "See what we learned today, Mr. Scruffy. Solve a mans problems with violence, help him for a day. Teach a man to solve his problems with violence, you help him for the rest of his life."
- Technically, the "Fish" version is a subset of that one.
- Just moments earlier, Belkar learned that his sociopathic nature was going to get him killed off. The conclusion his mentor (or hallucination; it's never made clear) drives him to is that he needs to FAKE character development.
- Belkar did this stuff pretty much from the beginning like this strip. When he quit from the Banjoist church, he says "I got into it strictly to injure Roy[...] but I've learned a valuable lesson: the power to inflict bodily harm was always mine. I just needed to use it more often...like so" and he throws one of his knives at Roy.
- Also this strip. Roy's lesson learned after jumping on an undead dragon and then falling to his death from it? "I learned to do it where the ground is softer."
- When Keira Knightley shows Rayne of Least I Could Do his future, this is the lesson he says he learns.
- Except that's actually a valid lesson, considering his future. In the present, he acts like an ass to everyone he meets, including his friends and the girls he goes out with, and in the future, he's rich, well loved, respected, and happy. That being an asshole has no consequences for him, and will, in fact, make his every dream come true, is a perfectly valid conclusion to reach.
Western Animation
- In American Dad, Stan's realization of his dream, becoming his boss Avery Bullock's Number Two, results in his unreasonably imposing on, and neglecting, Francine. Every time she tells him he must finally say "no" to Bullock, Stan immediately breaks his promise. When he finally "gets" the "stand up for yourself" Aesop, it's at the worst possible moment, when Bullock is shot and tells him to call for help. Stan ignores him and walks away even after Francine assures him it's okay to say "yes" this one time.
- In American Dragon Jake Long, at the end of the episode "Siren Says," the main characters try to figure out an Aesop but can't. For instance, they start out thinking that it's that old chestnut "don't be prejudiced for the beautiful and against the less attractive...except that lesson would be rather inappropriate since the beautiful girl was innocent and the less attractive girl was the evil Siren.
- Many episodes of Animaniacs ended with the Warners getting a random lesson for the day from the "Wheel of Morality". In a great gag, one of the spots reads "Bankrupt", making it both a parody of "Wheel of Fortune" and of the phrase "morally bankrupt". There's also a prize space, which they actually hit at one point.
- An example not coming from the Wheel of Morality bits came from the show's Power Rangers parody "Super Strong Warner Siblings", with Yakko, Wakko, and Dot as pseudo-Power Rangers fighting off bug monsters and the like. At the end of the short, the Warners show up to deliver the moral of the story...
Yakko: Hey, kids! Remember: Playing with giant bugs isn't cool! If someone wants you to play with a giant bug, just say "No, thanks!"
- One episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force had Frylock spending the entire episode saying too much TV was bad for you. In the end, however, he purchases a brand new television set for the house, which leads to this exchange:
Meatwad: I thought you said TV was bad for you.
Frylock: Oh, it is...but we ***ing need it!
- Avatar The Last Airbender: In the first-season episode "The Waterbending Scroll," Katara shoplifts a valuable scroll of waterbending techniques from pirates, which brings down both the pirates and the Fire Nation on their heads. At the end of the episode, Sokka reveals that he had the presumed-lost scroll, and demands, "First, what did you learn?" Katara says, contritely, "Stealing is wrong." Then, snatching the scroll from Sokka, she adds, "Unless it's from pirates!" (This was Katara's original justification for stealing — that the scroll was stolen by the pirates in the first place, and theft from a thief isn't really theft.)
- "The Fortuneteller" would have probably had the actual Aesop of Screw Destiny/don't rely heavily on another person, but as one the villagers pointed out, all of Aunt Wu's predictions did come true.
- "The Cave of Two Lovers" features a group of pseudo-hippies who repeatedly tell Sokka that he needs to focus less on the destination and more on the journey, and other such platitudes. At the end of the episode, the leader, Chong, delivers an Aesop-style summation and tells Sokka he hopes he's learned something. Sokka is no more impressed than he was at the start of the episode.
- The Brak Show was fond of nonsensical morals delivered by the title character.
- Brak's spoof Aesops don't hold a candle to his father's:
Brak's Dad: "Brak, remember that even though a man may have more hairs on his head that there are stars in the sky, that does not mean that he can plan a sucessful party that movie stars will attend and enjoy... responsibly."
- Clone High ends several episodes with these.
"Maybe littering is good— in moderation."
- Lampshaded by Danny Phantom: "Ghost attacks, we exchange witty banter, I kick ghost butt, then we all go home having learned a valuable lesson about honesty or some such nonsense."
- Drawn Together has a number of these. An example is at the end of the Indian casino episode, where Captain Hero preaches the moral of the story; that it was wrong for him to let innocent people die so he could make some money. Instead he preaches that although white people slaughtered the Indians and took their land, they shouldn't be allowed to have casinos because casinos bring out the worst in weak minded white people. He concludes his speech by yelling, "U.S.A.!" repeatedly while the crowd cheers along in a spoof of the film Rocky IV.
- Another one is when Clara learns that it's bad to keep your roommate sick by force feeding him an entire bottle of drain cleaner... because then if the sink gets clogged, you'll have no way to unclog it.
- Family Guy did the fourth variety at least once:
Lois: Well Peter, I guess you learned a very important lesson.
Peter: Nope!
- Family Guy also had the policeman paralyze himself again in order to please his wife and friends. He'd been spending too much time at the beach jet skiing.
- Another episode had Stewie finish a time reversal device just as Peter learned a valuable lesson about not taking Lois for granted, thus eradicating the whole ordeal from existence. It takes him a near-death experience to relearn that one.
- One episode went so far as to have a chain of politically incorrect outbursts followed by a Spoof Aesop and the iconic "The More You Know" logo. Except the last one.
- Garfield And Friends:
- In the episode "Once Upon A Time Warp", Roy is convinced that he should pay Wade the $5 owed him by a rocket that homes in on the pilot's debtors. When the rocket disappears, Roy takes the money back, but then Orson finds his book of prehistoric monsters:
ORSON: As you can see, kids, there's a lesson to be learned from this story.
ROY: Yeah. You don't repay money you owe, a dinosaur squishes your head.
ORSON: That's pretty much it.
- In one episode, Jon, Garfield and Odie go to Doc Boy's farm. Doc is proud of running an efficient operation, and to Garfield's horror he has no TV, because he thinks that would make things inefficient. While he's away, Garfield signs the farm up for cable. Now at this point the most likely moral would be "Doc learns that, in moderation, TV is okay" (or possibly "Garfield learns it's wrong to sign other people up for things they'll be expected to pay for without asking them"). Instead, this being Mark Evanier, we get "Doc Boy learns watching TV does indeed make farm animals lazy and inefficient, but that's okay because you can win Big Cash Prizes, and not need to work."
- In The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, Billy's fear of clowns eventually leads to him having a mental breakdown, where he gets some advice from his "Inner Frat Boy."
Inner Frat Boy: Aw, clowns aren't scary, Billy. They're just different. And just because someone looks different than you, or thinks differently than you, doesn't mean you should be afraid of them. It means you should be angry at them! How dare they be different! What, my way of life's not good enough for them?
Billy: So you're saying I should beat them up?
Inner Frat Boy: Billy, fighting outside of a hockey rink is wrong. But I'm imaginary, so do what you gotta do.
- Also, "Don't be afraid of failure. It's what keeps families together!"
- Kim Possible has done this occasionally:
Shego: What have we learned?
Drakken [reluctantly]: No clones.
Shego: Get in the car.
Ron: Normally I'd say we learned that suspicion and paranoia is bad, except that's what saved us.
Kim: Well, maybe we learned that... oh, I don't know.
Bonnie: I didn't learn anything.
Ron: That's it! Looking at you two, it's so clear!
Kim and Bonnie: What is so clear?
Ron: If you two had set aside your differences earlier, one of you could have won that Spirit Stick. That's the lesson here!
Bonnie: How about, "Cheer camp stinks"?
Kim: Yeah, agreed.
Ron: Works for me.
- On most episodes of Moral Orel, Orel is given a Spoof Aesop, but sometimes the Aesops are only Spoofs in comparison to the wrongdoings that go unaesoped. For example, An Aesop about not playing favorites with your friends in an episode where Orel blindly follows his delinquent friend into vandalizing cars and beating up little kids, or the episode where Orel is chided for his crack addition because crack is a gateway to (*gasp*) SLANG.
- In a Ned's Newt episode, Ned (a kid) and his Newt build a gigantic corporation by acquisitions and then let it collapse in on itself when they tire of it. As Ned enters his house:
DAD: I hope you've learned your lesson from this.
NED: I sure have Dad. Never buy a company on leveraged credit.
- Something of a subversion of the trope as the moral is actually sound for a lot of people, just not 8 year old kids and the target audience of their cartoons.
- So 8 year old kids should buy companies on everaged credit?
- The Simpsons frequently makes use of spoof Aesops. One memorable instance occurs at the conclusion of an episode where Lisa has persuaded Bill Clinton to issue an executive order overturning the results of an elementary school band competition;
Clinton: If something doesn't go right, just complain until you get what you want.
Marge: That's a pretty lousy lesson.
Clinton: Well, I'm a pretty lousy president.
- Another Simpsons example, from the episode "Blood Feud":
Marge: The moral of this story is a good deed is its own reward.
Bart: Hey, we got a reward. The head is cool. (referring to a large stone head they were given as a gift)
Marge: Well then... I guess the moral is no good deed goes unrewarded.
Homer: Wait a minute. If I hadn't written that nasty letter, we wouldn't have gotten anything.
Marge: Well... then I guess the moral is the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.
Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Marge: But it certainly was a memorable few days.
Homer: Amen to that!
- "The Old Man and the Lisa" had a particularly disturbing twist on the traditional Green Aesop. Lisa spends the episode teaching Mr. Burns about recycling and conservation. Burns takes the lesson to heart ... so he kills all of Springfield's marine life to create a meat slurry "made out of 100% recycled animals."
- Homer Simpson, when trying to give advice to his children, is an endless source of these.
Homer: Well, kids, you both tried your best and you both failed miserably. The moral is, never try.
Homer: If something's hard to do, it's probably not worth doing!
- "Homer Bad Man" has the classic fourth type:
Marge: Hasn't this experience taught you you can't believe everything you hear?
Homer: Marge, my friend...I haven't learned a thing.
- The backwards moral was common on South Park, with such gems as "don't vote — it makes no difference" (from "Turd and Douche"), and "stop the rain forest before it's too late" (from "Rainforest Schmainforest"). Also, many earlier episodes in the series ended with Stan or Kyle stepping forward to announce, "You know, I learned something today..." while the music swells and the ensuing monologue leads inexorably to yet another cruel spoof of the clichéd cheesy Aesop one would expect in such a situation. They, however, tend to be more serious in later episodes.
- The Toilet Paper episode ends with Cartman setting up the moral, but only manages to say, "Sometimes you..." before Kyle interrupts and claims that he learned nothing.
- In the ending of "The Snuke," Kyle points out to Cartman that his fear of Muslims was misplaced. Cartman then replies that if he weren't a racist, he wouldn't have discovered the real terrorist plot so "Bigotry and intolerance saved the day!"
- Done in every episode of the short-lived cartoon Spacecats. In an unfortunate irony, the first such lesson was "Don't watch cartoons. They will rot your brain." The cartoon aired on NBC the year the network decided to replace its Saturday morning cartoon lineup with an expanded morning news show.
- In the Trapped In TV Land episode of Teen Titans (Control Freak gets into the television and starts hypnotizing the viewers, so they have to go in there and stop him), at the end of the episode we're treated to this exchange not unlike The Simpsons', above:
Robin: So, I guess it is bad to watch too much TV.
Starfire: But, we were only victorious because Beast Boy watches too much the television.
Raven: So, I guess there really is no lesson.
Cyborg: Yep, it was all completely meaningless.
- "The moral of this story? Never make a deal with an interdimensional demon without a little protection." Something we should all take to heart.
- A classic example from The Tick:
Tick: You know, though today was the worst day of my life, I learned many things. First, the world looks a lot different when you're six inches tall and covered with feathers. Second, two heads are definitely not better than one. And finally, you can lay an egg and still feel like a man.
- The direct-to-video Tiny Toon Adventures special How I Spent My Summer Vacation featured the following Credits Gag:
Moral of the Story (Pick One): 1) Enjoy Your Vacation 2) Relish Your Youth 3) Don't Pick Up Chainsaw-Wielding Hitchhikers 4) Feature Length Movies Should Not Have 18 Different Plots.
- The Two Stupid Dogs episode "Family Values", a parody of The Brady Bunch, had a lot of this trope. Every time some random mishap would happen (like getting a finger set on fire), the mother would ask the kids what they learned from all of it. The children would respond with such morals (irrelevant within the episode, but taken from actual Brady Bunch episodes) as "I learned not to get hit in the face with a football!" or "I learned that Jesse James is not a good role model."
- Examples of the non-sequitur(or Incredibly Lame Pun) moral can be found in every episode of Aesop and Son, one of the recurring cartoons on Rocky And Bullwinkle. In each story, Aesop would illustrate a standard proverb with a fable, and his son would reply with an alternate, punnish moral based on the events of the story, such as "A chain is as strong as its weakest mink", or "Absinth makes the heart grow fonder."
Fanfiction
- Crack Shots by yonwords is a story Wes Janson is telling to the Wraiths, after which he tells them that he just gave them valuable insight about their commander. They think he picked the story to illustrate that Wedge Antilles has survivor's guilt and holds himself aloof from people he thinks will die on him.
Wes shook his head. “No, I told that story so you’d all know better than to try to out-drink Wedge. It’s a mistake I’ve watched countless people make.” He paused and gave them one of his most serious looks. He was a little out of practice but doubted they’d notice. “Even the most mild-mannered Corellian holds his liquor better than the rest of us. Remember that.”
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