Parents, just because it is an animated film doesn't always mean it's for kids, as many of these examples contain sexual content, violence, swearing, and themes that would confuse or bore your kids.
- 9: Despite the dark tone of the advertisements, some of which explicitly state it's not for kids, many parents took their kids to see it anyway. Most of the younger ones were in tears by the middle of the film. And to top it off, the official trailers heavily alluded to the deaths of several characters, one of whom dies screaming in terror right before having his soul sucked out. Yet parents still took their kids to see it and then complained about the dark material.
- AKIRA: First released in an English dub in the late 1980s, it managed to break Japan out of the Animation Age Ghetto in American eyes, containing a lot of violence (including a few exploding heads, people being smashed, and blown into gibs), a near rape scene and a few utterly disturbing sequences.
- Don't let the title of Animal Farm (1954), along with its Disneyesque animation, cute animals and PG rating fool you; it's very violent with many animal deaths depicted, both on– and offscreen. The trailer marketed it to kids, calling it "a film that any child can enjoy" and emphasizing the funnier scenes. It also does not help that like Watership Down, it was rated U by the British Board of Film Classification in its native country (United Kingdom).
- Antz is considered to be one of the most mature movies DreamWorks has made. While it's rated PG, it's a much harder PG than, say, Shrek — a couple of "damns" wouldn't shock most people, but the humor is more in line with Woody Allen's other, more clearly adult-aimed work ("You know, I was gonna let you become part of my most erotic fantasies..."). And then there's the violence. Not helping is that the vast majority of merchandise is aimed at children.
- In some countries, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America was marketed to kids. It was even rated G in Quebec!note
- Bird Boy: The Forgotten Children at first glance looks like an innocent children's film judging by the cast of cute Funny Animals and an art style that wouldn't look out of place on a children's book. But beyond that is Nightmare Fuel that even adults would find legitimately disturbing, Family-Unfriendly Violence and death, profanity, drug use, implied themes of mental illness and the fact that the setting is a Crapsack World that sets an overall bleak tone. Definitely not for children.
- Beowulf (2007): Yet another movie marketed as another summer action-y film along the lines of what would soon become dominated by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Apparently, terrified children were taken to see it.
- The Breadwinner, despite being from the creators of The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers, is a very serious and mature film about life in Afghanistan. Violence towards women is shown, an 11-year-old girl is whipped by an adult man for dressing inappropriately, a woman is beaten and later shown with a black eye, a girl falls on the ground and her nose starts bleeding, a man tries to shoot two children with a gun, the same 11-year-old girl's father is taken to prison and is implied to have been beaten, a boy says his father was killed by the Russians, a man threatens to kill a child, and a war that starts with gunfire.
- The DC Universe Animated Original Movies are made strictly for a grown up audience, with many of these movies pushing the PG-13 rating to its limit and in some cases, go straight to R. The films feature intense, often graphic violence, surprisingly common swearing and ramped-up sensuality. Despite this, some parents think that because it's animated and they're superhero movies, that they must be in line with the more kid-friendly DC Animated Universe (which itself could get pretty damn dark), and thus perfectly acceptable for kids.
- Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles particularly stands out because it also features, well, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are currently owned by Nickelodeon, which, through their Nicktoons channel, aired during Thanksgiving 2019. It is most definitely not for the kids most versions are aimed at, but rather the 35+ year olds who grew up with the franchise in the 80's. It's tone and violence level are closer to the Eastman and Laird comics than any previous animated incarnation.
- Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights: Yes, it's an animated wacky holiday musical, but it's a hard PG-13, rife with Toilet Humour. Despite the rating, however, the film on YouTube — yes, the official rental/purchase — still got flagged as "made for kids" by COPPA in early 2020, just for being an animated film.
- Felidae is an animated film about cute little cats solving a mystery, right? Yes, and along the way we see graphic disembowelment (in one case involving a pregnant female), a cat with her head torn clean off, sex scenes, alcoholism, profanity, truly horrific animal abuse (involving a cat's skin getting burned off with acid), a suicide cult, a highly disturbing nightmare sequence involving rotting, screaming cat corpses being used as puppets, and at one point, full-frontal human nudity (female and male). That's an impressive list for a film about animated cats.
- Fritz the Cat may look like a kids movie due to the fact that it was an animated cartoon about an anthropomorphic feline, however, he's X-rated and clips on YouTube are age-restricted but were later marked as "made for kids" by COPPA. Thankfully, the markings were eventually undone.
- Those picking up Grave of the Fireflies thinking it to be cheery Ghibli fare are treated to maggot-infested corpses and children dying of starvation. It is occasionally placed in the kids' section, and yes, it was originally made as a double feature with My Neighbor Totoro, but the entire film can be summarized with From Bad to Worse. Not to mention that some DVD prints of it say "Suitable for ages 3+" on the back cover. You'd think the word "grave" would be enough of a hint, though. It's even more so in the recent releases because it has a TV-PG rating. Even worse, the German release was rated 6 and up.
- The Haunted World of El Superbeasto: Despite its animation style and cartoony slapstick, it's definitely adults-only.
- Hell and Back (2015): Since it's stop-motion animation similar in style to The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions, it must be okay for kids, right? Wrong. The word "Hell" in the title alone should be an indication. In fact, it's a very dark film about two friends who are sent to Hell via a carnival ride. On top of that, there's tons of disturbing imagery, plenty of crude sex jokes and near nonstop swearing, and it's from the writer of the equally kid-unfriendly Robot Chicken.
- Immigrants is a film made by a company who made a lot of Nicktoons, so it should be great for our kids to watch, right? It isn't - it was originally going to be a series, to air on Spike TV (who at the time had a block of adult-oriented cartoons), but the show was scrapped and turned into a Compilation Movie.
- Isle of Dogs has animated dogs being sent to an island of trash that a guy wants to blow up, a picture of a boy chopping off a man's head, a dog biting off another's ear, numerous injuries to dogs including some very nightmarish scenes, mild swearing, and a story that may only make sense to older viewers.
- The Australian-made claymation film Mary and Max deals with a fair amount of mature themes such as prostitution, suicide and alcoholism, and also has brief nudity and references to sex. Despite this, almost every Canadian province classified a G rating (Alberta rated it 14A), and, in Australia, a PG rating. By comparison, Singapore, who actually likely watched the film, gave it a PG-16. The animation style is very cartoony and cute, and one of the protagonists is a child, which doesn't help. There's also a bit of full-frontal nudity of the overweight/obese Max in an Imagine Spot.
- Ghibli's Princess Mononoke has a very long Nightmare Fuel page, and for very good reason. Decapitations, dismemberment, The Corruption, hollow skins that slither at great speed and swarm the boar god, one of the main characters being absorbed by a demon as The Corruption spreads to her and she screams... all in the beautiful Ghibli animation style. This is likely because of the word Princess in the title and having talking animals like wolves (even then a Prince is instead the protagonist).
- The National Film Board of Canada has helped produce an amazing array of creative and revolutionary films, especially animated shorts. Some of them are beloved classics that are great for kids, like "The Log-Driver's Waltz" and "The Hockey Sweater"; others are more adult, either in the sense of having narratives that are boring to children, being experimental and arty, containing flat-out inappropriate material, or some combination of the three. One of the most famous NFB shorts is The Big Snit, which features a couple arguing over a Scrabble game and culminates in a thermonuclear detonation, for example. However, it's not unheard-of for educators and parents to assume that anything NFB must be G-rated and child-appropriate. Please don't just leave your kids in the care of a DVD of Richard Condie animations because he did The Cat Came Back.
- Rock and Rule: Despite being made by Nelvana (a company known for more kid-friendly shows such as the Care Bears and Franklin) and rated PG in the United States,note it isn't a kids' movie as it features scenes of drug use, sexual content, slight profanity, and implied Satanism. The film is aimed at young teens at the most; however, a lot of this is pretty mild.
- Similar to Terkel in Trouble (mentioned below), Ronal the Barbarian resembles something out of Pixar, yet is filled to the brim with vulgarity, gore and sex jokes. It's pretty obvious from Ronal's crotch bulge on the poster alone that the tagline "For the whole family!" is a sarcastic joke.
- Sausage Party:
- It looks similar to Toy Story with food that talk, and they are going to someone's home to have a party. But a few trailers or clips on YouTube should indicate that it's anything but child-friendly. When they get home, the potato gets peeled with a slight Jump Scare and drops an F-bomb, and it only goes From Bad to Worse from there. There is a violent homage to Saving Private Ryan, the woman eats cute baby carrots, there is tons and tons of swearing, and at the end, everyone has sex.
- In Sweden, it's rated 11+, despite the heavy cursing, the food getting tortured in shocking ways, and the massive orgy at the end. Similarly, in Norway, it received a 12+.note
- Similarly, in France, it is rated -12note . Several Moral Guardians tried to raise the rating to -16, -18 or even to ban the movie altogether, since they believe it promotes group sex for children. A French court upheld the -12 rating, not even feeling the need for an extra warning as some stronger -12 films have carried.
- A multiplex in California accidentally showed the red band trailer to moviegoers waiting to see Finding Dory.
- This commercial had a warning about the film being rated R twice in the ad and the rest of the commercials even had to slap a red stamp of the R rating for the film's release date and title.
- They are now selling plush toys of the characters. To make matters worse, the toys are recommended for people as young as 0 months. However, age recommendations on toys are generally for safety purposes rather than content warning.
- As a real-life Take That! towards the above, the filmmakers have also released a Sausage Party Coloring and Activity Book seemingly just for laughs. It does include the warning "Adults Only — Not For Sale For Minors" on its cover and includes various "fun" activities such as colouring the food orgy scene in the ending and a word search puzzle consisting entirely of "FUCK" and "FUCKING".
- The Simpsons Movie, similarly to its series, was also assumed to be for all ages (it's for older kids and up). It was even rated U in Malaysia and Japan despite the language, violence and nudity (of Bart skateboarding naked with a brief genitalia shot); this, combined with the vast amounts of more teen-adult humor, was apparently shrugged off as subtle adult humor.
- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: The creators knew that young people might sneak into the movie (and many did), so In-Universe, they showed the boys going to see "Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire," which is rated R.
- The Danish film Terkel I Knibe (Terkel in Trouble) actually won an award in Denmark for "Best Kids and Family Film," and its DVD cover even proclaims it to be "The family film of the year."note However, a few clips on YouTube should indicate that it is anything but: there's a lot of black comedy and sexual references, a crazy uncle who swears and beats children who tried to steal his liquor, lots of swearing, an awfully cruel song about a poor starving kid in Thailand who sniffs glue to dull his hunger pains, a girl who takes her own life because of unrequited love, and the fact that the entire plot is about someone trying to kill Terkel, the main character. It was rated 11 in Denmark, but 15 in the UK— an example of Values Dissonance, as very dark, cynical comedy (a la Louie) is much more culturally accepted in Denmark than the UK.
- Watership Down: It's an animated film about rabbits, so the British Board of Film Classification rated it U, which is the lowest rating. It contains a rabbit nearly dying in a wire snare, rabbits being mutilated by other rabbits, and a dog tearing rabbits apart.
- When the Wind Blows has an art style that wouldn't look out of place in a children's book and stars a friendly old couple. It's actually about said couple trying to survive a nuclear war.
- The misconception of Wizards being made for children comes from its PG ratingnote as well as Ralph Bakshi himself referring to it as such; despite its copious amounts of violence and the well-endowed Eleanor in what looks like a Vegas showgirl outfit. Bakshi clarified in 2012 that when he called the movie a "kids film," he was really inferring to *older* kids aged 13 and up, not actual children. This is also reflected in the film's previously mentioned rating in America, as receiving a PG rating in the 70s was the equivalent of receiving a PG-13 today— at the time, the PG-13 rating didn't even exist. So while the film certainly isn't for small children, it's much more kid-friendly than Fritz the Cat or Coonskin. Even This Very Wiki made this mistake because, at one point, this film was cataloged under What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? despite it not being a children's film.
