Not all animation on the web is for kids.
- asdfmovie is popular among older children, thanks to its minimalistic cartoon art style and Surreal Humor. The Just Dance series, which has a reputation for being dubiously kid-friendly, lists its song "Beep Beep I'm a Sheep" as an available song in Kids Mode, although the song is squeaky clean itself. However, there are lots of Black Comedy sketches with red animated blood and some Suicide as Comedy. There are also some LGBT jokes (including ones centered around homophobia), a couple of references to sex and infidelity, and, in earlier sketches, mild profanity. The official Board Game Muffin Time is rated 12+, and asdfmovie14 begins with a Content Warning declaring that the video contains gore, violence, and death, and is recommended for ages 12 and up and not intended for children; however, asdfmovie14 is also sponsored by kid-friendly game Monster Legends, and the Mine Turtle from asdfmovie is available as a Guest Fighter in said game.
- Bee and Puppycat airs on Frederator Studios' Cartoon Hangover, which is an outlet for adult animation, and despite the pretty colors, adorable art style, and perky protagonist, Bee and Puppycat isn't targeted towards kids. It is relatively downplayed in that there isn't really much in the show that's objectionable in the first place (especially compared to sister show Bravest Warriors, mentioned below)—with really the only glaring "naughty" stuff present being some mild language, occasional innuendos, and a brief splash of blood in the final episode. The show is, for the most part, perfectly safe for kids to watch, but the recurring theme of settling into adulthood will resonate more seriously with the target teenage or young adult demographic, as will the main premise of the protagonists doing bizarre temp jobs as they struggle to pay their bills. Its sequel series Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space is mildly more inappropriate (complete with a dead body) but still censors out any language worse than "ass" (including the visual depiction of a character Flipping the Bird).
- Bravest Warriors: Kids may be drawn by the similar style of animation to Adventure Time (not to mention, it was created by the same person) and absolute cuteness of Catbug (or the fact that he's voiced by a six-year-old). Parents may not be so happy to have their kids watching a guy whose catchphrase is "Up yours!", a bear who describes a stick as "jive-ass", and a very hormonal teenage crew. It does not help that the comic series by KaBOOM! Comics and several books are actually kid-friendly.
- Parody videos by Cas van de Pol are often automatically detected as kid-friendly by YouTube because they're based on kid-friendly properties (Disney and DreamWorks films mostly) and get demonetized for including content inappropriate for kids such as gore and strong language, despite Cas including disclaimers clearly stating they're not for kids.
- Eddsworld may look like a kids' cartoon, complete with simplistic art and character design, but there's mild language, animated blood, and even nudity. Yeah, no wonder it has a T rating on Newgrounds.
- Buzzfeed's The Good Advice Cupcake is a Sugar Bowl webseries about an adorable cupcake who gives good advice. Note the advice is meant for young adults and the cupcake swears a lot (though partially censored).
- Happy Tree Friends: Always starts out innocent and cute, with colorful Woodland Creatures doing cutesy stuff. And then the bloodbath begins. Even YouTube got fooled by the series' cute appearance; when the site started using the TV Parental Guidelines, Happy Tree Friends was initially given a TV-Y rating, meaning it's allegedly suitable for even the youngest of children. The special episode made for YouTube to give awareness about its copyright policy, "YouTube Copyright School", is one of the few episodes actually alright for kids... trouble is, pretty much the entire seriesnote is on the site, gore and all. At least it seems that they didn't do the same to the spinoff Ka-Pow!, where we see Flippy's past, among other things.
- The original Making Fiends cartoons have shades of this. Ironically the series made it onto a Nickelodeon network, though even then it was dark compared to the others.
- To a greater extent, Amy Winfrey's other work, Big Bunny. It has pets getting eaten, a zombie bluebird eating a girl's eyeball as she watches and inaudibly screams in horror, a squirrel hosting a Nasty Party and turning the remains of the victims into pies, use of the words "hell" and "bastard" (although in the literal sense), and a man getting his hand bit off by his left pocket. All with blood. Who knows how Making Fiends would have ended up if Nickelodeon hadn't stepped in at the middle of its first season.
- Hazbin Hotel can look endearing to children for its lively cartoon-style animation, cute animal-like characters, musical numbers (some of the songs are even composed by Parry Gripp, who is known for his kid-friendly music), and immense popularity on the Internet, but unsurprisingly for a series focusing on sinning demons in Hell, it is mature, with frequent strong profanity, sex jokes, horrific violent acts (including rape), and constant usage of alcohol and drugs. Many of the clips have a "NOT FOR KIDS" label and disclaimer to deter children from viewing them, yet there are many who love the series. The spinoff Helluva Boss is even more so, carrying the same cutesy charm but manages to be more mature.
- When its premiere on Amazon was announced, there were several complaints from conservative Christians about
the fact that an "obviously Satanist cartoon that mocked Christianity" was intended for children.
- When its premiere on Amazon was announced, there were several complaints from conservative Christians about
- Homestar Runner is a more mild example: the artstyle is cute and bubbly, and the content is entirely family-friendly (the worst language the characters use is either PG-rated swears like "crap" or unusual euphemisms like "sweet genius!"). The target demographic is people college-age and older, as evidenced by humor based entirely around obscure wordplay, nostalgic references to '80s pop culture, and other jokes kids are unlikely to understand, like jabs at white-collar jobs and college radio. The series was still popular with children in its heyday, perhaps because the surrealism is only enhanced if you don't understand what they're saying. Regardless, this is exemplified by how the first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is rated "T" for teen by the ESRB, while the other four are "E10+" for ages ten and up. Worth noting is that the series began with an actual children's book, albeit an intentional parody of such.
- Almost anything made by Rooster Teeth. Being a group of gamers who enjoy copious amounts of drinking and swear like sailors, it bleeds into their other work, such as Achievement Hunter, Red vs. Blue and the like. Since it disturbs them to see younger fans enjoying these sorts of works, they try to draw them to some of their gentler works such as Game Kids.
- RWBY created confusion when it first came out because it initially seemed like a kid-friendly show. In Volume 3, the company issued a warning to adult viewers of the show to begin vetting the episodes before letting children watch. This is because the plot kicked off in earnest in that volume, beginning the show's increasingly Darker and Edgier storyline (which eventually includes on-screen torture in Volume 8). After Volume 3, RWBY Chibi began as a comedic parody of the show that remains kid-friendly.
- Camp Camp is set in a summer camp, and the main characters are kids, so it sounds like it would fit well in any kids' network... if not for the main character saying "fuck", not one minute into the first episode. Things get more family-unfriendly from there.
- gen:LOCK was clearly aimed at older audiences between the graphic violence, dark humor, profane language, and complex thematic elements, even making its way onto [adult swim]. And yet Season 2, made out of RT's hands on HBO Max, revealed a surprising number of parents who watched the show with their young children, until the season's Hotter and Sexier scenes made that ill-advised.
- DSBT InsaniT: Despite its simplistic style, it's definitely something kids shouldn't watch, mainly due to the adult language. This is even brought up in 'VRcade'. The same goes for Dreamscape.
- How It Should Have Ended may appear to be a funny cartoon portraying alternate endings of movies and TV shows, including some that kids love, but don't let that fool you. This series sometimes has cursing, violence (in their The Wizard of Oz parody, the witch is shot with a gun) and pop culture jokes that kids wouldn't understand (for example, Bing Bong singing a parody of a song from an R-rated movie in their Inside Out parody.)
- The Inside Out, Wizard of Oz, Toy Story 3 and The Phantom Menace episodes were once playable on the YouTube Kids app until they were removed after an investigation of the app by a parents' group, quite possibly due to a mix-up with the main channel and the HISHE Kids subchannel. An episode by the creators of the show is also included on a DVD of The LEGO Movie, a film targeted at children, which might fool the target audience into thinking that the rest of the show might be appropriate for them.
- The Mark Side, despite having a vibrant cartoony art style, depicts serious topics and has lots of strong language.
- The South Korean web shorts series Medical Island by Studio Animal may look adorable owing to the very deformed characters, but the show contains brutal gory violence and visible male genitalia.
- The short Pony & Boy looks like an even more deranged version of Adventure Time. It also features the boy tearing out Pony's heart in a nightmare sequence. Pony & Boy ends with a possible Downer Ending where the boy is sacrificed to a mountain.
- Many a Multi-Animator Project can wind up as this; a lot of them are neat-looking cartoon music videos, frequently featuring lots of cute animal characters (and sometimes featuring characters from popular kid-friendly works such as Gravity Falls), made by animators who each choose certain segments of the video to animate and draw those segments largely independently from one-another. The exact rules as to what any given Multi-Animator Project can contain vary wildly, as can what each person chooses to draw, so a segment featuring kittens having a tea party can be suddenly followed by anything from murder to strippers. "Anything" projects are especially blatant examples, since they have the loosest rules (often banning explicit sex and little else) and frequently lack content warnings regardless of what they contain; the latter seems to be due mostly to the assumption that warnings aren't needed, since the only people who are likely to watch them are already in the communitynote , are probably able to handle whatever's in the videonote , and know roughly what to expect. The song lyrics (or other audio, on the rare occasions that something other than a song is used) can also be rather family-unfriendly.
- The AOK video Dora The Grownup has appeared as recommended on several children's videos. However, the video is not as kid-friendly as the cartoon it spoofs, as Dora mostly deals with problems adults can relate to (mainly being an alcoholic and drug addict) and swears from time to time. There's also an episode in which Dora goes to a strip club in Las Vegas. AOK also offers several other non kid-friendly cartoon parodies of Caillou, Arthur and Muppet Babies, as well as the Subverted Kids' Show Patty Cake.
- Object Terror, you can't go wrong with seeing the show and thinking it's okay for kids, since it was inspired by Battle for Dream Island (Which is family friendly), has cute Animate Inanimate Objects with simple limbs and Black Bead Eyes. However, this show is incredibly violent and gory, along with also having a bunch of swear words and even a few minor sex scenes, and anyone apparently younger than the age of 14 should never go near it even with a ten-foot pole.
- Similarly, Object Redundancy was mistaken for a kids' show for the same reason - it had animate objects. This show is a little more extreme than Object Terror, though, since it has intense swearing, drug mention and use, swearing, and sex. No wonder the episodes were finally given an age restriction courtesy of the show's creator.
- Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: Despite being a Super Mario parody, the series frequently has swearing, violence, drugs, lots of Black Comedy, Vulgar Humor and far more adult content not suitable for kids. During the Waluigi Arc, the series shift to dramedy and introduced even darker subjects such as kidnapping, torture, death that isn't reversed or Played for Laughs, and borderline PTSD.
