History YMMV / CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers

** Verminous Skumm's plan in "A Formula for Hate" (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans prefer to consider it an excuse for to be a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.

** Verminous Skumm's plan in "A Formula for Hate" (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans prefer to consider it an excuse for just being a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.

** Also from "Teers In the Hood", the randomly appearing ghostly images of famous civil rights figures whose symbolism becomes muddled (possibly veering into UnfortunateImplications territory with the [[YouAreACreditToYourRace phrasing]] of the Planeteers ending speech invoking said civil rights leaders) when the focus of the episode is explicitly on gang violence as opposed to bigotry and inequality. Also crosses over into NightmareFuel due to the graphic nature of some of the images we see interspersed throughout the episode.

** The portrayal of the colonial and ethnic conflicts in "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" are so ridiculously off-base and [[UnfortunateImplications unintentionally racist]] despite the episode's contrary intentions that they end up CrossingTheLineTwice for many viewers. The [[WhatTheHellIsThatAccent ludicrously terrible Irish accents]] and comically extreme misunderstandings of local slang makes this especially true for anyone from Belfast[[note]]Funnily enough, the episode was actually completely banned from airing on Northern Irish TV in the 90s for its blundering inaccuracy[[/note]] or who grew up during The Troubles. The episode's epic failures in research, ridiculous stereotypes, bad accents, and clumsy over-the-top message are a joy to behold.

* UnfortunateImplications: There are quite a few episodes with these, but to highlight some of the most infamous;
** Both overpopulation episodes ("Population Bomb" and "Numbers Game") are based on unscientific Malthusian concepts that espouse the idea that people are having "too many" children and that this will inevitably spiral into the apocalyptic destruction of the biosphere unless birth rates are curbed. As mentioned under ValuesDissonance below, this has long since been discredited by researchers, but that doesn't stop "Population Bomb" from hinting at outright genocidal rhetoric in response, as Piebald refuses to save himself or his family from the tsunami and tells Wheeler that "[his] race has gotten what [they] deserve" for overpopulating Miceland and begs Wheeler to prevent this from happening to humanity. "Numbers Game" similarly depicts families with more than two kids, like Wheeler's hypothetical future one, as directly responsible for environmental destruction through their consumption and concludes by telling viewers to "limit" the number of children they have to no more than two. Mind you, this is being directed towards ''literal kids'' watching who [[CaptainObvious aren't exactly in the business of having families]] and likely only come away feeling like their very existence is wrong if they happen to be a third or later child.
*** It doesn't help that both episodes' AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle segments endorse China's then-current one-child policy and even advocate pushing for its implementation in more countries.
*** Ironically, Ted Turner himself has five kids.
** "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" took this to the point of getting itself banned from airing in Northern Ireland and several other jurisdictions for how badly it botches its portrayal of sensitive real-world conflicts that were ''all ongoing'' at the time. The episode's CaptainObviousAesop of [[PrejudiceAesop "racism is bad"]] should be very simple, but it's immediately placed in an [[CluelessAesop inappropriately over-the-top context]] by the villains giving everyone nukes that will destroy the environment in addition to each other and the Planeteers having to diffuse these ''ongoing real-world conflicts'' themselves. Beyond how ill-advised it is to condense such complex and sensitive matters into just 20 minutes of screentime, the episode's portrayal of the ethnic conflicts in question (UsefulNotes/TheTroubles, the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict, and UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra) ironically reinforces the very racism it tries to combat by heavily playing into ethnic stereotypes about [[JewishComplaining Jewish]] [[JewsLoveToArgue people]], [[MiddleEasternTerrorists Palestinians]], [[MalcolmXerox Africans]], and [[{{Oireland}} the Irish]], [[BothSidesHaveAPoint equating either respective "side" of each conflict to one another]] in a way clearly ignorant of each place's actual history of colonialism and [[GoldenMeanFallacy the fact that they mostly]] ''[[GoldenMeanFallacy aren't]]'' [[GoldenMeanFallacy on equal footing as the episode depicts]], and ending the episode with a very [[CondescendingCompassion condescending lecture for everyone involved]] about how each conflict would be instantly solved if the respective people just "get along". In the case of the Palestinian woman (Najot) and the Israeli man (Moysche), all it apparently takes for them to stop fighting is suddenly realizing that both their religions recognize Patriarch Abraham. ''That's it''. The ending also states that Marcy (the black native South African) and Peter (the AmoralAfrikaner) "still don't get along politically, but agree to respect one another as people"... except that Peter ''is still an outspoken white supremacist who literally wants to [[FinalSolution commit genocide against all of Marcy's people]]'', [[ShaggyDogStory which means the Planeteers literally helped nothing in this case]].

** Wheeler. Ted Turner created him to show how uneducated Americans are about environmental concerns compared to the rest of the world. However, this ends up with the other characters suffering from PositiveDiscrimination - wherein they are apparently more "educated" about conservation by virtue of not being in the United States. (This may be somewhat justified by the fact Wheeler is a city child whereas the others are implied to have been from more rural areas and thus closer in proximity to nature.) But as a result? This ends up making Wheeler come off as one of the few characters who has to deal with genuine personality flaws, and when we ''do'' get to see where exactly Wheeler was from (The Projects - government subsidized housing in the US for low income people, for those unaware), it's clear his lack of knowledge or education is due to circumstances that are no fault of his own, and [[KarmicButtMonkey the show punishing him for this "flaw"]] often comes off as [[UnfortunateImplications unintentionally classist]] as a result.

** As mentioned under UnfortunateImplications above, the episode "Population Bomb" is a particularly harsh example. The episode attempted to deliver an aesop about how apocalyptic overpopulation is, and that humans need to lower fertility rates and stop the Earth from being overpopulated to avoid the fate that Miceland suffered in the episode. As this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 video]] points out, higher fertility rates will increase education rates to help advance the world's development even further, and the world's population is growing but not at a fast enough rate to raise these kinds of concerns. Large families are also important in developing poorer countries by providing a growing supply of labor and a primitive safety net. Society is now much more aware of the negative impacts of population planning, including forced sterilization, forced and sex-selective abortion, infanticide of “excess” children, and, in the long term, skewered, unstable demographics. Finally, many scientists and activists have increasingly criticized the overpopulation hypothesis and its associated policies as elitist and anti-poor, as it put the onus on poor countries to stop having kids they might need, rather than on rich countries to consume more responsibly. [[note]]The episode unintentionally touches on this last point when Wheeler points out that Kwame's judgment of him [[{{hypocrite}} rings pretty hollow]] considering how much money and energy he wastes, with Kwame's [[LameComeback only defense]] being that him only having two kids somehow means he can "afford" to be wasteful.[[/note]]

* FauxSymbolism: Ma-Ti punches out Hitler!

* HilariousInHindsight: Zarm's second voice actor, Creator/DavidWarner, also voiced Ra's Al-Ghul on ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' - a character that has almost the complete opposite goals as Zarm, being a villainous environmentalist. Even funnier is that Zarm's third actor, Creator/MalcolmMcDowell, played his son, Arkady Duvall in the episode "Showdown".
* MemeticLoser: Ma-Ti. To the point that this very Wiki named a [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway trope]] after the supposed lameness of his powers. When in actuality, HeartIsAnAwesomePower, and much more practical than say, his fellow Planteer Wheeler's ability to accidentally burn down a forest if he's not careful.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Verminous Skumm's plan in "A Formula for Hate" (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans prefer to consider it an excuse for just being a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.

** "The Power is Yours!" moral has come under recent scrutiny as it becomes increasingly clear that worsening effects of climate change and environmental destruction are largely the result of governments and major corporations ignoring or denying the consequences of pollution and refusing to change laws and business practices rather than it being the fault of any individual for not properly recycling or the like.

* GrowingTheBeard: By seasons 5 and 6, the animation and narration become less error-prone and much more fluid and clean. To compensate, perhaps, the season six opening gets changed into a cheesy rap song.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Hoggish Greedly Jr. was the first animated role of Creator/CharlieSchlatter who among other roles is best known for voicing ComiicBook/TheFlash.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Verminous Skumm's plan in the HIV episode (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans prefer to consider it an excuse for just being a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.

** Many a fan have taken delight in mocking Wheeler [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude for his name]]. Hell, a lot of his mannerisms that scream of American stereotypes may also qualify.

** While Wheeler's backstory of having an alcoholic and emotionally abusive father is clearly played seriously and [[TheWoobie sympathetically]], the story only comes up in a couple of episodes and the last one involves Wheeler making up with the man. Had the story been written today, the other Planeteers would presumably have taken the information with more shock and gravity and the "making up" episode ("Talkin' Trash") would have involved them being more protective in case Wheeler's father hadn't changed.

* {{Squick}}: Sly Sludge is often pretty disgusting, as in the episode "An Inside Job", where he is seen happily smelling the fumes coming from a sewage pressure control valve while he tries to drown the Planeteers in waste. In "Kwame's Crisis", Sly even buries an entire town in garbage. Because the citizens of the town have lost all hope for trying to even be clean, they simply throw their trash wherever they wish, so in one scene, we get to see a woman open up a baby's diaper and toss it away, visibly showing the urine inside. "Old Ma River" also had no problems showing characters going through areas full of raw sewage, nor did it have any problems with depicting emaciated animal corpses, one of which was a vulture-covered cow carcass floating around in the Ganges River. Linka ends up getting battered by the cow's corpse, making her, Kwame, Gi, and Ma-Ti sick, when they save her.

** Secondly, the writers cheat by having Wheeler be "irresponsible" in a situation he had absolutely no control over (a dream).

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Captain Pollution, who only appears in four episodes, is seen by many as a villain that should have returned more times in the series, no thanks to being one of the few genuine threats to Captain Planet himself. What's more, some fans of the series feel that he should have had a VillainTeamUp with Zarm, and help bring back together the five Eco Villains who originally summoned him along with the EvilKnockoff power rings.

** Wheeler. Ted Turner created him to show how uneducated Americans are about environmental concerns compared to the rest of the world. However, this ends up with the other characters suffering from PositiveDiscrimination - wherein they are apparently more "educated" about conservation by virtue of not being in the United States. (This may be somewhat justified by the fact Wheeler is a city child whereas the others are implied to have been from more rural areas and thus closer in proximity to nature.) But as a result? This ends up making Wheeler come off as one of the few characters who has to deal with genuine personality flaws, and when we ''do'' get to see where exactly Wheeler was from (The Projects - government subsidized housing in the US for low income people, for those unaware), it's clear his lack of knowledge or education is due to circumstances that are no fault of his own, and the show punishing him for it as a result often comes off as [[UnfortunateImplications unintentionally classist]] as a result.

* {{Anvilicious}}: Environmental conservation is basically the entire message of the show, and it's not afraid to show it, given the over-the-top evil of every villain. Special mention to one scene in "The Ultimate Pollution" where, as he's fighting a tank, the Captain spews statistics about how there's enough steel in the tank to make 2,000 plows.

* DontShootTheMessage: Most actual environmentalists do not hold the show in particularly high regard, whether due to its frequently poor research [[BrokenAesop unintentionally bungling its messages]] or its StrawMan portrayal of the villains obfuscating the actual forces doing harm to the environment in real life.

* ValuesDissonance: While the show’s overall message of environmental and social responsibility remains resonant, some individual morals and characters have become rather outdated as a combination of [[HistoryMarchesOn history]], society, and [[ScienceMarchesOn science]] marching on.

** The episode "Population Bomb" is a particularly harsh example. The episode attempted to deliver an aesop about how apocalyptic overpopulation is, and that humans need to lower fertility rates and stop the Earth from being overpopulated to avoid the fate that Miceland suffered in the episode. As this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 video]] points out, higher fertility rates will increase education rates to help advance the world's development even further, and the world's population is growing but not at a fast enough rate to raise these kinds of concerns. Large families are also important in developing poorer countries by providing a growing supply of labor and a primitive safety net. Society is now much more aware of the negative impacts of population planning, including forced sterilization, forced and sex-selective abortion, infanticide of “excess” children, and, in the long term, skewered, unstable demographics. Finally, many scientists and activists have increasingly criticized the overpopulation hypothesis and its associated policies as elitist and anti-poor, as it put the onus on poor countries to stop having kids they might need, rather than on rich countries to consume more responsibly. [[note]]The episode unintentionally touches on this last point when Wheeler points out that Kwame's judgment of him [[{{hypocrite}} rings pretty hollow]] considering how much money and energy he wastes, with Kwame's [[LameComeback only defense]] being that him only having two kids somehow means he can "afford" to be wasteful.[[/note]]

* DontShootTheMessage: Most actual environmentalists do not hold the show in particularly high regard, whether due to its frequently poor research [[BrokenAesop unintentionally bungling its messages]] or its StrawMan portrayal of the villains obfuscating the actual anthropogenic forces doing harm to the environment in real life.

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: The ''If it's Doomsday, this must be Belfast'' episode, which one segment dealt with Wheeler managing to talk down both the Catholics and Protestants from nuclear detonation along with getting them on a peaceful relationship, became more heartwarming 6 years later with 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Though tensions and terrors have occurred after that, especially at the tail end of the 1990s, the results have been overall very positive with the sectarian violence winding down and both Sinn Fein (Catholic) and Democratic Unionist Party (Protestant) sharing power in Northern Ireland parliament in 2013.

** The randomly appearing images of famous civil rights figures in "Teers In the Hood", whose symbolism becomes muddled when the focus of the episode is explicitly on gang violence as opposed to bigotry and inequality. Also crosses over into NightmareFuel due to the graphic nature of some of the images we see interspersed throughout the episode.

* DontShootTheMessage: Many environmentalists do not hold the show in particularly high regard, whether due to its generally poor research or its StrawMan portrayal of the villains.

** Linka's from the Soviet Union, and more eco-savvy than Wheeler. But look up the Aral formerly known as Sea sometime. Or, for a slightly more dramatic and immediate example, take a look at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat a lovely little Soviet town named Pripyat]] and ''why'' it was abandoned. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it became clear that the USSR and its satellite states had ''appalling'' environmental records.

* {{Anvilicious}}: Environmentalism is basically the entire point of this show, and it's not afraid to show it, given how pointlessly evil the villains are. Special mention to one scene in "The Ultimate Pollution" where, as he's fighting a tank, the Captain spews statistics about how there's enough steel in the tank to make 2,000 plows.

* CommonKnowledge: One frequent criticism of this show is that the eco-villains are caricatures who cause environmental degradation just ForTheEvulz. But this isn't the case for all of them: Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder are generally trying to make money, Sly Sludge's damage to the environment is borne out of laziness and short-sightedness rather than genuine malice, and Verminous Skumm is more interested in destroying ''humanity'' than nature. The only major villain who this really applies to consistently is Dr. Blight. However, since Blight is one of the most frequently-seen villains, it's understandable.

* CriticalResearchFailure:
** Captain Planet is damaged by crude oil, ''a completely natural material'', yet is also healed by lava and magma, both far more dangerous than crude oil. Strangely, Hoggish Greedly calls the crude oil he fires "toxic waste", but it's a storyboard error as he fired some thick, shiny dark glop at Captain Planet, just like oil, as opposed to the colorful glop the show represents as toxic waste. (Admittedly, this example [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness is from the first episode]], so they likely hadn't worked everything out.)
** A Belfast Catholic using the taunt "Fenian Prods" in the "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" episode makes one question how much the writers actually know about sectarian hate in Ireland. If you're wondering, Fenian is a word for the (largely Catholic) Irish nationalists, while Prod was a derogatory term for the (mostly Protestant) North Irish Unionists. One can't be a Fenian Prod anymore than one can be a White Chink. However, this is actually a {{mondegreen}} and he really says "'''Flaming''' Prods".
** The way they handled the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the South African apartheid wasn't much better, with the South African soldiers [[ForTheEvulz causing racial violence for the sake of causing violence]] and Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and civilians and responding by [[DisproportionateRetribution demolishing Arab homes]] really makes one wonder if the writers knew ''anything'' about these real world conflicts.
** If Darwinia from the episode "The Blue Car Line" is supposed to be a fictional representation of the Australian city Darwin, then there is a hell of a lot wrong with it. For starters, two decades on from the episode's creation, Darwin still has a minuscule population of less than 150,000 people, little to no high-rise development to speak of, and -- the funniest error considering the episode revolves around alternative transport -- ''there's no trains'' (save for one train line that runs to Adelaide and Alice Springs).

* MisaimedFandom: The reason for the {{Flanderization}} and CartoonishSupervillainy is so that not everyone who has an environmental impact is seen as a CorruptCorporateExecutive who just wants to destroy the environment ForTheEvulz. However, some activists do look at Plunder or Blight or Greedly and see them as representative of those who cause environmental degradation. Some go even further as every logger, every miner, every dam builder, as a complete monster who wants to cut down all the trees or kill all the animals or dig up the entire world simply for the sheer joy of harming mother nature.

** The entirety of ''If it's Doomsday, this must be Belfast'', from the wild historical inaccuracies about all of the world conflicts presented, to outright ''Hysterical'' "dialogue" between each member of the conflict.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Some fans actually wanted the Eco Villains to win. The writers themselves must have caught this because they made it happen in "Whoo Gives a Hoot?" by having Looten Plunder succeed in clear-cutting a forest where endangered animals lived and even rubbed his success in the Planeteers' faces. Needless to say, it was quite a DownerEnding.

** Rather than be met with scorn, "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" is more likely to be enjoyed by anyone from Belfast or who grew up during The Troubles. Its epic failures in research, ridiculous stereotypes, bad accents, and over-the-top message are a joy to behold.
** Again, the season 6 theme song can be seen as this.

* {{Squick}}: Sly Sludge is often pretty disgusting, as in the episode "An Inside Job", where he is seen happily smelling the fumes coming from a sewage pressure control valve while he tries to drown the Planeteers in waste. In "Kwame's Crisis", Sly even buries an entire town in garbage. Because the citizens of the town have lost all hope for trying to even be clean, they simply throw their trash wherever they wish, so in one scene, we get to see a woman open up a baby's diaper and toss it away, visibly showing the urine inside. "Old Ma River" also had no problems showing characters going through areas full of raw sewage, nor did it have any problems with depicting emaciated equine corpses, one of which was a vulture-covered cow carcass floating around in the Ganges River. Linka ends up getting battered by the cow's corpse, making her, Kwame, Gi, and Ma-Ti sick, when they save her.

** Hoggish Greedly, to some, because some of his motivation is humanly understandable. His grandfather was, we are told, a nature-lover who treated him harshly; he was a self-made man who turned against environmentalism in the process. Anti-environmentalists the world over can relate. He also never completely understood the long-term damage he was causing, unlike most of the villains who loved what was happening, and even gets a considerably humanizing moment where he learns his factory has made his own son sick and [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes closes it down without hesitation to save his son]].
** Wheeler. Ted Turner created him to show how [[UnfortunateImplications Americans are uneducated about environmental concerns]]. However, this ends up with the other characters suffering from PositiveDiscrimination - wherein they are apparently more "educated" by [[UnfortunateImplications virtue of not being in the United States]]. (This may be somewhat justified by the fact Wheeler is a city child whereas the others are implied to have been from more rural areas.) But as a result? This ends up making Wheeler come off as one of the few characters who has to deal with genuine personality flaws, and when we ''do'' get to see ''where'' Wheeler was from (The Projects - which for viewers outside the united states, is government subsidized housing for low income people) his "lack of perspective" or education on such matters not only becomes relatable to viewers, but even ''justifiable''.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Verminous Skumm's plan in the HIV episode (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans just prefer to consider it an excuse for just being a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.

* CommonKnowledge: One frequent criticism of this show is that the eco-villains are caricatures who cause environmental degradation ForTheEvulz. But this isn't the case for all of them: Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder are generally trying to make money, Sly Sludge's damage to the environment is borne out of laziness and short-sightedness rather than genuine malice, and Verminous Skumm is more interested in destroying ''humanity'' than nature. The only major villain who this really applies to consistently is Dr. Blight. However, since Blight is one of the most frequently-seen villains, it's understandable.

** When Gi mentions that after the hypothetical bomb that Jerusalem was "only a memory", she seems awfully indifferent towards the destruction of the holiest sites in Abrahamic religions judging by the way she said it.

* ValuesDissonance: While the show’s overall overall message of environmental and social responsibility remains resonant, some individual morals and characters have become rather outdated as a combination of [[HistoryMarchesOn history]], society, and [[ScienceMarchesOn science]] marching on.

** The episode "Population Bomb" is a particularly harsh example. The episode attempted to deliver an aesop about how apocalyptic overpopulation is, and that humans need to lower fertility rates and stop the Earth from being overpopulated to avoid the fate that Miceland suffered in the episode. As this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 video]] points out, higher fertility rates will increase education rates to help advance the world's development even further, and the world's population is growing but not at a fast enough rate to raise these kinds of concerns. Large families are also important in developing poorer countries by providing a growing supply of labor and a primitive safety net. Society is now much more aware of the negative impacts of population planning, including forced sterilization, forced and sex-selective abortion, infanticide of “excess” children, and, in the long term, skewered, unstable demographics. Finally, many scientists and activists have increasingly criticized the overpopulation hypothesis and its associated policies as elitist and anti-poor, as it put the onus on poor countries to stop having kids they might need, rather than on rich countries to consume more responsibly.

** Captain Planet is damaged by crude oil, ''a completely natural material'', yet is also healed by lava and magma, both far more dangerous than crude oil. Strangely, Hoggish Greedly calls the crude oil he fires "toxic waste", but it's a storyboard error as he fired some thick, shiny dark glop at Captain Planet, just like oil, as opposed to the colorful glop the show represents as toxic waste.

** The episode about AIDS was very much an anvil that needed to be dropped at the time it was made. During the TurnOfTheMillennium and early parts of TheNewTens? People laughed at it - because it just seemed so ''outlandish''. However? As mentioned by Verminous Skumm, if the public is misinformed about a disease that makes it easier to spread. Listen to that line after the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic happened... then realise just how much of it was happening in North America and Western Europe.

** Verminus Skumm distributes a deadly drug called "Bliss" to those who crave it, including Linka and her cousin Boris, and hundreds of innocent people become deranged in search of more of the stuff. And although they manage to save Linka, ''Boris ends up dying of a drug overdose''.

** The concept of Duke Nukem as a villain is somewhat awkward for a 21st-century viewer. The show was made when the anti-nuclear movement was at its height and incidents like Chernobyl were prominent in public discussion. Decades later, nuclear power is still controversial, but a combination of greatly improved safety and the urgency of reducing carbon emissions has led to many environmentalists and scientists supporting nuclear power as a viable source of alternative energy. As such, it’s unlikely a modern version of the show would portray nuclear power in such a straightforwardly negative way.
** "A Formula for Hate", despite falling into ValuesResonance, fell into this during the TurnOfTheMillennium and TheNewTens (Even arguably the late [[TheNineties nineties]]) simply because it was made in the context of the "AIDS Crisis". People such as ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' and others laughed at the episode for just how ''dated'' it was, one of the reasons it came off as laughable 10 years later was because by then a lot of misinformation about AIDS and HIV were combatted.

* DontShootTheMessage: A lot of environmentalists ''hate'' the show despite agreeing with its GreenAesop because of how ham-fisted the writing was and how badly the research was screwed up, as mentioned above.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Verminous Skumm's plan how spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single kid is going to help him rule the world is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans just prefer to consider it an excuse for just being a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.
* {{Anvilicious}}: Environmentalism is basically the entire point of this show, and it's not afraid to show it, given how pointlessly evil the villains are. Special mention to one scene in "The Ultimate Pollution" where, as he's fighting a tank, the Captain spews statistics about how there's enough steel in them to make 2,000 plows.

* CommonKnowledge: One frequent criticism of this show is that the eco-villains are caricatures who cause environmental degradation ForTheEvulz. But this isn't the case for all of them: Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder are generally trying to make money, Sly Sludge's damage to the environment is borne out of laziness and short-sightedness rather than genuine malice, and Verminous Skumm is more interested in destroying ''humanity'' than nature. The only villain who this really applies to is Dr. Blight. However, since Blight is one of the most frequently-seen villains, it's understandable.

** Captain Planet is damaged by crude oil, ''a completely natural material'', yet is also healed by lava and magma, both far more dangerous than crude oil. Strangely, Hoggish Greedly calls the crude oil he fires "toxic waste", but it's a storyboard error as he fired a thick, shiny glop at Captain Planet, just like oil, as opposed to the colorful glop the show represents as toxic waste.
** A Belfast Catholic using the taunt "Fenian Prods" in the "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" episode makes one question how much the writers actually know about sectarian hate in Ireland. If you're wondering, Fenian is a word for the (largely Catholic) Irish nationalist, while Prod was a derogatory term for the (mostly Protestant) North Irish Unionist. One can't be a Fenian Prod anymore than one can be a White Chink. However, this is actually a {{mondegreen}} and he really says "'''Flaming''' Prods".
** The way they handled the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the South African apartheid wasn't much better, with the South African soldiers causing racial violence for the sake of causing violence and Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and civilians and responding by [[DisproportionateRetribution demolishing Arab homes]] really makes one wonder if the writers knew ''anything'' about these real world conflicts.

** Dr. Blight, [[spoiler:at least until you see the burn on her face that her hair covers.]] Hell, [[spoiler:she's pretty even with the scar!]]

** Linka's from the Soviet Union, and more eco-savvy than Wheeler. But look up the Aral formerly known as Sea sometime. Or, for a slightly more dramatic and immediate example, take a look at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat a lovely little Soviet town named Pripyat]] and ''why'' it was abandoned.

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: The ''If it's Doomsday, this must be Belfast'' episode, which one segment dealt with Wheeler managing to talk down both the Catholics and Protestants from nuclear detonation along with getting them on a peaceful relationship, became more heartwarming 6 years later with 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Though tensions and terrors do occur after that, especially in the end of 1990s, the results have been far more positive with the sectarian violence winding down and both Sinn Fein (Catholic) and Democratic Unionist Party (Protestant) sharing power in Northern Ireland parliament in 2013.

* MisaimedFandom: The reason for the {{Flanderization}} and CartoonishSupervillainy is so that not everyone who has an environmental impact is seen as a CorruptCorporateExecutive who just wants to destroy the environment ForTheEvulz. However, some activists do see Plunder or Blight or Greedily and see every logger, every miner, every dam, as a complete monster who wants to cut down all the trees or kill all the animals or dig up the entire world simply for the sheer joy of harming mother nature.

** When Gi mentions that after the hypothetical bomb that Jerusalem was "only a memory", she seems awfully indifferent towards the destruction of the holiest sites in Abrahamic Religions judging by the way she said it.
** The randomly appearing images of Civil Rights leaders in "Teers In the Hood", whose symbolism becomes muddled when the focus of the episode is explicitly on gang violence as opposed to racial violence. Also crosses over into NightmareFuel due to the graphic nature of some of the images we see interspersed throughout the episode.

** Finally, just when Wheeler is getting the upper hand by calling out Kwame's hypocrisy of wasting money and electricity and his LameComeback that having two kids means he's "Allowed" to, the writers cheat by having Gaia butt in and change the subject.

** Wheeler. Ted Turner created him to show how [[UnfortunateImplications Americans are uneducated about environmental concerns]]. However, this ends up with the other characters suffering from PositiveDiscrimination - wherein they are apparently more "educated" by [[UnfortunateImplications virtue of not being in the United States]]. (This may be somewhat justified by the fact Wheeler is a city child whereas the others are implied to have been from more Rural areas.) But as a result? This ends up making Wheeler come off as one of the few characters who has to deal with genuine personality flaws, and when we ''do'' get to see ''where'' Wheeler was from (The Projects - which for viewers outside the united states, is government subsidized housing for low income people) his "lack of perspective" or education on such matters not only becomes relatable to viewers, but even ''justifiable''.

** "The Power is Yours!" moral has come under recent scrutiny as it becomes increasingly clear that worsening effects of climate change and environmental destruction is the result of governments and major corporations ignoring or denying the consequences of pollution and refusing to change laws and business practices rather than it being the fault of any individual for not properly recycling or the like.
** The episode "Population Bomb" is a particularly harsh example. The episode attempted to deliver an aesop about how apocalyptic overpopulation is, and that humans need to lower fertility rates and stop the Earth from being overpopulated to avoid the fate that Miceland suffered in the episode. As this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348 video]] points out, higher fertility rates will increase education rates to help advance the world's development even further, and the world's population is growing but not at an exponential rate to raise these kinds of concerns. Large families are also important in developing poorer countries by providing a growing supply of labor and a primitive safety net. Society is now much more aware of the negative impacts of population planning, including forced sterilization, forced and sex-selective abortion, infanticide of “excess” children, and, in the long term, skewered, unstable demographics. Finally, many scientists and activists have increasingly criticized the overpopulation hypothesis and its associated policies as elitist and anti-poor, as it put the onus on poor countries to stop having kids they might need, rather than on rich countries to reduce their overconsumption.
** The concept of Duke Nukem as a villain is somewhat awkward for a modern viewer. The show was made when the anti-nuclear movement was at its height and incidents like Chernobyl were prominent in public discussion. Decades later, nuclear power is still controversial, but a combination of greatly improved safety and the urgency of reducing carbon emissions has led to many environmentalists and scientists supporting nuclear power as a viable source of alternative energy. As such, it’s unlikely a modern version of the show would portray nuclear power in such a straightforwardly negative way.

** "A Formula for Hate", despite falling into ValuesResonance, fell into this during the TurnOfTheMillennium and TheNewTens (Even arguably the late [[TheNineties nineties]]) simply because it was made in the context of the "AIDS Crisis". People such as ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'' and others laughed at the episode for just how ''dated'' it was, one of the reasons it came off as laughable 10 years later was because by then a lot of misinformation about AIDS and HIV were combatted Of course, it [[FunnyAneurysmMoment fell back into relevance 28 years later]]...

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: It's nigh impossible to watch the "A Formula for Hate" episode, or anyone who riffed it without feeling at least some of this trope due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.

** "A Formula for Hate", despite falling into ValuesResonance, fell into this during the TurnOfTheMillennium and TheNewTens (Even arguably the late [[TheNineties nineties]]) simply because it was made in the context of the "AIDS Crisis". People such as ''WebCritic/TheNostalgiaCritic'' and others laughed at the episode for just how ''dated'' it was, one of the reasons it came off as laughable 10 years later was because by then a lot of misinformation about AIDS and HIV were combatted Of course, it [[FunnyAneurysmMoment fell back into relevance 28 years later]]...

* FanPreferredCouple:
** Wheeler and Linka, hands down.
** Plenty of fans ship Kwame and Gi together as well. Even though nothing ever became official between the two, they do seem to be close and earlier episodes even suggested hints of something slightly romantic other than friendship.
** The episode "Fare Thee Whale" has flirtatious undertones go on between Dr. Blight and Looten Plunder.

* EvilIsSexy: Dr. Blight, [[spoiler:at least until you see the burn on her face that her hair covers.]] Hell, [[spoiler:she's pretty even with the scar!]]

* FanPreferredCouple: Wheeler and Linka, hands down.

* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: The [[http://www.joueurdugrenier.fr/joueur-du-grenier-captain-planet/ NES game]], an uncanny mix between a ShootEmUp and a PlatformHell with horrible controls. The Sega Genesis game wasn't much better, either.

* AngstWhatAngst: Linka in "Mind Pollution" has watched her cousin Boris die from an overdose of drugs in front of her and she is seen taking part in the Planeteer bit at the end of the episode with a cheery attitude. Geeze give the girl a break.

** A Belfast Catholic using the taunt "Fenian Prods" in the "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" episode makes one question how much the writers actually know about sectarian hate in Ireland. If you're wondering, Fenian is a word for the (largely Catholic) Irish nationalist, while Prod was a derogatory term for the (mostly Protestant) North Irish Unionist. One can't be a Fenian Prod anymore than one can be a White Chink. However, this is actually a {{Mondegreen}} and he really says "'''Flaming''' Prods".