Times where somebody shares a disguised anecdote about themselves in Western Animation.
- Parodied in this exchange from The Amazing World of Gumball's episode "The Pest":Billy: There once was a happy boy who—
Gumball: Can we just stick to the subject, please?
Billy: The boy is me, it's a story about me.
Gumball: Oh, sorry, please continue. - On American Dad!, Roger uses this as part of a convoluted back story for his made-up detective persona.Roger: My name is Braff Zacklin. I was an international race car driver. One day a baby carriage rolled onto the tracks, so I swerved into the retaining wall to avoid it. The car burst into flames, but the baby miraculously survived. I was that baby.
Steve: That doesn't make any sense.
Roger: I'M BRAFF ZACKLIN! - Inverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Katara goes to find the leader of the Fire Nation raiders that killed her mother. Yon Rha reveals via flashback that he was sent to kill the last waterbender of the tribe. Kya, seeking to protect the tribe and her daughter, who had interrupted the conversation moments before, falsely confesses to being that waterbender.Katara: She lied to you. She was protecting the last waterbender.
Yon Rha: What? Who?
Katara: ... ME! (cue terrifyingly badass display of using waterbending to suspend the rain) - Bee and Puppycat: Implied. Puppycat tells Wallace and Bee a story about a (presumably human) outlaw who fell in love with a princess, but was betrayed by the princess and her father. The end of the short shows Puppycat looking out the window with a reflection resembling the outlaw.
- While Boy & the World is devoid of dialogue, it is strongly hinted that the man in the rainbow hat is the titular boy.
- The first Care Bears movie had Mr. Cherrywood, an old man and head of an orphanage, tell the children of the orphanage a story about a possessed magician's apprentice named Nicholas who was saved by the Care Bears. In the end, his wife calls him by name, Nicholas.
- The Care Bears Nutcracker Suite features a ballet teacher telling her class about her favorite version of The Nutcracker, one where a girl named Anna goes with the Nutcracker and the Care Bears to Toyland. After saving Toyland, Anna wakes up to find it was All Just a Dream...but then she meets her new neighbor Alan who looks exactly like the Nutcracker's human form, and gives her a nutcracker as a Christmas gift. At the end of the movie, the teacher leaves with her boyfriend Alan, causing the students to deduce that she must be Anna.
- In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Scrooge's Pet", after Scrooge tells the triplets that good intentions don't always work out well, Launchpad begins a story about bringing a sick friend breakfast in bed and accidentally spilling it on him. Then Scrooge irritably reveals that the story was something that happened between him and Launchpad at some point.
- Played with in an episode of Hey Arnold! when Arnold is complaining about Helga. Grandpa Phil tells Arnold about a little girl named Gertie in his class that was horrible to him and spent the school year making him miserable. At the end of the episode Arnold's Grandma states that she was that very girl — though Arnold doesn't hear it. Apparently, Arnold doesn't know his own grandma's actual name (Phil usually calls her "Pookie").
- In the Looney Tunes short "Señorella and the Glass Huarache", the Framing Device involves a Mexican fellow telling his friend a Mexico-themed version of the story of Cinderella. At the end, the friend wonders why the narrator described it as a "sad story" when it had a happy ending, and the narrator reveals he's the guy who married the wicked stepmother.
- The Loud House: In "Middle Men", Lynn keeps telling Lincoln and Clyde stories about a new kid and the trouble she got in, to underscore how dangerous Middle School can be. As it turns out, she was talking about her own experiences in sixth grade.
- In an episode of the Madeline animated series, Madeline is humiliated when she messes up during a ballet recital. She's then told a story by a professional ballerina about another girl who messed up, but got back out there and kept trying. "That little girl...was me!"
- Metalocalypse:
- In one episode, Pickles takes his bandmates on a tour of the sleaziest parts of Los Angeles in an attempt to teach them about the drug-fueled excesses of 80's glam rock (and why he thought they were awesome.) He concludes the tour in an alleyway where he once saw a famous male singer performing oral sex on a guy. "And that guy...was me," he says. The others are shocked, and then Pickles laughs at them and says he was just kidding.
- In an attempt to gain sympathy from Nathan so that the former will pay for his cosmetic surgery, Murderface tries to do this, but his incredibly specific Dark and Troubled Past makes it obvious who he's talking about.
Murderface: I'm gonna tell you a sad tale.
Nathan: Oh god.
Murderface: Imagine a child ...so horrific-looking...
Nathan: Uh-huh.
Murderface: ...that he drove his parents to murder-suicide.
Nathan: Yeah, you. Right?
Murderface: Imagine a man...with so little self-esteem...
Nathan: You.
Murderface: ...that he looks and acts like me!
Nathan: You.
Murderface: Well that man is me! - Around the middle of Over the Garden Wall, it's revealed that the pianist frog from the intro, the Narrator, and Greg's would-be pet are all the same being.
- In The Raccoons, the episode "Trouble Shooter!" sees Bentley Raccoon running away from home and, after an Out-of-Context Eavesdropping incident, thinking he is not welcome with Bert and Cedric either and hitting the road. Cyril Sneer goes after him and tells him the story of a kid he used to know who, like Bentley, ran away from his family because he thought he could make it on his own. The kid in question grew up to be a millionaire, but there were a lot of "lost, lonely years" before he struck it rich, and no amount of money can buy back that lost time. Bentley guesses that Cyril is talking about himself, and Cyril responding with silence heavily implies that he is.
- The Rankin Bass special The First Easter Rabbit reveals in the end that the narrator E.B. (voiced by Burl Ives) is the special's protagonist Stuffy, now much older.
- In Recess, Spinelli's ballet teacher tells her, "You remind me of little dancer known by me in old country." "Yeah? What's she doing now?" asks Spinelli. "That I am telling later," replies the teacher. After her big ballet recital, Spinelli asks what happened to the girl, and the teacher reveals, "little girl was me."
- In Rugrats, there's a scene where an old lady is relating to Grandpa Lou about a man who showed her some kindness when she was younger, and how she never got the chance to thank him. Grandpa just smiles and replies "You just did." They get married in the second movie.
- The Simpsons:
- Otto tells a bedtime story to Lisa, the Urban Legend of a woman outrunning a driver who seems to be stalking her, but was actually trying to warn her of the axe wielding maniac in the back seat. He then asks her if she wants to know how he knows the story: "I....was that maniac" Cue Homer and Marge hearing Lisa's screams.
- An informational video about restraining orders narrated by Gary Busey tells the story of Joe, a Stalker with a Crush who received a restraining order from the object of his desires, Mary. At the end of the video...Busey: I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Joe is me. And Mary is a composite of twelve different women and a small, independent film company; all of whom couldn't deal with me because I'm too real.
- Subverted by Granny in Squidbillies when she explains how Gaga Pee Pap ran out on their family:Granny: He done married me, got me pregnant, ran off with some floozie bitch and had a baby. And that baby grew up to be... me.
Early: She don't fully recollect her connection to the man.
Granny: What man? - Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In "Sophmore Slump", Marco has spent the summer annoying his friends and neighbors by bragging, directly or indirectly, about his adventures on Mewni. His mom Angie tries to tell him the story of a girl she knew who came back from a trip to France, acting all snooty and using the French pronunciation of "croissant". When Marco fails to make the connection, Angie flat-out reveals that she was the "Craw-sawn Girl".
- The Tex Avery cartoon Dixieland Droopy tells the story of how John Irving Pettybone (Droopy the dog) acquires a Dixieland band made up of fleas, granting him his life-long dream of being a Dixieland conductor. At the end, the cartoon's narrator is revealed to be Pee Wee Runt, the trumpet-player in the band.
- Another Tex Avery cartoon, The First Bad Man, tells the story of Dino Dan, the first criminal in Texas history. At the end, it turns out that Dino Dan is the narrator.
- In the Thunder Cats 2011 episode "The Duelist and the Drifter", the Drifter, a.k.a. Hattanzo the Swordmaker uses this technique to relate his past to Lion-O, warning the young hero that he'll inevitably duplicate his failure because they're not so different.
- In an episode of Transformers: Prime, Ratchet tells Raf how the field medic who saved Bumblebee after Megatron had tortured him wasn't able to fix Bumblebee's voice box. He was speaking about his OWN inability to completely fix Bumblebee since he was that field medic.Ratchet: Yes, well... the medic could have done better.
