Anvilicious / Other Media

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• Cracked
• The Nostalgia Critic

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Magazines

• The Onion:
  • Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers Seeing as this is The Onion, the anvilicious message is basically lampshading the trope, by mocking serious news reports on the problems. It's in dire need of pointing out, remembering the Bangladesh incident. It should also be noted that there about 50 Klingon speakers (at the most) and about 170,000 Navajo speakers, thanks to revitalization efforts.
  • "Political Cartoon Even More Boring And Confusing Than Issue" in which nobody can understand an Anvilicious comic strip.
  • The Onion is often anvilicious non-ironically. One article was simply about people in the future scolding people in the present for not legalizing gay marriage (also, in the future, every single person in the entire world is pro-choice).

Radio

• The Big Finish Doctor Who audio The Last is ridiculously anvilicious in its anti-war message. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with statements like "Money that should have gone to space exploration went to develop more weapons" and "She should have known dropping bombs is wrong, that war is wrong".
• During World War II, many radio shows devoted some time to explaining and/or promoting various wartime programs (rationing, War Bond drives, etc). Most of them were less than subtle about it. Such as this infamous poster◊.

Tabletop Games

• Eclipse Phase: basically, yay transhumanism and anarchy. Let's put it this way: the main non-transhumanist power bloc is a ruthless military junta verging on The Dictatorship.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse has always had ecological subtext, given that you're basically Gaia's superpowered children fighting against an evil corporation of polluters, but some writers handle it worse than others. In The Silver Record's prologue, for example, the plot stops for an entire paragraph just so the reader can be informed that everyone who lives in the modern world is a heartless, egocentric bastard.
  But y’see, science is a double-edged razor. It provides us with better ways to feed ourselves, protect ourselves, and move from place to place, but it also breeds isolation and a “me-first” mentality. When people — Garou included — don’t feel like they have to struggle to survive, they get soft and selfish. After a while, everyone starts feeling like the lead in their own personal movie. Everyone and everything else in the world becomes supporting cast and background material. At that point, nothing is good unless it enriches you. Unless it makes your life safer, more comfortable, more fun. Don’t shake your head, you know I’m right! After a while, nothing in this world matters unless it somehow makes you feel better! Now multiply that by the amount of people in the world today, square it by the economies of nations, and subtract any sort of feeling of community or family. Our family tree is dying — literally! — because we don’t feel or feed its roots any longer.

Theater

• Parodied/played for laughs in Avenue Q. "The Money Song" starts with an over-the-top Anvilicious moral on charity and being generous... then halfway through the song, everybody runs into the audience asking for money.
• The truly Anvilicious narrator in Blood Brothers not only shows up to highlight every moment of foreshadowing in the musical but also appears at the end to let any terminally inattentive audience members know what the message was.
• Henrik Ibsen dropped some heavy anvils in his play Brand. The title character is a notorious carrier and tosser of anvils all the way, and one scene, showing a starving and freezing mother with a child begging for clothes and shelter on Christmas Eve, is anvilicious in spades. The anvil dropped is so heavy it actually kills off one of the lead characters in-play (Agnes, the wife of Brand).
• Hair sure drops a few about friendship, racism, and The Vietnam War.
• South Pacific more or less takes its anti-racism message and fires it out of a cannon into the audience. Repeatedly, and with prejudice. This is the entire point of the show. Rodgers and Hammerstein were asked to take the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught", which is even more on-the-nose with its message than the rest of the show, out entirely because it was thought to be too anvilicious; Hammerstein replied, "If you cut that song, you cut the whole musical."
• The Toxic Avenger, based on the campy movie of the same name, could be a hilarious hour of nothing but New Jersey jokes, which it is in some places, but eventually it gets bogged down by its need to hammer "Pollution BAD!" into the audience. Emphasis on hammer.
• West Side Story: Maria's closing speech has her chew out both the Jets and the Sharks for their hatred.
• Young Frankenstein's musical adaptation is similar to the example of Toxic Avenger stage adaptation; compared to the movie the sexual humor is a lot more heavy-handed.

Web Original

• Yellow Cake is loaded with anvils since it's an allegory of the evils of imperialism and ends with a "Reason You Suck" Speech, You Bastard!.
• Brad Jones reviewed Rock: It's Your Decision on DVD-R Hell, a little-seen TV movie produced by fundamentalist Christians about how rock is evil and how it'll cause you to go to Hell. It doesn't merely lob anvils, it ties them to cruise missiles and fires those at you. After the main character of the movie talks about how people at rock concerts didn't just sit quietly and listen, they got up and danced, like the music was controlling them; Jones jokes that the movie's aesop is that emotions are bad and if you dance to music, laugh at comedy acts, or cry at funerals, you'll go to Hell.
• A Downfall parody, The Antic Menace condemns human greed in its fourth episode, via a quote by Charlie Chaplin.
• Lucky Day Forever: A population of short, brown people who live in a part of town that looks like your typical post-Soviet city and even speak Polish [?] are exploited by the aptly named White society as cheap labor and spare parts.
• brentalfloss in Tetris WITH LYRICS.
  • "So, I was trying to communicate that women, uh, enjoy Tetris a lot. Is that clear?
• 2084 (Part 1, and Part 2 (NSFW) The message, being about what happens when copyright law goes horribly right, isn't exactly subtle about its message. The story concerns 2 people, one into WAM, trying to deal with a dystopia where copyright is abused to the point where you can't basically do anything without an iPad Expy, and do anything unless you pay hefty royalties to the creator. Granted, this was written after SOPA and PIPA occurred and failed to pass, but the unrealistic description of future copyright law can come off as jarring.
• CLW Entertainment: The Doraemon fandub episode "TV & Disc Do's And Don't's" repeats the moral "don't watch too much TV" ad nauseam, unlike the original Japanese version which is less repetitive.
• Parodied in Jake Eyes' 50 Ways to Die in Minecraft. Death #42 of the 6th episode is "Owning a Small Web Site Without Net Neutrality being Enforced", shown by a small building labeled "MCBLOXBLOGS.COM" being crushed under a larger Verizon building. Death #43 is "Witnessing a Failed Attempt at Subtlety", which involves someone who watched the bit immediately prior being crushed by an anvil with "NET NEUTRALITY IS GOOD!!!" printed on it in red block letters.
• Philosophy Tube:
  • Played for Laughs with Sir Nigel Piss, who is a very blatant Straw Hypocrite who makes judgements about how a different society "has never had a secular enlightment" for (insert reason here), followed by a statement displaying the very trait he accused the other society of having.
  • The Adeleide segment in Violence & Protest and its allegory describing the escapades of a person who provokes a twitter mob for a controversial tweet doesn't leave any room for ambiguity when said person is named Baronness Plantation Warrcrimes.
• SCP Foundation
  • SCP-2112 has its safety classification listed as Keter, one of the highest possible, because it makes those who hear it love covers over all other creative pursuits. This is an obvious enough Take That! at cover bands and unoriginal artists, but then Project Research Manager Edvalds' statement on the matter spells the message out giant, that valuing nostalgia over innovation, taken too far, could lead to the stagnation and decay of the human culture, become a planet of people who follow the "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" meme.
    Edvalds: "Some have questioned why SCP-2112 warrants classification as Keter. It is true that SCP-2112 poses no direct threat to human life or the continued existence of the human race; were every person susceptible to SCP-2112 infection to be infected, it would likely not result in a single fatality. What it does present, however, is a severe existential threat to the entirety of human culture, the arts, and all forms of creative work whatsoever. Man is a wonderfully creative animal and has developed a myriad of ways of expressing his thoughts and emotions — through poetry, dance, film, the written word, theatre, painting, sculpture, video games, even internet memes. We run the risk of every one of these mediums — every single last one of them — disappearing from our common experience, forever, in favor of thousands and millions of mediocre everymen performing the exact same songs over and over again."
  • SCP-5403, which is about an anomalous site that keeps constant surveillance on the Foundation so that it can spew tasteless shipping art, contains an extended diatribe on why using topics like relationship drama, abuse, and other forms of trauma as something that is cute, funny, or titillating is wrong and insulting to people who have lived through those issues for real. Dr. Laraske eventually explains in detail just how nerve-wracking a seemingly-harmless operation is to her subordinates, citing a researcher who experienced SCP-2678 (the Vorehole) and learned 5403 recorded the whole thing, and when the anomaly is seemingly neutralized, it reactivates one last time to write a 4.2K-word fanfic where Laraske is extensively brutalized for 5403's pleasure as a final display of how utterly callous and wretched its obsessions really are despite having the mind of a dumb teenager. Which also ties into the overall message - just because Hanlon's Razor easily applies to modern insensitive depictions of serious topics doesn't mean they're any less tasteless and hurtful.
• Screen Rant Pitch Meetings:
  • The creator, Ryan George, doesn't like the Disney live action remakes very much. During the pitch meeting for Aladdin (2019), the Producer, who otherwise enthusiastically goes along with whatever the Screenwriter pitches regardless of its flaws, briefly gets passed the Smart Ball and asks why they're remaking a beloved animated movie. He points out that at best, they could make a remake that's as good as the original, and adds that film technology hasn't advanced nearly enough to justify remaking it, only caving in when the Screenwriter says, "Because money?". The series doesn't shy away from making fun of the subjects of the pitch meetings, but it's rarely this blunt about it.
  • In general, the worse a movie or TV show is, the less subtle the series is about criticizing its flaws. In the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides pitch meeting, the Producer flat out states he has no reason to care about the central conflict of the story, and the Screenwriter agrees with him. Even the Screenwriter doesn't care about the romantic subplot between the missionary and the mermaid.
• Mario Party DS Anti Piracy's Grand Finale incorporates an Author Filibuster featuring the victim of the bizarre chase turning into an angel to deliver a Digital Piracy Is Okay message. Given the generally comedic nature of the finale, it's possible that it too is being Played for Laughs.
• The animated short Sometimes You're a Caterpillar is intended to teach audiences about how not everyone is as privileged as they might be. The story itself was effective enough in its execution, but quickly drops the pretense to deliver it in no uncertain terms, then hastily wraps up the plot.
• One episode of Nash's Classic Doctor Who Reviews series featured a graphic of MESSAGE falling on him when he examines the anti-Margaret Thatcher theme in The Happiness Patrol. At the end as the Doctor explains how wrong the villain is the MESSAGE returns to beat him about the head.

Real Life

• Mr. T, in every incarnation, is anvilicious to the point of becoming a running joke, thanks in no small part to the ironic humor of a large violent macho man screaming at you things a meek female kindergarten teacher would normally tell you. This resulted in a favorite satirically jumbled line from SNL: "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!"
  The weird thing about Mr. T is that he means all of it; the man who made a career out of screaming and hitting things is a big ol' Momma's Boy who loves kids and wants to use his image to help them. In the '80s he performed in a video called "Mr. T's Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool," a series of vignettes encouraging self-confidence and good decision making that is so anvilicious the videotape would make a pothole if you dropped it in the street. Unlike most celebrities doing pre-teen educational/self-help/anti-drug videos in the '80s, Mr. T was not ordered to do this as the community service portion of a drug sentencing; he co-wrote and produced the thing of his own volition. That's because Mr. T don't give ya no jibber-jabber. He tells it like it is.
  • Parodied in a fake Mr. T PSA on Key & Peele, where all the anvils he throws down are about him.
• During the 2011 Superbowl, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas took a moment during the halftime show to tell Obama to reform the school systems.
• Practically every child has had to attend an assembly at their school about how drugs and alcohol will ruin their life. In some health classes, it's not uncommon to have a "speaker" come and show the students pictures of an STD infection.
• One Scottish "well-meaning but comically futile campaign to make children take adult things seriously" educational curriculum involves one lesson showing teenagers how being immature about sex is bad, mmkay, which begins with splitting the class into groups and asking them to write down all the different terms for penises, sex, vaginas, homosexuality, and contraceptives, without fear of punishment. These are then read out by the teacher. The intention is to engage the class and make them realize how they buy into sexist or immature attitudes.
• Russell Brand's "parody" of Parklife is about as subtle about corporate greed and political corruption as using a chainsaw to trim threads. Filled with obvious Take Thats against UKIP, Starbucks, and David Cameron, it seems to paint Brand as a Straw Liberal. Worse still, it's not even funny.
• Benjamin Franklin's "Join, or Die", a wood relief warning about the possible fate of the American colonies if they don't start working together.
• The 1st Amendment auditing/Cop Watcher communities thrive on this trope. With cameras and cellphones they go to public places(city halls, libraries, post offices, police departments etc etc etc) and monitor the police in attempt to expose political corruption, infringement of peoples rights and police brutality and post it on Youtube and other platform. Mostly in the U.S, though there auditors in Canada and Great Britain.

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