Big Brother Instinct / Western Animation

"Hey, what's the big idea? That's my sister, man! [...] So give her back those cupcakes before I knock your block off!"

• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog has possibly the most emphasized use of Sonic's Big Brother Instinct towards Tails than any other Sonic the Hedgehog show. In "Tails' New Home", Tails summarizes it perfectly:
  Tails: A family is just people who care about each other more than anyone else, right?
  Sonic: Right.
  Tails: You're it!
• Adventure Time:
  • Finn is fiercely protective of his adoptive brother Jake, despite technically being the younger of the two. He’s very easy-going, but if you hurt Jake, all bets are off — he will unload a can of whoop-ass on anything that touches his brother. Played straighter towards Fern, as Finn constantly supports and encourages him, psychs himself up to slay a monster by pretending he's saving Fern, and mercilessly killing the Grass Entity to protect him.
  • Played straight with older brother Jake. He’s not as physically protective, but he is very tuned into Finn’s emotional well-being, and hurting his little brother’s feelings is the surest way to get on Jake’s bad side. He even claims to have a “Finn sense” that tells him when Finn is about to cry, and the angriest we ever see him is when he’s ripping a new one into Princess Bubblegum for breaking Finn’s heart. The last season even suggests that Jake neglects his own worries and processing of trauma in order to put on a brave face for Finn and help him cope.
  • Bubblegum herself is very gentle and understanding towards her timid brother Neddy. When her uncle Gumbald threatens him, Bonnie instantly gets over her fear and snaps "stay away from my brother!"
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Even though his baby sister Anais is smart enough to be in 8th grade and likely the smartest in Elmore, Gumball looks out for her whenever she gets picked on or is manipulated for her social awkwardness. He's also this to his adoptive brother Darwin as well.
• American Dragon: Jake Long:
  • Jake has a very perky, know-it-all sister who grates on his nerves more often than not, but his brotherly instincts kick in if there are any signs of danger towards her. When the prank he plays on her in "Family Business" out of jealousy of the attention she's getting from the magical world disarms her long enough to get her kidnapped, he's utterly sick at what his actions have wrought and immediately rushes to her rescue.
  • Haley herself returns the sentiment when she stands up for Jake after their grandfather accuses him for deliberately ditching his dragon duties just so he can take a break in "Being Human".
• Amphibia:
  • Anne becomes protective of the Sprig and Polly, especially the latter, whenever they're in danger. She's also this to Marcy because of her clumsiness and absent-mindedness.
  • Sasha acts like a big sister to Anne and Marcy before, during, and after her Character Development.
• Arcane:
  • Vi has this for her little sister Powder and their foster brothers. She always makes sure Powder is never in harm's way, which is why she's wracked with guilt for hitting Powder and blaming the girl for the deaths of Vander and their brothers.
  • As befitting the older one in their Like Brother and Sister relationship, Jayce is understandably worried for Caitlyn's safety after she gets injured by Jinx's bomb on Progress Day. However, he's still supportive of her career choice in law enforcement and offers her a position in his security force after her parents get her removed from the Enforcers.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Sokka and Katara switch off in who's taking care of who when it comes to the group.
  • Played completely straight in "The Deserter" when Aang accidentally burns Katara with inexpert Firebending, Sokka tackles Aang to the ground and yells.
    Sokka: I told you we shouldn't mess around with this! Look what you did! YOU BURNED MY SISTER!
  • After he joins the group, Zuko appears to quickly develop this with the rest of the gang, especially towards Aang, Katara, and Toph.
  • Katara is both an inverted example to Sokka and a straight one to Toph. In "The Runaway", Sokka has a talk with Toph about how, even though Katara's motherly attitude can be annoying at times, he has come to rely on it in the years after his own mother's death. She had been there, acting as a mother figure, for so much of his life that when he tries to picture his actual mother's face, he can only picture Katara's. This gets Toph admit that she realizes that Katara cares for her — the real her — more than her own mom ever did.
• Ben 10: Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Despite their differences Kevin acts this way towards Ben.
• Bob's Burgers: While in regular circumstances Gene acts more like a peer than a big brother to younger sister Louise — having a more immature and follower mentality compared to her — when the situation calls for it he will show his protective side. One episode even has Louise mentioning that she doesn't really view Gene as her "big brother" because he doesn't fit any of the associated stereotypes, and scoffs at the notion of him being "in charge" when the two of them are home alone, but when she is later brought to tears by teenage bully Logan, Gene steps in front of her and refuses to move even at the cost of taking what Logan had been intending to do to Louise.
• Breadwinners: Sway Sway sometimes has this for Buhdeuce. When Buhdeuce was being tortured by Steven Quackberg’s movie crew, Sway Sway goes crazy and torments them. Sway Sway also charges at a giant monster when he thinks he ate Buhdeuce.
• The Brothers Flub: It's no secret Fraz is constantly annoyed by his younger twin, Guapo. But even after reading a true fortune about him being doomed, Fraz rushed to a giant pinball machine to save his brother. The roles are reversed when Fraz is tricked into doing stupid things. Guapo's loyalty to Fraz overpowered his desire to have fun and he managed to save him.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers:
  • Ma-Ti's more vulnerable characteristics are counterbalanced by the four older Planeteers, all of whom are determined to see that he makes it out of each mission safe and sound.
  • Ma-Ti himself is an inversion; despite his physical weakness and self-doubt, he has saved the day more than once by combining his powers with a drive to protect his older friends.
• CatDog: Despite the fact that they're twins and he's only a few minutes older, Cat is very protective of Dog and will try to keep him out of trouble. The trope is also inverted as Dog, the younger twin, is also quite protective of Cat.
• While Blocky from ChalkZone is technically the older brother rather than Snap, since Rudy drew Blocky long before he drew Snap, Snap is often shown to act more mature than Blocky and has frequently acted like a protective older brother to him. "Bulky Blocky", in particular, has Snap dead set on making Butch Biceps pay for picking on Blocky.
• Class of 3000: Philly Phil. While he has low self-esteem and his own well-being isn't a high priority, his friends' safety definitely is. You can treat him how you like, but his friends? Leave. Them. Alone. It's a bit of a Berserk Button for him.
• In Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island Fred is normally oblivious and doesn't seem to care about his surroundings. But in "One Bad Apple" Bingo mentions he counts on Fred to stand up for him.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Danny does this with his Opposite-Sex Clone, Danielle. In the first episode they meet, he goes from suspicious to protective, keeping her safe from Vlad with his Ghostly Wail, the second time he was willing to be Valerie's captive if it meant saving her from being dissolved. Interestingly, he develops this instinct even with his older sister, becoming overprotective when she's in trouble or in the rare moments when she does something irrational.
  • The feeling is mutual. Danny may be the one with powers, but Jazz is the older sibling and doesn't like seeing people pick on her brother. While Danielle is younger than Danny, she'll stand up for Danny when she needs to.
  • Jazz displays plenty of Big Sister Instincts towards Danny. Upon discovering her brother’s ghostly secret, she steps in to protect her brother from Spectra by using one of their father’s inventions. Even before her discovery, she often looked after Danny, thinking that their parents couldn’t take care of her brother.
• In Dawn of the Croods, Eep is pretty protective of her brother, Thunk; this is something that went unexplored in the movie from which this show is spun-off. For example:
  • In "Wet Hot Ahhh! Valley Summer", when Thunk is hanging from a vine, visibly scared of jumping into the deep end of the Watering Hole, Eep grabs another vine, swings over, and encourages him, offering to jump down with him.
  • In "The First Picture Show", when everyone thinks Thunk is lying about the story he's telling, Eep (and their younger sister Sandy) jumps to his defense.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • Ed is this to Sarah.
  • Sarah herself is this to her friend Jimmy, she maybe is a Spoiled Brat but this is arguably one of her redeeming qualities.
  • Subverted with Eddy and his brother.
• Inverted and Played for Laughs in an episode of Family Guy where Stewie sticks up for Meg, punching Quagmire in the shins and telling him to stay away from her.
• In Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Susan is this to Johnny. One of the most notable examples is "Trial By Fire", when her fury at her brother being kidnapped after destroying an alien robot sentry even scares Reed.
• Franklin Turtle, without a doubt, seen in the third season in "Big Brother Franklin" when Franklin took to looking after a little kid named Squirrel. He also became a "best friend big brother" to Bear's little sister, Beatrice. Eventually, Paulette Bourgeois finally made him a big brother for real in the book "Franklin's Baby Sister" and the film Franklin and the Green Knight soon followed.
• In Generator Rex, Rex's older brother Cesar instantly goes into protective mode after their reunion and tries to 'rescue' Rex, even though Rex isn't in any danger. He later knocks out a bunch of Providence agents and jumps down from a ship to help Rex fight an Evo.
• Gorillaz plays this fairly straight during Phase 1 with the rest of the band members' attitude towards a then 10 year old Noodle. It starts getting played with more as time goes on, and by Phase 4 onward, Noodle says in an interview that, now that she's an adult, she's taken on this attitude towards her other bandmates, despite being one to two decades younger than all of them. It definitely helps that she's the most down to earth and the other three could really use it.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Dipper has this for Mabel, even though they're twins and he's the younger one at that. For example, in one episode they work together to get back at Pacifica for hurting Mabel's feelings, only for Mabel to learn that she has nothing to prove to her. Dipper, however, says that he's learned nothing and gets revenge on Pacifica anyway.
    • Dipper's protectiveness over Mabel becomes even more obvious as the series goes on. He is willing to do just about anything for his sister, such as breaking up with a boy when she can't bring herself to do it, help her put together a puppet show so that she can impress her crush of the week (even though it means devoting less time to his own important project), and he encourages her to cheat in mini golf so that she can beat her rival. The season one finale even has him jumping off a cliff into a giant robot to save Mabel.
  • And to an only slightly lesser extent, she protects him right back.
  • Wendy develops this for Dipper and shields him from the Shapeshifter.
  • Soos has also developed this for both the twins. He even goes as far as to go against Stan in order to protect them.
    Soos: Sorry Mr. Pines, but I have a new mission: to protect these kids!
  • Wendy is a downplayed example but she still has a deep protective streak over the twins, demonstrating by how mad she gets when Mabel breaks down after a unicorn tells her she isn't pure of heart.
  • Stan labored for thirty years to rescue his brother from another dimension after their fight threw him into it. He even took his brother's name, presumably to constantly remind himself what he was working for. In the end, he sacrifices his mind to protect his family (though thankfully he gets better).
    • Like Dipper, he's actually the younger twin by fifteen minutes.
• Infinity Train has Grace develop this for Hazel as time goes on, especially after Hazel's surrogate mother Tuba dies. When Hazel rejects her to stay with Amelia instead, feeling betrayed by Grace's unwillingness to openly accept her hybrid nature, Grace is devastated.
• On Invader Zim, Dib has this for Gaz... sometimes. "Gaz, Taster of Pork" is one example, when he's willing to take a punishment for Gaz, protesting that she's "just a little girl." In reality Gaz wasn't about to get any punishment, but she lets him take it for her anyway.
• Loopy's older brother Larry on KaBlam!'s Life with Loopy shorts is like that towards her.
• Kaeloo: Stumpy cares deeply about his seven younger sisters and will do anything to protect them from harm. The same applies to Vitamine, one of the sisters in question, who is always looking out for the rest of the family.
• In Kid vs. Kat, Coop Burtonburger thinks his younger sister Millie is annoying, but he is more than willing to put his life at risk to protect her.
  • On one occasion, when Millie is sad because she wants Coop to play with her, the boy agrees to spend time with her.
  • Even when Mr. Kat is lost, Coop finally decides to reunite Millie and Mr. Kat to make her happy.
• In Kim Possible, sidekick Ron Stoppable quite suddenly gets the news that his family has adopted a baby girl named Hana. He is, at first, disgusted by the "intruder" and wants little to do with her. He slowly starts to soften up, and when it's later revealed that Hana is the target of a villain's scheme, his brotherly instincts kick in with a vengeance. In a later episode where this story arc continues, he even cries when he believes that Hana's life is in danger.
• Mako from The Legend of Korra spent his childhood watching over his brother Bolin and he still is in his adulthood. When Bolin was kidnapped by the Equalists, he threw one of his captors across the screen Hulk-style, or in this universe, Korra-style.
  • Mako also deconstructs this trope: He's sheltered his brother from the harsh realities and darker nature of their environment to such a degree that it's partially led to Bolin's current naiveté and dependency.
  • Bolin himself counts, too. When Korra receives gifts from Tarrlok in front of him, Bolin offers to "have a word with the guy," as he thinks she's being harassed by a Stalker with a Crush.
  • Mako also seemed to have such an instinct for Korra between episodes five and nine.
  • Noatak, better known as Amon shows a pretty dark take on this. He'll bloodbend his brother Tarrlok, but when their father goes a little too far, he starts bloodbending him.
  Noatak/Amon: Stay away from him.
  • Lin Beifong, the elder daughter of Toph, is incredibly protective of her baby sister, Suyin ("Su"). In case there's any lingering doubts, just see those:
    • The first time we see Lin's Big Sister Instinct, it was in a flashback, in which Lin was trying to warn Su against her no-good friends, who were triad members.
    • The second time, we see Lin shielding Su with her body from the combustion-bender P'Li's attacks, before quite literally throwing herself into P'Li's line of sight, in order to give Su an opening. Luckily, Su made the shot.
    • The third time, Lin shoved Su out of the path of a huge incoming fire blast (and very nearly got burned herself), on the top of recusing Su from the prison — one that Su had landed herself in, nonetheless.
    • The fourth time, Su had been knocked unconscious when the Big Bad Kuvira yanked off the giant mech-suit's arm — of which Lin and Su were inside, wrecking the mechanism — and Lin made a makeshift metal seatbelt to strap Su to the wall (Lin's own 'seatbelt' was only half the size of Su's), right before the giant arm got thrown all the way across the city. Oh, and before this, Lin took on the guard attacking them and told Su to go ahead.
• Lilo & Stitch: Nani takes on this role to Lilo after their parents' death.
• Inverted in The Lion Guard. Kion is Kiara’s younger brother, but stronger because he has the Roar of the Elders. He’s seconds away from using it on Kovu when he thinks Kovu is going to harm Kiara. Kiara has to stop him from doing it so the Guard can be filled in on what they missed-namely Kovu marrying Kiara and becoming future king.
• In the Looney Tunes short My Green Fedora (1935, directed by Friz Freleng), Peter Rabbit reluctantly babysits his little brother Elmer. However, he realizes Elmer's gone missing and eventually finds him at the hands of a vicious weasel, whom he chases without a second thought, managing to drive him away by flushing him out of his hole with a garden hose.
• In The Loud House, all of the Loud siblings demonstrate this instinct for each other, regardless of age order, with such moments as Lincoln attacking what he believed to be a dangerous ghost for the sake of the twins and all ten of Lincoln's sisters stepping in to help him when they hear someone's bullying him (at least until they discover that Lincoln's bully is a girl after initially assuming that his bully was a boy).
  • Ronnie Anne, the girl who was bullying Lincoln, is revealed to be the younger sister of Lori's boyfriend, Bobby, and in an episode where a hurtful misunderstanding between Lincoln and Ronnie Anne led to the latter crying, Bobby's Big Brother Instinct towards his sister is shown—he even broke up with Lori after explaining that he couldn't bring himself to go out with someone who's related to someone who hurt the feelings of someone he's related to, and he only got back together with Lori after he saw Lincoln being nice to his sister and apologizing for what he said.
  • There was an episode that showed a dimension where the sexes of Lincoln and his sisters were the exact opposite^note meaning that Lincoln, now a girl named "Linka," is the middle child and only daughter of the eleven Loud children, the ten Loud brothers are shown to be just caring and protective of their sister as the ten Loud sisters are towards their brother (it's especially noticeable after the episode showed how mean the brothers were towards Lincoln). For example: when the brothers hear their sister screaming in the middle of the night, they immediately run to her room to see if she's okay and even offer to stay with her until she falls asleep.
• Martin Mystery is a huge man-child that doesn't take anything seriously in life, except when any danger that comes to his slightly older stepsister, Diana. Examples of this are shown in every episode where she calls out for help and he comes straight to her rescue.
• Mega Man (Ruby-Spears): Mega Man is this to his sister Roll to the point that in the pilot episode he is crush by a monorail train protecting her. In the same episode he tells a lie, something that robots are supposedly incapable of doing, to save Roll from reprogramming.
• Motorcity: Dutch is this towards his younger brother Dar, refusing to let him join the Burners after Dar realizes becoming a Kane Co soldier was a mistake.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Jenny has a Big Sister Instinct towards her friend, Tuck. She’s sees him as her little brother and is often protective of him. He likewise sees her as a Cool Big Sis.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • Shining Armor makes it no secret that he's absolutely terrified of King Sombra, but he doesn't even hesitate to take Sombra on one-on-one to buy his sister enough time to escape.
  • In "Griffon the Brush-Off", Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash have fun pranking everypony, but Pinkie has a strong instinct to protect Fluttershy from even their most harmless prank.
    Fluttershy (to Pinkie Pie): I'm a year older than you.
  • Though they are all about the same age, Rainbow Dash can be this to her friends, but especially Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and even Spike. She's willing to kick the teenage dragon's asses when she finds out what they're going to do to Spike. She also stands up for Fluttershy against some bullies back when they were fillies. She ends up having this attitude towards her fan-filly Scootaloo, being affectionate with the filly and fiercely protective of her when she's in trouble.
  • Twilight Sparkle was responsible for hatching her dragon assistant, Spike, when she was little. Since then, Twilight has been a surrogate big sister to him, and always caring for him. When Nightmare Moon takes over Equestria, the first thing she does is put an exausted Spike to bed before she starts searching for the Elements of Harmony, and Twilight was also willing to hurt the teenage dragons if they laid a claw on him.
  • Applejack to Apple Bloom, of course. She'll jump in front of a Chimera in a heartbeat to protect her little sister.
  • Maud Pie will literally move mountains if Pinkie Pie is in danger.
• A huge part of Wirt's character arc in Over the Garden Wall. He plays the babysitter role for his half-brother Greg as they journey through the Unknown, but it's a long time before he really takes his job seriously.
• The Owl House:
  • Luz Noceda has a protective streak towards King, Gus, and Willow once she befriends them. Because of this, she will defend them anytime they're in trouble and/or getting bullied.
  • Despite their constant teasing, Edric and Emira are this to their younger sister, Amity, especially after their prank in "Lost in Language" almost got her and Luz killed. They're also willing to help her whenever she defies their mother's orders.
  • Hunter, who in the later part of season two befriended and developed this towards Gus, and to a lesser extent toward protagonist Luz. A point of interest is that, even in Hunter's villain days, many fans noticed a sibling-like dynamic between Luz and Hunter in the form of petty squabbling and him treating his younger foe like a nuisance ("She can ruin someone else's day."), but seeming reluctant to actually hurt her.
• Skipper and Kowalski of The Penguins of Madagascar display this toward Private occasionally, covering his eyes or ears to protect him from "inappropriate" content.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Perry the platypus seems to be like this to the title characters, judging by how much more viciously he attacks his nemesis Doofenshmirtz when his current scheme would put Phineas and Ferb into danger. This is best exemplified in the first movie, when Perry lets himself get clobbered by Doof-2's minion, because it would reveal his identity to the boys if he fought back, but when Doof-2 orders his minion to do the same thing to Phineas and Ferb, Perry gets up and starts defending them without hesitation.
  • In the movie Across the Second Dimension, Candace-2 from the alternate dimension is fiercely protective of her brothers Phineas and Ferb. To the point she is willing to abandon the alternate Phineas and Ferb to protect her own. Though she eventually came back for them.
  Candace-2: I'll do anything to protect the ones I love.
  • Though not nearly to the same extreme, this also applies to regular-dimension Candace herself. Despite having a morbid fear of heights, she once rode a flying bicycle into space when her brothers got captured by an alien poacher.
• Pocoyo: Pocoyo has this towards Baby Bird, who sees him as an older brother. In "Twinkle Twinkle", Pocoyo is the first to show concern for Baby Bird when he cries and gets angry at Elly for causing it. Pocoyo is also the first to put his whistle away after realizing it makes Baby Bird upset in "Who's Calling Me Now?".
  • Inverted in "Pocoyo's Puppet Show": Pocoyo is discouraged from putting on his puppet show when it offends Pato and Elly, so Baby Bird angrily drags them over to make them apologize.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: Bullwinkle was like this towards Rocky at least once; in an episode where Rocky was injured, Bullwinkle became enraged, and chased after the bad guys like a man, er, moose possessed. Of course, the injury was only a bump on the head, but the doctor's medical jargon made him overreact.
• Rugrats:
  • Rugrats (1991):
    • Big Binky from "He Saw, She Saw" will go out of his way to protect his little sister Emma from harm (even if he won't take his binky out of his mouth).
    • Tommy cares a lot about his younger brother, Dil. He openly objects to Phil and Lil trying to return him to the hospital in the first movie, and is often quick to defend Dil if someone says bad things about him.
    • Chuckie Finster will defy his usual cowardice to save Tommy many times over, despite not being related to him. After his father Chas marries Kira in Rugrats in Paris, Kimi becomes his new little sister, which becomes the plot point of "Big Brother Chuckie". At first, Chuckie worries that he won't be able to protect Kimi since she's as adventurous as he is cowardly, and that she doesn't really need him to protect her. Near the end of the episode, when he sees two boys kicking sand at each other, and some of the sand lands on Kimi, he works up the courage to tell the boys to leave her alone. Fortunately for him, the boys mean no harm to Kimi, apologize, and walk away.
  • Rugrats (2021): Just like in the original series, Tommy cares a lot about Dil. In "The Heist", when he finds out that his parents are donating Dil's mobile to an auction at Angelica's preschool, he wants to get it back before it gets sold, knowing that it helps Dil fall asleep at night. When he explains this to his friends, Kimi, who was previously against the idea of taking the mobile back, supports Tommy's decision for this reason.
• Secret Mountain Fort Awesome: Festro calls his friends his "bros" and at times he has a protective side for them. In "Nightmare Sauce" he faced his worst fear (of wearing mom jeans) to save them all from his nightmare. In "Dingle Come Home" he declares war on a crazy cat lady when he mistakes her for kidnapping Dingle. In "Party Slog" he stands up for Slog when he realizes the humans only like him for his abs.
• The Simpsons: Bart Simpson usually wouldn't give a damn about what happens to Lisa on a mundane basis, and the two have an intense sibling rivalry, but his instinct does kick in every time something serious happens.
  • In "Bart the General", Bart has been insulting Lisa all morning. Upon getting to school, one of Nelson's cronies takes a batch of muffins Lisa had baked earlier. That's all it takes for Bart to attack the cronie (as pictured above) and he winds up punching Nelson in the face and is challenged to fight. It's the first sign in the series that Bart isn't a total jerk towards his sister.
  • In "Separate Vocations", an Aptitude Test tells Lisa that her suitable career is housewife. In response she becomes a delinquent, and eventually steals the teacher's guides, an expulsion-worthy offense. When Bart finds out what Lisa did, he takes the blame, staying in school due to his work as hall monitor. When she asked why, Bart tells Lisa that test or no test, she's the one with the makings to be a success.
  • In "'Round Springfield" when Lisa is absolutely crushed that she can't get the last copy of Bleeding Gums' album for a tribute after his death, Bart spends all the remaining money from his recent legal settlement involving Krusty the Clown's cereal to get it for her. He was thanking because she was the only one who believed him when he said his stomach hurt.
  • In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart helps Lisa when they're at military school by training her in preparation to use the Eliminator, and cheers her on whilst risking being beaten up by the other students.
  • In "Gone Abie Gone", Bart helps Lisa keep her college fund through poker because he secretly cares about her.
  • In "Black-Eyed, Please", Homer asks Ms. Krabappel to get rid of Lisa's bully substitute teacher. You know what she does? She gets Bart to play a transfer student in the woman's class, and he then proceeds to cause absolute havoc during a two-minute bathroom break and makes the woman quit her job. While it isn't shown, the fact that Bart agreed to do this at all shows that he does care about Lisa.
  • In "Moe'N'a Lisa", Bart is shocked when he finds out that Moe won't give Lisa credit for his success as a poet and teams up with Homer to get revenge on him.
  • To a lesser extent, Lisa has been an inversion of this to Bart. The best examples are the episode "Bart's Girlfriend" where she protects Bart from Jessica Lovejoy and the episode "Lisa on Ice" where Bart is attacked by a group of boys and Lisa beats up the bullies to protect him.
• South Park:
  • Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick cares a great deal about his younger sister, Karen. So much so that he dresses up as his superhero persona, Mysterion, and acts as her Guardian Angel.
    • In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, if the player character identifies as female then Kenny will note that he feels an urge to protect you because you remind him of his sister for some reason. The Casa Bonita DLC deals with him trying to save his sister from the Vampire Kids, or to be more exact, save her from hanging out with a pack of losers.
  • Alternatively and less immediate, Kyle Broflovski and Ike's relationship has varied throughout the course of the show; originally, Ike was more of an Annoying Younger Sibling who idolized Kyle, following him to school and copying his mannerisms, while Kyle held a more superficial malice towards his brother (when he learned Ike was adopted, he completely shunned him for a while). Nowadays, Kyle goes to great lengths to keep his little brother safe, from stopping him from running off to Somalia, to dragging his friends to Canada on Christmas Eve to get Ike back from his biological parents. Ike has now become Kyle's greatest drives, even moreso than his antagonism towards Cartman. Kyle was perfectly willing to let Cartman kill himself in Somalia, and even the thought of other classmates following him did not budge him from his celebrations. Realizing Ike had joined Cartman however completely reversed his feelings.
  • Female version — Let it be understood that only Shelley has the right to torture little brother Stan.
  • Stan Marsh himself shows this on occasion towards Kenny and Kyle, even though he isn't much older than them (Both Stan and Kyle are 10 years old, the former being the first to turn 10, and Kenny still being 9) and none of them are related. Stan often offers them emotional support, disciplines them and has gone through great lengths to keep them safe, even risking his own life at times.
• Space Chickens In Space: Finley, Starley, and Chuck all three have this towards each other. Finley warns and tries to save his younger siblings, Starley threatens those who try to hurt her brothers, and Chuck is often worried or even self sacrificing to his older siblings.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob and Squidward Tentacles have a very brother-like relationship, with SpongeBob acting like the Annoying Younger Sibling. Even though Squidward often shows resentment towards his “younger brother,” he cares a lot about SpongeBob deep down, and will make sure to stand up for him if need be.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi has this towards Anakin Skywalker, who in turn has it towards Ahsoka Tano. A villainous example exists between Savage Opress and Darth Maul, as while the latter still has a stiff adherence to the Sith code and forceful enforcement of the Master/Apprentice chain, Savage is still the only being he shows legitimate caring and concern for.
• Star Wars Rebels: Fitting the Ghost crew's found family dynamic, Zeb has this for both Sabine and Ezra, especially Ezra. Best shown when he tackles two Inquisitors to rescue his "siblings," despite knowing that he has little to no chance of winning.
• On Star Wars: The Bad Batch, the entire squad is protective of Omega, who is Everyone's Baby Sister — literally, being the only female clone of Jango Fett as well as the only one of the bunch who isn't physically mature.
• Steven Universe:
  • Amethyst can be considered one when hanging out with Steven, given her easygoing, fun-loving nature; she even teases Steven for being concerned about her in "An Indirect Kiss" when he uses his healing saliva to fix Amethyst's cracked gem:
    Steven: Amethyst, I'm sorry, I can't do anything right. Now I'm going to lose you, and it's all my fault.
    Amethyst: Ha ha, you care about me. [Steven hugs Amethyst]
    Steven: Please let me be a magic healer. [A tear from Steven hits Amethyst's gem, but nothing happens] Oh, come on!
    [Rose's fountain activates, washing over the brambles and making roses grow; Steven gasps]
    Amethyst: Look at this guy, saving my life and junk.
  • Garnet for Steven as well, since she's the strongest member of the team with a very protective instinct.
  • Steven Quartz Universe can be this to the Gems, helping to reassure them whenever they are having self-esteem issues.
  • Connie Maheswaran becomes one to Steven in "Steven's Birthday" ^note  in spite of Connie's and Steven's respective ages of 12 3/4 and 14, and that Steven can shapeshift as noted in "So Many Birthdays" when he magically shapeshifts into a baby, offering to stay behind and care for Steven:
    Greg: Connie, let me take you home, I-I'll call you when this all this gets sorted out. [Steven coos]
    Connie: Wait, no, I want to stay.
    Greg: Are you sure?
    Connie: Yeah, I just want to be there for Steven. Don't worry, Steven, it doesn't matter to me what age it seems like you are, I wanna hang out with you no matter what. Your dad still has his car wash and the gems have to do gem stuff so I'll watch you when they're not around. I can come see you after I'm done training with Pearl too. Doesn't that sound fun? [Steven coos with delight, holding Connie's finger]
• In Street Sharks, all of the titular brothers act this way towards each other.
• Taz from Taz-Mania can be fiercely protective of his two younger siblings, Molly and Jake, as much as the former annoys him. In "Oh Brother", he mauls a gorilla for attempting to punch Jake (though the gorilla only attempted it our of peer pressure from his own younger brother). In "Mall Wrecked", he strips a pair of vultures of their feathers for attempting to eat a sleeping Molly.
• The titular turtles in most Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles incarnations are this for each other. Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) in particular doesn't like it when anybody or anything threatens or hurts his brothers, especially his two younger brothers, Donnie and Mikey. More than once, he has jumped in-between their attackers to defend them.
• Thomas & Friends is this to some of the other engines, especially Percy. This is especially prominent in later seasons, where he is more matured and experienced so often charged with keeping an eye on newcomers. Also inverted since he is sometimes this to older engines such as Toby as well.
  • Although they are twins, Donald falls into this category with Douglas, especially predominate in their debut episode Brake Van where he bumps said brake van hard after Douglas' trains were delayed, and the CGI episode Love Me Tender where he realises that Douglas is stuck in the snow when he took his brother's tender by accident. This is also subverted in the episode Twin Trouble, where it's the younger twin's instincts which takes over. Duck barely has time to say "Donald's in trouble", before Douglas rushes to the rescue.
• In Thunder Cats 2011 Tygra often struggles with his deep resentment of his younger brother Lion-O, but when Lion-O is protecting some stockaded prisoners from an Angry Mob and has challenged them to Go Through Me, Tygra immediately comes to his aid informing the crowd "You better be sure you want to do this because I've got his back."
• The Mask: The Mask loves and cares about Stanley like he is his little brother so anyone who bullies him or takes advantage of him will end up on his revenge list.
• Most The Transformers TV series feature human characters, with said characters usually being kids, teenagers, or young adults. Expect every Autobot in the show (especially Prime and Bumblebee) to drop everything if their human friends need them, or to go out of their way to help them if they can. Given they all share the character trait of being All Loving Heroes, this makes sense.
  • In the first episode of the second season of The Transformers, Spike (the show's most notable Token Human) is badly injured during a Decepticon attack. The Autobots immediately drop the fight to get to Spike, with Ratchet and Prowl racing him to the hospital.
  • In Transformers: Animated, Sari becomes close with the Autobots, especially with Bumblebee and Bulkhead. When her father disappears in season 2, she moves in with them. While the Cybertronians have no idea how to properly take care of a human child, they give it their all and let her know that she's loved and cared for.
• Wild Kratts has the Kratt Brothers, who both play it straight and invert it. Most obvious in episode 32, when Chris goes missing after getting stuck to a bee, Martin is upset that he wasn't able to keep Chris from going missing and keep him safe, and he keeps setting out to find him.
• In the Peanuts special "Why, Charlie Brown, Why," Linus is friends with a girl named Janice who was diagnosed with leukemia. When a bully teases Janice about her baldness from her treatment, Linus goes into Big Brother mode times ten and not only dresses the bully down but does everything he can to keep from throttling the jerk.
• Winnie the Pooh isn't particularly smart to say the least, though he will constantly aid and comfort Piglet as much as his hapless self allows. Similarly Tigger is something of a Keet, though cares a lot about Roo. With a fair helping of Big Brother Worship in there from the latter, both even refer to each other as brothers. Both of these are seen in the original novels, though it is the Disney incarnations where this trope is most evident.
  Tigger: Only the best... for my bestest little brother...

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