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"When I was in high school, some kids were passing around fliers for the Asian Student Alliance and asked if I wanted to join, and I was like, 'Eh, I'm Asian enough. [nervous laughter] Did it HAVE to be on YELLOW PAPER?! Oh my God, you guys!'"

A member of a social group criticizes fellow members of said group for perpetuating behavior that mainstream society deems negative. The reproach may be anything from gentle needling to a knockout punch to a high-profile rant against the transgressors. Whatever the form, the Stop Being Stereotypical message is usually one against those actions that are embarrassing the group and hinder their efforts for wider acceptance. This is known in The Other Wiki as "respectability politics."

Typically, this may reflect divisions of class (such as middle and upper class black people living in Suburbia complaining about the "ghetto" behavior of unruly ones in the cities), gender expression (such as gender-conforming gays complaining about "flaming" gays, gender non-conforming heterosexual men and women complaining about other heterosexual men and women enjoying hobbies typically associated with their gender, or a Tomboy complaining about a Girly Girl because Real Women Don't Wear Dresses), ideology (such as people railing against the extremists of their religious or political ideology), or conformity to mainstream social rules (such as fanboys complaining about peers who won't even bother with personal hygiene). Whatever the group involved, the criticism is generally not of the behavior in itself, but of the way it "makes us look bad." Indeed, sometimes the complainers will engage in the behavior themselves, but will be careful to do so only in private; this, in turn, might cause the accused party to take the moral high ground over this hypocrisy.

If the criticism is leveled by a character in a work, it may be a Very Special Episode or an Author Tract. It might also be done by a Real Life creator as an attempt at reforming the group.

Telling others to Stop Being Stereotypical is not always presented in a positive light. The person making the criticism might be presented as being overly submissive to the norms of mainstream culture. A common response to "Stop Being Stereotypical" is "I don't care what they think." Both sides may end up calling each other Category Traitors. The recipient of the criticism will be accused of hurting the group by making them look bad, while the one who gives the criticism might be accused of being a Boomerang Bigot or an Uncle Tom. Sometimes the deliverer of this criticism is a bigot from outside the group: he's usually a Troubled Sympathetic Bigot who really wants to accept the group he hates (or at least realizes that he simply has to do so to be polite), but finds certain members of the group, whom he considers representative, to be so darned stereotypical in their behavior that they've put him off the entire group. In these cases, Stop Being Stereotypical overlaps with Why Do You Make Me Hate You?

Note that there is nothing limiting a Stop Being Stereotypical message to any particular type of assembly. Mathematically speaking, any sufficiently large crowd will have people who act against the group's interests and serve as the target of such a message. For example, most sports fans are simply enthusiastic supporters of their team, but all fans get a black eye when a few Fan Dumb members go overboard and start riots if their team loses (or wins).

A Cultural Personality Makeover is likely to result in this message.

This kind of thing can exist in real life, but it's probably best not to give any real life examples.

Also see Broken Base, a common place for enthusiasts to sling such accusations against each other, and Vocal Minority, which emphasizes that the stereotypes are the tiniest but loudest part of a given group. Don't Shoot the Message is the ideological variant of this, when the person complaining supports what's being said, just not how it comes across. Compare My Species Doth Protest Too Much (when non-humans come onto the scene), Self-Deprecation (this trope's self-directed and generally more comedic cousin), Stereotype Reaction Gag (when the stereotype turns out to be correct), Even Nerds Have Standards (when nerds distance themselves from someone or something too nerdy even for them), and Cultural Cringe. Contrast with Boomerang Bigot and with Klingon Scientists Get No Respect, who aren't stereotypical and get flack for it.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Captain Celebrity from My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is basically the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Eagleland trope, being a loud, boisterous Glory Hound (and serial womanizer) who waits for the cameras to show up before going into action and shows little regard for collateral damage. It eventually turns out that he's in Japan because all the other American superheroes effectively blacklisted him for both being a complete tool and validating everything xenophobic foreigners say about the USA.

    Comic Books 
  • Occurs in the final chapter of Gene Yang's American Born Chinese. Danny (a Chinese-American originally named Jin Wang) attacks his "visiting cousin" Chin-Kee, a buck-toothed slant-eyed Engrish-speaking caricature for being a perpetual embarrassment. It turns out Chin-Kee is actually Sun Wukong, trying to get Danny/Jin to accept the Chinese heritage he had rejected after a falling out with his stereotypically nerdy Asian best friend (and a desire to date a Caucasian girl).
  • As Deadpool put it: "Holy crap, you're an Arab living in America and you're a terrorist?! That's so disappointingly stereotypical and racist!"
  • Dork Tower has done several strips where the characters and/or the artist (who are all avid Tabletop Games players) call out other gamers for their lack of social skills (civility, personal hygiene, inappropriate clothing, etc.), especially at conventions.
  • Sistah Spooky once chewed out Empowered for crying because she was "reinforcing stereotypes about female superheroes".
  • From the DC Elseworlds series Kingdom Come:
  • In Kamen America, when she was a girl Carly had a teacher who tried to break gender stereotypes by pushing her to play sports and that her passion for fashion design was setting a bad example. Her father instead encouraged her to follow her heart and be who she wants to be.
  • In Maus, a work of non-fiction, Art Spiegelman calls out his father Vladek for behaving in a very stereotypical miserly fashion since he worries how this will affect people's opinions of Jews. His father explains it as a result of being in the Holocaust, but Vladek's wife comments that she and a number of Holocaust survivors they know haven't become misers. Not to mention it's subtly implied at some points that his father is an Unreliable Narrator about what he was like in the Holocaust.
  • In Ms. Marvel (2014), Kamala and her friend Nakia are both from Muslim families. In this case, the parents are more Westernized than some of their children—Kamala's father is always butting heads with her extremely religious brother Aamir, while Nakia's parents are hoping that her hijab is just part of a phase.
  • This is the central conflict with the comic New Super-Man. The Ministry of Self-Reliance sees the superhero team Great Ten as a group of stereotypical relics that the country has outgrown and has created the Justice League of China in order to beat the Westerners at their own superhero games. However, the Great Ten feel that the Ministry has abandoned their pride in their country and is reinforcing the stereotype that China is a bootlegger's paradise with their knockoff Justice League.
  • Suicide Squad: After helping to save Australia from an alien invasion, Captain Boomerang expects to be lauded by his fellow Aussies as a hero. Instead, he is confronted by a mob who are so sick of him giving Australia a bad name by embodying so many many elements of The Bogan on the international stage that they toss him off a ferry into Sydney Harbour.
  • This trope is a big part of the premise behind the X-Men - humanity in general fears mutants because they see them as dangerous and violent, and the X-Men take it upon themselves to police the mutant population, stopping evil mutants whose actions confirm anti-mutant prejudices.

    Fan Works 
  • Along Came a Spider: Trifa is very upset to realize that she's used as a spy and assassin by the White Fang specifically because she's a spider Faunus. It gets worse when she realizes many members of the White Fang are just as racist towards other Faunus as humans are, such as one White Fang member bragging that he got laid because he went on a date with a rabbit Faunus. Thinking it over, Trifa is disgusted to learn just how many Faunus embody the stereotypes of their animal counterparts. Adam is a bull Faunus and extremely hot-headed. The Albion brothers are fox Faunus are extremely clever and conniving. The cat Faunus Blake loves fish and hates dogs. And she later meets Velvet Scarletina, a rabbit Faunus who's very shy and timid and absolutely loves carrots. It gets to the point where Trifa thinks she might be the only Faunus who isn't a walking stereotype, being a spider Faunus who hates bugs.
  • Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: Ultimate Televangelist Yashiro Fujiwara is willing to badmouth other televangelists due to their reputation for greed. When introducing himself to Daisuke Hiyori, he openly claims that "most televangelists now don't care about their faith. They care about their fortune."
  • Service with a Smile: Adam Taurus says that Faunus have no connection between their animal traits and their behavior; bull Faunus (such as himself) don't hate the color red, rabbit Faunus don't reproduce quickly, so on and so on. However, his ex-girlfriend Blake is a cat Faunus who hates dogs and loves fish. Adam, being stupidly in love, originally found this cute — but now that he and Blake are bitter exes, he finds it annoying. He mentions that Blake's mother (also a cat Faunus) loves dogs and hates fish, so it's definitely just Blake.
  • Sixes and Sevens: Sousa claims he's fine with Roger Aubrey being gay, he just doesn't like how flamboyant he is. Peggy counters that Howard is no better, and if Sousa's handled him for as long as he has then he can put up with Roger for a few hours.
  • The Weaver Option: The Eldar Maea is captured on an Imperium world where her allies slaughtered defenseless humans and launched a stealth attack on Taylor's unit. In private, Desmerius berates her for acting like the stereotypical "evil xeno" Imperium propaganda warns against and making it increasingly difficult to maintain his secret trade deals with several Craftworlds.
  • White Sheep (RWBY): Blake, a cat Faunus, insists that Faunus do not have instincts any different than a human. Then she hisses at Yang's corgi.
    Yang: Congratulations on setting your people's cause back a thousand years or more.

    Film — Animated 

    Film — Live Action 
  • In Be Cool, celebrity music producer Sin LaSalle chastises his cousin (a rapper) Dabu, when the latter pulls up to Sin's house in a big black Hummer, with spinning rims and rap music blasting from the stereo.
    Sin: "Man, why you gotta reinforce the stereotype? I live here. I'm on the neighborhood watch."
  • The Big Sky: A party of white traders is traveling up the Missouri River in 1832. They encounter a Blackfoot brave, a toothless, grinning man who laughs stupidly and asks for whiskey. They name him "Poordevil." Teal Eye, a Blackfoot princess traveling with the whites, is disgusted by Poordevil and calls him a disgrace.
  • Blazing Saddles: Buddy, the Camp Gay director of the "French Mistake" musical number, is obviously none-too-pleased by his casts' own camp gay mannerisms, turning him into a bit of a Boomerang Bigot. He berates them as "Sissy Marys," calls them "faggots," and gripes that their lisping sounds like "steam escaping."
  • In A Christmas Story, the manager of the Chinese restaurant gets frustrated and embarrassed when his employees are trying to sing Christmas carols for their customers and keep having trouble with the Ls. Considering they decided to sing "Deck The Halls," which was practically tailor-made to point out their accent, one would almost think they did it on purpose. Especially since they immediately switch to "Jingle Bells" afterward.
  • Coach Carter challenges his inner-city basketball team to overcome the Dumb Jock stereotype by closing the gym and cancelling games until they improve their grades. Later he calls out both his players for failing to educate themselves and the Principal for perpetuating their situation believing they can't do any better.
  • Occurs in Crash, which as a whole revolves primarily around topics of racism and racial identity. Ludacris' character spends much of the movie rationalizing being a criminal and justifying how he is not harming black people or the community but winds up in conflict with Terrence Howard's movie producer. In the end, Howard's character says "You embarrass me; you embarrass yourself."
  • Dark Waters: Tom Terp, an experienced corporate defense lawyer, is disgusted by the Corrupt Corporate Executive misdeeds of DuPont, noting how it's people like them who make the public distrust all big corporations and their lawyers.
  • First Time Felon: Calhoun, explaining his views to Yance, quotes Chris Rock:
    Calhoun: "There's a war going on in this country. It's between black people and niggers.''
  • Subverted in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Kumar is reluctant to become a doctor as he thinks it's an Indian stereotype, but later decides that he wants to become a doctor regardless of whether or not it's stereotypical.
  • In Madea's Family Reunion, the black wedding planner says that she can hardly work with black people because they are ignorant.
  • Master: Both Liv and Jasmine object to each other in different ways. Jasmine finds Liv's insistence that Everything Is Racist grating and tiring, especially when she fails her essay for not being about race. Liv seems to think of Jasmine as along the lines of The Whitest Black Guy. It gets a twist with the revelation that Liv is probably white.
  • The 80s film Mexico 2000 is also not subtle at all about who is pointing their finger, albeit the film falls into the Hilarious in Hindsight territory since many of the stuff that happens in the film happened in Mexico in some scale or another after that year.
  • In The Nutty Professor, Professor Klump is a morbidly obese man looked down on for his weight. His family is also morbidly obese and portrayed as loud, obnoxious, lazy slobs who eat only junk food. After having a nightmare where he became a Godzilla-style caricature of a fat person, he decides to invent something that will get rid of his excess fat since he's too ashamed to be affiliated with anyone as heavy as himself.
  • This is the theme of A Soldier's Story as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play it was based on, A Soldier's Play. A black man, a sergeant in the 1943 US Army who craves respect from whites, is driven by an insane hatred for blacks that he thinks live down to white stereotypes.
  • In Tropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus criticizes Alpa Chino for using the N-word, a word which is used to "keep our people down." Hilariously, Lazarus is a white man playing a black man in the movie-within-a-movie, while Alpa is actually a black person.
    Kirk: [with tears in his eyes] For four-hundred years... that word has kept our people down..
    Alpa: ... What the fuck...?
    • Earlier in the movie:
    Tugg Speedman: I can't believe you people!
    Kirk: Whoa, whoa. What do you mean, "you people"?
    Alpa: What do you mean, "you people"?
    • There's also a variation on Klingon Scientists Get No Respect here since Alpa mocks Kirk for not acting like the white Australian he really is, with the implication that everything that comes out of his mouth needs to be about kangaroos, shrimps on the barbie and dingoes eating babies. Of course, Kirk is a very gentrified Australian who doesn't conform to the "outback" stereotypes.
  • In The Way (2010), Martin Sheen's character has his backpack, which also has his dead son's ashes, stolen by a Roma (Gypsy) boy. Though the boy gets away, his father drags his son back to return the pack and complains that his people have a hard enough time being smeared as thieves without his stupid son proving the stereotype true. To make up for it the father invites the pilgrims for a get-together, where he advises Sheen's character to go an extra distance to a seaside church to honor his own late son and has his thieving son carry the pilgrim's pack for him to the city limits as punishment.

    Literature 
  • Alpha and Omega: Judging by the way he boots various callers off his radio show, Reverend Lester Stark no doubt finds them just as cringeworthy as the reader.
  • In Anno Dracula, most vampires are ordinary people who happen to have unusual dietary requirements. A few powerful ones are inhuman monsters. And all the above have contempt for the ones who insist on flapping about the place in opera cloaks like something from a melodrama.
  • Many people, many of whom are Asian, have called out Amy Chua's already controversial "Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother" as enforcing the stereotype that Asian parents (Chinese in particular) are emotionally cold and abusive Education Mamas rather than promote a stronger parenting style like the book intended. With Drew Magary in his "25 Least Influential People of 2011" list summing it up like the book that makes people think more negatively about her and Chinese culture as a whole.
  • Discworld:
    • Men at Arms, Detritus the troll tries to use a Stop Being Stereotypical speech to defuse a riot between a gang of trolls and a gang of dwarfs.
    "Hah, I been a man only hardly any time," said Detritus, "and already I fed up with you stupid trolls. What you think humans say, eh? Oh, them ethnic, them don't know how to behave in big city, go around waving clubs at the drop of a thing you wear on head."
    • This trope is one of the novel's main themes. Detritus' comment about being a man comes from a speech by Vimes earlier in the book, where he says that there are no trolls, dwarfs, or humans in the Watch. When they put on the uniform, they're all Men of the Watch (even Angua, who's a woman).
    • Werewolves get it from both sides: humans hate them for the bestial habits, while wolves hate them because humans hunt them harder after a werewolf attack.
    • Snuff introduces goblins, establishes their complex (if peculiar to humans) culture and beliefs and their poetic names such as Tears of the Mushroom ... and then gives us Billy Slick (born Of the Wind Regretfully Blown) who can't be bothered with any of that stuff, and doesn't understand why other Morporkian goblins do.
  • Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Inverted in book 3 (Calling On Dragons) with Arona Michaelear Grinogion Vamist, who's made it his life's mission to go around to and pester magical beings to be more stereotypical. He's introduced making trouble a witch for having a garden that doesn't look sinister enough, not being an aged crone with a stoop, and having multiple non-black cats. He later insists to the King of Dragon's face that she's supposed to be eating a princess, not allying with her. He's survived this kind of idiocy because the wizards found him a useful distraction and put a protection spell on him.
  • The Honorverse:
    • In Field of Dishonor, the fourth novel, Michael Janvier, Baron High Ridge, is described as being the complete embodiment of the overbred, effete, arrogant aristocratic clique that makes up much of the Star Kingdom of Manticore's nobility. Lord William Alexander, himself of noble birth, thinks that if he had been sent to a casting director to play the part of such an aristocrat, the casting director would send him back with a note about harmful stereotypes and typecasting.
    • Michael Oversteegen in the same series triggers this reaction in a number of people. Notably, a number of the more intelligent and well thought of aristocrats in the series think he sounds like he is trying to present himself as an overbred aristocratic twit. While he is moderately conservative and supports the aristocracy, he is also highly intelligent, a brilliant tactician and commander, A Father to His Men, in no way condescending to those of lower rank, and highly thought of by the same aristocrats who wish he would just lighten up on that damned accent.
  • From The Madness Season comes Daetrin Haal, a vampire who doesn't like being called a vampire, who consciously avoids transforming into a bat even when it would be helpful because it's too much of a stereotype.
  • In The Man Who Was Thursday, the main reason Gregory is horrified that Symes is being elected Thursday is that he knows the man is an undercover policeman, but can't say anything. But there is also an undercurrent that Symes won the anarchists over with exactly the sort of Bomb Throwing Anarchist rhetoric that Gregory's own election speech said was a popular misunderstanding of anarchism, and not what they were actually about at all.
  • Naked Came the Stranger: Myrna Corby works very hard to fit in with the goyim of King's Neck, so she dislikes her mother-in-law for acting "kikey."
  • One reason George Eliot considers the titular "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" mockworthy is because she thinks that the really bad novels that terrible female writers publish support the idea that all women are stupid and shallow, and worries that this could be used to justify excluding women from higher education on the grounds that educating them will just make them stupid, shallow, and pretentious. She also makes the point that the more crap female writers are allowed to publish, the harder it will be for male writers to respect female writers—even the good ones.
  • In the Starfleet Corps of Engineers stories, P8 Blue relates to many of her fellow Nasats like this. She's outgoing, happy to take risks and progressive, while other Nasats live up to their people's stereotype as timid and too cautious/conservative. P8 brings it up in a discussion with a non-Nasat friend.
  • In Victoria, old Gunnery Sergeant Matthews, formerly of the USMC, feels this way about "ghetto gangsta" culture in general and criminality in particular. In his opinion, the black community's biggest problem is not racism from whites, but rather its own bad apples.
  • Glory in Wings of Fire is this with a side-order of Boomerang Bigot. All her life, she's been looked down upon for being a RainWing, especially due to the negative stereotypes of RainWings (mainly that they're lazy and powerless). She's determined to defy these stereotypes until she actually meets her own people for the first time... and realizes that they pretty much are that laid-back and pacifistic. She immediately starts chewing out all the RainWings she meets for the behavior since she's been taught to think of it as negative for all her life. It eventually takes an older RainWing pulling her aside and telling her about her people to point out that some of the behaviors she derides are actually essential to their health due to their tribe's biology, and her friends espouse the more peaceful lives of her tribe. She still fights to become their Queen in order to mobilize them to action and is still the least RainWing-y RainWing ever, but she doesn't make as much of a fuss about it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 30 Rock
    • Tracy and Toofer. Tracy also mentions a shadowy group called the Black Crusaders led by Lester Holt, Jesse Jackson, Condoleeza Rice, Bill Cosbynote , and Gordon from Sesame Street, an extremist version of this trope that targets black people whose actions make other black people look bad.
    • In another scene, as Frank leaves a gay bar full of stereotypically gay-looking men, one man shouts to Frank to come back sometime in a very effeminate voice, prompting his dance partner to berate him for "making us all look bad." They then return to bumping and grinding.
  • American Idol: The primary catalyst for William Hung's fame and notoriety was the fact that he was a walking Asian stereotype.
  • In Angel "The Thin Dean Line": Jackson is a thug and probable drug dealer, and affirms pretty much every negative stereotype of African-Americans. Gunn eventually tells him that while racism from the police department is a problem, Jackson himself is a part of that same problem, with his drug dealing harming his own community instead of making it stronger.
    "A thug with a gun, keeping the cycle going."
  • Used almost verbatim in a Barney Miller episode featuring the recurring characters of a gay couple, one fairly straight-acting, the other quite flaming. After a particularly campy utterance by the latter, the former admonishes him to "stop perpetuating the stereotype!"
    • Sgt. Harris is deeply embarrassed and annoyed when a Jamaican physician claims an obeah woman put a spell on him. The doctor says it's just part of his heritage and beliefs:
    Harris: Which include still taking seriously the mumbo jumbo of some old woman waving cat bones and chicken lips in your face?!
    Keating: Yes!...Alright, that part bothers me a little.
  • The Bewitched episode "Trick or Treat" has Endora curse Darrin to turn into a werewolf on Halloween night. When Endora refuses to undo the curse, Samantha convinces her to reverse it by accusing her of enforcing mortals' preconceptions of witches always acting evil.
    Samantha: For years you've complained about how [mortals] make fun of witches. "We're not like that," you said. "We're nice, civilized people."...But now you're acting just like those ignorant people think a witch acts. You're behaving exactly like their stereotype witch. And you're doing it to the one person willing to believe we were different.
  • In season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow joins a Wicca group at her college in the hopes of learning more about magic. However, the group is instead focused on the empowerment concepts of real-life Wicca, which comes across as incredibly naive in the Buffy universe. When Willow proposes that they explore the concepts of magic and spells, the leader of the group condescends to her that they do not want to be stuck in such backward stereotypes. Tara, the one girl present who seems to be interested at Willow's suggestion, is later revealed to be an actual practitioner as well, and becomes a recurring character and Willow's love interest.
  • Played with in Charmed, when the Halliwell sisters dress up as different witch stereotypes for Halloween; Prue as a Wicked Witch, Piper as Glinda the Good Witch and Phoebe as a Hot Witch. At one point, Phoebe complains about the negative perception media has given witches over the years.
    Prue: Is that why you're dressed as Mistress of the Dark?
    Phoebe: This happens to be a protest statement.
    Prue: I'm impressed at your ability to make a protest statement and show cleavage at the same time.
    Phoebe: Thanks.
    • Later in the episode, when the sisters are stranded in the 1600s and have to protect one of their ancestors from a mob of witch-hunters, Phoebe uses her newly-acquired ability to fly to scare off the crowd by flying at them while sitting on a broomstick and cackling. When Prue and Piper ask what she's doing, she answers, "I'm embracing the cliche!"
  • Episode 3 of Chocolate News begins with David Alan Grier warning all African Americans to please don't do anything dumb before election day on November 5, 2008, lest it would cost the chance of "having a brother in the White House".
  • In Community, Kane has this attitude towards Magnitude.
    Magnitude: Pop pop!
    Kane: You do realize they're laughing at you, not with you.
  • Inverted in an episode of Divorce Court (A People's Court-style talk show) involving a mixed-race couple, a black man and a white woman. The man was albino and shaved his head, so most people assumed he was white, and one of the things the woman hated was how he'd deliberately act "white" when it suited him (like job interviews or talking to the police). At first, it might seem touching that she didn't want her husband to be ashamed of his race, but it all went to hell when the judge asked her, "How's he supposed to act?" and she tossed up gangs signs and started hollering "Yo yo yo..."
  • This is a recurring theme on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Will came from inner-city Philadelphia and that mindset clashes with his wealthy family from Bel-Air, especially with his cousin Carlton, who is often teased for not "really" being black. In one specific episode, Will and Carlton try pledging to a black fraternity at college and Carlton is singled out by the leaders for more punishment because his family is rich and he grew up with a butler (Carlton: "We all had to re-asphalt the driveway" Will: "They let the rest of us wear shoes"). Despite that, the Frat leader rejects Carlton and accepts Will, and Will refuses membership for that reason. When Uncle Phil learns what happened he is furious that black culture looks down on his efforts to give his family a good life. For what it's worth, the frat leader is more or less alone in his treatment of Carlton and everyone else who weighs in disapproves, even threatening to remove him by the end of the episode.
  • This occasionally happens to Frasier and Niles Crane on Frasier when they're around people even more snooty than themselves. Emphasis on the occasionally, and it should be mentioned that they're not so much bothered by extreme snobbishness as much as stereotypically insincere snobbishness; they have a genuine passion for all things high-cultured, intellectual, and ultra-refined and are disgusted by people who fake it.
  • Whenever the subject of Southern cooking, especially Southern deep-frying, comes up on Good Eats, Alton Brown — who is from Georgia and loves and respects the culinary traditions of the South — is always at pains to emphasize that there are ways to do this kind of cooking that do not conflict with a healthy diet and that these ways are actually quite traditional. A lot of this seems to be inspired by the media exposure given to the recipes of Paula Deen — another Georgian — which do not fit into this balanced vision of the Southern kitchen.
  • In Heroes, one of Officer Parkman's colleagues sees him eating a box of donuts and calls him a "walking cliche". (In fact, Parkman had been forced to do so by a mind-controller who he tried to arrest.)
  • A skit from Key & Peele underscored this with "Office Homophobe", with the very Camp Gay Latrell constantly annoying his co-worker by doing things like blasting loud music consisting entirely of sex noises over a bassline, describing his own sexual encounters in graphic detail, and showing the co-worker a close-up picture of his own anus. Whenever the co-worker complains, Latrell indignantly accuses him of homophobia. Then, at the end of the sketch, the co-worker's boyfriend comes by to take him out to lunch, to Latrell's great shock.
    Latrell: Ohhhhhhh, I get it. I'm not persecuted, I'm just an asshole.
    • For bonus Hypocritical Humor, early in the sketch when the co-worker asks Latrell to play some less sexual "gay music", suggesting Barbra Streisand as an example, Latrell is offended by his stereotyping.
    • Another skit features an older black man walking around his city and approaching other black people he notices doing things he feels are feeding into negative stereotypes to lecture them... only to find out that they're actually doing things completely unrelated to the conclusions he's jumping to; for instance, he assumes a group of kids are committing a burglary when they're actually helping an old man move furniture, and a couple of guys wearing bright and baggy clothes turn out to be clowns on their way to a party. Things come full circle when he's approached and called out for being "preachy" instead of leaving people to their business.
  • Jocelyn Jee Esien's sketch show Little Miss Jocelyn featured the character of Fiona, a woman who believes that her all-white coworkers don't know she's black. Her sketches always involved another black person, like a courier or handyman, showing up in the office and Fiona berating them for their "stereotypical" behavior because she does not want her "secret" to be found out.
  • MADtv (1995):
    • There was a sketch where Bill Cosby (played by Orlando Jones) was shown proposing a show to prove he was actually black and not an Uncle Tom. Unfortunately (like Bamboozled), the show becomes a huge success, much to his horror.
    • There's a sketch where a man's siblings stage an intervention because he goes out of his way to behave as a walking Italian-American caricature. When he finally stops doing it—at gunpoint—he instead switches to an annoyingly high-pitched voice, claiming it's his normal one.
  • In one episode of The Office (US), most of the group gets locked in the office overnight. When the night cleaning crew shows up, Jim asks Oscar to translate for him so he can ask to be let out. Oscar indignantly asks why he assumes they speak Spanish, only to begrudgingly talk to them when it turns out that's exactly the case.
  • In The Parent 'Hood episode "I'm Otay, You're Otay", Nick Peterson is assigned to portray a notable Black figure in a presentation for Black History Month, but rather than picking someone like Martin Luther King Jr. or Thurgood Marshall, he picks Buckwheat from The Little Rascals. His parents are shocked, and spend much of the episode trying to make Nick choose someone less offensive, until he explains even though Buckwheat is a caricature, he still likes him. And in his presentation, he stops and explains that Buckwheat, among other characters, did help open the door for future black performers.
  • In an episode of Psych Shawn and Gus hire an Asian-American assistant and assume he knows about the Triads simply because of his ethnicity. While he finds it offensive, he begrudgingly admits that he does know enough to get the case started, seeming genuinely disappointed that he was able to help.
  • On The Sopranos, Dr. Melfi's ex-husband Richard resents her treating Tony because of the stereotypical association between Italo-Americans and organized crime. It reaches its highest level when Dr. Melfi is raped one night as she is leaving her office, and he focuses on the fact that the rapist has an Italian-sounding name. She points out that for that moment he seemed more offended at it being an Italian who attacked her than the fact that she was attacked at all.
  • Spicks and Specks: In the Australia vs, New Zealand episode, Alan Brough mentioned that Australians think New Zealand is such a small place that everyone must know everyone else. When one Australian asked him if he knew a particular New Zealander, Alan was all set to launch into a blistering retort, but instead had to—somewhat shamefacedly—admit the person in question was actually his cousin.
  • In Waterloo Road executive head Max Tyler expresses his surprise when head of pastoral care, Kim Campbell, is remaining firmly impartial when dealing with a case of alleged sexual assault.
    Max: I thought you were a committed feminist.
    Kim: Yeah, I am.
    Max: So I assumed you'd be firmly on the female side.
    Kim: That's a bit primitive, to think that feminists regard all men as rapists, isn't it??
  • Welcome to Wrexham spends an episode examining hooliganism in football. Mainstream fans talk about how they wish it would end, as the fights and riots only reinforce a negative stereotype about the sport they love. A hooligan interviewed for the show, meanwhile, fails to see anything wrong about his behavior despite the fact that he gets in constant trouble from the police and has been banned from going anywhere near the Wrexham grounds. This lack of self awareness is shown to frustrate the hooligan's girlfriend.
  • ABC's hidden-camera show What Would You Do? features an actor posing as a Christian shop owner subjecting two Jews (also actors) to an anti-Semitic rant and shows other people, many of them Christians, angrily standing up to him. A psychologist on the show explains that people tend to get angrier about negative behavior when it is displayed by members of their own group.
    • There was also a noteworthy segment where a pair of actors played a tacky American tourist couple in Paris to test the "snooty French" stereotype. Reactions from the locals ranged from mildly annoyed but patient, to finding the couple funny. It was the genuine American tourists who reacted most negatively to the couple, and one American woman even scolded them like a mother, telling them they were guests in another country and needed to stop making Americans look bad.
  • Played for Drama in "Will Works Out," a first-season episode of Will & Grace. The Camp Gay Jack joins Will and Grace's gym, acting and dressing in his typically flamboyant style while he's there. Straight Gay Will, who sometimes meets with legal clients at the gym, gets annoyed and even goes so far to call Jack a fag (and it's clear that this is not an example of N-Word Privileges but instead a genuine insult). Jack overhears him and comes to the gym the next day acting like a sports-obsessed straight man, then takes Will to task over both not wanting his clients to know he's gay and being ashamed to be associated with a "bad" gay guy. Will realizes Jack is right, apologizes, and even introduces one of his clients to him, casually coming out in the process.

    Music  

    Professional Wrestling  
  • A very annoying real-life phenomenon that, given the lack of Fourth Wall, directly affects wrestling. One example from the WWE, R-Truth, is a black parolee with piercings, braids, and tattoos who likes to dance performing rapping. Instant Ethnic Scrappy to the "Smart" Mark community, never mind that Ron Killings actually pursued a recording career before entering the wrestling business and still does music on his own time. While he did serve time in prison, that's not really part of his character. All in all, the R-Truth character is pretty tame given that race relations in wrestling tend to be a good 20-25 years behind the curve.
    • Many Japanese wrestlers also get labeled as too stereotypical, even the ones who are actually from Japan, and any tag team with shared ethnicity is thought of as a "race tag team" regardless of whether or not they use their ethnicity as a defining character trait— Unless they're white (and not Canadian). There are a number of teams that do use their race as such, and it's usually terrible: e.g. Cryme Tyme, promoted as two large black men from Brooklyn that steal...and that's it, and Harlem Heat who, while featuring stars Booker T and Stevie Ray, were initially promoted as a pair of wrestling slaves, led to the ring in shackles by a white southerner (WCW wisely did not air this on TV.)
      • Speaking of Cryme Tyme, with the team's break-up, Shad Gaspard started wearing college graduation attire to the ring and mocked JTG for reinforcing stereotypes of black men being thugs.
  • Inverted, in a sense, in the spring and summer of 2005, when the "Arab" "Muhammad Hassan" (actually an Italian-American named Mark Copani) and his valet Khosrow Daivari (who was actually Persian) appeared on the pro wrestling scene. A proud Arab-American from Detroit, Muhammad Hassan was full of anger and resentment against the prejudice faced by Arab-Americans during The War on Terror. You'd think he was an assimilated, Westernized ethnic Arab who despised fundamentalists, right? Well, no: Hassan was a Muslim extremist (though most Arab-Americans have historically been Christians or Jews) who proudly wore a keffiyeh and chanted like a muezzin. Even as the other WWE Superstars assured him that they hated him due to his being an "asshole American" rather than an Arab-American, Hassan just became even more angered, citing polls and devising long-winded rhetorical tricks and stunts including having his manager carried out by a group of ski-mask-clad men after having been beaten up in order to "prove" that the audience and the other wrestlers really were bigots, no matter what they said. Incidentally, that last stunt is what caused UPN executives to demand Hassan be written out of SmackDown (it having aired on the same day as the London train bombings), so he might have had a point somewhere.
  • In a mid 2001 promo, TAKA Michinoku (using a gimmick where his words are being said by someone offscreen and he merely flaps his lips) criticizes Tajiri (at the time William Regal's goofball assistant whom he barely understands) because "nobody wants to see stereotypes!"

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition supplement "Xanathar's Guide to Everything" has a section on "The Paladin Oath of Conquest", a sub-class for paladins who desire personal power and to see their enemies brutally crushed and humiliated. Some knights who take this oath end up being making a Deal with the Devil and become "Hell Knights" in the service of an Archdevil called Bel. Hell Knights often find themselves at odds with other Paladins of Conquest, who see them as dangerous extremists who have wandered too far into the dark.
  • Vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade look down on those of their number that feel compelled to walk around wearing capes and speaking in bad Eastern European accents. Partly for being an embarrassment during Elysium, and partly due to the walking Masquerade breach this presents (though someone *might* get away with it on the grounds that vampire hunters aren't going to believe that the guy in the cape going 'Bleh!' is really a vampire). This actually exists in game as a flaw, aptly called 'Stereotype'.

    Video Games 
  • In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, there are plenty of orcs and half-orcs who are muggers. If you're a half-orc, they'll start to mug you because they think you're a human, but they'll stop and apologize once they realize you're a half-orc. You can either walk away as though nothing happened or condemn them for making orcish people look bad.
  • Inverted in Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance with Christo, who is utterly baffled that the demons he's working with are all surprisingly compassionate and noble, and as a result of developing fondness for them, he has a hard time not caring for the collateral damage that his superiors' anti-Netherworld Weapon of Mass Destruction could bring, especially to his newfound demonic allies. He makes it a point that he wishes his allies were more like the power-hungry demons of yore so that he wouldn't have to care for the deaths that the weapon could bring.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition: This is Dorian's view of the Tevinter Imperium. Sure, it's his country and he loves it... but might his fellow Magisters please stop acting like magic Snidely Whiplash? They make it very hard to convince anyone that he's actually a reasonable person, doesn't practice Blood Magic, doesn't approve of slavery, has nothing to do with demons, and is very much against eugenics matches (especially since it means his dad has tried to magically make him straight so that he could produce a heir).
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • In Morrowind, this is inverted by the Master Thief of the Thieves' Guild, Gentleman Jim Stacey. He is a dark-skinned Redguard, but in the ES universe, it is the Khajiit who are most likely to be stereotyped as thieves and criminals. A Redguard thief is actually quite unusual.
    • In Skyrim, this is the attitude of most non-Thalmor elves about the Thalmor, especially other Altmer (high elves). The Thalmor take all the most negative Altmeri beliefs and cultural aspects (such as Fantastic Racism against Men and other elves to a lesser extent) and absolutely run with them (they think the mere existence of humanity is a mortal sin), and have managed to take over the Aldmeri Dominion and used it to launch a genocidal war. Of course, the Thalmor's default response to Altmer who don't share their views is to declare them No True Scotsman and massacre them, so you can see where the hatred is coming from.
  • Fallout 4: Porter Gage's opinion of most raider gangs. He's happy to be a raider himself, but he's a guy with vision, and having to corral drug-addicted idiots with no sense of self-preservation into actual functioning gangs is both difficult and frustrating.
  • Genshin Impact: Eula complains about how outdated and unpleasant noble traditions are, and is disgusted by the fact that her family still clings to the very values that the rest of Mondstadt despises them for, having apparently never learned their lesson. She has resolved to bring down her own clan if they step out of line again in her lifetime.
  • In League of Legends, Ekko, one of the only good Zaunite champions, hates most of the amoral or directly evil ones, because he sees them as playing into Zaun's stereotype as the 'progress as an excuse for cruelty' city.
  • Poker Night at the Inventory:
    Heavy Weapons Guy: Why does everyone think I like this Tetris? It is just stacking!
    • Tycho assumes the Heavy's drink of choice would be vodka; turns out he's partial to a peach bellini.
    • Also the assumption that everyone had regarding the Heavy being the Dumb Muscle, rather than the Genius Bruiser that he is - he just doesn't know English well enough to shed the assumption. His PhD in Russian Literature is also more useful in his line of work than one might think.
    • Every second conversation with the Heavy is dedicated to this.
  • Mass Effect:
    • In Mass Effect 3, Garrus Vakarian (a turian) and Tali'Zorah vas Normandy (a quarian) are members of alien species that are based on dextro-amino-acids instead of levo-amino-acids like humanity. They joke about the importance of making a good impression for "dextros" on the rest of the galaxy.
    • Also a major character point for Urdnot Wrex. Like many other krogans, he fights as a mercenary to get his need for violence out and earn his share of credits. Unlike most other krogans, though, it's because he gave up on plans to help lead the krogans out of the mess the genophage had left them in after seeing how the species wasn't going to put aside its ways so easily. If he lives, Wrex ends up assuming a position of leadership in his clan in the second game, where it's shown that his reforms really start helping the krogan turn things around. By the third game, with help from Shepard and Mordin Solus, Wrex looks poised to bring about a new future for krogans everywhere by applying a genophage cure. All of this is in stark contrast to Wrex's counterpart, Wreav, who fits the stereotypical "krogans wage war" mentality to a fault. If Wreav is in charge, he vows to have the krogan run rampant across the galaxy as they once did once the mess with the genophage is sorted out.
  • Minotaur Hotel: At one point, Ismael asks you what your favorite anime is. If you pick the option declaring that you love Anime so much that you can't pick a favorite, he tells you that his favorite anime is some Moe anime. This prompts you to internal monologue about how it's possible for someone to watch so much anime and still have shit taste. Author Tract or Hypocritical Humor? You decide.
  • Overwatch: Most Omnics have this reaction to Null Sector, a faction of machine-supremacist terrorists who started an uprising in King's Row some years prior to the events of the game. Not only do Null Sector gleefully embrace all the Killer Robot stereotypes about Omnics, but their revolution wrecked human-Omnic relations in King's Row and turned it from a bastion of tolerance to a Fantastic Ghetto where bigotry runs rampant on both sides.
  • Garrosh Hellscream of World of Warcraft is utterly loathed by fans for making the orcish race look less like Blizzard orcs and more like Tolkien orcs.
    • This happens in-universe as well. In one novel, the new Tauren chief grimly notes how Garrosh has turned the Horde into his personal empire, even to the point of using State Sec to root out "dissidents" and claiming his father's Heroic Sacrifice as his own triumph. Many other members of the Horde wonder why Thrall thought it would be a good idea to hand over the reins to him.
    • To emphasize how bad Garrosh is, he not only reignites the war between Horde and Alliance by committing a war crime against the Alliance city of Theramore, when he gets pulled into an alternate timeline and placed on Draenor before his people have succumbed to the demonic corruption that turned them into the invaders of Azeroth, he saves them from embracing demonic corruption... then arms them with military tech from his own time and turns them into an invading army that attacks Azeroth all the same.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Adventures of Gyno-Star, Gynostar is called out on wearing high heels despite being a feminist. She responds that she'll not submit to such expectations, as she considers them just another kind of oppression. (Also, she's a superhero, so the physics of the real world don't apply.)
  • Homestuck: Kankri expressed disapproval at Mituna for wearing a helmet on the grounds that it perpetuated a stereotype that all mentally disabled people are so uncoordinated they need to wear helmets constantly. As Mituna does need to wear a helmet, and as Kankri isn't disabled himself, this is definitely a negative portrayal meant to showcase Kankri's hypocrisy. (Or, alternatively, his grudge against Mituna for being together with Latula.)
  • In Multiplex, the gay manager once gave another gay employee a dressing-down for acting overtly and stereotypically gay, to the point that it was distracting customers, and more importantly, was personally offensive to said manager. Or, as another employee told their newly arrived co-head manager, was "reaming him out for gaying it up."
  • Something*Positive
    • In the "Hell House" arc, Fred, a devoutly Christian Texan, lambastes the operators of said Hell House for using scare tactics, stating that you don't lead people to Christ through fear. Eventually, when presented with the option of either "accepting Jesus" and being led out of the Hell House, or being forced to walk back through to the jeers of the workers, Fred sits down in protest and calls the police on the hell house operators, saying he's being held hostage.
    • At a gaming store, Davan is asked his opinion on some Serious Business fan-wankery by two guys. Davan responds by telling them it doesn't matter in Real Life, the nerdier of the two uses a Magic: The Gathering threat, while his friend tells him to stop reinforcing stereotypes. And then there's Mike, an archetypal "that guy", who ruins gaming sessions for everyone.
  • Pet Foolery: One comic has a cat invoke this on the Threatening Shark trying to eat him, saying that attacking him will only play into the negative stereotypes about sharks. The shark stops to think about it.
  • In one Critter Coven strip, celebrity Wiccan Trish Honeyblood is explaining to a reporter that witches aren't Satanists, only for a couple of people in the crowd to shout out that they are. She then backpedals to saying that Satanists don't literally worship the Devil, only for someone else to shout out that she does. Honeyblood eventually concludes that witches are very diverse. And very loud.

    Web Original 
  • Alyssa Milano, a proud Italian-American, made this Funny or Die video as a Take That! against the cast of Jersey Shore, who she feels embodies the worst stereotypes of both Italians and New Jersey. In this case, it's not even a case of "stop being stereotypical" so much as it is "stop following that stereotype because it's not even your stereotype." The stereotype created by the Jersey Shore cast more originates from Long Island, where the vast majority of the Jersey Shore cast are really from, most of them aren't even Italian at all. It leads to this because many people from New Jersey have taken on this image despite it being idiotic.
  • Macho Sauce Productions: Alfonzo Rachel often criticizes his fellow black people for living up to their negative stereotypes, and it seems to be a major theme of his videos. It's also inverted in that he himself had been accused of "acting white".
  • Before his channel died due to legal issues, FPSRussia picked up an impressive Hatedom from fellow gun owners who had a massive bone to pick with his extremely careless, unsafe and irresponsible stunts with firearms, some of which caused actual injuries and even near-fatalities to his crew. Given that gun owners already have a hard time shaking the stereotypical image of being Trigger-Happy nutjobs bestowed on them by pop culture and that the basics of gun safety are non-negotiable in avoiding serious injuries or deaths, the "Stop Having Fun" Guys are actually 100% in the right and Rule of Cool should never, ever trump responsible firearm handling.
  • Moviebob made a video discussing how gamers should avoid the negative stereotypes associated with them. Online gaming media proceeded to take up the topic at length with many calls for more maturity, less hateful speech (a product of G.I.F.T and the generally competitive nature of gamers). Extra Credits, Jimquisition, Revsion 3, TotalBiscuit, {Errant Signal}, and others weighed in. The movement generated a backlash from people who equated it with political correctness, which rather quickly got out of hand and eventually got tied up in the whole #Gamergate thing, leaving the gaming community splintered.
  • The Nostalgia Chick, in the Spice World review, angrily tells one of the Spice Girls to stop talking, since it's "bringing down the property values of vaginas everywhere."
  • The Nostalgia Critic
    • Raised Catholic himself, he tells off the priest in The Exorcist II for acting like the rest of the world has gone to shit because they're atheist.
    • When he reviewed Enchanted, he pointed out that the movie acted like Disney Princesses were still stereotypical Damsels In Distress when by that point they had become more independent.
  • The Onion:
  • The Rap Critic discusses this in an analytic fashion when reviewing Kanye West's "Black Skinhead." He notes that while Kanye sings about acceptance, he's playing up the sort of overblown Scary Black Man stereotype that badly hinders his message both by playing to stereotypes and by pushing other people away.
  • A video titled "Sakuracon Teh Comic" has a bystander angrily shouting at a group of people who are overenthusiastic about the things they like in Japan such as sushi, their music, anime, and manga, dubbing them as "weeaboos". This lampshades the real-life phenomenon of people who act like this in an exaggerated manner.
  • A variant in "Super Smash Brothers Brawl Taunts: Part 3": Bowser calls Peach out for "setting women's rights back about 400 years" by listing several of her traits, like slapping opponents, wearing heels, having a plethora of crops, and her powerful rear. Peach responds by angrily whacking him with her Frying Pan of Doom and says she got it from her kitchen.
  • Todd in the Shadows once applauded the band Far*East Movement for defying the stereotypes about Asian-Americans. Like "intelligent," "respectable," and "good at music."
    • He also bemoaned the fact that Ke$ha's song "Bl Blah Blah" is what pop music sounds like to people who hate pop music.
  • Zinnia Jones had a rant about the Unfortunate Implications of this in her video Gay People Who Hate Gay People, mostly the fact that some Straight Gay people hate Camp Gay people for being effeminate, obviously gay or flamboyant because it gives people a "bad impression of what gay people are like", and that it's hindering the acceptance of gay people. The Unfortunate Implications of that attitude says that if you don't act "straight", then you're somehow not deserving of equality.

    Western Animation 
  • In American Dad!'s Halloween episode, Toshi's mother got him a Samurai costume to "respect his heritage". He refuses to wear it, shouting, "I will not be a cliché!" He ends up donning the costume to hunt Steve down for breaking a promise to bring Toshi's sister home by sunset.
  • In the Archer episode "Honey Pot", Archer is on a mission to steal sensitive information from a gay enemy operative. He attempts to seduce him by disguising himself as a gay man, but due to his skewed perception, he portrays himself as an offensive Camp Gay stereotype which the Straight Gay agent rejects. A nearby camp gay couple also criticizes Archer's masquerade, saying he's "too gay".
  • Seen frequently in The Boondocks, as it's a recurring theme in Aaron McGruder's work:
    • In one episode, Martin Luther King Jr. is revealed to have survived his gunshot wound in a coma. He then wakes up after thirty years and is dismayed to see the state of America, and particularly the Black community. When he advocates for non-violence in the wake of 9/11, he's branded an anti-American and experiences a precipitous drop in popularity. It comes to a head when he holds a conference at a local church that devolves into a stereotype fest, and in his irritation uses the word "nigga" (admitting it is the "ugliest word in the English language") and indicts the audience in an angrier, more formal version of Chris Rock's original rant.
    • One controversial set of the original Boondocks newspaper comic strips had black contestants compete on a reality TV show to work for Russell Simmons, only to discover all the contestants were rude and lazy.
    • In another episode, R. Kelly is brought to trial over accusations of urinating on an under-aged girl (mimicking the real-life sex scandal). The prosecutor has mountains of evidence against him, including a video of R. Kelly committing the act, turning to face the camera, and answering a phone call where he promptly states his full birth name, profession, and Social Security number. Despite this, R. Kelly's lawyer distracts the jury from the fact that he's guilty and convinces them that the whole trial is really about racism and that the system just wants to keep R. Kelly down because he's black. A boom box is revealed, an R. Kelly song begins to play, and everyone in the courtroom cheers and bursts into dance. Huey shuts off the boom box, walks to the front of the courtroom, and delivers this:
      Huey: What the hell is wrong with you people?! Every famous nigga that gets arrested is not Nelson Mandela! Sure, the government conspires to put a lot of innocent black men in jail on fallacious charges. But R. Kelly is not one of those men. We all know the nigga can sing, but what happened to standards? What happened to bare minimums? You a fan of R. Kelly? You wanna help R. Kelly? Then get some counseling for R. Kelly! Introduce him to some older women! Hide his camcorder! But don't pretend like the man is a hero. [walks off-screen, walks back on-screen] And stop the damn dancing! Act like you got some goddamned sense, people! Damn.
    They still proclaim him innocent, to Huey's annoyance.
    • McGruder is one of several Black creators who have criticized BET for showing such stereotypically racist content to Black people that it undermines the Black community as a whole, and it shows in The Boondocks, where BET is regularly mocked. Huey is so disgusted by the network's depiction of Black people that he goes on a hunger strike until it's taken off the air, its offices are dismantled, and its executives commit seppuku.
  • Family Guy features "Asian Reporter Trisha Takanawa", who at one point meets David Bowie—and throws away her microphone, grabs his leg, and offers to make him fishball soup.
    Tom Tucker: Thank you, Trisha, for setting your people back a thousand years.
  • In Futurama, this is Zoidberg's reaction when the crew meet another Decapodian.
  • The Powerpuff Girls has one-shot villain Femme Fatale, a Straw Feminist who, upon committing bank robberies, demands that she receives nothing but dollar coins featuring Susan B. Anthony, a feminist hero in the United States. When the girls capture her, she successfully convinces them to let her go by claiming the system is stacked against her because she's a woman. Femme Fatale goes so far as to turn the girls into miniature man-haters who assume that every man is a horrible sexist jerk. Thankfully, Ms. Bellum and Ms. Keane are able to snap the girls out of it by pointing out that Femme Fatale doesn't actually care about women, considering that she's robbed and even injured female citizens of Townsville during her crime spree. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup then chase Femme Fatale down and deliver a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech about her ignorance of Susan B. Anthony, who, upon being arrested for voting, was nearly let off the hook because the judge assumed that she was "too weak" to handle prison. Anthony demanded that she be sent to jail, pointing out that she'd broken the law and wanted to be treated as truly equal under it, including in her punishment. The girls then decide to give Femme Fatale the same treatment. And how does she react to it? By complaining that the striped prison suit makes her look fat.
  • South Park:
    • In one episode, Kyle's cousin comes to visit—and to his horror, he's an outlandishly exaggerated embodiment of Jewish stereotypes, which threatens to undermine the good name Kyle has been trying to give Judaism throughout the series. He goes to great lengths to try and get him to be less stereotypical by introducing him to things the other kids can appreciate, like football. Stan points out that Kyle has become a self-hating Jew, which is itself a stereotype. And then, at the end of the episode, the kids discover that Kyle's cousin is filthy rich and try to get him to hang out with them more, but he refuses, saying they're all "a bunch of hick jock stereotypes" who like things like football.
    • In "Christian Rock Hard", Kyle accuses his father Gerald of being a cheap Jewish stereotype for not giving him an allowance. Gerald responds that he's not cheap—he just did it the day before.
    • One episode involves a blood feud between the Chinese owner of City Wok and the Japanese owner of City Sushi. Both of them are pretty stereotypical, but when the City Sushi owner discovers that the City Wok owner isn't an actual Chinese man, but rather a Caucasian with multiple-personality disorder, he's so ashamed of his naïveté that he commits Seppuku—and then, as he's falling to his death, berates himself for being a stereotype.
  • Spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons, when Marge suggests that Fat Tony take on a career that isn't a harmful Italian-American stereotype, such as a pizza maker or organ grinder, to which Fat Tony tearfully replies, "You've just listed all of my failed dreams."

 
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