Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Misblamed / Western Animation

Go To

  • Many people blame Scrappy-Doo for ruining Scooby-Doo (specifically, dumping half the original cast, switching to a Two Shorts format, and the franchise's first clumsy attempts to lose the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax) due to the timing of his introduction, despite the fact that the conventional mystery format and half the cast were dumped over a year after his debut. Ironically, despite even later showrunners and writers treating the character with disdain, Scrappy is what probably saved the show from cancellation way back in 1979. And the success of that new incarnation of Scooby Doo is likely what has kept the franchise going on to this day.
  • Fans of the original Young Justice comic book attacked the Young Justice (2010) cartoon for excluding Wonder Girl while including most of the other Justice League sidekicks. In reality, Wonder Girl was legally barred from appearing in the first season of the show due to rights issues. These same issues had earlier kept the character from appearing on Teen Titans (2003), and Wonder Woman from appearing in Static Shock, Batman Beyond and Smallville. She eventually appeared in the second season.
  • Marvel Animation fans love to blame everything wrong with any Marvel cartoon on Jeph Loeb. Notably, he was blamed for cancelling The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes to replace it with Avengers Assemble. In reality, Earth's Mightiest Heroes was not doing well with the network's target demographic and wasn't doing great in merchandise either. Disney XD commissioned Assemble in order to have a show more similar to the mega-hit live-action film that could better gear itself to younger audiences.
  • In Futurama, the episode introducing Dwight Conrad was originally scheduled for season 3, but was held back to season 5, despite the fact that the character appears in a number of episodes in between this. Many fans assumed that this was due to the Fox Network's seemingly random scheduling (which resulted in similar continuity errors regarding a few minor characters) but in fact some dialogue needed to be re-recorded and the actor playing Dwight wasn't available at the time. The decision to delay airing was made by the show's producers.
  • Nickelodeon took a lot of heat for the second half of the third season of Avatar: The Last Airbender taking so long to air that two episode premiered in Canada and another two on DVD. However, this was because production on the finale had been delayed, and Nickelodeon didn't want to air less than half of a season only to have another hiatus right before the end of the series.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
    • There was lots of rage surrounding the new film spinoff of the TV series, mostly about how it was George Lucas's "worst movie yet!" In fact, Lucas's input was more or less limited to suggesting that the show's feature-length pilot episode be distributed theatrically instead of airing on television.
    • Many blame Disney for canceling the series after it bought the Star Wars franchise in favor of Star Wars Rebels. But the rights to The Clone Wars at the time were owned by Cartoon Network, which made for an awkward legal situation. Rebels was actually in the works before the Disney buyout, due to the ratings of The Clone Wars declining (meaning that the show was slowly becoming unprofitable) and the Lucasfilm crew still wanting to do a Star Wars animated show that branched off of The Clone Wars.
    • Due to the turbulent status of the franchise in early 2018, it became increasingly common for many to state that Disney only Un-Canceled The Clone Wars in order to bring an end to the controversies. However, given that most of those controversies were just a few months old, animation (especially as visually appealing as The Clone Wars) takes a long time to make, and the teaser clearly had fully animated segments, it had to have been in the works well before that.
  • Warner Bros.' Histeria! has received some undeserved bashing because the people in question think it got Animaniacs and Freakazoid! cancelled. Animaniacs and Freakazoid! (the latter of which was canned a year before Histeria! even began production) were actually cancelled because the shows were seen as underperforming with Kids' WB!'s target demographic. Series creator Tom Rugger himself placed the blame for Animaniacs' cancellation on the success of Pokémon: The Series, for convincing executives that dubbing children's anime would be more profitable than creating their own programming.
    • Freakazoid's cancellation is also sometimes blamed on Madman creator Mike Allred, on the grounds that he sued over Freakazoid's similarity to his creation. This is not true: Mike has openly stated that he was unhappy that he didn't receive a credit for his influence, but he never sued — he didn't feel it was worth it.
  • For whatever reason, when the 1999 unaired pilot of As Told by Ginger made its way online, many fans mistook it for an attempt to reboot the series. This caused people to cry racism because the "new" Miranda was shown as being a brown-haired Caucasian (as opposed to being black in the series). For the record, Miranda's race was changed for the final show to invoke Actor-Shared Background with her VA, Cree Summer.
  • A very strong example of misblamed ignorance plus the Nostalgia Filter is the 2003 series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was complained by fans of the '80s version for being an "In Name Only remake of the '80s version", with no Bebop, Rocksteady, Krang, or ultra-silly themes as well as how it was less faithful to the comics. While it certainly doesn't share too much in common with the 80s cartoon, it was actually that incarnation of the franchise that was the In Name Only adaptation. The 2003 series remains one of the more faithful adaptations of the source material.
    • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comic book series doesn't help matters, since it was based off of the animated series and was probably read more by said complainers. Of course, Eastman and Laird's Mirage Studios didn't produce that book series—it was licensed out to Archie Comics.
  • People who don't realize there are two English dubs of at least the first three seasons of Winx Club like to slam 4Kids for their horrible "redub" of the series. The "redub" in question was done by a Canadian company and is actually more faithful to the original version than the 4Kids dub is.
    • On a latter note, 4Kids is sometimes blamed for plot holes they did not create. For example, Beta Academy is mentioned in the original Italian dub.
    • Now that Nickelodeon owns the show, they're getting lots of criticism for their "changes" (new music, Layla's name to Aisha, etc.). Some of these people thought 4Kids created Winx Club. The truth: Nickelodeon's undoing many of 4Kids's changes to make a more faithful English dub.
    • Nickelodeon's treatment of the show is infamous, but there's a lot of ambiguity over what was going on behind the scenes. While sending the show to Nick Jr. wasn't unusual for Nick, Rainbow has said that they wanted to retool the show for younger children (due to experimenting with adult-themed spin-offs, like World of Winx and the live-action Netflix series). Rainbow ending their deal with Nickelodeon is often seen as them realizing too late the deal was a bad idea, but Rainbow has said that they had issues affording the California voice actors.
  • Most of the hate for Cartoon Network's The Problem Solverz stemmed from the disproven idea that it was the show that replaced Sym-Bionic Titan. SBT was cancelled because it couldn't secure any merchandising deals, while Problem Solverz had already been in the works for years before said decision was made.
    • Likewise, the network's former president Christina Miller is often blamed for the channel focusing on more comedic cartoons rather than airing more action-oriented stuff. Some viewers even accused her of being a Moral Guardian who actively sabotages shows that are even slightly action-based just because they aren't what she thinks the viewing audience wants. In reality, action-based shows were already in decline on the network well before Miller took the helm, with examples including Green Lantern: The Animated Series, ThunderCats (2011), Sym-Bionic Titan and Young Justice (2010), all of which were cancelled in the years prior to Miller's arrival. While Miller has certainly continued the network's trend towards comedy, she cannot be blamed for starting it.
      • Heck, several Adventure Time and Regular Show fans blamed her for ending the shows, when in fact, the respective creators of both shows—-Pendleton Ward and J.G. Quintel—-decided to end their shows with Seasons 9 and 8, respectively.
    • The following CN president, Tom Ascheim, is getting blamed for completely pulling the plug on the idea of any action or story-based series airing on the network because of his alleged belief that cartoons are only for kids and kids alone, as well as his supposed opposition to any show that might draw in a Periphery Demographic, with some even believing that his decision to create a new preschool block was done to ward off older viewers from the network. However, it must be noted that action cartoons had already been on the decline on the network for years, as has been mentioned above, and that if Ascheim was not there to pull the plug, someone else would have done the same. However, it is still up to debate on whether Ascheim is directly responsible for killing off story-based series on the network, as some were still being greenlit during Miller's tenure.
  • It's usually held that the mature content in Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" was the result of John Kricfalusi's Protection from Editors. Given John K's departure from the original series was partly over Nickelodeon's censorship policies, it's an easy assumption to make, but according to Kricfalusi himself, it was forced on him by higher-ups at Spike TV. However, it is hotly disputed whether or not this is the full story, considering his history of Never My Fault.
  • The Superhero Squad Show is sometimes used as an example of the Disney/Marvel merger ruining Marvel forever, but it began production before Disney bought them.
  • When Kamp Koral was announced, fans were quick to blame Nickelodeon for deliberately waiting for Hillenburg’s death to produce the spin-off. While his thoughts on the show are unknown, it is possible that Hillenburg was aware of the show being developed, as the development began shortly before he passed away. Kamp Koral developer Vincent Waller originally tweeted his belief that Hillenburg was aware of the show, but he later retracted the statement, saying that the stressful period "kinked up my chronological memories of events into a bit of a slippery jumble for that entire block of time."
  • Seth MacFarlane tends to get misblamed on a lot of things (possibly due to his hatedom claiming that he is everything that's wrong with animation). One notable one is the animation of Butch Hartman. He is automatically blamed for those just because the two of them are friends despite the fact that MacFarlane has nothing to do with those projects. Instead, it's Hartman and Fred Seibert (the latter which never seems to get any sort of hate despite being the producer of those shows). And of course, there's the cash grabs and merchandising that the studio does and not him.
    • Another notable misblaming is MacFarlane being somehow blamed for Futurama being cancelled. The truth is that Family Guy was canceled one full year before Futurama was and MacFarlane wasn't even doing anything with Fox at the time. Also, MacFarlane and Matt Groening happen to be friends in real life so MacFarlane probably would have wanted Futurama to continue. He also had a voice role in the fourth direct-to-DVD Futurama movie.
    • MacFarlane is also blamed for the direction that Family Guy went through after the show was un-canceled. MacFarlane is barely involved with the show's scripts, with the actual writing coming from the story writers. That said, MacFarlane has veto power over what's in the scripts that do make it to air (in addition to voicing three of the main characters), so his hands aren't completely clean when it comes to poorly-received episodes and gags.
  • Similar to the Futurama example, many King of the Hill fans seem to think MacFarlane was responsible for that show's cancellation, as it was initially replaced by The Cleveland Show. Never mind that King was on the chopping block for 2-3 years prior due to sagging ratings and erratic scheduling, being renewed only due to fan outcry, the show enjoyed a thirteen-year run that many shorter-lived animated shows would kill for, and several other shows have rotated in and out of its old timeslot.
    • A lot of King of the Hill fans (even on this very wiki) blame Lucky for Luanne becoming more ditzy over the years. Luanne Took a Level in Dumbass years before Lucky showed up.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • No, Lauren Faust was not responsible for everything, good or bad, that ever happened on the show. While she did create it and wrote a handful of episodes in the first two seasons, she was only the showrunner during the first season. After which she stepped back to become a consulting producer in Season 2, before leaving the production entirely. She had zero input on any facet of Friendship is Magic (much less Gen 4 of the My Little Pony franchise as a whole) from Season 3 onwards.
    • "Magical Mystery Cure" is one of the most base-breaking episodes in the show's history, and its detractors often blame writer M.A. Larson for it. According to him though, the final episode only loosely resembled his original script and many elements had to be hastily cut (without his knowledge) due to the show being unexpectedly renewed for another season, resulting in the final product. Larson being a Teasing Creator who utterly reveled in taking the blame for putting wings on Twilight Sparkle didn't help.
    • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls was largely blamed for the third season only having thirteen episodes, as it was thought the production was truncated so the movie could be made. In reality, the season was only thirteen episodes because Hasbro originally intended it to be a 65-Episode Cartoon. In fact, Equestria Girls was only greenlit after the massive popularity of the show prompted them to order a fourth season.
    • After Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's Heel–Face Turn, the writers were criticized for never doing anything more with the character just as they became interesting and likable. However, the writers did want to do more with them, but Hasbro executives shot all these ideas down due to feeling their story was "over".
    • One of the criticisms of Starlight Glimmer's Heel–Face Turn was that it was being done to deliberately copy Sunset Shimmer's redemption and character arc. Word of God claims it wasn't, which is substantiated by Production Lead Time meaning it was likely written before Rainbow Rocks airedexplanation and made the previously contentious Sunset popular enough to want to copy.
    • In response to criticisms of the franchise's villains being Easily Forgiven, Equestria Girls director Ishi Rudell revealed that he is also sick of this trend and would be happy to do otherwise, but it's not up to him, implying this approach was an executive mandate.
    • My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)
      • A common point of contention is how it ignores Character Development and continuity (outside some cameos) past the end of Season 4, leading to questions about why they sought help from the hippogriffs over all the other allied races they made since then and it not feeling like it fit the shows continuity. Many criticize this as an attempt for The Movie appeal to wider audiences at the expense of it appealing to existing fans. But work on The Movie started immediately after end of Season 4, thus Production Lead Time would make it impossible to incorporate said later development and continuity beyond cameos if they wanted to or not.
      • Once it came out Friendship is Magic would end in 2019, some blamed the movie's weak reception and earnings. However, Hasbro stated they wanted it to continue for five years in 2014 when the movie was first announced, wanted to wrap it up in the very early pitches for Season 7 while the movie would be mid-production, and months after the movie released leaked early drafts for the next series which was too soon to have been designed in response to its reception. While other G4 movies may have been canned, the end of Friendship is Magic, already a Long Runner by this point whose toy sales were slowing down before the movie released, was decided well before reception of The Movie could influence it.
  • Due to Disney's history with Greg Weisman related shows (Gargoyles and W.I.T.C.H.), many fans blame Disney for cancelling The Spectacular Spider-Man. However, it was more a case of Screwed by the Lawyers. Due to Disney's acquisition of Marvel, Sony gave away their TV rights to the franchise in order to keep making Spider-Man movies. Since Sony still owned The Spectacular Spider-Man, it would've forced Marvel to pay to continue the series.
  • Many Doug fans claim that "Disney ruined Doug" when they bought the rights to the show and un-canceled it. In fact, buying Doug (and slapping their name on it) was the only thing they did to the show. Creator Jim Jinkens made all the changes himself.
  • Fans of The Looney Tunes Show and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated may be angry that the shows were cancelled because of Executive Meddling, but it was really because the producers meant from the beginning to make 52 episodes of each series.
  • South Park: Voice actress April Stewart has been blamed by some sore fans for Mona Marshall not having as many roles, as well as the exit of Eliza Schneider. In actuality, Schneider quit on her own terms in 2003 due to a salary dispute and issues with her union note . Stewart herself had to use an alias for her early work in the show until matters could be settled. It's also worth noting that Marshall always had voiced fewer female characters in comparison, as Schneider had handled the majority of the roles after Mary Kay Bergman's death.
    • Due to old fansites like Beef-Cake and convention advertisements mistaking Mona Marshall as the second voice of Wendy, Schneider herself received some blame and misconception of "usurping" the role. In actuality, she'd always voiced the character and simply modified her take after a while. In comparison, April Stewart would later receive flack for making Wendy sound too old, until it was revealed that it was the creators' own decision to not speed up her voice as much (while Mary Kay Bergman could naturally perform the higher voice, Schneider and Stewart had to have their voices digitally modified).
    • An in-universe Type 5 example is Played for Laughs in "Night of the Living Homeless", where Kyle tries to come up with an idea with what to do with the homeless, and Cartman's idea was to jump over them with his skateboard. The other boys either thank Kyle for the idea that was obviously Cartman's, or in Stan's case, get baffled by it.
  • The Simpsons has a serious case of Type 5: Fans who dislike the newer seasons generally say it's all the fault of the showrunner at the time: Mike Scully for Seasons 9-12, and Al Jean for Season 13 and onwards. While Scully and Jean aren't innocent, to be sure, they aren't 100% guilty either.
    • The showrunner isn't personally involved with every aspect of the show: The writing staff comes up with plot ideas and first drafts of episodes, while the showrunner selects which episodes get made and leads script revisions. The showrunner also isn't all-powerful: the senior production staff can and do interfere with writing and plot ideas.
    • Scully inherited a show that was starting to go downhill in quality: Season 8 was the beginning of the end, with many senior writers and producers heading for the exits, co-showrunners Oakley and Weinstein operated on the assumption that The Simpsons would soon be over note , leading them to experiment with new art and plot formats that led to a drop in quality and lack of direction for the show.
      • The hardcore Scully Hatedom says he did so much damage that the show couldn't be salvaged when he stepped down as showrunner in mid-2001, but that ignores the changes Al Jean implemented on the show: of the disliked elements from Scully's time as showrunner, many were scrapped immediately while many more disappeared over time - very few of the complaints about episodes in Seasons 9-12 can be applied to seasons since then, and vice-versa.
      • Since he became showrunner in Season 9, Scully gets blamed for that season's "The Principal and the Pauper", widely seen to be one of the worst Simpsons episodes ever, if not the worst. However, Scully was never involved in it. It was a holdover from Season 8, when Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein were showrunners, Steven Dean Moore was the director, and Ken Keeler was the writer.
    • Al Jean also inherited a mostly new writing staff, presided over the retirements of the show's last original writers a few seasons into his time as showrunner, and took over at a time when the series was falling apart, due to both its age and the Denser and Wackier elements introduced during Scully's tenure. 8 seasons was a long time, and 12 was positively record breaking. For obvious reasons, Jean's detractors also ignore his time as showrunner in the third and fourth seasons, generally regarded as two of the series' best.
    • The voice actors have also run out of steam with recent seasons: Hank Azaria (Moe, Chief Wiggum, Apu) has voiced one-off characters since the show's beginning and admitted in an interview that while he would try to do something new for each of them back in the 1980s and 1990s, he ran out of ideas around Season 10 (August 1998 to May 1999) and can now pull this off only a few times a season, sometimes less.
    • Matt Groening gets next to none of the blame for the show's decline, but he probably deserves more: Some of the big complaints about the last 15 or so seasons are Flanderization, blunt political commentary, and the show increasingly resembling South Park and Family Guy. Incidentally, these are also some of the main complaints about the Un-Canceled seasons of Futurama, which has little in common with modern-day Simpsons apart from having Groening at the helm.
  • Season 2 of Superjail! received a case of type 5, with Jackson Publick (credited under his actual name, Chris McCulloch ) getting the accusation of "usurping" the show from Christy Karacas, as he was put in charge of being the story-editor and having the final call on scripts. If an episode fell flat, a plot twist was done that a fan didn't like, or if there was less violence, it had to be all on him. In actuality, the season 2 format change was something that Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick had wanted to do in hope of breaking away from being formulaic and getting to explore the characters' stories more.
    • Type 2 and Type 3 also come into play, as while there was some degree of meddling in season 2 note , some of the moments cited as being the network screwing the creators over (perceived Flanderization, revelations of the Twins and Alice's backstories) were actually things that the creators themselves had decided on (to obviously mixed reception).
    • There is a lesser extent of type 5 with some of the new writers for season 2 (John J. Miller, Joe Croson, Adam Modiano), as none of them had written for the show before and were perceived as being amateurs or not "getting" it. In actuality, while the script is usually the writer's work, they evolve from boardroom pitches between all the writers and outlines by Karacas, the story editor revising the script over time, and there also being uncredited rewrites. In short, an episode that doesn't perform well doesn't always fall on one person. To contrast with the above situation, the writers and story editor in season 3 seemed to receive less blaming and outrage, perhaps as things had cooled down.
  • Fans of Kim Possible often cite the popularity of Phineas and Ferb as the reason that KP got the axe. KP ended a full year before P&F started airing regularly, and mainly because the show's creators wanted to move on, with that show's fourth season being an example of Un-Canceled anyway.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • As a result of the Fandom Rivalry, many fans blamed Phineas and Ferb for Disney Channel's bad treatment of Gravity Falls. At the time, Phineas and Ferb was not only barely even airing on the network due to winding down production, but Gravity Falls had already established itself as being their newest hit. The odd scheduling was a quirk of the show's production necessitating that new episodes had to be stretched out to a greater extent than its peers; a quirk that would continue into its second season on Disney XD, where it served as the flagship show for that channel.
    • Some fans blamed Disney XD for the show's end, but it was actually Hirsch's decision to end the show due to burn-out and wanting to avoid Seasonal Rot, with him even wanting to have a far shorter second season (if not just end the show on season one's cliffhanger). Disney actually saw it as a Cash-Cow Franchise due to its immense popularity and wanted to continue the show, forcing him to commit to a 20-episode season as opposed to the ten that he originally wanted once he agreed to do another season, and hoping that Hirsch would change his mind.
  • After the infamous Pickle and Peanut was renewed for a second season, fans got angry at it because of the cancellation of Wander over Yonder. The truth is that P&P itself was all but ignored by the network during its run, being placed in a year-long hiatus after its first season, and like several other Disney XD cartoons (including Wander itself), ended after its second season (albeit on its own terms with a definite finale).
  • Some Teen Titans (2003) fans blamed co-creator Glen Murakami for doing Teen Titans Go!. In fact, though he is credited as associate producer for said show, he has no major involvement in the show and that Aaron Horvath is the creative force behind the series.
  • "Prime killed Animated" is a common complaint of those who preferred the organic traditional animation to the more Movie accurate CGI of Prime. This isn't completely true. Hasbro gave Cartoon Network the option to continue using the license to produce Animated, while they would go on to produce Prime for their new cable channel, The Hub. Cartoon Network decided to end the show independently, as there was no incentive to continuing it if Hasbro would be pulling all funding and ending the toyline.
  • In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many people blamed Rugrats for the fact that The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life were cancelled, when in reality Ren and Stimpy was cancelled because of low ratings after the creator's firing and Rocko's Modern Life was cancelled because Nickelodeon thought that Joe Murray wanted to end his show.
  • Man of Action, the creators of Ben 10 have been blamed for the fan-divided Ben 10: Omniverse. However, they left the franchise after Ultimate Alien to work on Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), though they still receive a "created by" credit and in actual fact, art director Derrick Wyatt, executive producer Tramm Wigzell, supervising producer Matt Youngberg and now ex-Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Toonami CEO Stuart Snyder are actually responsible for the stylistic change from the Darker and Edgier tone of Alien Force/Ultimate Alien to the Denser and Wackier tone of Omniverse.
    • Several The Secret Saturdays fans blamed the show's creator Jay Stephens for the crossover episode "TGIS". However, no one worked on The Secret Saturdays (much less Stephens himself) had any involvement in the episode.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • No, the show was NOT removed from Nick's schedule and made online exclusive during Book 3 in favor of giving more airtime to Nickelodeon's more comedy-based shows. While it being a complete tonal mismatch compared to their other programming was a factor (being a teen-oriented action/adventure series), it was the series seeing far better viewership numbers compared to its on-air ratings during Book 2 that resulted in the decision.
    • Zigzagged with regards to the finale. Fans blamed Nickelodeon for the ambiguity of the final scene, which shows Korra and Asami going on a private vacation in the Spirit World, all-but-explicitly a couple. Many blamed Nick for the ambiguity of it, and assumed that Bryke had to sneak it in without the studio's knowledge, but after Bryke confirmed the Korrasami Ship online they mentioned that the Studio was supportive of the idea, though due to their Standards and Practices would only allow so much to be shown. So the studio is the reason for the ambiguity, but the scene was done with them fully knowing what was being expressed.
    • The finale similarly had other fans accuse Bryke of queerbaiting due to the slightly ambiguous ending. Most were a little more savvy and aware that Standards and Practices would only let them go so far, which Bryke confirmed online.
  • ChalkZone got a lot of flack from angry Invader Zim fans claiming that the former got the latter canceled. Not only was ChalkZone delayed for two years (and thus was not meant to be a replacement show), but Zim was still running when the first season of ChalkZone premiered (The Fairly OddParents! and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius are also blamed for this). The real reason why Zim was canceled was due to the show's high production cost, low ratings, and just generally being Screwed by the Network. Not to mention that ChalkZone itself was also treated horribly by Nick.
  • In a glaring example of the Most Visible Target fallacy, many fans of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood blamed the new kid on the block, Word Party, as the reason the former was dropped from Netflix, as the former (along with a whole plethora of 9 Story Media Group shows) was dropped days before the latter premiered. The real reason is that Amazon had just snatched the rights out of Netflix's hands by signing a multi-year exclusive deal to stream PBS Kids shows.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants is often blamed as the main reason for Nickelodeon's perceived decline in the late-2000s. While network executives did deem whether a show was worth keeping based on how much the ratings stacked up in comparison to SpongeBob (and quickly scrapped any animated series that wasn't in the same ballpark), that's about it. The creative staff has no control over how the channel treats their or their colleagues work, and that goes for the vast majority of popular programming.
  • Many fans of VeggieTales blamed Dreamworks for the new designs introduced in VeggieTales in the House. It was actually Big Idea's decision to change the characters' designs in an attempt to update what they saw as archaic designs that were beholden to the limits of early 1990s 3D animation software.
  • Johnny Test's fundamental destruction of the reputation of Canadian television animation has made it a pretty big source of this, due to the numerous misconceptions its Periphery Hatedom spawned.
    • The show's massive hatedom sometimes use it as proof that all Canadian animation is horrible. What many people forget is that creator Scott Fellows, James Arnold Taylor (Johnny's voice actor), and most of the show's production crew, are Americans. In fact, Warner Bros. Animation produced the early seasons while the later seasons were made in association with both Cartoon Network and Teletoon.
    • Canadian content laws are often used by people to explain why Johnny Test ran for as long as it did despite being widely hated, claiming that because the laws require channels to air a certain amount of natively produced content every day it was basically immune to being taken off air. This gets rather silly when you consider the law has been around for a long time; the real reason for Johnny Test's longevity was simply that its low budget and solid ratings allowed the networks to make profit very easily and thus motivated them to air it as much as possible and continue ordering new seasons.
    • People frequently use the show as proof that Teletoon uses the cheapest and laziest possible production values for all its original productions, despite the fact Teletoon isn't even an animation studio (and doesn't even have an in-house production company for that matter) and is in fact just a network that's involvement generally involves little more than ordering episodes of shows, lending them some funding (although they're not the sole donators to any show's budget), and giving executive notes to the production crew. In fact, NONE of Teletoon's original shows were actually made by them, but rather, they were the creations of numerous animation and television studios across Canada (in the case of Johnny Test, the real creators of the show were Cookie Jar Entertainment); the only reason Teletoon's shows are called "original productions" is because they were originally created for/commissioned by the network.
  • With Jimmy Two-Shoes, it's not uncommon to hear people accuse Teletoon as being responsible for all the Executive Meddling that got the Darker and Edgier pilot remade into the Denser and Wackier final product. In reality, it was Disney XD that mandated all the changes in order to make the series more kid-friendly and thus more marketable to American audiences; Teletoon approved the pilot concept without issue due to originally intending the series to be aimed more at teenagers, in line with their own programming (such as the Total Drama series, their most popular show at the time). This is more evident with the second season, which received the tonal retool it did at the request of Disney XD's executives rather than Teletoon's.
  • Angry Total Drama fans frequently see Fresh TV and Teletoon as being entirely responsible for many of the unpopular or controversial story decisions made in the seasons following the first. However, Cartoon Network purchased the majority of the rights to the franchise after the massive success of the first season, giving them greater ownership and far more influence over the show and its production than Teletoon, the franchise's channel of origin.
  • During The Batman's heyday, it got a lot of flack due to Executive Meddling relating to it removing the use of Batman characters in Justice League Unlimited outside of Bruce Wayne himself. However, both shows were victims of that as, barring a cameo of Nightwing in JLU, Teen Titans (2003) limited the use of Robin (resulting in The Batman's Robin being a case of Adaptational Late Appearance) and neither show could use Two-Face, the Scarecrow, or Ra's al Ghul due to The Dark Knight Trilogy (resulting in The Batman using its first Clayface in place of Two-Face, Hugo Strange in place of the Scarecrow, and Black Mask and — in The Movie — Count Dracula in place of Ra's al Ghul).
  • In the Hebrew dub of Dora the Explorer, the Gratuitous Spanish is replaced with Gratuitous English. This caused some controversy - Spanish is the major minority language in the United States, so by that logic, Gratuitous Spanish should have become Gratuitous Arabic instead - overlooking the fact all of Dora's other foreign dubs replaced Spanish with English as well.
  • This video blames Cocomelon on the cancellations of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and The Owl House. The biggest problem with this statement is that Cocomelon is not only aimed at a far younger audience than these two shows, being made for preschoolers as opposed to older children ages 6-12, but they're produced by different companies, for different platforms, all with their their own programming strategies: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power was planned for a 52 episode run from the moment it was greenlit, while The Owl House was a causality of a corporate leadership change and other factors.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: The show has been heavily accused of queerbaiting during its seventh season, after publicizing the fact that Shiro was gay and that Adam, his ex-boyfriend, would return that season. In the series proper, Adam is already dead by the time Shiro returns and only appears in two scenes, both of which are flashbacks. While the creators may have, knowingly or not, stoked hype for this plot, fans also blame them for the posters on Netflix's service that heavily marketed that aspect of the seventh season; said posters, however, are not made by the creators, but by Netflix itself, and they have no input in it.
  • High Guardian Spice:
    • While the crew often gets blamed for creating the infamous initial announcement trailer, story editor Amalia Levari claimed this was out of their control; according to Levari, Crunchyroll had asked the crew isolated behind-the-scenes questions, which they answered not knowing that those questions would be repurposed into an announcement trailer. As confirmed by Sofia Alexander, the creator of Onyx Equinox, the production staff don't have any input as to how their shows are marketed by Crunchyroll.
    • The series' staff are also accused of diverting funds from subscribers' money into this series' creation. However, not only is this claim unfounded but what has been confirmed runs contrary to it. In 2015, Crunchyroll had specifically received funding from companies like Sumitomo Corporation and Otter Media to invest in co-productions and original programming, including the Crunchyroll Originals program in general.
  • The hatedom of Work It Out Wombats! believes it was responsible for Elinor Wonders Why getting Screwed by the Network, even though they have nothing to do with each other besides sharing an animation studio. Although Elinor fans thought their show was canned, once season 2 was confirmed to be in production, their claims of Wombats "killing Elinor" became unfounded.
  • Velma:
    • The show's staff received no end of flak for not including Scooby-Doo in the show due to feeling he is too "kiddy". While showrunner Charlie Grandy certainly did admit that the writing staff thought Scooby-Doo was a generally childish element of the franchise that would have been hard to fit into the show's adult tone, he also revealed that they wouldn't have been able use the character even if they wanted to, as Warner Bros. Animation told them that the Great Dane was off-limits.
    • The show was also blamed for causing the cancellation of Final Space due to how that show was taken off of HBO Max and that Velma came in to seemingly replace it while having Velma's and Fred's character designs look very close to that of Quinn Ergon and Gary Goodspeed respectively. However, Final Space was screwed over as a result of complications with the merger between WB and Discovery along with the failure of executives to recognize the popularity of the show and that they wrote it off for taxes.
    • Many accuse Mindy Kaling of being the creator of the series; that honor would go to Charlie Grandy. She also is confused as a writer when she isn't credited as one. She is actually the executive producer.
  • The Owl House: When discussing the reasons the show was canceled and Season 3 was shortened to three 44-minute specials, people are usually quick to point to the show's LGBTQ+ representation, particularly due to the former CEO. This ignores the other Disney series with LGBTQ+ representation that were allowed to continue despite it, and creator Dana Terrace stated it was due to being serialized with an older audiences seen as not fitting the "Disney brand"—the Disney Channel brand which focused on episodic comedies for young audiences. While a later post Dana made after the 2022 Florida LGBTQ protests suggested homophobia was a factor, there are others to consider.
    • Due to the unfortunate timing of the episode "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", many assumed Amity kissing Luz was what caused Disney to cancel the show. However, due to Production Lead Time the decision was most likely made well before the episode was even scripted. Dana Terrace herself would even confirm that the kiss had no influence on cancellation of the show.
  • It's commonly claimed, including on this very wiki, that SWAT Kats was cancelled on the direct orders of Ted Turner, who disliked the show's violent content and/or wanted to promote his own pet project Captain Planet and the Planeteers. While Turner did disapprove of cartoon violence in general, his distaste was mostly aimed at Animated Shock Comedy shows like Beavis and Butt-Head rather than action/adventure shows. The actual decision to cancel the show was made well below his level, and seems to have largely happened because the executives in charge believed Turner disliked it.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top