Politically Correct History in Western Animation.
- In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the black Jack Fury leads the Howling Commandos, who as mentioned, are pretty diverse during World War II. Of course, seeing as that particular WW2 was between the Allied Nations and Hydra as well as the Nazis, it can probably be excused as an Alternate History.note
- Subverted in the '90s X-Men: The Animated Series cartoon, where a time-traveling Storm who goes back to the 1950s is told she is not welcome in a restaurant. At first, she thinks it's because she is a mutant, then once she realizes it's because she's black, she says that discrimination by race is almost quaint.
- An episode of Justice League Unlimited featured Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern chasing a Mad Scientist back to the Wild West, where they disguised themselves as law enforcers. Nobody they met saw anything odd about a woman or a black man as a lawperson. Though this might be an unintended aversion, as there were black lawmen and cowboys at the time, but they sort of faded out of the limelight until recently.
- An earlier episode, "Legends," before the series changed names, had some of the League transported into a dimension that bore resemblance to an in-show comic book (it's theorized that the creators of said comic had a subconscious link to that universe and used what they thought were original ideas for the comic) and pair up with equivalents of the Justice Society of America, who were of course still in The Golden Age of Comic Books mentally. The token girl character invites Hawkgirl to help cook. And when Green Lantern's childhood hero complimented him with "You're a credit to your people, son!", Green Lantern could only reply, "Uh... yeah." It was an incredibly subtle bit of animation where you could see John's thoughts written all over his face... he obviously knew that the other man wasn't trying to be insulting, he just came from an era where statements like that probably were the equivalent of being racially sensitive. (The fact that the present day Green Lantern did not meet an actual Golden Age DC superhero but the equivalent enabled the script to get away with more. Actually, an earlier draft of the script had just that scenario, but you tend to think that DC Comics might have a problem with any incarnation of one of their superheroes portrayed as a racist.)
- Sabrina: The Animated Series, "Witchery Science Theater": No one in the old B-grade movie that Sabrina and friends find themselves trapped in found Sabrina's Afro-American Secret-Keeper best friend the least unusual. Then again, it was a Show Within a Show and not actual time travel.
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers, a time travel episode to World War II features Caucasian, Asian and African American soldiers all in the same company. It also features a handlebar mustached Führer, who, while clearly intended to be Hitler, isn't.
- The cartoon Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat has the Magistrate having three daughters and NO sons. No-one says anything about it. In real life, he would have been pressured to keep trying for a son or take another wife — the Kingdom could NOT be passed down to girls! Also, in real life, no matter how dumb the Magistrate is, his wife wouldn't dare talk to him as she did (in a henpecking, almost bullying, mother-like way) or she would have been beheaded! (or at least not in public, there were plenty of Chinese noblewomen who ruled from behind the scenes.)
- Fantastic Four: The Animated Series had a Time Travel episode where the heroes are transported to ancient Greece during the battle of Marathon. The Thing asks whose side they're on and Reed Richards responds, "The Persians were brutal tyrants, while the Athenians invented democracy." While neither side was a bastion of liberty by today's standards, participation in Athenian democracy was denied to women, foreigners, and slaves (i.e., over two-thirds of the population). Meanwhile, while the Persians were conquerors and slavers they were conspicuous for how they tolerated the customs and institutions of the peoples they conquered — their general policy was that as long as they paid proper tribute to the empire and didn't rebel, their conquered states could self-govern, maintain their traditions and beliefs, and generally go on much as they had before being conquered. This is generally believed to have been a major contributor to the success of their empire, as it tended to make rebellion a much less attractive proposition than it might otherwise be.
- Lampshaded on Histeria!. Any time their depiction of history got a little less than family-friendly, network censor Lydia Karaoke would step forward and complain. Many of Lydia's complaints were more along the lines of Have a Gay Old Time, however.
- A Christmas episode of The Simpsons, set at Christmastime during World War II, shows the neighborhood of the Simpson family (or, at least, the family being portrayed by the Simpsons characters) as racially integrated. Although there were some integrated neighborhoods in the 1940s, that has not commonly been portrayed in popular culture, either then or now - and it is certainly odd to see it on The Simpsons, which is famous for its cynical brand of humor and historical generalizations.
- Not to mention it showed Marge as a combat rifleman in the war, even though women are only just now being allowed in direct-combat roles in the U.S. Army.
- That was more Played for Laughs than for political correctness. The joke had been that Marge had been drafted from the Simpson family instead of Homer because Homer was too fat to fit into the foxholes and ended up working on the weapon assembly lines instead.
- Not to mention it showed Marge as a combat rifleman in the war, even though women are only just now being allowed in direct-combat roles in the U.S. Army.
- King of the Hill had an episode dealing with this. Hank, dismayed at the fact that the school's Texas History textbook skips important events like the Alamo in favor of pop culture, produces a re-enactment of the Alamo with another man who's supposedly just as outraged. However, that man's script is a revisionist version of the story where the Texans are all braindead, drunken cowards (and one wears a dress, to boot). The man defends his version by saying the facts are unclear (and citing Oliver Stone's JFK); after briefly considering trashing the set, Hank realizes it's wrong to censor someone just for disagreeing, and presages the play with a speech about the bare facts regarding the Alamo.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender has this in-universe, when Aang accidentally infiltrates a Fire Nation elementary school and their history turns out to be systematic propaganda, including revising the comet-powered genocide of Aang's pacifistic race as a mighty victory over the mighty 'Air Nation' armies. Given they also obviously killed all the babiesnote , this isn't a story likely to hold together long against serious examination, but it makes the majority of students who hear it much less likely to start wondering about the rightness of the cause than the truth would.
- Under Fire Lord Zuko, what is politically correct changes dramatically from the regime probably instated by Fire Lord Azulon, who presided over the chronological bulk of the war and making it a feasible long-term project. Something Sozin almost certainly never anticipated and Ozai never had the patience for.
- The Legend of Frosty the Snowman takes place in a stereotypical 1950's suburban community, but racism doesn't exist. Kids of different races hang out, and it's socially acceptable for Tommy (who is white) to be attracted to Sara (who is black).
- When Jem and the Holograms go back to 1781 Vienna and 1944 London, Shana, Aja, and Raya never face any racism.
- Subverted in The Owl House with Philip Wittebane/Emperor Belos, who was a white British settler in the New World stranded in the Boiling Isles in the 1600s. While his journal entries Luz reads seems to indicate he grew to love the Demon Realm despite its horrors like she did, in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen", when Luz and Lilith travel back in time to meet him, it's revealed he's a racist jerk who hates witches because he hasn't let go of his seventeenth-century mindset. "Hollow Mind" goes even further by revealing that he still identifies as a witch hunter centuries afterwards, and in fact his ascent to power and the Day of Unity was all a very-long gambit to wipe out the Boiling Isles to save humanity. This is despite him altering his body with magic to survive to the point that even many of the witches we see like Eda, Amity, Willow, and Gus resemble humans more than he does. He's also heavily hinted to have killed his own brother for letting go of the anti-witch beliefs and falling in love with one.
- Codename: Kids Next Door plays with this during "Operation: C.A.K.E.D.-F.I.V.E." as Numbuh 19th Century is shocked to see girls now serving as Kids Next Door operatives, which, given the roles they were forced into during his time makes sense, yet makes no comment on the French-African Numbuh 5 serving as one outside of her gender, even though she would have been most likely enslaved when he was active.
