Sandbox / Accidental Aesop Wick Check

• (1/50, 2%) Used as YMMV entry, provides context for why it's "accidental"
• (19/50, 38%) Used as YMMV entry, does NOT provide context for why it's an "accident"
• (11/50, 22%) In-universe examples
• (7/50, 14%) Potholes misplaced from YMMV
• (2/50, 4%) Other forms of ZCE
• (10/50, 20%) Other forms of misuse

Used as YMMV entry, provides context for why it's "accidental" (1/50)

• Dr. Seuss: He rarely had an intended moral in mind while writing his books, and was always irritated at people insisting on reading one into them. His argument was that a moral could be read into any story with consistent characterization as naturally some characters are going to be more sympathetic than others, and “What’s wrong with kids just having fun reading without having to learn something?” This does need more context on what the accidental aesops are though, even for a creator page.

Used as YMMV entry, does NOT provide context (19/50)

• A Giant Sucking Sound: While having a viable third party might be valuable, but they can still be Mirroring Factions to two major American parties if the radicals, which ironically one of the Freedom Party's major flaws is its attraction of extremists of all political spectrum for better or for worse, who would cause further gridlock into the legislative process and refuse to compromise even for a mutually beneficial outcome.
• Adventure Time:
  • "You Made Me!" has spawned a ton of these. "If you can't love yourself, you can't love somebody else"? "Everyone has a soul mate"? "A negative times a negative equals a positive"? "Friendship makes everything better"? "You are your own worst enemy"? Take your pick- they all work out nicely.
  • One moral that could be construed from "Too Young" is "Inexperienced, immature people should not be given positions of leadership."
  • One interpretation on "Wizards Only, Fools", is watch out for bootleg medicine, that may actually be fake.
• Air Force One: Given what Marshall and his family go through, one may see the story as a warning about tit-for-tat political beefs between countries.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul movie has one: while online pictures/videos of someone getting into embarrassing situations can be hilarious, the subject of said picture/video will hate having one of their most humiliating moments immortalized where anyone can see it.
• Doctor Who S30 E3 "Planet of the Ood": In light of "The Curse of Peladon" being a pro-EU tract, the timeline here established turns this episode into a Brexit tract.
• DuckTales (2017) S3 E2 "Quack Pack!": When Goofy convinces Donald that every family has its own kind of normal, he's also defending Pete and his family from the original Goof Troop, explaining that regardless of how dysfunctional they were, they were still a family, still cared for one another, and had their own special way of showing it.
• Ed Edd N Eddy S 4 E 11 Little Ed Blue: If someone's in a bad mood, maybe ask why they're in a bad mood first before trying to cheer them up. Double D and Eddy's attempts to cheer Ed up without knowing why he was mad just ends up making him angrier. If they had simply asked him why he was so upset, they very easily could have saved themselves a lot of pain. And urging someone to "get over it" when they're upset like Eddy tries to do certainly won't help.
• Enchanted:
  • Taken the wrong way, the film can come off as implying that it's perfectly fine to break off a four year committed relationship for the sake of a girl you've only known for a week.
  • If a woman loves a man, she should leave her whole life behind and go live with him in a strange new place. The fact that Nancy throws away her cell phone in Andalasia just further symbolizes how she casts away her whole identity for Edward's sake.
    • Softened, in the sense that Nancy finds love, and happily becomes a princess. Plus, it's safe to assume that she and Edward can easily return to New York through the portal (just as he was able to in the first place).
    • In addition, it's implied Nancy wants a fairy tale romance that's uncomplicated.
  • Courtesy of "That's How You Know", you shouldn't stop doing romantic things for your significant other once you're official.
• Ethnic Cleansing: White nationalists are Ax-Crazy Gun Nuts who would blow your brains off without hesitation just for looking at them funny. Blatant complaining.
• Family Guy 8 E 7 Jerome Is The New Black: Don’t try too hard to make someone like you. It would just end in you getting your feelings hurt.
• Family Guy S 2 E 5 Love Thy Trophy: Children can pick up racist beliefs at a very young age.
• Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2: Value the time you spend with your friends and family, as you may never know when they might leave you. Following the events of the game and Hanna's near-death, the children have begun making time to visit each other more often, and it's implied that Cannelle is trying to spend more time with Vanilla.
• Harley Quinn (2019):
  • As Doctor Psycho shows Harley, hiring the first guy available might not be the best idea, especially if there's a stated reason they're on the market.
  • There is an unspoken lesson about Harley's wardrobe that correlates with the feminist message of the show. "How a woman dresses, either sensually, skimpily, or modestly, it is their choice and their choice alone. If people can't respect that choice or act maturely in response to it, that's their fault." Harley's original costume was a form-fitting catsuit that her abusive, sexist boyfriend forced her to wear as a form of dominance and control. While Harley's new costume puts emphasis on her femininity and control over her own sexuality, as shown by how she confidently returns to the Joker in her new costume and is leered at by all the men there before defeating them all in a mass brawl by herself.
  • As Kite Man learns the hard way, maybe it's better to share your desired future with the person you're marrying before the literal wedding vows, so you don't discover right there that you two don't desire the same things.
  • Part of why Poison Ivy keeps convincing herself to commit to her relationship with Kite Man is she feels it would be "safer" and "easier to go along with" what a Nice Guy wants, than a tumultuous relationship with someone else, particularly Harley. Yet, as the series shows, life will throw curve balls at your relationship anyway, so no relationship is truly "safe" or "easy," and then it can feel even more tedious and grueling trying to salvage a relationship that, deep down, you don't really want. What's more, your partner will pick up on your lack of enthusiasm through every hurdle, and there's only so long they can endure feeling like the person you're settling for.
• Incoming!: If you ignore your fiance to join a black-ops Avengers team, he'll summon an alien armada to attack the earth.
• It's a Wonderful Life:
  • If you're a woman and don't marry your designated soulmate, you'll spend your life as a miserable spinster.
  • Don't conduct business or drive drunk. It means you may accidentally kill someone, or damage a tree.
• Live A Live: Some people see the conflict between Huey, Rachel, and Kirk and all the resulting damage it causes as a prime example of why dating your co-workers is generally discouraged in real life.
• NIMONA (2023): There is a mention of the overt lesson, but it's not really made clear how these entries are "accidental" lessons. With the length in which they describe the context for them, they seem like pretty deliberate acts meant to encourage something, and they don't attempt to prove otherwise that they were unintentional.
  • Though the overt lesson is that individuals should be understood rather than demonized for being different, it can be argued that the movie also makes a point about how all that is needed for evil and prejudice to flourish is inaction from those around them and nobody willing to confront them openly about their wrongdoings. The Queen's murder could have been avoided if Diego had dared to openly show Ballister the footage of her swapping his sword, or revealed it as proof of his innocence at any point afterward, but because he did nothing, Ballister was forced into teaming up with Nimona to try and prove his innocence another way. Ambrosius refuses to openly side with Ballister when forced to choose between believing in him (despite clearly knowing something's wrong) and upholding his duty as Gloreth's descendant, and as shown through the Director's Engineered Public Confession, his attempt to confront her in private over his suspicions would only have lead to his death. Even when the Director’s confession is publicly aired, all it takes for her to remain in power is revealing that Nimona is a shapeshifter and claiming that it was her instead in the video, using the public's belief in her and the Institute to deflect the accusations and further demonize both Nimona and Ballister for their attempts to expose the truth.
  • Similar to Zootopia, the film can be viewed as a "reform/dismantle the police department" allegory. Knights are the cops of this world, and a lot of their decisions are based on inherent prejudices for those they see as "monsters". It's only after being on the other side of the law or empathizing with those that they previously held prejudice against are the more moral individuals like Ballister and Ambrosius able to change things for the better.
  • The importance of community for LGBTQIA+ individuals. At the beginning of the movie, Ballister only expresses affection for Ambrosius in private, and only Ambrosius says "I love you" throughout the movie. It's only after meeting another openly queer person (Nimona) who he has a platonic relationship with and is unabashedly herself that Ballister can kiss Ambrosius in public. Similarly, there's a brief Imagine Spot where Ambrosius goes on a rant, before cutting back to him stoic saying he's fine, he has a Freak Out and echoes exactly Nimona's reaction to his cutting off Ballister's arm; Nimona very much represents his own Hidden Depths.
• Orpheus: A Poetic Drama: The focus on Aristaeus's bees opening rifts between the Underworld and the world above, and their beneficial effects on both, can be seen as having a Green Aesop when the main focus was on Orpheus, Eurydice, and their love story.
• Perfect Blue: The only mention of context on what the "intended" message of this work is is just to explain why it fails, and in contradiction to another entry. Seems more like a Broken Base kind of deal, but either way runs on misuse.
  • The whole film can be seen as a deconstruction of Fanservice and how a series should never rely on it to gain viewers. Because at the end of the day all you've done is objectify and humiliate a human being.
    • Given that all of the movie's problems are caused due to characters' adverse reaction to fanservice, it can easily be seen as the opposite message too - being obsessed with ideals of purity and expecting others to live up to them can drive one bonkers. What one person considers an average day at the job can be seen as degrading and humiliating by others, and the problem only comes when the latter try to reign in the former.
  • To a lesser extent, getting a driver's license and a car invites freedom to your life. It also means you won't get driven by someone who may want to kill you.

In-universe examples (11/50)

• Archie Comics: In-Universe. One story had Mr. Weatherbee assigning Archie to give a speech to the male students on a subject that interests them. He chooses inflation and has Betty, Veronica and Ethel help him demonstrate its effects. Big Ethel is shown in an early 20th-Century swimsuit that covers her whole body, Betty in a standard one-piece suit, and Veronica in a bikini to symbolize "The Shrinking Dollar." Mr. Weatherbee compliments Archie on his speech, but tells him, "There's only one problem, Archie. You have the entire class looking forward to further devaluation." In other words, if you go from a full suit to a one piece to a bikini, the next step would be...
• Peeking Through the Fourth Wall: In-Universe — In Episode 34, the characters read Business Over Brother, in which Luan wants Lincoln to assist her as a party clown so she can get the leftover cake. He's too busy doing his homework, so she steals the homework and has two of their pets destroy it. However, he's too angry with her to be her assistant, but she ends up getting the cake anyway but being too sad to want it anymore. Lincoln notes that the story probably wasn't meant to have a moral, but he's found two perfectly good morals: "Have faith in yourself" and "Don't take people's homework".
• Travels of the Trifecta: In-Universe, Paul "learns" from his Mine Badge battle that he's such a great trainer that he can beat Gym Leaders even when sick, instead of learning to be more patient and take better care of his own health. This then leads to Candice beating him in a Curb-Stomp Battle the first time he battles her, not only because of him underestimating her Pokemon's power, but because of his own deteriorating health at that point caused by him being injured during his trek through Route 216-217 and his terminal illness that he is unaware of at that point.
• Tropes A to D:invoked The Honest Trailer for Knives Out opens by suggesting one that applies to it and director Rian Johnson's previous movie: A really cynical take by a reviewer on a real work.
  Narrator: From the director who ruined your man-childhood comes a film about how, if you act like an entitled dick, women and minorities will take away everything you ever loved. [clip of Kylo Ren acting out in The Last Jedi] No, not that one. [clip of Marta in front of her newly-inherited mansion] The new one. Aaand mute thread.
• Manga/Bakuman: An in-universe example serves as Nanamine's Start of Darkness. Originally a Lonely Rich Kid, Nanamine read Mashiro and Takagi's "Money and Intelligence", intended to be a dark, cynical dystopian piece, and had the epiphany that he could just buy friends and accomplish basically anything he wanted through riches and being manipulative. Seems like a case of Dramatically Missing the Point.
• Tropes A to C: What Major Monogram got out of "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister" in the In-Universe character commentary:
  Monogram: If you steal potions from people, you will grow 50 feet tall. You shouldn't steal, stealing is bad and it's against the law.
• Escape from Vault Disney!: In their episode on Life with Mikey, they point out that both Mikey and Angie shoplift and are forgiven once people realize they are celebrities from television. They say the movie then implies that wealthy celebrities are above the law.
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: John played a portion of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (as a depiction of how much of an Anti-Drug fervor we were in the 80s and 90s) before mentioning this: A deliberate reach for a joke.
  John: [Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue] had a clear message to kids: "If you do drugs, all your favorite cartoon characters will show up and talk to you." Is that what you want? Is that what you want?"
• H.Bomberguy: Another case of documenting a reviewer's critical spiels — I don't think the "aesop" of these entries come from what the work itself possessed and more just what critical hottake the reviewer found out of it (in other words, he's producing a moral lesson on his own based on his analysis of the work), which seems like the improper way to use this trope.
  • He believes that the film The Room is a close impression of how Tommy Wiseau saw an actual breakup. This means it (unintentionally) works very well as a statement about how bad relationships warp your perceptions, with the nonsense characterization, rampant misogyny, and Random Events Plot being a symptom of the fact that Wiseau's viewpoint wasn't healthy or accurate.
  • RWBY's handling of the Faunus plot is so muddled and disoriented that it accidentally makes the point that supressing a civil rights movement is actually a good thing, because they're all evil terrorists who want to bomb cities that largely are apathetic to individual acts of racism.
    Hbomb: The gang gleefully kill dozens of White Fang members, throwing them off a train at high speeds where their remains will be shattered and smashed into a pulp, unburied in a collapsing tunnel covered in monsters and explosives, and then later the only exit from this monster-infested tunnel is sealed shut, trapping any of the survivors inside to die horrible deaths. And sure, maybe they experienced racism and suffering, but they decided to be evil so they got what was coming! If you kill one of these guys your conscience is clean!
• Katamari: The epilogue to the Frosty Peak arc shows that Ace's takeaway from the whole experience is that giving somebody nothing and calling it 'friendship' is a fun prank. Sherman's understandably taken aback by this.
• Pelswick: In-universe: Mr. Jimmy did not intend the Aesop: "You are taking something that is not that bad and covering it up with a lot of things that are worse" in the dance episode; he just really wanted to cover his bald spot.

Potholes misplaced from YMMV (7/50)

• Marvel Comics: Miles Morales: Reconstruction: Of The Paragon and Legacy Character, and possibly a more thorough one than the Spider-Man series intended it to be. Unlike Peter, Miles dons the suit because he feels like it is his fault that Peter, someone he has never met and wasn't ever close to, died — while Peter dons the suit because his father figure was killed indirectly because of him. Miles wasn't motivated by dead parents or a tragic past, he was inspired by Peter's example to do something selfless. Miles is an example of how a superhero can do good by becoming a symbol, and not just by punching villains in the face. To further separate him from Peter, it is important to note that Miles' life was perfectly normal before taking up the mantle which contrasts both versions of the 616 Universe and Ultimate. As soon as he became Spider-Man, there was an almost immediate shift in how the world became to him. His uncle, who was previously cordial and cool to him, became selfish and manipulative. His dad's bigotry probably wouldn't have bothered him so much if Miles didn't have powers himself. The one and only sole consistent source of confidence that he had was his mother and then she died because Venom was looking for the new Spider-Man so it could be said that he indirectly caused his mom's death. It is as if to show that Miles' theme as Spider-Man asks one question: Why, on Earth, would anybody want to be Spider-Man?
• One-Punch Man: Saitama: Supporting Protagonist: If anything drives the plot more than Saitama's disillusionment in becoming a hero, it's the struggles and Character Development the people around him are going through. He usually either has some words of wisdom (even though he rarely considers them such) for them, or points out the flaws which are holding them back. More of an in-universe example, but it's not labelled as such.
• Smiley Face: Drugs Are Bad: This might not have been the intended message of the movie, but Jane's marijuana habit completely wrecks her life. Improper YMMV trope on main page.
• Nerd³: Cheaters Never Prosper: Almost always an Accidental Aesop, but whenever Dan cheats in a challenge, competition, or other form of meta-game, he loses anyways, either by chance or because he counts the cheating as losing^note For example, in the 2.5 million subscriber special, he uses GTA Online's micro-transactions to get extra money in order to beat Matt. However, at the end, not only did he fail to make money with the things he bought using those transactions, he counts that money as debt he needs to pay, and notes that the money will only last as long as the servers do. This is an Invoked Trope here, since he did it to prove how bullshit GTA Online is.
• Tropes A to B: Broken Aesop: The show has a few:
  • In the episode "Swarm of the Century", the lesson is that you should always listen to your friends, even if what they say doesn't make sense. Pinkie has the solution to the problem, but she just demands that everyone help her without telling them how or why, and when another method almost works, she screws it up. It's a better illustration of how important it is to explain yourself properly if you want to get your ideas across to others. Blatant editorializing at the end.
• Best of the Worst: Broken Aesop:
  • Ryan's Babe at least appears to be (the bizarre way the story is presented makes it unclear if it was intentional or an Accidental Aesop) partly about how Ryan shouldn't enable his Stalker with a Crush Love Interest, portraying her willingness to do extreme things for him since they were children and her suicidal depression after he runs away during the film's events as extremely unhealthy for both of them. This is abruptly thrown out the window when Ryan suddenly has a Love Epiphany and returns to his hometown to be with her despite everything.
• Tiny Meat Gang: An Aesop:
  • Lapses into accidental with "you." The video's Sickeningly Sweethearts think their video will inspire others to find their soulmates but the impression that Cody and especially Noel got is that while people are working their asses off just to be able to eat, there are overly privileged people like the video's couple who are so well off that they seem unaware of just where the materials for their hobbies come from.

Other forms of ZCE (2/50)

• Tropes P to Z: As an unintentional side effect of narrative choices, some very odd story reads developed. Also a misplaced main page placement.
  • Also crosses with Accidental Aesop but still manages to hit it: If you don't treat one of your childhood friends like an actual friend, even though you claim that you care for them, one of their relatives will use ancient, reality-warping beings to systematically destroy your very being for not being nicer.
• Lyttle Lytton Contest: Accidental Aesop:invoked Cadre notes that a "young ponyless reader" would draw some damaging conclusions from this. Presumably the hypothetical bad author did not intend to emotionally scar little girls... An invoked trope but with no context.
  Some girls never get a pony, but Jane was good and her daddy loved her.

  — Sasha Cornish

Other forms of misuse (10/50)

• Vathara: Author Appeal:
  • Awesomeness Is a Force: Jedi, benders, psychics - Vathara really likes the concept of "perfect leaders" who can walk into a rabble and instantly cow them, inspire them, and turn them into an army. Often becomes an Accidental Aesop as this phenomena is repeatedly demonstrated to not just rally the masses into victories over evil, but is often the cause of hellish conflicts that annihilate populations; it took a "perfect leader" to defeat the tyrant, but the tyranny began with a "perfect leader." Not only is this a misplaced main page trope, the entry as a whole feels like it's going a little overboard with the analysis.
• Peanuts: Linus keeps shoving his dinner off his high chair while Lucy and Charlie Brown watch. Not really a moral lesson here, is it?
  Lucy: Mother's trying to get Linus to eat by himself. (beat) If he knocks his dish off the table three times, he has to go to bed without any supper.
  Charlie Brown: Is that teaching him to eat?
  Lucy: No, but it's taught him to count to three!
• DuckTales (2017) - Season 3: The Accidental Aesop Goofy provides relating to Pete and his family; they were pretty dysfunctional. Yet as Goofy points out, they still had their heartfelt family moments and their own "normal." Is this "accidental"?
• Tuca & Bertie: In a roundabout way, the show's depiction of more dramatic things like strained relationships and sexism in ways that, while not downplaying their drama, are still first-and-foremost funny. It's like an Accidental Aesop about how, as awful as these things can be, nothing is so bad that you can't still have a good laugh about it. Again, is this "accidental"?
• The Turner Diaries: Not Helping Your Case: A meta example. The book is a white supremacist Author Tract, and yet its existence ends up providing one of the best arguments against white supremacy, as it presents the causing of a Class 1 Apocalypse How as a happy ending, thus delivering the Accidental Aesop that white supremacy will literally end the world if allowed to flourish, and that even the surviving white supremacists would live extremely difficult lives for centuries to come. It proves that fighting white supremacy is in the best interest of everyone, even the white supremacists themselves. Blatant excuse to complain about a controversial work.
• Chick Tracts: After Lance commits suicide and his friend Dolly is saved from the same fate by converting to fundamentalist Christianity along with her sister, they just forget about him, as if they're happy that they didn't end up in hell like Lance, who has just burned up and vanished into "the darkness outside". Seriously, they have no respect for the dead or even visit them, which brings out the "Christian" message that people should only care about themselves and forget about others if they die heathens. Pothole to accentuate complaining.
• Garfield and Friends: Usually, the later seasons make jabs at shows that try to shoehorn educational material into the stories, but the episodes that do have educational material teach us that putting educational stuff in a show can work if you let it come naturally and not make it the main focus. This one's a ZCE and also potentially misuse, thinking this trope is about "shoehorned" tropes.
• Grand Theft Auto Online: Grand Theft Auto V 's critiques of rampant greed and capitalist excess contrast sharply with Online 's encouragement to the players to spend money both in-game and in real life by appealing to materialism. This creates another inadvertent aesop in the meta sense: The products of capitalism are ill-equipped to criticise it. Definitely just meta complaining.
• Grizzly Man: The documentary is supposed to be a lesson on why nature is dangerous when underestimated, the other lesson can be interpreted as "Popularity and fame are corrupting influences that can enable a person's worst habits". While Treadwell did indeed manage to survive his trips and physically interacted with bears and their cubs, the attention from the media and the public more than likely encouraged his antics by treating him like a celebrity and treating his dangerous behavior as just wacky shenanigans, and probably contributed to the self-mythologizing behavior that would eventually lead to his death. This goes into very questionable meta-judgements of the matters beyond the work itself and into real-life people.
• Heaven's Gate: A meta example. This film's production is a good cautionary tale of how being a Perfectionist can blow up in your face. Had Michael Cimino been a bit more pragmatic about how to achieve his artistic goals for the film, a lot of its issues could've been avoided. It's also a great reminder about keeping your ego in check and just as quickly as you can be on top, you can also just as quickly lose it as Michael Cimino went from being a major name in the movie making business to having his career destroyed by this film. More meta troping.