Values Resonance / Western Animation

Works with their own pages:

• The Simpsons
• South Park

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• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog had an infamous Sonic Says segment about someone touching you "in a place or in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable." As memed as it is for the mind-bending sight of seeing Sonic the Hedgehog teaching kids about sexual harassment, the segment gets a lot of admiration today for its bravery in telling kids what to do if they're harassed, with sexual harassment and child exploitation becoming more widely discussed issues over the years.
• The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan: 11 Chinese characters and not a single stereotype to be found. Impressive for 1972. Just as impressive that it was a show where all of the main characters (if not all of their voice actors) were Asian-American.
• Animaniacs:
  • "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock" has a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome to Slappy suffering a nervous breakdown; Skippy is forced to commit her to a nursing home and take over the household chores. The short emphasizes that this situation is highly abnormal and unhealthy, and the adults in Skippy's life interfere when his teacher notices that he's falling Asleep in Class and constantly stressed out. She calls a social worker, who takes the time to assess if Slappy is at home and waits to get his side of the story before taking him to foster care. It's quite poignant that all of the adults in the short are legitimately concerned for Skippy's well-being, and care for him enough to tell him he doesn't have to take on such a burden.
  • "The Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation", in which the Warners mock obsessed fans who have made their show their entire identity and nitpick trivial details that most viewers would never notice or care about^note It's hard to even call the characters they're making fun of Straw Fans, since most of their dialogue is sourced from actual Animaniacs newsgroups of the time, became even more relevant as the Internet and social media became more accessible, leading to fandoms becoming increasingly visible and Caustic Critics being more prevalent. It's become a common meme nowadays to link a screenshot from the bit as a response to heated fandom drama or nitpicking.
  • The Hip Hippos, for what they're worth, can be considered quite progressive. Despite being a married couple in a comedy show, they never play the Awful Wedded Life trope or any of its related tropes (e.g. Henpecked Husband, Parenting the Husband, Lazy Husband) straight, with both being portrayed mutually loving and respectful towards each other. They are also both equally as flawed as each other as well. Special mention goes towards their first episode "La Behemoth" in which their housekeeper quits due to lack of respect from the Hippos. Whilst most shows at the time would either have the wife doing the work whilst her husband lazes around or have the wife nag the husband into doing the housework, instead it's Flavio (the husband) who volunteers to do the housework with no hint from his wife, whilst Marita (the wife) pitches in later, and they both fail due to their pampered lifestyle.
• As Told by Ginger, an early 2000s Slice of Life cartoon aimed at middle school girls, covered many surprisingly mature topics for a Nickelodeon cartoon (such as Slut-Shaming, depression, bullying, and puberty) in ways that resonate well with today's youths. It features several respectfully portrayed Ambiguously Gay and Ambiguously Bi characters as well.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • Part of Two-Face's origin story in The Animated Series is being blackmailed by Rupert Thorne over his mental illness, as having it publicly revealed could ruin any political aspirations he had and get him fired from his current position as DA. Society's treatment of mental illness has only become a bigger issue in the years since.
  • The Riddler's origin story as a video game developer and his desire for revenge after being mistreated by his boss can feel very justified if you've ever read about how AAA game development frequently crunches their staff to complete massive amounts of underpaid work within small time constraints.
  • The episode "Lock-Up" features an Arkham Asylum security guard who brutalizes the inmates he's in charge of, believing it's for the good of society. The debate over the treatment of incarcerated people has become more relevant as the "tough on crime" mentality has gained more scrutiny.
• Clone High: JFK's foster fathers were created at a time when gay people were often the butt of jokes. While Carl and Wally have somewhat stereotypical designs, and Wally is blatantly Camp Gay, they also happen to be the most loving foster parents in the series, with the two being nothing but supportive of JFK's goals and desires. JFK himself also has no issue with referring to them as his parents, with his biggest source of embarrassment from them being how they dote on him rather than them being gay.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: While most of the show's plots rely on blowing up childhood fears and prejudices to comical extremes, the episode Operation OFFICE involves a villain with an Evil Plan that exploits other adults, with the kids serving as only a means to an end. Sure, blasting them all off to Pluto is cartoonishly over-the-top, but the basic idea of a Corrupt Corporate Executive screwing around with his employees' family time so they'll work even longer hours seems more and more plausible in light of all the horror stories about how mega-corporations like Amazon treat their workers.
• Cow and Chicken:
  • It might be a stretch to call Cow and Chicken "queer-positive," as any and all references to non-heteronormativity (Pronoun Trouble, cross-dressing, gonky femmes — including women with five o'clock shadows — and inverted gender roles) are played for inherent absurdity. However, because the show depicts these so matter-of-factly and none of the characters In-Universe react to them with overt disgust or treat them as abnormal, it retroactively comes off as a reasonably tactful depiction of gender nonconformity, which is not something you can say for most other pre-2010s works which rely almost entirely on gay jokes. It helps that masculine and feminine stereotypes are played for comedy equally, regardless of which gender is displaying them, and everyone is already so ugly that the show is clearly not playing favorites.
  • Sergeant Weenie Arms telling Chicken, Flem and Earl that "real men aren't afraid to play with sissy dolls!" is played for irony (ie, that this testosterone poisoned Drill Sergeant Nasty is telling his soldiers that the manliest thing they can do isn't shaving with rocks or sleeping on a cold ground, but playing with dolls). Today, the manliest of men wholeheartedly embracing something distinctly feminine, much to the confusion of his followers, who just wanted total machismo, comes off as a genuine satire of toxic masculinity.
• The Critic:
  • Jay's Rousing Speech about not going to bad movies, sequels past the second, TV-to-theater movies and remakes, received a lot of retroactive praise, as many people feel modern-day Hollywood is too reliant on remakes and franchises, with very little in the way quality original material.
  • While many Political Overcorrectness jokes on the show fall under Values Dissonance, the joke from "Uneasy Rider" of a wealthy father bemoaning how his private school student son doesn't say "he or she" instead of just "he" still works as a satire of wealthy alleged liberals who are woefully out of touch with the values they claim to support. It's even funnier now that "they" is the most accepted gender-neutral pronoun.
• Daria: Jodie's struggles and discussions on race relations were relevant during the Turn of the Millennium, but are even more relevant now.
• The Doug episodes "Doug Tips the Scales" and "Doug’s Chubby Buddy", both of which deal with some form of body dysphoria, are still relevant today. The former deals with Doug becoming insecure about his body shape after overeating at his grandma's. The latter episode, interestingly enough, briefly touches on the idea of being too thin, as Skeeter attempts to gain weight due to believing he's too skinny for his bathing suit. That's not something you see much in modern media.
• The Dover Boys, released in 1942, ruthlessly parodies the Damsel in Distress trope, a trope with which the problems wouldn't start to be widely addressed by mainstream media until The New '10s, with Dora eventually beating back Dan Backslide by herself and her would-be rescuers being so useless that they end up taking each other out by pure accident, after she'd already rescued herself. She then happily ditches them for an older and probably more mature guy.
• Duckman:
  • Duckman launches into a rant against super-sanitized comedy, something that is more relevant today than when it originally aired in 1994.
  • Similar to the Simpsons episode "Homer Badman", "Papa Oom M.O.W. M.O.W." focuses on media sensationalism (although in this case Duckman really did commit sexual assault, unlike Homer). Duckman also comes to enjoy the attention, which is theorized to be one of the reasons people commit certain atrocities: to make a name for themselves, even if it's for the wrongest reasons imaginable.
• The DuckTales (1987) episode Blue Collar Scrooge deals with the themes of respecting workers' rights and the relationship between bosses and employees. Needless to say, still very relevant in later years.
• The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode It's Way Ed has become more relevant in later years due to modern-age cultural trends, such as emojis, fidget spinners, and countless Internet memes, becoming dated rather quickly.
• The 1943 Wartime Cartoon Education for Death has aged remarkably well because it realistically depicts how innocent children of the time were indoctrinated by the Nazi regime (along with sympathetic parents afraid of it all) without resorting to stereotypes, and paints an unfortunate picture that shows not just what a bad state Germany was in at the time, but also how much worse things could have gotten. It also resonates with modern audiences, who are painfully aware of the dangers of modern-day Neo-Nazi hate groups and the consequences of politically motivated misinformation campaigns and propaganda. Finally, the important virtues mentioned in the cartoon are "laughter, hope, tolerance, [and] mercy", things that will always be important to have.
• The Family Guy episode I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar" has Peter telling a sexist joke at work and admitting to videotaping a female coworker without her consent and knowledge. While he catches no end of heat for this during the episode, the episode's themes have become even more relevant today due to workplace sexual harassment becoming a hot-button topic. Lois and Gloria's verbal confrontation (right before their physical confrontation) was also written in part so the creators could voice a pro-feminist sentiment — in the face of Gloria self-righteously demeaning Lois for being "just a housewife" with no career of her own, Lois makes it clear that "feminism is about choice; I choose to be a wife and mother." This sentiment has been even more relevant since the episode originally aired in 2000.
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids:
  • "The Tomboy" shows an athletic girl named Penny showing off her skills in various sports, while Albert impresses everyone with his ability to bake, even beating Penny in a head-to-head contest. Showing that boys and girls can enjoy whatever activity they choose, and not fall into gender roles because of peer pressure, will always be important.
  • In "How the West Was Lost," the Junkyard Gang meets a new indigenous student named Johnny and immediately assumes that he'll be a Magical Native American who can do all manner of tricks, since they've only ever seen native people through their stereotypical depictions in Western movies and TV shows. Johnny is firmly not a stereotype, though, and the kids decide (after a little help from Mudfoot) to actually learn about indigenous peoples and treat Johnny with respect. Seeing a non-stereotypical Native American on television was unprecedented in the 1970s, and still relevant in the 2020s.
  • "Junk Food" features an early example of A Weighty Aesop that surprisingly isn't about weight loss. Albert and his friend Slim eat too much junk food and go to a dentist, who tells them about the importance of a balanced diet. Albert decides to try it out, but instead of losing weight, he finds himself having more energy and doing better in sports, while Slim, who sticks with sweets, suffers from sugar crashes and digestive problems. The morals "eating a variety of foods will keep you healthy" and the related "the goal of health is not to be thin, but to be the best you can be" are just as vital in the twenty-first century as they were in the '70s, especially as new information about the dangers of restrictive dieting (especially for children) becomes available.
  • Bill Cosby's closing monologue in Double Cross cautions viewers to take racists seriously before they get powerful and influential enough to become a serious threat, and to not be fooled by racists and bigots who target another group but seem to leave yours alone. This is probably an indirect reference to Martin Niemöller's famous passage "First they came...", which is about the Nazis purging various political targets during the Holocaust. Very relevant in the modern day, thanks to the rise of white supremacist groups (who often rely on Token Minority grifters excusing their behavior to gaslight people into thinking they're not racist), and the Black Lives Matter movement exposing systemic racism in multiple fields.
  • Teen Mom revolves around the gang trying to help a friend with her newly found motherhood after she becomes pregnant. What makes this effective is that she goes through real issues that all new mothers face. Plus, the gang and her mother don't give up on her. In today’s day and age, when teenage parents or people who have kids out of wedlock are often slut-shamed, exploited, disowned by their own parents, and/or prejudged for it, this episode comes across as way ahead of its time.
• Fillmore!
  • The episode "Test of the Tested" tackles standardized testing and how it hurts kids. It's even more relevant nowadays due to the problems stemming from standardized tests, which include stifling the creativity of students and lesser impact on their ability to apply them to real life.
  • The lesson Fillmore teaches Wayne in "North of Friendship, South of Honor" about how looking the other way when you see harm being done turns you into someone you can neither like nor respect is even more relevant in modern times where people who do what Wayne was doing in the face of abuse of power are coming under just as much fire as those who are actually committing the abuse.
  • The anti-bullying episode "A Dark Score Evened" advocated a "Step In, Stand Up and Speak Up" approach to bullying instead of expecting the victims to either, quote the episode, "lie down and take it" or fight back all by themselves, both of which are being shown by research to be ineffective in contrast to a bystander stepping being very effective. In fact, the execution of the Fighting Back Is Wrong aesop is rather handled as "Fighting back against bullying isn't wrong; just don't do it in a way that turns you into someone else's nightmare" and used in tandem with a complete aversion of School Bullying Is Harmless, making the message actually effective to put into practice.
• The Flintstones
  • In The Missing Bus Fred becomes a schoolbus driver, and has to deal with Thoth-Amon who put an absurd amount of pressure on their children. Some of the lines wouldn't sound out of place in a modern Reddit thread.
  • I Yabba Dabba Do and Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby were surprisingly progressive for two movies made in the early 90s and did better jobs at modernizing the franchise than previous subsequent Flintstones media. Not only do they add prehistoric versions of then-modern conveniences (such as VCRs, microwaves, and frozen dinners), but both manage to show Fred and Wilma (who have always been 1960s parents) how much times have changed since the original ended.
    • In I Yabba Dabba Do, Fred doesn’t want Wilma to become a working woman, now that Pebbles is an adult and on her own. Despite this, Fred comes around and realizes that he and Wilma can both have jobs and still be married.
    • In Hollyrock-A-Bye Baby, Fred is in a rut because he misses Wilma cooking his dinner for him now that she’s working, and Wilma says that she doesn’t want to go back to being a housewife and he should stop living in the past. Later, Wilma says that Pebbles shouldn’t have a career and be a mother at the same time since the former never worked during Pebbles’ childhood. In the end, Pebbles does have the job she wants while being an attentive mother to her and Bamm-Bamm's twins. And Bamm-Bamm never once tries to make Pebbles quit her dreams or have her do all the work in caring for their kids; he's as present as Pebbles, even being a stay-at-home dad because his job allowed him to and fully supports her decisions when it comes to her career. And while Wilma still doesn’t approve of Pebbles' decisions, she ultimately respects them. In other words, this animated movie aimed primarily towards children showed a Happily Married couple with jobs they both enjoy, each one being respectful of the other, and still being good parents.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "When Aliens Attack", Fry declares he's going to be a hero "like Xena, or Uhura, or Captain Janeway!" The joke being that Fry, ditz that he is, is listing women rather than men. Twenty years later, it makes Fry look surprisingly progressive for a guy from the 90s (meanwhile, Leela's only response is to admonish him for being unable to tell between fiction and reality, rather than try to "correct" him).
  • The episode "I Dated a Robot" uses a company that kidnaps celebrities and sells robots in their likeness to the public as a metaphor for digital piracy, specifically music piracy via Napster. While the Napster parody is pretty dated to 2001, the sci-fi premise actually aged very well with the AI boom of the late 2010s and early 2020s. The episode can be retroactively viewed as a critique of people making deepfakes of actors and even studios profiting off actors' artificial likeness without said actors' consent.
• The 1950 Goofy cartoon Motor Mania has been more relevant today because many drivers still tend to let their emotions and ego override the well-being of the other people on the road.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • The show's depiction of Mr. Hyunh was very forward-thinking for the '90s, as the creators avoided using him for cheap ethnic stereotype jokes in favor of a positive portrayal of a Vietnamese immigrant. His voice actor, Baoan Coleman, even shared the same ethnic background to ensure accuracy. His backstory in "Arnold's Christmas" has also aged very well as it continues to be one of the few portrayals of The Vietnam War in Western media to show it from the perspective of a Vietnamese civilian rather than the American military.
  • The episode "Helga's Show" has Helga doing impressions of classmates that they find offensive. She tries to make it up by being complimentary and as inoffensive as possible. The same people realized this routine is boring and that they overreacted and she just meant everything as a joke so she goes back to the old one and the same people laugh at the jokes they were once offended by. This topic is highly debated right now on whether comedians should soften their jokes to avoid offending people or if people shouldn't take these jokes so seriously.
  • Mr. Simmons alternates between this and Fair for Its Day. He is a fourth-grade teacher, yet in-universe, nobody questions this - and he's shown to be a very good teacher, too.
• Hell Bent For Election is a Take That! against Republican candidate Thomas Dewey, who ran against FDR in the 1944 presidential election. In one shot, the camera pans past many of the Defeatist Limited’s carts, and end of the train is a walled cart with a gun on top of it, lampooning Jim Crow laws.
• Johnny Bravo:
  • Johnny's womanizing may be Played for Laughs, but it's at Johnny's expense as it almost always ended with him on the receiving end of some physical pain (usually from the woman herself), making the message quite clear that that kind of attitude is no way to earn someone's affections. And the one time he dropped that behavior and began treating a woman differently (albeit to chase her away) she actually warmed up to him and, while it didn't stick, he ended up learning that having a true connection with someone was far deeper than looks — it's just too bad he tried to strengthen this connection by falling back into old habits which ended up chasing her away.
  • Even disregarding that, Johnny ended up the way he is due to a (horribly misguided) attempt to give his then-girlfriend the man he thought she deserved, rather than who he was back then. He also has nothing but respect for women, treating them all equally and accepting rejection rather than getting upset or blaming the woman. He also loves his mom to death and is willing to help others not for a chance at a date, but because it's the right thing to do. Despite his bad behaviour due to not knowing any better, Johnny does legitimately love women and wants the best for all of them.
  • "The Sensitive Male!" shows how the titular character the episode is named after is actually a manipulative Jerkass, who is using fake sensitivity in order to win over women. At the end of the episode when his true nature is revealed (and Johnny rats him out to other women, while also calling him a jerk), he is tied up and carried away by them to be given further punishment. Thus giving us a relevant message to this day about how faux nice guys can be just as bad as (or even worse than) their macho meathead counterparts.
• King of the Hill:
  • "Leanne's Saga" is one of the earliest episodes in television that portrays female-on-male domestic abuse seriously. Even though the issue has more people calling it out and spreading awareness, there's still a stigma of male abuse victims.
  • "That's What She Said", an episode from 2004, depicts the effects of sexual-innuendo-laden jokes and treats them as sexual harassment. It even showcases the stigma that existed in 2004 about male-on-male sexual harassment. Almost 20 years later, the message is still relevant - that not only are these jokes inappropriate, but that even men can be sexually harassed and it's not funny.
  • In a similiar vein, there's the sexual harassment Luanne faces as a drink girl from a group of male golfers in "Jon Vitti Presents: Return to La Grunta", and the aftermath of Hank being humped by a dolphin at the resort. Luanne starts blaming herself for being harassed, saying it was her fault she'd been groped for 'taking the putt in the first place'. Hank tries to convince her to report the men, but him refusing to talk about the dolphin incident makes her believe she should just ignore her harassment as well. She then goes to work wearing baggy clothing and large glasses, as 'looking pretty in public is asking for trouble'. Both Luanne and Hank are also triggered by various things regarding their trauma, and Hank eventually admits to Peggy what happened, saying, "I thought ignoring it would make it better but it just made it worse... for everyone. You know, I've never said this about anything before... but it feels good to talk about it." Afterwards, as he tells the guys about it ("I don't know what I'm going to do but it starts with not lying about what happened. It's the dolphin who ought to be ashamed of himself."), they laugh at him... until Bill starts sobbing and admits it happened to him too— twice. At the end of the episode, when Hank witnesses Luanne still being harassed (despite dressing 'unattractively'), he grabs the ring leader by the ass (as he had spanked Luanne) and drags him to the dolphin tank, dumping him in the water with the 'frisky' dolphin Hank was attacked by previously. Luanne then regains her confidence and sheds the baggy clothing, saying that she wasn't afraid anymore, and she's going to dress how she wants no matter what. While some of Hank's side is Played for Laughs, it's still a very relevant commentary on rape culture and its consequences, especially post the #MeToo movement gaining traction.
    Hank: You think you can touch anyone you want anywhere you want? You think it's okay because no one says it's not?
• "Make Mine Freedom", an anti-Communist propaganda cartoon made in 1948, contains this surprisingly forward-thinking and egalitarian line:
  "When anybody preaches disunity, tries to pit one of us against the other through class warfare, race hatred, or religious intolerance, you know that person seeks to rob us of our freedom and destroy our very lives."
• Patrol 03: A kids' cartoon where one of the main characters, Carmen, uses a wheelchair would be very much welcomed today as disabled characters are rare in animation and usually supporting or one-off characters if they even appear at all. Plus there's the fact that Carmen is always treated as an equal to her able-bodied colleagues.
• The anti-war short "Peace on Earth", released on the eve of World War II about the horrors of World War I, still carries a haunting message applicable to today's world. It became far more profound from the 1950s onward and was even remade at the time (as Good Will to Men), as the Cold War made its metaphor of human extinction a chillingly literal one.
• Pepper Ann:
  • Even when it's been off the air for over twenty years, the show has been praised for its handling of feminist issues that are still relevant today. Much like everything groundbreaking from the 90s, everything that was new in this show has been copied and improved upon.
  • The episode "Dances with Ignorance" delivers multiple aesops about stereotypes, especially towards Native Americans, that are still relevant over twenty years later.
  • The episode "Impractical Jokes" also delivers a very good aesop that the "Just Joking" Justification is very harmful.
• While it results from a bizarre situation, the Pinky and the Brain episode "Brinky" shows a two-father family in a relatively fair light for the 1990s, with most humor coming from Pinky and Brain's clashing parenting styles rather than them both being men. When they appear on The Rikki Lake Show, nobody seems to mind that they're two men (or mice, for that matter), and Romy's quip about having two dads is more a segue into a Full House joke than something homophobic.
• Recess:
  • The episode "Economics of Recess" focuses on the lead character TJ using cheap labor from younger kids to eventually obtain all of the playground's monster sticker currency and own everything, which makes it impossible for any of the other kids to enjoy anything. At the end of the episode, TJ is persuaded to sign a contract that prevents monopolies in the schoolyard. The episode feels even cleverer today, with the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders campaigns calling for change as higher-income citizens amass more power and aren't taxed fairly, while corporations such as Apple and Amazon pay their employees poorly and give little despite being insanely lucrative.
  • The episode "Recess Is Canceled" focuses on how the government attempts to raise test scores by eliminating recess. This results in just the opposite, necessitating the return of recess. Even today, whether recess is good for elementary-school children or a waste of valuable time still arouses heated debate. Fortunately, plenty of research shows that at least 20 minutes of recess per day is beneficial for students, whereas kids who don't get recess are less likely to actually learn and more likely to fidget, making this episode very much Truth in Television.
• Despite Rocket Power very much being an Unintentional Period Piece of the Turn of the Millennium, it has a few episodes that do stand out:
  • The episode about a snowboarder with a prosthetic leg tackles ableism in a way that is surprisingly ahead of its time. Reggie allows her to beat her in a competition because she thought it would make for a cool story. For many people who grew up with visible and invisible disabilities? The girl's umbrage is understandable and even justified - because they all grew up hearing "inspirational" stories of disabled people as "role models" that would often cause depression for others when they couldn't do the same thing.
  • The episode about Reggie wanting to be a part of a Volleyball team and not making it because she wasn't exactly a team player still holds up years later, after multiple video games about teamwork where a single person trying to win by themselves could ruin the game for others.
  • The episode about the "secret spot" actually has aged particularly well - the gang needs to get permission to go to the titular "secret spot" from all their parents. Sam's mother doesn't let him go until she knows where it is - but isn't portrayed as being irrational or overprotective by anyone in the show.
  • A lot of the episodes have themes that revolve around respecting nature and keeping things clean, being respectful to the locals when visiting new places, sharing the environment with others, and creating and maintaining safe spaces for children and adults to engage in extreme sports. Over the years, these messages have managed to remain incredibly relevant, especially in this modern era where people often selfishly hog an area to themselves to get a perfect shot for social media, ruin natural wonders by selfishly encroaching on protected areas, and the general acceptance of skate culture among other extreme sports, resulting in more demand from parents and children for safe places to skate.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • One of the reasons for the show's lasting appeal is how it's the first cartoon to discuss the struggles of "adulting" (i.e., being self-reliant in your early twenties), a universal concept among young adults in The New '10s and The New Twenties.
  • The running gag with the in-universe corporation Conglom-O is that it owns everything. With the buyouts of smaller companies by big corporations such as Disney and Amazon, it's hard not to draw comparisons.
  • The second episode of the series (6th in production order) "Leap Frogs" deals with Bev Bighead feeling neglected by Ed, her needs aren’t met anymore. So she decides to release that pent-up sorrow by seducing Rocko. The topic of sexual harassment is handled very well here, even in a cartoonishly exaggerated way. At the time, it was rare to show a man being harassed by a woman in scenarios not played for comedy, and while comedy still exists? The point is this all makes Rocko very uncomfortable, with Bev being forced to explain her feelings to Ed when they're caught in a compromising position.
  • The 1996 episode "Closet Clown" has a thinly veiled allegory about being privately gay, which sees Mr. Bighead realizing he likes to be a clown despite initially being hostile towards them and ending with his friends and wife expressing their support for him.
  • The two-parter "Cruisin'", which teaches a lesson about having empathy for the elderly, has held up very well, especially since the trope Scatterbrained Senior has always been a great source of cheap humor, regardless of generation.
  • The episode "Commuted Sentence" makes a very strong point about American cars-as-default culture — Rocko ends up having his car towed, and when he tries alternative methods of commuting like the subway, they are all much slower and end up making him late to work, much to the ire of his boss Mr. Smitty who doesn't care why he's late and ultimately fires him. In many parts of the U.S., suddenly losing your car or ability to drive can also mean you can't get to work to make your wages, or even get fired.
• Rugrats:
  • Lil, the most prominent girl of the babies, is quite unconventional for a female character in the 90s. She enjoys doing gross boyish things like playing in the mud with her brother, but she also happily plays with dolls and has other girly pastimes. At an age where pink frills and saccharine cuteness are often foisted on young girls, it's very refreshing to see Lil have a mixture of masculine and feminine traits without affecting her friendship with the others. Susie and Kimi have their own positive character traits as well (intelligence and maturity for Susie, imagination and bravery for Kimi) to create a nice collection of diverse young girls with their own interests.
  • The episode "The Clan Of The Duck," where Chuckie and Phil wear Lil's dresses with a hugely positive message about not conforming to gender stereotypes. That was in 1997! More than 20 years later, the DK-published Rugrats Guide to Adulting acknowledged the resonance.
  • The Mother's Day special has earned lots of praise, retroactive and otherwise, for a number of reasons. First of all, in one of the flashbacks, Betty is depicted breastfeeding a newborn Phil and Lil, and this depiction is a loving depiction, in a time when negative attitudes toward breastfeeding were still entrenched in some countries. Second of all, when the babies discuss what a mother does with her baby, Chuckie realizes that his widowed father, Chas, is as nurturing as any mother, with a positive message that a "mother" need not necessarily be female.
  • This video made by NickRewind highlights all the progressive aspects of the series, including feminism, gender nonconformity, tackling heavy subjects like death, breastfeeding, and holidays like Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Passover.
• Schoolhouse Rock!:
  • The pleas for conserving natural resources in "The Energy Blues" are as relevant in The New Twenties as they were in the 1970s (possibly because the need to do so hasn't faded from the public consciousness).
  • The "Tyrannosaurus Debt" song isn't that dated, considering concern about the economy and the U.S. owing money to other nations.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • As stated by this video, the episode "Ripped Pants" perfectly captures the fleeting nature of meme culture even when it was released in 1999. By ripping his pants, SpongeBob becomes the most popular guy on the beach, but by trying to ride on its fame a little too much, the joke loses its value, alienating even his closest friends.
  • "Fools in April" shows the fine divide between good, harmless pranks like SpongeBob's and nasty, hurtful ones like Squidward's. As such, pranking videos (which lean towards the latter's pranks) are notoriously seen as annoying, unpopular, and even dangerous as people have been injured and killed for doing "harmless" pranks. Furthermore, in-universe, whereas the customers find Sponge's pranks to be in good fun, they are so disgusted with Squidward's prank that they all leave the restaurant and call him out on it.
  • The episode "Squirrel Jokes" especially rings true in the late 2010s and the 2020s, with people complaining about how some jokes, especially by comedians, have been recently subjected to cries of Political Correctness, ignoring that the jokes in question are being criticized for being hurtful, particularly towards minorities. Additionally, it addresses how these depictions can affect how people see reality and thus takes a shot at the "fiction doesn't affect reality" argument, with people thinking squirrels are as smelly and stupid as SpongeBob claims. It also tackles the idea that if you make fun of one group, you have to be willing to make fun of everyone, including yourself. By the end of the episode SpongeBob still does squirrel jokes, but he also mocks himself along with the other fishes. Being able to poke fun at everyone (while maybe slightly toning it down) is the difference between good-natured jabbing comedy and being hateful.
• Tex Avery MGM Cartoons:
  • Tex Avery's "TV of Tomorrow" contains much commentary on television that mostly rings true today, such as a family life (literally) based around the TV set, a man keeping his face glued to the screen in the living room as his wife drags his body into the kitchen (only pulling his outstretched head in to eat his dinner), a lack of variety in programming (the old "X number of channels and there's nothing on" problem), TV shows being adapted into movies (a man who's sick of watching Westerns on TV goes to the movies. He thinks he's seeing a romantic film—but it turns out to be the Western he was trying to avoid at home), and TV being on-the-go (the Scottish flashlight TV is more-or-less similar to mobile devices having Internet and video capability).
  • The "Farm of Tomorrow" and its omnipresent, often disfiguring genetic engineering. And also for inventing Longcats.
• Thomas & Friends: "Thomas in Trouble" explores abuse of power by law enforcement, especially against people who did nothing wrong. Toby even stands up to the Jerkass cop by ringing his bell at him, scaring him off in the process. During the protests against police brutality in 2020, many fans cited the episode as being relevant today.
• The Time Squad episode "Forget the Alamo" has Larry helping Tuddrussell's ancestor Jeremiah plan a party for General Santa Anna and his men by presenting a theme-park version of Mexico. When the army arrives, General Santa Anna is appalled by their insensitive treatment of his country: "This is NOT Mexican! It is an insult to our culture!"; his anger is what prompts the army to attack and set history right. As the years have passed, such stereotypical depictions of countries have been found to be incredibly demeaning to the people who live there...just what this episode demonstrates.
• Tom and Jerry: "Jerry and the Lion" focuses on a lion that escaped the circus befriending Jerry, and ends with Jerry helping the Lion get on a boat that takes him back to Africa. When taking into consideration the modern views of animal acts in circuses, especially after the likes of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey were accused of animal abuse, Jerry helping the lion go home is actually a pretty noble thing to do.
• Regardless of the brief Values Dissonance, some of the themes from the original 1980s The Transformers cartoon brought up in some of the episodes are still deeply relevant:
  • The Quintessons using subliminal messaging to achieve a goal by making everyone hate each other has become much more relevant with large corporations becoming more powerful and gaining more influence over the media.
  • While the war between the Autobots and Decepticons is portrayed as a necessary war, with the Decepticons portrayed as irredeemably evil, the war between Xattaxiss and Lanarq in "The Quintesson Journal" is portrayed as a war that is a senseless waste of life, simply because the two don't like each other, and the Quintessons are the only winners (in this episode, they are basically arms dealers - for both sides''). It hammers home a message that war is truly horrible and should only occur if absolutely necessary. It also portrays hatred as an emotion that destroys simply everyone who engages in it and shows the cost of what it can do.
• Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, while Fair for Its Day in many ways, touched upon subjects that most animated shows at the time wouldn't even dream of. It handled issues such as feminism, pretty privilege, population control, far-right extremism, consumer advocacy, diversity hires, and more.
• The Weekenders aired from 2000-2004. While in many ways an Unintentional Period Piece, it's had a lot of Values Resonance:
  • Most notably? It showed that Adults Are Useless is surprisingly not always the case. Most of the adults in the show are depicted as people. They have flaws, wisdom, and are surprisingly more in touch with their children than one would think. Tino's mother especially - it becomes almost a Running Gag that she's very in touch with what her son is feeling.
  • The fact that while the parents (Especially Tino's mother) were generally wise, they sometimes weren't fully right - and the kids had to learn to solve their problems by themselves. The adults weren't there to solve kids' problems for them, they were there to tell them how to solve them.
  • Tino's mom also delivers a particularly well take on the Be Yourself aesop - it's not "Be Yourself and people will like you", because that will lead to entitlement and false hope; but "Be Yourself because otherwise, you will not be happy since you are living a lie."
  • There is a surprising amount of gender-non-conforming behaviour amongst the main four characters.

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