Moroboshi: Well, to be real with you guys, it's not like your elementary school friends are gonna become your lifelong friends, anyway. Whether they moved away to another school or not, I didn't keep in touch with a single one of my friends from back then.
[both girls go into a Stunned Silence, then start to cry]
Nozomi: Moroboshi-sensei!
Moroboshi: What? I'm spitting facts!
[both girls go into a Stunned Silence, then start to cry]
Nozomi: Moroboshi-sensei!
Moroboshi: What? I'm spitting facts!
Everyone knows the Stock Aesops: Be Yourself; appreciate what you have; follow your dreams. Sometimes, these morals contradict each other, but nobody is surprised to see any of them in a story. However, sometimes a story aims to teach a lesson that isn't simply common wisdom or an easy slogan but instead carries more than a few questions over the circumstances. This may be "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished", "Growing Up Sucks and there is no way around it," "Big moves get results so Be a Whore to Get Your Man" or "Sometimes Violence Really Is the Answer". Those are hard lessons: they may be true, but they're uncomfortable topics and easy to misinterpret without proper context.
This kind of moral is — at the least — subjective. Sometimes an author thinks they're delivering a hard truth, but the audience sees it as common knowledge, or vice versa. Since one person's hard truth is another's dangerous falsehood, examples belong on this page regardless of whether their Aesops are objectively true, and regardless of how much the audience is convinced that they are. The important thing is that the Aesop is a bitter pill to swallow, and something parents probably wouldn't want their kids learning, even if it is true. These morals often try to Take a Third Option, in knowing the truth you can be better prepared to accept the consequences when it does happen.
Note that a Hard Truth Aesop doesn't have to be pessimistic, just surprising and unconventional. For example, "Peer pressure is good for you because it convinces you to try new things" (or conversely, "Rejecting the wisdom of the crowd could end badly")." Presentation can also turn a stock Aesop into a hard truth: for instance, "Keep it Safe, Sane, and Consensual" almost always gets a friendlier reception from Moral Guardians than "You Need to Get Laid," though both assert that Sex Is Good.
Due to Values Dissonance, a moral that was once a hard truth may now either be seen as a Captain Obvious Aesop, especially morals about social mores and civil rights (see Fair for Its Day), or alternatively as a discredited one, especially morals regarding child-rearing (which often comes off as promoting child abuse to a modern audience). This list is for morals that can be hard to stomach even for the culture for which they were written. Beware falling anvils.
Contrast Don't Shoot the Message, where even those who agree with the Aesop hate the presentation.
See also Unfortunate Implications and The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
Note: Not every work has an Aesop. There is a difference between 'depiction' and 'endorsement': a character behaving in a certain way does not necessarily mean the work promotes said behavior (for the character or the audience). If you are drawing an absurd moral from a story which doesn't attempt to teach one, take it to Warp That Aesop on Darth Wiki.
Works with their own pages:
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- 2.5 Dimensional Seduction: One is delivered In-Universe in Chapter 35, after the manga club hands in their report of how they're being true to themselves and want to do cosplay as their club activities, despite the potential risks involved. The Headmaster tells the club's advisor, Mayuri, that, while people love to say that kids need to make mistakes to learn from them, the truth is that some "mistakes of the youth" are far too harmful to be dismissed as learning experiences. So while it may sound ideal to let students take control of their own lives, adults need to exercise some control over them for their own safety, because some mistakes must be avoided. He also acknowledges that adults don't know everything, but they do have more life experience than teenagers, and that difference matters. As such, he lets the club continue their cosplay as "club activities", but for the sake of protecting Lilysa from potential danger or bullying, they don't publicize their club's activities and protect her identity.
- Attack on Titan: Conflict and violence are an inetherely aspect's of the human condition, and any peace that is achieved may be upended for one reason or another. By the very end of the story, the Rumbling only served to level the playing field; even with the loss of the power of the Titans, Paradis and the rest of the world are still at odds with each other, and the island will be destroyed in a future war, though only after every character we knew have lived long lives and passed and after many generations of peace and progress.
- Baki the Grappler: Fighting with an honorable sportsman mentality is fine, but in the harsh world of street fighting and grapplers, if you aren't a Combat Pragmatist willing to put your life on the line, you are gonna be beaten to a bloody pulp or outright killed. That's what the Ali Jr. arc was seemingly aiming at.
- This was also a lesson Baki himself had to learn the hard way over the course of the series. In the beginning, Baki believed during his childhood that fighting dirty was wrong and that it was no different from fighting with hate in one's heart. But once he entered the underground arena and learned firsthand just how cut-throat the real world of fighting actually is, he gradually grew out of that way of thinking over time.
- Beastars has a couple of characters state out loud:
- Pacifism is noble, but it only matters coming from someone strong enough to defend themselves, as Gosha tells Legosi. Furthermore, there are times where you're going to have to fight if you want to protect yourself or others you care about.
- Not every evil deed can be explained away with a Freudian Excuse. Legosi vainly searches for a reason behind Melon's mass-murdering, only to realize that there is none.
- No matter how uncomfortable they are, societal and systemic problems need to be brought into the light so they can be properly discussed and solved.
- Differences between groups aren't just skin deep, and societal progress can't be made without understanding that.
- Black Clover: When Yuno and Asta ask the Wizard King about what they must do to achieve his rank, he answers that nothing is more important than producing results, and he came to be the current Wizard King due to producing more and better results than any other of the captains. While the manga makes clear that effort and kindness are important, this is also a very pragmatic way to see the world.
- Black Lagoon: Trying to do the right thing in a criminal underworld filled with the worst lowlifes ever born to the human race is a fool's errand, especially if you aren't even willing to use violence to protect yourself. As a result, Rock's inability to realize this early means he's virtually useless for most of the entire show. All his attempts at helping people and being the bigger man regularly either blow up in his face or spectacularly end in failure, and it isn't until the entire Yokino incident that he finally realizes just what kind of world he's living in. The results aren't pretty.
- Blue Period: A job in the creative arts is not fun—it's even more work and stress than any normal 9-5 would be, and it has an even higher chance of your aspirations and hard work never being rewarded.
- Bokurano: Kirie, having learned that every time you win, another universe is destroyed, talks with Tanaka, believing he cannot fight in light of that information. Tanaka essentially gives him two lessons. 1) People's lives are not equal, and when people are forced into a situation where they must choose one person's life or another's, they will choose the one they value more. 2) People exist because of sacrifice, from the plants and animals they eat every day to continue living, to the ones who died to ensure their standard of life, and even Jesus and the Buddha are no exception. He takes this to heart, fights and wins.
- Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki:
- Oftentimes, Failure Is the Only Option. Even if you try your absolute hardest, you are not guaranteed success; almost always, there will be people that are better than you at the thing that you pour all your effort into and who can defeat you effortlessly. Life is a series of failures: the true test of character is how you pick yourself back up after a defeat, as Fumiya, Shuji, and Mimimi all learn at various times.
- You should try to Be Yourself, but doing it too much can be just as bad as being fake. Despite Fumiya becoming disillusioned at how much Aoi has masked her real self to the point where she can't even speak honestly to Takahiro when he spills his true feelings to her, he realizes that there's no good answer to whether you should Be Yourself or be something else entirely. While Aoi's habit of viewing social interaction as a game with a series of challenges has made her unable to truly relate to anyone else, using that mindset did lead to tangible self-improvement for Fumiya; when he attempts to be himself, he reverts to the friendless loser he was at the start of the series, and he ultimately ends up realizing just how much good that the game mindset did for him. In short, everyone has an outward image that they project to the world, and learning how to manage it and your true self is a challenge that can never be solved.
- Codename: Sailor V: Doing your duty and doing the right thing can often come before your wants and dreams. In the final chapter, Minako realizes that her duty as a Sailor Guardian means that she will never be able to become an idol or fall in love.
- Darwin's Game isn't shy about voicing its support for The Power of Friendship, but its take on it is far more pragmatic than idealistic—alliances are beneficial because they increase each party's chance of survival. And while the story shows that it's important to build strong relationships with as many people as possible, it also shows that you shouldn't show any mercy to those who threaten your friendships, just for the sake of keeping everyone safe. Most of what makes Kaname such an effective leader is his ability to be simultaneously merciful to his allies and ruthless to his enemies.
- Delicious in Dungeon:
- During their trip in the fourth floor, Laios points out to Senshi that Anne the Kelpie is, at her core, a wild monster. Her friendship with Senshi means she would never attack him even though she's a monster, right? Wrong. She tries to eat him as soon as he gets on her back. The reader learns a brutal lesson about trusting wild creatures: Just because they seem tame doesn't mean they can't turn on you in an instant. There's a big difference between "has never attacked" and "safe".
- After abandoning Team Touden when they had just lost a teammate, Namari pragmatically refuses to abandon her current job to help Team Touden upon them meeting once more, yet Chilchuck scolds Marcille for trying to make Namari do so. Leaving her job would've made her look unreliable from a business standpoint, teaching the lesson that looking out for yourself is fine, and you shouldn't have to bend to others if you believe what they want is not right for you. But she ends up being used as a meat shield by her employer, taking fatal blows because her employer will simply revive her again, which does no good for her mental well being. To rub salt in the wound, Team Touden goes on to slay a dragon, defeat Thistle the Lunatic Magician, and end the Winged Lion’s schemes to control the world by taking away his hunger, thus Team Touden took control of the kingdom. They succeeded because they had solid trust in each other, demonstrating how having friends who will help you — whether or not it's pragmatic — can be a valuable asset. Also, sometimes you have to make risky decisions in order to score big in life; Namari's pragmatism cost her a chance at accomplishing something great because she wanted to choose the "safe" option.
- Digimon Adventure 02 has an episode in which the Digidestined are trapped in an underwater rig that is slowly running out of air, with only one escape pod. Since he's terrified of being trapped underwater, the kids choose Cody to go and Bring Help Back. Upon reaching the surface, he finds out that to get Joe's help, he'll have to lie, something Cody is deeply uncomfortable with, to the point that he later feels that he doesn't deserve the Digi-Egg of Reliability. This leads to the Once an Episode Aesop: that lying is sometimes perfectly okay if you have a good reason for doing it.
- Gohan learns the hard way early on in his training in Dragon Ball Z that nature is harsh and cruel with many animals trying to attack and kill him. The young boy finds himself from under constant threat from beasts which wouldn't think twice about killing him. He learns it fully when a dinosaur he finds and befriends is killed and eaten by another. Nature is nothing like the Disney-esque fluff it's shown as. It can be a merciless place where only the strong survive.
- At the end of Eden of the East, Akira (the hero) comments that the Japanese have great potential but need someone to rule them to unlock that potential. In the end, though, the series subverts this Aesop by more or less stating that while it might achieve great results, it would be wrong to do so. Similarly, Akira/the series seems to take the viewpoint that since national tragedies/catastrophes bring a country together, causing one is a great idea so long as you can figure out a way of doing it without killing anyone.
- In Fire Force, Shinra gets two harsh lessons related to his Warrior Therapist tendencies: some people, like Inca, don't want your help, and with others, such as Nataku, your help is not the best option for them to overcome their issues. In both cases, nothing can be done to change this, and the only thing for Shinra to do is help out too as much to an extent that he can.
- Fly Me to the Moon: If you don't tell your crush about your feelings, that crush will inevitably choose someone else as a romantic partner. And when this happens, you have no one to blame but yourself for your heartbreak. Aya never confessed to Nasa while they were in school together, so once Aya realizes that Nasa and Tsukasa are married, Aya is crestfallen. But Aya has to accept that she's missed her chance, and it's all her own fault; Tsukasa didn't do anything wrong, and Nasa had every right to choose Tsukasa since Aya never hinted at her feelings.
- Fullmetal Alchemist is the Trope Namer for Equivalent Exchange - you get in return what you put into something. Unfortunately, Real Life is far more complex than a simple exchange - the trope Hard Work Hardly Works exists for a reason. Dante in the 2003 anime has this to say about it:
Dante: Consider the state alchemy exam that you passed with flying colors. How many others took the test that day? Spent months, years preparing, some working much harder than you. Yet you were the only one who passed. Where was their reward? Is it their fault they lacked your natural talent?
- The ghost train episode of the 2018 anime series of GeGeGe no Kitarō teaches that sometimes it's too late for second chances. The protagonist of the episode may have realized that his cruel behavior drove several of his employees to suicide, but there's nothing he can do to make it up to them — they're already dead, and so is he, and Kitaro refuses to save him as their vengeful spirits drag him off to hell with them.
- Gleipnir turns the concept of The Power of Friendship on its head. Sure, close bonds between people can make lives better. But it can also make people stoop to lows they normally wouldn't to protect each other, and friendships can end up amplifying the involved parties' flaws instead of their good points. It's spelled out verbatim in the manga that people can commit acts of evil that they wouldn't dream of doing for their own sake if it's for someone else's.
- In Grave of the Fireflies (which takes place in the final year of World War II in Japan), the protagonist Seita runs away from his aunt's home with his sister in tow because she's been largely an abusive Jerkass to them even though they lost their parents. The adults he meets advise him that even though his aunt is an asshole, he still needs to suck up his pride, go apologize to his aunt, and ask her to move back in so he can protect himself and his little sister. He's only fourteen, so he's too youthfully arrogant to understand that there are more important things than being right and that growing up means that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to survive, especially when you have someone else to take care of. Because Seita refused to swallow his pride and go back to his aunt, both he and his little sister end up dying a slow, agonizing death by starvation.
- Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure has a dark message given the franchise's standards: you're not obligated to save everyone that begs for help, especially if they have caused nothing but pain and suffering. Nodoka/Cure Grace defies Save the Villain by rejecting Daruizen's begging with an Armor-Piercing Question, asking if he would continue hurting and killing if she decided to rescue him. When Daruizen attacks, confirming that he would keep going with his evil, Cure Grace leaves Daruizen for dead, since he's too far gone to save. Even if the next episode has her expressing guilt over her actions, her fairy partner Rabirin told Cure Grace that she ultimately made the right choice.
- Higurashi: When They Cry:
- The moral of the Tsumihoroboshi-hen arc appears to be "friends help friends hide the bodies". But in a more directly stated example, it's okay to hide things from your friends if they don't need to know about it. Even though they're your friends, it doesn't require complete disclosure. While Higurashi certainly emphasizes the importance of trusting your friends, at this point, it acknowledges that there are some things people just can't tell others and shouldn't have to.
- Saikoroshi-hen (whether you accept it as All Just a Dream or not) seems to advocate a rather ruthless approach to pursuing one's happiness at the expense of others.
- The moral of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor as a series can be taken 2 ways: 1) Being an individual in a conformist society will lead to extreme success, or 2) Rigid military discipline is actively bad for winning wars, and treating it like a joke will make everything better. The former is one for the Japanese, and the latter is one for Americans.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
- Ishigami's character arc makes the point that you shouldn't try to get along with everyone, especially if they've done nothing to earn your respect. Most of his fellow first-year students shun him and treat him like a pariah for his role in a Noodle Incident in middle school, but his decision not to go out of his way to correct them is treated as justified because their recollection of the incident is mistaken and they are treated as a bunch of unlikable gossips for judging him as a creep without knowing the full details of what happened. Everyone who knows the truth (the Student Council and some of his other friends) agree that he did the right thing, the real culprit got his due karma offscreen, and telling the girl he protected to piss off for being ungrateful forms a significant part of Ishigami's Character Development.
- His major romance arc also brings up the idea that people who care a lot about you aren't obligated to fall in love with you. Tsubame knows perfectly well that Ishigami's a great catch and had been working hard to be a better man for her, but she just doesn't want to date him.
- Even though Kaguya fell in love with Shirogane's genuine kindness and determination to improve himself, the fact remains that she showed interest when he acted confident. Loving the true you is great and all, but if you don't have confidence or show some backbones, likely your crush wouldn't notice or remember you. The same can apply to Tsubasa since Kashiwagi didn't show interest in him until the latter acted more assertive by Shirogane's advice that the two started dating.
- Kakegurui:
- The Debt Swapping Game Arc has Yumeko stating that if someone doesn't do anything to get out of a bad situation, especially when the opportunity to do so presents itself, the person likely deserves to be in that position.
"You now have a chance to get out, and if you don't take it, you're just a puppy who cowers when someone takes the leash off, proving to everyone you are a meek, obedient housepet. Or maybe, being on a short leash is how you want to live your life."
- The Choice Poker Game has the Aesop that if you want something big, then you also need to be willing to risk big. If you face nothing but grief and pain after it, then that's the price of trying to achieve what you want.
- The Debt Swapping Game Arc has Yumeko stating that if someone doesn't do anything to get out of a bad situation, especially when the opportunity to do so presents itself, the person likely deserves to be in that position.
- In Living with my Brother's Wife, Nozomi, the protagonist's sister-in-law, learns that two of her students are having a dispute since one girl just learned that the other is moving to Hokkaido for the next school year and that the latter had kept it a secret from her. Nozomi's fellow teacher, Moroboshi, bluntly states that the friends one makes in elementary school won't become lifelong friends, especially since you'll make new friends at each stage of your life and adds that she never kept in touch with any of the friends she made when she was those girls' age, much to Nozomi's dismay. Moroboshi then adds that it's still possible to keep in touch with your friends even if you're separated and that even if you do lose touch with your friends, you can fondly remember your friendship.
- The Lost Village: The end of the series has the message that everyone copes with their issues in their way, and sometimes the way they find is to run away from them, and when that happens, it's just as valid of a way to deal with it as any other. While not uplifting, the message isn't exactly invalid.
- One of the themes at the end of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is that peace is nice, but you have to be willing to fight against bad people who delight in tormenting others. Indeed, the Grand Finale has Kamille getting over his earlier "Why do we have to keep fighting?!" attitude and killing the Big Bad.
- Monster (1994):
- While the manga and anime have a family-friendly Aesop that teaches Forgiveness and uses A World Half Full, the creepy children's books were made like this purposefully by one of the characters to instill nihilism in children. They feature such lovely morals as "It doesn't matter whether you make a deal with the devil or not because you're screwed either way".
- A broader one for the series itself: Some people are simply born as genetic sociopaths, even disregarding whatever Freudian Excuse they may have. You can try to make them see the error of their ways as hard as you want to, but they simply won't care.
- My Hero Academia:
- The series opens with the premise that all men are not born equal. Izuku, who desires nothing more than to become a hero, is born Quirkless in a world where the vast majority of people are born with a Quirk, and is flat-out told by All Might that one cannot become a hero without a Quirk of some sort. Meanwhile, his childhood friend-turned rival Bakugou is born with an excellent Quirk allowing him to produce explosions from his sweat — tailor-made for a hero. It is later reconciled with a more family-friendly Aesop, however, as All Might is impressed by Izuku's heroism in trying to save his friend from a villain and tells him that he can become a hero because of his kindhearted nature, setting Izuku on the path to becoming the greatest hero, though it is still played straight in the sense that Izuku has to inherit All Might's Quirk to have a shot in the field, showing that while hard work is important, it cannot always beat natural talent by itself.
- Uraraka wanted to become a hero to make money to support her family, feeling ashamed that her reasons weren't as noble as her classmates. She is told by her friends that there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money to support oneself or the people they care about. Quite the unexpected lesson for a series about kids learning to become superheroes.
- The ongoing subplot regarding Endeavor and his family teaches the important lesson that there is no right answer to whether you should forgive your abuser or not. After all of the horrible things that Endeavor put his family through, he genuinely wants to redeem himself and be a better father and husband to them. However, just because he is willing to take the steps to better himself and repair the damage he's done doesn't mean his family is in any hurry to forgive him if they even decide to do so at all. All of his children are divided in their feelings on the matter; from Fuyumi willing to give him a chance even if she still has her reservations, Natsuo still outright despising him and refusing to want him anywhere in his life, to Shoto not fully forgiving him yet but willing to acknowledge that he does want to change for the better and is waiting to see how he does so. None of their reactions are portrayed as wrong or unreasonable, and Endeavor himself admits that all of them are entitled to their feelings noting that even if he does become a better person he may still have done too much for his family to ever want him back.
- Nanabun no nijyuuni has two back-to-back Character Focus episodes that both end in an HTA:
- Reika's episode teaches that everyone has standards and lines they won't cross, but holding to your morals can easily be selfish. Even if you don't want to do something because you consider it offensive or degrading to yourself, and even if you're completely justified in thinking that, if not doing it will negatively affect others, you just need to suck it up and do the thing you don't want to do.
- Jun's backstory's moral is no matter how miserable your life is, and how justified you are in moping about it, you need to stop crying and be happy, and Wangst serves no purpose because your life is too short to waste it whining and there will always be others who have it worse than you.
- Naruto: Kakashi at one point tells his students that "thinking you get it and getting it are two different things". It's a saying that there's no hard substitute other than experience to teach you in ways a mere lecture cannot provide for you.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Life is inhumanly dark, tragic and painful, and there will be numerous points where you consider simply withdrawing into nothingness, but only through the bad can we find the higher purposes of true fulfillment and happiness. Additionally, you can never fully know a person. Their thoughts and feelings are their own, and attempting to break down that boundary is not good nor healthy. The basic message is summed up by Yui at the end of End of Evangelion.
Yui: Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be happy. As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist, everything will be all right.
- New Game!, which is about a Japanese gaming company, occasionally has employees be forced to accept decisions that negatively impact them individually but benefit the company as a whole. One example is when Aoba becomes character designer for Peco, only to find that Christina, a high-ranking manager, decided to give the assignment of drawing the key visual(as well as the credit) to Aoba's boss and mentor Kou, simply because Kou is more skilled and better known. Aoba isn't happy with the decision, although Kou gets angrier about it than Aoba does, but ultimately accepts it.
- One Piece does this in the wham arc that is Marineford. Despite Luffy's utter determination in infiltrating Impel Down, enduring (and recovering from) Magellan's poison and losing possibly 10 years of his lifespan in the process, and immediately setting out to Marineford to save Ace from execution, his abilities are simply outclassed in the field and he is repeatedly hindered from his efforts to reach the execution platform by much stronger Marines. His efforts turn out to be All for Nothing when Ace is killed by Akainu anyway, which prompts Luffy and his crew to train and become stronger for two years before entering the New World. Kizaru puts it best, as he holds down Luffy, who is unable to fight back:
Kizaru: Willpower isn't enough. You have to have more than courage. Straw hat, without strength, you cannot save anyone, no matter how hard you try.
- Earlier, in the Alabasta arc, Vivi has the idealized hope that all it'll take to stop the Alabasta Civil War is to speak with Rebel Leader Kohza, so no one will die. Luffy bluntly points out that it is a war, and people are going to die no matter what.
- Oshi no Ko has a dark take on the typical shonen To Be a Master plot as it comes to Aqua's rise in the entertainment industry: said industry is one that's fundamentally built on lying. Professional actors are just as good at playing characters off the stage as they are on it, and the industry is filled with sociopaths, Manipulative Bastards, and backstabbers who will happily throw each other under the bus for a chance at stardom. Truly pure-hearted people who refuse to engage in the politics of the business won't last very long.
- Overlord (2012): Power Is Everything. Things like having a strong sense of justice, wanting to protect and provide for your family and loved ones, and even having absolute loyalty to your nation are perfectly fine, but none of it means anything if you lack the power to actually protect them. The titular Overlord and his cronies all have a merry field day in conquering the new world they've found themselves in, killing countless corrupt nobles, innocent civilians and unquestionably heroic figures in the process. The other races, especially the humans, can do nothing to protect themselves from Nazarick's reign. The tomb and its denizens go virtually unopposed for the entire story, simply because no one in this world has the power to stop them. All any of them can really do is either join them (where they'll at least have a SLIGHT chance of not being killed simply for being human, or just not a natural-born native to Nazrick) or be ruthlessly mowed down in the process. Either way, there's no stopping Nazarick.
- Peach Milk Crown carries the message that your dreams, grit, and determination can only take you so far. The protagonist Youichi Kouda is the captain of a small track club who has little talent but never gives up; after a student named Momo Tange who was formerly a champion high-jumper transfers into the school, he reignites her passion for track and field and the whole club makes a promise to go to nationals while a romance appears to blossom between them. However, the team ends up getting smacked around by reality as Youichi suffers a Game-Breaking Injury due to not knowing when to quit and only Momo and one other team member even make it past the first qualifying round. In the end, the team is reduced to sitting in the stands cheering on Momo during nationals, and Youichi ends up rejecting Momo after realizing that his feelings for her were nothing but superficial infatuation, and he didn't fall in love with her as a person. So the moral of the story is that your adolescent dreams will probably not come true, but that doesn't mean you can't learn anything from the experiences.
- Plunderer:
- It's impossible to obtain your goals with pure idealism—to truly get what you want, you need to sacrifice something. The After the End world is so terrible to live in that the only way to ensure your family's survival is to become a soldier, even if you're a pacifist. Several characters are shown that things that look altruistic and idealistic, like giving food to a starving child or sparing your enemies, will only result in misery for everyone. Rihito became a cold, inhuman murder machine so that the rest of his classmates wouldn't get blood on their hands, and that line of thinking is criticized as wrong, with the implication being that they all should have shared in the guilt.
- The Power of Friendship may be important, but relying too much on your friends is an unhealthy dependence rather than an admirable quality. Mizuka ends up becoming The Load because she depends too much on Rihito, and later her obsessive dependence on him renders her vulnerable to becoming Brainwashed and Crazy.
- Pokémon the Series:
- The Kanto season had "no, simply trying hard enough doesn't always guarantee you success in life." Misty sums it up early on in the third episode, and it remains a theme throughout Kanto, ultimately coming to a head in the Pokémon League where Ash's laxness in actually training his Pokémon and relying on pure luck and scrappy pragmatism ends up running out and costing him the league. Though this does lead to the more Family Friendly Aesop of "failure is not the end of the world."
- The same moral is taken to the next level in Sinnoh, where Ash is forced to admit after many failures that he will not beat his Jerkass Social Darwinist rival Paul just by believing in his Pokémon really hard. At the end of the day, faith alone is simply not a match for cold, calculated strategy, and insisting that it is will only end in more failure. Luckily, it's reconstructed near the end of the same arc. Ash realizes The Power of Friendship can still make a difference; he just needs to stop relying on friendship and nothing else. This pays off at the Sinnoh League when Ash and his team are able to beat Paul by combining friendship and willpower with legitimate battle tactics; Paul has the latter but shuns the former, and finally loses.
- In "A Double Dilemma", the group head to North Petalberg, which turns out to be populated by Loony Fans of Norman who all antagonize Ash for wanting to challenge him. Even when Ash defeats all of them and then saves them from Team Rocket, they refuse to be humbled and continue shunning him (though they do thank Pikachu for saving them). Ash just decides to act the better person, realizing that, unlike a lot of other antagonistic characters he redeemed, there are just some he can't win over.
- Just one episode later Ash ends up defeating Norman, which earns him his Balance Badge, but Max is so angry about his father losing that he steals the badge away and locks himself in his father's greenhouse, claiming that it's simply not okay that Norman lost, because he idolizes his father so much that it blinds him to the realities of leading a Gym: it's not about stomping the competition into the dust all the time. Losing is the most necessary part, so one can become better and mature. Especially as a Gym Leader there is no way around it.
- In the Johto and Unova seasons, a lesson espoused is that there is a difference between conquering your fear and putting your fear aside. While it is possible to conquer a fear, it's equally possible to never overcome it, especially if your phobia is that deeply ingrained.
- In "The Joy of Water Pokémon" the trio meets Nurse Joy, who, because of a traumatic incident in her childhood, was afraid of Water-type Pokemon. While she doesn't hate Water-Type Pokémon, she can't touch them without a special suit or her Chansey assistants. At the end of the episode, she encounters a situation where she must calm a Gyrados without her suit, and manages to do so, but faints later. Misty praises her for overcoming her fear, but Joy makes the point that she is still afraid of Water-type Pokémon, and likely will be for the rest of her life, but she won't let that stop her from carrying out her duties.
- Ironically Misty herself fell to this moral in the third episode of the original series, due to her bug phobia making her an enormous jerk towards Ash's Caterpie. While she does acknowledge Caterpie after it stops Team Rocket, she's still too terrified to hug it and her phobia remains in all her future appearances, she just stops using her fear of bug Pokémon as an excuse to be an asshole to them.
- In Unova, we have Iris, who has a known fear of Ice-type Pokémon, which Trip naturally mocks her for as her "fear" is because she wants to be a Dragon-type trainer and Ice-types are strong against Dragon-types. However, she eventually ends up in a situation where she is trapped with Georgia's Vanilluxe. She manages to put her fear aside and give Vanilluxe commands. However, the episode ends with Iris still afraid of Ice-type Pokémon but has made progress in conquering her fear.
- Pom Poko: Just because your side is in the right morally doesn't mean your efforts won't be in vain.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica has the moral that there's no such thing as true selflessness or a Selfless Wish. Sayaka, Kyoko, and Homura all make wishes that they think to be selfless because it involves bettering the life of a loved one, but fail to consider how they feel about it which leads to it backfiring (Sayaka heals Kyousuke thinking he would reward her with his love, only for him to hook up with Hitomi instead, Kyoko gains her poor father an audience for his sermons through magical brainwashing, and he snaps when he discovers this, and Homura got Time Travel powers to save Madoka, but is hiding everything from her and getting her in more danger as a result). Ultimately, it's better to admit one's selfishness than deny it until it's too late to get what you want, and truly selfless acts requires sacrificing oneself to pull it off (Madoka wishing to save all magical girls and wiping herself from normal existence in the process).
- In-universe example: in Urusei Yatsura, Ataru tells a class of kindergartners a story about the legendary Kintaro, who through ceaseless effort, finally became the assistant to a great man.
Ataru: The moral of the story is, "Even if you work like a dog… you can only rise so far in this lousy world!"
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Powerful people abuse their power, and not much can be done about that in the grand scheme of things. Growing Up Sucks at least a little bit. And while adults want to deny it, teenagers WILL have sex, not always with other teenagers, and not always willingly. The most powerful of these comes at the end: that an abuse survivor cannot be saved from her abuser by a third party and must instead choose to save herself. And while it may puzzle the average onlooker, this obvious decision requires INCREDIBLE bravery and willpower to break away.
- Shiki has the moral that if things get bad enough, anyone can and will turn into a murderous monster regardless of his or her original personality because most people just care about themselves and their own more than anything else, and that it doesn't matter if you do decide to be selfless and nonviolent because you're screwed either way.
- W-Change!! concludes with the moral that there are some things in life that you can't really deny or get away from no matter how unpleasant it is for you, but it'll be okay as long as you have people you love (and who loves you in return) walking with you along the way. Maki starts as a reluctant heir to her Yakuza family, and really wants to be a normal bride. However, it is made difficult by the fact she has a violent Split Personality that goes on a destructive rampage whenever she falls unconscious. It is made worse by the fact that her love interest, Fukama, whom she thought was in the same boat as her, decides that he'll stick with the underworld and succeed his family business despite initially wanting to go to university and become a normal member of the society. Kisaragi eventually learns to accept her family and identity, and fulfills her "dream" of becoming a bride anyway by marrying Fukama, even if it means dealing the violence and intergang conflicts that comes with becoming the wife of a Yakuza head.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! had, in its filler DOMA arc, an Aesop that Valon/Varon teaches Mai: The Power of Friendship won't win her battles for her, and she can't rely on her friends to help her. On the other hand, he was saying that to further convince Mai to leave her old life behind and join the DOMA cult.
- YuYu Hakusho: No matter how dedicated, noble, or motivated you are, in the end, it'll all come to naught without results, and the power to see them through.
- The Dark Tournament's final battle, between Yusuke and Younger Toguro, has Genkai (as a spirit) communicate this to Yusuke.
Genkai: "Sorry, Yusuke. This is the world you've found yourself in, and it's not pretty. When you're not strong enough to lead, you lose the privilege of getting what you want."
- The following arc, "Chapter Black", hearkens back to this with its main villain, Shinobu Sensui. Sensui actually kills Yusuke in battle. He does so in front of Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama, much like how Younger Toguro (falsely) killed Kuwabara in front of Yusuke. Yusuke actually intended for that to happen, hoping that seeing his death would trigger his friends' inner power, like seeing Kuwabara supposedly killed did for him, allowing Team Urameshi to save the day. Indeed, Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama all trigger grief-fueled power-ups, but they ultimately remain outmatched against Sensui, as he'd managed to master powers far beyond their own.
- The Dark Tournament's final battle, between Yusuke and Younger Toguro, has Genkai (as a spirit) communicate this to Yusuke.
Comic Books
- The moral of Birds of Prey: The Battle Within, the arc from issues 76 to 85, appears to be the fairly stock Aesop of "You should accept your friends for who they are and not try to change them", except that what Barbara Gordon was trying to change about Huntress was her tendency to kill people. In the end, Barbara apologizes to Huntress, and, in the Dead of Winter story arc (issues 104-108), actually tells Huntress to use deadly force against the Secret Six if she thinks it appropriate, making the moral that sometimes killing people is a good idea.
- One of the Mass Effect: Foundation comics had Kaidan's father offer the advice that even the right decision has terrible consequences.
- The Mega Man (Archie Comics) comic comes after half of Dr. Wily's robots from the second and third line decide they'd rather be shut down than be reprogrammed. Rock and Roll are deeply saddened by seeing them commit the robot version of suicide, with Dr. Light sadly telling them that you can't save everybody and not everyone wants to be saved.
- The Vision (2015): "Not everyone can or should be shoehorned into middle-class suburban life".
- Cat Kid Comic Club: In ‘Influencers’, Flippy points out to the baby frogs that even though everyone promised to help, no one is actually doing anything.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes:
- In one strip, Calvin is debating whether he should spend his time playing outside, or focus on his schoolwork. He decides that playing will make him happier in the short term, studying will make him happier in the long term, but going to play outside would also make better memories. Not every day you see a comic tell kids to not care too much about their homework.
- In one strip, Calvin tells his teacher Ms. Wormwood that he wants a guarantee that his schooling is going to ensure that he's rich and successful when he grows up. Ms. Wormwood bluntly tells him that if he wants a good education, he has to work harder: "What you get out of school depends on what you put into it." Education isn't automatically a ticket to success, and requires active participation as opposed to passive learning—again, that's not something you see in a lot of comic strips.
- One of the strip's most common Aesops deals with Calvin's parents—namely, that parenting is often a tedious, thankless, and downright horrible job, especially when you're dealing with a kid who's a mix between a Child Prodigy and a Spoiled Brat. While Calvin's mom and dad do genuinely love him, they're also extremely and justifably frustrated with his destructive behavior, refusal to do schoolwork or chores (out of laziness rather than inability), and generally nasty demeanor. Bill Watterson himself commented that he wanted to depict the reality of parenting as opposed to the sanitized version popular in comic strips, and often, that reality isn't pretty.
- Building on the above: the arc where Calvin and his parents come home from time away to discover that someone broke into their house is A Day in the Limelight for his mother and father, who spend several strips discussing how they're feeling. One Aesop in particular comes from Calvin's dad, who remarks that when he was a child, he always assumed that his parents could solve any problem without trying... but now that he's a grown-up himself, he's realized that "the whole thing is ad-libbed." Parents and authority figures don't automatically know how to solve every problem, and being an adult doesn't mean you have everything figured out: often, people are just doing their best to get through every day without an instruction manual.
- A hard-hitting storyline has Moe force Calvin to hand over his toy truck. After contemplating what would be doing the right thing, he tries (a second time) to make it clear to Moe that taking his toy truck is wrong only to ultimately give up when Moe dares him to a fight. This shows that bullies cannot be reasoned with and they can even get away with their misdeeds simply because they're bigger and more powerful. Plus, as Calvin and Hobbes discuss in the end, the world's not always a fair place and some people just don't care about ideas of right and wrong.
- Pearls Before Swine: Parodied with Rat's children's stories.
Goat: You are not putting this in a children's book.
Rat: "So remember, kids, luck and timing are more important than personal effort."
Eastern Animation
- Upin & Ipin: Seronoknya Membaca/Reading Is Fun: You must accept a fictional narrative's Canon, even if it doesn't turn out how you'd like it to, and keep your Fix Fics to yourself.
Fairy Tales
- Russian fairy tales tend to be rather cynical. One story in a collection by 19th-century folklorist Alexander Afanasyev has the moral "Old favors are soon forgotten."
- Russian fairy tale "Morozko" has "you should not go out of your way to be rude, confrontational and arrogant to powerful people who can destroy you easily and with no consequence because it will not end well for you".
- Cinderella. Charles Perrault announced at the end that the moral was: Good looks and all sorts of other wonderful traits are useless without connections.
- The standard fairy tale plot of a hero overcoming impossible quests to marry a princess gets subverted in Friedrich Schiller's ballad "The Diver". A King throws a golden cup into some rough water and declares that whoever can retrieve it can keep it. After the hero manages this, the king ups the ante by throwing a ring into the water and telling the hero that he will get the princess if he can do it again. The hero tries and drowns. The new moral here is "she is probably not worth it" or "quit while you are ahead".
- Friedrich Schiller subverts the "Idiotic challenges will win you the heart of a woman" plot in "The Glove" in which a lady throws her glove into an arena full of lions and tigers and challenges (mockingly) her suitor to get it. He retrieves the glove, the lady immediately falls for him — and he throws the glove in her face, saying "Den Dank, Dame, begeher ich nicht" ("Such gratitude, madame, is not desired by me") — the Aesop is "Women, don't mock your suitor if you want to keep him" or "Men, sometimes a woman is more trouble than she's worth".
- "The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind": If you are forced to pick sides, always choose the one who will be more advantageous for you.
- Puss in Boots (a.k.a. "The Master Cat") has "if you would be successful in life, learn how to evade your predators, how to catch your prey, and how to curry favor with the powerful."
- "The Scorpion And The Frog":
- Taken by itself with no metaphor, the lesson is that a predatory animal (the scorpion) with enough sapience to communicate with a creature it naturally preys on (the frog) shouldn't attempt to fight its instincts and pursue cooperative ventures. Evolution molded the scorpion to kill prey and trying to be something other than that to the frog will only result in one's predatory instincts rising to the surface at the worst possible time, dooming both to a watery grave. It is better to stick with the natural order of things than to try to evolve past one's Darwinian trappings.
- As a metaphor for evil, it suggests evil is an overriding character trait that outweighs self-interest and survival and one should not trust in an evil person trying to pull a Heel–Face Turn.
- It's also saying that some people are just plain rotten, and shouldn't be trusted, because of who and what they are.
- The moral is "Talk does not change the nature of things", i.e., you can discuss something, debate it, argue about it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, and agree on it. None of that will change its nature.
- A more down-to-earth moral is that you should not trust wild animals because they can not be reasoned with, and they can and will attack you when you get too close to them.
- Another way to interpret the lesson is that you can't keep sugarcoating your problems and you can do great harm to yourself by trying to "fix" evil.
- One story involves a cat and a mouse living together and deciding to store a pot of cream for winter. They hide it in a church until they need it. Over some time, however, the cat is gradually tempted three times into drinking the cream, until it's all gone. When the mouse finds out, she starts yelling at the cat for eating their food supply for the winter. The cat responds by eating the mouse, and the story concludes with the lesson that, well, that's just how the world works (that cats and mice just can't co-exist). It also can be a "Just So" Story, i.e. "…and that's why cats and mice are such bitter enemies to this day." From this, we can also draw the rather jarring conclusion that some acts are truly unforgivable, such that the conflicts arising from them can never be peaceably settled.
- One story involves two brothers, one rich and one poor. Subverting the usual setup, the rich brother is quite willing to help out the poor brother, who cannot seem to hold on to money for any length of time. One day the rich brother waits in the bushes by the roadside until he sees his brother, then throws a purse onto the road. The poor brother just keeps walking, and when questioned says he was walking with his eyes closed to see how blind people manage it. The Aesop is that there's just no helping some people.
- A folk tale goes like this: In the winter, a peasant sees a little bird stiff with cold and plunks it into a fresh cowpat to warm it up. The warm bird starts chirping, attracting a fox, who pulls it out of the cowpat, dunks it in a pool of water, and eats it. The moral is threefold: Those who drop you in the shit don't necessarily mean harm, those who pull you out of shit don't necessarily have your best interests at heart, and when you're in the shit, don't go chirping about it so everyone knows.
Fan Works
- Applejack's Love: Sometimes, you can't get together with the one you love. And trying to might make things worse by damaging the relationship you already have.
- A Second Chance: During chapter 16 from the sequel No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, While alone, Lincoln and Lisa end up having a very frank discussion where they both admit that having Massive Numbered Siblings living in the same modest household is inherently a bad thing, a difficult and overbearing situation at best. But, as Lincoln points out, if that's your lot in life, the least you can do is try and work things out rationally and make compromises with your family and vice versa in order to make cohabitation more bearable, while inane and petty quarreling only exacerbates things.
- Bitter Tears: An Anon-A-Miss Fic: A serious betrayal of trust by those close to you can't be Easily Forgiven, no matter how much you want to and how much they sincerely regret it, apologize, and work to redeem themselves. Sunset's attempt to forgive her friends amounted to bottling up her feelings until they broke, resulting in a massive emotional breakdown where she smashes a mirror in anguish and has to be rushed to the hospital because of how much blood she loses. Afterwards, she admits despite understanding why they did it and that she would have done the same given the evidence and her past actions, she can't trust them anymore. The only reason she gives them another chance is that she would avoid reconciling with Princess Celestia, confronting her own role in an even greater betrayal.
- Blackbird (Arrow):
- Your choices have consequences, no matter how unintended they might be. While she is a victim and the trauma she underwent is entirely unwarranted, that reality is Sara chose to get on the Gambit and betray Laurel, and thus what happened to her is, in part, her own fault. Nobody else can take that from her — not Oliver, for making the offer, and not Laurel, for dating Oliver in the first place. The only person who has any right to share the blame (besides Malcolm Merlyn) is Dinah, for letting Sara go and letting her believe it was a good idea in the first place. This is important because trying to absolve Sara (and herself, for that matter) of the blame is what Dinah uses to justify trading Laurel to the League of Assassins for Sara's freedom, something that only makes Sara's preexisting Guilt Complex worse and drives her over the Despair Event Horizon, since that makes Laurel's terrible situation another consequence of Sara's actions.
- Sometimes, there are no good options. While Sara's decision to let Laurel take her place is rightfully portrayed as wrong since her sister was an innocent who had been the victim of her choices once already, it's openly acknowledged by Oliver that Sara was put in an impossible situation (while also not being in a sound state of mind). Either she betrayed Laurel one last time so she could finally go home and live with knowing what she made her sister suffer in her place, or she could stay and endure brutal Training from Hell to become an assassin for the League. There was just no way for Sara to win, and Oliver rightfully blames Dinah for putting her in that position by making exchanging Laurel for Sara an option in the first place.
- The Black Emperor: Sometimes love triangles can't be solved in a clean and pretty fashion and someone will end up with a broken heart.
- The Black Sheep Dog Series drives home the point that not everything in life is a choice, and that one cannot simply wash their hands clean of their heritage and upbringing. Sirius Black is forced to learn that no matter how much he hates his family, and how much he tries to disassociate from them, he cannot change the fact that he is still his parents' son, and the heir to the House of Black, who will one day be responsible for all that it entails. Although he shares almost none of their ideologies, Sirius is really not that different from many of his family members (particularly his mother and his cousin Bellatrix), and he still carries the aristocratic arrogance typical to his family's circle, that even people who don't know him can immediately tell that he's a well-bred Pureblood. He is also forced to admit that, despite his hatred of his family, he is still mostly living off of his family's wealth left to him by his Cool Uncle, who is the one who gave him the Aesop in the first place.
Alphard: It's a lesson everyone has to learn, sooner or later.
Sirius: What lesson?
Alphard: That not everything in life is a choice. Some things just are.
Sirius: I don't understand—
Alphard: You'll be a Black until the day you die, my boy—whether you like it or not. You can try to deny it all you want... But it won't make it any less true. - Cain (MHA): In the second-to-last-scene of the fic where the perspective switches to Izuku, Toshinori explains to the latter, there are just some people in the world who will never respect you no matter what you do, and the only thing they can accept is for you to stop existing. This is made evident after the Quirkless awareness assembly when Katsuki berates Izuku harder and harder (while Izuku says nothing) to the point where the volatile blonde suicide-baits Izuku in front of everyone, and then blames Izuku for getting him in the mildest of trouble.
- The Emerald Phoenix: People aren't obligated to care about your emotional problems and using them as an excuse will only result in tragedy.
- Faery Heroes
includes a minor lesson against both Turn the Other Cheek and With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Harry is only willing to tutor a few students in Defense Against the Dark Arts and quickly shuts down the idea that because he's such a great teacher he should tutor everyone. First, he's not getting paid to do so and is using his own free time to help them. Second, most of the people in the school have turned against him at some point which leaves him rather opposed to the idea of helping them with their schoolwork.
- The short Fallout fan video "Friendship!" parodies this, by teaching the viewers an important lesson about friendship in the wasteland: It doesn't exist, and those who naively believe in it make excellent Human Shields that have plenty of free money on them.
- Family Guy Fanon have some particular to Peter and Francis' relationship due to the nature of the fanfic being a bit of a Deconstruction Fic:
- While "Honor Your Father" is normally a good virtue, if your elder is an entitled asshole who mistreats you, it will enable them to hurt you more. Peter puts up with a lot (and we mean a lot) from Francis, but realizes toadying to his father isn't worth it.
- Adding to that, Turn the Other Cheek doesn't work toward entitled abusers, and you have to get confrontational, physical, or throw them out of your life if you want them to change. Note when you read the episodes ("Between Sanity and Madness" was a good turning point) how only when Peter stands up to Francis does the latter's Jerkass tendencies start to diminish.
- For His Own Sake: If you go out of your way to burn all your bridges and refuse to change for long enough, then it won't matter if you finally wake up and want to make amends; what's done is done and no one will want anything to do with you. By the end, Granny Hina, Mutsumi, Su, and Sarah all regret the harm they've caused Keitaro and everyone else around them (and Naru pretends to), but because they spent the entire story refusing to listen and blaming others, either their attempts at Crossing the Burnt Bridge utterly fail as they drove their loved ones away, or they don't even bother as they realize how futile it would be and can only stew in their guilt.
- In the Hilda fanfic, A Home For Tontu: Even if you're telling the truth, some people are too stubborn to listen and will stick to what they believe, even if they're wrong, and sometimes, it's better to move on than to try and reason with such people. After Hilda tries and fails to convince Deborah that the Black Hound is the one responsible for the thrashing and that Tontu is Misblamed, Tontu makes it clear to Hilda that her efforts were ultimately futile, as Deborah had already made up her mind about Tontu (and Nisse as a whole) and was never going to change her mind, so it's best to just forget it.
- When he finally gets around to telling his history in I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Harry Potter admits that always saving the world because he could was a rather poor choice. Fifteen hundred years of every dark wizard being stopped by him meant the world became overly reliant upon him. When an accident with a time turner flings Harry two hundred years into the future, the world's been ravaged for decades by a war between two dark wizards. And when Harry kills them, the people of the world blame him for not stopping them sooner.
- Infinity Train: Wake Me Up: Sometimes, doing good actions like motivating and helping someone can do more harm than good, especially if the person being helped has bad intentions. Fennel always motivated everyone to follow their dreams but the last person she motivated and helped was none other than Colress, resulting in him using the corrupted Dream Mist in Vermillion City for the sake of experimentation, this resulted in the woman ending up on the train after realizing that she was an Unwitting Pawn for Colress.
- The Karma of Lies:
- People are not guaranteed to appreciate what you've done for them. Marinette finds that her classmates take her generosity for granted, ignoring her in favor of courting Lila's favor while expecting her to help them out again if they decide they need anything else.
- Helping others only works if they're willing to be helped. Marinette is unable to prevent her classmates from being scammed by Lila as none of them are willing to listen, and once they finally learn the truth, they expect her not just to sweep in and save the day, but to forgive them, as they still refuse to acknowledge how they wronged her. Meanwhile, Adrien offers his aid to those he knows have wronged others and winds up getting hurt by them himself.
- Like Mother Like Son: Your children don't have to listen to or obey you when they're adults. If you don't give your children a reason to respect you when they're young then they probably won't when they get older. Lynn Sr's friend Kotaro didn't have a good relationship with his father growing up as he was hardly around, and now as an adult, he doesn't care what his father has to say.
- Long Lost Loud: You can't expect someone to forgive you and even a genuine apology won't be accepted. Lori wanted to find her brother to make amends and apologize for her actions, but after these years he now has apathy to his old family, making clear he won't forgive them and he doesn't want to do anything with his old family anymore. Lori accepting this fact allows her to finally move on.
- Marooned in Madagascar: In The Odd Family, the B-plot with Princess Julienne and Prince Barty regarding their relationship with King Julien. Though people can change, not everyone does and might instead relapse into their old habits. This is evident with Julienne and Barty, as although they initially seemed to grow fonder of their estranged son and do show some affection for him now and then, they are still careless Upper Class Twits who mostly visit their son when they need someone to pamper to their needs and never showed remorse over abandoning him as a child. Whatever fondness they do have for Julien also makes things worse, as it keeps Julien from seeing reason and trapped in the toxic relationship.
- Miracle Queen Aftermath: By the end of the story, Adrien is forced to accept multiple truths he had been unwilling to acknowledge.
- When someone rejects every second chance they have been given, it's clear they haven't learned the lesson and deserve no more. Chloé had multiple opportunities to become a nice person, but squandered them all out of pettiness or jealousy.
- Sometimes, the only way for people to become better is to face the consequences of their own actions. Chloé was repeatedly sheltered from punishment by her overly permissive father and thus never understood why she should be better, while Adrien doesn't acknowledge his errors until his classmates chew him out for excusing Chloé's actions.
- There are actions that, no matter why, will immediately push you through the Moral Event Horizon. Chloé deliberately trying to crash a train to engage in Engineered Heroics was bad enough, but her willing collaboration with Hawk Moth, a known terrorist, are widely considered beyond the pale.
- Excuses only go so far. While Chloé's mom may be missing from her life and her father isn't emotionally there, in the end Chloé did what she did of her own will.
- Forcing people to forgive their bullies is always selfish. People are allowed to be happy that those who have wronged them are no longer in their lives.
- Doing something good once doesn't make you a good person. Adrien gets rebuked for insisting Chloé was "getting better", when in reality all she did was throwing a nice party (which she only did as a ploy to get back into Adrien's good graces) and helping stop Malediktator - which, as Alya points out, doesn't count because Chloé was the one that caused Malediktator to appear.
- Trying to improve and become a better person is good - but in the end what matters is actually changing. Chloé might have become slightly nicer, but she threw all the progress she had made to help Hawkmoth out of spite.
- My Little Pony: Totally Legit Recap:
- Sometimes children shouldn't blindly listen to their elders, because they may be putting their selfish desires ahead of the children or are just no better at making responsible decisions.
- If you don't like your sibling's partner even if they're a good match for them, sometimes you just have to suck it up for their sake.
- You're going to die in the end anyway, so why not try to make the most of your time, instead of sulking in misery and fear of trying.
- Platitudes about inner beauty and believing in yourself are no substitute for actually building the skills to take on life and making meaningful connections to fall back on when things get tough.
- Never Had a Friend Like Me: Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their treatment of Amanda show that not every neglectful parent is just a flawed person who needs a reality check. Some people are too awful to be allowed to raise children. Norm adopting Amanda to get them away from her is portrayed as the correct decision.
- A reimagining of Disney's centenary short Once Upon a Studio called Version 2.0 seems to provide a nice message as the pressure of the group photo for such a huge occasion is much more apparent this time round. That you should never be daunted or intimidated by huge milestone celebrations such as this.
- Cinderella perfectly exemplifies this as she gives a heartwarming speech to her 500+ animated cohorts, explaining how even in times of significant pressure like this, their dreams and hopes are never out of reach, and somehow, their courage will always prevail. And just to alleviate the pressure completely and bring everyone's collective spirit back up, Rapunzel, inspired by Cinderella's idea, starts up a new rendition of the one song that defines Disney more than any other; "When You Wish Upon a Star", reminding all the characters of WDAS that they, collectively, have stood for over the past 100 years.
- This little message could perhaps make this version of OUAS even more wholesome than the existing short.
- The Fire Emblem: Awakening fic Shattered Reflection has a lesson taught to the two main protagonists through experience with the other protagonists. No matter how hard you try to do right by others and support the people you love, there will still be individuals who treat you like shit for completely arbitrary reasons. You should try to do the right thing anyway.
- Some Things Never Change: The bittersweet conclusion of Squidward's rivalry with the late Squilliam comes with a few of these:
- Know when to quit. Being The Determinator won't help you in the long run if you fail to make any real progress with your goals after years and years of trying. Continuing to barrel onward will only cause you grief and misery, and your own passion and hobbies will become corrupted into a poison that will galvanize you from the inside, and Squidward realizes that his obsession with surpassing Squilliam when he never had a chance has caused him to waste most of his life. Society and life itself won't cut you slack just because you're the put-upon little guy, and Squilliam is ultimately remembered as a wonderful person while his Jerkassery is swept under the rug and Squidward remains in obscurity well into his old age.
- There's a fine line between optimism and denying reality. Having a fixed belief that you'll somehow do better next time, even if each "next time" results in the same failure, or that you can keep doing something by just believing in yourself even if you have some debilitating problem that keeps you from continuing on (like being a dancer while your physical skills are naturally deteriorating with advanced age), will get you nowhere at best and will leave you stuck in a vicious cycle that is guaranteed to cause you needless misery at worst. By the end, Squidward is forced to accept his dreams of becoming a famous clarinet player and showing up Squilliam were nothing but a pipe dream, and he never had a real chance.
- Don't obsess about trying to one-up someone. Especially if, in the case of Squidward and Squilliam, you're the underdog and they are a highly successful and influential Rich Bastard celebrity with a penchant for bullying those less successful than them. Underdogs Never Lose isn't reflective of reality. Squidward's true ultimate victory over Squilliam comes from recognizing he should just put his rivalry to rest because the deck was stacked against him from the start, and all he did was provide Squilliam with an endless source of amusement.
- A Student Out of Time:
- Trying to atone for what you feel is your responsibility can end up hurting other people too. Many times, it's someone selfishly trying to soothe their guilty conscience through some deed and not actually to put things right.
- While you should strive to help others, you can't fix everything or save everyone. You'll destroy yourself if you try.
- Being a better person and changing your ways is hard, but it's beyond important.
- The future isn't guaranteed to be better. If you want it to be, you need to work on making it better.
- Your personal problems will never stay completely personal. They hurt other people just as much as they hurt you, if not more so.
- Every action, no matter how seemingly small, has consequences that will affect the world at large. You need to be prepared to live with that and face whatever happens as a result.
- This Bites!:
- Cross has to share one with Vivi regarding her efforts in saving Alabasta. As much as one can admire benevolence as a goal to strive for, if you're a ruler, relying only on benevolence to carry the day is unrealistic and dangerous. As a ruler, every action you take will be gambling with people's lives. At the end of the day, people don't respect and bow to benevolence, they respect authority. If you're not willing to risk the lives of others when the situation demands it, all you're doing is making yourself and your nation a target for opportunists like Crocodile.
- Cross spends much of the fic preaching that "Sometimes Violence Really Is the Answer". Consider this Aesop in regards to the Fantastic Racism between humans and fish-men, which is contrasted to the pacifism of Queen Otohime. As Cross lampshades, Otohime would have slapped Cross across the face hard enough to break her wrist for his underhanded methods. But, on the other hand, Cross's methods work: by calling for violent change and manipulating the baser emotions of people, Cross masterminds the biggest death blow to slavery the One Piece world has seen in centuries. Meanwhile, Otohime's methods nearly got her kingdom destroyed by Hody Jones, who planned to use it to kick-start a racial war between humans and fish-men — something that is also lampshaded when Cross notes that Otohime's plan was stupid.
- The New Retcons: Sometimes, you and your family are better off apart. After Elly’s funeral, the Patterson family breaks apart between divorces and moves and they barely speak to each other (Elizabeth and April don’t even speak to Michael anymore), but they’re all doing better than they did when they were closer.
- The Sun Will Come Up And The Seasons Will Change:
- If somebody can't love you and accept you for who you are, they're not worth your time even if they are a family member, and trying to gain their approval will only make you miserable. It's best to be with family and friends who care about you and cut ties with those who hurt you, especially if the people who wronged you don't plan to make things right. If Dana hadn't caved into Irene's demands and sought approval from her, as well as sought therapy to come to terms with her abusive childhood and accept the help of those who stood up to Irene, she could've been a better person who didn’t alienate everyone who could have possibly wanted to help her and not abused Mary. Meanwhile, Mary’s Character Development involves her learning to stand up to ableist characters in her life, accepting the kindness and care of those who truly love her, and being done with seeking the nonexistent approval of anybody who doesn't value her. She ends up all the better off for it as a result. Blanca perfectly sums it up in Chapter 19:
Blanca: Kindness is an irreplaceable virtue to have, but showing it to people who have only ever been cruel towards you will only be a detriment to you rather than a boon. You shouldn't feel obligated to extend a helping hand to someone who will only repay it with hatred and cruelty.
- Just like Book Three of the canon show demonstrates, some people won't change their harmful views or ways even with every chance of redemption. Sadly, all you can do is watch as they self-destruct; you can only change somebody who wants to change, and you need to know when someone is too far gone to save them anymore. If someone refuses to be helped out of a spiral of self-destruction, the best you can hope for is making sure that you don't get dragged down with them.
- If somebody can't love you and accept you for who you are, they're not worth your time even if they are a family member, and trying to gain their approval will only make you miserable. It's best to be with family and friends who care about you and cut ties with those who hurt you, especially if the people who wronged you don't plan to make things right. If Dana hadn't caved into Irene's demands and sought approval from her, as well as sought therapy to come to terms with her abusive childhood and accept the help of those who stood up to Irene, she could've been a better person who didn’t alienate everyone who could have possibly wanted to help her and not abused Mary. Meanwhile, Mary’s Character Development involves her learning to stand up to ableist characters in her life, accepting the kindness and care of those who truly love her, and being done with seeking the nonexistent approval of anybody who doesn't value her. She ends up all the better off for it as a result. Blanca perfectly sums it up in Chapter 19:
- An Unpleasant Surprise: All of the progress that society has made towards normalizing LGBT people is remarkable and inspiring, as LGBT people deserve to treated with respect. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a long way to go before LGBT people can truly be considered normal; homophobia is still alive and well, and combating it continues to be a very serious issue. If your friend holds bigoted views and is unwilling to change them or consider they might be wrong, it's best to cut ties with them, especially if you're the demographic they're prejudiced against. Just as Molly is forced to do with her old friend Ashley.
- What Goes Around Comes Around (Miraculous Ladybug): Adrien learns several lessons that challenge his worldview in the finale:
- People are most often NOT going to be the perfect versions you envisioned them as. And expecting them to act the way you want them to is just naive and selfish. And most often, they aren’t going to, no matter what you do.
- And sadly, this can apply to family as well, as family members can be awful towards you despite your familial ties towards them. If they are abusive to you, just cut ties with them and move on.
- Bad people don’t need to have a sympathetic excuse to be bad: There are people who are simply bad just for the sake of it, and they can’t be reasoned with.
- And when you know someone is bad, you have an obligation to keep them from hurting others. Just letting them do as they want is only enabling their bad behaviour and doesn’t magically reform them. And if people are hurt because of the enabling, they are going to blame you as well, regardless of whether you were their friend or not.
- People are most often NOT going to be the perfect versions you envisioned them as. And expecting them to act the way you want them to is just naive and selfish. And most often, they aren’t going to, no matter what you do.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin and the King of Thieves:
- Sometimes people may find it too difficult to change who they've turned out to be, no matter how much they may want to or even it's for the sake of a loved one. They might not be the person you want them to be, but that doesn't mean they don't love you all the same.
- You need to know when to stop pursuing a hopeless goal. There's no sense chasing a dream that not only probably won't come true, but doing so at the expense of the people who care about you. Chase an impossible dream long enough, and you'll alienate everyone that you're doing it for, leaving you to forget why you started in the first place. Determination all by itself means nothing if you're going to be left looking back on it all wondering if it was really worth the trouble.
- The Bad Guys (2022): Underdogs will not always manage to become popular and beloved in the end, even if they do really make a turn for the better as people. The Bad Guys, in their (initially deceitful) quest to becoming the Good Guys manage to briefly go from feared, despised criminals to popular and redeemed in the eyes of the people when a clip of Mr. Wolf (who was starting to truly want to go good) saving a kitten went viral and, later, when the gang performed greatly at the fundraiser gala. However, that superficial universal "love" immediately goes back to scorn the second the Big Bad framed them for a theft they didn't even want to commit, and they are immediately arrested with pretty much zero proof. In the end, when the truly reformed Good Guys save the day and have a chance to be public heroes, they decide to turn it down in order to protect Governor Diane's own reputation and the whole world still sees them as criminals at the end like they always did. Of course, the sweet part of this bittersweet aesop is that Celebrity Is Overrated and whatever "love" the masses can give is shallow and will dissipate the moment you so much as look guilty of a crime, as is the case with Villain with Good Publicity Professor Marmalade immediately being arrested when he's framed as being the Crimson Paw. The protagonists at least end the story with the meaningful support of one another, Diane, and Wolf's new pet kitty.
- Bee Movie: Successfully advocating for a cause might make things worse for everybody, especially if you don't do the proper research into what you're advocating for or against in the first place.
- Beowulf: The film posits that stories of heroism are lies told to cover up questionable or outright shitty behavior, and by the time you realize you shouldn't have told your own in the first place, you'll be too old and filled with regret for it to matter.
- The Black Cauldron: Taran's character arc contains one: Some people just aren't cut out to follow their dreams.
- Coco: Pursuing something you love is a good thing, but taking it to the point where you'd do anything to achieve it is only going to cause you and your loved ones pain. And sometimes, you have to sacrifice your dream if you have much more important priorities, such as taking care of and providing for your family.
- Encanto:
- You might be denied opportunities and talents that other people get — ones you may feel (or indeed, be) entitled to, and no amount of hard work or moral virtue will get those opportunities back. What you can do is make the most of your own opportunities and talents.
- Family is important, but that doesn't mean it's always supportive. They mean well, but your relationships with them can turn toxic under certain conditions and you shouldn’t just lie down and take that toxicity to keep the peace, especially if they don't realize how badly their actions are hurting you. Things only ultimately improve for the Madrigals when Mirabel finally snaps and calls out Alma for how badly her perfectionism has been affecting the family.
- Finding Nemo: If you are a parent, it is better to let your child learn lessons the hard way instead of giving in to your instincts and keeping them sheltered their entire childhood to try to protect them.
- FrankenWeenie:
- It's okay to be "weird" — as long as you're careful about the consequences of your actions.
- Science is a labor of love and should be practiced by people who are passionate and have good intentions. If not, the results will be disappointing at best, and horrific at worst.
- How to Train Your Dragon 2: Hiccup learns the surprisingly dark Aesop that some people simply cannot be reasoned with and can only be brought down by violence. This drives his entire conflict with his father, as Hiccup believes he can talk sense into the Big Bad Drago while The Good King Stoick knows better than to even try.
Stoick: Men who kill without reason cannot be reasoned with.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Even though Quasimodo is the hero of the story, Esmeralda chooses Phoebus over him, because kindness and friendship don't mean you're entitled to, or even ready for, a relationship. Also, people want to be with someone who understands and respects them as human beings, not ideals. Esmeralda didn't fall in love with Phoebus just to "pair up the pretty people," but because he saw her as a real person, neither an angel or a witch as Quasimodo and Frollo respectively did. And even if it had boiled down to which man she found more sexually attractive, that's her right too and a very real part of the equation when choosing a partner.
- Ident: Life is hard and filled with thankless moments, but complete freedom doesn't guarantee happiness either.
- The Incredibles teaches against Tall Poppy Syndrome and false accomplishments - pretending that everyone is equally special is wrong, because some people really are better at certain things than others, and trying to bring them down to the level of everyone else will ultimately only make everyone worse off. While "be who you are, not who others want you to be" sounds like a fairly family-friendly Aesop, the rather cynical implication is that people, in general, will always tend to envy you for being better than they are unless your superiority is immediately beneficial to them.
- Inside Out:
- Living a life of happiness, wonder, and simple pleasures without any pain and sorrow is simply unrealistic, everyone will have some bad experiences that shape them for better or worse. Sadness is a necessary part of life that defines moments of true joy and happiness, and growing up means losing some parts of childhood and dealing with these complex emotions. If properly understood, this will make you a stronger person more capable of dealing with frustration.
- Trying to always live up to your family's expectations can drive you crazy, destroying your sense of yourself in favor of an ideal you're not even confident with.
- The Little Mermaid: Finding the perfect romantic partner for you is impossible. Eric tries so hard to find the mysterious girl who saved him and fails to realize the redheaded mute combing her hair with a fork is the same person. Ariel finds out that Eric can be obsessive and ignore what's in front of him, but she loves him regardless and he has a good heart. Neither are perfect, but they realize they want to be together despite their flaws.
- Megamind:
- The titular character tries to make Roxanne Richie's cameraman, Hal Stewart, a replacement for Metro Man after his supposed death and tells him that a girl could love him if he saved her. What he doesn't know is that Hal lusts after Roxanne and would do anything to be with her. But when Hal learns that she is not into him at all, he goes on a rampage and tries to kill Roxanne and Megamind. Giving someone power—be it fictional superhuman abilities or something real like a leadership role or political office—doesn't automatically mean they'll be good, if anything it just makes them worse, especially if they're the kind of person who doesn't have the mental or emotional maturity to handle them.
- Metro Man's reasons for faking his death provide a very realistic view on how society can pressure you into fulfilling a role that's beneficial for them and refusing to do as you're expected to will be punishing. Roxanne's explosive reaction to the truth exemplifies the backlash a hero will face if they don't use their powers for the benefit of others simply because they can thus they must. Megamind applies this aesop to himself to renounce his role as a villain and becomes the new protector of Metro City. The movie ends with Megamind loved by the population while Metro Man can't show his face again out of fear for the hate he'll be subjected to. Ultimately, Megamind's decision to break free from the role given to him by the city will not be judged like Metro Man's because the city will now benefit from Megamind's intelligence.
- Megamind also learns something in the long run. As he puts it when Hal calls him a loser no matter what side he's on, "There's a benefit to losing: You get to learn from your mistakes."
- Monsters University:
- You can be successful without a university education if you work hard and make your way up through the ranks over time. Not a negative one at all, since it's not as though it's telling people to slack off; while they do make it eventually, Mike and Sulley's path is harder than that of the college graduates. Extremely high college enrollment rates today prove that people know that it's not worth taking.
- The film also has a more brutally honest message: No matter how hard you try or how much you love and know about the material, there are just things in life you can't do, at least not traditionally. Accept it, and find where your real talents lie at. This is notably balanced out in that it clarifies that you can still work for the thing you love, but with a different task as Mike never becomes an on-field Scarer, but an assistant and is treated like an equal to Scarers.
- The film often shows that, yes, cruel people sometimes have a point. Jerks like ROR are correct in pointing out Oozma Kappa lack traditional Scaring build despite clearly being wrong for belittling them. In a sense, this notion drives Oozma Kappa to look further to prove that traditional build is not all there is to it.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: You've uncovered a new passion in life and yearn to express this newfound aspect of yourself? Well, think long and hard before you do — you may be making a terrible mistake. Perhaps you should just stick with what you know, instead. Although your new source of inspiration can help you rekindle an old passion if things have been feeling stale lately.
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish:
- We All Die Someday. And there's absolutely nothing you can do to prevent that. However, that shouldn't stop you from living life to the fullest and finding meaning in your own existence.
- Some people are too cruel and set in their ways to ever change for the better. While most of the film's cast change into better people by the end, the Ethical Bug realizes that Jack Horner is genuinely irredeemable, knows it, and refuses to change. Ultimately, he gives up on Horner because trying to get him to reform is a losing battle.
- Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa: You should not give away things with personal sentimental value as a gift. That thing may mean a lot to you, but the receiver who hasn't lived your experiences and don't have the same attachment shouldn't be expected to appreciate it.
- Ratatouille: Play along to your true talents and call, and don't attempt to force yourself into a role you're not suited for. Gusteau's motto was "Anyone can cook" while he was alive. As Anton Ego realizes late in the movie, Gusteau wasn't saying that anyone can become a great artist. Instead, what he was saying was slightly more cynical, but still ultimately hopeful: "Not everyone can become a great artist. But a great artist can come from anywhere".
- Ron's Gone Wrong: No matter how popular you are on social media, one mistake or embarrasing incident can ruin it all. And even if you decide that Celebrity Is Overrated in favor of real friends, you'll still lose out on every opportunity that status could have given you.
- Shinbone Alley: Some people just plain can't be saved from their self-destructive ways; Love Redeems is only a thing if the person in question wants to be redeemed in the first place. Archy never can get Mehitabel to fall for him, and his love alone fails to redeem her like he wanted. Mehitabel even declares that Archy is "too far down the social ladder" for an Uptown Girl such as herself, and goes right back to her hedonistic, self-destructive ways. In the end, Archy decides it's better to just let Mehitabel be herself and gives up trying to make her into a better person.
- Soul (2020): It is very possible, and even likely, that you don't have a purpose in life, and you may live a life that is completely ordinary and unremarkable. Even if there is some reason you were put on this Earth, no one's going to tell you what that is; either you need to discover it on your own, or forge it yourself—and there's always the possibility that it won't fulfill you the way you hoped. But that's all okay. If you enjoy your life, no matter how simple or small it may seem, it isn't a waste, and simply living can be reason enough for being alive.
- Steven Universe: The Movie:
- Happily Ever After doesn't exist; there will always be challenges and hardships in your life that you'll have to overcome, no matter how much you don't want them to happen.
- Sometimes, even when you try your hardest, even with the best intentions, you can't change people, or how they feel. Some people will only change when they decide to put in the effort to change themselves for the better.
- No one owes you their friendship. You may crave a deep emotional bond with someone, and they might sympathize with you for having a terrible past, but you can't force a genuine connection between two people where there isn't one. This is especially true if you've already hurt them or even tried to kill them.
- The Sword in the Stone: While she's not an important character to the overall plot, the girl squirrel who falls hard for Arthur's squirrel form spends most of her screen time giving him unwanted affection to win his love, only to learn he's actually a human child, and by extension doesn't/can't return her feelings, which causes her to break down in tears. Merlin paints this as a sad lesson of Love Hurts, but also is a harsh lesson on people who experience love for the first time; don't get too attached to your first crush, especially if you know little about them and it's clear that they aren't interested, because you're setting yourself up for a painful heartbreak.
- Team America: World Police: While resorting to violence to solve all of your political issues is wrong, promoting peace and diplomacy to people who are just too violent or self-righteous to be reasoned with just leaves you helpless, so violence is at times quite necessary. The trick is to know when and where it is necessary to use it, and in what amounts, and to not get too attached to it.
- Tubby the Tuba (1975): You may have many failures before succeeding. While this is a good lesson, it can be depressing to see Tubby's failings and his orchestra ridiculing him.
- The Wild Robot (2024):
- Fink points out to Roz that, unlike what other kid-themed animal adventure stories would have you believe, Nature Is Not Nice. To survive on the island, they need to hunt, kill and eat suitable sources of food to sustain themselves, even if that's each other, punctuated by him boiling and steaming a crab alive in a steam vent to eat. At several points, it's made clear that every animal companion Roz encounters is at risk of dying from the environment or each other at any given point.
- Longneck points out to Brightbill that, contrary to what he believes Roz's Accidental Murder of his birth family was in his best interests. As a runt, his mother would have abandoned him to care for the stronger, healthier flock as a whole, whilst Roz going against conventional sense in raising him despite his low odds were what allowed him to survive to a teenager.
- Wanting to do something doesn't mean you're ABLE to, and sometimes it can only be achieved through rigorous work and preparation. Brightbill isn't naturally strong enough to survive the migration on his own, so Longneck recommends a grueling regimen to build his strength, telling Roz to keep him airborne for full days and learning to fly while carrying heavy weight, so he can master carrying his own.
- Wreck-It Ralph: Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, being whatever we want just isn't possible. There are some things about ourselves that we can never change, and that's okay. At times like these, coming to terms with that instead of fighting an unwinnable battle is what's best for us.
- At the same time though, judging people by their labels is going take its toll on them eventually, and to avoid any unpleasantness, you should respect them all the same.
- Ralph Breaks the Internet: Follow your dreams, but if you have to move away from friends or family in order to pursue those dreams, you might have to face a tough dilemma to choose one or the other. In short, you can't have it all, and achieving what you really want means sacrifice.
- Ralph Breaks the Internet also offers the Aesop that sometimes being a true friend means letting someone leave your life instead of forcing them to stay with you. As people change, they tend to drift apart, and it takes work and honest communication to maintain an old friendship—and even then it's likely that things won't be exactly the same as they were before, and if you can't make peace with that, you'll always be unhappy.
- Zootopia shows that everyone has their biases (up to and including those who have been on the receiving end of them like the main characters themselves) and some of those biases can be destructive as they lead to prejudice, stereotyping, and profiling. While harsh and not a thing people want to admit, it's how bias works in the real world. However, the blow is softened in the sense that it shows that one can overcome their biases if they actively work on becoming aware of them and moving past them.
Literature
- Many of the original Aesop's Fables have this trope; family-friendly modern selections of Aesop's Fables have to tactically omit many of the original ones. Some examples include:
- The Bat and the Weasels: It's sometimes wise to change or lie about your affiliation to save your skin.
- The Fox and the Goat: Don't trust anyone who's in trouble, because they're likely to be using you to get out of it.
- The Farmer and the Nightingale: Never believe a captive's promise and never give up what you have.
- The Ass and the Lap Dog (and The Eagle and the Crow): Just because someone else achieves something good doesn't mean that you can.
- The Porcupine and the Snakes: Be careful who you take as a guest because they might be an asshole.
- The Lark and her Young Ones: If something is worth doing, the only one you can trust to do it is yourself.
- The Wolf and the Lamb: A powerful tyrant only needs an excuse, not a reason, and arguing rationally won't save you.
- The Wolf and the Crane: The higher your hopes, the more likely you are to be disappointed. If you put yourself in danger to help someone, they won't always be grateful and it will be nothing more than a waste of time.
- Two Pots: Don't hang around powerful people, if there's any mutual trouble you'll get the worst of it.
- The Man and the Lion: All history is written from someone's point of view.
- The Lion's Share or The Lion and Other Beasts Go Hunting: Just because someone wants you to co-operate with them in work does not mean they will give you a share of the reward.
- The Farmer and the Snake: Some people are just plain evil and no amount of building trust will change that.
- The Ass and his Driver: If someone is determined to destroy themselves, step back and let them, or they'll destroy you too.
- The Man, the Boy, and the Ass: No matter what you do, someone will dislike it, and trying to change what you do to please everyone will make you lose your ass.
- Angela and Diabola has two: "Evil is sometimes a stronger force than good" and "If good has to destroy badness, it can no longer be perfect." The pure evil Diabola is only stopped from wreaking total havoc by the goodness of both her parents and her sister; when her father leaves the family because he blames himself for Diabola's evil, chaos ensues. Only Diabola's accidental death at the hands of her purely good sister Angela can finally stop her... yet because killing is inherently wrong, good can't be "pure good" anymore if it destroys evil. Therefore, Diabola's evil is absorbed into Angela, and she becomes an ordinary, flawed little girl.
- The final book of A Series of Unfortunate Events had the Aesop of "some mysteries will never be solved."
- One of the Stock Aesops is that cowardice doesn't pay. In extreme cases, the bold lives where the coward dies (sometimes Driven to Suicide), or they both survive/die, but the coward is marked forever. So it comes as a tragic surprise that in Bridge to Terabithia, Leslie, who had no fear from the creek, drowns, whereas Jess, who feared the water (and couldn't swim) survives—and while he does suffer, it's from grief over the loss of his friend, not because of cowardice.
- The Chronicles of Narnia contains the lesson that the real world is a harsh and violent place that sometimes takes a fair amount of violence to survive in. C. S. Lewis was even quoted once as saying that pretending otherwise would do a great disservice to children. Once again, an example of a very true and important Aesop, but one that many parents would rather their children didn't know.
- The Cold Equations: "The choices you make can have negative, even catastrophic, results even if you didn't do anything particularly bad." This serves as a deconstruction of stories where the day is always saved somehow, all too often by a Contrived Coincidence or Applied Phlebotinum. It's an Enforced Trope because John Campbell sent the story back to Tom Godwin three times because Godwin kept saving the girl without resorting to either plot device.
- Courtship Rite borders on Spoof Aesop territory. On a Lost Colony where cycles of famine have made cannibalism common and acceptable, he has a preacher teaching that cannibalism is wrong. At first, the reader may expect that cannibalism is being used as a metaphor and that we're going to learn an ordinary Aesop about violence being wrong, but in the end, the preacher is forced to learn a valuable lesson: cannibalism isn't so bad.
- In one entry of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, one teacher discovers her dictionary is missing. She tells the class that there will be no consequences, she just wants the one who took it to come forth. When Alex Aruda reveals he has it, Corey Books decides to put it back… and he is punished because the teacher sees him with the dictionary. This is a fairly common method of entrapment by adults towards children - so this teaches the audience not to hold adults to their word as they will always go back on it.
- Fate/Zero has Kiritsugu Emiya enforcing violent utilitarian ethics to save as many lives as possible. He has killed a lot of people over his life and saved even more. But he's forced to face the truth at the end: World peace is probably impossible. The message is wrapped up in Magi Babble and delivered by what might as well be The Devil, but the fact is that he's unable to think of a way to make people stop killing each other short of killing everyone. Other related stories build on the point that this is just what humans are and you can't make them better without fundamentally changing them. Learning this lesson costs him his wife, his daughter, his partner, his health and his ideals.
- Although Friedrich Nietzsche is not explicitly Social Darwinist, his revolt against conventional morality is elaborated upon with Beyond Good and Evil, The Antichrist, and others engender a rejection of egalitarian altruism and antipathy for the socially disadvantaged.
- In Harriet the Spy, young writer Harriet learns that sometimes you have to lie to people to help them feel better about themselves so they won't hate you.
- Holes: Elya Yelnats' backstory demonstrates that you can't try to marry someone you just met. As a peasant in Latvia, Elya is in love with local beauty Myra Menke, only to find out later on that she is so dense she can't even choose between Elya Yelnats and Igor Barkov (keep in mind that Elya is around Myra's age while Igor is 42 years her senior). Elya then leaves Myra and emigrates to America.
- The works of H. P. Lovecraft teach you that the universe is not just a Crapsack World but a fundamentally indifferent and horrifying place and only our ignorance of its true nature keeps us all sane.
- Jackie and Craig: Yep kids, life is vicious, miserable, and indifferent to your suffering, so be sure to cling to those precious few bright spots for the brief time that they last!
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Democracy is not an automatically good and fair system of government—left to its own devices, it can become just as decadent and corrupt as the worst feudal aristocracies, or even more so.
- Little Women: The March sisters and Laurie all learn that adolescent dreams don't always come true. Meg never becomes rich, Amy never becomes a professional artist, nor Laurie a composer, Jo achieves only modest success as an author (though in Jo's Boys she eventually does gain fame thanks to Magnum Opus Dissonance), and even Beth's simple dream of never having to leave her parents is shattered by her early death. But except for Beth, all the characters do find happiness in the end, so the hard truth is balanced by the message that life can still be happy and fulfilling even without the dreams of your youth.
- The Lovely Bones is about a fourteen-year-old girl who gets raped and murdered, and remains in the 'in-between' before moving on to Heaven to watch how her family deal with the loss; plus her murderer dies in a random accident and is never brought to justice for her death or that of the other women and girls he killed, and her family never learns the truth of what happened to her or where he dumped her body. It puts forth the Aesop that sometimes bad things will just happen to you or your loved ones, you can't control them, and you may never get full closure. You can, however, control how you deal with these things.
- Matilda: Authority figures—be they schoolteachers, headmistresses, or even your own parents—can be terrible people, and don't always have children's best interests at heart. Though the Wormwoods and Miss Trunchbull are comically exaggerated as Abusive Parents and a Sadist Teacher, respectively, their ignorance and cruelty are very real, and Matilda only gets her happy ending when she actively resists them instead of passively accepting what they say because they're grown-ups. The end of the book drops another one—a Family of Choice can be more important and meaningful than blood relations, and sometimes it really is in a child's best interests to not live with their birth parents and siblings. Harry and Zinnia Wormwood ultimately realize that they just plain don't understand Matilda and can't make her happy, so they willingly leave her with the kind Miss Honey because caring for her isn't possible for them, which is viewed by everyone involved as the right choice.
- The ending of Metaltown shows that some people are just too rich, powerful, and connected to be imprisoned or even accused of wrongdoing, and sometimes the one real hope of unseating them doesn't come to pass. Despite this, things can get better, even if change comes slowly.
- On My Honor: Going back on your word often has dire consequences that not even your parents can save you from, and you'll have to live with those consequences for the rest of your life.
- Perelandra, the second book of the The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis:
- The plot of the book is that the planet Venus is in the "Adam and Eve" phase and the devil has sent his agent-a man named Professor Weston-to corrupt "Eve." The angels send a man named Elwin Ransom to make sure that Tinidril chooses wisely. In the end, good triumphs over evil, but in an unexpected way: Ransom kills Weston and drops his body into a volcano. This is actually lampshaded by the protagonist, who assumed that the fight would be purely intellectual, that he would win by the sheer force of his argument, and was initially horrified at the idea that he'd have to make the fight a physical one. It was very much a Take That! at the pacifists who opposed Great Britain's military opposition to the evils of Nazi Germany and promoted Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy.
- Another interpretation; Non-Violence and diplomacy are ideal and should be pursued first; however, if they fail, one has no choice but to fight. The message of this book is the doctrine of Just War: Peaceful means are ideal and should be pursued first but violence should be allowed as a last resort when all peaceful means have failed. Ransom tried diplomacy and debate first but Weston wouldn't be swayed and had an answer for everything, so Ransom had no choice but to destroy Weston.
- The Princess Bride has one in-universe: the narrator notes how horrified as a kid he was because some events of the story just didn't work out as they did in traditional fairy tales and adventure stories, and found relief only when he realized that the Aesop was that life wasn't fair.
- Protector of the Small: Sometimes there isn't one good, right choice. When Kel interrupts a squire attacking her maid, she intends to report him for attempted assault. Her maid begs her not to - the squire is well connected and can retaliate by having her and her uncle fired. Later Kel finds that the squire went on to rape other common girls and is sick with guilt, thinking that if she'd acted he could have been prevented.
- There is also the message that no single person can really stop the injustice that is ingrained on the societal level. One outstanding female knight and Thayet's new egalitarian military corps has done little to change most people's minds about female soldiers (and the assumptions about their morality). Kel is forced to accept that she cannot give Lalasa the justice she deserves even though Jon fully agrees that the laws governing the noble treatment of commoners are morally wrong and dangerous besides. Changing laws around traditional societal values takes years if you want to do it without an uprising. Similarly, some people will never "come around" and will even act against their own interests to serve their hardheaded ideology. None of this makes doing the right thing pointless, and Kel's blazing idealism does lead her to help make some changes for the better, but nothing can simply be fixed.
- At the end of Mastiff, after Prince Gareth was rescued his parents pushed the legislature through to end slavery in Tortall. Beka immediately worried about knock-on effects of this, knowing what a big industry slavery was. The timeline in Tortall: A Spy's Guide and a mention in The Numair Chronicles show that after the pronouncement came a Tortallan civil war as many nobles rebelled rather than free their slaves and start paying them. The era only ended when Gareth was king - thirty years into his reign, he started executing the heads of rebellious noble houses and keeping the families of their replacements hostage. This underlines what Jonathan told Kel in Squire - the Crown has to take into account how the rest of the country will react if it wants to make necessary changes.
- Ramona Quimby: The multi-book subplot of Robert Quimby's search for a good job ends in Ramona Forever with this lesson: "We can't always do what we want in life, so we do the best we can." After going back to college and earning his credentials to become an art teacher, Mr. Quimby gets only one job offer, from a one-room schoolhouse in a far-away rural town where no one wants to move. So he gives up his teaching dream and accepts an offer to become a supermarket manager instead. Ultimately, it works out well for him: his salary is good, freeing the family once and for all from the money worries that troubled them throughout the series, and he's still able to practice art by painting advertisements on the store windows. Still, it's not surprising that the film Ramona and Beezus gives his job search a less bittersweet ending by having him receive an offer to teach art at Ramona's own school.
- In Shel Silverstein's "The Perfect High", Gimmesome Roy climbs a mountain in search of learning from Baba Fats what drug will give him the perfect high. Fats tells him the perfect high is within himself, but Roy is furious at this and threatens him with violence, so Fats tells him it's in a far-off land, and Roy goes off in pursuit. Fats concludes:
"Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone,
Facing another thousand years of talking to God alone.
"It seems, Lord," says Fats, "it's always the same, old men or bright-eyed youth,
It's always easier to sell them some shit than it is to give them the truth." - The Spider and the Fly: If you hear rumors that someone is not to be trusted, believe them.
- Starship Troopers: Sometimes Violence Really Is the Answer. Yes, it is preferable and best that you look for a non-violent solution to any given problem. But at the same time, sometimes that simply isn't going to work. Insisting on avoiding any violence once it's clear that a compromise can't be reached is dangerous in itself.
- This happens a lot in Hans Christian Andersen stories. Probably the best is The Steadfast Tin Soldier, the moral of which is: "Life Isn't Fair, and sometimes just when you've worked your hardest to get something right, something will come out of nowhere and screw it up for no reason."
- Another classical moral is that having imagination is good. So When The Windman Comes by Antonia Michaelis is a huge subversion, with the moral "imagination, when not strictly separated from reality, is potentially very dangerous—it can isolate you and make you live in fear of imaginary horrors—all the while making you more vulnerable to Real Life. Sometimes, being a skeptic is favorable, even for a child." This is particularly jarring since many other books by the same author promote imagination and/or openness to seemingly impossible things.
- Dr. Seuss:
- The Sneetches teaches that sometimes it takes a really unfortunate circumstance in life (like being cheated out of all your money) to learn the error of your ways.
- The Lorax is one of the most poignant Green Aesops ever written, where the ecosystem has collapsed thanks to unchecked corporate greed and the economy built on the Truffula trees has collapsed with it. Unless we care, nothing is going to get better. But if we do care, if we put the work in to protect what we have left, then maybe, one day, the damage can be undone.
- Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset: Sexual ethics and marriage are little more than social constructs, there's nothing immoral about teenagers having sex, and an incestuous relationship can be wholesome. Just make sure both (or all) parties consent and protection are used (and don't catch anything).
- Tuck Everlasting: Everyone has died at some point, young or old. Who Wants to Live Forever? is not a vote for you now.
- An interesting example is They're Rioting In Room 32 by Janice Harrell: "In the real world, there are things more important than romance - like getting your homework done and staying out of jail." Not unusual in an adult novel, but it's downright shocking in a YA romantic comedy aimed at teenage girls and written in The '80s, especially when stated baldly by the protagonist. She then goes on to remark that it would be nice if one of her best friends could delay his undying passion until the gang had solved their current crisis, which leads to another: If you and your friends are in the middle of a bad situation, (which could actually land one of you in jail) your friends will not patiently listen to you going on and on about your deathless infatuation, especially with someone who shows no interest in you, and has actively rejected you; they're more likely to tell you to shut the hell up and put some effort into foiling the schemes of the person trying to frame you for a crime. The sequel Love and Pizza to Go has an even more genre-unfriendly aesop: most high school relationships don't last very long. The two couples who get together at the end of the first book both break up by the third act of the second (less than a year later), which leads to the rejected two getting together - which is in itself unusual, because they rejected ones are the protagonist and one of the major characters.
- Wintergirls: Destroying yourself destroys the people who love you, too. And it's nothing but purely selfish on your part while you're doing it. You owe it to everyone who cares about you to recognize what's happening and stop before you do something you can't take back. Lia's anorexia is consistently portrayed throughout the book as terrible not just for her, but for everyone else in Lia's family because of all the things Lia has to do to lie about it. One particularly rough incident is when Lia's little sister Emma is the one who catches Lia slashing herself bloody in the bathroom in a fit of self-harm. The incident seems to have given Emma PTSD-like symptoms, as Jennifer later mentions that Emma can only sleep a few hours a night, and has nightmares about their family being eaten by monsters when she does. Only after this incident does Lia finally realize exactly what she's doing, and while she felt bad about her anorexia before, this moment shows Lia how bad she's really been acting and makes her realize how much she's destroying her family.
Music
- "Black Tie White Noise" by David Bowie has one, the result of it being written in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles: Racial harmony is possible but don't imagine it's going to be easy to achieve, or that there won't be violence along the way ("There'll be some blood, no doubt about it"). Not a comfortable Aesop, but if history's taught us anything…
- The music video for Drake's Find Your Love. The song is a positive message about putting everything on the line for love which Drake does in the video to a woman… who's also connected to a gang leader. He crosses the line and attempts to woo her… and he's eventually caught by the gang, beaten and (presumably) shot in the back of the head by the same girl he was putting his heart on the line for. The video ends in a Bolivian Army Ending (the girl could have shot the gang leader) but there is a clear message about how not even love is worth crossing a line over.
- Eminem has many songs about how, while violent and/or explicit music may be a bad influence on the youth, it also serves as an important outlet for their more complicated emotions. A good example is "Sing For The Moment", in which the character at the beginning of the story is an angry young white child from a broken home who became "brainwashed from rock and rap" and punched his abusive stepfather in the face. It's clear he isn't exactly looking to Eminem's music for its clever lyrics or satire of white-trash life, but the defiant fantasy it inspires him to live up to — even if never intended — is a form of liberation he needs.
- Harry Chapin's song Mr. Tanner is about a man who runs a dry cleaner and loves to sing, and is an amateur performer in his spare time. His friends convince him to try to become a professional singer, so he throws all his money into a concert performance that… bombs. Critics are terse and dismissive with him, suggesting he'd be better off keeping his day job. Mr. Tanner returns to his home and his job and stops performing publicly. The moral here is "Sometimes chasing your dream fails". If you want to be more blunt, you could phrase it "Loving to do something doesn't make you good at it."
- Indica's song "In Passing" is about a dead singer telling her sister that her pain will go away and everything passes. Not quite unfriendly until the last few lines where she tells her sister that she also will pass. Extremely true and not something most children are equipped with or taught.
- The Kenny Rogers song Coward of the County. The song's message implies that, for some things, the only course of action is violence, and being a pacifist will only get the ones you love murdered or hurt. The song also implies that filial piety is futile, and you cannot obey your parents' wishes all the time.
- Kocchi no Kento's "Hai, Yorokonde" has quite a relevant moral: it's perfectly fine to be nice and look out for people's wellbeing, but if it's constantly at your own expense, then you need to take a break and remember to put your needs first. Trying to play the "therapist friend" for everyone all the time - especially in already emotionally-taxing places like school or the workplace - is just going to tire you out and leave you with no time to sort out your own baggage.
- O.C. Smith's song "The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp" has a message that being a prostitute doesn't make a woman evil or contemptible.
- The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" is the namer for a trope of this nature which translates to "revolution is futile because the person in charge is always going to make it tough for everyone else". Occasionally, Pete Townshend has put a more positive twist on this as "Don't listen to the boss in the first place. Think for yourself."
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Skipper Dan" has one: just because you are talented at and passionate about something, that doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to make a career out of it (especially in a highly competitive field like acting/entertainment).
- Will Wood's "Memento Mori". The song is intentionally insensitive and comedic, with most of it singing that "one day you're going to die!" and that no matter what horrible way you die, nobody will remember you and your existence means nothing. However, there's a few lines ("but you'll be at peace before you sleep if you just keep this in mind: that everything and everyone goes with the passage of time!") that mention that accepting your death is actually a good thing since then you can focus on making the most out of your life while you have it.
Theater
- Avenue Q is a parody of Sesame Street aimed at adults, which means teaching life lessons that aren't always simple and sweet. "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" brutally subverts the Prejudice Aesop and teaches the audience that everybody holds some prejudice, even if they're marginalized themselves (i.e. Gary Coleman enjoying jokes about Polish people despite getting offended about black jokes), while insisting we shouldn't take it too personally (and that some stereotypes may even be based in truth). The final song, "For Now," also takes an Anti-Nihilist approach to life, admitting that you may never find your purpose in life, but that'll be okay, because everything in life (happy and sad) is temporary.
- A Chorus Line: Every dancer has a story... but a story isn't enough to get you success on Broadway. Zach still has to cut half the cast as he only needs eight dancers. Even if you do make it into a show, it's not steady work, especially when Broadway itself is inconsistently profitable. Chances are you'll never break out of a faceless ensemble cast to be a big star, and trying to draw attention to yourself may only work against you. Your career is only as viable as your body, so once you hit a certain age or suffer a Career-Ending Injury like Paul, you'll need to find a new source of income. "What I Did For Love" and its preceding scene have all the dancers acknowledge these harsh realities and embrace that they love the craft so much, they'll do it as long as they can, risk and all.
- Death of a Salesman says that "it's okay to stop pursuing a dream if your talents and passions lie elsewhere." In addition to their obsession with popularity, Willy and Biff do not realize the amount of effort needed to achieve their dreams. To illustrate, Charlie's son Bernard works hard to become a successful lawyer and Uncle Ben goes into the jungle for four years to find diamonds and come out rich. On the other hand, Willy and Biff are always looking for an easy way out and hate what they do, and that's why they ultimately fail in life.
- The musical Carousel and the play Liliom on which it is based contains one of these, personified in the immortal line: "It's possible for a man to hit you, hit you real hard, and have it feel like a kiss." Amanda Palmer did a cover of the song "What's the Use of Wondrin" as a creepy domestic abuse ballad… and didn't have to change a word.
- Into the Woods, as a Deconstruction of fairy tales in general, features quite a few.
- As "No One is Alone" states, "Fathers, mothers--people make mistakes." Parents aren't automatically paragons of virtue who know what to do—they're just as human and fallible as the rest of us, and the odds are that they're going to screw up in some way. Every single parent in the show—from Cinderella's neglectful father to the overly controlling Witch to Jack's outspoken mother to Little Red Riding Hood's overly violent Granny—ends up damaging their children or the people around them in some way, which is the risk you have to accept when you have a child.
- "Witches can be right. Giants can be good"—or, in other words, life operates on Gray-and-Gray Morality. The heroic characters from the fairy tales—Cinderella, Jack, Little Red Riding Hood, the Princes, and the Baker and his Wife—end up lying, cheating, stealing, and eventually outright murdering people, while the traditional villains—the Witch, the Giant, and the Giantess—are shown as justified and morally correct in some circumstances. The Giantess in particular showed nothing but kindness to Jack, and he still stole from her and murdered her husband, driving her to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Little Red and Jack are forced to accept that a fairy tale conception of "good guys and bad guys" is inherently false, and that even the best people have to do morally questionable things to survive.
- Little Red sums up one of the major themes of the show in "I Know Things Now": "Nice is different than good." The heroes try to be nice to one another at all times, but that doesn't make them good people—in fact, the things they do are often worse than the villains' actions because they think that being nice absolves them from responsibility. Conversely, the Witch is decidedly not nice, but she's also the Only Sane Woman in several situations and acts on a Cruel to Be Kind philosophy. Being nice and polite is a fine thing, but there's a big difference between having good manners and being a good person.
- Matilda has quite a few:
- The show summarizes its main Aesop through its Arc Words: "Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty." It's shown throughout the play that being passive and hoping things will get better isn't enough. If you really want to change an unjust situation and "put it right," and have the power to do so, you're going to have to break the rules to do it. Matilda's own miserable situation only improves when she actively takes a role in fixing it by defying her parents and Miss Trunchbull, even though she knows she could get in serious trouble for it—you have to make sacrifices and run the risk of punishment if you truly want to fight injustice and make a difference.
- Much like the book it's based on, the musical outright states that authority figures—be they parents, bosses, or teachers—aren't always morally correct just because they are older or have a position of power, and sometimes the best thing you can do is disobey people you know are wrong.
- Miss Honey, Matilda's kindly and loving teacher, offers a surprising variation on Adults Are Useless. Despite being a Friend to All Children and sincerely wanting to help Matilda, Miss Honey suffers from massive trauma over the untimely death of her father and being horrifically abused by Miss Trunchbull, her cruel aunt. She ultimately can't muster up the courage or strength to take action because of her personal demons, and it's left to Matilda to save the day and defeat Miss Trunchbull. The painful lesson is that even good and genuinely well-meaning adults might not be able to help you out of a tough spot, and waiting for them to bail you out—especially when they're struggling with their own issues—is a bad idea.
- RENT:
- Using real people in your art is not cool if they don't give you their consent to be in it in the first place or you're exploiting their pain. Mark gets reamed out by a homeless woman after he uses his camera to stop a cop from harassing her because she knows that he only did it to make a name for himself and to minimize his self-guilt for being lucky enough to not be in her situation. She rightfully points out filming her like an animal on the Discovery Channel doesn't solve any of her problems, and then asks Mark if he has any extra money he can give her since that would actually help her (which he doesn't). Afterward, Mark decides to only make his documentary about his HIV-positive friends as a living memory of them but nearly gives up on realizing they aren't art, and they are going to die due to circumstances beyond their control.
- People are going to change, whether you like it or not, and you may lose your friendships with them in the process. Benny "changes" after he marries Allison and demands rent from his friends, knowing very well he can't pay. After Angel dies, the original group breaks up while calling each other out for their flaws and ignoring Mark and Benny's pleas to stop.
- Urinetown: Sometimes, there's a very good reason why a law that seems oppressive exists. In the show's case, people have to pay to use toilets because of a catastrophic draught that has reduced the water supply. When the rebels succeed in overthrowing the government and make restrooms free for everyone, what little water they had is quickly used up, and everyone dies of dehydration in a Downer Ending. Yes, the law may have been reducing the amount of water each person could use, but it was there for a very good reason.
- Wicked: The message of "Popular", Glinda's "I Am" Song, is that being liked by others will get you farther than merely being a good person. You may think this is only to show what a shallow and pretentious character Glinda is. Except she's ultimately proven right. Elphaba's actions, no matter how heroic and selfless, all fail to change anything as Madame Morrible launches a smear campaign against her and makes everyone too afraid of her to listen to the problems she's trying to fix. In the end it's Glinda who gets the power to dispose of the villains and change Oz for the better, but does she do it by speaking out against their crimes or trying to help their victims? No, she does it by sucking up to them and endearing herself to the dim-witted people of Oz until she has enough power and influence of her own to launch a non-violent coup d'état.
- In The Wild Duck, the entire cast turns out to be one giant Dysfunction Junction that is only keeping itself together by repressing every one of their hidden sins and weaknesses through willful delusion. When the resident Wide-Eyed Idealist attempts to unravel some of these lies and bring about truth, the result is the suicide of the family's young daughter. Doctor Relling, the man who attempted to keep all this under wraps, muses that you can "deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness." The truth may be nice to have when you've got it, but not every little white lie or character flaw must needs be brought to light if it's going to destroy people for no payoff.
Video Games
- Abomi Nation: In the face of an evil opponent who has proven willing and able to both lie and murder without remorse, sometimes killing them really is the only solution. Ioti attempts to show mercy to Furcifume and his goons, but this just results in them prolonging the war and killing more people. After awakening, Ioti ultimately accepts that killing Furcifume is the only way to stop him.
- BioShock gives a pretty harsh shot at the common Aesop of "Study hard and become a white-collar worker if you want to get anywhere in life" or "You're paid in what you are worth in society". Rapture was supposed to be a city made up of the best and brightest of humanity… but in the end, someone still has to do dirty jobs, such as plumbing, trash-collecting, and scrubbing the toilets because those jobs are what keeps society running. And when you treat these people horribly? Don't be shocked when they happily turn on you.
- Galloway's arc in Bully focuses on the issues between two teachers: Galloway is friendly and well-liked but an alcoholic. Hattrick is a Jerkass who abuses everyone around him and actively exploits students but calls Galloway on drinking during school. The students, however, don't mind at all (and are shown not to follow his example), because Galloway is a decent guy whose belligerent co-worker makes his life difficult, and Jimmy ends up helping him get into recovery because he needs help, not because he needs to be punished. And all this is on top of the actual authority figures doing nothing to solve the real problems because they think it builds character. Overall, the message is that some adults are too corrupt or too ignorant to understand what is and isn't Harmful to Minors, and bullying isn't just a childhood problem.
- Freeware RPG The Crooked Man:
- The game follows the main character as he retraces the steps of the previous tenant of his apartment, which align creepily with his own. Each of the people he meets is facing the dilemma of struggling bravely forward, or giving up, on whatever conflict they're dealing with. Invariably, the answer is to accept one's limitations. There are some things in life that, no matter how badly you want them and no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to achieve; if you don't fit a certain mold, there's no honor in ruining yourself to force it.
- Another one is that, sometimes, helping the victim can and will seriously backfire, despite any good intentions. Attempting to console the woman will have her instead think that she should bottle it all in yet again, instead of seeking closure and move on. Encouraging the student will make him angry, thinking you're mocking him, which is a huge Berserk Button for said guy. And finally, attempting to negotiate with the suicidal man will get both him and you killed.
- Cyberpunk 2077:
- A single person (or a small group) can't reform a corrupt system that spans the entire globe, because they simply lack the means and power to do so, and even if they put a dent in it, it will be patched up sooner rather than later.
- Some people are their own worst enemy. While the system or an outside agent might make a tempting target for blame, the fact is that sometimes the only one who is to blame for your bad situation is you and your poor choices.
- Deltarune:
- In stark contrast to Undertale, this game makes the point that some people are too unreasonable to be dealt with peacefully, even if you try your best to be nice or spare them. For such people, the only way to pacify them is through force. This aesop sees use in Chapter 1's Final Boss fight, where Ralsei's attempts at peacefully resolving the conflict with King nearly gets the party killed, and King is only able to be subdued either through magic or an outright revolution (depending on the player's actions).
- Conversely: Malicious people can be contained depending on the context, but never truly reformed. Jevil is imprisoned, but once released displays the same violent temperament Seam describes.
- Sometimes, no matter what you do or how good you are, you have no control over your situation.
- Dragon Age: Origins is full of those and sometimes lampshades them.
- At the mage starting quest you get several of them, the most prominent being that guile and trickery are sometimes preferable to trust and altruism.
- The overarching story in Orzammar delivers the message that a progressive-minded individual who is personally a manipulative, sleazy jerk sometimes makes a better leader than a kindly, democratic individual bound by stagnant social traditions.
- This even applies to Paragon Aeducan, one of the most venerated individuals in Dwarven history. His decision to ignore the Assembly and lead the Warrior Caste in the defense of the city, prevented the Darkspawn from breaching Orzammar and saved their race from being wiped out. In other words, democracy is all well and good, but when you're too busy arguing to see the enemy about to kill you, a military coup is the only solution.
- Dragon Age II: Follows the first game's lead and drops a few of its own hard pills to swallow.
- Oppressed minorities aren't automatically morally pure victims just because they're oppressed. They can be jerks, abusers, killers, and betray people who try to help them just like people of any group. (As many mages that Hawke tries to help escape Kirkwall's infamous Gallows demonstrate.)
- Most societal problems are too pervasive and systemic for one hero to just ride in, slay the bad guy, and fix everything. Often, there isn't just one bad guy, or even one problem. Also, trying to fix some things can make others worse. (Case and point: Despite Hawke fending off the Qunari invasion at the end of Act 2, this just removes the common enemy for mages and Templars to unite against, so within a few years the city is torn apart by their Civil War.)
- Some environments breed too much hostility, stupidity, and/or destructive reasoning for any voice of reason to sway hearts and minds. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can't reason with squabbling factions who are too hell-bent on blaming and fighting each other to solve greater problems.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition continues the tradition.
- The base game drops this somber one: "Yesterday's oppressed often become tomorrow's oppressors." Particularly the reveal that the ancient Elvhen Empire was ruled by abusive tyrants, had slavery and blood sacrifice, and fell to internal strife rather than external conquest before they became Enslaved Elves to the Tevinter Imperium. Likewise, despite most non-magic humans resenting once being enslaved by Tevinter, once they became the new power in the southern continent they went on to oppress mages and elves themselves.
Dorian: Solas, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. The elven city of Arlathan sounds like a magical place, and for my ancestors to have destroyed it...
Solas: Dorian... hush. Empires rise and fall. Arlathan was no more "innocent" than your own Tevinter in its time. Your nostalgia for the ancient elves, however romanticized, is pointless. - DAI picks up where DA2 left off in stating that oppressed minorities are not morally pure victims just because they're oppressed; nor that they can't be awful to their own as well, or complicit in their own oppression.
Sera: Elfy elves have shoved "victim" in my face a million times... Everyone is always, "Oh, poor elves. Victim of this and whatever." But the empire ate itself. Love it. Like being sad makes them better than me. Turns out, they're not victims. They're just like everyone else: arseholes.
- Sera, unlike the setting's other Enslaved Elves who long for freedom and resent their human oppressors, has internalized racism, feels elves are just Playing the Victim Card, and dislikes anything elven in nature because she was shamed for not being "elfy" enough by other elves her whole life. Sera demonstrates the uncomfortable truth that oppressed minorities can be bigoted toward and oppress each other too.
Sera: "Never be as good as we were!" Well, who's we? I'm doing just fine!
- Vivienne is a hardcore Chantry Loyalist Mage who supports the Circle of Magi (literal prison towers guarded by Templars), she supports this partly due to Internalized Categorism, partly because she feels that free mages encourage the public's fear of magic by abusing it with Blood Magic, Demonic Possession, Power Incontinence, and killing sprees... and partly because she gained considerable political power through the Circle system. The Aesops delivered are:
- Some restrictive systems are Necessarily Evil to educate and monitor certain members of the population so they aren't a danger to themselves or others, and help them become more productive members of society.
- Or, conversely: Vivienne demonstrates that some minorities support oppressive systems that enslave their fellows because it's what gives themselves more power.
Nightmare: What's it like living as an apostate, Vivienne? Do you really think you'll reclaim your power in the Circle... At your age?
Vivienne: [through clenched teeth] Not. One. Word.
- The base game drops this somber one: "Yesterday's oppressed often become tomorrow's oppressors." Particularly the reveal that the ancient Elvhen Empire was ruled by abusive tyrants, had slavery and blood sacrifice, and fell to internal strife rather than external conquest before they became Enslaved Elves to the Tevinter Imperium. Likewise, despite most non-magic humans resenting once being enslaved by Tevinter, once they became the new power in the southern continent they went on to oppress mages and elves themselves.
- Evan's Remains. The game's major Aesops as demonstrated through Clover is that life can be brutally unfair to some of the best people around, and that immortality is non-existent; all you can do is cherish the time you have with a person before they pass away.
- Fallout 3. There is a quest called Tenpenny Tower, about a luxurious hotel inhabited by prejudiced humans and a nearby gang of civilized ghouls (a form of monstrously mutated human) who want to live in it. There are three ways to solve this quest — Two of them involve killing either party and being rewarded by the other for it. The final option is, through a lot of tedious diplomacy, to convince the humans to let the ghouls live alongside them, and it ends with the two species coexisting peacefully and happy-happy. Except, a few days later, all the human inhabitants have been slaughtered by the ghouls. note Sometimes the oppressed, when presented with the opportunity, can be just as inhuman as the oppressors.
- In Fallout: New Vegas, there are four possible factions that you can join with: Caesar's Legion, the NCR, Mr. House, and Yes Man. While Caesar's Legion is treated as the de facto bad group and are pushed far into the category of evil, the other three have flavors of what one would call "good" about them while retaining some bad. The NCR is the strongest military, but unfortunately are also heavy on taxes and some settlements crumble under their protection as a result. Mr. House definitely has the best assets and can help humanity rebuild, but he's in it for entirely selfish reasons and ultimately he will rule New Vegas under his current policy of "money talks" and leave the slums as they are or purge them, and Yes Man's ending has New Vegas purged of all three other factions and declaring independence, but as General Oliver points out: there is absolutely no infrastructure and will likely crumble with no way to retain its independence. As such, there's the hard truth that there is no golden ending, no happy way to resolve all the problems. Like real life, there's not always a perfect answer, it's just about weighing your morals on which answer you choose and accepting that as the reality of your decision.
- Far Cry 5:
- "Being independent and trying to fix everything yourself can make things worse." This is exemplified by both the Deputy and Sheriff Whitehorse and Joseph Seed. The former going in unprepared and trying to arrest him only escalates tensions, while the latter is more obsessed with forcibly converting all of Hope County to their cause rather than minding his own business and taking care of his flock. All of this leads to a war in the region and the deaths of countless people on both sides. All of this leaves everyone distracted and wasting so many resources that, when World War III breaks out and nukes start falling all over the region, everyone is caught with their pants down and only Seed and the Deputy manage to survive.
- There's a lesson that our lives are flooded with so much irrelevant information that it's making it harder for us to see the big picture. If you stop and listen to the radio, you can hear many broadcasts about the current state of the world, particularly escalating tensions with North Korea, the Middle East, and Russia, to the point that American citizens are being asked not to travel overseas and that war may be inevitable. This is something nobody in Hope County seems to draw attention or prepare for while they're dealing with Eden's Gate, a comparatively small conflict that could've been avoided if both sides simply chose to walk away.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, the Endwalker expansion deals with this during the first part of the story in Garlemald. Prior to this, Alphinaud and Alisaie are told by their mother Ameliance that sometimes, words won't be enough, and that people need to speak with their actions. After going to Garlemald on a mission of mercy to provide aid, the Eorzeans are met with suicidal resistance from the remaining Garleans, many of whom see the Eorzeans as vultures who have come to pick over the remains of the Empire. Several Garleans die tragic, avoidable, and utterly pointless deaths rather than accept that the Eorzeans are there to help, despite that really being the reason that they're there. They even engage in a suicide mission to attack the Eorzeans, only stopping because the reinforcements the Garleans were counting on got wiped out. Alphinaud and Alisaie eventually realize the truth to their mother's words and come to the conclusion that actions, not words, are what are needed to convince the Garleans that they're there to help.
- Discussed in Final Fantasy XV. After completing a quest involving the hunter Dave's aunt Kimya, Kimya tells the party to pass along a message to her nephew- that he should believe in himself and make his own decisions. After finishing the quest, the party discusses Kimya's advice, as well as the fact that she'd had a falling out with her own sister (the former leader of the Hunters) over using methods to fight demons that her sister didn't approve of. Considering that Dave ultimately realizs that he's not ready to lead the Hunters, this suggests that faith in yourself isn't always a good thing.
Ignis: "Do not follow. Trust yourself." Sound advice.
Gladio: Reasonable enough, if a bit obvious.
Prompto: Though you could say that's what led Kimya to start a family feud.
Noctis: How can you trust yourself to always be right?
Ignis: Not as sound as I thought, perhaps. - Fire Emblem: Three Houses: You cannot satisfy or save everyone. Regardless of which house Byleth chooses or who they side with, they are guaranteed to make enemies with at least some of the playable cast by the time the war beginsnote , and while Byleth can convince some party members to defect to their side, none of the routes conclude with the entire playable cast surviving to the end.
- Mega Man Legends has a terrific one that comes from the villains. After their Last Villain Stand (Or so you think) against The Flutter when they're shot down, Tron apologizes for failing and Tiesel says "Don't worry your pretty little head over it, Tron. We tried our best, but sometimes your best isn't good enough. We lost fair and square. That's life." While it's jarring and not as optimistic as "you can achieve anything", it's also sound advice that not only teaches "you will fail sometimes, get used to it" but also that there's no shame in trying your best and failing.
- One of the biggest themes of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is the rise of new media (particularly the then-burgeoning internet) and in turn those who are willing to exploit it to control or outright censor the flow of information, including what turns out to be a Government Conspiracy (actually AI run horribly rampant after its Well-Intentioned Extremist creators lost control of their own systems) who are ostensibly motivated by the idea that humanity is far too biased, self-serving, and instigating of "junk data" to accept genuine truths and make reasonable decisions from them. This narrative culminates in a particularly harrowing moral: the Information Age is going to be a rough time as across the board as users are going to easily form secluded echo chambers that leave "real" discussion difficult to impossible, as well as enable those higher up on the social ladder to further dilute and alter the truth for their own benefit, making things even worse on account of being completely sociopathic.
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War has two tropes as its main themes: Necessarily Evil and He Who Fights Monsters. Essentially, someone needs to Shoot the Dog… but no matter how necessary the action is, you can expect to suffer horribly and be reviled for it. Summarized neatly in the Arc Words spoken by Shelob.
Shelob: How much are you willing to sacrifice?
- Needy Streamer Overload has quite a few:
- Changing for the better will not be painless, and nobody, regardless of how much they know or how close they are to you, can magically fix your problems: at some point, you really do have to suck it up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do the dirty work yourself. Ame is painfully aware of how unhealthy her current lifestyle is, and wants to change it - but, thanks in no small part to her troubled childhood and the bullying she faced in school, is terrified of the idea of having to go through that pain again, preferring to numb it through substance abuse and mindless media consumption despite knowing that this won't solve anything. Her desire to change without being hurt is so strong, in fact, that she's created multiple imaginary friends and romantic partners explicitly for this purpose, allowing her to, in effect, shunt the actual hard work of self-care and personal growth off on another part of her psyche - but this only serves to strain her fractured mind even further, and eventually she realizes that, if she really wants to become a better person, she needs to take things into her own hands and face her problems head-on rather than force someone else to work through her baggage for her.
- Escapism is a valuable tool to deal with life, but it should be done in moderation. Many of the game's Downer Endings are the result of Ame indulging too much in some sort of material pleasure to the point where it consumes her entire life - be it fatally overdosing on drugs, becoming addicted to sex and masturbation, gaining worldwide fame through her streams at the cost of her personal happiness, or starting a crazed cult with herself as the main figurehead - while the low-Stress and low-Darkness endings where Ame gets ahold of herself, leaves P-chan and starts earnestly trying to improve her way of life are framed as more bittersweet.
- NieR: Automata has an existentialist theme of "The world is cruel, unforgiving and meaningless, and just the act of being alive in such a world is terrifying, but it's still possible to find purpose in a purposeless world, or find new purpose if your purpose is lost."
- Palette features a "Just So" Story about the moon, explaining that it waxes and wanes as part of its efforts to match the sun and stars. However, it can never become as big as the sun or as small as the stars, and is constantly changing in a futile effort to maintain either charade. The moral of this story is presented as "Don't try to become something you're not."
- Papo & Yo has an intentional one, as the game is a thinly-veiled metaphor for the author's relationship with his alcoholic, abusive father.
Caballero: I heard these beautiful words from [my] therapist: "When someone wants to hit bottom, there's nothing you can do to stop them." When someone is self-destructive or destructive of others and you want to stop them, there's nothing you can do. They're looking for something there. They're getting something out of that destruction, and if you stay with them, you're gonna get destroyed. So the only thing you can do is let them go, and it is the most painful thing you can do in your life.
- Persona:
- Both Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth have a Hard Truth Aesop that, ironically, serves as a deconstruction of the very idea of one in the first place: just because someone knows the Awful Truth about themselves doesn't mean they'll automatically accept it, especially if that truth is antithetical to their values and how they view themselves as a person.
- In Innocent Sin, Maya never accepted her Shadow as an aspect of herself, making her unique among the series' playable characters who've interacted with their Shadows - because to do so, she would need to admit that she secretly hates her childhood friend group (who are also the other playable characters) for locking her in the Alaya Shrine on her last day in town, inadvertently leading to her almost being killed when the mad arsonist Tatsuya Sudou/King Leo set the shrine ablaze. Instead, Maya simply brushes the Shadow off as some sort of doppelganger that manifested through the conflicting rumors surrounding the incident.
- In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Rei also denied her Shadow, as it'd be like admitting she lived a short and meaningless life full of pain and suffering that ultimately amounted to nothing. The other characters try to convince her to accept it only for Rei to briefly transform into her Shadow, complete with golden eyes and demonic voice, to tell them off.
- Persona 3:
- Akihiko's character arc makes the point that no matter how strong you are, you cannot protect everyone. Ever since he failed to save his sister from a fire that destroyed their old orphanage, Akihiko has thrown himself into boxing and Shadow-hunting so he can, in his own words, never feel powerless again. The game pulls no punches in showing how unhealthy this attitude is, with him often expressing interest in going to Tartarus even when injured and always being eager to fight, with Mitsuru repeatedly expressing her concerns about him viewing their mission as a game. Shinjiro also notes that the two of them are very alike, in that they're both unable to let go of the past. It takes Shinjiro's death for Akihiko to finally get past this flaw, as he now realises that no amount of power will prevent him from getting hurt sometimes.
- The game also makes clear that while yes, We All Die Someday and our actions may be insignificant in the grander scheme of the universe, that doesn't give you an excuse to spend your life wallowing in stagnation and self-pity without doing anything to change it. At the end of the day, that "grand scheme" is just a nebulous thing that won't leave much of an impact on your mundane life unless you let it — it's the actions and words of you, and the people in your life, that bring about real, tangible change in the world.
- The central point of Persona 4 is that life is not fair. No matter how hard you work, you're not guaranteed any reward, others can and will be better than you without even trying, and part of growing up and becoming an adult is accepting that fact. The villain Adachi refuses to accept that, and lashes out at the world he believes he deserves something from by killing. The Investigation Team, all of which do learn this moral throughout the game, explicitly compare him to a spoiled child throwing a tantrum for not getting his way.
- Persona 5 has the main message that sometimes society and people are so corrupt and evil that the only way to make real change is to force them, sometimes through unethical means like vigilantism—and while forcing someone to take responsibility for their actions may not be taking the high road, it changes society for the better just as much as if they had decided to do it of their own free will.
- Both Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth have a Hard Truth Aesop that, ironically, serves as a deconstruction of the very idea of one in the first place: just because someone knows the Awful Truth about themselves doesn't mean they'll automatically accept it, especially if that truth is antithetical to their values and how they view themselves as a person.
- Phantasy Star IV has a Secret Test of Character that ends with the lesson that negative emotions like hatred and rage aren't evil, they're a necessary aspect what it means to be human.
- Pokémon:
- Bianca's entire character arc in Black and White is about learning the unfortunate truth that not everyone can become stronger than they already are. Bianca spends the first half of the game being the most excited of your friends to get a Pokémon and start her journey as a Pokémon trainer, even running away from home to do so. But while she's adequate, she's far from being on par with you or your mutual friend Cheren, and no matter how much she tries, the gap just continues to widen until she's forced to admit to herself that she'll never catch up, giving up her dream. This would be a downer if it wasn't for the uplifting follow-up aesop: "even if one goal doesn't work out, you can always work towards a new one." After giving up her attempts to be a trainer, she spends the second half of the game trying to find a new goal in life, soon discovering that her real passion lies in Pokémon research rather than battling. At the end of the game, she's an intern at Professor Juniper's lab, and by the sequels, she's a full-time lab assistant.
- The postgame Eevee sidequest in Sun and Moon provides some stunningly harsh and sober lessons about getting older that the game makes very little attempt to sugarcoat. In summation: you will get old someday, and as you do you'll likely have to give up on your interests and dreams from when you were younger and settle for a boring, mundane career as your priorities change to adult things like getting the bills paid (especially if you have a family) as shown by about half of the old trainers involved. There's a good chance your mind (the Jolteon trainer) and body (the Umbreon and Leafeon trainers) will simply start giving out on you as you age, and even if you manage to stave off aging on the outside with cosmetics, your body will continue to age on the inside (as shown by the Leafeon trainer). And finally, you will die someday (the Sylveon trainer already died and the one you battle instead is her granddaughter). The whole sidequest carries the somber implication that as the times go by and new generations take over, it's most likely that your accomplishments from when you were younger will be forgotten and will end up meaning nothing in the long run. However, there are different trainers who have jobs such as Bellhops and Firefighters, suggesting that you can get a job but still do Pokémon battling on the side.
- Legends: Arceus has this in their story. Distrust doesn't go away quickly, even when you have been in a place for a while and done much good for it. When Kamado banishes you from the village and declares you the source of the red sky, the villagers very quickly show that they never fully trusted you even after everything. The only ones who stood up for you or expressed faith in your innocence were ones who worked with you much more directly and personally knew you, like Professor Laventon and Cyllene.
- Larry, from Scarlet and Violet warns the player that you can't always just Be Yourself in real life.To demonstrate his point, his Terastallized Staraptor will use Facade, an attack that deals double damage if the user suffers a status ailment. He also mentions that he hopes that the child player character would have no need to wear a facade.
- While Red Dead Redemption has a few over-arching Aesops, the side quests mostly promote a philosophy of "Be careful doing nice things for people, because it may not end well for all involved". While there are some examples of a good deed having a genuinely good outcome, most do not follow this line of reasoning. Give an inventive aviator the means to create his flying machine? Congratulations, you just gave him the means to fly off of a cliff to his doom. Rescue a seemingly love-struck Chinese immigrant from cruel indentured servitude? Good job, you find out later his "love" is an addiction to heroin. Decide to rescue a mountaineer from rampaging Sasquatch? Nice work, you just single-handedly reduced a peaceful species to a single suicidal survivor. This even applies to minor side-activities, where stopping to help someone on the side of the road can get you either killed or left horseless. While mostly played for the sake of dark humor, the general message is the same; people will manipulate your sense of justice, honor or altruism to deceive you and sometimes the worst thing you can do for a person is giving them the help they seek. The main story itself has the aesop that it's extremely difficult to escape one's past, and to a lesser extent that law enforcement agencies are just as bad as the people they persecute.
- Remember Me tells us that painful memories, particularly painful, traumatic ones, are still valuable to us as people because they make us who we are.
- Shin Megami Tensei: In practically every game in the mainline franchise, you will eventually have to accept that sometimes there are no good choices, be it a permanent bad solution that only solves half the problem or a temporary good solution that isn't guaranteed to solve anything, and regardless of what you do choose, it will put you at odds with those close to you. But in the end you still have to choose what you believe is the best choice, and you have to live with the consequences of that choice.
- Sonic and the Black Knight has the message that We All Die Someday, so we should make the most of the time we have left instead of futilely trying to prevent the inevitable, which can cause its own problems.
- Tactics Ogre: Due to its War Is Hell narrative, a lot of these are presented.
- Reading the Warren Report about the people you fought showcases that the stage bosses include people who were poets or philosophers. One stage boss is going after you because you killed his brother - and you probably didn't even think twice about it.
- The fact that there are a lot of mutually exclusive characters gives a big aesop that you can't save everyone. While this is undermined slightly by the fact that this is possible via the Chariot system, it's there as an Acceptable Break from Reality.
- Early on in Azelstan's sidequest, the player has to save him twice. But the second time after he's saved, the little girl who has taken a liking to him is shot dead. And there is nothing the player can do about it. It's a Player Punch both that in fights like these, civilians can easily get killed but also that you can do everything right and still end up with bad things happening.
- An important figure in the game's backstory was King Dorgalua - seen as The Good King. However, he has been long dead by the time the game starts. Until, however, it's learned that after his wife and son died, his Rage Against the Heavens made him go into the underworld.
- In the Lawful route, Denam decides Utopia Justifies the Means and he did what he had to do. However, he is constantly called out for participating in the horrific deed that he did. Even when he tries to make amends for it, he has to work very hard to persuade people - and some still won't forgive him.
- In the Chaotic Route, Denam sticks to his principles. However, he spends almost all of the Chaotic route on the run and is told that you can't truly stick to your principles at all costs. While Denam is morally unsullied, he's also not actually doing much of anything. Having a set of principles is indeed an admirable thing, but it does not make life easy for him.
- In the Neutral route, Denam does indeed stick to his principles... but when things go wrong, casts them aside and rejoins the people who made his life difficult for all of chapter two. In doing so, he suffers a massive loyalty drop from several characters who joined him because he stuck to his principles (Notably Arycelle). Being "Wishy washy" has consequences. Just because you may easily forgive some people doesn't mean others will.
- Not everybody will believe you even if you are telling the truth. Denam spends a lot of the Neutral and Chaotic routes trying to convince people that he had nothing to do with the False Flag Attack on Balmamusa but many don't believe him. This is perfectly demonstrated with Occione in the remakes - while Denam can save her, she recognises him as the Butcher of Golyat but refuses to listen to him even as he tries to tell her the truth.
- Tales of Crestoria:
- People will believe what they want to believe. Even when confronted with the truth, someone might just reject the clear truth to continue living a comfortable lie. And it's all too easy for people in power to manipulate the truth for their own ends. Vicious, in particular, is dubbed "the Great Transgressor" and labeled to the public as some kind of monster from the moment he's born. So Vicious figures that he'll just give the people what they want, because nobody's willing to hear his side of the story. And that being the case, Vicious doesn't see the point of having a moral high ground when nobody's willing to listen to him. Even Ideal Hero Kanata has to admit that as harsh as Vicious can be about the world, he's not entirely wrong about how easy it is to manipulate people.
- The game pulls no punches in saying that feeling guilty about mistakes you've made doesn't magically absolve you of sin, nor does it change what you've done. You can't just suffer in silence and hate yourself for your sins, then pretend like that suffering and self-hatred somehow makes everything okay. Also, the people you've wronged are not obligated to forgive you for what you've done, even if you had a good reason to do it. And you aren't guaranteed to get a chance to absolve yourself of sin or make up for it, either. You just need to accept that the past is the past and move on with your life. Exemplified by the Character Catchphrase of Vicious when he transforms a party member into a transgressor: "Are you gonna own your sin, or are you gonna let it own you?"
- Tales of Symphonia:
- One of the major Aesops is about knowing when to quit, and that sticking to your beliefs isn't always a good thing. Lloyd and the Big Bad both act as a Deconstruction of the Determinator trope, with it morphing into Detrimental Determination for various reason. But Lloyd eventually becomes a Reconstruction of the trope, and the game pulls a Decon-Recon Switch by giving the aesop that a person needs to temper their determination and idealism with pragmatism. Even if Lloyd remains firm in fighting for his overall goal, having the moral high ground and a vision for a better future means nothing if he always thinks big picture and never takes the small steps to make sure that he can get what he wants. Meanwhile, the Big Bad stubbornly refuses to change to the bitter end, not caring about who he has to hurt or what he has to do to achieve his goal, with the world teetering to the brink of extermination as a result. Even when the very people that he was enacting his schemes for to begin with tells the Big Bad that what he's doing is wrong and he needs to stop, he still doesn't listen.
- Another Aesop is that when the oppressed rise up against their oppressors, they risk becoming oppressors themselves.
- During one cutscene, it is revealed that Exspheres are essentially the hardened essence of a dead human being and Lloyd becomes enraged at the prospect and tries to destroy his own, only to be quickly stopped by Kratos who points out that these objects are one of the few reasons they're even alive. It's not a particularly happy idea, but in a bad situation, sometimes the best tools you have can come from the worst possible places. Regardless of whether Lloyd agrees or not, he ultimately doesn't destroy his Exsphere, and eventually moves on from the revelation to use it in the best way possible. What we use may not always be a good thing , but it can still be used for good, especially if it already exists and thus can be put to good use. Of course, this is assuming that such a thing is in hands willing to do "good" with it, which ultimately is subjective given the people who made them, the Desians, see themselves as the chosen people carrying on the will of Cruxis against the humans that shunned and harmed them.
- Justice is subjective. People can easily throw it around to try and force their points of view upon others and use it to excuse their actions.
- As Regal notes, discrimination will always exist as people will find the pettiest of reasons not to like one another. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World expounds on his refutation of Mithos' plan to eliminate all racism by making everyone the same by having the human citizens of both Sylvarant and Te'thealla quickly develop a deep-seated hatred of each other, showing that bigotry will always exist in some form or another - it doesn't have to just be about race.
- Touken Ranbu: Changing history is bad, even if it's for the better. Your personal feelings on historical events ultimately don't matter, the past must be allowed to run its course and you must learn to move on, no matter how painful it makes you.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Sena's Ascension Quest, which focuses on Shania and how she was shaped into the person we meet, caps off with the aesop that just because someone is your parent doesn't mean that they love you. Shania's mother is shown to be a vile human being whose selfish nature caused untold suffering, and is contrasted with Monica and Ghondor's relationship which, while strained, is built on genuine love.
- The Walking Dead: Season Two: There are times when there simply are no good choices to make. Every choice that Clem makes in the season leads to a negative outcome.
Visual Novels
- Cinders has quite a few:
- It's often more important to be intelligent that it is to be kind. While you should always try to be kind, in many positions the only person who can make an actual difference is someone who knows what they are doing, regardless of morals.
- On the flip side, being both immoral and unintelligent is a recipe for disaster. Should Cinders become the Evil Queen, her being Stupid Evil drives the kingdom to ruin and it's all but stated that she dies in the violent uprising that her actions cause. Contrast that to the Good Queen, who while being an ineffectual leader is at least remembered fondly for her immense kindness.
- Just because you have a legitimate grievance against someone doesn't automatically make them the bad guy and you the good guy. As Madame Ghede points out, while Cinders has every right to hate Carmosa and her stepsisters for how they've treated her, she needs to remember that they are people with reasons for the way they act.
- Sometimes you are going to have to grit your teeth and work with people you hate. The only way that Cinders can gain control of her father's house without stooping to doing unethical things is to reconciling with her stepsisters and impressing Carmosa, as the house is ultimately legally Carmosa's.
- Doki Doki Literature Club! has several:
- "Love and friendship, while important, aren't replacements for therapy." This is exemplified by Sayori, who suffers from severe depression and has managed to keep it secret from the Main Character, her childhood friend, the entire time they've known each other and has never gone to therapy. When he learns this, he can either give her a Love Confession or a Platonic Declaration of Love, which she appreciates… and then wonders why it isn't making her happy. It doesn't help that Sayori, while she has feelings for him, also struggles with extreme self-loathing and feels like a burden on others, something that the Main Character genuinely wants to understand but doesn't know how to help with. Because of this and Monika's manipulations, regardless of the outcome Sayori ultimately hangs herself.
- "Don't assume that your friends are incapable of hurting you, especially if they're envious and if they have power". Monika literally manipulates the game reality they live in to make Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri more unstable. You have to be careful not to be gaslit if you're in the way of a person and what they really want.
- Fate/stay night has a few of these:
- General: There's no such thing as a perfect, flawless hero. They just don't exist. If someone is a Living Legend or The Ace, odds are they had to sacrifice an awful lot in order to become that person. The story also pulls no punches in showing that just because someone was seen as a hero in their time doesn't mean they will be now, with Gilgamesh being portrayed just as cruel, callous, selfish and childish as he would be viewed as in real life.
- Unlimited Blade Works: Dedicating your life to the benefit of others, and helping people out a sense of obligation rather than desire, makes you little more than a machine who feeds off the happiness of other people. However it may sound, life does require a degree of selfishness every now and then. If you want to help others, you should do it because it makes you happy, not because it makes others happy.
- Heaven's Feel: Sometimes, to protect what's most important to you, you have to abandon what you once believed in (or at least, what you thought you believed in).
- Save the Date (Paper Dino): Sometimes, Failure Is the Only Option. If Felicia goes on a date with you, she dies no matter what. The only ending in which she lives, barring hacking the game, is the one were you two never go on the date.
- The Song of Saya: Pursuing your love and disregarding what society says isn't always a good thing. Even if a romantic relationship is mutually and deeply loving, if it is also toxic and makes worse people of both partners while harming everyone around them, then the best thing to do for everyone involved is to break it off, for your partner's sake as well as your own, no matter how much it hurts. Fuminori and Saya are each other's light in a dark world, and will do anything to make each other happy, but Saya is a man-eating Eldritch Abomination who, as far as Fuminori knows, is an underage child. Fuminori explicitly disregards society's standards that condemn their relationship, but said relationship leads them to do things like kill innocent people and potentially dooms humanity. The "happiest" ending, in so far as it is the ending where most characters live, is the one where Saya leaves Fuminori for his own sake.
- Zero Escape: Junpei's subplot in Zero Time Dilemma basically goes 'Trusting people might fatally backfire on you, but trusting nobody will definitely kill you'. Even when the group he's in starts to actually work together, they do so not out of trust (or even mutual respect) but because they'll die if they don't and nobody has the time to think up a better plan.
Web Animation
- Red vs. Blue: After all of the shenanigans of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Church takes a moment to reflect on how he's learned that it's wrong to hate people based on arbitrary political or military delineations. Instead, you should strive to "despise people on a personal level." Obviously, it's not necessarily a great moral, but it still rings true to an extent in that one should not mindlessly hate just because they were told to and that decision should be made after getting to know a person well enough to judge them by your own standards.
Church: You should hate someone because they're an asshole, or a pervert, or snob, or they're lazy, or arrogant or an idiot or a know-it-all. Those are reasons to dislike somebody. You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level. Not because they're Red, or because they're Blue, but because you know them, and you see them every single day, and you can't stand them because they're a complete and total fucking douchebag.
- RWBY: The series has quite a few of these, especially in the later Volumes when the complex narrative is made clearer:
- The series makes it consistently clear that authority figures are not perfect, and that not everything they say and do is true, or necessarily to the younger generation's benefit. Every major authority figure, from Ozpin to James Ironwood, is shown overtime to be deeply flawed people who constantly keep on making terrible decisions based on faulty assumptions or outright falsehoods, and Team RWBY and JNPR find themselves being dragged into the mess of a Secret War the adults are part of, having to shoulder their mistakes and responsibilities despite being severely underprepared for it. This causes no shortage of problems, since the adults' web of deception poses a very real danger to the younger generation's ability to fight against Salem. Additionally, the flawed parenting of some of these adults have left deep trauma in their children, resulting in those children having to resolve their own problems in addition to the above.
- Being on the "right side" of a cause does not inherently make you a good or just person, or immune to falling into selfish or destructive behavior that could end up harming your own cause far more than your enemies. Adam Taurus, Ozpin and Ironwood end up being very notable cases of this. The first portrayed himself as a freedom fighter for the rights of Faunus, Ozpin portrays himself as the leader of a secret society dedicated to opposing the leader of the Grimm, and Ironwood the second is initially portrayed as a respected general while also being a part of said secret society. The series consistently shows however that this does not make their actions inherently correct or justifiable, with themselves often being as much of an obstacle to their own goals as the enemies they face:
- Adam at one point in his life was genuinely someone who did want to fight for the rights of Faunus, but Adam allowed himself to become consumed by his own bloodlust and started destroying his own faction out of ego and inability to let go of his entitlement in regards to his ex, Blake Belladonna. All the while his extremist behavior alienated less militant and more cautious Faunus in the process until the White Fang was nearly reduced to a cult hellbent on subjugating their enemies no differently than the humans, and also endangering the people he claimed to stand for due to the very real risk of his actions backfiring and painting all Faunus as being terroristic monsters. To make matters worse, the White Fang prior to him being leader was certainly at risk of becoming like this under Sienna Khan, but she was far more practical and understood the geopolitical complexities of their situation and recognized how dangerous his rhetoric was becoming... only for him to kill her.
- Ozpin's actions are revealed through sidestories and his backstory to have also played a large part in the many injustices in society, being so fixated on fighting to achieve his god-given mission that he ignored and papered over many of the societal issues in the Kingdoms, while also being too myopic to realize how self-destructive this is and implied to be repeating this course of actions for centuries. In addition, his extreme secrecy, constant tendency to only tell half-truths or leave out vital information that puts other people’s lives at risk has alienated many of his potential allies, or unintentionally been the catalyst for them turning on him.
- Ironwood is the most egregious case, with his reign over Atlas being intensely authoritarian, and said society being a police state that subjugates and oppresses its own people, enabling villains to easily exploit it and turn the citizens against him. While he tries to portray himself as a benevolent but tough leader, his care is shown very quickly to be extremely conditional and easily revoked, as well as being a massive hypocrite. Combined with his own inability to self-reflect and stubborn paranoia, and he causes just as many problems as the villains, to the point that when he finally faces off against Salem, he runs away and tries abandoning Remnant to the Grimm solely to avoid facing his own fear and the consequences of his incompetence and irrationality. All the while insisting that everyone else failed to be grateful to him for his sacrifices and lack of respect.
- Likewise, this applies to Ruby herself. Her Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers! attitude causes her to come into conflict with Ironwood when they couldn't come to a compromise on dealing with Salem's invasion, resulting in most of their troubles in Volume 8 stemming from their conflict, not helped with splitting up the group to deal with multiple conflicts, which in turn led to her having to invoke a ColonyDrop onto Mantle to save Penny... only for her to die anyways. Even after facing the consequences for her decisions, Ruby pushes herself forward and makes more mistakes in the process which severely damage her mental state but the rest of the team use her Wide-Eyed Idealist nature to continuously dismiss her obvious trauma as something she’ll easily get over because it's precisely how she always presents herself to her teammates. When Ruby finally has enough, she additionally calls them out for using her as a pet to justify how they resolve their own issues (I.e., Blake condemning even the most sympathetic White Fang members like Ilia because of her experiences with Adam, and Yang trying to paint the whole story like fairy tale by pinning all the world’s problems on Salem just because she had a hand in killing Summer Rose despite them both knowing the truth is much more complicated than that), in addition to the more serious ones at hand. It comes to the point she abandons the group and attempts to end her own life, leaving her team completely wrecked. Yes, even the Wide-Eyed Idealist is human and not someone to overly rely on.
- The real world is not a fairy tale. Sometimes there will be no victory, good intentions can make things worst, and doing your best won't always save the people you care about. Every member of Team RWBY and JNPR find themselves facing terrible situations and all they can do is make the best out of it but the results are almost never satisfying because no amount of preparation or effort can guarantee everyone involved will get their happy ending.
- Ruby and Jaune are constantly crushed under The Chain of Command and every casualty from their side is a blow to their self-esteem. Their struggle shows how incredibly taxing it is to be placed in a position where the safety of others is dictated by your abilities and no amount of training will prepare you for the guilt that comes with failure. Although the two grow immensely as the series progresses, they still find themselves in situations where it's downright impossible to save everyone and demonstrate how learning from your mistakes will not stop you from making more in the future.
- Blake wishes to find a peaceful and effective way to fight for equality but always finds herself relying on violence to protect her friends and family. Some people cannot be reasoned with as demonstrated when Yang and her are forced to kill Adam in self-defense after offering him several opportunities to leave them alone. The reality is violence is a necessary consequence when words and laws can't get through people, especially abusers who will doggedly refuse to acknowledge the pointlessness of their crusade and just let it go.
- In an inversion of this, the Hard Truth Aesop for Adam is that you sometimes just need to know when to call it quits. Letting your wounded ego and desire to harm your enemies drive your actions will only end badly, especially when you literally have nothing to gain from it and are ultimately just throwing away your life for no reason even after your enemy decided to show you mercy.
- Ironwood and Ozpin are an unusual case of this, in that their actions are layered with the outside facade of being "rooted in reality". However, their circumstances and subsequent behaviors reveal that they have a strong expectation that the world will just function according to what they believe should happen, even if reality goes against it. Ironwood has a high position in Atlas being both the head of its Academy and the General of its Military, and thus believes that Atlas' military might would be what will win the war against the Grimm. In reality, Atlas isn't as autonomous as Ironwood believes it to be, as it's also home to arrogance, elitism, and Cultural Posturing. While this was something that Ironwood had seen for himself, his Fatal Flaw was thinking that he could control both that part of Atlas and the underbelly that Atlas prefers to ignore.
- Ozpin is shown repeatedly to use fairytales as his way of trying to understand his current situation or to explain the situation to others (Using fairytales to explain the conflict between himself and Salem as being Black-and-White Morality, while the actual situation is much messier and more complicated than that, or thinking he could use the Staff of Creation to uplift Atlas as a symbol of humanity's greatness, only for it to backfire and turn Atlas into an authoritarian nightmare). The end result is that his methods end up failing miserably when pitted up against reality, which is too complicated to neatly fit into these kinds of categories, and unintentionally causes more damage than helps, especially compared to the far more pragmatic Salem.
- It's also reconstructed in that while it's true that the world isn't a fairytale, and the reality is that you can't always fix everything or achieve a total victory, it is still possible to make one's way towards a better ending if one is willing to work towards it and to keep trying. Yang and Blake's romantic situation would have been broken under any other circumstance due to Blake's fear from Adam's abuse causing her to abandon Yang (who has severe abandonment issues), and it does cause them serious tension and difficulty in the aftermath. But because both of them are willing to work through their issues and communicate with each other, they are not only able to repair the damage, but come out of it better, stronger, and closer than ever eventually culiminating in the closest thing to a fairy tale romance in the entire series when they confess their love to each other in a magical thunderstorm. It is hard, and it isn't always guaranteed, but the effort and willingness to try is very much worth doing.
- No amount of complaining about how "you never wanted this" will ever amount to anything. Your life has been decided by the bad choices of those who came before you, and even if you are wildly unqualified for a job, everyone will still demand that you fix it or they will hold you accountable for its failure. Oscar learns this lesson when he's chosen to be the next Ozma and forced out of his peaceful life at a very young age. No one, not even the good-natured heroes, ever question if the kid should become involved in the war against Salem and simply expect him to play the role that's been assigned to him as his failure could lead to the world's end. Although Ozpin and Ruby offer words of sympathy and encouragement, the truth is they can't do anything about Oscar's situation and the boy is stuck with a large burden on his shoulders.
- Trust is always a tricky thing, and recognizing that someone handled it poorly is no guarantee that you can do any better. Early in Volume 6, the heroes harshly and justifiably call out Ozpin for his rampant secrecy and lack of trust regarding an Awful Truth, causing him to retreat into himself while the heroes vow to approach the issue more honestly and united. When it comes time to tell Ironwood about what happened, however, they see that he's not ready to hear everything and decide to temporarily hold off with the full truth, uneasily aware that this is essentially what they berated Ozpin for doing while two of them ironically leak information that Ironwood told them to keep secret. When they do finally tell Ironwood of Ozpin's secrets, while he initially reacts calmly to the news (albeit needing some time to process this), once he got wind that Salem had already made her move as well as realizing that his own secrets were leaked, he began rapidly Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and declaring that the heroes are his enemies. Ultimately, the heroes admit that trust and secrecy are far more complicated than they previously thought, which on a positive note allows them to let go of their lingering anger and reconcile with Ozpin.
- Clinging onto a single philosophical worldview and doing anything to uphold it only causes damage those around you. A notable case is the Brother Gods, who were exiled from Ever After for this very reason: the Light Brother especially insists on upholding the Balance Between Good and Evil, with two equal forces constantly at odds with each other, when the Tree finds it more of an ecosystem. This had put him into conflict with his Dark Brother on several occasions to the point of toxicity whenever he wanted to do something to impress his older brother or outright anyone. And such refusal to learn this lesson, has caused problems in both Ever After and Remnant that last even now.
Web Comics
- Boy Meets Boy ends with the lesson that people change, friendships don't last, and you'll probably have to settle for second best, because the love of your life simply isn't interested.
- Cyanide and Happiness: This strip explains that criticism is not only useful, but essential to proper development. It features a father bluntly telling his son, who failed a spelling bee but still got a participation award, that he isn't automatically special and wonderful; he has to work for it. The dad is careful to distinguish this from parental love: "You are special to me, because you're my son. However, you aren't special to everybody else." He goes on to say that praising people regardless of their skill level and never giving useful, constructive criticism can be just as detrimental as mocking others. Criticism exists to make people aware of their own shortcomings, which in turn lets them become better people, and it's important to provide it. There's also a subtler Aesop about how being a parent means occasionally saying unpleasant things to your children, even if it hurts their feelings—it's better for such things to be said by someone who genuinely loves you rather than a bully.
- El Goonish Shive had one at the end of "Death Sentence": When confronted with a bad situation, one shouldn't simply decide that the worst outcome is inevitable and plan for that. People should, by all means, try to make better plans so that things might end peacefully and without anyone getting hurt. However, what they need to remember is that sometimes that isn't going to work at all, and their plan might be doomed from the beginning, and so if their plan goes to hell, they should be prepared for the bad ending- but that doesn't mean that they should stop making plans where Everybody Lives. It's a pretty depressing message, though the rather idealistic character to whom it gets delivered accepts it (but not happily).
- One of the possible endings to Friendly Hostility teaches us that even with the best intentions, you can't force a relationship to last.
- Jack has a few overarching themes in its stories, mostly centering on the nature of sin, punishment, repentance, and redemption, understandable for a comic about Heaven and Hell. One of these is that almost no one is good enough to get into Heaven, and almost everyone who goes Hell will never get out… not because of anything they do or don't do personally, but because Hell itself can screw them out of their chance at redemption.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal features in-universe humorous examples.
- For example, the hare put in far less effort than the tortoise, but still got second place, which is, you know pretty freaking good.
- The Uncomfortable Truthasaurus gives us several nasty ones. Not everyone has a talent or is smart, and the ones that have "special talents" had to work a lot to acquire said talents. What virtually everyone wants in a relationship is someone attractive and of high social status.
- For example
- Sluggy Freelance ends the "Aylee" Story Arc with An Aesop that you should always stand by and trust your friends, even if there's a very real chance they might destroy all life on Earth.
- Penny Arcade has one that combines an Imaginary Friend with a Precision F-Strike.
- Walkyverse has "Morals mean diddly squat without experiences to back them up… which is a license to screw around and do stupid things".
- The Oglaf strip Bilge teaches one in a humorous manner; hard work, sacrifice, and dedication mean nothing without practical knowledge and skills. The plot is that a group of villagers have spent months building a ship to fight the Vikings, but the finished ship itself is utter crap and stands no chance in an actual fight. One of the villagers tries to get them to back out of fighting by saying, essentially, that no amount of hard work and determination can create good products without knowledge of how to properly make it. The other villagers ignore him, not wanting to have wasted their work, and promptly suffer a humiliating defeat.
A lot of people gave very selflessly to build this warship so we can go out and battle the Vikings. But the time has come to admit that hard work and hope are no substitute for actual knowledge, and that we've made a really shitty ship. If we sail this ship against the Vikings, we'll be massacred immediately. I suggest we break it up for scrap, never speak of it again.
Web Original
- In Dragon Ball Z Abridged's rendition of Android 16's pep talk to Gohan before he goes Super Saiyan 2, it goes from an understanding speech about how it's not wrong to fight for what you love to 16 viciously ripping Gohan apart for acting like he's the only one of the cast who suffers, and for rigidly sticking to his pacifist principles instead of doing the right thing.
Android 16: Cell was right, you think you're better than everyone else. But there you stand, the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs, and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns. You were a coward to your last whimper.
- The Aesop of "Why Lying is OK!" by Matthew Santoro is that some lies are necessary for society to function and that always telling the truth is a bad thing.
- Discussed at length in The Nostalgia Critic's "Top 11 The Simpsons Episodes", where he names "Bart Gets an F" his favorite episode of the show, in large part, because it's the rare piece of pop culture that's brave enough to teach "Failure is an unavoidable part of life — and we all fail sometimes, even when we try our very hardest." He argues that this is one of the most important lessons that anyone can learn, but admits that it's rarely used as An Aesop in pop culture because it's so much more uplifting to show a protagonist succeeding through hard work. In the same episode, Critic discusses this trope when naming "Homer's Enemy" one of the 11 best episodes of the show. He sums up the episode's moral as "Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason, and sometimes dumb people are rewarded more than smart people", but argues that the episode is brilliant because it faces such a grim message so unapologetically, and manages to make it surprisingly funny.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Your salary comes from somewhere; a workplace with good working conditions and good pay may have engaged in unethical business practices in order to achieve them. During the Mysterious Somebody era, PPC agents were paid well and had reasonable working hours, but the organization also ran a factory that manufactured Mary Sues for profit and had a brutal Secret Police department meant to protect their dark secrets.
- CGP Grey: "Rules for Rulers" is one long, sobering explanation of why corruption, backstabbing, seemingly irrational decisions are Inherent in the System. Whether in a democracy or a dictatorship, power is mainly about controlling wealth and who gets it. If you want to hold onto power, you have to engage and even kowtow to powerful interests by giving them a share of the "treasure" (straight-up cash in dictatorships, more legal favors like subsidies and tax breaks in democracies). If you don't and instead spend that treasure on other things- such as improving the lives of your citizens- someone offering them that money will convince them to overthrow you. You also can't avoid systems of power, since they exist in everything from governments to corporations to tiny HOAs. The most you can do is ensure the least powerful and most honorable members of a system also have influence, as they keep the truly selfish and treacherous in check if everyone benefits more than just a few. But even after explaining this, it's also made clear that without power, you can't affect anything. If you want to see change, it's a game you have to know how to play - and that dictatorships often end up ruining themselves because one can have a system that benefits many agents or one than benefits the guys on top and nobody else - and a system without strong supports is fragile, miserable, or both.
- The Homestuck Epilogues has the aesop "not everyone you were close to as a teen will grow up to be a good person." To this end, it performs a major Happy Ending Override on Homestuck, and shows how the protagonists of Homestuck—characters that people have followed and cared about for years—fail to overcome the beliefs and social pressures of the worlds they were born in and slowly become neglectful, apathetic, and sometimes abusive to their loved ones. Two of them even become outright terrible people.