Unfortunate Implications

Let's just say Vogue managed to get themselves into trouble.

"I'm amazed sometimes at the subtext that writers don't spot in their own work."

— Diamanda Hagan

The media to which TV Tropes is devoted generally exhibit greater sensitivity now than in the past. However, even when authors are being careful with story elements, it's impossible for them to know every single person in the world's opinion or how certain tropes may be construed as offensive, especially when you consider just how diverse human beings really are. When a work's content offends a large enough audience in a way that the author did not expect, you get this.

This is a highly subjective Audience Reaction, and since in the past this page became bogged down in arguments between tropers who believe that concerns about such matters simply relate to an overreach of "political correctness", and tropers who view the entire "political correctness" argument as a plausibly deniable defense of bigotry, no example may be added to this article without proof that it's not just one person's thinking. Citations are done as follows:

• Blah Story Blah Blah Circumstance Blah Blah Implication Blah. Example Website

• The citation needs to record the opinions of several people; a citation that mentions only one person isn't enough.
• The citation should be in a reputable source. We'd prefer you cite something a bit more formal than someone's Tumblr blog or Twitter feed. Anyone can write a blog post and then call it a "citation".
• Also, citations stuck behind paywalls or mandatory logins don't count. If people can't see your proof, then it doesn't prove much.

Keep in mind that Unfortunate Implications are unintentional. An intended offensive message (for example, a piece of Axis propaganda about Jews) does not belong here, nor does natter about the author's true intentions. Also, for something that may not be offensive to you personally but may offend others in a different culture or time period (or vice versa), see Values Dissonance.

If you came here looking for unfortunate implications of the Nightmare Fuel variety, rather than the hopefully accidental offenses with which this trope concerns itself, see Fridge Horror. If something with this kind of content offends everyone, regardless of audience or time or place, then it's an Audience-Alienating Premise. If unfortunate implications are caused by the modern audience by once-innocent words changing meaning over time, it's Have a Gay Old Time. If a work's unfortunate implications become more famous than the work itself, then it's Overshadowed by Controversy.

To avoid these pitfalls, please see So You Want To Avoid Unfortunate Implications.

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Subjects susceptible to Unfortunate Implications include:

• Highly controversial topics such as politics, religion, and sex.
• Subject matter related to race, ethnicity, and class, such as slavery or colonialism.
• Anything related to the Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes, especially those that seemingly blame a victim for their own assault or link rape to Character Development.
• Allusions to historical atrocities like the Holocaust. 9/11 counts as a modern example.
• Anything related to Nazi Germany, (and for some) Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union. The British Empire can be a bit tricky too.
• Stereotypes of any kind.
• Double Standards and sexism.
• LGBT+ related material.
• Parallels between fantasy/science fiction works and the real world, especially with Fantasy Counterpart Cultures and Space Jews.
• Subject matter related to disabilities and handicapped people.
• Lifestyle choices, such as being childless, having a large family, being single, or being married.
• Anything cultural, especially when handled clumsily.
• Any words that are supposed to mean one thing, but may or may not be misconstrued as another.
• A lot of Glurge tends to fall into this category, too.
• Mockery of targets people think should not be mocked.
• Glorification of widely reviled cultural figures.

The following tropes are cited as common sources of Unfortunate Implications:

• All Gays Are Pedophiles - [1]
• Cure Your Gays - [2]
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male - [3]
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male - [4]
• Insane Equals Violent - [5]
• Madonna-Whore Complex - [6]
• Missing White Woman Syndrome - [7] (although this trope can be discussed in relation to gender, it is less focused on than its racial aspects)
• Monochrome Casting - [8]
• Repressive, but Efficient - [9]
• Sassy Black Woman - [10]
• Scary Black Man - [11] (this trope has led to black men being murdered in Real Life, apropos of nothing else)
• Spicy Latina - [12]
• Trans Character, Cis Actor, especially the Cross-Cast Role variety - [13] [14]
• White Man's Burden - [15]

noreallife

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Example subpages:

• Advertising
• Comic Books
• Films — Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Anime & Manga

• Attack on Titan:
  • Dot Pixis, whom the author stated was modeled after General Akiyama Yoshifuru, sparked a massive Flame War over Akiyama's war record, with some detractors even thinking he was a World War II war criminal (despite having died long before the war even took place). That said, some speculate that he may have played some part in the Port Arthur massacre, yet another point of friction between Japan and the countries they fought with during the early 20th century.
  • There's an article about the franchise titled "The Fascist Subtext of Attack on Titan Can’t Go Overlooked''. Writer Tom Speelman claims that the manga and anime are "full of anti-Korean, nationalist, pro-Japan subtext, parallels to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and subtextual references to Nazi Germany." It centers on plot points late in the story that reveal the answers to the central Ontological Mystery, particularly comparisons between the depiction and treatment of the Eldians, especially the ones who become Titans and anti-Semitic propaganda.
• Carole & Tuesday: Many articles have pointed out that the show's depiction of Dahlia, an intersex character, can be transmisogynistic and racist, as she is portrayed as a violent brute.
• Cross Ange: The show has been widely criticized for its sleazy, tasteless use of Gratuitous Rape in the first two episodes. The ANN review team's first impressions are representative.
• DARLING in the FRANXX: Jacob Chapman has written a Twitter thread on what he regards as the show's "harmful worldview": "The targets of fear and derision in FRANXX hop from aggressive women to gender-nonconformity to childless or infertile adults to Literally An Alien Hivemind", which, according to the show, are "...evidence that the world 'went wrong'". Chapman points out that the show's stances concerning gender roles and human relationships give it a misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic bent, and have been used to oppress sexual minorities. He also points out the show's reactionary tone in that it "... takes current-day societal anxieties, exaggerates them, and poses that the solution is to double down on the status quo even harder, framing oppression of others as *true* rebellion."
• Death Note has attracted fire for implicit misogyny. This started with the brief tenure in the story of former Naomi Misora, a former FBI Agent who is briefly shown to be a talented investigator (and got an Expansion Pack Past in the prequel)... but whose concerns are dismissed by her active-duty fiancee Raye Penber whom she left the job to marry (even her English voice actor Tabitha St. Germain criticized that scene) and then unceremoniously killed off by Light. The only other female character in the series with any agency worth mentioning is Misa Amane, an Ax-Crazy fangirl of Villain Protagonist Light whose presence in the story is almost entirely counterproductive to everyone involved, and whom even while dating her to keep her around for his use, he openly cheats on with his high school flame Kiyomi Takada—who doesn't fare any better herself, being made by Light to kill Mello and then burn herself to death.
• The Discotek Media rerelease of Lupin III: The Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure put a disclaimer concerning the work's homophobic content due to the main villain Hermann Von Diett being a homophobic stereotype, ranging from him being a cross-dressing misogynistic Neo-Nazi cult leader, to his name being a pun on the word "hermaphrodite" to the several gay panic-style jokes towards his subordinates.
• EX-ARM: Minami and Alma's kisses are always subject to Kissing Discretion Shots because the creators weren't capable of making a convincing kissing animation. As Mother's Basement points out, since these are lesbian kisses, this could easily be misinterpreted as homophobic censorship.
• My Hero Academia: Chapter 259 revealed the Doctor (the evil scientist assisting All For One and Tomura Shigaraki)'s name to be Maruta Shiga, with many people noting that the name "Maruta" was likely a reference to project Maruta, a project done by Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II that involved inhumane experimentation on various people which included live vivisection, weapon testing, and forced pregnancies. While this name fits Horikoshi's tendency to give his characters punny/meaningful names, the "unfortunate" part comes in when you realize that "Maruta", meaning "logs" in Japanese, was the name given to the test subjects, as the official cover story for the facility was that it was a lumber mill. Fans were very upset with the idea of a character as vile as the Doctor being named after the victims of a horrible experiment instead of the perpetrators, especially the ones from China^note it even led to the series being taken down online there and South Korea where the scars are still prominent. Horikoshi later apologized for this on his Twitter account, where he clarified that the reference was unintentional and that he would change the Doctor's name in future chapters.
• Naruto: As detailed in an essay within Manga's Cultural Crossroads, written by Yukari Fujimoto, which was reported by Sage's Rain, Kishimoto has a tendency of portraying women in antiquated and limited roles that leave them underdeveloped when compared to their male counterparts. In addition, female characters are almost always written in a fashion where their storylines or motives are devoted towards supporting or serving male characters in traditional roles expected of women, such as healers, housewives, or mothers. As such, women in Naruto lack the agency or ability to be anything but supporting characters or love interests for their male counterparts, whom do not suffer from any of these issues. This is corroborated by Kishimoto himself, to a point, in a 2014 interview with Shonen Jump Magazine where he admits that he is not very good at writing female characters.
• One Piece: While there has always been some controversy about Eiichiro Oda's portrayal of female characters (like their near homogenized designs compared to the wide variety of male characters and Oda's alleged protectiveness from serious injuries since his daughter's birth), complaints have reached a head during the Dressrosa arc.
• While Sister Krone of The Promised Neverland is a popular character with a complex backstory, some readers were made uncomfortable by her less-than-flattering depiction as a black woman, with her cartoonishly grotesque features, expressions, and somewhat animalistic demeanor in some scenes that are seen as reminiscent of old racist caricatures.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: A number of critical viewers have pointed out, in regards to the explanation that Kyubey contracts teenage girls because they are overly emotional — and thus have the most energy to harvest and exploit — that the show's crux (and the Magical Girl system in general) relies on the Hysterical Woman stereotype. The inevitability of the witch process makes this even worse, as all it does is propel the notion that girls and women are too weak-willed and capricious to handle power. This is especially harrowing once you realize that Magical Girl is supposed to celebrate women with power, not condemn it. It's only made worse with later episodes heavily implying Sayaka's contract had nothing to do with talent; it was to pressure Madoka into making one. So evidently any random girl can contract, but boys never can.
• Ranking of Kings: Viewers have pointed out that one of the chapters could potentially be interpreted as an allegory to Japan's colonization of Korea. This has generated controversy, such as one user describing the title as "a poorly thought-out manga that projects an internet right-winger's image of Korea onto a group of fictional people.", and another writing, "I hope Koreans read this and see the truth about themselves."
• Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac: Andromeda Shun's gender change from man to woman (named Shaun in this adaptation) brought a worldwide negative reaction and that has been mentioned by both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking media, as Shun was rather unique for a guy character at his time of creation being the Sensitive Guy in a team of Manly Men and a Badass Pacifist with feminine motifs that were taken seriously. To Gender Flip that character unintentionally sent out the message that an unconventional guy wouldn't fly in that universe.
• Your Lie in April: Many accuse this series, even on this Wiki, of poorly handling the subject of abuse. Kousei is more or less bullied into going back into the source of his trauma, despite his objections. The narrative paints his abusive childhood as just him making excuses, and Kousei ends up wishing his mother would forgive him despite what she had done. Even with accepting the slapstick comedy the series also unintentionally pushes the message that exposure therapy is the best method to overcoming past trauma. As noted Kaori and Tsubaki resort to essentially bullying Kousei into finally playing piano again.

Comic Strips

• An Australian political cartoon depicting Serena Williams' infamous outburst at a 2018 grand slam attracted considerable controversy for depicting the tennis star as a large black woman with big red lips having a tantrum (one commentator described her depiction as "unnecessarily Sambo-like"). It didn't help that her opponent Naomi Osaka, a half-black half-Japanese woman, and the umpire Carlos Ramos, who is also dark-skinned albeit Portuguese, were both depicted as white (with the former having blonde hair).
• Dennis the Menace (US): Hank Ketcham attempted to integrate the strip in 1970 by introducing Jackson, a black playmate for Dennis. The result flooded Ketcham with angry letters, saying Jackson was an unnecessary Sambo-like stereotype. To Ketcham's credit, later issues of the comic book and an animated series from The '80s had Dennis interacting with much more positive examples of minorities.
• Garfield: Jim Davis got himself in hot water with this strip where a spider taunts Garfield about becoming a decorated hero if Garfield lays the newspaper on him. The final panel has the spider getting his wish in the form of "National Stupid Day". Complaints ensued that it was insensitive to the military (the strip was posted on Veterans Day no less), and Davis later apologized for it.
• A Malaysian newspaper got in hot water for running a strip that showed Ultraman (representing Japan) running from a tsunami a few days after an earthquake and tsunami occurred in Tōhoku in 2011.
• A Rugrats newspaper comic strip had caused some controversy for featuring a scene where Tommy Pickles was wondering about the true meaning of a traditional Hebrew mourning hymn while attending a Synagogue with Grandpa Boris. Many readers had accused the comic strip of showing Antisemitism as the strip seemed to be patronizing such a solemn prayer. Readers also complained about how Grandpa Boris seemed to be shown as a stereotypical Nazi-era depiction of Jews because of his big nose (although Ashkenazi Jews are quite fond of Boris and his wife Minka).
• A Valentine's Day post from the official Peanuts Twitter account had the caption, "You're one of the best people I know." Seems sweet at first… except the accompanying image shows Charlie Brown telling the Token Minority Franklin, "You're one of the good ones." Obviously, this tweet didn't stay up for long before people started calling it out, and the Twitter account later deleted the image, explaining it was meant to be a "celebration of friendship" and not anything racist.

Fan Works

• An In-Universe example in Dear Diary: After telling her favorite childhood story, Opal acknowledges that, looking back, it has a lot of Unfortunate Implications, as it portrays wild Pokémon as weak and insignificant side characters who could never really understand the heroism and loyalty of a trained Pokémon.
• Guys Being Dudes: In-Universe, Arlo brings this up in reference to the completely submissive/scared Uke archetype being readable as normalizing abuse while he and Spark discuss how bad the movie they saw at the park was.

Films — Animated

• Upon its release, Aladdin came under fire by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee for the infamous lyric "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face" in the opening song "Arabian Nights". The line was changed to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense" for the VHS release, and has been changed in every other adaptation as well. The current official line first used in the 2019 live-action remake is "Where you wander among every culture and tongue"; the word "barbaric" in the following line is also changed to "chaotic".
• The Angry Birds Movie has been accused of spreading a message that can best be summarized as: "Immigrants will come into your country, steal your resources, and destroy your home."
• Barbie of Swan Lake: Some people find that Rothbart's appearance - in particular his exaggerated hooked nose - his obsession with gaining power, his daughter's own fixation with jewellery and his name having Jewish roots, all makes him come across as a negative stereotype of Jewish people. At least some of this probably wasn't intentional (for example, Rothbart's facial features were likely designed to resemble a bird of prey given his Animal Motif) but several viewers have commented on the unfortunate associations. It really doesn't help that the heroine of the film is a blonde, blue-eyed white woman.
• Batman: The Killing Joke: The Adaptation Expansion that was supposed to be an Author's Saving Throw for Barbara's treatment in the graphic novel is even worse than in the source material, as she's treated as Ms. Fanservice and given an arc portraying her as an emotionally needy girl seeking out a relationship with Batman rather than a platonic friend and heroic protégé.
• Because of all the praise regarding the same-sex parents in the trailer for The Boxtrolls, some people may be disappointed when they find out the film had some uncomfortable transphobic implications, including playing the reveal of the cross-dressing character as a textbook Unsettling Gender-Reveal. This review brings this issue up, complaining that there was only one female character in the movie "unless you want to count the man-in-drag figure, via whom the movie adds a dash of transphobia".
• Stephen Krosecz of Animated Analysis argues that the heroes of Cars 2 are prejudiced against the Lemon cars, that the film doesn't seem to treat this as a bad thing, and that one could interpret this as an ableist message. Likewise, Jack Saint has observed eugenics undertones in the film. Oakwyrm also notices ableist undertones in the treatment of lemon cars, such as Mater casually making anti-lemon remarks and even remarking that he sees towing lemons as a key source of income, and notes that if cars are sentient and the discontinuation of lemons is treated as normal, that sounds disturbingly like eugenics.
• Charming:
  • Multiple reviewers have criticized the writing of the female characters in the film — outside of Lenore, pretty much none of the women have a role outside of "falls for Phillipe at first sight because of his curse" (making them all come off as incredibly shallow personality-wise), the princesses are given stereotypical Alpha Bitch personalities and no other depth (which doesn't even make sense in Cinderella's case, given she wasn't a princess by birth in either the original tale or the Disney movies that this film targets), and the main villainess' motivation is a stereotypical Woman Scorned plot.
  • In addition to pointing out the above in her own review, Musical Hell also took issue with the presence of the Matilija, which aside from them being giants play the Cannibal Tribe trope completely straight (being people-eaters who are predominantly dark-skinned and dressed in African-inspired face paint and jewelry). And since they're all women, they fall into the same issues as the above — and on top of all that, the fact that the only one who's not skinny as a rail decides to make Phillipe her husband is played for comedy.
• Disney's Chicken Little didn't sit well with some viewers because of the way the story treats Foxy Loxy. She's a popular, athletic tomboy and a bully. And by the end of the film, not only is she the only real antagonist, but she's also mind raped into becoming docile and feminine after being trapped, terrified, in a featureless, black void. When a cure is offered, Runt exclaims "She's perfect!" and she instantly becomes his girlfriend. So her character arc ends with her being brainwashed into becoming traditionally feminine, and no one advocates for her right to her own personality because a boy likes her better this way. The issue of gender roles hasn't gone unnoticed.
• The Chipmunk Adventure: A critique at Cracked compared this film to "a 'best of' for the cinematic xenophobia of [the 1980's]" because most non-American characters are portrayed in a negative light: the villains are German (with a hint of Incest Subtext), the European policemen ambush and scare the children, the Chipettes are given to a young Arabian prince as sex slaves, an African tribe almost kills the Chipmunks, and some Mexican sombrero-wearing locals act like maniacs by randomly firing their guns into the air.
• Coco: As this video points out, the film features a portrayal of a border control system in the afterlife that risks normalizing a militarized border. Notably, the border system in the film, while portrayed as an obstacle, is never outright condemned. And the film's happy ending contends with portraying the border as a simple fact of life, in contrast to how other corrupt systems like the Scream Factory in Monsters, Inc. are dismantled and replaced.
• Elemental (2023):
  • Pixar posted a Tweet advertising the movie captioned "Unleash your wildfire side." Unfortunately, they tweeted it during one of the worst Canadian wildfires in recent history. Fans and detractors alike accused Pixar of insensitivity towards those affected by the wildfires and the drifting smoke affecting air quality in Canada and the northeastern United States. Not helping matters is that the movie poster the Tweet was parodying was of Turning Red which takes place in Toronto, Canada. Pixar deleted the Tweet in response to the backlash.
  • Pixar made a fake fancam showing several scenes of a young elemental child named Clod flirting with the adult Ember. But people accused them of promoting sexual predator behavior because it shows a small child flirting with an adult. Not helping matters is that the reason Ember cited for repeatedly turning him down is that "elements don't mix" rather than his age, so Pixar quickly took the fancam down.
• The Emoji Movie:
  • This article points out how female Jailbreak is the only emoji to have a full body, as if the designers went overboard in establishing that yes, she's a girl.
  • For whatever reason, the movie's official Twitter account decided to post an image parodying The Handmaid's Tale, which is about a woman forced into institutionalized rape by an oppressive theocracy. This was widely criticized as tasteless and offensive and the offending tweet itself was taken down two days after it was initially noticed.
  • This review brings up that the movie suggests you can delete trolls in the same manner that someone can delete emails, apps and emojis. Anyone who is familiar with what trolls actually are can see a problem with this.
  • Some reviewers have pointed out how Gene reverting back to his "meh" personality after Jailbreak rejects his romantic advances conveys the message that you can't ever truly be yourself unless you snag a romantic partner.
• Foodfight!:
  • The Nostalgia Critic, JonTron, and DStecks all pointed out in their reviews that The Reveal that Lady X is an old prune mascot implies that "ugliness = bad". And that's only one example of Beauty Equals Goodness in a movie that consistently plays it straight (although you'd be hard-pressed to say that anyone in the movie is actually appealing, given the animation).
  • Some people also consider the movie homophobic due to Vlad Chocool's Depraved Homosexual behaviour (for the record, he's the only gay character in the movie). And then there's all the racist and sexist unironic caricatures…
• Free Birds has been criticized for equating the struggles of Native Americans to turkeys being on the Thanksgiving menu. The "Indian" turkeys also speak broken English.
• How to Train Your Dragon 2: The Big Bad of the film, Drago Bludvist, being the first non-white character of the franchise, has attracted some backlash for unintentional racism.
• Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom: The AV Club has critiqued the film for turning H. P. Lovecraft into a cute Kid Hero, as he was actually a horrid racist.
• The Incredibles:
  • The first movie has been compared to the works of Ayn Rand and has an in-universe demonstration of Nietzsche's concept of Herd Morality. It doesn't help that the villain does have a widely-recognized superpower (super-intelligence and tech genius, of the Iron Man variety), but in-universe, he's considered a disgruntled mundane because he had to actually work for his powers where real supers' gifts are natural and effortless.
  • There's an In-Universe example in the Pixar short film Mr. Incredible and Pals, the plot of which is Mr. Incredible and Frozone watching the unaired pilot of a show about them. Frozone (a black superhero) is highly upset that (among other things), they lightened his skin tone considerably, made him speak in Jive Turkey, and made him the Distressed Dude while his (white) friend Mr. Incredible rescues him.
  • When Brad Bird revealed that the reason Frozone's wife, despite having an unused character design, was never seen on screen was simply because she's funnier as a voice, people pointed out that black women are already rarely represented onscreen in animation and her few lines, memetic as they are, painted her as just a Sassy Black Woman.
• In The Jungle Book (1967), orangutan King Louie was originally intended to be played by Louis Armstrong (a fact made fairly obvious by his name), but they realized that casting a black actor as an ape (who sings a song about how he wants to be human) could be seen as this, so they chose Sicilian-American Louis Prima instead, which incidentally kept The Danza aspect of the original choice. However, critics have pointed out that the ethnicity of Louie's voice actor is irrelevant because the characterization of Louie himself still draws on stereotypes about African-Americans. Having a white man play a character who is, for all intents and purposes, a stereotype of black people is also problematic in its own right.
• Mars Needs Moms, as this Something Awful review points out, risks coming across as one of the more alarmist tomes on parenting from the '50s. The Martian women, who assume the roles of societal leaders, need to abduct human mothers to serve as templates for maternal care — because a powerful working woman apparently can't be a loving mother at the same time. The Martian men thus have no role in their society and become something between hippies and gay stereotypes. And the Martian girl explicitly says at the end that the only way for a child to truly feel loved is if they're raised by two parents, which must have been interesting for all the single parents in the audience to explain to their kids afterwards.
• Hasbro's official synopsis for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is "Learn all about the magical parallel universe with high schools instead of castles, where six pony friends become real girls with a love for fun and fashion." The implications come from the unintentional Ambiguous Syntax of "real girls". While the intended reading was that the girls in the movie are humans, rather than horses like in the TV show, Amanda Duncil from Feminspire took a No True Scotsman interpretation that it was saying that "real girls" must love fashion and fun, combined with the ridiculously thin bodies of the girls that reinforce a stereotypical and unrealistic idea of beauty.
• Pocahontas has come under fire from numerous Native American groups (example) for whitewashing history and turning a story of kidnapping, rape, and genocide into a family-friendly romance guaranteed not to make white Americans uncomfortable. There's also a lot to be desired from the equivalency between Native Americans and the colonists in "Savages".
• There was considerable backlash towards Ralph Breaks the Internet after the official trailer was released, as it featured Pocahontas, Tiana, and Mulan with lighter skin colors than how they looked in their original respective films. While Tiana's was fixed, Pocahontas and Mulan's remained unchanged in the final product.
• Raya and the Last Dragon:
  • As put here, the film's main criticism is its Cultural Chop Suey of various Southeast Asian cultures to the point of being unrecognizable by its Southeast Asian audiences. Very much not helped in that most of the cast are East Asian actors, which implies Disney views no difference between the various regions of Asia and ends up perpetuating this belief to its general audiences due to how it handles depicting the continent.
  • A group of Southeast Asian commentators has summarized various misgivings from the wider Southeast Asian community regarding the film's questionable and often poorly-researched handling of representation:
    • Firstly, the movie's external marketing and Disney's handling of the property had the habit of speaking over and pushing Southeast Asian creators to the fringes of a movie about their culture, while promising a great deal of authenticity which it ultimately didn't deliver on.
    • Secondly, a good deal of whatever cultural representation is present tends to be fairly shallow and stripped of its deeper cultural meaning. Additionally, the work's core theme of trust and unification among the nations is seen by many Southeast Asians as in hilariously poor taste, given the many vast differences and conflicts between their countries, including a history of warfare colonialism not just from European outsiders but also one another.
    • Thirdly, the relationship between Raya and Namaari is criticized for being a halfhearted attempt at Bait-and-Switch Lesbians that is poorly-handled due to Namaari's lack of sympathetic qualities, and which made the questionable choice of relying on Western-style Butch Lesbian stereotypes to make Namaari Ambiguously Gay instead of homaging authentic Southeast Asian LGBTQ culture (and the one time it did try that, it got it hilariously wrong^note Raya and Namaari refer to each other as "dep la", seemingly a way to sneak Bilingual Bonus flirting in with the Vietnamese term for "strangely beautiful". However, in addition to being grammatically awkward, Vietnamese is a tonal language, and whoever inserted the term into the script either forgot to inform the voice actors of the correct tones or failed to do the appropriate research, so it often sounds like they're calling each other the much less romantic-sounding "screaming sandals" instead).
• Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken: The plot's second to third acts hinge over the titular protagonist having her life saved by and befriending a member of a fantasy race, a mermaid named Chelsea, and striving for peace after finding like-minded views and experiences as teenage girls feeling alone and having to hide who they are. This friendship is in spite of Ruby being told by her grandmother that mermaids are inherently evil and should've been all killed when the moment was possible. Ruby's mother, Agatha, also immediately disapproves of Ruby befriending a mermaid and insists to her daughter that she's dangerous and not truly her friend all because she's a mermaid. Because Chelsea is revealed to be Evil All Along at the last 15 minutes of the film and Ruby's family's hatred of mermaids as a whole is validated, people saw it as a potential pro-xenophobia message going against the idea of people of different backgrounds getting along. The film's unintended moral has left it coming across as one that discourages compassion with those who are different, encourages blindly believing your family's prejudices even in the absence of evidence, and that war is necessary even if said target of prejudice is at a massive power disadvantage.
• A number of Jewish people have pointed out how Mother Gothel’s role in the film Tangled resembles an antisemitic caricature. Gothel, the main antagonist with dark curly hair and a hooked nose, kidnaps the blond-haired, button-nosed Rapunzel for ritualistic purposes. They note how it's eerily similar to stories of blood libel, where Jewish people were falsely accused of kidnapping and murdering non-Jewish, Christian children for rituals. Some also took issue with the way Gothel is portrayed as nagging and passive-aggressive when acting as a mother to Rapunzel, which is a common stereotype of Jewish women, particularly mothers in this case.
• Turning Red: A bunch of people have read the scene where Mei uses her Red Panda form as a way to make money by taking pictures of herself in the Panda form as very creepily close to saying that selling your body at a young age is a good thing. The panda is often seen as an allegory of reaching puberty, and Mei is thirteen when she reaches it, so when the scene comes when Mei and her friends agree to make it profit off of it, it can also be read as the movie saying that you should exploit your natural gifts for money.
• Anthony Pryor points out in his review of Wizards that the director's words that the film's conflict between good elves and evil mutants is supposed to represent a real-life conflict in Israel gives bad implications. The Big Bad seemingly being born hideous and evil is also pointed as potentially giving a bad message.

Music

• The AV Club article "We Care a Lot" discusses various examples of the Charity Motivation Song, such as "We Are the World", "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and more obscure efforts, pointing out more than once that the songs and videos made for them wind up coming off as narcissistic by promoting the celebrities singing them as much as, if not more than, the cause.
  • 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' in particular has been criticized for perpetuating a patronizing stereotype of Africa, with the offensively inaccurate lyrics not helping. Some lyrics were altered for the 2014 cover, but their replacements were also considered pretty offensive. Even the title is problematic, given the prevalence of Islam in the affected areas.
• Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" music video has plenty of these, a great many of which get called out in the Literal Music Video parody of it. On the whole, the video promotes promiscuity while shaming more conservative outlooks while simultaneously flipping between two different stereotypes.
• Shawn Mendes: As this article points out, the narrator of "Treat You Better" seems to be the stereotypical Dogged Nice Guy. The lyrics imply he has entitlement issues and believes that he's the best choice because he's a "gentleman" and thus, "deserving" of being with the girl simply because he's "nice".
• Taylor Swift:
  • Some of her early songs can come off as slut-shaming and sex-negative sometimes (in "Fifteen" it's implied that her friend's virginity was all she had, and in "Better Than Revenge" it's implied that the person it's addressed to stole her boyfriend via being better at sex, just for two). See this article for a much longer explanation.
  • "Look What You Made Me Do" got quite a few people mad for glamorizing abusive relationships. While the song is more about Swift's relationship with other celebrities and the media, the title is reminiscent of a phrase commonly used to blame abuse victims for their own abuse.
  • "Anti-Hero"'s music video has been widely criticized for using the word "fat" as a negative adjective. While she has been open about suffering from an eating disorder, people argue that she still has privilege as a white thin wealthy woman. The shot showing the word was later edited out of the video.
  • Her decision to engage in a public romance with Matty Healy and released a collaboration with Ice Spice was widely derided as damage control for Matty's numerous racist behaviors and comments.
• "The Christmas Shoes" is a contemporary Christian song (and movie) about a melancholy gentleman who helps a boy buy a pair of shoes for his mother, who is on her deathbed and expected to pass away shortly, so she can greet Jesus while wearing them. The singer then muses to himself that God sent the kid to remind him what Christmas is all about; in other words, God killed a little boy's mother on Christmas just to guilt some unrelated curmudgeon into appreciating the holidays. That observation has been made numerous times by various critics, but the Nostalgia Chick and Patton Oswalt probably put it best.
• The song "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke is supposed to be an Intercourse with You song. However, the lyrics come off more like the perspective of a rapist. To illustrate, Todd in the Shadows did a juxtaposition of this song and "Sex Type Thing" by Stone Temple Pilots (a song explicitly sung from the perspective of a rapist) in his review, while Sociological Images did a break-down of the song by taking images from Project Unbreakable (an online photo essay of survivors holding up placards with quotes from their rapists to bring awareness) to demonstrate how in a real-world context things like this aren't said in a consensual encounter. It's also brilliantly satirized in the parody "Lame Lines". This parody by Bart Baker points out the rape overtones while still being comedic.
• Justin Timberlake was criticized by the Take Back the Night Foundation, an anti-rape group, for his song "Take Back the Night." Timberlake claims that he was unfamiliar with the organization when he wrote the song and that the similarity between the title and lyrics and their name is unintentional. However, certain lyrics such as "come on, surrender," "your love's a weapon," and especially, "they gon' try to shut us down, I’ll be damned if we gon' let them take back the night" read as very disturbing when viewed through this lens. He has since apologized and made a statement in support of the group, and for their part, they have decided against taking legal action.
• Lily Allen's video for the song "Hard Out There" met with controversy over alleged racist undertones, such as Allen using predominately black backup dancers while singing about how she doesn't need to shake her booty because she "has a brain". Allen claims the fact that the dancers were mostly women of color was an unfortunate oversight, and that they just happened to be the most talented women who auditioned.
• Similarly, Lorde's single "Royals" became the subject of controversy because she criticizes the materialism and alleged "vapidity" in genres like rap and hip-hop, which are primarily populated by black and Latino artists. She even ended up issuing an apology to Drake and Nicki Minaj after claiming their music was irrelevant.
• Cover Band Sambô's take on U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" got some heat for making a cheery samba version of a song about a massacre remembered today as an Irish national tragedy. The performance, full of smiling, giggling, and cheering, throws the point of the original version out the window, as if the group was making fun of what happened, or if the performers never bothered learning what the lyrics were about. In an interview, when faced with the accusation of making the dissonant version, the group responded that the rhythm didn't make the song any less sad, and blamed Misaimed Fandom for the awkwardness.
• Though Nas has never directly commented on the matter, thus leaving them ambiguous, a few lyrics in his songs "Everything" from Nasir and "What Goes Around" on Stillmatic have been interpreted as being antivax. The latter's lyrics in context seem moreso about how black children in particular tend to be deliberate victims of medical malpractice, and the first seems to focus moreso on the literal pain of the needle from a baby's perspective, but the ambiguity has made more than a few listeners uncomfortable.
• "Rhythm Is a Dancer" by the Eurodance group Snap! has the line "I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer". This has been referred to as "the worst lyric of all time" and it drew controversy from family and health groups in spite of the analogy being used in rap music since the late '80s.
• "Word Crimes" by "Weird Al" Yankovic was a victim of this in two separate ways:
  • The song created minor controversy with Al's usage of the word "spastic". Once informed that it's a derogatory term in the United Kingdom for people with cerebral palsy, he quickly apologized on his Twitter and cuts the entire verse when he performs the song live in the United Kingdom or Australia.
  • The song also has been criticized by linguists and educators for promoting prescriptivism and making fun of people with learning disabilities.
• "Happy Ending," the second single from the 2017 Hopsin album No Shame, is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: it tells the story of a man who gets a Happy-Ending Massage at an Asian massage parlor — already embodying a rather egregious stereotype. It's bad enough that some of Hopsin's vocals, which take the POV of the Asian masseuse, are incredibly broken English sung in a high-pitched Funetik Aksent that almost certainly comes across as Yellowface. But what really takes the cake is the video, which was taken down from YouTube for nudity. The titles are written in stereotypical "wonton fonts," and in one scene that drew particular ire from critics, the masseuse dances around with tip jars covering her breasts that say "Suckee" and "Fuckee" in Asian Speekee Engrish. Controversy ensued, with critics including a member of the House of Representatives and the Director of Disruption Strategies at the anti-sex trafficking organization Polaris, while Pitchfork gave it special mention in their review of Hopsin's No Shame, and The Needle Drop was so disgusted by the song and its unfortunate implications that he not only called it the worst single of 2017, but the worst of the 2010s as well.
• Rihanna:
  • "Bitch Better Have My Money" has been accused of promoting violence against women by several commentators. One of the most common criticisms is why the wife of the 'bitch' in question is tortured for her husband's crimes. However, some have argued that it is an empowering narrative about a black woman getting the money owed to her despite a racist industry and have accused feminist critics of having a double standard against black artists.
  • Rihanna's continuous friendship and even collaboration to Chris Brown has been widely critized as sending messages of women accepting their abuser.
• The Christmas carol "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (originally written by Frank Loesser, sung here by James Taylor and Natalie Cole) has in The New '10s drawn fire from listeners leading to it being banned by some radio stations for what sounds like Questionable Consent on the part of the female speaker: the line "Say, what's in this drink?" especially can raise eyebrows. As this article explains, Values Dissonance is largely to blame here: the woman is actually consenting, but a "good girl" in The '40s wasn't supposed to actually say yes to sex, and the line about the drink is a period Stock Joke where the woman is "blaming" the sex on nonexistent alcohol.
  "It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes… which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no."
  • This eventually led to John Legend and Kelly Clarkson recording a new version with less unfortunate lyrics, but even that led to criticism for changing the popular lyrics.
• The Maroon Five song "Animals" was criticized by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), who said that the song promotes domestic abuse and the dehumanization of women.
• "Lost in the Fire" by The Weeknd has been accused of perpetuating the myth that lesbianism is "just a phase" and that sex with the right man will turn gay women straight, as well as fetishizing bisexual women. Supposedly, the song is specifically about The Weeknd's tumultuous relationship with Bella Hadid, and not meant to be a statement about lesbians in general, but this doesn't do much to make the lyrics less uncomfortable for queer women who are harassed with similar comments.
• The music video to Dream's song "Mask" shows the streamer throwing away his "normal pills", which represent ADHD medication. This was interpreted by some fans as a condemnation of medication for mental health issues in general, as he appears much happier afterwards. Dream had to clarify in an interview that it was meant to be specifically about how in his personal experience, he felt better after going off his meds, and that he wasn't necessarily encouraging others to do the same.
• In 1960, Larry Verne topped the charts with "Mr. Custer", a Black Comedy novelty song about a cowardly soldier who doesn't want to fight at the Battle Of Little Bighorn. Between the subject matter, the lyrics, the tribal war chants in the background, and the soldier's goofy Southern accent, there's something here to offend everyone. Tom Breihan elaborates:
  It’s an offensive song, and it’s not even offensive in a coherent way; it insults white Southerners and Western hero myths just as much as it insults Native Americans.... “Mr. Custer” is an offensive and morally wrongheaded song that also is pretty much unlistenable musically.
• Kiely Williams's "Spectacular" is about a woman who goes to a bar, gets very drunk (with the implication that she may have been drugged) and has "spectacular" sex with a stranger before blacking out in the middle of it. She then concludes that the experience was awesome and she'd do it again. As a result, the song was accused of advocating promiscuity and unprotected sex, glamorizing rape, and perpetrating the view that sexual assault is partially the woman's fault if she for instance gets so drunk that she can't say no.

Professional Wrestling

• Noted on Lethal WOW about how WWE has a history of favoring white Divas as their top babyfaces. Any women of colour either don't become stars or else get pushed as heels (and make what you will of their opponents usually being heroic white girls). Likewise, many women of mixed heritage have a history of downplaying it and being presented as white or Ambiguously Brown. Especially of note is Sasha Banks taking ages to achieve anything, despite her clear popularity - when her white contemporaries received pushes far quicker^note This might help explain why Sasha and her tag partner Naomi walked out of WWE in May of 2022. They have yet to return and have been doing modeling work to pay the bills.
• Cewsh Reviews has noted the disturbing tendency for WWE to portray their Faces as mean-spirited bullies who are supposed to be in the right purely because the audience cheers for them. Sheamus is particularly notorious for acting like this whenever he's face.
• Paige has attracted a couple:
  • In one Smackdown segment, she referred to Tamina Snuka as Naomi's "boyfriend" and suggested that she belonged in the wrong division. Critics pointed out the negative implications of a face making sexist and transphobic remarks.
  • She and AJ Lee were the faces going up against the heel Bella Twins. The face team had two Tomboys, while the heels were Girly Girls. This wouldn't have been so bad if Paige hadn't claimed that she and AJ were automatically better because they weren't girly, and that the Bellas somehow weren't 'real' women. ''Diva Dirt'' criticized them for that.
• After losing her Divas' Championship, AJ Lee - again meant to be a Face - insulted the Bella Twins by claiming "talent isn't sexually transmitted"^note At the time Brie was dating Bryan Danielson (they're now married and have two children) while Nikki was dating John Cena. Resorting to Slut-Shaming as a way of insulting her opponents was called out.
• In the sixth season of WWE Tough Enough, contestant Amanda accused Sara Lee of being a "ring rat". Mick Foley criticised Amanda's Slut-Shaming Sara Lee in an attempt to sway fan votes. He also had a problem with none of the judges calling Amanda out for her bullying. He later wrote a retraction once it was explained that Amanda was playing the part of the heel in the final, though still said she shouldn't have resorted to slut-shaming to get Cheap Heat.
• The character of Muhammad Hassan, an Arab-American wrestler who was angry at the United States for discriminating against him following the 9/11 attacks. It was a powerful gimmick that touched upon the real-life social issue of Islamophobia. There was just one problem: the character was portrayed as a heel, which essentially meant that the Islamophobes were essentially the good guys in his storyline. Things were only made worse after the terrorist angle that aired the day of the London terrorist bombings in July 2005. Aside from being obviously insensitive, it perpetuated the "All Muslims are Terrorists" stereotype and completely contradicted the original character of being an ordinary American standing up to discrimination. Hassan explained his thoughts on it here. Ultimately, Hassan was written off when the Undertaker put him through the stage.
• Ronda Rousey, meant to be a Face was criticised for again resorting to Slut-Shaming in a promo against the Bella Twins. Her comments about the 'Diva Era' making her "sick to my stomach" were also noted as hypocritical^note The worst parts of the Diva Era were all down to Executive Meddling handicapping women who did want to wrestle and were not given the chance.
  "Ronda Rousey is the main eventer of this all women's PPV, the all-women empowering event. She's the face of this women's event and she's the one taking issue with Nikki Bella being in a relationship with a man."

Radio Plays

• The German companion shows Benjamin Blümchen and Bibi Blocksberg, which have the ridiculously innocent premises of a talking zoo elephant and a boy going on all sorts of adventures, and a young witch girl getting herself into all sorts of magical kerfuffles, have (rather ridiculously) been accused by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education of essentially indoctrinating kids with a Straw Liberal worldview where all authorities are automatically evil or incompetent, industry is eponymous with dishonesty and corruption, journalism is always right, and PR is all-powerful.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has faced accusations of carrying these in various ways beyond just the moral panic about Satanism and anti-Christianity.
  • The Gaming Philosopher, NPNR, and The Ubbergeek find implications of sexism in the portrayal of the drow race: the only civilized race to function entirely on a matriarchal system (at least before the serpentine lamia were added), composed almost entirely of Always Chaotic Evil Social Darwinists with a Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and who treat their men like garbage. The lamia are almost as bad but didn't generate much outrage, most likely because they don't have Wolverine Publicity like the Drow do.
  • The community is also divided on whether or not orcs and drow represent racist stereotypes, with entire articles written to support both sides. On the side arguing that they do, James Mendez Hodes published two articles called "Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth" Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror and Part II: They're Not Human expounding at length about specific details that could easily be perceived to imply deliberate racial antipathy towards Asian and Black ethnicities, the history of Dungeons and Dragons' (and also J. R. R. Tolkien's) creative backgrounds that inspired the development of these perceived flaws, and (in the second article) suggesting ways to Avoid Unfortunate Implications when playing this and other role-playing games. Jeremy Blum of HuffPost wrote an article describing the way that the portrayal of orcs and drow as Always Chaotic Evil humanoids with dark skin exemplifies biological determinism and supports racism, along with explaining why the use of the word "race" by D&D is incorrect.
  • In "Best Practices for Religious Representation, Part I: Check for Traps" (in the section called "Did You Know This Was Religious?" between halfway and three-fourths down the page), James Mendez Hodes also points out various terms used in Dungeons and Dragons which have origins in religions whose populations have suffered historic discrimination and oppression, and again suggests alternatives to make the game playable without abusive appropriation of marginalized peoples' cultures and concepts.
  • A Mythcreants page called Ridding Your Monsters of Ableism lists multiple examples of how traits such as "low intelligence," "ugliness," "sensory disabilities," and "insanity" are used in monster descriptions that reinforce Evil Cripple and Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency stereotypes in the real world, and offers alternatives for players and Game Masters to avoid these problems.
  • The Your Dungeon Is Problematic blog reviews the entries in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monstrous Manual and intersperses quotes from the actual text of the work with commentary on how that text invokes problematic stereotypes, such as the mention of derro's use of Charm Person magic to obtain Breeding Slaves invoking Gratuitous Rape and comparison of the description of mongrelmen to a racist anti-miscegenation screed.
  • Wizards of the Coast themselves addressed the accusations of Orc- and Drow-based racism and portrayals of the Vistani as Roguish Romani stereotypes in an article titled Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons in which they commit to publish new works with more varied portrayals of orcs and drow and revise previous and current works to remove problematic stereotypes.
  • 5th Edition re-introduced the hadozee race, humanoid monkeys with a fold of skin that lets them glide, in Spelljammer: Adventures in Space with new lore stating that they were Uplifted Animals that were enslaved by the wizard that uplifted them and were freed by the wizard's apprentice. Unfortunately, this drew massive criticism for its parallels to African slavery. This combined with a piece of art in the book depicting a hadozee bard in a similar outfit and pose to a piece of minstrel art caused both the lore and the artwork to be swiftly removed from digital versions of the book and all printed versions going forward.
• This was a major factor in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition being embroiled in controversy:
  • First, the play-testing adventure Enlightenment in Blood not only had a sample PC who was strongly implied to be a paedophile, but the first scene was set up to encourage said PC to feed on a baby. Needless to say, there was backlash.
  • Later on, White Wolf were accused of marketing the game line to the alt-right and neo-Nazis. This prompted them to release an AMA where they took a very unambiguous stand against fascism, explained that some of the perceived "dog-whistles" (such as the 1-4-8-8 dice roll) were due to a lack of knowledge and apologised for others (such as one of the Brujah clan's abilities being named "triggered").
  • The Camarilla sourcebook attracted controversy and triggered an international incident when it referred to the Real Life persecution and genocide of Chechnya's LGBTQ+ population as "a clever media manipulation" to hide the existence of vampires. The controversy led to Paradox restructuring and integrating White Wolf, thus ending them as an independent company.
• The Dresden Files RPG has an in-Universe inversion: Billy, in his capacity as author, invents the term "Focused Practicioner" to describe people who can do serious magic but don't have the power and/or breadth of talent necessary to earn the title of "Wizard". As he puts it, the only words in usage to describe those people were things like "hedge-wizard" and "kitchen-witch", which are dismissive, borderline insulting and definitely carry unfortunate implications of lack of training and skill, which is simply not the case (many focused practicioners are as powerful as, if not more powerful than, wizards, just within a very narrow field).
• Puerto Rico is Overshadowed by Controversy due to its colonialist theming. In particular, the "colonist" workers (which are represented by dark brown tokens, and additional plantations directly increase the size of the next shipment of them) are thinly-veiled slaves, with the game doing nothing to address the abuse of slaves at real plantations. This results in a game that at best glosses over historical human rights abuses, and at worst uncritically parrots the slavers' mindset that the slaves are just a tool for you to get what you want (in this case winning the game). The game also ignores the native people in the colonized land.
• Warhammer Fantasy has the Pygmies, which are such a catastrophically racist depiction of Africans and the real-life Pygmy peoples that it's a wonder they came from the 1980's and not the 1880's. Complete with enormous lips, spears, nose-bones and cannibalism. Needless to say, they never made it past second edition and Games Workshop has never spoken of them again.

Theatre

• The play All in a Row, which premiered in London in 2019, faced some serious backlash for portraying an autistic child as a puppet, as it implied that autistic characters could easily be replaced by props. Not helping was the puppet's design as "grey and mawkish" and the flimsy excuse that it would have been too hard to get consent from an actual nonverbal autistic child (since verbal autistic children exist and are often capable of tasks like acting, and even nonverbal autistic children can learn to communicate and do such tasks).
• The Las Vegas Sun's review of Criss Angel BeLIEve points out that in the original (subsequently retooled) story "[T]here's a continual struggle over [Criss's] usually shirtless bod between his stage assistants, Kayala, an angelic ever-receding woman in white and Crimson, a devouring, demonic black woman. (Not even going there.)"
• Miss Saigon was written in the 1990s and, despite initially casting some actors in yellowface (already a highly problematic move), brought major roles for Asian American actors during a time when there were few. However, many modern critics have denounced the show for its misogynistic and racist overtones. The love story between the white American soldier Chris and Kim, a Vietnamese escort he sleeps with, is seen as highly questionable, with most of the story putting sympathy towards Chris in what many see as unchecked White Guilt.
• In RENT, Maureen is the only character in the show, and one of the few characters in mainstream theater, to represent bisexuality. Unfortunately, she has caught a lot of flak from the bisexual community. Her promiscuity, emotional abuse, and inability to commit to a relationship are common bisexual stereotypes, and they make up the bulk of her character and her conflict with Joanne. Additionally, she's never explicitly called bisexual despite repeated implications that she's still attracted to men, and the only one to assign her a label (Mark's mom) calls her a lesbian. Even if Mark's mom is meant to be simply ignorant, it still comes across as bisexual erasure.
• When Tootsie was given a Broadway adaptation in 2019, it received several criticisms for the story (a struggling actor masquerading as a woman to get a role on a big Broadway show) having transphobic undertones without the excuse of Values Dissonance that the original movie has. Some lines do try to address this (with Michael's agent flippantly supporting alternate pronouns and using whatever bathroom you want), but for many it comes across as a weak hand wave. Even more controversial was several pieces of merchandise that featured the quote from the show: "Being a woman is no job for a man." While this makes sense in the context of the show, it received much backlash from trans people for sounding eerily close to a transmisogynistic slogan, resulting in the merchandise being pulled.
• The 2020 Broadway revival of West Side Story decided to make the Jets mixed-race. While this may have been intended to modernize the story, it had the unfortunate side effect of underplaying the racism and instead primarily associating gang violence with people of color. Scenes like Anita's sexual assault and the mass arrests following "Gee Officer Krupke" that originally featured white men committing crime now feature mostly black men, playing into the stereotype of black men as dangerous.

Theme Parks

• The Epcot ride Habit Heroes was heavily criticized for fat-shaming, as it focused on fighting the Anthropomorphic Personification of obesity. The article also notes that one of the bad habit "villains" seen in the old attraction's site was Insecura, an embodiment of insecurity, who is treated as a bad habit alongside things like a sweet tooth or excessive gossiping. Thankfully, Disney closed the ride and remodeled it to be a bit gentle to a much warmer reception, though the attraction eventually closed altogether in 2016.
• The now-closed America Sings ride in Disneyland featured the song "Who Shot the Hole in My Sombrero?" When the ride opened, it was sung by a dog who had a Mexican accent. The press and attendees didn't take too kindly to it, so the dog was quickly rerecorded with a Texan accent.

Webcomics

• This is invoked purposefully on one occasion in 8-Bit Theater. When Bahamut decides that Red Mage and Black Mage are Fighter's slaves, and Fighter starts referring to Red Mage as Red Slave, Black Mage points out that this would make him Black Sla— "GOOD NIGHT, EVERYBODY!"
• Ménage à 3: Zii has a habit of tossing people into sexual situations and otherwise violating personal boundaries willy-nilly. The audience is apparently supposed to be on her side, and she isn't punished for it for a long time. This is in addition to a lot of fanservice and some stereotyping in the comic generally. For more detail, see these reviews. However, things grew a little more nuanced as the plot continued, as one of Zii's conquests turns into a comedic Stalker with a Crush who is largely responsible for her first serious relationship for years crashing and burning.
• Moon Over June is pretty notorious in general and there's very little about its plot that doesn't carry unfortunate implications; the most commonly cited ones are Hatsuki's ability to 'try out' eating disorders and her deciding to become a lesbian to piss off her parents, Summer having such extreme misandry as to seriously consider putting any son she may end up having up for adoption, and Summer's career as a gynecologist being solely based on her desire to grope vaginas all day, which is treated as perfectly fine.
• One-Punch Man: Oh, boy... The character Puri Puri Prisoner is basically every negative caricature of gay men given flesh. The series tries to play him for laughs but many fans, particularly those in the LGBT community, are less than amused. This has been toned down later in the manga (read: he doesn't openly rape people anymore), but he's still a huge stereotype. It really doesn't help that he's one of the only openly-gay characters introduced so far.
• The Princess's Jewels: The webcomic is about Princess Ariana, whose mission in the comic is to collect a bunch of beautiful men to make a Royal Harem. Over the course of her adventure, she pulls her chosen men away from their lives and their homes, treats them like objects for her own amusement, and even threatens a Cold War between her country and another if they don't do what she says. The critics in this video rip the premise to pieces, pointing out how nobody would like this comic if it were about a man doing this to a bunch of women. Of course, since it's about a woman doing this to a bunch of men, that makes it okay.
  • Special mention is made of Nell Phantom, the first man Princess Ariana collects for her harem. They read a comment where the commentator gushes about him, stating that it's good how he brings representation of black people to the webcomic. One of the critics points out how he's made to wear a choker that he calls a collar, and is basically treated like a dog, which is reinforced by Nell Phantom's wolf man motif... and he's the only black person in the Princess' harem.
• Invoked in this strip of Shortpacked!. A LEGO Space Policeman shows a diagram of a variety of diverse-looking aliens and identifies them as inhuman criminals in a lecture to a bunch of identical human trainees. After a Beat Panel, one of the trainees asks "Anyone else uncomfortable with this?"
• Sticky Dilly Buns: Ruby has a degree-level education, is looking for an appropriate job, and considers this a higher priority than dating. She's also a screaming neurotic who seems permanently stressed out, and the best advice she receives in her job search relates to how she should dress. Amber is a former porn actress who got her current job (and her apartment) by sexually manipulating a man; she's also relatively well-balanced and comfortable with her life. This has inspired some comments on the comic's discussion boards; readers think that the comic is implying that women who seek to get an education and use it to earn a good living are doomed to be desperate virgins who need to get laid, and that the best way for a woman to get on in the world is to exploit her appearance and sexuality.

Web Animation

• Lampshaded in the Camp Camp episode "Cult Camp"; the Jewish and Nerdy Neil is quick to point out the "fucked-up implications" of Dolph (whose main schtick is his resemblance to Hitler) dragging him to what is essentially a gas chamber (actually a brainwashing sauna).
• Lampshaded in the DEATH BATTLE! episode "Batgirl VS Spider-Gwen'', in which Boomstick points out that Batgirl's hero name makes it sound like her role is defined by her relationship to the male Batman, as opposed to Robin, who gets a name that makes him sound independent.
  Boomstick: You know, how come she's called Batgirl when Dick gets to be Robin? Her identity and individuality shouldn't be anchored to the patriarchal idea that women are publicly defined by the men in their life.
  Wiz: Uh, well said, Boomstick.
• English Fairy Tales (previously known as My Pingu TV), a channel from India featuring animated fairy tales, came under fire thanks to a video called Dina and the Prince, in which an angel named Dina is forbidden from speaking with the prince that she loves, but does so anyway and is punished by being turned into a black woman with a scarred face and curly hair, which is explicitly said to be "ugly", while her previous pale-skinned and straight-haired appearance is said to be "beautiful". As covered on the article, hundreds on the video itself and on social media criticized both the message and its execution, as it was not something you'd want impressionable kids to take to heart. The channel eventually released an apology and removed the video.
• Extra Credits: Discussed. They note how poorly thought-out game mechanics can accidentally send very dangerous messages if designers aren't careful and responsible. As an example, they cite the convention of making certain races and groups the enemy in modern mainstream shooters, which risks dehumanizing them in the minds of players who are required to slaughter them in droves without question. They single out Call of Juarez: The Cartel as an example of a game that does this, devoting an entire episode to ripping apart the implications within it.
  • For example, the only achievement in the game related to "Kill X Enemies" called "Bad Guy", and is done on a level with exclusively-black gang members (whom you purposely incited to violence). Couple that with tweaking reality to fit the narrative (in this case, using one level to depict Mexican drug cartels coming to the US to abduct American women to sell as sex slaves, when the reality is pretty much the complete opposite) and their outrage over this is understandable, even if Hanlon's Razor applied. Oh yeah, and the "heroes" treat the strippers in that latter mission as Disposable Sex Workers.
  • Once more in regard to The Division, due to the games focus on a sleeper cell stationed in America for the purpose of gunning down civilians in a time of crisis with next to no oversight beyond a single individual, no due process in their judgement, and answerable only to the head of state. They make explicit comparison to organizations like the historical Brownshirts.
• RWBY: The fandom generally regards the Fantastic Racism of the Faunus as badly handled, including portraying the only Faunus rights organisation (the White Fang) as terrorists that only achieve success when led by A Nazi by Any Other Name who abusively stalks his ex-girlfriend. It accidentally sends the message that the fight for equal rights becomes morally wrong if there's any deviation from peaceful protests while also portraying peaceful protests as ineffectual (e.g., see some examples as follows). The creators have acknowledged in interviews that they didn't handle it well, and discuss in Volume 5, Chapter 10 DVD Commentary how they originally planned a minor background storyline before realising that the issue is too important for that and that they should have handled it better.
• Terrible Writing Advice: Discussed quite frequently, in JP's usual sarcastic style. He tends to break character when doing it, to hammer home the point that writers should pay close attention to their work before they end up unintentionally replicating problematic tropes and plots.
  • He explictly namedrops the concept in the "Fantasy Races" video, where he notes how the lore of some fantasy universes not only claim that races have inherent traits (case in point, the existence of the Always Chaotic Evil trope), but also that some races are "better" than others (which conspiciously often happens to be the blonde, blue-eyed Elves, or some similar equivalent). Applying these practices to real people is the easiest way to create racist propaganda. He also notes that the authors who include these tropes rarely ever take any time to explore the philosophical and metaphysical implications of imbuing an entire race with a strict moral alignment.
  • "Alpha Heroes" examines the trend of common boyfriend characterizations in romance novels to come to the only logical conclusion: the best boyfriend is a "domestic abuser with control issues", whose overriding drive to claim his love interest is proof of his masculinity. Never mind the creepy implications of normalizing borderline-criminal behavior, which tend to be handwaved away because "he's attractive". This part of the video includes a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer precisely because this attitude is unironically idealized in the genre.
  • "Giving Criticism" plays this trope for laughs at the suggestion of the good guys using a burning cross as their symbol, with Beaubien saying "Um, I guess it could work?", while the caption reads "Translation: Try Again."
  • "Cosmic Horror" discusses the racist and xenophobic views of H. P. Lovecraft. As these ideas tended to come across in his writing, JP warns prospective authors to be careful in using him as inspiration (without breaking character, to boot).
  • "Apology Video Template" invokes this by advising anyone creating one to blame their wrongdoings on depression. Never mind the inevitable backlash from those who call them out on scapegoating an easily-misunderstood mental condition suffered by millions around the world.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Critic's review of Sailor Moon was heavily criticized for being sexist. The article goes into detail about how Usagi shouldn't be called stupid, cowardly, or slutty, and how the message of girls accepting their sexuality and femininity, as well Usagi as being allowed to be flawed instead of being perfect and unrelatable was lost on him. The same review got another article about how it was filled with Victim-Blaming. The author dedicated a special section of scorn for the dick-talking scene.
• On Columbus Day in 2017, Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire tweeted out a cartoon depicting pre-Colombian Native Americans as cannibalistic savages. Christopher Columbus and other Europeans come along and teach them agriculture and build modern cities. Mediaite accused the video of "excusing ethnic genocide by depicting Native Americans as cannibals and savages who weren't tamed until white Europeans came to America and took their land." He eventually took it down and apologized.
• Several reviewers have criticized Growing Around by The Mysterious Mr. Enter, on the grounds that the story's setting (where children are in charge of adults) comes off as a dystopian society, despite being portrayed in a positive light. The children's treatment of the adults (and in the case of bullies, other children) often comes off as abusive despite them being the heroes, while the adults are portrayed as evil for resisting this. Given that Enter himself suffered from Abusive Parents and bullies in real life, and treats these topics as hot-button issues in his own reviews, this can make the story come off as a misguided revenge fantasy.
• The Onion: The "Autistic Reporter" series caught some flack for furthering stereotypes of autistic people, such as Lack of Empathy, Schedule Fanatic, and Literal-Minded. While most articles parody, subvert, or invert stereotypes, this series seems to play them entirely straight as a source of humor.
• Neopets: Burrito in the Wall was an item released on January 19, 2017... the evening before the presidential inaugaration of Donald Trump, who at the time was known for wanting to build an anti-immigration wall on the United States-Mexico border, a project many decried as being inherently racist. The item came across to the userbase as bragging about Trump's victory and the start of his administration, but staff claimed it was supposed to be a Shout-Out to Pink Floyd — an explanation which came off as a stretch (If it was meant to be an "Another Brick in the Wall" pun, why that particular date? Why a stereotypically-Mexican food?). Regardless, the item was deactivated a few days later due to the public outcry.
• PewDiePie's song "Bitch Lasagna" has the line "I'm a blue-eyes white dragon while you're just dark magician". This references the Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters,^note The Blue-Eyes White Dragon is more powerful than the Dark Magician, though they're both considered powerful cards. but some observers thought he was mocking Indian people's skin color. References: [16] [17]
• Screen Rant Pitch Meetings, often mocks the various ways movies and TV shows fall into this trope, often followed by a "Whoops!" "Whoopsie!" exchange between the Screenwriter and the Producer. One example is The Big Bang Theory pitch meeting, in which the Producer realizes that making fun of Raj being Indian might be racist, insinuating that he and Howard are a gay couple and having those insinuations Played for Laughs might be homophobic, and making Penny less intelligent than the guys might be sexist.
• During the Lavender Town episodes of Pokémon World Tour: United, the characters participate in the Festival of Life, a celebration that winds up resembling Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead. In episode 35's intermission, Jake, who plays Rose Jenny, states that he realized as they recorded that they may have strayed into culturally insensitive territory without meaning to and requests feedback on the matter. Episode 37 opens with Jake explaining that they got that feedback, with reactions ranging from "It's okay, don't worry about it" to statements that they felt uncomfortable for reasons such as the cast treating the celebration too frivolously. Jake makes special note of one response which explains that because the character Tsubaki, who opposes the Festival of Life and who the hosts themselves regard as the villain of the arc, came off Unintentionally Sympathetic, it appeared as if the hosts themselves regarded the Festival, and by extension Día de Muertos, negatively. The hosts assert this was not their intent, apologize to those left offended or otherwise uncomfortable, and retcon some of the details of what's been happening, such as toning down the decoration of skull masks the characters got, to try and better regard the celebration with the respect it deserves.
• Lampshaded and Played for Laughs in SMPEarth. When Wilbur Soot and SootCharlie make an alliance with TommyInnit, Wilbur names their trio "Cummie Squad". This does not sit well with 15 year-old Tommy, and the name is quickly changed to "Cumin Squad".
  Tommy: Wilbur, when my mum asks me what I was doing tonight, and I say "I was participating in "Cummie Squad" with a 23-year-old man", how do you think she'll feel then?
• Discussed by Arin during Grumpcade when he and Barry are playing Yoshi's Story. Arin recounts the time he and his wife Suzy heard about a watermelon pie and really wanted to make one, but they opted not to as they had a Black friend coming over and were afraid he'd take it the wrong way.
  Arin: We had a friend who was coming over and we were like "oh man let's make a watermelon pie" but he's Black, so I was like "Ohh... maybe he would take offense to that" if we were like "Oh man! Here's a watermelon pie! This is the only pie we've ever made for you and it's a watermelon pie and it's purely coincidental but yeah!"
• Critical Role has come under fire with the title sequence introduced in Critical Role: Campaign Three. Many felt that the intro video, which featured the cast dressed in pith helmets and keffiyehs, was unintentionally drawing on the imagery of Europeans colonizing SWANA^note South-West Asian/North African nations. Along with the setting of Marquet being inspired by such nations and cultures, the video reinforced concerns these critics had going in that this campaign would fall into cultural appropriation.
• The "Amharic Curse" meme, in which an uncanny image is posted along with a creepy phrase in the Amharic language, which uses the Ge'ez script. The implication of the meme that the Ge'ez script looks demonic was criticized by Ethiopians^note Amharic is primarily spoken in Ethiopia. as racist and othering.

Other

• Fashion designer Kimhekim has gotten flak for his collection, which was first shown at Paris Fashion Week, called "Attention Seeker". At the show, models went down the catwalk wearing white shirts with the word "sick" across their chest and pushing along an IV stand. Those who require intravenous medication, such as cancer patients and people with chronic illnesses, were appalled at how their condition was treated as a fashion accessory, and the name was also viewed by some as an accusation that the chronically ill are just "seeking attention".
• Barbie:
  • The 2013 Barbie book I Can Be a Computer Engineer was accused of teaching girls not to pursue technological careers, but rather that they should always get men to solve their problems, then take credit for their work. Amazon and Mattel respectively responded to the controversy by ceasing all direct sales of the book, and promising to write stories with an "empowered" Barbie.
  • Infamously in the 90s, "Teen Talk Barbie" caused this due to its controversial line involving math. The actual line is "Math Class Is Tough!". Mattel's intentions were relatabilty - few school kids like math and high school math classes are often considered hard - but parents heard it and were offended. The line either perpetuated Dumb Blonde stereotypes or made it seem like all women were bad at math. A good chunk of this issue ended up being due to the line being remembered incorrectly. It's often said that Barbie's line was "Math is hard!", or something similar, which sounds more like it perpetuates the idea that "girls are dumb". The doll ended up recalled as a result.
  • In the early 2000s, Mattel introduced the "Happy Families" line. It was discontinued due to complaints that it was promoting Teen Pregnancy. Midge and Alan were actually Happily Married and in their 20s at the time, however many people associate Barbie dolls being teenagers due to Barbie's fluctuating age.
  • A notorious 1965 "Slumber Party" Barbie doll came with a scale permanently set at 110 lbs and a book titled "How to Lose Weight," with the back reading simply "Don't Eat!"
• In early 2020, as Bernie Sanders was the frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, there were pundits arguing that this wasn't a good sign, with MSNBC's Chris Matthews comparing Sanders' victory in the Nevada primaries to Adolf Hitler's invasion of France. Sanders supporters and many others immediately pointed out that not only was Sanders Jewish, but some of his relatives were killed during The Holocaust, which led to Matthews resigning from MSNBC.

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