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  • The Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Comedians" came under fire after a 5-year-old boy allegedly imitated a stunt from the episode and ended up burning down his home and killing his baby sister. In response, MTV began heavily editing or outright banning episodes where the boys performed dangerous activities out of fear of repeat incidents. The truth of the matter, however, was that the mother of the boy was found to be lying about the show's influence on her son's behavior to save herself from legal repercussions: as it turns out, their home didn't even have cable, so there's no way the kid would have seen the show at that time (however, according to a 2011 New York Post interview with the kid's mother, she claims her son watched the series at his babysitter's house).
  • Big Mouth:
    • Talks for a second season of the series were initially muddled because of the controversy over the show's sexual content. Specifically, the fact that the main characters are underage, which led to accusations of the series harboring pedophilic overtones. Before that, it had to deal with backlash over its initial trailer, an Audience-Alienating Premise, and an unusual, somewhat ugly animation style, making it one of the more divisive animated series that Netflix has produced. Even though the show was ultimately a critical success, the depictions of underage nudity and sexual behavior makes it extremely difficult to talk about the show to the general public.
    • Season 3's messages on sexual orientation were overshadowed by Ali's explanation of pansexuality in "Rankings", due to her definition calling bisexuality "so binary" and implying that only pansexual people can date trans people. With the rest of the episode showcasing the Double Standard in how Ali's pansexuality is fetishized and Jay's bisexuality is dismissed, a lot of LGBT people were too uncomfortable with the transphobic definitions of bisexuality and pansexuality. Co-creator Andrew Goldberg even apologized in light of the backlash.
  • It's not very easy to talk about Season 11 of Bob's Burgers without mentioning Jay Johnston (Jimmy Pesto Sr.'s voice actor)'s alleged involvement in the US Capitol riot during said season. This resulted in Johnston getting fired and Jimmy Sr. getting sidelined before he was eventually recast with Eric Bauza.
  • BoJack Horseman:
    • In-Universe, controversy strikes the crime drama Philbert near the end of the fifth season. BoJack and his costar Gina seem to both be on a great new career path, especially since Philbert was Gina's first meaningful role and she was praised for her acting ability. This goes down the tubes once video leaks to the public of BoJack nearly choking Gina to death due to being high on painkillers and being unable to distinguish his show from his reality. Gina decides to lie about the severity of the video in an effort to not have her career overshadowed by it. Ultimately, an unrelated controversy about the CEO (who happens to be a sex robot) harassing women results in the production company folding and the show being cancelled anyway:
      Gina: My career, after so many failed attempts, is finally starting to take off. I am getting offers, and fan mail, and magazine columns about what a good actor I am. People know me because of my acting. And all that goes away if I'm just the girl who got choked by BoJack Horseman... I don't want you to be the most notable thing that ever happened to me. I don't want you to be the question I get asked in interviews for the rest of my life.
    • Happens in the final few episodes to BoJack's flagship show Horsin' Around. Due to the revelation of BoJack's role in costar Sarah Lynn's death, as well as his numerous other instances of toxic and downright predatory behavior becoming public knowledge, the show's producer considers the series tainted with such a reviled figure's name tied to it and cancels a planned Blu-ray/DVD release. She goads BoJack into a deal to allow the series to air after heavy recuts to remove him entirely (which she had previously done to The Cosby Show after Bill Cosby's rape allegations came to prominence), effectively changing the whole premise of the show.
  • Cans Without Labels has been talked about heavily for its disastrous Kickstarter campaign and the fact that it was what John Kricfalusi was working on when allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls came forward against him, far more than the content of the cartoon itself.
  • Countless cartoons from The Golden Age of Animation have been subject to censorship since the 1960s because of imagery that is nowadays considered racist or a bad example to little children.note  Though most of them only have minor scenes that can be edited in syndication, eleven Warner Bros. cartoons are almost impossible to edit without making the plot of the shorts near-nonexistent. These are the Censored Eleven, cartoons that can never be shown on American TV.
  • While Clarence is still a pretty popular show, mention it anywhere, and typically at least one person will bring up the mental breakdown of the show's creator Skyler Page, including him groping a female coworker's breasts, and his subsequent firing. It's possible that the management at CN didn't forget about it either, as Clarence wound up getting Screwed by the Network big-time over the next several years before being cancelled after only three seasons.note 
  • While regarded as a Cult Classic in its native North America, Clone High is infamous for the massive backlash in India due to the show's portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi as a raging, sex-obsessed party animal. As Gandhi is a highly revered figure in India for helping them gain independence from British rule, many Indian viewers found this extremely disrespectful, and the protests that sparked helped contribute to the show's abrupt cancellation. It should be noted, however, that the Gandhi in the show isn't actually Gandhi; he's a clone who cracked under the pressure to live up to Gandhi because he's so well-revered.
  • The Cow and Chicken episode "Buffalo Gals" is remembered mostly for the eponymous characters, who are heavily made out to be stereotypical lesbians, with sexual innuendos throughout. The episode was never reran on Cartoon Network again, and many networks refused to air this episode.
  • Classic Disney Shorts:
  • One of the Ever After High specials has Darling Charming delivering CPR to Apple White in a way that greatly resembles a kiss (both characters are girls). While it hasn't been confirmed whether it's romantic or not, many fans interpreted it as such. Others, however, insist that it was just CPR. As a result, this ended up sparking debates on what's acceptable to put in children's cartoons.
  • Family Guy:
    • "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)" is hardly remembered for anything other than a gag where Quagmire rapes Marge Simpson, then follows her home and shoots her family. The joke provoked a serious backlash, including from Fox network executives, Matt Groening and people who worked on The Simpsons, and is more talked about than any other element of the episode, including the fact that it served as the conclusion of the Jillian arc.
    • "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" is remembered mostly for its negative portrayal of a born-again Christian and its overall message, which many felt amounted to "Belief Makes You Stupid".
    • "Extra Large Medium" is, at best, only remembered for the controversy of a female character with Down syndrome who mentions that her mother is a former governor of Alaska, which strongly implies that her mother is Sarah Palin, the only woman to have served in the office of governor in the state. Palin actually is the mother of a child with Down syndrome. The situation was only made worse when Patrick Warburton, Joe Swanson's voice actor, told the media that even he thought it was in poor taste. Conservative pundits on Fox News and elsewhere ended up praising Warburton as a hero for "defending" Sarah Palin, something he denied was his intention, which turned the situation into a bigger PR nightmare. The actress who voiced the character, Andrea Fay Friedman, actually had Down syndrome herself; and she would later make a statement criticizing people who questioned the episode. Some, however, have claimed that she was pressured into making the statement by Seth MacFarlane, keeping the controversy going.
    • "Quagmire's Dad" is mostly known for the titular character, who comes out as a trans woman and subsequently undergoes gender-affirming surgery. Despite series creator Seth MacFarlane calling her the most sympathetic transgender character on television, the episode was criticized for indulging in stereotypical and transphobic jokes at her expense, including many characters referring to her as "it" and Brian complaining that there's no registry for transgender people like there is for sex offenders.
    • "Life of Brian" is one of the most controversial episodes of the show because of its premise of having Brian be run over by a car and killed and being replaced by the character of Vinny, another anthropomorphic dog who acted like a stereotypical Italian-American. Brian was revived and brought back three episodes later, a move which proved to be just as controversial as "The Life of Brian", if not more so. Some fans thought that bringing Brian back wasn't part of the original plan and saw it as caving in too easily to the complaints. However, those who knew that Production Lead Time made such a change impossible realized that the producers must have had the idea of Brian being brought back to begin with, which made the whole thing look like a publicity stunt to boost the show's ratings and viewership.
    • "Peter Problems" is rarely brought up for anything other than the infamous scene where Peter graphically eviscerates a beached whale with a forklift while trying to put it back in the ocean.
  • Full English was a British show intended to be the counterpart of adult shows such as South Park or Family Guy. Already unpopular with audiences who viewed it as copying from its source material, what nailed the show into the ground was an infamous segment where the ghost of infamous reality TV star Jade Goody has a fight with the ghost of Princess Diana. After numerous complaints, especially from infamously sensationalist newspaper The Daily Mail, the show was subsequently canned, and the remaining episodes were then aired one last time before never being aired again.
  • Though the show has received critical acclaim, it can be a bit difficult to discuss Glitch Techs without bringing up its Troubled Production. First announced as early as 2018, the series was originally going to be a Nickelodeon original, but had no promotion or even production updates beyond leaked footage and Word of God. Then, in January 2019, the show was very abruptly cancelled before it even got a chance to premier, and the show's production staff were laid off without any warning note . This move was widely criticized by even the most die-hard Nickelodeon fans, feeling it only supported the accusations that Nickelodeon relies too much on nostalgia and require their shows to be immediate successes. Though the series was picked up by Netflix over a year later and has been well-received, the continued discussions regarding the show's production only further damaged Nickelodeon's reputation among fans.
  • Glenn Martin, DDS was controversial during its brief time on the air, as it was an adult program played on Nickelodeon scheduled after SpongeBob SquarePants and had advertisements during its child-friendly shows, despite its heavy use of sexual themes, amounts of gore, and having an episode where a boy shoves his head up an elephant's rectum.
  • While Harvey Beaks is regarded as one of the better Nicktoons to come out of the early 2010s (a notable Audience-Alienating Era for Nick); it's been largely overshadowed by its abrupt cancellation and the network's treatment of creator CH Greenblatt after he broke the news of the show's ending online.
  • High Guardian Spice's reputation is mostly based around the backlash surrounding its creation and announcement trailer. Crunchyroll marketed itself on how it supported the creators of anime directly and offered fans an above-board means to support the animators (who are worked like slaves and tend to only make between 300 to 500 USD a month) in lieu of piracy. So when fans learned Crunchyroll was using that money to fund original works instead, the reaction was outright hostile as fans felt they had been lied to, betrayed, and outright scammed. Then the trailer launched and consisted of nothing but storyboards, a couple of character sketches, a very vague description of the premise and feel, and a lot of emphasis on the creators, but showed no actual animation. Now their already hostile audience felt the majority of the trailer seemed like it was trying to Polish the Turd rather than deliver a good product while the work itself had absolutely nothing to show for itself to Win Back the Crowd, making them feel vindicated in their preemptive dislike. However, the most controversial parts of the trailer were those focusing on the diversity of the show's characters and staff, due to most of the people shown in the trailer being white women, ensuring that anyone with strong opinions (positive or negative) on diversity would have a reason to be upset. Due to this backlash, the show was put on The Shelf of Movie Languishment, missing its intended 2019 release, only being silently released in October 2021, with no information being released before outside of a brief spot in a trailer, ensuring that by that time, it would only be remembered as "that show with the trailer that made people mad." For a full, unbiased, play-by-play of the events, a dedicated website called The High Guardian Spice Archive exists which chronicles the entire controversy.
  • Gwen Stefani's cartoon Kuu Kuu Harajuku is more known for allegations of Japanese cultural appropriation from various blogs and sites than any aspect of the show itself.
  • The final episode of The Legend of Korra has largely been overshadowed by the last four minutes where Asami and Korra receive a Relationship Upgrade, which is one of the first cases of a canon same-sex relationship being depicted in mainstream non-adult Western animation. Some have accused it of being too "pandering", usually towards supporters of the ship; others were unsatisfied because their relationship was only subtly built-up, and was not given full confirmation on-screen like Aang and Katara's relationship, but was only confirmed online afterwards.
  • Little Ellen, a Celebrity Toon about Ellen DeGeneres, was greenlit in 2019. Thanks to Production Lead Time, the show was in production by the time Ellen was exposed for workplace abuse and racial microaggressions in 2020. This controversy resulted in the cancellation of her talk show, while Little Ellen still got promoted and released by HBO Max in 2021, as if nothing ever happened. As such, more people discuss Ellen's controversies and the bad timing of the release, rather than the content of the show itself.
  • Made by Maddie was originally set to premiere on Nick Jr. in September 2020, but it drew large backlash on social media due to allegedly plagiarizing Hair Love. Nick Jr. pulled the show before it could air and removed it from their website. This is the only thing the series is remembered for, if anyone remembers it at all, and it's unknown if the episodes will ever see the light of day.
  • If Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is remembered for anything, it's for that notorious scene in "The Littlest Tramp" in which Mighty Mouse sniffs a flower given to him by Polly Pineblossom earlier in the episode, by which point it's been crushed into a fine powder, making it look as though he's snorting cocaine. Moral Guardians were outraged immediately, even though the crew members themselves said that it wasn't meant to be a cocaine joke and that the moral guardians (like many before and after them) blew things out of proportion. Even John Kricfalusi thought so, but only because there were two other scenes that were more dubious: The Kirk Douglas-esque man force-kissing Polly Pineblossom (and the fact that she's forced to marry him to save herself from being homeless) and the end when the two drive off into the sunset and the car explodes into a mushroom cloud for no reason.
  • The Miraculous Ladybug episode "Chameleon" is a fairly average episode in which a Manipulative Bitch manages to briefly turn protagonist Marinette's friends against her. However, due to a number of factorsexplanation, it ended up causing a massive Broken Base within the fandom and led to the rise of the highly controversial "salt fic" genre amongst fanfic writers. As a result, the episode is far better known for the controversy it caused rather than its actual quality.
  • Mrs. Munger's Class was a set of interstitial skits that aired on ABC's One Saturday Morning block in 1997 and 1998. It featured pictures from a 1970s yearbook, digitally altered and overdubbed with voices to create classroom-themed vignettes. The segments are known almost entirely for the one thing that got them pulled off the air: the teacher and four of the students recognized their likenesses being used on the show and filed a class-action lawsuit. The fact that one of said students was black and given a voice similar to Buckwheat didn't help.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • The episode "The Last Roundup" is about Applejack joining a rodeo competition, promising to donate the prize money to help with public repairs, and vanishing to secretly work at a cherry orchard so she'd have something to donate after failing to win any money. When discussing the episode, most people will ignore this plot in favor of the opening scene, which gave the fan favorite Memetic Bystander Derpy Hooves lines and a canon name, and the fact that the scene was censored after the first airing due to her portrayal, cross-eyed look, and name being considered offensive to disabled people. When "Derpy" was once again given a (much larger) speaking role in the Season 5 episode "Slice of Life" (a Milestone Celebration dedicated to acknowledging as many fandom in-jokes as possible), she would conspicuously never be referred to by name, and the credits called her "Muffins" instead.
    • It is also nearly impossible to talk about "Filli Vanilli" without mentioning the sheer amount of backlash due to Pinkie Pie suffering from a severe case of Jerkass Ball in this episode, which culminated in the writer Amy Keating Rogers receiving a huge amount of hate mail and death threats.
  • Despite being devoid of controversial content, the child show Peppa Pig has been the center of controversy in some countries:
  • Postcards from Buster, an Edutainment spin-off of Arthur, is largely remembered for the kerfuffle surrounding the banning of one of its episodes, "Sugartime!" The episode is largely innocuous, but PBS came under fire from angry parents due to it featuring two real-world lesbian couples. The episode doesn't explicitly say "lesbian", "homosexual", or any other term regarding sexuality — simply that their children "have two moms" — and the episode takes place in Vermont, where same-sex civil unions were legal in 2005, but PBS was forced to pull the episode once they were threatened of getting their federal funding slashed for displaying them. As moral values have shifted towards wider acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, with gay marriage being legalized across the US in 2015 and Arthur itself featuring long-time character Mr. Ratburn in a gay wedding in 2019, the fact the episode generated such a controversial response is a particularly upsetting stain that everyone involved — including series creator Marc Brown — wishes never happened.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016) was initially Adored by the Network when it first aired, but a chain of controversies eventually led to the series being Quietly Cancelled after three seasons:
    • Within a month of starting, the series had already gained an unsightly reputation due to various changes, such as removing the 1998 series' popular character Ms. Bellum, recasting the Girls and Princess Morbucks while keeping the original voice actors for the rest of the returning characters, and a Denser and Wackier tone similar to that of Teen Titans Go!. Adding insult to injury, viral clips from the episode "Painbow" showed Blossom and Bubbles twerking, which would have been seen as Totally Radical even if it wasn't an overtly sexual dance move. It certainly didn't help that "Painbow" was co-written by Julia Vickerman (whose reputation was later tarnished by allegations of pedophilia).
    • The episode "Horn Sweet Horn" was overshadowed by advertising portraying it as a Very Special Episode using the story of a horse wanting to be a unicorn as a metaphor for being transgender, only for the episode to turn said horse into a monster and reveal that he was a unicorn the whole time, in what many saw as a transphobic Broken Aesop. Not helping matters was the fact that, according to the episode's writers, it was never written to be an allegory about gender dysphoria, but Cartoon Network executives saw it that way and marketed it as such.
    • The series' reputation was further affected by the accusations of character Jared Shapiro being a blatant Self-Insert for writer Jake Goldman.note  This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Blossom has a crush on him and it isn't quite specified whether or not the feeling is mutual. Blossom is middle school-age at the oldest, Jared is in high school, and Goldman is a grown man. However, another writer has claimed that Jared wasn't Goldman's direct creation, as he was just physically based on him as a production crew inside joke, and they simply decided it'd be doubly funny if Goldman voiced him, too.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show:
    • The episode "Man's Best Friend" was banned due to a scene of Ren violently beating George Liquor with an oar. It was also one of the possible reasons why John Kricfalusi was fired from the show, as he stood firm and refused to censor the episode despite Nickelodeon's insistence. Despite this, fans still consider it one of the funniest episodes of the show.
    • The episode "Powdered Toast Man" got backlash due to the titular character burning the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights after being declared President, which was removed from reruns. Also in the episode, Powdered Toast Man saves the Pope (played by Frank Zappa); reruns later referred to him as simply "the man in the funny white hat," perhaps due to a similar outcry from Catholics.
    • The whole show fell into this in early 2018, due to two female cartoonists accusing Kricfalusi of statutory rape and possession of child pornography in light of the #MeToo movement. Even prior to the 2018 accusations, Kricfalusi's immense talent as an animator was often overshadowed by his notoriously bad temper, his abrasive demeanor, his harsh criticisms of other animators and cartoons, the toxic work environment he created, his self-righteous views and his falling out with Billy West, who described his experience working on Ren & Stimpy as the "worst of my life", as well as Bill Wray and Bob Camp who saw their careers seriously damaged by their work on the show. Comedy Central openly stated that Kricfalusi will not be involved with their reboot of the show in any capacity - and even that didn't stop backlash towards it due to how heavily associated Kricfalusi is with the series.
  • Rick and Morty's reputation took a hit following the disastrous Szechuan Sauce promotion event. On October 7, 2017, McDonald's brought back the sauce, which gained a Colbert Bump after being mentioned in the season 3 premiere. However, each location had only 20 packets of sauce, leading to angry fans starting riots and harassing workers, many of whom weren't informed of the event until the very day it started. This fiasco, combined with reports of fans harassing the show's female staff and the spread of an infamous (but satirical) rant about the shownote , has led to Rick and Morty gaining a reputation for having a toxic fanbase. While the controversy has fortunately died down since the premiere of season 4, it still hasn't been forgotten by people who aren't fans of the show.
  • Robinson Sucroe is impossible to mention without getting into the plagiarism lawsuit or the scandal that followed. Cinar copied the show from a proposal in the 80s from creator Claude Robinson, which resulted in a lengthy legal battle that resolved in 2009, in Claude Robinson's favor, and also exposed tax fraud and other seedy financial actions on Cinar's part that shut the studio down in 2001.
  • The Simpsons:
  • South Park:
    • "Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus" is more known for the anger it generated from fans when it aired as an April Fools' joke instead of the highly anticipated "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut", the episode that supposedly reveals the identity of Cartman's father.
    • "Super Best Friends" is best known for being banned due to Muhammad being part of the titular group of deities, and is usually brought up alongside "200"/"201" when discussing the Muhammad controversy. Ironically the episode provoked little controversy when it originally aired; it was only after later episodes of the show generated controversy for their depictions of Muhammad that the episode was banned.
    • "Trapped in the Closet" is more known for how both Tom Cruise and Scientology responded to the episode. The episode is also known for the questionable circumstances that led to the departure of Isaac Hayes, Chef's voice actor, who was a Scientologist himself.note 
    • Episodes "200" and "201" are a Milestone Celebration that reveals the real truth concerning Cartman's father. However, the former caused a radical Muslim group to send death threats to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for depicting The Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit (even though it was really Santa Claus); Comedy Central subsequently edited the latter episode so all audio and visual references to Muhammad were censored, thus resparking the Muhammad cartoon controversy in real life. To this day, it has never been rerun, it is not available for legal streaming and only the censored version has been released on DVD. The uncensored version wouldn't be released until it was leaked in 2014. However, it's only available through torrent sites. The censored speech at the end, amusingly proven true by the censorship, essentially amounts to "Use fear and you will always get what you want!"
    • There's some in-universe instances of this too, often directly based on real-life instances mentioned on the other subpages. In a parody of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, "A Scause for Applause" featured Jesus being accused of using drugs to perform his miracles, with everyone destroying their "What Would Jesus Do" bracelets; Stan not removing his bracelet is what kicks off the plot. "The Problem with a Poo" parodied the Roseanne Barr tweet controversy, as Mr. Hankey's offensive tweets result in him being banned from the town despite years of bringing them Christmas joy. There's also the meta two-parter "Cartoon Wars," in which a mediocre episode of Family Guy sparks mass panic just because of a very brief Cutaway Gag featuring Mohammad. Like its fellow Mohammad-themed episodes, "Cartoon Wars" doesn't air on television anymore.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • The episode "House Fancy" only seems to be remembered for a scene where Squidward's toenail is ripped out in a rather violent fashion while he and SpongeBob are trying to move a couch, and the complaints it received due to the Nausea Fuel it invoked.
    • The early seasons of the show drew the ire of the Christian Right due to them perceiving the title character as gay, which the producers denied.note  One notable example they used against the show was the episode "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve," in which SpongeBob and Patrick raise a baby scallop together and start acting like a married couple. Ultimately, religious groups ended their attacks on the show when it became apparent that the general public weren't taking their views seriously.
    • Two episodes are overshadowed by brief references to suicide: "One Coarse Meal" for a scene where Plankton is so sick of living in fear of Pearl (actually her father, Mr. Krabs, dressing up as her to scare Plankton away from the secret formula) that he tries to get run over by a bus, and "Are You Happy Now?" for two scenes where it appears Squidward is trying to kill himself, but is really trying new ways to make himself happy, like putting up a birdcage or baking. Other episodes before and since have made suicide references, but these were seen as particularly blatant and/or grim, and most fandom discussion and criticism of the episodes is based around those moments.
    • The spin-off show Kamp Koral is primarily remembered for its infamous announcement several months after the passing of the original show's creator, Stephen Hillenburg. Some people, such as former writer/producer Paul Tibbitt, thought that Nickelodeon was disrespecting Hillenburg's wishes and purposely waited for his death to make the spin-off. note 
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: After the gay kiss featured in "Just Friends", some evangelical bishops in Brazil called for a total boycott of all Disney products in the country.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Writer Jesse Zukenote  is mostly remembered for the harassment they received over their work on the episode "Beta", the Ship-to-Ship Combat it caused, and the fact that it caused them to leave the show, than any of their merits as a writer (they would later return for Season 5, only to leave again for mental health reasons).
    • The episode "Keystone Motel" is mainly remembered for a bunch of fans leaving gag reviews about a real motel with that name, until the show's producers had to tell them to cut it out since a majority of the reviews made the motel look poor in quality.
    • It is nearly impossible to talk about the art book without bringing up the character known as Concrete. The art of the character, from a design brainstorming exercise, resembles a caricature of African-Americans due to her literal black skin and oversized lips. Furthermore, she's described in a text blurb as being illiterate, which is a stereotype of said ethnicity.note  This caused quite a stir in the fandom where many accused the show's staff of promoting racist views. The designer of the character, Lamar Abrams (who is African-American himself) and Hilary Florido, who wrote the text blurb, apologized, and the character (along with the rest of the Gems in her section) was removed from future prints. The controversy then shifted onto certain fans who harassed the crew even after the apologies, with some going as far as to call Abrams slurs. This caused a whole new section of the fanbase to defend the crew, even those who found Concrete offensive, with many pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of it all.
    • In-universe, this is what happened with the legacy of Rose Quartz. With the revelations of her origins as a disguised Pink Diamond this led to everyone questioning their values and purpose. Up until this point everyone viewed her as a couragous freedom fighter who believed in freedom for living beings of all kind. While that still technically held true, the sheer number of lies she's told (coupled with the revelation she was naive to a fault) made everyone start questioning their own motives, purpose, and, in one case, existence.
  • Stripperella suffered this due to exotic dancer Janet Clover filing a lawsuit against Stan Lee for stealing her idea.
  • Teen Titans Go! is infamous for its extensive advertising, reruns, and marathons, while Cartoon Network's other popular shows at the time it began airing (most notably Steven Universe and Adventure Time) have either been under-advertised, given multiple month-long hiatuses, or outright cancelled by the network at that point. This, along with the hatedom amongst older audiences and fans of the original Teen Titans, has overshadowed nearly every other aspect of the show.
  • Thundercats Roar has been largely overshadowed by the backlash to its initial reveal; along with its Denser and Wackier tone and Art Shift, as well as being aired in the wake of the short-lived but much-loved 2011 series. This caused many involved with the series to receive death threats, as well as causing CalArts to close due to a percieved shooting threat referencing the infamous "don't come to school tomorrow" meme (this despite the fact the "CalArts style", which Roar resembles, did not originate from the school). A crossover with the similarly-controversial Teen Titans Go did not help, with a questionable joke featuring Panthro's corpse, which many felt was mocking the death of Earle Hyman, his voice actor in the 80's cartoon, from just a few years prior. The widespread backlash, combined with poor ratings, and the fact that Thundercats doesn't have the same Pop Culture Osmosis as DC Comics does, led to Thundercats Roar being cancelled after just one season.
  • The Transformers: The episode "Thief in the Night" is best-known for featuring Carbombya, a nation of very broad Arab stereotypes that offended Casey Kasem (who was of Lebanese descent) so much he resigned from the show.
  • Twelve Forever will most likely be chiefly remembered for its massively Troubled Production (its producer shut down before its premiere), as well as creator Julia Vickerman being fired for mistreating her coworkers and making pedophilic comments on her social media, most infamously a story about her stalking a teenage boy at an amusement park.
  • The Wacky World of Tex Avery would be an entirely unremarkable syndicated weekday cartoon, were it not for the fact that DIC Entertainment inexplicably decided to name the series and one of its main characters after Tex Avery, an animator and director mostly famous for his work on Looney Tunes and several MGM cartoon shorts. Tex Avery, at the time of the show's airing, had been dead for seventeen years. This was intended to give the show some name recognition, but anyone capable of recognizing that name would realize that he couldn't possibly have had any input on the series, and likely jump to the reasonable conclusion that it was a callous attempt to leech off the man's legacy. It didn't help when it came out that DIC planned to go ahead with the series regardless of the approval of his surviving family, only paying them as a courtesy, meaning the idea of it being a tribute read as disingenuous. Because of this, it's very hard to talk about the show's merits one way or the other without first discussing the merits and morality of it using Avery's name.
  • The qubo version of VeggieTales was originally controversial when it aired because, among other edits, all references to God were removed, including the ending message, to appeal to a secular audience. note  Parent groups were not happy about this and filed complaints to NBC about it. This resulted in Season 2, as well as a third season that would go unaired until 2016, leaving in references to God. Despite this, the show did extremely well in ratings, becoming qubo's second highest-rated show after 3-2-1 Penguins! and LarryBoy Stories.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender, while well regarded for a good portion of its run, quickly spiraled into this starting from its seventh season on:

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