Protagonist Centered Morality / Western Animation

Protagonist-Centered Morality as seen in Western Animation.

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• Æon Flux subverts this constantly. The pilot starts out as a normal "Superspy slaughters mooks" sequence, then slowly shifts its focus to the final thoughts and experiences of several drugged, bleeding guards dying on the floor. The episode "War" goes through no less than four protagonists in a matter of minutes, each alternating sides in the conflict, and several of which start by killing the previous protagonist...
• Amphibia: The narrative tends to portray the mishaps Anne and the Plantars cause in various episodes as Played for Laughs and Black Comedy purposes, while Sasha and Marcy's mistakes are taken seriously and both have to endure punishment and hardships for their huge mistakes and betrayals. But Anne, Sprig, Polly, and Hop Pop have often made similar mistakes, and their choices made can range from being questionable to Crosses the Line Twice. For example; Anne convinces others to lie and steal even if it's for good reasons, once sells Sprig to marry Maddie for pizza dough, and later forces him to date Ivy while he's still engaged to Maddie. Sprig tried to send Hop-Pop's girlfriend Sylvia to her doom just to spend time with Hop Pop, and later devices a scheme to be together with his girlfriend Ivy during a super important mission to avoid 5 minutes of separation. Polly often gets into fights with people, and will even beats up babies. Hop Pop has implied to have killed someone in his past, and has even commented manslaughter in one episode. They even summoned a eldrich chicken god that can breath fire and turn people to stone, just to cover up a simple mistake. If not for Maddie having an antidote to unpetrify the turned stone townsfolk, they probably would've been cold stone forever. But nobody cares that they were almost as good as dead, as long as Anne and the Plantars learned their lesson. Cause again; it's all Played for Laughs. Thought, episodes like "The Plantars Last Stand" and "After the Rain" do play realistic outcomes for their (namely Hop Pop's) actions in later episodes, but their other mistakes often don't have any lasting consequences and is rarely brought up again.
• To some degree in The Dreamstone. Though they get the shorter end of focus in several episodes, the narrative seems to side with the Land of Dreams, who generally treat the Urpneys as Villain Ball Magnets and repel and often sadistically punish them for trying to give them bad dreams (disregarding Zordrak tortures or kills those that don't). The fact the heroes are exceptionally pious about it helps little either. Later episodes at least tone down their retaliations and give them a more genuine provocation, though the Urpneys still aren't really any more willingly villainous than before.
• Family Guy:
  • The majority of the time Peter is handed a lesson, Lois is designated as the Straight Man and supposed to be considered of higher moral ground, despite the fact that, in later episodes at least, Lois only has a vague margin of scruples over Peter, and many of her lectures or arguments with him are full of hypocritical or self serving behaviour (perhaps the most exaggerative examples include when she raped him to prove how misguided his vow of abstinence was, or when she chastised him for saying he hates his kids, despite once outright advising Meg to commit suicide out of apathy for her).
  • Brian hit on his owner's wife after Peter gave him a home. He is very hypocritical; he constantly acts like everyone who doesn't agree with him is an idiot. He dates women for their bodies while claiming to be interested in their minds. Lampshaded in "Jerome is the Brand New Black" by, of all people, Quagmire. Much of this is either a one-time-only thing (in the former's case), or later toned down, and he becomes more of a self-loathing Jaded Washout.
  • Quagmire's been portrayed as a borderline or flat-out rapist consistently since the show began (keeping several "tagged" Asian women in the trunk of his car, having an automatic system in place in his house to drug visiting women unconscious, etc...), but he gets to call Brian out for the above, when he is certainly even worse. Quagmire was portrayed as good for the majority of the show despite the fact he sleeps with minors, sexually assaults them, and some many other things that would otherwise land him in prison under realistic standards. Sure, while he has his good moments, that does not make his evident crimes less invalid or excusable in any way, not to mention he goes after Peter's wife, too, so there's that to keep in mind.
  • In general, Peter is a Manchild who engages in random antics and behaves like a small child. If anyone else tries something similar, Peter tends to berate them. Examples include mocking Billy Joel for going by 'Billy' (even claiming he, Peter, is an adult), and outright calling Joe stupid for randomly wanting to play reedpipes.
• Futurama:
  • Played for Laughs in "War Is The 'H' Word" when Bender and Fry try to steal valor to buy gum at 5% off and get told said discount is only for actual members of the military:
    Bender: What?! This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me!
  • Lampshaded at the end of "The Silence of the Clamps", when the crew learns that the very Bender-like robot they had seen killed wasn't Bender at all.
    Leela: So that moon hillbilly who got murdered was just an innocent husband and father!
    [Beat, then everyone cheers.]
  • Also Played for Laughs in "Leela and the Genestalk" when Leela is adamantly against genetic researching because she believes it may cause unforeseen negative side effects. Even when Mom explains it can feed the hungry and cure countless sick people, and even when it cures a man of his gigantism right in front of her she refuses to budge. Then Mom points out it can also cure Leela's disease, and her opinion instantly flips and she becomes a supporter of it.
    Leela: Even if genetic engineering feeds the hungry, and cures some giant guy! That doesn't make it right. We have no idea what the long-term effects will be. And once that genie is out of the bottle—
    Mom: I can cure you too.
    Leela: Okay I'm in.
  • Played straight in "Stench and Stenchability". Tonya breaking Bender's leg is treated as proof that she's even eviler than Bender... even though Bender was planning to kidnap her and murder her parents, and she knew about it. Later, she's portrayed as being evil for continuing to hate Bender after he saved her life, even though Bender did so completely by accident and he was actually celebrating the fact that she was dying at the time.
• The tad-infamous Hero Factory special Invasion from Below showed signs of this, as the Heroes' actions at the end lead to the death of the entire Beast colony, including their unhatched eggs, even though it was made clear that they were a sentient species who only became aggressive when unassuming construction workers trespassed into their nest. The Heroes do make peace with them, but a slight misunderstanding (one Beast accidentally stepping on a gun) causes another fight, and the Heroes blast their nest to pieces, letting the colony fall into a lake of acid. At the end, we're supposed to cheer for their victory and the one surviving Beast egg is even presented as a dark Cliffhanger, when it's clearly been shown that the Beasts are not evil by nature and can be reasoned with. In a previous episode, the Heroes even contemplated enacting infanticide (after finding eggs belonging to the species of an escaped prisoner), and only decided against it for tactical reasons.
• Les Sisters: Wendy and Marine frequently cause problems for the people around them, yet when one of the antagonists does the same things as them, it's treated as despicable. Thirteen-year-old Rachel attacks seven-year-old Marine for humiliating her? Rachel is a horrible person (while Rachel can be pretty bad at times, she wasn't that bad in the episode in question). Thirteen-year-old Wendy attacks seven-year-old Loulou and throws paint on her because Loulou humiliated her in public? Loulou apparently deserved it.
• The Lion Guard: A number of viewers question how the titular Lion Guard honors the Circle of Life by stopping hungry predators from simply hunting.
  • Whenever Janja and his clan try to hunt animals, they are chased out of the Pridelands by the Lion Guard because they don't respect the Circle of Life. However, these same heroes also trespass into the Outlands multiple times to stop the hyenas from hunting animals in their own turf.
  • When Makucha tries to hunt Ajabu, who he had chased all the way from the jungle and was his rightful prey, the Lion Guard stops him just because member of the Lion Guard Beshte recently befriended Ajabu.
  • Even Ushari and Makuu, predators who live in the Pridelands have fallen victim to this once.
• This was a consistent problem Loonatics Unleashed had. Regardless of what was going on or the actual points anyone made, team leaders Zadavia and Ace and Lexi Bunny were always portrayed as right because they were "the heroes." On the other hand Danger Duck could be an egotistical jerk, so he was always wrong and deserved anything he got, like Lexi giving him a "brain blast" over something like a mild insult.
  • The episode "Secrets of the Guardian Strike Sword" gives multiple examples.
    • At the beginning of the episode Ace is saved from a tight spot by a guy named Deuce. When Zadavia finds out Deuce is around she angrily tells him to get off her planet, but refuses to explain why. Because Deuce saved him before, though, Ace decides to go over Zadavia's head and let him ride along on an important mission. But Deuce turns out to be evil and just trying to win Ace's confidence to steal the titular Cool Sword from him, which can revive an army of Mecha-Mooks. After this Zadavia finally explains her behavior: Deuce used to be a general in her army but he was obsessed with gathering glory in battle and had an insatiable desire for power, so she didn't agree to give him absolute control of her military and he deserted. If she'd just said that in the first place, Deuce probably wouldn't have gotten the sword and the danger would've been avoided, but it's brushed aside with nobody having less faith in her or questioning her judgement.
    • While trying to get the sword back, Ace is jump-kicked from behind by Deuce, and calls him out asking "Is that how you treat your friends?" In their ensuing duel, though, Ace gains the upper hand when he takes advantage of Deuce turning his back to jump-kick him from behind. To drive it home, that fight is supposed to prove that Ace is the "true warrior" who really deserves the legendary sword.
    • In the wrap-up, Ace asks Zadavia when she'll tell him what other powers his sword has, but she replies she'll do it when the time is right because too much knowledge is dangerous. Duck complains that too little knowledge is dangerous too, and as he does an unexplained energy beam comes from Ace's sword and zaps him. This is treated as funny and something Duck deserves for contradicting Zadavia. Even though he was basically saying that knowing how to properly use a dangerous weapon is a good idea. Not to mention how the whole episode probably wouldn't have happened if not for Zadavia withholding important info for no good reason, yet the show turns right around and expects the viewer to take it on faith that if she says it's not the time to talk about this, then it's not the time to talk about it.
  • In "It Came From Outer Space" Rev and Lexi mess around with one of Tech's inventions that looks like a video game but actually controls some kind of orbital weapon system, and they find out they just fired real missiles at a real alien ship whose owner decides to invade the planet over this unprovoked attack. Eventually the alien warlord's driven off, his weapons destroyed, and Tech starts setting booby traps in his lab to discourage this from happening in the future. But nobody's ever really called out on how by ignoring a reasonable request from Tech ("don't play in my lab: the things in there are powerful crime-fighting weapons, not toys") and insisting on fighting it out with a vastly superior enemy over the misdeeds of one person, the Loonatics almost got the planet they're supposed to be protecting destroyed, and they're lauded for solving a serious problem they created themselves.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • One major example is "Boast Busters". While Trixie does go overboard with her ego, one of the ponies who calls her out and complains is Rainbow Dash, who's not exactly the picture of modesty and humility herself. Rarity and Applejack didn't cover themselves in glory in that episode either. While they criticized Trixie for her boasting and bombast, they wasted no time trying to show up the stage magician at her own show and get the spotlight on themselves, and nothing is said about them starting the entire conflict in the first place by loudly heckling and disrupting the show the second Trixie introduced herself as "great and powerful" which is what actually egged on Trixie's boasting to begin with. Later, the only reason anything bad happens is because Snips and Snails lure a dangerous animal to town because they want to see Trixie slay it, and yet they get no consequences while Trixie is blamed for the incident and loses her home and all her belongings. This is treated as Laser-Guided Karma because, as far as the show is concerned, her minor spat with the protagonists at the beginning of the episode makes her deserving of all the blame.
  • In the same episode, Twilight magically zips Spike's mouth shut. Later in "Magic Duel" (coincidentally Trixie's reappearance), Trixie uses a cursor to remove Pinkie's mouth. Trixie's act is presented as evil, but not Twilight's (in Twilight's defense, Trixie left Pinkie like that for a while), nor was Twilight's not bothering to actually restore Pinkie's mouth until the ending for the sake of a gag.
  • One particularly funny example is the main cast calling out Discord for ruining the Grand Galloping Gala in "Make New Friends But Keep Discord", when you consider that the spirit of chaos unleashing a nearly unstoppable Blob Monster still caused less collateral damage than the Mane 6 managed to cause in "The Best Night Ever" (and that Princess Celestia knowingly invited them to the event knowing they'd liven it up by completely trashing the place; it's never explicitly stated if she invited Discord for the same reason, but she does seem to get a laugh out of it).
  • Trixie has yet another example, this time intentionally done and called out on. When Twilight began mentoring the reformed villain Starlight Glimmer, she encouraged her to start making friends. She was horrified when her choice of friend wound up being Trixie, causing Twilight to attempt to break them up. Starlight (who wasn't here for either of Trixie's earlier episodes) asks what exactly about Trixie is so terrible, especially since Twilight claimed to have forgiven her at the end of her last appearance. The fact that Starlight's own crimes were far, far greater in scope than Trixie (who at her worst was being influenced by the Alicorn Amulet) actually causes her to have second thoughts about Twilight, and wonder how sincere her own forgiveness was.
  • "Wonderbolts Academy" has Lightning Dust, effectively a version of Rainbow Dash stripped of most sympathetic qualities, so obsessed with her own personal goals that she endangers those around her without really caring about it, culminating an incident that could have killed the Mane Six who are thankfully saved by the other recruits, with Lightning Dust shrugging it off as no big deal and getting a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Rainbow Dash and eventually fired. Then in "Non-Complete Clause" Rainbow Dash and Applejack are so obsessed with their own personal goals that they endanger those around them without really caring about it, culminating in an incident that could have killed Yona but thankfully she's saved by the other students, with Rainbow Dash and Applejack shrugging it off as no big deal... and getting rewarded in the end for "showing the students how not to behave" (and Twilight knows they weren't trying to do that and were just being selfish and competitive). The Double Standard is completely lost on all of them, including Rainbow Dash who still bears a grudge against Lightning Dust the next time they meet only a few episodes later.
  • "2, 4, 6, Greaaat" has Twilight Sparkle being a Trickster Mentor by making Rainbow Dash do a job she doesn't want to do to teach her a lesson despite being thoroughly upset with Discord for doing this to her on two separate occasions.
  • "A Horse Shoe In" has Starlight Glimmer give a fierce "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Trixie for expecting her to be made vice-headmare of the School of Friendships's just because she's her friend despite showing themselves unqualified and carelessly endangering students. But the School was founded on Twilight Sparkle knowingly employing her friends, including Starlight, over qualified staff arguing it made them more qualified to teach friendship, which was ultimately portrayed as 100% right despite their endangering students and questionable effectiveness as teachers. Starlight is only in the position to hire because she was promoted to headman on a whim by Twilight despite the numerous times she engaged and harmed others even after her Heel–Face Turn and gotten off scot-free with at most an apology, which isn't even presented as Starlight having allegedly learned from those mistakes.
• Deconstructed in The Owl House. Emperor Belos feels all of his actions are justified because he thinks he's the hero of the story. In his eyes, everything from turning himself into a horrible monster by consuming Palismen to stabbing his own brother Caleb to death is justified by the idea that he's saving humanity from the evils of witchcraft... by orchestrating a continental genocide. Even cloning Caleb only to abuse those clones into perfect obedience and kill them when they stop being useful is described by Belos as an attempt to "save" Caleb by making a better version of him.
• Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: In "My Mischievous Son", Penn zaps in a world as a family man who must convince his boss to give him a promotion and Rippen zaps in as Penn's mischievous son who tries to convince Penn's boss to reassign him to Antarctica instead. When said boss shows up, he states there's another character wanting the promotion and, no matter what, the one who doesn't get the promotion will be Reassigned to Antarctica. The viewers aren't explained why Penn's character must be the one to get the promotion.
• The title characters of The Powerpuff Girls are often just as destructive as the villains they fight, which is almost never acknowledged because, well, they're the Powerpuff Girls. Most likely the townsfolk decide that they're probably a better option than leaving the Kaiju unchecked, but often the destruction they cause is entirely disproportional to the threat. This is generally intentional with shades of Comedic Sociopathy at times.
  • The beatings they regularly give to any criminal, particularly Mojo Jojo, are almost always excessive force, which results in horribly brutal treatment. Given that Mojo's no more physically able than a regular chimpanzee, it's the equivalent of Superman giving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Lex Luthor.
  • "Mime for a Change" introduces Rainbow the Clown, a cheerful children's entertainer who commits no crimes beyond being loud and slightly annoying. After his colors are drained in a freak accident, he turns into Mr. Mime and begins draining Townsville of its color and life. It's made clear that he's not acting in his right mind, and when the girls restore color to the city at the end of the episode, he thanks them for saving him to the cheers of all present. The girls' response? They beat him up and throw him in jail over something that wasn't his fault. Of course, the narrator proceeds to take their side in his closing statements.
  • Subverted in "Town and Out", when the Professor and the Girls move to the town of Citiesville, which is far more like a real city than Townsville. While there, they manage to foil bank robbers from escaping by blowing up the bridge they were about to cross with their eye lasers. Instead of being praised like they would be in Townsville, the mayor of Citiesville chews them out for their extreme course of action, and points out they could have just stopped the robbers by using their flight and super strength, without costing the town a ridiculous sum of money.
  • There are many instances when a villain is either subdued or surrenders... only to be beaten to a pulp before going to jail. One example comes from Big Billy becoming a good guy temporarily only to leave the group after getting yelled at. In the end, he saves the girls' lives by thwarting a scheme against them. The girls say that while they appreciate it, he still has to go to jail for helping the Gangreen Gang trap them in the train tracks, which he nods in acceptance.... they then beat the snot out of him.
  • One episode focuses on Buttercup going too far with this. She beats Fuzzy Lumpkins far beyond any need to, and is called out for it by her sisters and the doctors who treated Fuzzy, who is wheelchair bound with excessive injuries. The doctor blatantly states she isn't a hero for beating up someone so viciously. Unfortunately, the episode doesn't really work since Blossom and Bubbles are just as guilty and aren't subject to the same scolding.
  • A prominent example is "Bubblevicious", where Bubbles viciously beats up innocent citizens and a dog solely out of anger at her sisters and trying to prove she's "hardcore". She is never punished, nor does she ever show any remorse for her actions. It's suggested that we're supposed to see these as justifiable responses, because Bubbles only stops when her sisters call her "hardcore" like she wanted.
  • Subverted in "Uh Oh Dynamo". The Professor forces the girls to use a Humongous Mecha to fight a giant pufferfish monster and the fight totally destroys Townsville, but instead of overlooking the destruction like they usually do, the whole town yells at them and demands they never use the robot again, despite having no problem when the Girls themselves often do the same level or higher amount of damage. Realising what they did, the girls shift the blame onto their creator, who has the decency to be rendered speechless and leave under the towns' collective glares.
  • Also given one big lampshade in the origin movie, where the girls' first flight through Townsville causes mass destruction and makes the populace terrified of them. For what it's worth, they never cause anywhere near that level of destruction ever again unless they're actually fighting something.
  • Bubbles has her Companion Cube, Octi, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her whenever it gets damaged or stolen, but Bubbles shows absolutely No Sympathy to Buttercup when she and Blossom found out that Buttercup had her own Security Blanket, and shame her into get rid of it at the end, because she shouldn't "need" it to help fight criminals and monsters, though it's clear to the viewer that Buttercup just loves having a blanket regardless if she could fight, and was mostly just telling them this just to avoid embarrassment. All this, yet Bubbles is still allowed to keep Octi without question because...?
  • It's a bit worse in the comic book "Bow Jest". Blossom is painted as wrong for "ditching" her sisters in a battle against Princess to look for her bow, getting angry at her sisters for "their blunder", and for jumping a girl to try and take her bow. While understandable, her sisters are not much better, since they knowingly brought up Blossom's embarrassing moment to the Professor (which she was uncomfortable to talk about), Bubbles, of all people, made fun of Blossom for losing and depending on her bow (prompting Blossom to get mad and rebuke her sisters, resulting in the Professor scolding her), and Buttercup stole it the next day, proceeding to rub it in by wearing it, and Bubbles lets the teasing go on, with no one stepping in to deal with it. When Mojo Jojo steals Blossom's bow from Buttercup and rubs it in Blossom's face, he is rightfully framed as wrong for it. The narrative paints Bubbles and Buttercup's actions' as simply teaching Blossom a lesson on dependence.
• Played for Laughs in Rick and Morty when Jerry has become violently ill from mutant bacteria that Rick left in the fridge in Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate. He rushes Jerry to an alien hospital to be cured but, when Jerry infects a doctor, Rick just shoots the doctor dead without even blinking rather than using any of his various non-lethal gadgets.
• Santa Inc.: At the end of episode 6, after Santa spells out to Candy why he chose Devin over her to be the next Santa^note Namely that she's horrible at arguably the most important part of being Santa - dealing with children. And he tells her that's not just a skill you can pick up and learn. The kids can tell., he still says wants her to run things behind the scenes, giving her the chance to implement all the reforms and changes she'd proposed. Candy literally tells Santa to go fuck himself and quits. And the show clearly expects the audience to side with Candy and not see this as Candy throwing away the chance of a lifetime.
• Invoked in the South Park episode "Coon vs. Coon and Friends".
  The Coon: It's not my fault you guys turned evil, Kenny!
  Mysterion: You are the bad guy, fat boy. You!
  The Coon: I'm going around making the world a better place!
  Mysterion: For YOU! You're making the world a better place FOR YOU!
  The Coon: ...right, that's what superheroes do.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: You're supposed to side with the titular character and Patrick, no matter what, especially when they annoy or cause injury to other characters because of their idiocy. We are also supposed to side with SpongeBob and Patrick over the people who have a justified grudge towards them, like Squidward, such as in the episode "Bubble Buddy". We're supposed to sympathize with SpongeBob because people want to pop his "friend". The problem is that the two were causing trouble the entire episode, such as keeping a very large amount of people waiting two hours to use the bathroom because Bubble Buddy was "using it" and making an unreasonably complicated order at the Krusty Krab. And since the bubble currency they paid Mr. Krabs ceased to exist (and was never valid to begin with), they technically stole several hundred dollars' worth of food from him. Bubble Buddy even let a fish die; at least in the mob's case, they didn't know Bubble Buddy was alive.
• The finale to Star vs. the Forces of Evil has become infamous for this. In particular, the last few minutes shows Earth and Mewni fused together. Despite all the humans running and screaming in fear from the monsters, all the destroyed stuff, how hard it will be for everyone to adapt to the new world, the mostly unresolved racism between monsters and regular Mewmans, the fact that people who have been ruled by a monarchy for their entire lives now having to coexist with countless different world governments, and that Star and Marco will never see their friends who didn't live on Mewni again, this is still treated as a good thing and a happy ending because it means Star and Marco get to stay together. In other words, who cares how many billions of people have had their lives uprooted as long as our leads get to stay together?
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Padme is treated as a honorable moral center of the Senate, but during the Clovis arc she aids a plot to bomb the Banking Clan (a neutral planet in the Clone Wars) and steal all their financial records in the ensuing chaos. When they find out, all Padme gets is three days in a cell before being bailed. Once the ledgers are released to the public, the Republic and the Confederacy are appalled by what the financial records reveal but never bring up that Padme good as carried out a terror attack on peaceful territory. A few episodes later, Count Dooku attacking the Banking Clan is treated as an immoral breach of treaty, and grounds for a Republic assault.
• In sequel series Tangled: The Series, Rapunzel is shown to be kindhearted and optimistic, yet naive, always wanting to see the good in everything. Come the 3rd season, after Cassandra steals the Moonstone and uses it to undergo a transformation in order to "get back the glory she deserves", Rapunzel has made some very questionable choices in her bid to redeem her friend. Rapunzel even gets called out by Eugene on her actions (she argues that friends don't leave friends behind, then Eugene counters that Cassandra was the one who left her, Rapunzel was unable to refute it). It also didn't help that she basically altered the past to convert Eugene's way of thinking to match hers. Rapunzel gets so desperate to getting Cassandra back as her friend that she's given her numerous second chances which all get thrown back in her face and resulting in a lot of collateral damage. It came to a point that Rapunzel was basically willing to risk her kingdom, family, friends, and loved ones' well-being if it meant redeeming Cassandra. Yet we're supposed to root for Rapunzel's choices as being idealistic and just since she's the main character, but really feels more like her being a selfish Wide-Eyed Idealist.
• Applied in a big way in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, as noted most obviously in the turtles' treatment of Karai, Hun, and the Shredder. While all three characters have led crime syndicates and have ruined countless off-screen lives, the turtles' treatment of them varies wildly. The Shredder, as Hamato Yoshi's killer, becomes a kill-on-sight villain whenever he threatens the world. Hun, who is openly antagonistic against the turtles but has yet to do any real damage, is dealt with ambivalence—if he's killed, fine, but they won't go out of their way to do so. On the other hand, sometimes-ally Karai—who has tried to kill the turtles on more than one occasion and was perfectly willing to allow her father to commit interstellar genocide—wound up being invited to April and Casey's wedding after her help defeating an even bigger bad. Combined with the fact that "stopping the bad guys" sometimes means "committing genocide", it's hard not to conclude that the turtles, although unquestionably heroic at times, have also committed plenty of actions that would make people go "what the hell, hero?"
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures Spring Break Special, in order to save themselves from being Elmyra's "Easter bunnies", Buster and Babs give her Plucky so she can abuse him. Normally when bad things happened to Plucky, he often deserved it for being a jerk and con artist. What did he do to deserve this? ...nothing. All he was doing was earning money in an honest way by selling his tanning invention so he could go out on a date with a girl he met on the beach. He wasn't lying, cheating, or swindling people, and to add insult to injury, the girl ends up going out with Hamton. Not helping Buster and Babs' case is that they make jokes about the situation instead of showing concern for Plucky's well-being.
• In Go Go Gophers, which ran on the Underdog cartoon, Colonel Kit Coyote was very much an obsessive and egotistical bully for constantly trying to get rid of the two Gopher Indians, but then again, those two did quite a few mean things to him as well in retaliation that often left him and his men injured or in the stockade, and never got punished for it.
• In Winx Club: Sky is never once called out or regarded as being in the wrong for lying to his girlfriend about the fact that he was engaged; the series justifies this much, MUCH later by flanderizing his fiance into a hate sink to make him look like he's in the right for his very scummy actions. In real life, this kind of behavior would've gotten him slapped and dumped, as girls do NOT typically like learning that their significant other has been lying to them and essentially two-timing another woman to be with them.
• In Xiaolin Showdown, when Wuya uses a Wu that she didn't wager, the monks and the narrative treat her as a cheater, yet, previously, when Omi challenged Dojo to a Showdown, he used two Wu's that he didn't wager, and the narrative treated him like he did something acceptable.

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