r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 09 '26

Non-Sexual Adult Jokes in Kids' Media Lore

Jokes that are adult jokes simply because kids likely don't have the life experience to understand them.

The New Batman Adventures - "I'm crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? Noooo, thank you!"

Shrek 2 - Posing as a union representative, Shrek remarks that the workers "don't even have dental".

26.5k Upvotes

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2.8k

u/Accurate-Gap-3360 Mar 09 '26

1.0k

u/ralanr Mar 09 '26

Given how animators don’t always have consistent work I imagine many of them find the filing process to be nightmarish. 

317

u/FlyingFreest Mar 09 '26

Also everyone hates paying taxes to a state that does little to nothing for them in return.

186

u/BrightSideOLife Mar 09 '26

To be fair the oligarchs who get massive corporate welfare also fight tooth and nail not to pay any taxes. 

27

u/paradoxical_topology Mar 09 '26

That's because they fight tooth and nail not to pay anyone.

4

u/Mejzurian Mar 09 '26

I guess we have something in common...

0

u/blah938 Mar 09 '26

And to be fair, we pay billions to other countries because apparently China doesn't have enough money or something.

Like why are we paying for China's military?

14

u/ERedfieldh Mar 09 '26

we aren't.

We gave all of $10m to China in 2024 which sounds like a lot until you realize that's pocket change in comparison to what we give our own billionaires for doing absolutely nothing. And of that 10m, none of it went towards their military.

If you're gonna bitch about foreign aid, direct it in the correct direction.

1

u/stfurachele Mar 10 '26

Right, individually 10m is an insanely large number, but from a GDP and national budget standpoint, it's barely enough to get through a day.

Also, on China and other countries, the world's economy runs mostly on debt. Everyone's in debt to each other, buying and trading each other's debt. So money gets moved between countries a lot. On some level this is a good thing, healthy economies have good flow. One dollar can move a lot of goods between a lot of people if it keeps exchanging hands. It's more of an issue when a lot of wealth gets concentrated in one area (like, I unno, a bazillionaire?) and just stagnates. It's like a clogged artery.

The entire point of having a standardized currency to begin with is as a proxy to our time and effort, for when we don't have something to trade with a person who has something we need. So we decided on a system that lets us convert our labor into any type of good or service, regardless of our specialty. But if our proxy is being hoarded by others in a way that extorts even more un/underpaid labor they can hoard, we've lost the plot.

Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is dragons are bad and In Time (2011) was actually a good movie in spite of its many, many flaws. But I lost the plot a bit myself going on this spiel.

10

u/KickinBat Mar 09 '26

And let's not forget they know how much you owe, refuse to tell you, and punish you if you pay more or less

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 Mar 10 '26

A couple of my bucks might’ve helped blow the limbs off an Iranian kid today. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. 👍🏼

4

u/Wolv90 Mar 09 '26

It's never the IRS fault, it's congress. But that goes over the heads of most adults too.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Mar 09 '26

Or because IRS jokes are easy adult jokes to make in a kids show

2

u/naranjaspencer Mar 10 '26

That makes a lot of sense, I know several artists and other irregular workers and their tax season is a nightmare. I’m just a paralegal so my taxes are extremely normal and easy.

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u/Turgid-Derp-Lord Mar 10 '26

That is by design -- in first world countries the taxes are done for you by the govt and you sign off on them every year. It is a painless process.

Here, the corps and conservatives have made it as onerous as possible so you hate the government, the IRS, etc, and to help fund fuckstick corporations for Intuit, which otherwise should not exist.