Hang out in geeky spaces online and you're sure to encounter some people with very, very strong opinions about cartoons. If you're reading this article, there's a good chance you might have such strong opinions yourself. Sometimes these discussions can be in good fun, bring up certain topics and things are bound to get seriously heated. A lot of topics you might not even expect to elicit such strong reactions do. Sometimes these angry responses are perfectly valid in response to some truly horrendous decisions by the people who make the cartoons we love and/or hate. Plenty of other times, however, the fans have no good reason for such anger, or they take a semi-reasonable reaction and blow it way out of proportion to a scary degree.

With so many controversies in the world of animation, which ones are the fault of toxic fandom and when are the artists at fault? Comic Book Resources is ready to deliver the verdict on 20 major cartoon controversies from the early '90s to the present day. This article will describe what went down in these animation arguments and explain why either the fans or the creators were at fault. To be very clear, even in cases where the creators are wrong, that is NOT an excuse to harass or behave poorly towards anyone. Two wrongs never make a right. Prepare to sigh with disappointment at both the people who make your favorite cartoons and the people who watch them and give fandom a bad name!

20 FANS: SHE-RA DESIGN CONTROVERSY

Let's be honest: most of the people angry about the new She-Ra cartoon never cared about She-Ra until now. It was always a cartoon aimed at young girls, with a secondary camp-loving queer cult following. Given that, Noelle Stevenson, a lesbian cartoonist successful at writing kids' comics, seems like a perfect fit for the material, and yet she's already being attacked by people angry about the redesign.

The refrain that the new She-Ra "looks like a boy" is particularly ridiculous. The character's still clearly feminine; if the more practical shape of the armor casts a slightly more androgynous silhouette, her everyday look certainly doesn't. Complaints that she's not "attractive" enough get downright creepy when you consider this version's a teenager.

19 CREATORS: BUTCH HARTMAN'S KICKSTARTER

Butch Hartman, the creator of The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom and a few other shows announced his departure from Nick in February 2018. In June, he launched a Kickstarter for his latest project: a family-friendly streaming channel called OAXIS. The campaign made its crowd-funding goal, but people soon discovered Hartman wasn't completely honest with his intentions.

While in public, Hartman was promoting OAXIS as a general family service, videos from behind closed doors revealed OAXIS is being specifically planned as a "Christian" network. The lack of transparency about this bothered backers. More and more evidence has piled up that makes Hartman look not so good, particularly an interview where he says some truly cruel things to voice actress Tara Strong.

18 FANS: THUNDERCATS THREATS

The backlash over Thundercats Roar makes slightly more sense than the backlash over She-Ra in as much as it seems the people angry about it actually liked the old shows and the radically different new style could be off-putting. What still isn't excusable is the sheer level of vitriol unleashed towards the show and the artists working on it.

Perhaps the single worst response to Thundercats Roar occured on June 4th, when a troll on Twitter threatened a mass shooting at CalArts, the art school these trolls blame for the "style" of Thundercats Roar despite no evidence the show's artists even attended. The campus had to shut down for the day all because of one toxic fan.

17 CREATORS: THE PROBLEM WITH APU

In 2017, Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and fan of The Simpsons, released the short documentary The Problem With Apu. It detailed his and other South Asian comics' issues with Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. In particular, the fact he's voiced by Hank Azaria, a white guy, was an issue for many. While Azaria responded to criticism gracefully, The Simpsons itself missed the point.

The show responded in the episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished" with, essentially, a shrug. Sitting next to a photo of Apu, Lisa turned to the camera saying "Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?" Considering Lisa is the show's progressive voice of reason, this was out-of-character in addition to a weak response to criticism.

16 FANS: THE "CALARTS STYLE"

Connected to the Thundercats Roar controversy is the whole  "CalArts style" meme, an inaccurate idea that just won't die. Some fans claim that all cartoons today look the same and it's the fault of CalArts, with the above image often used as "evidence." Of course, that image is an off-model fan-drawing (the official designs are more distinctive), and half the cartoons included aren't even from CalArts alumni!

It's true cartoons go through stylistic trends, and you don't have to like every trend, but "CalArts style" simply doesn't exist. The phrase was coined by John Kricfalusi (a man who'll be discussed more later) to complain about The Iron Giant, a movie by a CalArts alum that certainly doesn't look like what these memes are complaining about!

15 CREATORS: BEAST BOY GOING ANTI-VAXXER

How's this for a tragedy in five acts? Act I: Greg Cipes is cast as Beast Boy in the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon, developed by David Slack. Act II: Inspired by playing a vegetarian character, Cipes goes vegan himself. So far, so good. Then we get to Act III: Cipes falls in with the PETA crowd, and a lot of the psuedoscience that surrounds it.

Act IV: Cipes starts believing the myth that vaccines are "poisoning" kids and causing autism. Act V: When David Slack (who is on the autism spectrum himself) eloquently calls out how utterly wrongheaded, offensive and ableist the anti-vaxxer position is, Cipes fires back by calling Slack a "bully" and a "piece of ----." Not cool, Beast Boy. Not cool.

14 FANS: THE RICK AND MORTY FANDOM IN GENERAL

It almost feels like beating a dead horse to complain about the worst parts of the Rick and Morty fandom, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve it. This show has a huge audience, but a few particularly vocal fans have made the mistake of thinking Rick's a role model, and those fans have to make the rest of us miserable.

Singling out an individual controversy involving the fandom is hard. The McDonalds Szechuan sauce riots were the most publicized cases of Rick and Morty fans acting embarrassingly. Even scarier than that, however, was the time fans sent death threats to the show's female writers.

13 CREATORS: POKEMON GIVING KIDS SEIZURES

Yeah, this is one controversy where nobody will defend what happened, not even the animators who accidentally caused it. On December 16th, 1997, 685 kids were sent to hospitals (and 150 staying at those hospitals) because of seizures caused by flashing lights in the Pokemon episode "Electric Soldier Porygon." Bizarrely, many of these kids didn't even have epilepsy!

The Japanese TV and animation industries established new guidelines to avoid incidents like this in the future. The episode was quickly pulled from circulation and never aired in the United States. The character of Porygon never returned to the anime, even though it was Pikachu who did the seizure-causing attack.

12 FANS: VOLTRON FAN BLACKMAILS STUDIO

If you're getting into the Voltron fandom, just don't talk about ships. Nothing good has come of the extremely angry shipping discourse in the Voltron fandom. Fans continue to attack each other over different ships, and have even sent threats to the actors and writers. One particularly obsessed fan acted on one of these threats.

It wasn't a death threat (fortunately), but still a pretty extreme blackmail threat. This fan began posting unapproved photos taken at a tour of Studio Mir, threatening to keep the photos up on tumblr unless the show made "Klance" (Keith/Lance) canon. The situation was defused and the fan took the photos down, but this obsessive shipper almost got the animators in legal trouble.

11 CREATORS: MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN AT PIXAR

Of all the abuses of power exposed as part of #MeToo, some of the most shocking to animation fans were the actions of Pixar/Disney executive John Lasseter. In the press, Lasseter had cultivated an image of a lovable if touchy-feely savior of animation. Turns out, behind the scenes, he was too touchy, in a bad way, and not so lovable.

Lasseter's sexism explains the firing of Brenda Chapman from Brave as well as Rashida Jones' departure from Toy Story 4. Reports heartbreakingly outline how his sexism influenced the general culture at Pixar. Fortunately, Pete Docter will be replacing him at Pixar and Jennifer Lee will at Disney.

10 FANS: BULLYING A STEVEN UNIVERSE FAN-ARTIST

This tragedy really had less to do with Steven Universe than it did with the mob mentality of cyberbullying. Supposedly, fan-artist Zamii070 initially became a target of online harassment over some IRL relationship drama and jealousy. The people trying to attack her, however, found a lot of "useful idiots" for their hate mob in the Steven Universe fandom.

The constant "call-outs" on tumblr tried to to paint her as a "bad person." Many focused on the time she drew Rose Quartz, a larger character, too thin (this was before we'd even seen Rose's body on the show). Zamii attempted to end her own life, but thankfully survived. The writers for Steven Universe were rightfully upset with how their show became an excuse for harassment.

9 CREATORS: THE KILLING JOKE MOVIE

Seriously, what were Bruce Timm and Brian Azzarello thinking with The Killing Joke animated movie? Adapting that particular comic story, one that's almost as problematic as it is brilliant, was going to be a challenge no matter what, yet everything this movie did to attempt to "fix" the problems with The Killing Joke just made things way worse.

The scene where Batman and Batgirl get it on was the most scandalous addition to the movie and the one that caused the most outcry, but really the whole first 30 minutes of the movie is sexist nonsense. If you ever wanted to hear Batman Batmansplain the objectification of women, maybe this is your movie, but many fans were righteously annoyed.

8 FANS: MACING A GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE OVER SONIC

The Sonic the Hedgehog fandom has a reputation for being one of the more... eccentric major fandoms on the internet. Of course "eccentric" doesn't automatically equal "bad." In the case of the fan who maced a GameStop employee as part of a nonsensical protest over the Sonic Boom game and Cartoon Network series making Sonic's arms blue, however, the situation is equal parts weird and bad.

This particular fan's story is a sad and bizarre one. Initially infamous for a fan-comic, this was a person who had a number of serious family and mental health issues. These issues were only exacerbated by an obsessive group of trolls and stalkers egging on tons of bad decisions, which eventually included this Sonic Boom "protest."

7 CREATORS: RACIST ALADDIN LYRICS

"Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place/where the caravan camels roam./Where they cut off your hand if they don't like your face./It's barbaric, but hey, it's home!" Watch Aladdin today and you won't hear one of those original lyrics to "Arabian Knights." The "barbarism" no longer refers to dismemberment but merely the desert heat.

Disney movies have a history of racial stereotypes, but Aladdin was the first time the company instantly responded to criticism. Of course, even with that offensive line removed, Aladdin isn't the most PC movie, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee had many additional criticisms. In response to this controversy, as well as a changing social climate, later Disney films have increasingly aimed for greater racial sensitivity.

6 FANS: ANTI-LGBT PROTESTS ABOUT ANIME EXPO

It seems like ever minor thing in geek culture these days gets transformed into a "culture war" even if nobody was angry about it before. Anime conventions have held LGBT-themed panels since forever. There's tons of LGBT-themed anime and there are lots of queer fans, so having these panels made sense. Nobody complained until Anime Expo 2018.

Some of the complainers made a big deal about the fact that Crunchyroll, the leading anime streaming site, was hosting the panel. But what's wrong with a company that streams queer-themed anime sponsoring a panel relevant to the very shows it promotes? This was just a whole lot of Twitter rage over absolutely nothing.

5 CREATORS: NINA PALEY'S RADICAL POSITION

Sita Sings the Blues is an amazing movie. It's actually available for free, as director Nina Paley relinquished all copyright over the movie in protest of copyright laws. It's a good thing she did that, because it would be a lot harder to recommend the movie if she were profiting off it given some of her other stances.

Paley already had a history of taking questionable "radical" positions (her stance on population control is unfortunately reminiscent of Thanos). In the past couple years, she's unfortunately identified herself as a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (or TERF, for short), making all sorts of extremely transphobic statements on social media. Truly disappointing from such a talented filmmaker.

4 FANS: A STALKER CANCELS TINY TOONS

Social media might amplify toxic cartoon fandom, but it's been a problem for a long time. Back in the days of Usenet, Tiny Toon Adventures was one of the most popular cartoons, and with that popularity came those who didn't express their fandom in the healthiest of ways. One such fan actually contributed to the show ending.

Dennis Falk stalked the show's production team and became particularly creepy towards voice actress Tress MacNeille. MacNeille had to stop going to local conventions to avoid him. This was one of the main factors in the decision to end the show. The final Tiny Toons special, "Night Ghoulery," featured a caricature of Falk.

3 CREATORS: THAT FROZEN SHORT IN FRONT OF COCO

Compared to, well, every other controversy on this list, this one is pretty mild and innocuous. Still, it deserves mention because, during the first two weeks of Coco's release, everyone was angry about this, and this is a case where the fans' anger was 100% justified.

Disney/Pixar movies usually have shorts in front of them, but those shorts are usually, well, short, typically around four to six minutes. Olaf's Frozen Adventure, in contrast, was 21 minutes long, a full-length TV special and a mediocre one at that. Theaters in Mexico apologized for the short and pulled it after only a couple of days. It took two weeks for it to leave American theaters.

2 FANS: BIGOTED BRONIES

"Bronies," the older, mostly-male fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, have been the subject of many controversies. Like any fandom, there are both positive aspects and disturbing ones. Little is more disturbing than how a few particular bloggers have decided that Friendship is Magic, a kids' show created by a Jewish woman about different types of ponies being friends with each other, is actually an endorsement of fascism.

Yeah, everyone's brain explodes the first time they hear about this (though perhaps, given cultural changes, it's less surprising today than it was in 2011). One would hope these blogs were ironic, but in the brony fandom it's hard to tell where irony ends and sincerity begins. If you're defending evil "ironically," does motive even matter?

1 CREATORS: EVERYTHING TO DO WITH JOHN KRICFALUSI

Once upon a time the creator of Ren & Stimpy had a devoted fan following who supported him in his earlier controversies. He was fired from both The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Ren and Stimpy, but he used those controversies to build up an image of a cranky yet "genius" artist put upon by network executives who "just didn't understand his genius."

That image slowly crumbled over the years, as later projects without earlier collaborators turned out awful and he failed to deliver upon a Kickstarter campaign. Then there was the horrific revelation he was grooming and abusing underage fans, which is enough for anyone with a heart to cancel this man forever.