About

Never Animated Correctly refers to a series of YouTube videos in which musicians and YouTubers demonstrate that in animated television shows, characters playing instruments are almost never animated to match the sound they produce. Though the cliche is far older, the video trend on YouTube breaking down such examples originated in early 2022.

Origin

On February 21st, 2022, YouTuber EMCdump posted "Drums Are Never Animated Correctly…"^[1] In the video, they show a clip from The Simpsons in which Bart plays a standard rock beat on the drums. They then demonstrate what it would sound like if the scene's audio matched the animation of Bart playing the drums in the clip. The video gained over 12 million views in two months (shown below).

Spread

EMCdump created several similar videos over the following weeks. On March 24th, 2022, they uploaded a second "Drums Are Never Animated Correctly" video featuring a scene from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, gaining over 2 million views in one month (shown below, left). On April 3rd, they posted a third video in the series, showing a scene from Caillou,, gaining over 1.6 million views in less than one month (shown below, right).

The success of EMCdump's videos inspired other YouTubers to make similar videos focusing on different instruments. On April 10th, YouTuber Trombone Tino posted a "Never Animated Correctly" video showing a Family Guy clip of Peter playing the trombone, gaining over 2.5 million views in nearly three weeks (shown below, left). Of note, Trombone Tino said Family Guy was actually fairly accurate when depicting the playing of musical instruments, and EMCdump has posted a video showing a drum solo from the show being animated accurately.^[2] On April 19th, YouTuber Yenchy posted a "Never Animated Correctly" video using a Looney Toons clip of Bugs Bunny playing the piano, gaining over 5.5 million views in 10 days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References