Apparently Rocky and Bullwinckle is satire.
It had a lot of bits that only adults would get. I remember Peabody and Sherman visiting Edgar Allen Poe who was a really happy dude. Sherman came up with all sorts of bad ideas to get him writing dark books. Peabody said don't worry. Then the mailman brought Poe a letter from the IRS saying he was being audited. After that Poe wrote what he's famous for:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless
here for evermore.
...