Jake's "Perfect" Family (As Told by Tobias):
Last big one that comes to mind for me is the gap in how Tobias sees Jake's family, vs. how Jake sees Jake's family. From Tobias's point of view, Jake's living in a 1950s sitcom: he has two parents, one sibling, one dog, and they all get along! They live in a McMansion, off two white-collar salaries — one a doctor's salary! — and they go on vacations together every year. They eat fresh salmon, and spinach, and homemade tiramisu (#16), as they sit around their kitchen table every night and talk about their feelings.
Which is all literally true. But the other thing that's literally true: Jake is the only Animorph with no safe place to retreat to in between battles, because he's the only one cohabiting with a known controller. Part of the reason Tobias can be under the impression that Jake's home life is picture-perfect is that the Animorphs spend the least time at Jake's house: most meetings are at Cassie's, Tobias and Ax's scoop is their go-to backup location, and occasionally they spill into Marco's or Rachel's bedrooms. Because Jake's home is fundamentally unsafe in a way none of the others' are. When Rachel has a nightmare, she gets Jordan's incompetent but well-meaning comfort (#2); when Marco or Cassie does, their dads come to offer hugs (#10, #19); Tobias and Ax are alone, but at least it's private (#33). Jake describes jamming his face into his pillow so he can cry himself to sleep as silently as possible in #1, #6, #26; he also has raging insomnia by #26 that is still an issue as of #47.
And Jake's family being so enmeshed makes the controller thing so much worse, because he can't get away from it. In #31 Tom's yeerk almost has to resort to murdering their dad to get out of attending a family event to support their mom. In #21 the ongoing emergency forces Tom and Jake to spend more time around each other. In #37 Jake can't get out of traveling with his family for over a week (I assume for the High Holy Days?) because Tom's yeerk has refused outright and so Jake is completely unable to refuse as well. Meanwhile, Tobias's perspective on all this is semi-amused bafflement that "Tom" (or Jake) can't just go "screw this!" and walk out of the house, expecting their parents to take that as a valid answer.
In many ways, both Jake and Tobias assume that Jake has no problems and Tobias has all the problems. The other four Animorphs are way more balanced in their perspective. Marco especially feels for Jake because he knows how hard it is having yeerks corrupt your family. Ax understands Jake's complicated grief over losing Tom (years before Tom actually dies), and Ax understands that Tobias is the way he is partially by choice. Cassie and Rachel both see how Jake is being worn down to nothing by sheer exhaustion, and are also both copacetic about how eating roadkill isn't the worst lifestyle choice.
So like, the version that Tobias tells in #49, of Jake having this perfect family that disappears completely in an instant, isn't true. The version Jake tells in #53, of Tobias having no family at all and then suddenly having a great home life with a mom and a dog, isn't true either. But they're both fooled by the American Dream idea of happiness being a matter of how much stuff you have and how nuclear your family looks.
