This article explores animated segments that appear in otherwise live action, mainstream commercial documentaries made since 2000. An examination of films including The Age of Stupid, Bowling for Columbine, Searching for Sugar Man, Camp 14: Total Control Zone, Cobain: Montage of Heck and Everything’s Cool suggests that animated sequences function either as ‘connective tissue’ or ‘disruptive interjection’ and that this function is not necessarily determined by the animation being aesthetically or ontologically distinct from the live action context in which it appears. Instead, other narrative and rhetorical devices determine to what extent an animated section interjects. Ultimately, the author suggests that the ability to interject into the realist veneer of documentary representation demonstrates animation’s critical and political potential within a non-fiction context.