History Main / OnceUponaTime

* ''Disney/{{Pinocchio}}''

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow:'' "'''Once upon a time,''' the sky grew [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments black as blood.]]"

* [[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick Lindsay Ellis]] begins part two of the ''Loose Canon'' episode about ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' like so:

* {{Theatre/Anastasia}} has this exchange:
-->'''Dmitry''': Do you believe in fairy tales, Vlad
-->'''[[DeadpanSnarker/Vlad]]''': "Once upon a time" I did!

-->'''Patrick:''' '''Once, there was''' an [[Literature/TheUglyBarnacle ugly barnacle]]. He was so ugly that everyone died. The end.

* In-universe: ''{{Kolya}}'' has an example of a girlfriend of Louka's telling little Kolya stories in Russian over the phone (while her husband is away, naturally enough), starting audibly with ''Zhyl-byl...''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow:'' "'''Once upon a time,''' the sky grew [[CrowningMomentOfFunny black as blood.]]"

--->'''Jiminy Cricket:''' '''One night, a long time ago,''' my travels took me to a quaint little village. It was beautiful night. The stars were shining like diamonds high above the roost of that sleepy old town, pretty as a picture. As I wandered along the crooked streets, there wasn't a soul to be seen. The only sign of life was a lighted window in the shop of a woodcarver named Geppetto. So, I hopped over...

* In ''VideoGame/Undertale'''s opening:

* ''Film/{{Sabrina}}''
** The 1954 original begins with this:

** The 1995 remake uses this phrase in both the opening and closing narrations:

* WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation :[[Franchise/RedFaction Red Faction: Guerrilla]]

* ''Anime/PrincessTutu'': The narrator begins each episode with the Japanese equivalent of this, むかしむかし（昔々） or "mukashi mukashi". It's rather purposeful, since the show deals in Fairy Tale tropes.

* Another title for ''Anime/{{Windaria}}''.

* ''Film/ANewHope'':
--> '''[[ALongTimeAgoInAGalaxyFarFarAway A long time ago]]''' [[ALongTimeAgoInAGalaxyFarFarAway in a galaxy far, far away...]]

Now, stories that began with "OnceUponATime" often ended with "...and they all lived HappilyEverAfter." But [[FanNickname Once]] never got to the end of the stories -- he always stayed at the [[BeginningTropes beginning]]. And that is where he will always be.

* WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois: Albert Barillé produced tons of educational animated series which all got "OnceUponATime" in their title, completed with the main subject (man, space, life, America, inventors, explorers...). They also shared a very similar cast of reccuring characters.

-->"'''Once upon a time,''' there was this brilliant, brilliant composer, not the best looking guy. And one day, this beautiful, young, chestnut-haired, singing and dancing ingenue floats into his life, and he falls in love with her. And he decides, 'I'm gonna take you under my wing, and tutor you, and compose this incredible masterwork for you to star in.' And she was enthralled at first, but then, in the end, it didn't work out too well. I'm talking, of course, about the tragic, torid tale...of Creator/AndrewLloydWebber and Music/SarahBrightman, during the creation of what would eventually become [[Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera the longest-running Broadway show in musical theater history]]!"

* In ''{{Exalted}}'', {{Koan}}s and sutras associated with the Sidereals inevitably begin this way:

Now, are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin. Once upon a time... [[note]]there was a boy who decided to stay up late and read TVTropes. Even though his parents had warned him that doing this was a bad thing, still he was compelled to do so. So, the lights of the screen illuminating his face, he carefully surfed the site, reading trope descriptions and examples, going over works pages and forum threads, until finally he looked at the clock and realized it was well past the reasonable amount of time one would surf the web. And then the boy knew his parents were right -- that by surfing TVTropes, he had ruined his life in such a way that he could now never go sleep. He was cursed to forever surf TVTropes, haunting the TropeLaunchPad, quietly drifting from page to page like a ghost in the machine; until one day, he met someone who had been similarly trapped. She was named JustForFun/TropeTan. Together, they decided that perhaps this wasn't such a lonely place to be stuck. And so they lived and troped HappilyEverAfter.[[/note]]