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Creative Closing Credits / Animated Films

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  • Every Pixar movie except the first Toy Story has unusual ending credits:
    • Hilarious Outtakes appear in A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.. That last one also features a company play based on a throwaway line from earlier. Monsters, Inc.'s opening credits have a 2D effect of monsters wandering through all the doors like they were Scooby-Dooby Doors. They do a Shout-Out to this in the opening of Monsters University.
      • Speaking of which, Monsters University has a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue where all characters are shown in collectible cards for their "scarer" careers.
    • Finding Nemo's credits features the characters swimming through and around the credits (including Mike from Monsters, Inc.).
    • The Incredibles has a very stylistic montage recapping the film during its credits, evoking the work of master movie title designer Saul Bass (it's actually a spiffed-up version of the film's early storyboards; originally it was all going to be animated in this style). The various action vignettes surrounding the closing credits are related to the role of the person following each, for example, the Shading Supervisor has a shimmery shadow on the ground.
    • During the credits of Cars, following a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, the cast goes to the movies (drive-in, of course) and we see clips of vehicle versions of previous Pixar movies. For bonus points, Mack (voiced by John Ratzenberger) raves about certain characters before realizing they're all voiced by the same guy.
      • Cars 2 shows 2D animation of Mater and Lightning McQueen visiting the world.
      • Cars 3 credits are presented on the wall of Doc's garage, showing photos of Lightning and Cruz as they enjoy the rest of the racing season together as a team, with her as the racer and him as the crew chief.
    • Ratatouille uses stylized hand-drawn animation, similar to The Incredibles, for its end credits. Both were made by Brad Bird.
    • The end credits of WALL•E, which is pretty much a mini-movie (and rough history of Western Art) after the movie is over, depicting the renewal of Earth. Also serves to make clear that humans survive the recolonization of Earth; some test audiences were concerned that one sprout wasn't enough to prove that they wouldn't die out. (The closing shot of the field of plants right before the credits was likewise added for that reason.)
    • Up has the credits in the form of Ellie's scrapbook that's been added to by Carl and Russell.
    • Toy Story 3 has a kind of "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue montage during the credits. Suffice it to say that the story simply doesn't end when the credits begin.
      • Toy Story 4 has another "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue dispersed throughout first few minutes of the credits. It largely focuses on Woody, Bo, and the other "lost toys" helping other toys at the carnival find new homes. The only exception to this is Forky being warped into a Love at First Sight scenario.
    • Inside Out has glimpses into the minds of a few minor characters, including the Teacher, Jangles the Clown, and a random dog and cat.
    • Coco's end credits are presented as various marigold petals fly past papel picado banners that show various alebrijes and artifacts shown throughout the movie.
    • The title for the Toy Story Toons short Small Fry is shown as a label on a small box of French fries. And the end credits are shown on an overhead fast food restaurant menu sign.
    • Turning Red has colourful silhouettes of all the main and supporting characters performing actions from the film.
  • Even films in the Disney animated canon have some:
    • Tarzan has the closing credits appear and scrolling over a nighttime jungle background with a waterfall.
    • Brother Bear has clips of Kenai, Koda, and even Rutt and Tuke, which is followed by Phil Collins singing "Look Through My Eyes" and "No Way Out" (extended version), and then Koda proclaiming that no fish were harmed in the making of the movie, which is quickly followed by a bear running across the screen, chasing a fish yelling "HE'S GONNA EAT ME!". After Koda covers the screen, the sound of a bear swallowing can be heard. Cue end logos.
    • Bolt has a children's book-looking epilogue with pictures that show Bolt, Mittens, and Rhino living happily with Penny on a farm.
    • The Princess and the Frog has stylized credits similar in tone to later Pixar movies, depicting places from the movie and Tiana and Naveen doing romantic things together (in both amphibian and human form).
    • Tangled has stylized credits of various scenes from Rapunzel and Flynn's adventure. They were animated by Shiyoon Kim, and you can check out a few pictures of them here.
    • Wreck-It Ralph shows pixellated versions of most of the cast, and shows the adventures of the main four characters after the movie, having fun in the fictional games from the movie, and real-life games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Street Fighter II. All while set to Owl City's "When Can I See You Again".
    • Frozen features some absolutely gorgeous looking imagery referencing ice and snow set to a Demi Lovato cover of "Let It Go".
      • Frozen II continues this trend by featuring imagery referencing the six spirits and Anna and Elsa's journey throughout the film. The music this time around is a cover of "Into the Unknown" by Panic! at the Disco.
    • Big Hero 6 has Animesque-stylized credits mentioning some of the further adventures of the eponymous team. With Fall Out Boy's "Immortals" to boot!
    • The credits for Disney's centenary short; Once Upon a Studio, depict various animation panes showing Disney characters either leaning on them or standing next to them, in all kinds of elaborate and crazy scenarios.
    • Wish, which was made to celebrate the studio's 100th anniversary, has its end credits decorated with starry images of characters from most of Disney's previous animated features, from Snow White to Splat.
  • Arlo the Alligator Boy: The first part of the end credits are shown as various artifacts and portions of Edmée's swamp shack. The credit crawl itself has various colored pencil animations interspersed, consisting of specific moments from the movie.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has a 2D animated epilogue (Or it would've been had the second movie not taken place instantly after the first) that includes Shout Outs, Mythology Gags, and lots and lots of rainbows. The sequel likewise does this, albeit with different art styles.
  • The Simpsons Movie includes gags of the family sitting in the theater watching the credits for their own movie.
    Bart: Come on, dad, let's go! I've been holding it in since they put the dome on the town!
    Homer: A lot of people worked hard on this movie, and all they ask of you is to memorize their names.
It would've included Comic Book Guy's scathing critique of the film, but it was rejected in previews. And it also included the deleted Springfield anthem.
  • The end credits for Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit feature absolutely hilarious flying bunnies. Crossing over with Credits Gag, at the very end, the line "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture" comes up. The last rabbit rises until he bumps his head on that line and falls squealing off the screen.
  • Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa has 3D paper cut-outs of the characters.
  • Coraline has the real angel and Other demonic Scotties flying around the credits, playing with the jumping mice's ball.
  • 9 has the credits floating up out of the open Talisman.
  • How to Train Your Dragon:
    • The credits of the first movie roll on yellowish parchment and are accompanied by concept art that also served to inspire the illustrations in the Dragon Manual.
    • The credits for the sequel show a series of concept art for the film that is ridiculously beautiful all on its own.
    • The third movie features a Good-Times Montage of Hiccup and Toothless together from all three movies. Later, the headings for different sections/departments in the credits are animated with 2D Vikings acting out something related to the section's title (for example, for "modeling", a short animation shows two Vikings chipping away at a block to make a statue).
  • Despicable Me has two minions having a contest to see who can reach further off an edge while another minion referees.
  • Cats Don't Dance shows a series of posters for historical and recent (at the time) blockbuster movies, in which the Real-Life actors' images are supplanted by the film's own animal stars.
  • Don Bluth is fond of this. All Dogs Go to Heaven has a continuously moving background of painted clouds, Rock-A-Doodle has a colorful, abstract background consisting of huge music notes scrolling up, The Secret of NIMH frames the credits with delicious illustrations, etc. The Land Before Time showcases the lush Great Valley.
  • Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole adapts the film's events as a pretty shadow puppet show for its closing credits.
  • The ending credits of Steam Boy take the form of a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
  • Shrek:
    • In Shrek's opening credits, swamp muck "coincidentally" falls in the exact patterns of the actors' names.
    • Shrek Forever After had a Dance Party Ending followed by a "collage" of characters from the first three films (minus Artie); the rest of the credits were on Rumple's fancy parchment paper, with inverted versions of the second film's credit illustrations.
    • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The end credits of the film are printed on the same magic map fought over throughout the film.
  • Alpha and Omega shows concept art and early 3D models of all the characters.
  • The credits for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists start with a Dramatis Personae and "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. The scrolling section features a background consisting of all the obscure visual gags in the film.
  • Cinderella III: A Twist in Time shows a series of paintings depicting the film's characters, including the Grand Duke in a parody of The Scream and Gus in a parody of Blue Boy.
  • The LEGO Movie has credits animated in stop-motion, with the credits written on DYMO labels placed into the environments. Watch it here.
    • The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part features dioramas related to the movie, this time animated in CG, accompanied by a song about the credits being great. The staff roll also features a few models which are winners of a contest to have them featured in the credits.
  • The LEGO Ninjago Movie features some animations for the film on backgrounds stylized like LEGO instruction manuals, followed by some outtakes of Jackie Chan during the live-action segments.
  • Peanuts:
    • A Boy Named Charlie Brown has portraits of the artists and animators that made the film appearing beside their names. As a bonus, the colored outlines of (some of) the characters appear alongside the names of the actors and their characters.
    • The end credits for Snoopy, Come Home are entirely typed up by Woodstock at Snoopy's typewriter. Just like the previous film, the artists and animators are credited with their image beside it. In addition, instead of listing actors with their roles, the heads of the characters appear with Woodstock typing up the actors' names next to the character he or she plays, complete with Snoopy's actor's name appearing physically next to him.
    • Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown has Snoopy, Woodstock and Charlie Brown riding on a motorcycle through a very psychedelic landscape straight out of The '70s.
    • Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown continues with this trend of crediting the artists with their respective image, but this time, with the backgrounds playing around with the colors red, white and blue.
    • The Peanuts Movie has the characters dancing in a similar fashion to their dances in A Charlie Brown Christmas over drawings of themselves from the original comic strip. In addition, the credits also scroll beside various panels from the strip.
  • The end credits for Looney Tunes: Back in Action has rough pencil animations of the Looney Tunes characters playing out alongside the scrolling credits.
  • The credits for Kung Fu Panda start with a montage of the characters all tossing around a panda-shaped training dummy to a remix of "Kung Fu Fighting". The rest of it is a series of stills, showing what everyone is up to after the events of the movie. Kung Fu Panda 2 takes a similar approach, with the first part being a shadow puppet rendition of how Po ended up in the Valley of Peace, and the second part being stills about him growing up.
  • The credits for The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water depict stylized versions of the characters in a conga line, with various tiki heads appearing in the background.
  • Kubo and the Two Strings:
    • Done in 2D animation, with a bonus showing how the Gashadokuro, the largest stop-motion animated puppet ever, is set up right before it attacks a crew-member.
    • At the end, the letters in the Laika production logo turn into silhouettes of various characters from all four of the studio's movies to date. This would later be updated for Missing Link.
  • Disney's Winnie the Pooh features:
    • The credits for The Tigger Movie feature drawings in the style of E.H. Sheppard, who illustrated the original Winnie-the-Pooh books, retelling the film's plot.
    • The credits for Piglet's Big Movie features music video with Carly Simon and some kids performing "With a Few Good Friends", interspersed with clips from the movie.
    • Pooh's Heffalump Movie has various vignettes of the characters welcoming Lumpy and the Heffalumps into their society. Notably, Christopher Robin appears despite being absent from the rest of the movie.
    • Winnie the Pooh (2011) has the live-action dolls from the opening arranged in scenes reenacting the film's plot. It then goes to the animated characters interacting with the scrolling credits (and, in Rabbit's case, getting Squashed Flat by them).
  • The first part of the credits of The Boss Baby are presented as a joint pirate fantasy of Tim and the Boss Baby (Theodore) - eventually the Mom comes in and tells them it's time to go to bed, but then agrees to let them play just a little longer, though what we see of the fantasy ends at this point as the credits transition to the less-distracting sort of background typically used for the lengthy scrolling credits.
  • Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You has a Cover Version of said song performed by Breanna Yde (the voice of Little Mariah in the movie) during a montage where she and her family and friends look for her missing dog; the first half of the end credits scroll next to the entire music video for the original song. Unsurprisingly.
  • The first part of the closing credits of Quest for Camelot fading in and out over different angle shots of a 3D model of the Stonehenge-type circle of stones and the certain magic stone - where Excalibur came from - before the standard scrolling credits. There are also each shot of a differently shaped stone with an engraved drawing of each character as the credits of the voice actors and animators of the characters are being shown.
  • The end credits of the third Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf movie, Moon Castle: The Space Adventure, scroll from right to left and take place in space, where the candy spaceship piloted by the goats dodges various obstacles. The ship and obstacles are also both depicted as 8-bit sprites.
  • The credits for UglyDolls contains fan creations from the Uglydolls Factory game.
  • Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe features such credits in the form of silhouettes recapping the film, complete with a song that hangs one massive lampshade on it.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games: The first part of the opening credits consists in following a spark of magic over the strings from Twilight's board of weird Canterlot High events, with "Hasbro Studios presents" and the names of the executive producers on cards pinned to the board, as well as the movie title on a post-it over a calendar.
  • The beginning credits of Cats Don't Dance have the names of the main crew members appear on various billboards and signs as Danny Cat travels to Hollywood.
  • The end credits for Doogal, the Same Language Dub version of The Magic Roundabout (2005), feature behind-the-scenes clips of dub's All-Star Cast recording their lines, talking about their characters and just goofing off, often alongside clips from the movie itself.
  • The The Seven Deadly Sins: Grudge of Edinburgh credits scroll over a scene of Lancelot walking away from Edinburgh, and end with The Stinger of him meeting up with Jericho.

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