How We Got Here / Western Animation

Examples of How We Got Here in Western Animation television series.

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• The 7D has done this with "Buckets" (which begins with the dwarves running out of a dark house in terror) and "Doing The 7D Dance" (which starts with Hildy and Grim about to send the 7D, Queen Delightful, Lord Starchbottom, Sir Yipsalot and Squire Peckington off into space on a rocket).
• The Adventures of Paddington does this every episode, beginning with a scene of Paddington in his room writing a letter to his Aunt Lucy about the events of the episode, and the rest is a Whole Episode Flashback of what happened according to the letter.
• Alienators: Evolution Continues has "To Carthage Then I Came", which begins with Lucy carrying an unconscious Wayne through the deserts of Tunisia, and then she narrates a flashback on what happened to them, Ira, Harry, and Gassie earlier that day, before returning to the climax.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: The episode "The Candidate" opens in media res after all the kids have started fighting in the halls. Gumball then appears after it freezes and begins explaining how that point was reached.
• The American Dad! episode where Steve was found dead in his pool. It's a look-alike.
• Season 7 of Archer opens with a Wham Shot that seemingly shows Archer's corpse floating in a pool, in a tribute to Sunset Boulevard. It then flashes back to six months beforehand. Despite a number of ways shown throughout the season in which it could have been a fake out, it turns out to be the real Archer. Season 8 reveals that he survived, but it placed him in a coma.
• The Arthur episode "Double Dare" begins with a Cold Open in which Arthur and Buster are in the school bathroom, trying to pull Francine in through the window. It then flashes back to explain how this came to be, and catches up with itself about 2/3rds of the way through.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Runaway" starts with Katara turning Toph in to the authorities. Then we go back and learn how this came to make any sense at all.
• The Batman episode "Batgirl Begins: Part 1" begins with Batgirl being attacked by Batman and Poison Ivy, and the rest of the episode, as while as the next one, detail how she got there.
• The New Batman Adventures also did this with the unbelievably awesome episode "Over The Edge". The episode opens with Commissioner Gordon and a police squad chasing Batman and Robin through the Batcave, shooting at them with machine guns, grenades, and a couple of rocket launchers. Once they reach safety, Batman brings Nightwing up to speed on how Scarecrow killed Batgirl/Barbara Gordon in front of her father, driving him to revenge on Batman. It turns out that it was All Just a Dream, which poor Barbara is having due to a dosage of Scarecrow's fear-inducing chemicals.
• Camp Lakebottom: In almost every episode. "Escape From Camp Lakebottom" is a notable exception.
• Parodied in Class of 3000. The kids are in a cage suspended over a pit of lava. When one of them asks how they got into the situation, another responds that it was the same way they get into every situation.
  flashback
  Little D: I've got a great idea!
  end flashback
• The Code Lyoko episode "Bragging Rights" starts with Yumi and Ulrich attacked by robot-spiders in the Amazonian lab, and Ulrich comments: "To think it was supposed to be a piece of cake..." Then it flashes back to the few hours before.
• The Daft Planet episode "Requiem for a Game" begins with Ched and Hudson running down a street. Hudson runs in front of a car that blocks Ched's exit, which causes him to get tackled to the ground by their pursuer.
• Almost every episode of Detentionaire starts with a scene from the climax of the episode (which ends in a cliffhanger, of course) before rewinding to explain how the characters got into the mess.
• Dog City: Discussed in the episode, "Of Mutts and Mayors", which starts off with Ace and Rosie on the run. Ace has no idea how they wound up in this predicament, which prompts Eliot to explain that they would be starting off near the end, where things are really bad, and then they'd show everyone how they got there.
• The first episode of the Spin-Off The Emperor's New School had a Shout-Out to this by starting with the emperor as a bunny and then explaining how it happened.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode, "Once upon an Ed", the Eds have to tell Johnny why they're stuck in his drywall. Unfortunately, all of the Eds are rather Unreliable Narrators with the episode being a look into how each Ed views the world around them.
• The Fairly OddParents!: The first scene of "When LOSERS Attack" is Timmy running through a dark forest, and getting completely vaporized with a laser by an unknown attacker. The episode then shifts to 24 hours earlier, showing the events that led up to this point. The ending shows that Timmy wished for all of his enemies to be lookalikes of himself, and he was never actually in danger.
• The Family Guy episode "Crimes and Meg's Demeanor" parodies this by attempting to do this trope right as the story is about to end.
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes: The episode "The Cure" starts with Reed, Susan, Johnny and She-Hulk fighting alongside while a Brought Down to Normal Ben Grimm watches it from home. Then it goes back to when Reed is about to try another way to turn the Thing back into Ben Grimm.
• Final Space begins with Gary drifting alone in space with having only ten minutes of oxygen left to live with HUE as his only companion. It then goes back showing the events leading to Gary's predicament.
• The Flintstones:
  • The episode "The Tycoon" begins with Fred getting yelled at by Wilma and the Rubbles at home. A narrator flashes back to when J.L. Gotrocks, a dead-ringer for Fred, escaped his monotonous tycoon job and convinced Fred to be his replacement. While out, he encounters the three and acts like a huge jerk toward them; after the two doppelgängers switch back, Fred comes home to a bitter reception and doesn't understand why. Poor Fred.
  • The episode "The Golf Champion" opens with Fred winning the Loyal Order of Dinosaurs' gold championship, only for Barney to rush the field and try to wrestle the trophy out of his hands. A reporter on the scene asks a spectator what prompted the fight, and the ensuing flashback tells of when Barney got elected to be club's president and vowed to make sure all its members pay their back dues; Fred hadn't paid his, and Barney wants to withhold the trophy until he does.
• Futurama's Star Trek-themed episode, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", parodying the TOS episode listed above.
  • Also happens twice with the first episode of the 2010 season.
• The Garfield Show
  • The episode "Jon's Night Out" begins with Garfield trying to wake Jon up as he sleepwalks through a building, and then proceeds to tell the viewer the story.
  • The episode "Little Yellow Riding Hood" begins with Garfield and Jon escaping from a wolf, and Garfield asks the viewer to pause the show, and then tells the viewer the story.
  • In the "Rodent Rebellion" special, it began with Garfield and Odie being hounded by police before explaining how they got into that predicament.
• Gargoyles did this in "Revelations". The first scene is of Goliath being tortured by Mace Malone, as Matt Bluestone (who, in previous episodes, didn't even know the Gargoyles definitely existed) watches. We then get the explanation of how this happened from Bluestone.
• The premiere episode of Gravity Falls, "Tourist Trapped", starts out like this, with Dipper explaining to the audience why he and his sister are trying to outpace a giant in a golf cart.
• Parodied in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, in the episode "Billy and Mandy Begins". Irwin's question about how they got to be dangling over a giant serpent monster is misinterpreted as a question of how Grim ended up with Billy and Mandy. Two distorted accounts and an accurate synopsis of the pilot take up nearly the entire episode, and by the time it's clarified that the question was how they got in that specific situation, everyone's eaten alive before it can be answered.
• The Peanuts special Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown begins with shots of various holes being dug around parts of the neighborhood, including the pitcher's mound Charlie Brown is standing on, Lucy's psychiatrist stand, and Snoopy's doghouse, and it's because Linus is searching for his blanket that Lucy buried, and the rest of the special explains how it got to that point.
• Harriet the Spy has a few episodes that open in the middle of the action, while Harriet herself narrates what's going on, sprinkling in hints on how the events ended up the way they did (like when she ran from city hall security with her birth certificate in hand, or when she dug up holes in her backyard as her nanny watched from inside the house). After the opening title sequence, the episode proper starts sometime prior to the events, before eventually looping back around with greater context.
• Brendon Small of Home Movies tried to do this with one of his films, but did it badly.
• Jem: The pilot starts with an already famous Jem being well-received by her fans and then it flashbacks to the graveyard scene with Jem's father being buried.
• The Legend of Korra; Season 4 opens by catching up with everyone after a Time Skip save Korra herself, who's shown at the end Fight Clubbing in an Earth Kingdom slum while bitterly denying her identity as the Avatar. The next episode covers her attempt to recover from her injuries and PTSD received in Season 3 before she ran away and ended up where she was in the premier.
• The first episode of Legend of the Three Caballeros opens with an Action Prologue showing the Cabs engaged in a dramatic fight with a demonic being in Another Dimension, and then a voiceover from Xandra says we're probably confused and need to go back a bit, with the bulk of the episode showing Donald's life before he got involved with Xandra and the other two Cabs. The series doesn't reach the opening scene until the Season Finale, at which point Xandra has a voiceover reminding us we've seen this bit before and saying we're all caught up now.
• The Loud House: "Friendzy" starts with the Loud Siblings fighting each other, and the police showing up to break up the fight. Lincoln then proceeds to tell the audience how things got out of hand so much.
• Megas XLR did this rather breezily, when they fought a giant cheese monster. Coop put aerosol spray cheese into the reactor on a dare.
• Molly of Denali: "Name Game" starts out with Molly covered in feathers and jam. The rest of the episode explains how she got to this point.
• Phineas and Ferb: The episode "The Remains of the Platypus" started with a half-naked Doofenshmirtz, Perry the Platypus serving as his butler, Carl in a cage dressed like a squirrel, Linda showing up to return Perry's fedora hat to Carl, and a band showing up. Rather than simply flashing back to the beginning, the episode kept flashing back to key moments of the story and then returned to present time.
• The opening scene of the Pinky and the Brain episode "Brain Noir" spoofs Sunset Boulevard, with Brain narrating how he came to be floating face down in a pool of water.
• The Mickey MouseWorks short "Topsy Turvy Town" (which was one of the MouseWorks shorts repackaged as part of the House of Mouse episode "Daisy's Debut") begins with Mickey and Minnie in a cell while a cloaked figure informs them that it is time for their punishment. The short then reveals how Mickey and Minnie got into this situation.
• The Owl House:
  • "Yesterday's Lie" begins with Luz appearing in a mirror to Vee and confronting the so-called "Creepy Luz". After the Cold Open, it's explained where Luz physically is, how she's appearing in reflections, and how she learned of her impostor.
  • "Hollow Mind" begins with Hunter yelling at Luz for getting them zapped into Emperor Belos' mindscape, then two different but interconnected Night Market flashbacks reveal why they were there, how they met up, and how this led to them getting stuck in the mindscape.
• Rick and Morty: An In-Universe in "Look Who's Purging Now", while Rick is setting up a signal beacon, Morty is asked to listen to The Lighthouse Chief's hackneyed screenplay, which begins with a dramatic moment and then flashes back to three week earlier. After hearing the whole screenplay, Morty gives his honest review that he suggests to just start the screenplay when the story starts. Hilarity ensues once the Lighthouse demands they leave for insulting his work.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko does this in "Driving Mrs. Wolfe" when Heffer's mother takes the family's brand-new convertible to a demolition derby, which the family is watching on the stands, then just as their car is about to collide with what they believe is the toughest racer in the derby, he takes us back to how he ended up in the situation: it started with him trying to teach Virginia how to drive, leading to his car getting totaled after it is run over by a train, then ending with him and Virginia inadvertently entering the derby and winning it.
• The first episode of Ruby Gloom starts with Ruby running through the house, seemingly avoiding her friends as they try to get her attention. Then, it takes us back (with a narrator reading as the words are typed on the screen) to "EARLIER THAT DOY" (the last word being a miswritten "day").
• The Simpsons has done this a few times, with one of the better examples being "The Telltale Head", which begins with Bart and Homer, carrying the head of Jebediah Springfield, being chased by a lynch mob, with pretty much the rest of the episode consisting of Bart telling the mob the tale of the events that led up to him decapitating a statue of Jebediah Springfield (and the subsequent encounter with the mob).
• The Spectacular Spider-Man
  • The episode "Catalysts" opens in the middle of a battle between Spider-Man and Green Goblin in a crowded ballroom, while the rest of the episode details how they got to that point.
  • Also in the episode "Subtext", though this goes back and forth between flashbacks and actual events.
• Spliced had "Octocataclysm", which was an explanation of why Smarty Smarts was chasing Octocat with a laser and furiously meowing.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Missing Identity" has SpongeBob tell the story of how he found his missing identity.
• The Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Cheer Up, Star" opens with Marco and Star being assaulted by a small army of Ludo's minions, and eventually flashes back to how Marco got them into this mess.
• Steven Universe: The episode "Serious Steven" opens with Steven and The Gems in the wreckage of a FunLand ride, the events that led to this are shown later in a flashback during their mission at an old ruin.
• The first episode of Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, "Confessions of a Teenage Superhero", introduces the Flex Fighters during a battle with Multi-Farious, then shows how they got their powers by backtracking to the day Jake and Nathan met Ricardo.
• Stroker and Hoop parodies this in an episode. The first shot is Stroker lying on the sidewalk, bleeding out. He proceeds to tell an episode-long story of how he got there (involving ninja) and when the entire thing concludes, it turns out that he ended up on the sidewalk by slipping on his son's skateboard.
• Superman: The Animated Series: "The Late Mr. Kent" starts with Clark's funeral and then it goes back to the beginning of the events that led Detective Bowman to want him dead.
• One episode of Sushi Pack uses this trope to set up a Rashomon, with two characters remembering the events of the day differently as they try to figure out how they ended up on an asteroid hurtling toward Earth.
• Tangled: The Series:
  • The episode "Not in the Mood" begins with King Frederic ordering Rapunzel to be locked up. Cue the "24 Hours Earlier..." card.
  • The episode "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf" begins with Rapunzel being chased by a werewolf. Cue the "34 Hours Earlier..." card.
• The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles often used this device as The Teaser.
• The Underdog episode "Underdog Vs. Overcat" has this format.
• The Weekenders, "The Most Awful Weekend", opens on Sunday with the gang sitting on a bench with lots of stains and things, and the story explains how they got them over the weekend.
• Yin Yang Yo!: "Deja Foo" opens up with Ultimoose somehow having become the Night Master, and Yang futilely fighting him. After getting thrashed, Yang wonders how this could have happened, before seeing the Amnisulet in Ultimoose's hands and recounting how his actions led up to this moment.