Show pilots are a very tricky process. They are made, and even if they get a chance on the air, the vast majority of them fail within a few weeks. With other shows, they sometimes will build up a dedicated audience that will fail to keep the show alive long enough. Most of the time.
Most full television seasons are between 20 and 26 episodes long. There are various exceptions, animated shows can go from 13 episodes to well over 40 episodes. With such a vicious market, the ability to reach the 100 episode mark is a rare and coveted thing. So when a show does achieve that milestone, they plan something big to not only draw ratings, but to break out into the three digit episodes.
This will often coincide with the Very Special Episode, but it could also be the Tonight Someone Dies or other similar episodes. It may avoid all of that and the episode is just given an additional polishing to make it one of the best episodes of the series. It may also result in a Milestone Redo, when elements (or even the entire plot) of the series' first installment is directly homaged in celebration of the event.
In the case of Long Runners and shows where a hundred episodes is not that big of a deal, the celebration is sometimes in the form of "10 Year Anniversary" or something similar.
Part of the celebration is that pure money is offered with syndication rights, which a general rule of thumb is to have 100 episodes to air in certain time slots like Nick at Nite does. Because the show was already financed and produced, this will bring in the nostalgic viewers without much effort.
But no matter what, remaining in the public view for five years is an impressive event in any form of media.
Remember, Examples Are Not Recent.
Examples
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Anime
Inuyasha did a special retrospective type episode for its 100th. All the characters got stuck in demon moth cocoons and thinking about how InuYasha always helped them out while InuYasha was trying to rescue them.
They did this yet again for its tenth anniversary with a cover of Naruto clones working on a puppet of his newly-acquired Sage-Mage enhanced Rasenshuriken technique.
The anime had an omake for the 349th episode about the characters celebrating the 350th episode...which the title character himself wasn't invited to because he was not in it (the whole episode was about Sasuke and Itachi), and then noting that before this he was absent for the 100th episode (which was about Might Guy, Rock Lee, and Tsunade) and the 300th (the episode of the fight against Hidan and Kakuzu right before he showed up). Which is funny, because most of the characters who were invited there weren't in that episode either.
To celebrate Shonen Jump's 40th anniversary, there was a special anime tour moving through ten cities in Japan, showing anime movies that had been made just for the occasion. This included a new Dragonball special, which concluded its anime run (in Japan anyway) eleven years ago, making it a bit of a milestone celebration for Dragonball as well.
The Gundam franchise has had several over the course of its long life. The 10th anniversary was marked by the All That Gundam special and the OAV Gundam 0080, and the 15th by G Gundam, the first AU Gundam series. The 20th saw the "Gundam Big Bang Project", which included movie versions of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, culminating with ∀ Gundam and the live-action movie, G-Saviour. The 25th saw the Zeta Gundam movie trilogy (which also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the series), Gundam SEED Destiny, and Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: The Hidden One Year War. However, there was no new Gundam anime produced for the 30th anniversary celebration (The Gundam 00 film, A wakening Of The Trailblazer, was released in 2010, after the 30th Anniversary celebration was over).
The 30th also featured a special animation showing all the protagonist Gundams in action together. And of course, they built a life-size statue of the original.
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED celebrated its 10th anniversary with the release of the HD Remasters.
Macross Frontier was originally planned as a 25th anniversary for Super Dimension Fortress Macross. It ended up a year late, but the show was still full of references to the number 25: the new fighter was the VF-25, Frontier was the 25th fleet, the main Macross ship was the Macross Quarter (25%), etc. The show also related to elements of all the previous Macross series.
Tatsunoko Production's Karas was made for the studio's 40th anniversary.
One Piece Film: Strong World, the 10th movie corresponding to the series' 10th year anniversary, was penned by Eiichiro Oda himself; as confirmed by Word Of God, this means that this is part of the manga's canon. However, this is largely averted in the One Piece anime itself. No milestones in the series are particularly heralded as special events, and significant events only happen on episodes 250 (end of Franky's origin flashback), 300 (Zoro's defeat of CP9's Kaku) and 400 (Silvers Rayleigh talking about Gold Roger).
The Slayers franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary with re-releases: both new cover art and slight changes in dialogue for the light novels and new boxart complete with new supplementary materials for the anime.
Earlier in 2006, for its 15th anniversary, Megumi Hayashibara released a new single, Meet Again, and it was accompanied with a new animated music video of the characters, making it the first animated feature for the franchise since the Slayers Premium movie in 2001.
For the 30th anniversary (2008) of both Rumiko Takahashi's first published short story (Katte na Yatsura) and the manga version of Urusei Yatsura, three new OVA episodes (one for each of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ˝, and InuYasha) were made, along with an animated short crossover of those three series. (The Inu Yasha OVA episode, which covered the Black Tessaiga arc, was later reused as part of the second TV series.) These were initially shown during that year at a gallery show, called "It's a Rumic World", which also featured manga manuscript pages and other illustrators' drawings of Takahashi's characters on display.
2013's Pretty Cure line up will dual-wield celebrations - Doki Doki Pretty Cure will be the 10th anniversary series, Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage 2: Friends of the Heart will be the 5th anniversary movie for the All-Stars movie series and Doki-Doki's movie will be the 15th Pretty Cure movie.
Audio Play
Big Finish Doctor Who (see also, Live-Action TV) had "Zagreus", marking both the 50th audio story and 40 years of the franchise. It was a Wham Episode for the Eighth Doctor with Five, Six and Seven showing up as split personalities. There's a 100-minute story starring Doctors Four through Eight (plus guest-stars) scheduled for the franchise's 50th anniversary.
Comic Books
In Spawn #100, Malebogia, the Big Bad of the first 99 issues, is killed off. Spawn's nemesis/occasional ally, Angela, is also killed.
Sonic the Comic celebrated its 100th issue (and, by extension, 200th week in existence) by ending the Robotnik Rules arc, which had been going on since issue 9. Some argue it Jumped the Shark then.
The Archie Sonic comics celebrated #200 with Sonic's defeating Robotnik, who promptly goes medically insane (though he eventually recovers).
Issue #50 of the Archie comic concluded the End Game story arc and killed off Dr. Robotnik. Issue #75 then replaced him with a alternate-universe counterpart that looks like the game's "Eggman" version, rather than the cartoon incarnation the comic was originally based on. The alternate Robotnik has been in charge ever since.
Issue #225: Sally is apparently killed and kicks off the Sonic: Genesis storyline
Issue #250: Set to be part of the upcoming crossover with Mega Man (as well, the 25th issue of that will be part of that storyline, too.)
Sonic Universewas supposed to celebrate its 50th issue with a tale set outside of the Archie continuity: an epilogue story for Sonic Underground. (The story will still occur, albeit later.)
Sonic Universe #25 kicked off Silver's storyline.
Knuckles The Echidna #25 had Knuckles be fully reunited with his father Locke.
Cerebus ended with issue #300. This event had been planned for 27 years.
The previous centennial issues each featured major turning points in his life: issue 100 introduced Cirin, the Big Bad of the series, and revealed that she was an Aardvark like Cerebus. Issue 200 has Cerebus meet his creator in space, and upon his return he gives up on adventuring and settles into the life of a barfly.
Legion Of Super-Heroes had a #300 in 1983 which was the 25th anniversary, which put to rest the AdultLegion story and brought back artists (and even logos) from various eras of the Legion. Natural for a comic published every month for 25 years—except it wasn't. The Legion had moved between comics and ended up getting the numbering of the Superboy comic, which wasn't monthly throughout its run; the fact that issue #300 was the 25th anniversary was pure coincidence.
Also, the 10th anniversary (Superboy #147, 1968) finally revealed the origin of the Legion. The 30th anniversary (volume 3, #45, 1988) brought back the older artists again. The Legion has also done standard anniversary issues according to the cover numbering, meaning that V3 #50 was an anniversary issue with a letter column commenting on another anniversary issue.
Amazing Spider-Man #50 was the famous "Spider-Man No More!" story where Peter quits being Spider-Man (duh), but finds himself unable to quit as the Kingpin rises to power.
Issue 100: Peter tries to remove his powers, has an acid-trip dream where he fights the Vulture, the Lizard, the Kingpin, Doctor Octopus, and the Green Goblin before seeing an image of the deceased George Stacy. When he wakes up, Spidey discovers he has six arms, kicking off the Six-Arm Saga that introduced Morbius.
Issue 200: Spider-Man faced Uncle Ben's killer, the Burglar (who was now working with Mysterio) once more.
Issue 300: First full appearance of Venom.
Issue 365: Celebrated the 30th anniversary of the web-spinner with a story that had Spider-Man fighting the Lizard again, the re-introduction of Peter's parents (who would later be proven to be androids), a sick poster of Spidey, Venom, and Carnage, and a preview of Spider-Man 2099.
Issue 400: Ended with the death of Aunt May and the revelation that she'd known Peter was Spider-Man for years. Most of the fandom agreed it was a fitting sendoff for the character. Naturally, this was retconned a little over a year later...
Issue 500: Spidey helps Doctor Strange and several other heroes deal with a demon invasion in New York, magically revisits several moments in his past, and gets to meet Uncle Ben's ghost for five minutes thanks to Strange.
Issue 600: An upgraded Doctor Octopus attempts to make up for his past misdeeds by taking electronic control of New York City, the idea being that he can make everything far more efficient. Unfortunately, his subconscious mind attacks Spider-Man, endangering everyone around him, and tries to ruin the arrangements for Aunt May's wedding to J. Jonah Jameson Senior. Spidey beats Doc Ock at the site of their very first battle, and May and JJJ Sr are married by Jonah himself. Oh, and Mary-Jane shows up to catch the bouquet.
For Spidey's 50th anniversary in 2012, Marvel did:
The first-ever crossover between the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Marvel universe; as Peter Parker faces a world where he was killed in action and Miles Morales (the new Ultimate Spidey) sees what his predecessor might have grown up to be.
A separate storyline where Spider-Man took on a Kid Sidekickwhich ended badly; the kid quickly became a Smug Super and Spidey had to depower him before he became even worse.
Issue 700: Amazing Spider-Man's final issue leading into its Marvel NOW replacement Superior Spider-Man; the conclusion of a long-running subplot where Doctor Octopus was dying from injuries accumulated from his many fights with Spider-Man - but not before putting a Freaky Friday Flip on Peter and wearing mind-swap-protection armor to secure his position; unable to regain his true body, Peter implants his memories into Doc Ock and convinces him to not ruin the reputation of Spider-Man as Doc Ock's former body passes away, taking Peter's mind down with it. This turns the villain into the Superior Spider-Man.
For the 60th anniversary of Donald Duck's creation, he wrote "The Duck That Never Was", a Wonderful Life story set on Donald's birthday.
He also did "W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N", a story for the 60th anniversary of Huey, Dewey, and Louie's first appearance that was a Whole Episode Flashback to the day the nephews joined the Junior Woodchucks.
For Scrooge McDuck's 50th anniversary, Rosa wrote a story "A Little Something Special", where Scrooge's biggest enemies plot to rob him during a celebration of the anniversary of the day Scrooge arrived in Duckburg.
Even Gyro Gearloose got a 50th anniversary special, "Gyro's First Invention", which featured a Whole Episode Flashback that explained where his little robot Helper came from, and explained how he helped Scrooge get the money in his money bin out of the sinkhole it fell into after the events of Carl Barks' "A Christmas for Shacktown".
Furthermore, there is Gladstone Gander's 50th anniversary special, "The Sign of the Triple Distelfink", wherein he tries to avoid his own birthday party, in order to hide the fact that his birthday is the one day of the year when his legendary luck leaves him. A flashback in this story reveals he was literally Born Lucky, having inherited his good luck from his mother.
Most Archie Comics digests will have special stories for their Milestones, where the characters discuss exactly how they should celebrate said milestone.
Archie Double Digest #200 celebrated 200 issues with the start of a 4 part "New Look" story entitled Archie Goodbye Forever, and even bigger than that, Archie #600 celebrated 600 issues with the start of a 6 part story entitled Archie Marries Veronica (of which the final three parts switched to ''Archie Marries Betty).
In the DC Universe, several Post Crisis titles hit #100 at about the same time in The Nineties. All of them were given special prismatic covers. In addition:
Superman launched "The Death of Clark Kent" arc, in which Superman temporarily gave up his secret identity.
Justice League America gave honorary membership to the entire DC Universe, and then had a big fight against Lord Havok (revealed to the reader, but not the team, to be Maxwell Lord). And then Guy Gardner showed up, kicking off the "Way of the Warrior" Cross Over between JLA, Guy's own title and Hawkman.
The Flash discovered the Speed Force, the source of all super-speedsters powers which continues to affect the series to this day. He then used it to give himself a serious power upgrade and save his city from the brink of annihilation.
In Green Lantern (Vol. 3) #100, then-current Green Lantern Kyle Rayner teams up with a time-displaced Hal Jordan, prior to his Face Heel Turn as Parallax. It's also the prelude to the "Emerald Knights" story arc.
In July 1986, Marvel Comics celebrated their 25th anniversary (the 25th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, their flagship Silver Age title) with a cover theme - every comic published in that month had a portrait of a character on it surrounded by a border containing various characters. Even the licensed comics got in on the act.
In 2009 when Marvel celebrated their 70th Anniversary (the 70th anniversary of Captain America) (just roll with it) many comics were published with Variant Covers with a style very similar to the 25th Anniversary listed above.
The UK version of the Marvel The Transformers comic, due to a quirk of publishing, ended up with over four times as many issues as the US comic. Issues #100, 200, and 300 all featured wraparound covers and double-length stories.
The Dandy and The Beano celebrated their 60th birthdays and 1997 and 1998 respectively. Both put out double-length issues in which The Dandy resurrected numerous older strips, while The Beano printed a series of stories based around the number 60.
Both also hit issue 3000 around the year 2000. The Beano's honouring of this was nothing special, but The Dandy featured a series of stories based around trouble caused by the '3000 bug', a spoof of the then-recent millennium bug scare.
For the 10th anniversary, a badge reading '10 years of Thrills' was inserted somewhere in each strip.
For the 30th anniversary, which was also the 30th anniversary of the first Judge Dredd strip, they began the "Origins" story, which explains how the world of Judge Dredd came to be. John Wagner had been planning on writing that story for a while, but figured that the 30th anniversary was the right time to publish it.
The 10th anniversary of 2000 AD's sister title, Judge Dredd Megazine, ran Judge Death's Origin Story.
In 2010, the Meg's 300th issue and 20th anniversary occurred within two issues of each other, and os issues 300, 301, and 302 were all double-length (and the price was raised by a pound; issue 303 was still 50p more than 299, grumble grumble). Across all three were run two special features:a three-part in-depth interview with Carlos Ezquerra, and past writers and artists reminiscing about their favourite parts of the Meg. Issue 302's Judge Dredd strip was full of all sorts of continuity nods and the final panel, while making perfect sense in the context of the story, was clearly a happy birthday message to the Meg.
The 70th Anniversary of Captain America, in addition to being right around the time the movie was released, featured Steve Rogers once again donning the identity after previously leaving his former sidekick James Buchanan Barnes to fill in the role. Marvel also released multiple variant covers to comics released in July which featured everyday Americans and real American heroes alike all bearing Cap's signature red-white-and-blue colors.
Superman returned to is trademark look and had his classic powers restored after the controversial energy being storyline for his 60th anniversary in the one-shot "Superman Forever."
The final part of The Death of Superman fell on Superman #75. The issue that kicked off his return? The Adventures of Superman #500. The issue that brought him back to Metropolis? Superman: The Man of Steel #25
Fan Fic
Calvin and Hobbes: The Series has an in-universe example in "The Case of the Rogue Water Balloon", wherein G.R.O.S.S. celebrates its second anniversary and its 500th water balloon attack.
Film
Movie studios often get updated Vanity Plates on their anniversaries. The first few movies with the updated logos also contain messages denoting the anniversary. (eg, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader begins by panning up from the 20th Century Fox structure to some lights spelling out, "Celebrating 75 Years".)
Skyfall commemorated the 50th anniversary of the James Bond films with a bunch of Mythology Gags (one of which gets some importance in the final battle) and a status quo change for Daniel Craig's Bond.
Universal celebrated its 75th anniversarynote referring to the 1925 re-branding as Universal Pictures Company, Inc., not the 1912 founding of Universal Film Manufacturing Company by opening each movie released in 1990 with the logos that graced their works from 1927-1990, and a then-new logo (though they skipped the version that refers to them as Universal International). Fittingly, this montage first appeared at the beginning of Back To The Future Part III.
Universal released a similar video for their 100th anniversarynote referring to the 1912 founding of Universal Film Manufacturing Company, preceding another new logo with the ones used from 1927-2012 (they did not exclude the Universal International ident this time), but showed this montage online instead of during movies.
Cars came out during Pixar's 20th anniversary. To commemorate this, the Pixar logo fades into "Celebrating 20 Years" written against a black background, with Luxo Junior's light bulb forming the zero in the 20. Cars 2 celebrated Pixar's 25th anniversary with a Creator Cameo of Pixar head John Lasseter. (It also introduced an uncelebratory first for Pixar, but that's neither here or there.)
The 1111th and the 2222nd volume of the long-running weekly German Sci Fi series Perry Rhodan were both quite nice in-character and in-continuity parodies of the series, both written by Horst Hoffmann who recently announced his retiring from being a regular author.
Sweet Valley High celebrated its 100th book (well, actually its 97th through 100th) with its first Story Arc, a Genre Shift to horror. It worked surprisingly well, leading to more story arcs and more fantastical story elements in the future.
Return to Firetop Mountain celebrated both the 50th installment in the Fighting Fantasy series and the tenth anniversary of the publishing of the first book. It took the reader back to the same dungeon of the original The Warlock of Firetop Mountain to defeat a resurrected Zagor.
Wheel of Fortune: The 3,000th and 4,000th episodes were special retrospective episodes, featuring some of the key highlights of the (syndicated) series. The 3,000th program aired in 1998, and the 4,000th sometime in 2003. A rare photograph, printed in Jefferson Graham's "The Game Show Book," showed Vanna and Pat at the puzzle board to promote the daytime series' 3,000th episode, aired sometime in the fall of 1986.
The Price Is Right: With the ceremonial 5,000th episode (in the spring of 1998), Studio 33 (where the show taped) was renamed the Bob Barker Studio. The 6,000th and 7,000th episodes have all featured increased prize budgets and other pomp and circumstance.
''Jeopardy!: The original version aired its 2,000th episode in early 1972. In place of Final Jeopardy! was a performance by Mel Brooks' 2000-Year-Old Man character. Various other special episodes and tournaments have cropped up during the course of the Trebek version.
Lets Make A Deall Celebrated being on air for 50 years in early 2013 by having Monty Hall himself and his assistant taking over for one of the deals.
Bob Hope: Various shows marked one of his landmark anniversaries or birthdays, starting with "A Quarter Century of Bob Hope on Television" in October 1975. Birthday celebrations for his 75th, 80th and 90th birthdays aired in 1978, 1983 and 1993, respectively. Many of these shows featured clips from previous specials, along with pre-taped well wishes from his friends, often the sitting president at the time and the casts of various TV shows.
All in the Family: The 100th and 200th episodes of the series were Clip Shows, but not in the traditional sense of wrapping a "recalling old times" storyline around past clips. Rather, these were special guest stars – Henry Fonda for the 100th show, in December 1974, and Norman Lear for the 200th show (from March 1979) – providing commentary, narrating clips and introducing interview excerpts from the main cast members.
Happy Days: The series' first "milestone" show came just two years into its run, titled – inventively enough – "Second Anniversary Show," and was simply Fonzie and the family laughing about past adventures. Two more "anniversary milestone" shows – titled "Third Anniversary Show" (Howard and Marion celebrating their anniversary) and "Fourth Anniversary Show" (Lori Beth writing a paper about the Cunninghams, an "average middle-class American family") – aired in 1977 and 1978, respectively.
The Tonight Show: To celebrate Johnny Carson's 10th anniversary of hosting the show, a prime-time special aired, including highlights from his first decade of the show and special guests. Clips were rather limited due to much of the archives being wiped (due to reuse of videotape), although kineoscopes and video of late 1960s highlights were shown. Another "milestone anniversary" show aired in 1977 to mark his 15th year as host, after which the specials began airing annually (e.g., "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 17th Anniversary Special" in 1979) until the last one aired in 1991. As the years progressed, more clips were aired since all shows produced after sometime in 1972 exist.
Star Trek celebrated 30 years with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager doing special episodes that referred back to the original crew. Deep Space Nine did a revisioned look at the events of the classic episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" via Time Travel and Voyager also did a The Greatest Story Never Told with what Captain Sulu did during the majority of the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The reason why Voyager had one featuring Sulu was that The Trouble With Tribbles was one of several Season 2 episodes to not feature Sulu (thanks to George Takei filming The Green Berets) and it just seemed strange to not include the character somehow in the 30th anniversary...
The Voyager 100th episode "Timeless" featured the destruction of Voyager with only two survivors from a botched attempt to return home. Harry and Chakotay used Time Travel to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, which made them fugitives of Starfleet. Adding to the occasion was guest star LeVar Burton, who also directed the episode.
The 100th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer coincides with the fifth-season finale, in which Buffy dies (for the second time). "The Gift" additionally was the last Buffy episode to air on The WB network before the series moved to UPN in September 2001.
The episode began with a Previously On segment that contained clips from every single previous episode, all going by at very high speed.
The canon Season 8 comics that continued the story were coincidentally released on the 10th anniversary of the first season.
In Angel's 100th episode, "You're Welcome", Cordelia awoke from her mystical coma and reinvigorated Angel's fighter spirit. And it was revealed that she had died.
Power Rangers celebrated 10 years with "Forever Red" in Power Rangers Wild Force. 10 years of Red Rangers returned for a fight that crosses over into several past seasons. They did 15 years with "Once A Ranger" in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, which had some of the more popular (non-Red) Rangers return for another fight.
Power Rangers' 500th episode (during the Dino Thunder season) was a big Clip Show showcasing most of the series. It also moved the story forward a bit, as the Dino Rangers finally found out that their teacher and mentor, Tommy Oliver, was a veteran Power Ranger (the very firstSixth Ranger, and Red Ranger to the followingcouple teams). The very next episode saw Tommy climb back in the saddle as the Black Dino Ranger.
And in a bit of fortuitous timing, the final Disney season before Saban claimed the franchise back, Power Rangers RPM, ends with the 700th total episode.
On the other side of the Pacific, in 2006 Super Sentai celebrated its 30th Anniversary*
referring to the number of seasons at the time, not the age of the Super Sentai franchise since it began in 1975
in Go Go Sentai Boukenger with the after-show segment "The 30 Sentai Encyclopedia", short skits hosted by the Boukengers briefly reviewing every show and every first over the past 30 years, as well as shared themes between shows. There was also the CrossoverReunion Show, featuring the physical manifestation of the 30 Years of Sentai in AkaRed, who had the power of all the past Red Rangers combined, along with a Ranger from the previousfourSentaiseries, AND a villain from the one before those.
Before that, Kousoku Sentai Turboranger was launched as the then-eleventh show (tenth anniversary) of Super Sentai. Its first episode was a special Clip Show that summarized the previous ten shows and featured 53 Sentai heroes in costume (which seems a modest number nowadays, when the first episode of Gokaiger had almost four times that amount). Interestingly, Toei decided to add twoprevious shows into the canon later on, making the Turboranger officially the thirteenth. The only reason they weren't included before was they lacked the Humongous Mecha.
There was also a 25th anniversary team-up movie featuring the Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger teaming with five Super Sentai members from pastseries.
On a smaller note, the 15th reunion movie, Engine Sentai Go-Onger vs. Gekiranger, saw a theatrical release instead of being Direct-to-Video for being number 15; acknowledged in the movie's ending when the heroes celebrate a birthday party, and calling it "a Super Sentai birthday". Then theatrical releases for reunion movies became the norm.
Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the 35th series, is Super Sentai's equivalent to Kamen Rider Decade, with the heroes channeling powers and mecha of previous Ranger teams. Previous Rangers themselves also make guest appearances. In a nod to the previous anniversary, AkaRed was the one who gave them their powers.
Usually in Super Sentai, the aforementioned reunion movies are released in January near the end of the current series' run. However, since A. the Gokaigers' reunion film with their predecessor Tensou Sentai Goseiger was produced far earlier in Gokaiger's run and B. 2012 happens to be the 30th anniversary of the Metal Heroes, Toei decided to do something completely different for the January film: A crossover movie between Gokaiger and the first Metal Hero, Space Sheriff Gavan.
Kamen Rider ZX, the tenth hero to bear the Rider monicker, is a low-key version. He was first advertised in a year-long promotion campaign across several mediums before finally debutting in a TV Special.
Averted by Kamen Rider Agito: the only thing marking the show as the 30th anniversary of the franchise is a disclaimer opening the first episode. Then again, the franchise was just fresh off arevival at the time; survival was a more pressing matter back then. However, Agito did introduce traditions that would stick for all the following years, including multiple Riders as the norm and the utter lack of ending credits.
Kamen Rider Kabuto had a few smaller things to celebrate the Kamen Rider franchise's 35th anniversary, including the return of blatantly insect-themed suits and after-show review segments for episode 23 to 27.
Kamen Rider Decade, a year-long celebration of 10 years of the franchise's Heisei era in the form of a Crisis Crossover (a crisis which, oddly enough, eventually expands to celebrate the franchise's 38-year history by the end).
Kamen Rider OOO and Kamen Rider Fourze collectively celebrate the franchise's 40th anniversary. (Yes, this means they're taking two years to do it. Just go with it.)
The Let's Go Kamen Riders movie features OOO along with the original two Kamen Riders and Cash Cow Sub-FranchiseKamen Rider Den-O. The rest of the Riders make cameos as Big Damn Heroes during the final fight, too. The film also doubles as a celebration of the Toei Company's 60th year, which it marks with a special cameo scene where four of Shotaro Ishinomori's non-Kamen Ridertoku heroes intercepting and quickly killing off a retreating General Shadow. Furthermore, episodes 27 and 28 of OOO happen to be the 999th and 1,000th episodes of the franchise as a whole, and feature the characters...filming a movie about Kamen Rider.
Fourze is named for "40", in-universe for the 40 Astro Switches he can use but obviously also for 40 years (in addition to continuing the previous years' Numerological Motif [Decade was 1, Double was 2, OOO was 3]). It also mentions Urban Legends about previous Riders, and uses Theme Naming that references classic Riders. Plus the traditional crossover-with-the-previous-Rider movie was expanded from just OOO and Fourze to include the first seven Riders and OOO's predecessor Kamen Rider Double. And on top of all that, a joint anniversary crossover with Shin Chan.
Building off the previous entries, Kamen Rider X Super Sentai Superhero Taisen is stated by Word Of God to not be an anniversary bash for either series, but it's hard not to take it as one - released during Fourze and hot on the heels of Gokaiger, featuring them plus OOO and Decade in some of the featured roles, and including just about everyone else in the battle sequences. It also roughly coincides with the 10th year of the Super Hero Time block that features both franchises.
The Japanese Iron Chef had a 2000th plate special commemorating the number of dishes that had been served on the show. Chef Joel Robuchon was a special guest judge, and the Chairman Kaga chose his five favorite and three least favorite dishes to have been served on the show.
Stargate SG-1 had "Wormhole X-Treme" as its 100 episode, and another metahumor episode for the 200th episode.
Friends "The One Hundredth": Phoebe gives birth to the triplets.
Smallville featured the death of a main character in the 100th episode. In the 200th episode, Season 10's "Homecoming", Clark lets go of his guilt over his father's death, which was the aforementioned main character death that happened a hundred episodes earlier. And, at the very end of the episode, he and Lois share a dance, and, without either of them noticing, he begins to hover.
The 25th anniversary had two stories: "Remembrance of the Daleks", which had the Doctor revisiting the site of the first episode the next day (albeit hundreds of years later in his own timeline), and "Silver Nemesis", which was about a 25th anniversary, aired over the anniversary date, and had a cameo of Nicholas Courtney and some program staff.
Averted with "The Stones of Blood", which was the 100th episode and aired on the show's 15th Anniversary. It was going to start with the Doctor and Romana celebrating his birthday with a cake, but the production team wisely vetoed it as too self-congratulatory.
Subtly done for the 200th story, "Planet of the Dead" features a number 200 bus, which the Doctor refers to as "The mighty 200!"
The BBC has commissioned a drama about the show's beginnings to celebrate the 50th anniversary.
Not to mention the 50th Anniversary special penned by Moffat, the audio dramas, comics, and short stories leading up to the anniversary, and more!
The X-Files had a fake 100th episode; they claimed it to be the 100th episode in the promos but if you do the math, the episode is the 99th episode to air. Scully's cancer was cured in this episode and it also concluded a few other subplots as well. The actual 100th episode to be aired was a flashback episode that showed how the Lone Gunmen formed in 1989 and met Mulder and Scully was not in that episode. Their 200th episode was some stupid Brady Bunch episode.
Stephen Colbert did the 100th episode of The Colbert Report in a tuxedo, and had the same guest as on the first episode (the first ever repeat guest). The Daily Show ran segments celebrating their '10 F#@king Years' anniversary every now and then for six months.
The '10 F#@king Years' segments were made more hilarious by the collective cast acting as though they hadn't achieved something, but rather that they had just been through something terrible, and it wasn't over yet.
The Fifth Anniversary Show was supposed to be a big deal with lots of correspondents weighing in, but everyone had something else to do at the last moment and sent apology videos (Stephen Colbert's was a Video Will). Even the guest was on the other end of a satellite connection.
The 100th Scrubs episode was an elaborate parody of The Wizard of Oz, directed by Zach Braff.
Referenced in Monk with the CSI parody episode. The actual hundredth episode of Monk features Monk's 100th case as a documentary. And then Monk ends up solving his 101st case inadvertently.
The 300th episode of ER had the doctors betting on the number of patients they would have that night. The winner had a round 300.
Its 100th episode had them host a woman who was born 100 years ago that day.
CSI: Miami brushed with the Trope for their 100th, "Death Pool 100". The case just happens to involve counterfeit money, specifically $100 bills, but it's easy to miss. At the end of the episode, after most of the Montage Out, the core cast gathers on a beach casually talking about the case. The conversation ends by Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
Calliegh: Everyone thinks it's easy to make a hundred. Horatio: We know better.
LOST's 100th episode, "The Variable", which was actually #96, hinted at Tonight Someone Dies in previews (someone did, fan favorite eccentric scientist Dan Faraday), tied in advertising for the 2009 Star Trek movie as well as the show Flash Forward, and aired immediately following Barack Obama's 100th day address. As for the episode itself, it established the plan to alter the course of the series and prevent the crash of Oceanic 815. The occasion was also marked by a special Ace Of Cakes with an awesome 100th episode cake.
The 100th episode of Frasier has the entire city of Seattle commemorating "Frasier Crane Day", to celebrate Frasier's 1,000th radio broadcast, and also has Niles and Frasier actually on-location and walking around Seattle.
Seinfeld had a clip show called The Highlights of 100.
The 100th episode of That '70s Show was a musical, with Fez imagining the cast covering some of the '70s hit songs.
The Ultra Series show Ultraman Mebius and its tie-in movie Ultraman Mebius & The Ultra Brothers were made "Comemmorating 40 Years of Ultraman", revisiting the original Showa era universe (Ultraman to Ultraman Eighty) after 25 years of alternate universes and featuring returning actors, characters and monsters from there.
How I Met Your Mother. 99 episodes of almost zero amount of information about the mother, then comes along episode 100 with a huge information overflow.
It even played with Tonight Someone Dies by "killing off" one of Barney's suit jackets. His tailor even likening using its buttons on another suit to "organ donation".
"The Slutty Pumpkin Returns", the Sequel Episode to "The Slutty Pumpkin", is an in-story example — even though the series began in 2005, Ted first met the eponymous Slutty Pumpkin in 2001. The episode itself takes place in 2011, during which Ted finally meets the girl who wore the Slutty Pumpkin costume again, after years of waiting for her in the same "hanging chad" costume at the same Halloween party (not unlike Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin).
Game Shows do this a lot. One example (of many) was the 3,000th episode of Trebek's Jeopardy! — the opening round featured the same categories used in Trebek's premiere (with new clues), Double Jeopardy! featured special categories worked around the milestone, and the Final Jeopardy! category was "Holidays", the same as the first episode.
Sesame Street had anniversary specials during years 10, 20, 25, 30, and 35. The 40th anniversary had to settle on-air with "40" (the highest number in the show's curriculum) sponsoring the season premiere. That season was also loaded with Easter Eggs.
Barney & Friends had Old King Cole come over for a visit in episode 100. Barney is reunited with some alumni to celebrate ten years, and gets a memory book after twenty years.
True Life so far has had a "Where Are They Now" episode for its 100th episode (2007) and it's 200th episode (2011). In them, they revisited some of the most memorable people (the 100th episode included a girl with Tourette's Syndrome and a little person who was a Britney Spears impersonator, 200th episode included an alcoholic who ran over her boyfriend and a girl who had alopecia).
The tenth season premiere of Mystery Science Theater 3000 had TV's Frank returning to reap souls ("Second Banana Heaven was way too political") and Joel Hodgson returning to fix up the Satellite of Love.
The 100th episode of 30 Rock was a one-hour episode about the Show Within a Show's 100th episode, and was even titled "100th".
The episode also featured special guest appearances from Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks, the important plot point of Tracy deciding to leave movies to return to TV, the return of Dennis Duffy (a recurring character who was Liz's boyfriend in the first season) and a gas leak that caused the cast to reminisce about the past while in an altered state.
The entire 25th and final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show is a milestone celebration, with her bringing back her favorite or most shocking guests.
The 100th episode of Bones flashes back to how Booth and Brennan met and first worked together and has Booth confess his love for Brennan.
In Supernatural 's 100th, Sam and Dean finally meet their half brother Adam and also rebuild their relationship.
Gilmore Girls 100th episode has Emily and Richard renewing their wedding vows.
The 100th episode of One Tree Hill has Karen return for Lucas's wedding where he is left at the altar, and Dan rescues Nathan and Haley's son Jamie after he is kidnapped.
The 100th episode of Desperate Housewives plays with the Tonight Someone Dies card by killing off a previously unseen character who has been a part of the main character's lives for over a decade, the flashbacks in the episode show his involvement in their lives. Season one characters Martha Huber and Yao Lin also make a reappearance.
NCIS celebrated their 200th episode "Life Before His Eyes" with a lot of continuity nods to the previous eight seasons. Word Of God says this episode was a "gift to the fans".
The 100th episode of Criminal Minds was actually called "100". The episode was told in Anachronic Order with the team being interviewed by Strauss because Hotch killed an infamous serial killer who murdered his ex-wife.
Meanwhile in soap operas, Neighbours had celebrated both episode number milestones and anniversaries, usually by having some big event happen in the episode in question. Especially big milestones were the 1000th episode, the 10th anniversary, the 3000th episode, the 20th anniversary, the 5000th episode, with cameos from many former characters (some of them extremely former) and the 25th anniversary (in late 2010). The 6000th episode (and the week leading up to it) created a mystery over a murder attempt on Paul Robinson's life, which kept going for several months after.
To be fair, every 1000 episodes usually marks the culmination of some storyline, or a special event thrown into the middle of the plots, as has the 10th, 20th, and 25th (I don't recall anything at the 5th or 15th however). Other massive events typically happen at the end of each shooting season of the soap (ie. they shoot for about 230 episodes per year and then stop for an "end of year" finale).
The Big Bang Theory's 100th episode focused on the possibility of Leonard and Penny getting back together. They also had special behind the scenes video with the cast looked back at the series so far.
JAG celebrated its 100th episode "Boomerang (Part I)" by filming it on location in Australia, and the 200th episode was a What If?.
Saturday Night Live parodied this with their 100th Digital Short which was a music video called "We're Gonna Suck Our Own Dicks", a big musical Call Back to all the other Digital Shorts.
November 4, 2013 is the tenth anniversary of Retro Game Master, at which point it will be considered a Long Runner. The show's celebrating it throughout the whole year.
Alegria launched in 1994 as the 10th anniversary show; the year also saw the retrospective documentary A Baroque Odyssey.
The 20th anniversary was marked with, among other things, the retrospective book 20 Years Under the Sun and the Midnight Sun concert in Montreal. The latter doubled as a 25th anniversary marker for the city's international jazz festival, which the concert was held at.
The 20th anniversary of the London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera was marked with the BBC documentary special Behind the Mask. The 25th anniversary was marked with a mega-staging of the show at Royal Albert Hall (140 cast members as opposed to the usual 40, etc.), followed by a "grand finale" featuring appearances by most of the original London cast and a performance by Sarah Brightman (the original Christine); this was filmed and released on video.
The tenth anniversary of Les Misérables was celebrated with a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and the 25th with a staging in the O2 arena.
Theme Parks
The Disney Theme Parks have interesting anniversary promotions for whenever a park reaches the 10th, 25th, etc. anniversary of its opening day, usually debuting new rides/additions to the parks, new/updated shows and parades, and usually a large gimmick. For its 25th year, Disney World's Cinderella Castle was transformed into a gigantic pink cake.
Mickey Mouse's 60th birthday was acknowledged at Florida's Magic Kingdom with a whole themed "land", Mickey's Birthdayland, in 1988; the park kept it and tweaked its theme over the years (first it became Mickey's Starland, then Mickey's Toontown Fair) until it was torn down in The New Tens to make way for the Fantasyland expansion.
Transformers Generation 1 20th Anniversary: a huge transformable figure of Optimus Prime, complete with his trademark gun, laser axe, a miniature Megatron in gun mode, and of course, the Matrix of Leadership.
25th Anniversary: the original Optimus Prime toy was rereleased with the inclusion of a DVD of the first three episodes of the original series and a copy of the first issue of the Marvel comic book. Also, new toys were produced based on characters from throughout the franchise, from G1 to Transformers Armada.
Beast Wars 10th Anniversary: a rerelease of several figures along with two new figures of Optimus Primal and Megatron. All the toys had pieces which could be used to build Trans-Mutate.
Nendoroids are adorable, pseudo-bubblehead figurines primarily aimed at otaku. With that in mind, the 100th release in the line is a character who falls outside of that demographic: Mickey Mouse, who is quite jarring when put next to franchises such as Touhou*
BIONICLE got a line of six small sets called the Stars, a collection of remakes of characters from across the series' decade of existence. They also happened to be the last sets before the line got the can. They tend to be perceived as a rather weak way to both celebrate a milestone and end the line.
Barbie's 50th anniversary brought the My Favorite Barbie line of toys. Each set contains a reproduction of a famous Barbie doll, an extra outfit from the same era, and a retro pamphlet of other Barbie clothes and accessories sold at the time.
Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse celebrated the 50th anniversary of Barbie's old friend Midge by adding her as a new major character.
Capcom celebrated Mega Man's 15th Anniversary by releasing the Anniversary Collection, a Compilation Rerelease of all of the console classic Mega Man games (1-8, plus the arcade games Power Battle and Power Fighters).
Mega Man X 7 was also part of the 15th Anniversary celebration. Between the GameCube version of the Anniversary Collection with its unpopular switched controls and just how godawful X7 was, this didn't end well.
In fact, Capcom celebrated all things Mega Man for two years. It was...odd.
And before that, Mega Man 8 itself was a 10th anniversary special, with an art booklet of previous games, and an animated intro that was a callback to the whole series at that point.
Despite everything thatrecentlyhappened, it has been recently confirmed that Capcom will be celebrating Mega Man's 25th anniversary. See Rockman X Over. Despite this, evidence is that it isn't appropriate for celebrations, like with Sonic 2006. They then supported the fan-made Street Fighter X Mega Man as an anniversary game for both franchises, which is being better received.
Capcom also celebrated Street Fighter's 15th Anniversary by releasing the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, which had Hyper Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and no trace of...you know...the original Street Fighter. Because that would have actually been an Anniversary Collection.
For the twentieth anniversary of the release of Bionic Commando (1988), a 2.5-D remake of the original was released in 2008, with a fully 3-D sequel following in early 2009.
RuneScape celebrated its 100th quest with a continuation of the first one, divided in several segments with their own rewards. It was basically the biggest quest until that point.
At the same time, the latest part of the Compilation, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, was promoted as part of the 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII.
EA Sports listed Madden NFL 2005 at the 15th Anniversary of the series, and released a collector's edition with earlier versions of the game updated with modern rosters. Madden NFL 2009 is the 4th game since then, but it is billed as the 20th Anniversary Edition. Math never was EA's strong suit.
It's not just the hedgehog celebrating his 20th birthday —- the Vocaloids get in the act in a minor way, as the third title of Sega's Project Diva series of Vocaloid Licensed Games, released just a few days after Generations, includes a Vocaloid cover of "Live & Learn" in the bundled bonus CD and an in-game Sonic costume for Miku because of Generations (in contrast the other Sega-themed costumes in the series*
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin was released in 2006, 20 years after the release of 1986's Akumajo Dracula for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. The FDS version would be ported to cartridge and released for the NES in 1987.
For the 25th Anniversary, Nintendo set up newwebsites and rereleased the SNES game Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii with a book and soundtrack.
Nintendo also celebrated the 30th anniversary of Luigi's first appearance in Mario Bros, calling the year 2013 "The Year Of Luigi" in order to celebrate the release of some Luigi-centered games as well as the New Super Luigi U expansion pack for New Super Mario Bros U.
Space Invaders celebrated their 30th anniversary with Space Invaders Get Even, where the eponymous invaders become Villain Protagonists. They also released Space Invaders Extreme, which is a modern revamping of the game.
The King Of Fighters XII was rushed to market to mark the series' 15th anniversary. As Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s equal circumstances had already demonstrated, results were disappointing.
Harvest Moon had two Spin-Off games made for the series' 10th anniversary: Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon and Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon. The former proved popular enough to become its own series.
Also for their 10th anniversary Marvelous released two Harvest Moon games, DS and Magical Melody. Both games were throwback games with the former taking place in Forget-Me-Not Valley 100 years in the future, and the latter featured characters from previous games (mostly from the first game of the series). Both games are often cited as being the end of the "classic" Harvest Moon period, due to future games being vastly different from the older Harvest Moon style. The odd part is though, the games were released in 2005 when their anniversary was in 2006.
The SaGa series celebrated its 20th anniversary by remaking Sa Ga 2 as SaGa2 Hihou Densetsu -Goddess of Destiny-...and releasing a 20-disc compilation of all the SaGa soundtracks.
Halo gets a graphically revamped Updated Rerelease of the first game and a Halo: ReachNostalgia Level map pack (which can be obtained either bundled with said rerelease or as a seperate DLC) for its tenth anniversary. The rerelease is one of the first games developed by 343 Industries, the Halo studio established after Bungie became an indie studio.
The Legend of Zelda celebrated its 25th with four games: Skyward Sword, remakes of Ocarina of Time and Four Swords, and a rerelease of Link's Awakening that helped launch the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console service. Plus a worldwide orchestral concert tour, promotional items for Skyward Sword and Ocarina, and even a tribute level in Super Mario 3 D Land. The anniversary concluded with the Japanese art book Hyrule Historia, which revealed the complete timeline of the franchise for the first time ever.
Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] marks the 10th anniversary of the Kingdom Hearts series, noted in-game with a story recap feature. Coincidentally, it also has a tip of the hat to the 30th anniversary of TRON on the same year with the inclusion of a TRON: Legacy world.
Parodied in Team Fortress 2: Valve meant to commemorate their 100th update with the medals that showed how long it was since you first started playing the game, but they had to put a bunch of other, minor updates before then. So when it finally came out, it was the 119th update, and they acted as if this was some major milestone to celebrate.
The first Half-Life came out in November 1998. In November 2008, Valve offered the game to anyone who still didn't own it on Steam for 98 cents.
Similar to the way they celebrated Mario's 25th anniversary, Nintendo created a similar package for Kirby's 20th anniversary, complete with book and soundtrack. However, since Nintendo didn't previously make a Kirby anthology, this release is all-new, including a museum mode giving details about the series.
The Sims 3: High-End Loft Stuff. Since it was released around the time of The Sims franchise's 10th anniversary, 3 items from the original game were included in the pack: the giant fish tank, the electric guitar, and the vibrating love bed.
Homestar Runner: Strong Bad tried (and failed) to answer 50 emails in a row for his 50th Strong Bad E-mail, presented his 100th email (a flashback of how he met Homestar) in widescreeeeen!, and traveled to meet alternate universe versions of himself for #150. For #200, there was a big build-up only for the resulting email to be addressed to Homestar rather than Strong Bad- it's then revealed that Homestar has had his own email show all along, which Strong Bad tries to ruin.
Also parodied in Issue 10 of Teen Girl Squad. Keep in mind that in Teen Girl Squad, everyone dies Once an Episode:
Cheerleader: It's our tenth issue-versary! Let's do a Clip Show! So-And-So: Let's have a wedding! The Ugly One: Let's have a baby! What's Her Face: Let's kill someone off! Narrator Strong Bad: Okay! (everyone dies suddenly in bizarre ways)
This practice was thoroughly mocked by Zero Punctuation. His 100th episode opened with him celebrating the event, complete with party hats and noisemakers. So, to commemorate the event, he reviews a very special game; Call of Juarez: Bound in blood. Which...is exactly the game he had scheduled anyway.
It's just a number. 101 is also a number. And so is 99, and at least that one looks like someone getting bumfucked.
Later in the review, a sentence is abruptly interrupted by another noisemaker bursting out the side of Yahtzee's head, apropos of nothing. He just apologizes for the interruptiona nd goes on with what appears to be a bloodied ear.
Then, two episodes later, he actually does review a game he really likes: Silent Hill 2.
And what better game to celebrate my 102nd episode?! *noisemaker*
How It Should Have Ended has a parody of Titanic, the second highest-grossing movie of all time, as the 100th video.note The show already spoofed the #1 blockbuster, Avatar, a few years ealier.
Note that the characters themselves have a huge party to commemorate the event - but Reed Richards secretly confides in Spider-Man that this isn't actually the 100th strip, technically speaking, due to some miscellaneous strips featured in Toyfare's sister magazines like Wizard and Inquest Gamer. As such, at the very end Spider-Man goes back in time to three issues ago and gives the huge cake from the party to the stars of the real 100th strip, the motley bunch of Stormtroopers.
8-Bit Theater never does anything special for its milestones, even for its 1000th. Although the titles do sometimes reference the number, such as "Episode 255: Maximum 8-bit Hexadecimal Value is FF. Coincidence?", "Episode 404: Comic Not Found", "Episode 666: Is Just Another Comic, Calm Down", "Episode 911: It's A Conspiracy", "Episode 912: For Real Emergencies", "Episode 913: The Last Of The 9XX Jokes", and "Episode 1000: I can't believe someone was asshole enough to make 1,000 sprite comics" followed by "Episode 1001: I can't believe someone was asshole enough to make more than 1,000 sprite comics".
The 300th one may count, as it gave a sneak peek of the Light Warriors' class changes and major character Sarda. It also had a big Time Skip gag.
The Order of the Stick was intended to have the group meeting Xykon on the hundredth strip, but the writer messed up the timing, and had one character complaining about it ("And I was expecting something impressive for the hundredth episode.") Every other hundredth was something special, though. The two hundredth was the very long battle with Miko, the 300th revealed Xykon's massed army, the four hundredth was a kiss between two major characters, the five hundredth was the start of Roy watching the rest of the Order, and the six hundreth is when the POV switched back to Roy, though they repeat the same "I thought there'd be something special..." joke from the 100th episode, and then hang a lampshade on it. However, the 700th and 800th comics had nothing particularly special about them, and it wasn't even lampshaded.
1/0, in addition to ending with comic #1000, dedicated comic #251 to its "1000th panel" celebration.
MegaTokyo used its comic #1000 to show Kimiko having a critical part of the nature of the world around her revealed to her, and revealed Miho's Little Miss Badass status in strip #1024 (#1 KB).
And comic 1337 is triple length, showing an Image Spot of Largo ammasing an army of Ph33rb0ts.
Sluggy Freelance includes a piece of simple animation every year on its anniversary (usually making someone dance to the song "X Years of Nifty Darn Comics"). The tenth anniversary featured this plus a bonus comic that referenced the "spam Satan" joke from the very first strip.
Darths & Droids celebrates every 50th strip by adding another level to the string of "What our webcomic is in this universe, since the thing we're parodying doesn't exist" strips following the 50th strip.
XKCD skipped comic number 404, so that a 404 'File not found' error appears if someone tries to access it.
And for the 1000th comic, a binary joke: only 24 comics till a nice round number!*
1024 is 10 000 000 000 in base two. The next binary milestone will be 100 000 000 000 (2048 comics), and at 4096 comics the total would be 1 000 000 000 000 in binary and 1 000 in hex.
In honor of Platypus Comix's 10th anniversary, accessing the site during the week of February 7, 2011 brought up a page which resembled the homepage used in 2001. Through the Wayback Machine, the page even included links to old comics and articles, as well as a dated homepage for Platypus Comix's parent site, Toon Zone. Clicking, "Click here to restore status quo" brought up the usual website, decked out with a vertically-oriented banner, which featured characters from both ongoing and discontinued comics partying together.
During the 10th anniversary of Toon Zone, Peter Paltridge released an Electric Wonderland comic in which the main characters find themselves in Toon Zone's domain while pursuing a thief.
El Goonish Shive, used to celebrate each year of the comic with a filler comic featuring the whole main cast. It stopped doing this after the 6th anniversary but acknowledged the 9th with this filler which has links to previous milestone celebration comics.
For the 10th anniversary, it celebrated with a filler comic that mimics the setup and dialog of the very first comic but is in color, features transformations, references the anniversary and has a different ending.
Sonic The Comic Online celebrated the 250th issue of the series with a mega-packed issue. The issue is the largest so-far in the series, the online fancomics or the original Sonic The Comic; it also featured more artists in one issue then any other issue. It feature various cameos from characters that haven't appeared in a long time.
There's the general case of "1 million hits", "1 million subscribers", etc. This usually has some celebration or special comment on sites that consider those relevant.
For their 100th episode Talk Radar put together a six hour long podcast that was half original content, half clip-show.
Celebrating the site's anniversary with a gigantic crossover is a traditional event. The second anniversary of the website featured the six-part miniseries Kickassia. The third one had the seven-part web video Suburban Knights with more effects and callbacks to Kickassia. The fourth one was an eight-part film known as To Boldly Flee, containing more continuity and improved CGI effects.
Linkara (A part of That Guy With The Glasses) celebrated his 1 year anniversary by reviewing Maximum Clonage, a story from the infamous Spider-Man Clone War saga. The 100th episode had him review a Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, (specifically Sonic Live!) one of his most requested comics to review.
And for the 200th episode, he finally decided to rip into the one people have been clamoring for him to tear to shreds since the beginning. That's right, he finally went after One More Day.
For her third year anniversary of being on the site, Lindsay did an in-depth commentary on her first ever review, Pocahontas.
The Angry Video Game Nerd himself had a special episode as his 100th. Action 52? No. Nintendo World Championships? No. It's about R.O.B.
Generally, critics on TGWTG treat their 50th and 100th reviews as such- Kyle reviewed Melancholia, and Jesu Otaku reviewed the FMA Anime, for instance.
The 100th Episode of We're Alive was accompanied by a revamp of the show's website, launching a new iPhone app for downloading the podcast and new merchandise in the online store. In story the episode ended with the destruction of the safe-zone in Boulder.
Eat Your Kimchi: The 200th video was A Day in the Life and the 100th Music Monday had an 18 minute "best of" compilation video.
The Simpsons had a special 300th episode...sorta. "Barting Over" was actually the 302nd episode, but Fox insisted on a special event episode to coincide with the Daytona 500. Nothing too special about the episode itself, other than guest shots by Tony Hawk and Blink 182, but there is a gag where Lisa mentions that this is the 300th time that Homer has done something crazy with Marge saying she counted 302.
Likely, its 500th episode had a couch gag that showed all the previous 499 couch gags, all continuing to pan skyward as they play out until it stops with the multiple incarnations of the family sitting at their couch.
The gag for the 499th episode was a surprise 500th episode party. When Lisa points out the error, Moe replies, "Well, guess what? Fox isn't doing this again."
They also spoofed their actual 100th episode — all they did was have Bart write the lines "I will not celebrate meaningless milestones."
The 400th episode, "You Kent Always Say What You Want", opens with The Tracey Ullman Show short "Family Portrait".
They also parodied this trope with "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", the third Clip Show episode.
Episode 167 was the episode that tied the show with The Flintstones as the longest-running animated prime time show. "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" featured a lot of Lampshade Hanging on various Animation Tropes. Some versions of the episode use the couch gag where the family find the Flintstones already sitting there.
The 20th anniversary was marked with the documentary The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special: In 3-D! On Ice!, directed by longtime fan Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and broascast on January 10, 2010, following the 451st episode (which Fox promoted as the 450th for whatever reason; had they not promoted it as such, the documentary would have aired on January 14, the original broadcasting date of "Bart the Genius").
In addition, a contest was held for fans to introduce a new character to the show. The winning entry was Ricardo Bomba, a South American ladies' man who works as a safety inspector at the nuclear power plant. The episode where he made his debut killed him off before anything could be established about him. However, executive producer Al Jean said it's possible Ricardo might appear again.
Spoofed in-story in "I Love Lisa" with The Krusty the Klown 29th Anniversary Show.
South Park's 97th episode "Canceled" was clearly intended to be the 100th (with the Leaning on the Fourth Wall moment and all), but it was instead aired as the 97th so as to be the Season 7 premier, taking advantage of its Mind Screw opening that mirrored the Pilot Episode. The actual 100th episode, "I'm A Little Bit Country", had a tacked-on "100 episodes" acknowledgement at the end.
The 200th episode is the first of a two-parter and features a story involving every celebrity the town has ever pissed off; the second part is also a Wham Episode for Cartman: His true father is also Scott Tennorman's. Think about that one... the story also reignited the Muhammad cartoon controversy in real life.
Spoofed in the Looney Tunes short "Blooper Bunny", which celebrates Bugs Bunny's 51 1/2 anniversary with a brief dancing number. Most of the cartoon is behind-the-scenes footage and Hilarious Outtakes of said dance number.
Spoofed in Animaniacs, with the Warners' 65th Anniversary Special (referring to their backstory of being created in The Thirties).
Family Guy's 100th episode (excluding the splitting of the DVD movie into seperate episodes for broadcasting) was Stewie Kills Lois, kicking off a two-parter in which Stewie finally realizes his ambition to kill his mother and conquer the world...or so it seems.
The 150th episode was an experimental story called Brian and Stewie in which only the two title characters appear, the entire episode is confined to a single scene, and there are no cutaway gags or even music.
The 200th episode, "Yug Ylimaf", involves Stewie and Brian accidentally reversing time and revisiting moments from older episodes.
SpongeBob SquarePants' 10th anniversary special was an hour long and featured live action appearances by Will Ferrell, Craig Ferguson, Tina Fey, Rosario Dawson, LeBron James, P!nk, and Robin Williams. And Ricky Gervais was the narrator.
The plot for the episode itself was that the Krusty Krab was celebrating its eleventyseventh anniversary. This prompted the characters to reminisce, only instead of a standard Clip Show, the flashbacks are all new.
While the series itself never reached 100 episodes (unless you count Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z), The Powerpuff Girls had a 10th anniversary special years after the show ended, which celebrated everything fans loved about the show compressed into 25 minutes. That would be wordplay, self-referential humor, homages & parodies, wit, and the occasional song.
For those wondering it ended with Mojo Jojo creating a tranquil world free of all the past old problems of war and starvation (much to the girls surprise). Then gets bored by all the peace, so everything returns to the status quo.
Also, the 100th episode of the 2003 series is a special episode depicting the story of Master Splinter's owner Master Hamato Yoshi.
The airing of Transformers Animated coincided with the 25th anniversary of the airing of Transformers Generation 1 (and, by extension, the origin of the entire Transformers mega-franchise). It celebrated by paying homage to every single Transformers incarnation previously made, even the obscure one that were barely even released in Japan and not at all outside.
Granted, many of those nods and references were All There in the Manual, but that said, the manuals (that is, the Allspark Almanac, volumes 1 and 2) are extensive and full of Mythology Gags.
Spoofed on Ka Blam. The show is all set for its 100th episode, complete with a stadium, dancers, red carpet, fancy dress, etc. Then, maybe thirty seconds after the show starts, a stagehand tells Henry and June that it's only the 17th episode.
Futurama's 100th episode is another spin on the RMS Titanic tragedy (this was done before in the show's 10th episode, which featured a spaceship version of the cruiser as its main setting, but this episode uses a "Land Titanic" for its backstory), but nonetheless shook up the status quo a bit by having Leela's heritage as a mutant accidentally outed, giving the mutants equal rights, and even pulling a Like You Would Really Do It by making it look as if Fry mutated himself. And of course, the Lead In for this episode is the Planet Express crew making their 100th delivery, and the party celebrating it serves as a minor B-plot.
American Dad begins its 100th episode with Roger dressed as the Grim Reaper, telling viewers that to celebrate the milestone, they're going to kill off 100 characters. There's even an on-screen counter to keep track of the deaths. The show keeps its promise, though 97 of those deaths belong to background characters who are killed all at once in a bus crash.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force's 100th episode paid homage to Scooby-Doo, and also features a subplot of Master Shake visiting the show's executives (in the form of Dana Snyder, no less), trying to bring the show into syndication. However, since the show is only a Quarter Hour Short, it only has fifty half-hours of material.
