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To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise, they built one. A full size one. "I will not celebrate meaningless milestones."
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.
- Sailor Moon ended with episode 200.
- Pokémon had a special episode made in part to celebrate 10 years since the franchise launched with the Pokemon Red And Blue Game Boy games in Japan in 1996. The kicker, it aired in the U.S. (with new voice actors) first, where the fans there only had Pokémon since 1998.
- Diebuster was made to commemorate Gainax's 20th anniversary.
- The Naruto manga celebrated its ninth anniversary with a page showing Gaara and Naruto posing with a certain group of seven other people
 ◊.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Yu-Gi-Oh! Tenth Anniversary Movie marks the ten years of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series (not including the Toei series), featuring the main protagonists of the original, GX, and 5Ds series teaming up.
- Transformers Energon included the 500th episode of Transformers to be shown on Japanese TV. It was a weird, pointless episode that spoofed professional wrestling.
- 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).
- Pretty Cure All Stars DX was made for the show's fifth year.
- For Azumanga Daioh's tenth anniversary, the manga was re-released with updated artwork and new chapters.
- 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.
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.
- Amusingly, the Archie comics just reached #200, which it celebrated by... 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.
- 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 is doing 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.
- Don Rosa has done a few of these:
- 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 1985, DC Comics celebrated their 50th anniversary with Crisis on Infinite Earths, which brought a Cosmic Continuity Reboot upon the DC Universe.
- 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.
- Wonder Woman had the death of Diana's Anti-Hero Substitute, Artemis, leading to the restoration of the status quo.
- 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.
- Green Arrow had the title character killed and replaced by his son. (He got better, but not for a decade).
- 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 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.
- 2000 AD has done a few:
- 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.
- For its 80th anniversary, Dick Tracy ran a storyline from September 18 to October 23, 2011, which doubles as a follow up on a 1948 story arc and a Milestone Redo of the first storyline (as recounted by Sam Catchem to Lizz Worthington).
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.
- Universal celebrated its 75th anniversary*
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 anniversary*
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 has so far only posted it online.
Film — Animated
- Tangled has a Logo Joke for the Disney Animation Vanity Plate proclaiming the film as being the 50th movie in the Disney Animated Canon.
- 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.)
Literature
Live-Action TV
Theater
- Cirque du Soleil company milestone celebrations:
- 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 25th anniversary included a stilt-walking event centered on Las Vegas, a two-disc Greatest Hits Album featuring songs from almost every show produced up to that point, and a book on the company's costumes over the years.
- 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.
Toys
- Transformers has had quite a few of these:
- 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 figurine 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 *
(no, Nazrin doesn't count) or Vocaloid.
- 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.
Video Games
- Capcom loves 'em:
- 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, 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.
- 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.
- Contra 4 was released at the 20th anniversary game for the series, emphasized with its heaps of series Fanservice (although the other type is unlockable).
- Square Enix had a group of Final Fantasy games released under the 20th Anniversary banner of the series, including a PSP Updated Rerelease of the original and the Massive Multiplayer Crossover Dissidia: Final Fantasy.
- 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.
- Sonic the Hedgehog's tenth anniversary was celebrated with Sonic Adventure 2. The fifteenth, with Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis and a platformer for the Xbox 360 and PS3 - though neither were in any way appropriate for celebrations (but the latter has some justification in being rushed for both it and a Christmas release).
- The 20th anniversary game, Sonic Generations, builds off the successes of Sonic Colors and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 one year prior. Its biggest selling point is the return of the classic, Black Eyed Sonic, running alongside the modern, Green Eyed one, each with their respective, seperate gameplay in a time travel plot that revisits areas from the preceding nine main games of the series. The plot is even based on a time-altering villain crashing Sonic's birthday party.
- 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* were included merely for the sake of Shout Outs).
- 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.
- Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth was released for Wiiware in Japan exactly twenty years after the original Game Boy game's release.
- Super Mario Bros.. celebrated their anniversary with "Happy! Mario 20th". They had a website (now defunct) and a soundtrack (with selections from the original game, The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Sunshine) to celebrate with it, and they even offered a "20th Happy Mario!"◊ Sonic shirt!
- For the 25th Anniversary, Nintendo set up new websites and rereleased the SNES game Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii with a book and soundtrack.
- 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.
- 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 SaGa 2 as SaGa2 Hihou Densetsu -Goddess of Destiny-...and releasing a 20-disc compilation of all the SaGa soundtracks.
- Pac-Man World was released for the 20th anniversary of Pac-Man and the plot is even based on a villain crashing Pac-Man's birthday party. Pac-Man World 3 would later be released for his 25th anniversary.
- Halo gets a graphically revamped Updated Rerelease of the first game and a Halo: Reach Nostalgia 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 3D Land. The anniversary concluded with the Japanese art book Hyrule Historia, which revealed the complete timeline of the franchise for the first time ever.
- Solatorobo is considered to be CyberConnect2's 15th anniversary celebration, being a Spiritual Sequel to the very first game they developed.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D 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.
Web Animation
Webcomics
- In the hundredth Twisted Toyfare Theater strip, "Tonight, one of these characters will die!" Quoth Mego Spidey: "Hope it's me."
- 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 peak 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).
- Captain SNES: The Game Masta managed to work its 200th story comic celebration into the plot. The 500th was slightly clumsier.
- Narbonic had this very silly one-year anniversary celebration.
- Questionable Content #666: Spontaneous metal interlude!
- VG Cats had a flash animation for the 100th comic, and actually skipped the 200th comic with a note reading "TBA 2009".
- Which now reads "TBA - Never".
- Adventurers! had hundreds of comics numbered 999 so that the final chapter would be number 1000.
- Awkward Zombie has its 100th comic, in which Master Hand kills the recently returned Roy in one hit.
- 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.
- The KAMics is usually sarcastic about it's milestones, comic #500 is a good example of this.
- Every hundredth Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic strip is in color.
- The 200th comic of Brawl in the Family had a musical accompaniment, dedicated to all the Mooks that died at the hands of gamers everywhere.
- 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 Platypus Comix's parent site, Toon Zone, the cartoonist released an Electric Wonderland comic in which the main characters find themselves in Toon Zone's domain while pursuing a thief.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: "Happy first anniversary, Dr. McNinja!" It's a Wham Strip.
- 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.
- Arthur, King of Time and Space ended its first year with the Battle of Beldegraine and Arthur learning who Morgan is. It ended its second year with a timetravel flashforward. The third and fourth aniversaries just get mentioned in passing, and the fifth aniversary is the pre-Time Skip Wham Episode. Sixth passed without comment (except in The Rant), and seventh wasn't even mentioned there.
Web Original
Western Animation
- 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.
- 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 and the couch gag had the Flintstones themselves gathering on it.
- 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 100th episode had the weirdest episode up until then.
- "Canceled" was clearly intended to be the 100th (with the Leaning on the Fourth Wall moment and all), but it somehow aired as the 97th, so "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).
- Spoofed in Space Ghost Coast to Coast with its 37th Episode Anniversary.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Turtles Forever, a celebration of 25 years of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that also serves as both a Grand Finale for the 2003 series and a fitting send-off to the Mirage era of the franchise as whole, what with it being sold to Nickelodeon shortly before its airing.
- 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 KaBlam!. 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.
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