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Omake

"In the war room, things are not quite as... strict as they are in the rest of the world."
—Cyrus, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

"Omake" is a Japanese word that, similar to the Louisiana Creole word "Lagniappe", means "an extra little something" or a bonus that is added to, but separate from, a particular work. The practice of adding just a little extra something to one's work has been around for a long, long time: Charles Dickens, for example, was a regular practitioner of it, back when he wrote his stories for newspapers and magazines.

Generally, this extra material doesn't interact with the primary plot of the work, and is generally seen as "stand-alone" material. Some times the extra material isn't even considered canon, though such additions can add depth and insight to the primary characters if the writer makes an effort to connect the "extra" to the main material.

Nearly all types of media feature extras: artwork is popular for anime and manga, particularly holiday art (especially if the artists can draw the ladies in Sexy Santa Dresses); musicians regularly add "hidden tracks" to their records; television producers create extra scenes to be shown over the credits or as online-only "webisodes"; movie producers sometimes create whole new short films, just to add as an "extra" on the DVD; and comic books often feature "backup stories" that are only a handful of pages long.

And Knowing Is Half The Battle segments are a subtrope.

Obake, while sounding similar, is something very different.

Examples:

Anime & Manga
  • Penguin Revolution ends each volume with an out-of-continuity short involving the characters - for example, at the end of a volume in which Ryo was injured shielding a producer, Yukari polls some of the other characters to find out if they would have done the same, getting humorous results from each. These shorts are then followed by an author's note in panel format - also usually humorous, but in one volume it is devoted to the recent death of the author's dog.
  • Every volume of Fullmetal Alchemist comes with some truly side-splitting Yonkoma strips and assorted drawings by the author parodying the events of her own comic. This editor's favorite is the ongoing drama of Roy Mustang in a 1970s shoujo romance comic.
  • Hellsing has these at the end of most volumes. Generally they involve Super Deformed versions the Valentine brothers or Seras giving commentary on the series thus far.
  • Blue Seed has a regular "Omake Theatre" segment after the end of every other episode. These range from goofball jokes and sketches to brief but poignant character pieces. (Particularly outstanding is the segment that reveals that pink-jumpsuited gun-nut Kome once had a schoolgirl crush on a boy who never noticed her — a boy who is now one of her coworkers, for whom she still feels a strong but hidden affection.)
  • Magic Knight Rayearth has an "omake" option on the extras menus of its North American DVD release, but this writer's player steadfastly refuses to play them.
  • The Japanese DVD release of Mai-HiME includes a tongue-in-cheek "trailer" for an allegedly upcoming feature length film which pits the heroine of that show against the heroine of its successor, Mai-Otome; the end of the trailer promises its release in the Spring of 20006. Yes, twenty thousand and six.
  • Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex features an omake after every episode involving conversations between the Tachikoma. These shorts are called Tachikomatic Days, and feature surreal humour.
  • Bleach has "Shinigami Illustrated Picture Book" at the end of almost every episode after the beginning of the Soul Society arc. At first just information on the shinigami leaders, this soon became canon omake—generally humorous moments that had happened off-screen during the span of (or just after) the regular episode. Some of them are even animated adaptations of omake chapters written by Kubo Tite himself.
  • Shakugan No Shana had as DVD specials two mini-episodes of "Shakugan no Shanatan" and one of "Itadaki no Hecatetan", featuring a pocket-sized version of the titular character that spoofed events in the main series.
  • Video Girl Ai featured an Omake Theater segment after nearly every episode.
  • Gun X Sword has Gun X Sword-san, what amounts to a computer-generated hand-puppet show involving Wendy, Kameo (her pet turtle), and other characters as needed.
  • Saiyuki Reload's UraSai segments are random bits of silliness at the end of each episode, meant to be more kid-friendly because the show originally aired right before Pokemon. They're worth it, if only for Goku's Magical Girl parody.
    Sanzo: *firing his gun* What the hell are you doing?
    Goku: A little... fanservice...
    Sanzo: For whom?
  • Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water has ten omakes that contain crack plots and supplementary information about the plot, the characters, and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
    • There also exist fairly kitschy official Nadia Anime Music Videos, which this troper thinks were originally released on Nadia LCDs.
    • The omake set is called Nadia's Omake Theater.
  • Every episode of Cardcaptor Sakura ends with a "Leave it to Kero-chan" segment where Kero introduces Sakura's outfit of the week.
  • Pokémon has "Professor Oak's Lecture", where the Professor talks about one species of Pokémon and usually ends up getting attacked by it.
  • The DVDs of the full Sky Girls series contain comedic extras in which Eika tries her hand at fishing. No, really.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha started its life as a mini-game that was included in the Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever fandisc which depicted the adventures of the main character's little sister as a Magical Girl.
  • Naruto Shippuden has omake at the end of most episodes; they ranged from characters talking about the history of Konoha to downright silliness like Shikamaru and Asuma talking about changing the show's name to Shikamaru/Asuma Shippuden. The latter is particularly memorable when Naruto shows up indignantly in the end and is handed the script for future episodes, only to find that he's barely in any of them. (A subtle dig at the manga's and its titular character's lack of screentime for a long period.)
    • Also to note is that the Shippuden Omakes have been dubbed into English, which doesn't happen that often.
      • Though they're only on the DVDs; the Disney XD broadcast cuts them out (which is probably true for a lot of anime aired in countries with more commercial time per episode).
  • Played straight in both To Heart and To Heart: Remember My Memories, where six stand-alone omakes were made for each series. The To Heart omakes were more of slice of life themed, while the Remember My Memories omakes had a continuous plotline for the six omakes.
  • D.Gray-Man had super deformed versions of the characters acting out little omake at the end of later episodes. The characters were done in the style of the "talk pages" in between the chapters of the manga in the tankoubon.
  • Gundam Seed has some hilarious omakes in it's Gundam Seed Character Theater. This first involves Yzak Jule's hilarious attempts to take Athrun down a peg or three by learning and mastering Athrun's secret of success. The other two involve Rey Za Burrel, Meyrin and Lunamaria Hawke, and Shinn Asuka's attempts, on Gilbert "Gil" Durandal's orders to destroy the successful formation of Kira and Athrun's friendship, and destroy Lacus' reputation. Both attempts fail hilariously.
  • Princess Princess is published with actual slipcovers. If you happen to take the slipcovers off, you find that there are omake printed on the covers of the books themselves. The mini comics are called "Prince Prince" and feature the main characters in an Alternate Universe as girls crossdressing as guys. (As opposed to the canon, where they are guys crossdressing as girls.)
  • Third season episodes of Konjiki No Gash Bell would end with a gag section where they switched two characters' hairstyles.
  • Darker Than Black has two omake chapters in the manga (one in which the secondary protagonist discovers that Hei is on good terms with the cops, and another consisting of rather hilarious four-panel comics), and the OVA similarly spoofs the main series.
  • Even the Code Geass Manga Spin Offs have been known to add the occasional omake pages, involving such characters as Lelouch, Clovis, and Bartley.
    You're the only one who understands me, Bartley.
  • Fushigi Yuugi's Pioneer DVDs contain a lot of omake, including raw commercials, artwork, music clips, a relationship chart, interviews and footnotes. There's also a special omake known as "The Tale of the Forbidden Women's Hot Spring Resort", which parodies the Nyosei arc that the anime omitted.
  • Harukanaru Toki no Naka de - Hachiyoushou has versions of the next episode previews narrated by villains on earlier DVDs (normally, these are narrated by the members of the central cast), and the last one contains the eight Multiple Endings for the series.
  • There's a Yonkoma in between every chapter of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Manga adaptation.

Comic Books
  • Arguably, the Freaky Friday story arc from Ultimate Spider-Man. In this story, Spider-Man and Wolverine switch bodies and try to live one day each other's lives. They barely last 3 hours. They are on the verge of beating the crap out of each other before Jean Grey steps in and sets things right. The issue starts with the author speaking directly to the audience, almost apologizing for the story. Having been accused of excessive padding in past story arcs, the author jokes that even he could not pad the story for more than two issues. The issue also pokes fun at some of the more mundane aspects of Spidey's powers which most people take for granted, especially Peter.
  • Detective Comics #347 had a rare after-story "what if" segment that showed what would have happened to Robin if the villain of the story had actually killed Batman. (This was in 1966. Who says Bats only got Darker And Edgier after the Adam West years?)
  • During the 80's, several DC Comics titles would feature "backup stories" in the last five or six pages of each issue. Most notably, the Green Lantern series was backed up with Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, short one-shot stories that would feature the members of the Green Lantern corps who didn't interact with Earth all that often. All of these were canon, though, and now that the Green Lantern Corps have their own title, that character development is coming in handy. Oh, and that one story about how the Corps was going to die, written by Alan Moore? Turns out it was important...
  • Star Wars Tales featured one-page strips in most issues starring editors Dave Land and Jeremy Barlow, numerous artists, writers and other personnel interacting with the characters. Featured responses to fan mail, Running Gags, Baby Darth Maul and the revelation that all of the strips are drawn by Jawas.

Film
  • The DVD of the first Ringu movie features Sadako's cursed video as an omake. After the end of the video, the screen blurs and a close-up of Sadako's creepy eye displays, which this troper finds funny but which might also be a nightmare fuel to some.
    • The American remake also included the cursed movie on the DVD, but with two extra Nightmare Fuel-inducing factors: first, you couldn't pause, stop, or fast-forward through it, forcing you to watch the whole thing (unless you turned the TV off.) Second, after it's finished and it returns to the menu — it plays the sound of a phone ringing. Creepy as hell.
  • Pixar always throws extras in. In addition to their cartoon shorts, they often create a "blooper reel" for their films.
    • The Ratatouille DVD has a short film featuring some fun facts about rats.
    • The Incredibles featured a 1950s style cartoon featuring Mr. Incredible and his "sidekick".
  • The I Am Legend DVD has four cartoon shorts done in still-frame comic book style. This troper thought the one by Orson Scott Card was scarier than the actual movie itself.
  • Fear Net.com broadcast a series of half-hour long films that were set in the same continuity as 30 Days of Night.
  • Some films have connected online content that's so extensive it might as well be second films.

Live Action TV
  • Similar to The Ring example above, the Doctor Who season three boxed set contains a video that plays half a conversation (It's complicated) that took place in the episode Blink.
  • Friends was good at adding extra scenes that only had a peripheral connection to the primary plot of an episode over the end credits.
    • Seinfeld did this a lot too.
    • So did dozens of other sitcoms.
  • The number of television shows that offer "exclusive online content" on their network's websites is truly staggering.
  • Mockumentary-type shows like The Office and Parks And Recreation will have a short tag that relates to a B-plot, or a one-off gag in earlier in the show. For instance, if a small gag was someone complaining about their Dr Pepper being stolen out of the office fridge, expect to see whoever it was taking the Dr Pepper out of the fridge during the Omake.

Music
  • Musicians have been adding "hidden tracks" to their recordings since the invention of vinyl records.
  • The Soundtrack to X Files:Fight The Future includes a secret track where Chris Carter explains the whole backstory to the conspiracy. A pity he didn't do through, you know, the plot of the movie itself!

Video Games
  • The War Room tutorial segments in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin feature exaggerated, less-serious versions of the characters — including villains — who come to give you advice, and contain much of the game's humor. At one point the game lampshades it with the page quote.
  • Another Day in The World Ends With You probably counts as an extended Omake with the characters cast in completely different roles with humorously tweaked personalities and even lets players meet some developer avatars, including character designer Tetsuya Nomura.
    • It also has the rare distinction of being a canon version of an Omake-everything that happens in the Another Day chapter takes place in a parallel universe from the main game, and reading the Secret Reports will clue you in that one of the Joshuas and the Mr. Hanekoma on top of the rooftop are actually the versions from the regular universe, and that this is where Joshua spent his time in between getting blown away by Minamimoto and coming back for the ending!
  • The Metal Gear Solid games generally do this in their expanded re-releases. Metal Gear Solid 3 was the most notable contributor, featuring a 'Secret Theatre' with movies such as the humorous Metal Gear Raiden shorts, dedicated to humiliating the eponymous Scrappy, and the Snake vs. Monkey minigame, which featured Snake and...a monkey.
    • MGS4's ginormous encyclopedia may have come close to toppling that though, at least in terms of effort put in by the contributors.
  • This was released prior to Soul Calibur 4's Japanese release. In it, recurring character Cassandra explains the gameplay to new character Hilde.

Webcomics
  • Megatokyo ends each chapter with an omake featuring the protagonists as completely different from their canon selves. The Chapter 4 omake Grand Theft Colo: Otaku City, for example, shows Makoto, an Anthropomorphic Personification of the main Megatokyo server owned by ColoGuys, stolen by a Largo that looks more like a 70's pimp; Piroko, Piro's gaming avatar, is an Elegant Gothic Lolita Action Girl, Kimiko is a gun-toting Yakuza, Piro is an Ax Crazy otaku, Miho is a Wrench Wench Cute Witch, and Erika and Yuki are cops who run a shady auction business.
  • Darths And Droids provides multiple alternate universe versions of the same characters playing different movie-based games.
    • Also the intermissions.
  • Errant Story has had two varieties of Omake, first a sequence called "Fun With Familiars" featuring familiars Ellis and Rape-kun back in the old high-school days, and later, "Errant Commentary" featuring characters Bani and Sara at the end of each chapter.
  • Girl Genius has occasional non-canon segments starring its cast, such as the Revenge of the Weasel Queen storyline.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court follows every chapter with a single bonus page. These may be (canon) short stories; description of (canon) background details by the secondary narrator; or book-ending, symbolism-dense Treatise pages.
  • Lackadaisy Cats has what are called "preview comics" which explain things like why Rocky has a hole in his ear and why Rocky refers to Calvin as "Freckle".
  • Flipside has "Intermission" strips after each chapter.
  • Coga Suro has a 'Coga Suro Review' at the end of the first chapter of Coga Suro 2, which looks to be a recurring feature. Appears to be heavily influenced by Lucky Star 's 'Lucky Channel'.
  • The El Goonish Shive: NP strips often serve this purpose.

Web Original

Western Animation

Print Media
  • Newspaper comics, published in the Sunday edition, often are designed with an embedded, “thrown-away” panel or two, usually at the beginning. That is, the comics are designed to make sense even if the 1st one or two panels are not printed. This is because some newspapers provide less space for the comics than do others. In some cases the 1st couple of panels are a separate, but perhaps related, introductory gag and in other cases, the comic is so cleverly written that the elimination of the first two panels has no effect.

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