On Ice

Crash Nebula... ON ICE!

So you have a character who's famous in-universe, or a popular show-within-a-show. For sake of example: The Alice and Bob Show. What better way to show off that fame and popularity? Alice and Bob on Ice! When you've got your own ice show, you've officially made it to the big time.

Like many Shows within Shows, an in-universe Ice Show may be rife with Adaptation Decay and Stylistic Suck. There also tends to be a high level of camp.

Not related to metamphetamine, and Yuri!!! on Ice is not an example. Sub-Trope of Live on Stage!. Sometimes overlaps with Screen-to-Stage Adaptation, though that trope is usually used to refer to "legit" theater — i.e. The Musical adaptation of a hit property on the West End or Broadway.

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Examples on ice!

Advertising

• Progressive On Ice.

Comic Books

• One Cartoon Network Action Pack story based on Ben 10: Ultimate Alien sees Ben, Gwen, and Kevin attend the suitably farcical "Ben 10 On Ice", which ends up getting crashed by Aggregor.

Comic Strips

• The Far Side spoofed this twice with the prehistoric Dirt Capades and The Ice Crusades.
• Spoofed in Life in Hell with "Hell on Ice".

Films — Live-Action

• History of the World Part I had a brief clip promising "Hitler on Ice" in the sequel.
• The climax of Death to Smoochy takes place during a production of Smoochy on Ice.
• In Vegas Vacation, Clark Griswold notes in passing that one of the local productions they could check out is Liberace on Ice.

Live-Action TV

• iCarly discussed the trope in the episode iWin A Date when two of their friends didn't show up for their webshow as they went to see Girly Cow On Ice.
  Carly: Why is it whenever there's a popular TV show they just gotta go put it on ice!
• Dialogue in a Full House episode revealed that Danny once took D.J. to see Smurfs on Ice.
• The Goodies decide to introduce Royals On Ice!
  "But they'll break every bone in their body!"
  "No they won't!"
  Cue Title Card: BUT THEY DID.
• A major plot thread in Season One of Kidding is Seb preparing to launch Pickles On Ice, an adaptation of his son Jeff's beloved children's show Mr. Pickles' Puppet Time with a show starring a skater in a Goofy Suit as Mr. Pickles, Jeff's Excited Kids' Show Host persona. It's intended as the first step in, effectively, removing the severely depressed Jeff from his own program/franchise so his deteriorating mental state won't affect it. Jeff manages to change it to Picklebarrel Falls on Ice with Tara Lipinski just visiting the other characters, but Seb changes it at the last minute to have Tara's sister play Mr. Pickles in the final scene...only for a mishap to leave Tara's throat cut (not fatally) at the end of the premiere performance. The two different Goofy Suits built become a Chekhov's Gun in the back half of Season Two: having been discarded, they're first used by a pair of unsuccessful holdup artists, and one then falls into the hands of a disgruntled adult fan of the show who begins to stalk Jeff and his family in disguise.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: 3 words: Circus On Ice, one of the more blackly comic riffings of an old short featuring a real ice variety show.
• Nick at Nite had a marathon of The Odd Couple titled "Odd Couple On Ice!" The wraparounds for this had skaters in Oscar and Felix costumes performing routines while Tony Randall and Jack Klugman provided commentary.
• Saturday Night Live for December 11th, 2010 had a Meryl Streep on Ice sketch.
• David Letterman:
  • His December 12, 2010 show had a fake ad for WikiLeaks on Ice.
  • In The '80s one Top Ten list featured rejected Ice Capades themes, including "Big Bird Gets Mites", "Eldrige Cleaver's Soul on Ice on Ice", "A Fat Smurf Hits on Dorothy Hamill", and "Snoopy Stains the Ice".
• Step by Step: When Frank and Carol try to enroll Lilly into a prestigious preschool, some employees interview them to see how cultured they are. When Carol talks about going to the ballet, she immediately changes her story and says it was more like ice dancing. Frank says it was called Snoopy on Ice.

Web Animation

• The YouTube Poop Good Burger on Ice.
• The Strong Bad Email "rock opera" makes reference to a Dangeresque: Put 'Em on Ice! at the end. It bears mentioning that Dangeresque is an action-movie franchise about a hard-boiled cop.

Web Comics

• Love and Capes has The Crusader on Ice. The Crusader's girlfriend is the only one amused.

Web Original

• The House to Astonish live show opened with Paul declaring "Live! On fire! On ice!", which was also used as the episode title. It wasn't really on ice (or indeed on fire).

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • The full title of the 20th anniversary special was The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special - In 3-D! On Ice! (Although it was neither on ice nor in 3D, and was shown during the 21st season...but it really was about The Simpsons.)
  • In one episode of the show, Krusty and Sideshow Mel host an Ice Capades-type show; they slip behind some flats and two obvious skate-doubles come out to do an ice dance in their stead. When they finished, they were crushed by the scenery, revealing that Krusty and Mel were watching TV and slacking off.
  • In Season 2's "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", Roger Meyers, Jr. strolls past a poster for Itchy & Scratchy on Ice as he dictates his rude reply to Marge's letter.
• In an episode of The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy sells magical lemonade so he can afford tickets to Crash Nebula on Ice.
• Rugrats (1991) had Reptar on Ice. Reptar is the show's expy of Godzilla, but for some reason (even the guy playing Reptar complained about its implausibility), the ice show had him falling in love with a reporter. On the other hand, Grandpa Lou was doubtful about seeing it but thought it was brilliant once he did. Meanwhile, the babies try to return a lizard to the actor playing Reptar, believing it to be Reptar's baby. The actor is forced to improvise when this happens, and since he has a fear of lizards, he is horrified when they show it to him.
• Robot Chicken did a sketch where The Empire Strikes Back became "Empire... On Ice!"
• Arthur:
  • In the episode "Play It Again, D.W.", D.W. has four tickets to Crazy Bus Live. Arthur doesn't want to go, but D.W. tells him that it's only fair; she had to go to Bionic Bunny on Ice when Arthur wanted to go. ("Buster's New Friend" also showed when Arthur and Buster had a souvenir poster signed by the Bionic Bunny actor at the ice show, who was noticeably overweight and was munching on a chili dog while signing autographs.)
  • Also, in the All-CGI Cartoon Arthur's Missing Pal, D.W is trying to win a contest to see Mary Moo Cow on Ice. She succeeds, but finds the ice show to be a rip-off compared to the Mary Moo Cow TV series.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "Bloo's Brothers", Bloo's popularity has resulted in a flood of Captain Ersatz Bloos, and this becomes a problem when Mac only has two tickets to the Ice Charades.
• Eddie from Slacker Cats goes to see Saving Private Ryan on ice.
• In Doug, Judy is a fan of Shakespeare on Ice.
• The Critic episode "A Little Deb Will Do Ya" has a subplot involving Jay's rivalry with timeslot competitor Humphrey the Hippo (an Expy of Barney the Dinosaur). One establishing shot sees an advertisement for Humphrey's Madison Square Garden event "The Hug-In" getting plastered over with a "Sold Out" banner.

Real Life

• The Real Life progenitors of this trope were touring ice skating revues such as Ice Follies and Ice Capades, via segments inspired by popular kid-friendly franchises. Ice Follies featured Sesame Street characters in The '70s, while Ice Capades (which died in The '90s) featured:
  • Yogi Bear (1977 edition, plus crossovers with Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones in '79 and '91)
  • The Snorks (1985)
  • Ewoks (1986)
  • Teddy Ruxpin (1987)
  • The California Raisins (1988)
  • Super Mario Bros. (1989) — Princess Toadstool spoke like Mae West, King Koopa was played by Mr. Belvedere, Mario sounded like Fred Flintstone, and the whole thing ended with a Curb-Stomp Battle in which Mario did NOTHING. It has to be seen to be believed...so here it is!
  • The Simpsons (1990) — In this case, the Simpson clan came to watch the show and most of their stage time was spent bumbling in and around the audience (with Marge complaining to Homer and Bart that this was how they "got kicked out of the Guns N' Roses concert"). They ended up onstage by interrupting the finale, with Bart performing "Do the Bartman" before they were all shooed off.
  • The Smurfs (1981) (More than once in The '80s)
  • Barbie (Several times in The '80s and The '90s)
  • The 1997 show was subtitled The Magic of MGM and thus had segments based on Goldfinger (James Bond on ice!), Stargate, The Pink Panther, Rocky, and All Dogs Go to Heaven — plus a segment that went from West Side Story to Tank Girl in the blink of an eye!
  • Sky Dancers, as part of the very last Ice Capades show to ever be produced.
• The Disney on Ice franchise, The Rival to Ice Capades that eventually came out on top.
• The Wizard of Oz on Ice was adapted from the 1939 film.
• Anastasia on Ice.
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit along with the other characters created by Beatrix Potter had an ice show at Alton Towers in the early 90's.
• Aliens - ON ICE!
• Holiday on Ice, currently a Europe-only production which has given the continent shows featuring:
  • Asterix
  • Ice Age
  • Looney Tunes
  • Madagascar
  • The Pink Panther
  • Peanuts
• Rick Wakeman's Concept Album The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table was performed at the Wembley Arena as King Arthur on Ice. According to some reports, this was not an aesthetic choice on Wakeman's part, it was just the Arena had recently held a skating contest and couldn't be thawed in time.
• A step up from the above tours are arena productions based on live-action or comic book properties, featuring elaborate special effects and/or stunts to put characters and creatures through their paces.
  • George Lucas' Super Live Adventure was a Japan-only 1993 tour in which a young woman was plunged into the worlds of, in turn, Willow, Tucker: The Man and His Dream (!), Indiana Jones, American Graffiti (!), and finally Star Wars on The Hero's Journey.
  • Batman Live
  • Doctor Who Live featured monsters and evil robots on stage and the Eleventh Doctor in specially-recorded film footage. It even used the concept of classic serial "Carnival of Monsters" as its framework!
  • Marvel Universe LIVE! is from the same producer as Disney on Ice.
  • Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular featured life-sized animatronic dinosaurs prowling the stage.
  • How to Train Your Dragon: The Arena Spectacular is from the same producers as Walking With Dinosaurs but combined with a retelling of the first movie in the successful animated film franchise.
  • Toruk — The First Flight is an Expanded Universe Prequel to Avatar produced by Cirque du Soleil.
• One of the final two editions of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (which both closed in 2016, and had the same corporate parent as the aforementioned Disney on Ice) incorporated ice skating into the traditional three-ring show.
• Crystal and Axel are literally Cirque du Soleil on ice.
• Several Norwegian Cruise Line ships, thanks to a licensing deal with DreamWorks Animation, staged a How to Train Your Dragon ice show.
• Some Six Flags theme parks featured a half-hour Looney Tunes ice show in the early 1990s.
• In general, stage shows at the Disney Theme Parks (and the Disney Cruise Line) and Universal Studios parks are in the spirit of the above productions, putting a bevy of popular characters on stage and rarely making it to an hour's runtime, though some are considerably more elaborate than others and/or are actually condensed direct adaptations of films.

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