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Rhyming Episode

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Sometimes, to make their audience's excitement tingle, a work makes their cast speak in jingles.

Or: A work has a chapter or episode where the characters speak in rhymes. This is sometimes justified by the characters being involved in an in-universe musical or some other sort poetry event. Other times, the cast have a (mis)-adventure to a Quirky Town (or planet, or dimension) where this sort of speech pattern is the norm, or has a run-in with a character who somehow only speaks in rhymes. Often done in reference to other works that heavily features Rhymes on a Dime (such as Dr. Seuss) and, depending on the episode's length and the writer's poetic capabilities, may contain a heavy dose of Painful Rhyme. The episode is also likely to have a Rhyming Title to match.


Examples:

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    Comic Books 
  • Archie Comics has several, almost all of them triggered by Jughead.
    • One story involved Jughead rhyming all of Archie's sentences, causing a chain reaction that rapidly has all of Riverdale High compulsively rhyming each other's sentences non-stop. Everyone is miserable until Betty and Veronica recall that the last time Jughead did this, it finally stopped when he suffered a blow to the head. They then trick him into making an insulting rhyme with Big Moose's name in his hearing...POW.
    Betty: Hurt?
    Jughead: It smarts.
    Veronica: Betty! That doesn't rhyme.
    Betty: Are you kidding? That's sheer poetry.
    • Another story has Jughead participate in a poetry contest and starts speaking entirely in rhymes to "train" himself. His rhyming kick ends up infecting his friends, who starts speaking in rhymes as well. Then Veronica gets an idea to send him to an isolated inn her family owns for the weekend, and manages to cure themselves of Jughead's rhyming influence. That is, until Veronica decides to call the inn's keeper to check up on Jughead, and realized too late that Jug had started the rhyming kick there, and Veronica brought back the fad by relaying the keeper's rhyming message back to her friends.
  • Captain Marvel: In Captain Marvel 2014 #9, Carol, Tic, and mutant rock star Lila Cheney end up on a planet where it is customary to speak only in rhyme. Highlights include Carol chiding her opponent in a death match for trying to rhyme tale with fell, and later knocking out said opponent with a BOP while telling her to stop.
  • In The Defenders #115, the Beast, Gargoyle, Sub-Mariner and Valkyrie are accidentally sidetracked while attempting to return to Earth, and wind up in a dimension called 'The Land of Here and There': based on the works of Dr. Seuss. The local inhabitants all speak in rhyme, and Beast soon finds himself getting into the swing of things and joining in. The Comically Serious Sub-Mariner most assuredly does not.
  • The second Super Diaper Baby book briefly starts rhyming in the middle, in a parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.

    Fan Works 

    Literature 
  • In 'The Neverending Story'', Atreyu reaches Uyulala, the Southern Oracle. He soon discovers that it only ever speaks in rhymes and cannot comprehend human speech unless it's also rhymed, resulting in a rhymed conversation.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Moonlighting episode "Atomic Shakespeare" was done in costume as if the cast were in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. At one point, the leads break the fourth wall to tell the audience, "We hate iambic pentameter!"
  • How I Met Your Mother has the episode "Bedtime Stories" entirely in nursery rhymes.
  • The Faerie Tale Theatre adaptation of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is a straight-up retelling of the Robert Browning poem, so after a Framing Device prologue that presents it as a bedtime story Browning is telling a young boy, all the dialogue and narration is in rhyming couplets. This is also a rare rhyming episode that is primarily Played for Drama.
  • Inside No. 9 episode "Zanzibar" is based upon Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and uses iambic pentameter throughout.

    Web Video 

    Western Animation 
  • The Danny Phantom episode "The Fright Before Christmas" has a villain called The Ghost Writer, who turns Danny and all of Amity Park into a Christmas poem, forcing everyone to rhyme.
  • The Animaniacs episode "Twas the Day Before Christmas" was done in rhyme, as was "The Kid in the Lid".
  • The Pinky and the Brain episode "Hickory Dickory Bonk."
  • The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode "Bad Rap."
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Dream Scheme", revolving around dreams and sleeping, is written in rhyme to resemble nursery rhymes.
  • The Johnny Bravo:
  • The Arthur episode "Rhyme for Your Life" involved Binky Barnes having a dream where he was in a town called Verseburg, where everyone spoke only in rhyme.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SpongeBob vs. the Patty Gadget" had the entire episode in rhyme, telling the story of how SpongeBob was about to be replaced by a machine that made as many Krabby Patties as he did.
  • There have been several Garfield and Friends episodes that were in rhyme, such as "Ode to Odie" and "Fit for a King".
  • The narrator in Danger Mouse delivers his lines in rhyme in the episode "Once Upon A Timeslip" after a microphone glitch transports the cast to the days of Robin Hood.
  • The Pink Panther: The cartoon is narrated in rhymes in the German dub.
  • Hong Kong Phooey has the Rotten Rhymer as villain. (The episode is not rhymed throughout, but Phooey learns that it's infectious.)
  • The House of Mouse short "Mickey's Mechanical House" has all the narration and dialogue in rhyme.
  • Several early Private Snafu shorts had most of the dialogue in rhyme, probably because whey were actually written by Dr. Seuss himself.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: The Monster of the Week "Frightningale" speaks in rhymes and forces everyone to sing, dance, and rhyme along with her lest they be turned into statues.
  • What's with Andy? had one episode where Andy has to say everything in rhyme for a whole day thanks to a bet he made with Jen.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball has two episodes that feature a narrator (whose voice is provided by Sir Derek Jacobi) who speaks in rhymes: "The Lie" in season 3 (about a made up Christmas-like holiday named Sluzzle Tag) and "The Night" in season 4 (about the dreams of the citizens of Elmore).
  • VeggieTales: "The Story of Flibber-o-loo" from "Are You My Neighbor?" tells the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible, but done in the style of Dr. Seuss, complete with rhyming.

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