"Hey, didn't we already run past that couch, chair, and lamp?"
— Wanda, The Fairly OddParents!, Channel Chasers
Animated characters running, driving or in a chase scene will pass the same two bushes, three rocks and four trees over and over again. It is, or was, a cost-cutting measure — the eternally-looping background saves a lot of time and effort on the part of the animators, no matter where the characters are going and how they're supposed to get there. It occasionally results in Special Effect Failure if the cut between the end of the loop and the beginning isn't as smooth as it should be. In the industry, this is known as a "repeat pan".
Wrapping backdrops are not limited to outside settings either. Tom and Jerry can chase each other past the exact same door and window five times in a small room with no corner in sight.
The effect was most frequently seen in products made by Hanna-Barbera, but can be spotted in shows from other studios, too.
This trope was lampshaded even before it saw widespread uses, with some older Looney Tunes having the camera zoom out for us to see the characters running on a treadmill powering the background before the characters themselves notice and jump off the treadmill to continue the chase properly.
It's rarely found in anime, where the tendency is to avoid long-running sequences to begin with, or to instead use an abstract background when doing so (speed lines, pastel versions of cityscapes, and other easy-to-draw things) in order to cut costs.
Today, largely a Discredited Trope. Compare Cut and Paste Environments for video games, and Unnaturally Looping Location, for locations looping in-universe. Modern-day cases can be found in video games involving scenarios where the background is always moving—the development team must use this trope so the scenario can play out as long as needed for the player to resolve it. Compare and contrast Motion Parallax, emulating the distance/perception of movement dichotomy (farther=slower) through layers.
Not to be confused with Wrap Around.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Super Dimension Fortress Macross features a number of scenes with Wraparound Backgrounds. There is one scene in the "Pineapple Salad" episode where this trope is made incredibly obvious by the fact that the perspective of the streetscape suddenly 'jumps' when the loop is restarted!
- There's a subtle visual lampshading of this trope in an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist in which Ed and Mustang are in a carriage with a wraparound background of factory buildings. When they get out of the carriage the perspective shot shows dozens of identical factory buildings receding to infinity.
- This was Played for Laughs in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The SOS Brigade's film showed Mikuru running through the same shopping district several times in a bunny suit, growing increasingly exhausted in each take.
- Coppelion episode 5 uses this when Ibara and crew are escaping from the 1st Division.
- Parodied, like all corner-cutting cartoon techniques, in an episode of Cromartie High School, where Hayashida and Kamiyama are talking while walking to school. When they pass a brick wall, the camera cuts to an open plan where they are shown walking back and forth in front of the wall - the idea being emulating this trope.
- Episode 12 of The Idolmaster features a climactic chase scene between the Producer and Miki Hoshii. While they're having their conversation during the chase, the background very noticiably cycles through the same building and handful of people multiple times.
Films — Animated
- This occurs several times in the first Asterix movie Asterix the Gaul.
- Rock-A-Doodle: Chanticleer and Goldie are sitting on a stationary motorcycle, filming a movie for Pinky's studio. The camera is on their right, while some scenery is painted on a bolt of fabric that loops around two large rollers on their left. There isn't that much fabric involved, so this "scenery" is bound to loop around many times during the filming sequence. Pinky has hired an insect actor to buzz around Chanticleer and Goldie, as if this will somehow disguise the fact that the same shrubbery has passed in and out of frame repeatedly.
Films — Live-Action
- In a homage to classic animation, the live action Speed Racer film uses incredibly obvious wraparound backgrounds, particularly in the scene where Rex and Speed are driving down the road: the loop is short, has an element that makes sound to bring your attention to it, and is the same on both sides of the car. Even when the camera angle is pointing behind the car so you can see the two identical sides meet.
- In The Matrix, if you watch closely, you can see the background wraparound as Neo is being driven to the Oracle for the first time. The scenery is the same on both sides. This is an intentional to show off how the Matrix is just a simulation.
- The characters of Be Kind Rewind are seen setting up a revolving drum of cars on a street, which is used to film the the scene in Men in Black where they drive upside-down in the tunnel.
- In the 1953 film of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, it was used quite obviously, as well as being lampshaded in the lyrics of the song in "We Open In Venice". Video clip here
We open in Venice,
We next play Verona,
Then on to Cremona.
Lotsa laughs in Cremona.
Our next jump is Parma,
That stingy, dingy menace,
Then Mantua, then Padua,
Then we open again, where?
We open in Venice... - Occurs in the all-cartoon opening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit here.
- Arguably occurs in the opening titles of Speed. The credits appear between the floors of a lift shaft as the camera descends many, many floors. The lift shaft is clearly a (well constructed) miniature, so it's likely the same footage, looped a number of times, masked by the large beam that obscures the view.
- In the documentary The Hollywood Clowns, this was used in silent film, and one shot shows a chase taking place on what's almost a carousel with a background painted onto it, and another with a cowboy riding on a mechanical horse, with a wraparound backdrop like the one that would be seen decades later in the music video for "Shiny Happy People" mentioned below.
- Though never used in either film proper, the DVD Commentary for Scooby-Doo has the cast joking that, for the sequel, there should be a scene in which they're all running in profile with the same background going by over and over.
- Werewolf (1996): The security guard's driving rampage passes the exact same gas station four or five times.
Live-Action TV
- Back in the days of rear projection backgrounds, live-action car chases often had these.
- And before back projection, a revolving drum was used. The revolving drum technique was revived by Gerry Anderson's puppet shows. Runway shots of aircraft used a more sophisticated technique involving separate conveyor belts painted with wraparound details for the runway, land background and sky background, all of which were run at different speeds to simulate perspective. The sky background on its own was used for shots of the aircraft in flight, which worked fine when it was flying straight and level but not if it went into a dive, because the clouds were also at a steep angle and made it clear that they had just tilted the camera.
- Or they'd just have the actors run through the same set, over and over, and over...
- Referenced in Lost, when Libby mentions how this was done in The Flintstones and then points out that they have passed the same tree several times.
- The set for the corridors of the Enterprise in classic Star Trek consisted of one curved corridor with a couple straight ones intersecting it. The foot chase through the ship at the end of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" passes through the same intersections many, many times.
- Played straight many times in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The stretch of corridor running between the Ten Forward set and the crew quarters set was only about thirty feet long, and when "walk and talk" scenes were filmed there, the actors would frequently walk off-camera at one end of the set only to re-enter (after a cut) at the opposite end. The most egregious example of this comes at the end of the two-part episode "Gambit," with Picard, Riker, and Data discussing the fate of the mercenaries.
- More subtly, the window in the Captain's Ready Room showed a moving star field at sublight speed. This star field was on a conveyor belt. (Stars at warp in TNG appear as streaks, so those are Chroma Keyed in).
- Subverted in an episode of Corner Gas. Oscar and Emma are shown in the cab of their RV, and trees passing by in the background indicate they are moving. Cut to an outside shot that shows the RV is parked outside The Ruby and a convoy of flatbeds full of trees is driving by in the opposite direction.
- The opening and closing titles of Taxi show a taxi driving across New York's Queensboro Bridge. The original footage was too short, so it's repeated a couple of times. The overlaid titles, and the fact that the bridge has a repeating pattern of girders, make this less obvious.
- George Sr's "wall" in Arrested Development is nothing more than a round silo the he drives around in a loop to give the illusion of a wall.
- German "Bernd das Brot" is captured this way in the night loop of KiKa. He chides the gag as dated, he lampshades it...but in any case, he can't escape.
- Sesame Street did this in the early 1980s Muppet song "Let's Go Driving."
Music
- R.E.M.'s music video for "Shiny Happy People" features an old man on a bicycle powering the soundstage's wraparound backdrop.
Theatre
- One showing of the musical adaptation for Ben-Hur used a wraparound background (on a drum) for the chariot race sequence.
Video Games
- Pretty much every driving game until the fourth generation of games (16-bits) has them. One notable example is Top Gear 2 for the SNES and Genesis; before every race, you are shown a scrolling view of its location, which is also used as backdrop for the race itself.
- Most train or elevator levels in games; generally, they loop indefinitely until you defeat a boss or complete some objective).
- The elevator boss fight in Final Fantasy VII: The 3D backdrop for the fight is an outside elevator infinitely going down (the building is supposed to be only ~70 stories high).
- Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation has a rare 3D variation of this when Lara is on a train. The poor draw distance that causes fog to appear helps disguise this trick.
- The first Soldier of Fortune, as well as Blood, has train stages that loop the level.
- Most of episode 3 of The Walking Dead has the train driving past the same area of rural Georgia, which wouldn't be as noticeable if it didn't include a small segment of fence. And given the heavy emphasis on conversation and plot development, you're going to see them a lot.
- This is used as a minor plot point in Super Mario 64; the staircase that leads up to Bowser's final hideout is infinite, and the curse will only break when Mario collects 70 stars. The staircase is lined with portraits of Bowser on both walls at constant intervals. What happens is that at a particular painting, Mario is seamlessly teleported in front of the previous painting, and since the upper area is in darkness, it gives the illusion of infinity. The illusion is easily broken if you get the camera to face the beginning of the staircase.
- Telltale Games' Sam & Max: Freelance Police seasons do the same thing during the driving segments. Possibly Lampshaded in the Season Two finale, where the DeSoto is in its own personal hell - driving down the same endlessly looping streets at an insanely slow speed - and the buildings in the distance are just painted onto the wall.
- Lethal Enforcers 1 has a level where a car chase happens alongside a never-ending block with "a lot of National Rubber Stamp Co.'s", as The Angry Video Game Nerd points out in his Sega CD review.
- Justified in Odin Sphere, as all battle stages are circular.
- Resident Evil 0 uses this trick for the train in the beginning. Every shot of the "outside" is a looping FMV.
- Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 4: Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective (which is basically an interactive Movie Within A Web Animation Licensed Game) has a badly made Wraparound Background in its "car chase". The Cheat is carrying a single branch back and forth in the background.
- This exact type of wraparound is used in the Homestar Runner web series this game is based on, in the Strong Bad Email "dangeresque 3", where Strong Bad as consolation for not making Dangeresque 3 by June of 2004 (and starting production only four months previous to the Email) shows a "director's cut" of the first film.
- This is similar to the effect used in Rayman Raving Rabbids. Several of the shooting sequences take place on a train. However, it's actually a movie set, with the train stationary and the Rabbids running by with bushes and cacti every few seconds.
- The 1980s arcade game Operation Wolf uses these.
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty uses this to simulate the Tanker moving down the Hudson River. The combination of rain, fog, the fact that it's evening and the spray from the ship disguises this unless you're looking for it.
- Not played straight in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, but one of the levels requires you to "act" your way through a film studio, which uses an obvious-to-the-player wheel of a sky background for a chase scene.
- Chapter 2 of Paper Mario opens with a train taking Mario from Toad Town to Mt. Rugged with a repeating background between the locations.
- Many of the levels of Super Mario Bros. have the exact same hill, bush, and cloud repeating itself every three screen widths as Mario moves across each level.
- Wally Bear and the NO! Gang features levels that loop several times.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Hogwarts Express level has an in-game engine Forced Perspective background which loops on a virtual revolving drum.
- Pretty much every 2D platformer with sprite graphics/traditional backgrounds ever made, since the game only has a certain amount of space for the background image. This can be very noticeable in Super Mario World hacks that forget to stop a background with a prominent feature in it from scrolling when you move, or Super Mario Bros X games that fail to loop the background convincingly enough.
- One of the most obvious cases can be found in Freedom Planet, in which an easily noticed vertical line is present in the most distant mountains in Pangu Lagoon. It appears to be the result of forgetting to touch up the artwork to blend where one loop ends and the next one begins. The stage is also long enough that this line can be seen from multiple locations.
- Battle Garegga's Stage 7 is an airport runway that you fly down until you complete the main body of the stage as well as defeat Black Heart mk2, the first of the game's two Final Bosses. The runway ends up being far longer than any other runway in the world; for reference, the world's longest runway is 5500 meters long.
- Raving Rabbids has one rail shooter level that is set in the middle of a movie shot that is using a physical roll of looping background. And some Rabbids running around with props.
- Iggy's Reckin' Balls seems to have very limited space for background art, as they all loop approximately every one and a quarter screens. All of the different world themes have three layers of Motion Parallax, so the frontmost layer, which scrolls the fastest, is the most obvious one.
- Triggore: Justified, since the game takes place in a small house, which you are standing in the middle of.
Web Animation
- A rather egregious example occurs towards the end of Dusk's Dawn when Donut is walking down the longest and least interesting hallway in Equestria for over an entire minute. He even lampshades it, not that it makes it any more bearable.
- In Homestar Runner, the Strong Bad Email "little animal" ends with Strong Mad chasing Strong Bad past a wraparound background.
- Mystery Skulls Animated: Briefly seen when Vivi, Arthur and Mystery are running down the hallway with the suits of armor, and again when Arthur is fleeing from Lewis down another hall in the Haunted House.
Webcomics
- The Order of the Stick, instead of copypasting, shares the background among as many adjacent panels as possible, even if the "camera" doesn't move a bit. (At least for its first 200-and-odd strips.) It's most notable in the Starmetal arc (strips #150 to #173), because the same 3 or so backgrounds are recycled over and over, but this trick is used cleverly at other points of the comic.
- Subverted in this Ozy and Millie strip, in which two characters discuss this trope while walking in front of what appears to be a wraparound of a coffee shop storefront. The last frame pans back to show that the entire block comprises coffee shops; one character observes, "This is Seattle, after all."
Western Animation
- The Flintstones is guilty of this in nearly every episode, as are quite a few other Hanna-Barbera shows from the sixties and seventies. A Cartoon Network promo hangs a lampshade in which, after running across such a background, Barney Rubble taps Fred Flintstone on his shoulder using the "wraparound". Another promo is a music video of Soul Coughing's "Circles", where Fred, Barney, and other Hanna-Barbera stars are literally "walking around in circles" when they get stuck in the Wraparound Background and try to get out. Check it out!
- This trope is referenced in the Family Guy episode "A Picture's Worth a Thousand Bucks". Peter and Meg are having a discussion while walking down the streets of New York City, which suddenly become the repetitive thoroughfares of The Flintstones' Bedrock.
- Parodied and lampshaded in The Fairly OddParents! Trapped in TV Land episode "Channel Chasers".
- One especially blatant example occurs in one of the Flintstones' Christmas Episodes, where Santa arrives at a party and Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm lead a large group of children across a stationary background to meet him. This large group is then followed by... Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. That's right, Wraparound FOREGROUND.
- Particularly noticeable in Scooby-Doo, since every episode involves exploration and chases.
- Also used in a Terry Gilliam Monty Python's Flying Circus cartoon.
- The Simpsons skewers it in "The Front". The background behind Bart and Lisa repeats itself, complete with the same janitor, while they take a tour of the Itchy and Scratchy Show cartoon studio. And of course, during this scene, the tour guide mentions the fact that backgrounds are often recycled to keep costs down, thus driving the point home. The commentary mentions that they had to put the woman mopping because people are almost trained NOT to look at the backgrounds. They had to use a very short loop and movement in the background to draw attention to it. Also the Couch Gag where the family runs past their own living room over and over.
- Subverted, with Lampshade Hanging, in an episode of Dexter's Laboratory that is itself an Homage to Wacky Races. Dee Dee asks her imaginary friend Koosalagoopagoop (whom she is also using as her vehicle) why the background keeps repeating. Koos explains that it used to be a popular cost-cutting measure, but then the racers discover that they are stuck in a trap set up by Mandark, in the form of a treadmill surrounded by holograms of various rocks going by them again and again. Koosie even mentioned the industry name "the Repeat Pan" and gave Hanna and Barbera a Shout-Out.
- Parodied in the The Angry Beavers episode "The Big Round Sticky Fish Thingy". Norb tries to get away with the eponymous "fish thingy" (a rare sturgeon egg) after tricking Dagget into looking for it elsewhere. Norb finds himself going past a repeating background of absurd images, including a reproduction of "Washington Crossing The Delaware", and realizes he's running on a treadmill with a scrolling background hastily constructed by Dagget.
- Subverted at least twice in Little Dracula, where some character is riding a car or a horse in front of what turns out to be a Wraparound Background.
- Parodically lampshaded in Ruby Gloom, during the episode "Name that Toon". As Skull Boy leads Scaredy Bat past the backdrop sheets for his cartoon, he says he'll try to avoid Repeat Pans, another name for this trope, and Scaredy Bat agrees that they invariably look cheesy. This entire sequence is shot in front of a Wraparound Background, made particularly obvious as the same two distinctive backdrop sheets are repeated over and over.
- Parodied by Peter Kay, who compares the layout of a wedding buffet to this trope, referencing Scooby-Doo. (Vol-au-vents, chicken wings, cheesecake, vol-au-vents, chicken wings, etc.)
- During the model train chase in Wallace & Gromit's The Wrong Trousers. Justified in that the train is actually going around in circles around the edges of the same room. The creators even lampshaded this in the DVD audio commentary.
- Parodied in one Invader Zim episode, "A Room With a Moose". To keep his class distracted while he sends them to pocket dimension containing a moose, Zim puts them on a bus and has a wraparound background playing on the windows.
- Some of the really cheap DC superhero cartoons are very guilty of this. The worst example is in a Flash short in which Flash and Kid Flash chase Zoom throughout the world, including a chase in Egypt in which they pass by thirty pyramids. Note: there are only three "True Pyramids", and about half-a-dozen failed attempts. It's not just the cheap DC toons, either - the DC Animated Universe does it, too.
- Garfield and Friends: Lampshaded in "The Cartoon Cat Conspiracy", where Garfield watches a Hanna-Barbera style cartoon:
Garfield: Did you notice how large the living room is? It's about three miles, I figure! And they've run past that same table about 20 times.
- Many of the Fraidy Cat episodes use this technique. “A Small Star is Born” is the worst offender though, when Kitty Wizard chases Fraidy thinking he’s an impostor, the background consisting of just a door loops around, with no change in the background. Just the doors.
- Lampshaded by Cartoon Network in its "Shorties" series, specifically the Pixie & Dixie short "Harasscat" in which Mr. Jinks gets a pounding by the police for violating the restraining order issued on Pixie and Dixie's behalf. Jinks attaches the restraining order to a grandfather clock, which the police start pounding—As Jinks chases Pixie and Dixie, they pass by the grandfather clock and the police some four times.
- At least one Golden Age cartoon is guilty of this. In Porky's Road Race (Warner Bros., 1937), the Cheerio Special (an auto race with a quartet of British figures) passes the same scenery many many times in a 30-second period.
- Lampshaded in Dave the Barbarian. Dave and Oswidge are running through the castle halls while devising a plan to get out of their crapsack situation. About 20 seconds in, Oswidge looks at the background for a few seconds. "Is it just me, or have we passed that same door about 10 times?"
- Here Comes the Grump is full of them, thanks to the many chase scenes.
- Lampshaded in Spy Groove. While the guys are driving through Miami, the narrator points out how they pass by "another palm tree and juice bar".
- Lampshaded in an episode of Johnny Test, where Johnny gets turned into a mouse and then chased by his intelligent cat nemesis Mr. Mittens. Along with several other Shout Outs to Tom and Jerry, at one point while fleeing he muses "I never knew this room was so long... and how many times have I seen that computer? There it is again!"
- Parodied and lampshaded in the musical recap of ReBoot Season 3: the binome actors portraying Matrix and AndrAIa march in place while the backdrop scrolls past them to represent the passage of time, and after the last still image the backdrop slide says "Don't roll farther than this!" Sure enough, as soon as the audience has time to read that message, the backdrop quickly moves in reverse, belatedly trying to correct its mistake.
- Lampshaded in Voltron Force, when several characters are fleeing zombie ninja scientists through a shopping mall which uses a wrap-around background. Larmina and Allura talk briefly about how they've been past these stores already; Lance claims that all malls have multiples of the same stores.
- Used as a part of a scam in the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Ready, Set, Ed!" to give the illusion that the Ed's tiny "rocket car" is traveling around the world to different countries. It starts to fall apart when Ed stands still and says he's homesick... right in Kevin's view.
- Parodied in an episode of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures that lampoons Scooby-Doo. During a chase scene, Mighty Mouse runs past the same clock and window several times before the camera pulls back and reveals that the hallway has several of them spaced few feet apart.
- We Bare Bears: Parodied in one of the segments in "Charlie's Halloween Thing 2". The Baby Bears are running from a wolfman as part of a Scooby-Doo parody, when the wolfman suddenly stops and seems to notice the wraparound background. Then the Bears run out the left side of the screen and back in on the opposite side.
- Family Guy often combines this with 2D Visuals, 3D Effects in driving scenes; when a shot is shown inside a moving vehicle, they often pass the same CGI buildings and trees over and over.
- Jorel's Brother: Lampshaded in an episode where Lara is riding her bike with Jorel's brother by the street, and notices that she is actually passing by the exact same houses every few seconds, as if it were a cartoon. Jorel's brother hand waves it by saying it's just because the houses in their neighboorhood all look alike.
Real Life
- In its 19 December 2006 headline on the death of Joseph Barbera (of Hanna-Barbera), Fark Dot Com acknowledged this trope with a joke that had been floating around Usenet: "Joseph Barbera dies. Funeral procession to pass same three buildings every two seconds."
