Lampshaded in their 100th episode, Season 5's "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" — all they did was have Bart write the lines "I will not celebrate meaningless milestones." Season 6's "Lisa's Rival" was the 100th produced episode, but the producers always planned for "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" to be the celebration.
Episode 167, season 8's "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", was the episode that tied the show with The Flintstones as the longest-running animated prime time show, and featured a lot of Lampshade Hanging on various Animation Tropes. Some versions of the episode use the couch gag where the family find the Flintstones already sitting there.note There is some debate about when this was done; the original broadcast used the couch gag with the parody of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but syndicated and international versions use the Flintstones one, indicating it may have changed for the Fox repeat. Note that the version with the Flintstones still has the audio from the Sgt Pepper's one, indicating it was hurriedly edited in.
Season 9's "Trash of the Titans" was the 200th episode of the series. The episode starts with where the Couch Gag would be, except Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie end up running into Bart's classroom, where they find Bart writing, "I will not mess with the opening credits."
Since season 11's "Treehouse of Horror X" was the tenth "Treehouse of Horror" episode, the Couch Gag shows the Simpsons (except Lisa, who's wearing a simple axe-in-head costume) as various TOH characters: Homer as the jack-in-the-box in "Treehouse of Horror II"'s "Bart's Nightmare", Marge as her witch self in "Treehouse Of Horror VIII"'s "Easy Bake Coven" (albeit with her normal yellow skin rather than green skin like in the segment), Bart as the fly-headed hybrid from "Treehouse of Horror VIII"'s "Fly vs. Fly", and Maggie as Kang's mutant child in "Treehouse Of Horror IX"'s "Starship Poopers".
The series had a special 300th episode...sorta. Season 14's "Barting Over" was actually the 302nd episode, but Fox wanted the 300th episode to air on the same day as the Daytona 500 and pushed it back. Nothing too special about the episode itself, other than guest shots by Tony Hawk and blink-182 and an unusual Chalkboard Gag where Bart writes "I will not" repeatedly until he stops, pulls an axe out of nowhere, and chops up the chalkboard until the school bell rings, 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. For the record, the 300th episode was "Strong Arms of the Ma".
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 broadcast 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").
Its 500th episode, season 23's "At Long Last Leave", had a couch gag that showed all 499 previous 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, forming a mosaic "500". In addition, the chalkboard gag is Milhouse writing "Bart's earned a day off" and the opening logo includes a caption declaring "The most meaningless milestone of all!", referencing the chalkboard gag from the 100th episode.
Their 550th episode, season 25's "Brick Like Me", has Springfield reimagined in LEGO form. Notably, the LEGO aspect was promoted and not the episode count, and 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.
The 600th episode, season 28's "Treehouse of Horror XXVII", acknowledges this at the end of the opening sequence, where Frank Grimes warns that you'd be forced to watch a marathon of all the episodes in Hell,note Likely a cheeky reference to FXX's 600-episode Simpsons marathon later that year. includes a special VR couch gag, and closes with a song about the various shows it outlasted.
"Springfield of Dreams: The Legend of Homer Simpson" was a Mockumentary created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the episode "Homer at the Bat".
The 30th anniversary of the family's first appearance (on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987) was celebrated in the 616th episode "Looking for Mr. Goodbart". A clip from the first Tracey Ullman short "Good Night" was played before the intro sequence (a parody of The Big Bang Theory's).
To mark the 30th anniversary of the "Treehouse Of Horror" specials, the end credits of Season 32's "Treehouse Of Horror XXXI" shows all 90 Treehouse of Horror segments from the previous 30 years in reverse order, from "When Hairy Met Slimy" in "Treehouse Of Horror XXX" to "Bad Dream House" in the very first "Treehouse Of Horror".
Season 32's "Manger Things" was the show's 700th episode.
The 750th episode, the season 34 finale "Homer’s Adventures Through the Windshield Glass", featured a special version of the opening sequence which manages to stuff in 750 of the previous characters which have appeared in the show, including Freeze-Frame Bonus appearances of Bill Cipher, who had also appeared in a previous episode, and Ryuk, who had appeared in Treehouse of Horror XXXIII.
The gag for the 499th episode was a surprise 500th episode party. When Lisa points out the error, Moe replies, "Well, guess what? Fox isn't doing this again."
"Fears of a Clown" featured a similar couch gag where the Simpsons secure a spot in the Museum of Television for reaching 636 episodes (surpassing Gunsmoke for the highest number of scripted episodes for a primetime TV series), when it was actually the 632nd episode to air, as once again pointed out by Lisa.
Spoofed in-story in "I Love Lisa" with The Krusty the Klown 29th Anniversary Show.
"Lisa Gets the Blues" ended with Homer saying that the best part of the episode was that the next one would surpass Gunsmoke in episodes. Bart then asks what about their radio episodes, and Homer tell him to shut up.
South Park's 97th episode "Canceled" was clearly intended to be the 100th (with the Leaning on the Fourth Wall moment and all), but it was instead aired as the 97th so as to be the Season 7 premiere, taking advantage of its Mind Screw opening that mirrored the Pilot Episode. The actual 100th episode, "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. Unfortunately, both episodes are also a Banned Episode due to heavily focusing on The Prophet Muhammad, which lead to such an uproar amongst the Muslim community that the creators were sent death threats.
1990 was the 50th aniversary of Bugs Bunny, celebrated with a half-hour special entitled Happy Birthday, Bugs: 50 Looney Years; the first cinematic Looney Tunes short in decades ("Box Office Bunny"), and a book (Happy Birthday, Bugs) and video game (The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout) based around Bugs's birthday party. Spoofed in the following year's 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.
On July 27, 2020, to celebrate Bugs' 80th birthday, Warner Bros. released a 45 second-longLooney Tunes Cartoons short about the Looney Tunes characters celebrating his birthday.
Spoofed in Animaniacs, with the Warners' 65th Anniversary Special (referring to their backstory of being created in The '30s). In actuality, this was the 65th episode and first season finale. In a more literal sense, the direct-to-video movie Wakko's Wish is essentially the show's 100th episode and series finale.
"Elwood City Turns 100!" (100 episodes), "Happy Anniversary" (10 years), "Fifteen" (15 years), "The Last Day" (20 years).
The Episode Title Cards for season 10 had a 10 roll on the lower right-hand side. As well, there were subtle references to the anniversary with the number 10 appearing in certain locations in various episodes.
The 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.
The 200th episode, "Yug Ylimaf", involves Stewie and Brian accidentally reversing time (indicated by the title) and revisiting moments from older episodes.
SpongeBob SquarePants' 10th anniversary special is an hour long and features 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. The plot for the episode itself is that the Krusty Krab is celebrating its eleventyseventh anniversary. This prompts the characters to reminisce, only instead of a standard Clip Show, the flashbacks are all new.
The 20th anniversary had a campaign called Best Year Ever, which consisted of the following celebrations:
The first toyline in years for the show was announced in February at the New York Toy Fair.
A spin-off limited series featuring a younger SpongeBob called Kamp Koral got announced.
Entenmann's Little Bites collaborated with the show for a contest where the winner would stay in the SpongeBob house replica at Nickelodeon's hotel in Punta Cana.
SpongeBob's Birthday Blow-Out, a special with live-action humans, aired on the week of the 20th anniversary.
San Diego Comic-Con recreated Bikini Bottom at their Nickelodeon booth.
In Peru, Dunkin Donuts made exclusive donuts in the likeness of SpongeBob and Patrick.
Build A Bear released special plushies based on the franchise.
Several teams on the East Coast Hockey League had SpongeBob themed events during the 2019-20 season, including special Best Year Ever jerseys that were auctioned off.
While the series itself never reached 100 episodes, the original 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.
Turtles Forever, a celebration of 25 years of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that also serves as both a Grand Finale for the 2003 seriesand a fitting send-off to the Mirage era of the franchise as a 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 Hamato Yoshi.
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 24th episode. Unfortunately, it was the 17th episode aired on Nickelodeon.
After eleven years of not having regular reruns (for the show itself- Life With Loopy, Prometheus And Bob, and a few other shorts were reran on their own on Nicktoons until early 2007), The Splat (now NickRewind) aired the show the weekend of October 8 and 9, 2016- which happened to be the weekend right before the show's twentieth anniversary on October 11th.
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.
The series 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 96 of those deaths belong to background characters who are killed all at once in a bus crash.
The 200th episode featured an After the End scenario with cameos by almost every character in the series. The number was also significant in that it referred to the 200 clones Roger made of himself in the Large Hadron Collider which triggered the apocalypse in the first place.
The 300th episode brought closure to one of its long-running subplots since Season 1, the Golden Turd.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force's 100th episode paid homage to Scooby-Doo, and also features a subplot of Master Shake visiting the show's executives (in the form of Dana Snyder, no less), trying to bring the show into syndication. However, since the show is only a Quarter Hour Short, it only has fifty half-hours of material.
The 100th episode of Regular Show, "A Bunch of Full-Grown Geese", is full of call backs, starting with the return of the baby ducks from "A Bunch of Baby Ducks" (which is also alluded to in the episode's title). Later, when Mordecai, Rigby and the ducks merge into a Humongous Mecha, various items from previous episodes (the magic keyboard from "The Power", the trucker hat from "Eggcelent", etc.) make an appearance.
The 100th episode of Total Drama, "Zeke and Ye Shall Find", has all the current competitors going up against Ezekiel — the first contestant ever eliminated from the show.
The season 5 episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" premiered exactly five years to the day since the series premiere, though unlike the previous examples, hardly any attention to it was brought up. This may have been deliberate to enhance its effectiveness as a Wham Episode, which ends with the Cutie Mark Crusaders finally earning their cutie marks, and their series-long nemeses Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
The 200th episode "Sparkle's Seven", was co-written by the cast members, incorporating a lot of things they wanted to do with their characters that hadn't happened yet, from the characters engaging in a spy heist plot to explaining the relationship between Twilight and Spike.
For their 10th anniversary in 2002, they made this promo featuring moments from the first decade of the channel's history in one minute.
For the network's 20th anniversary celebration in 2012, they temporarily re-aired episodes of many of their classics, brought in a set of bumpers featuring numerous Crossovers, created a medley of CN theme songs (can be seen here), and finally a rather psychedelic music video and poster◊, featuring over a hundred characters from nearly every cartoon ever shown on CN.
For their 25th, they put out a short bumper of their original characters forming a 25, and later a music video of their older and then-current characters alike having a dance-off.
The 30th anniversary festivities aren't anything to slouch at either. They created new bumpers showing multiple characters from their shows throughout the years, added a 30th anniversary page on the channel's HBO Max hub, and have altered their schedule to air reruns of classic shows throughout the month of September. A three-day livestream was also set up on the network's YouTube channel, which showed select episodes of the many shows that have been on the channel, from the network's classics like Cow and Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, to their newest shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show and Teen Titans Go!. Between the episodes broadcasted on the stream, select scenes from the shows featured on the stream were presented as if they are old school infomercials. While the oldest shows shown on the stream, like Duck Amuck, were presented in their original quality, shows from the mid-2000s were shown on the stream at a higher quality than when they were originally shown on the network, as they were created to account for widescreen displays. The stream also featured high quality, widescreen versions of CN City promos, as these were originally shown before widescreen became the norm on television. This stream is also notable because it occurred shortly after Cartoon Network's parent company Warner Bros. Discovery removed many of the network's shows from HBO Max, leaving fans worried about their future.
The 1998 series had an flash-animated tv special known as "The Powerpuff Girls Rule!!!". Not only was it stated by Craig McCracken to be the proper ending of the show, but it was also to celebrate 10 years of the show. Prior to this episode airing, a marathon was aired to showcase 10 randomly selected episodes, 10 episodes of the villains of the show, and 10 of Craig's favorite episodes, leading up to the the new special at 8:00. Cartoon Network also aired marathons of the show in subsequent anniversaries.
The 100th episode of the franchise is fairly episodic in nature with not one Callback in the entire thing. In fact, it only stands out because it's one of the few episodes that has a Downer Ending.
The 199th and 200th episodes (in production order) of the franchise deal with a time traveling Villain Team-Up that has a group of evil Bens ready to defeat and conquer every universe. Ben is joined by other alternate versions of himself (a few of them established in previous installments) and has a reveal that Ben got the Omnitrix because a version of him that never obtained it, along with Paradox, manipulated the events of the first episode.
Steven Universe celebrated 100 episodes with the first true double-length episode "Bismuth"note Production code-wise — it was actually the 98th/99th episode to air, but the Season 2 shorts collectively made up one production code. It was also a Wham Episode, introducing a long-lost Crystal Gem and revealing that Rose bubbled Bismuth and claimed she was dead to prevent her from using a weapon that could instantly kill a gem.
The Raccoons: The 40th anniversary of the franchise in 2020 will be commemorated by a release of the complete original series (specials included), remastered from the original 35mm prints, along with a remastered soundtrack release featuring previously-unreleased songs such as "Missing It", "Come On Home", "Restless in the Night", "Sooner or Later", and Steve Lunt's original version of "Run With Us", as well as a reboot of the series premiering in the near future.
Episode 100 was an episode in which Raven accidentally makes a deal to remove all sounds from the world.
The episode "Hey You, Don't Forget About Me In Your Memory" celebrated 30 years of The Breakfast Club, which it spoofs.
Episode 200 was a two-parter in which the Titans meet their creators and learn how cartoons are made. However, these were episode 201 and 202 in production order, and the actual 200th episode, "Thanksgetting", was a Thanksgiving Episode.
The 300th episode was a "Dance Crew Edition" of "Justice League's Next Top Idol Star".
For the tenth anniversary, Cartoon Network will air an all-week marathon of the show on the week of April 23rd, 2023.
A new one-hour special, Daniel Visits A New Neighborhood, premiered in June 2022.
On September 3, 2022, the exact date that the show premiered, a marathon was held on the PBS Kids 24/7 channel called Top 10 Tiger Tales, showcasing the top 10 episodes of the show as voted by viewers.
The week of September 5, 2022 saw 5 new episodes premiere to begin the show's 6th season.
A new game, "Daniel Tiger's Nature Walk", was released on the PBS Kids website.
New merchandise was released to celebrate the anniversary, including a defictionalized version of Daniel's red sweater.
For the tenth anniversary of PAW Patrol in 2023, the following events happened:
At the beginning of the year, a special figurine set of every pup was released.
In September 2023, Nickelodeon held a marathon of every episode of the show (minus the missing episodes "Pup-Fu!" and "Pups Save Sensei Yumi") called "Every Pup Ever".
When Rugrats celebrated its' tenth anniversary in 2001, many things were done to celebrate it:
A marathon showcasing the top 10 episodes as voted by fans aired in April 2001. These episodes were later released on two VHS tapes and a DVD, both of which notably contained the first public release of the show's pilot episode, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing".
In June 2001, the Rugrats got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Embassy Suites ran a Rugrats promotion in the summer of 2001, where families staying there would recieve a special, Rugrats-themed gift. They also hosted a contest in which the winning kid would be animated into a special 3-minute short based on Rugrats.
A special called "All Growed Up", which saw the Rugrats cast as pre-teens, aired in July of 2001, becoming Nickelodeon's highest-rated broadcast of all time.
Variety and TV Guide both had special issues dedicated to Rugrats in July 2001.
A special called Still Babies After All These Years aired.
On November 19, 2023, a Bluey marathon called "Blueyfest" ran on The ABC to celebrate the show's fifth anniversary. The marathon counted down the show's top 100 episodes, and ended with an exclusive version of the intro played before the top episode ("Cricket").
For the tenth anniversary in 2003, the following events happened:
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie recieved massive promotions for its' home video release in 2003, including promotions at Applebee's and Chuck E Cheese. The VHS release also had an early version of the Big Idea 10th anniversary logo.
A special CD, Have We Got A Show For You, was released.
More titles were added to the VeggieTales Classics lineup.
"The Wonderful World of Auto-Tainment!" and "The Ballad of Little Joe" were released in 2003.
For the 20th anniversary in 2013, a compliation video of every Silly Songs With Larry segment was released, alongside an accompanying CD.
◊. Instead of the usual opening showing the Simpsons coming home, there's a montage of memorable moments from previous episodes, each from a different seasonnote . During the last clip, the camera pans out to reveal an alien living room 30 light years away from Earth, transitioning to the Couch Gag featuring an alien family resembling the Simpsons, with the Homer analogue commenting on how different Homer's voice used to be.
