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Musical Episode / Western Animation

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Musical Episodes in Western Animation.

  • 12 oz. Mouse: The episode "Auraphull" featured, among other things, a Rat Pack-esque cover of the theme song, and a fuzzy, low quality VHS recording Live-Action guitar solo.
  • Adventure Time:
    • In "What Was Missing", Finn, Jake, BMO, Princess Bubblegum, and Marceline try to compose a song that will get past a magical gate so they can get back their stuff that was stolen by a Door Lord.
    • In "Food Chain", Magic Man pranks Finn and Jake by sending them on a musical journey through the food chain.
  • The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin: "Octopede Sailors" had more songs than any other episode and could be considered this.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: The episode "The Singing" features an outbreak of "spontaneous singing" among the citizens of Elmore.
  • American Dad!:
  • In one episode of Animalia a core spore blows and all the animals start singing everything they say.
  • Animaniacs:
    • Would occasionally feature songs in various segments, but one particular type—Rita and Runt—would always be a full musical, ranging from send-ups of Les Misérables and The Rocky Horror Picture Show to adaptations of Of Mice and Men. Rita was voiced by none other than Bernadette Peters, one of the biggest Broadway stars of her era, so naturally the writers wanted to showcase her incredible pipes.
    • The film Wakko's Wish was a full-on musical, and served as the Grand Finale for the series.
    • Episode 82, the third season's finale, consisted entirely of six musical segments back-to-back ("Wakko's Two-Note Song," "Panama Canal," "Hello Nurse," "The Ballad of Magellan," "The Return of the Great Wakkorotti," and "The Big Wrap Party Tonight").
  • Arthur:
    • The show did a music video episode in season 3, titled "Arthur's Almost Live Not Real Music Festival": just a revue of musical numbers performed by the cast. The songs are a rap on how awesome libraries are, Brain reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arthur and D.W. complaining about their dad's awful cooking opera-style, and a doo-wop song about Mr. Ratburn assigning ridiculous amounts of homework.
    • "The Ballad of Buster Baxter", the season 3 premiere, featuring music from Art Garfunkel that told the story of Buster returning to Elwood City after traveling with his father, and the struggles he faced discovering that things had changed there. Garfunkel himself appeared in the episode as a moose actually singing the story; at the end of the episode, everyone realizes that they had no idea where he came from.
      Arthur: MOM, THERE'S A SINGING MOOSE IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE!
    • Downplayed in "Lights, Camera... Opera!" This episode features three opera performances, including a lengthy original track based on Carmen.
  • The Avenger Penguins episode "Rock 'n Roll Penguins" consisted of musical numbers. Even the Badly Drawn Brothers got a song.
  • The Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" is notable for having somewhat of an in-story justification: the story is about a villain with a hypnotic voice controlling the world through music. Probably the show's most audacious use of Refuge in Audacity.
    • Although that doesn't explain Black Canary (and later, Green Arrow), breaking out into song on their own. Maybe they're just musical theatre fans. "Was the singing really necessary?"
  • Big City Greens
    • The Christmas special "Green Christmas" has songs, which are even lampshaded a few times.
    • "Okay Karaoke" does it in standard 11-minute form, presenting it as a Diegetic Musical.
  • The 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars has this happen in the final episode "Turf Wars", including some Villain Songs for the Nomad Rats, Hairball, Dr. Catorkian, and an evil Harley.
  • Bob's Burgers:
    • Deconstructed in "Hamburger Dinner Theater" where Linda naively believes singing can make any situation better, even when they get robbed.
    • Season 7 premiere "Flu-ouise" has the A-plot of Louise having a fever dream that is basically a Whole-Plot Reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which several characters in her dream (voiced by her family) sing as well as Louise herself.
    • The Season 8 Christmas Episode "The Bleakening" ups the ante by being an hour-long musical special with seven new songs.
    • The season 9 premiere "Just One of the Boyz 4 Now" has a Running Gag of Tina falling for one of the boys at the auditions, and having an Imagine Spot where he sings her a romantic pop song.
  • The Brak Show: In "Psychoklahoma", Brak and his family put on a musical adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
  • Captain Flamingo: The last few minutes of "The Musical" has Milo singing a song to the tune of Toreador March in order to distract the Warrior Monkey from ruining Kirsten's play dedicated to Captain Flamingo's contributions to Halverston and Area. Some of the rest of cast later join in near the end of the song, which even includes the Narrator as well!
  • In the CatDog episode "It's a Wonderful Half Life", Cat and Dog have a shared dream depicted as a black-and-white Inkblot Cartoon Style musical.
  • Clone High had "Raisin the Stakes: A Rock Opera in Three Parts", which still contains spoken dialogue in addition to songs.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door did two musical episodes: "F.O.O.D.F.I.T.E." (A heavy metal opera) and "L.O.V.E." (A West Side Story-ish musical).
  • Cow and Chicken has one episode devoted to the school staging Cow's bizarre allegorical musical, "The Ugliest Weenie".
  • Craig of the Creek has "In the Key of the Creek". The episode has Craig stuck inside because of rain, and the songs are him imagining an adventure at the creek.
  • In one episode of Curious George called "Sock Opera Monkey", George does a puppet show of the opera Hansel and Gretel to a recording of the music. In another, "Go West, Young Monkey", although he doesn't sing, several other characters do. (Most of this is a dream sequence.)
  • The 2018 Danger Mouse Christmas Episode, "Melted", has everyone except DM as a fan of a Frozen parody of the same name, and Dawn attempting to recreate it in real life with herself as the heroine.
  • Daria, of all shows, had a musical episode aptly named "Daria!" And yes, Daria sings too—well, more like talking in pitchmsot of the time, but she does sing a few lines - probably because she's just unmotivated, even in a musical. Perfectly in-character.
  • Dead End: Paranormal Park: The episode "Phantom of the Theme Park", as the result of a spell cast by Pugsley.
  • Dexter's Laboratory had its oft-quoted even to this day LABretto episode, which presents itself as an Origin Story chronicling Dexter's rise from birth to building his secret lab. And it's done as an opera.
  • Eek! The Cat had "Quadrapedia", in which a pair of metal-singing sisters capture Annabelle due to being jealous of her beauty.
    • Another episode involved Dee Dee getting a song stuck in her head, where most of the lines were sung to the tune of it.
  • The Emperor's New School: The Musical speaks for itself, really. Bonus for being a parody of High School Musical.
  • The Evil Con Carne episode "The Pie Who Loved Me" is almost entirely sung.
  • "School's Out: The Musical", an episode of The Fairly Oddparents. The holiday specials also feature musical numbers.
  • Family Guy has done several episodes which are more or less shameless pandering to old-style movie musicals (often focusing primarily on Brian and Stewie and titled "The Road to <Insert Place Here>", which is itself an homage to the Hope/Crosby "Road" movie musicals; one of these, "The Road to Rhode Island", even included a song based on the Road theme itself). A lot of the episodes have one or more musical numbers in them without quite rising to the level of "Musical Episode". And then there's "The King Is Dead", an episode about a musical ("Peter Griffin Presents a Peter Griffin Production of Peter Griffin's The King and I, a Peter Griffin Joint"). It's... not much like the actual musical.
  • Freaky Stories chose to tell the Urban Legend of "the Hook" as a Musical Episode.
  • Futurama:
  • Garfield and Friends: This show did a lot of episodes told entirely through song.
    • "The Garfield Opera" is an opera song about Garfield's eating habits, called a "Serious Cultural Moment" by the Buddy Bears.
    • "The Life and Times of the Lasagna Kid" details the Lasagna Kid (Garfield) saving Mona (Penelope) in a wild-west setting.
    • "The Garfield Rap" is a rap song about various Running Gags, such as kicking Odie off the table and his love of lasagna.
    • "The Picnic Panic" has Garfield, Odie, and Jon dealing with ants that invade their picnic.
    • In "Another Ant Episode", the ants from "The Picnic Panic" return and invade Jon's house.
    • "The Guy of Her Dreams" is about Penelope wishing that her dates with Garfield were more exciting.
    • "The Garfield Musical" has Penelope fall in love with a rock-and-roll cat instead of Garfield.
    • "Truckin' Odie" is a country song about Odie accompanying a trucker on his delivery.
    • "Ode to Odie" is a rap in which Odie meets a mean dog.
    • "The Ocean Blue" has Jon, Odie, and Garfield encountering a shark at the beach.
    • "The Man Who Hated Cats" is a downplayed example, as while not all of it is told in rhyme like the other musicals, there are about five songs in it.
    • The U.S. Acres segments only had one musical episode: "Kiddie Korner", where the characters sing nursery rhymes. However, they keep getting interrupted by Aloysius, who finds unwholesome things in each one.
  • The Garfield Show: While the series was originally pretty song-lite, seasons 3 and 4 had multiple four-part specials that featured the cast singing at various points.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandys episode "Little Rock of Horrors". It features a very catchy swing-type tune sung by a brain eating alien. Which was sung by Voltaire.
  • Hey Arnold! had "What's Opera, Arnold?," an All Just a Dream rendition of Carmen with the kids from the show.
  • Johnny Bravo:
    • "The Sensitive Male!" has Johnny being subjected to a parody of Schoolhouse Rock! as Jack Sheldon tries to teach him how to be more sensitive towards women.
    • "Traffic Troubles" has Johnny getting sent to "Musical Comedy Traffic School" for jaywalking.
  • Kaeloo:
    • Episode 89 is a musical comedy revolving around Mr. Cat stealing a song that Stumpy wrote by selling his soul and turning it into a Broadway production.
    • Episode 193 starts with Stumpy wanting to buy a pair of shoes and then suddenly shifts into a musical where Mr. Cat sings about trickle-down economics and Kaeloo sings about how love is more important than money.
    • Episode 225 is about the characters noticing the Character Development that they've been going through recently, and Mr. Cat and Rules' hesitancy to accept changes in life.
  • Kappa Mikey had "The Karaoke Episode", which involved a magic karaoke machine that forced everyone to sing instead of talk.
  • Kim Possible's "Rappin' Drakken" comes close to being a musical episode.
  • The Magic School Bus has "The Family Holiday Special", a Christmas Episode which features several Christmas Carols with lyrics re-worked about the episode's theme of recycling.
  • Looney Tunes
  • The Loud House: The appropriately titled episode "Really Loud Music" is a musical, featuring no less than 14 songs, one of which is sung twice.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has All Hands on Deck.
  • Metalocalypse has songs in every episode, but season 3's "Rehabklok" was more of a cohesive musical.
  • Miraculous Ladybug has "Santa Claws", which doubles as the Christmas Episode.
  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey has a rather unique variation known as "Animal School Musical". The episode is justified in-universe as the result of a magic wish gone wrong and the characters are literally forced to sing whenever the universe finds it appropriate.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic does regularly feature musical numbers, however some episodes have been full-fledged musical episodes themselves:
    • The season 3 finale "Magical Mystery Cure" manages to cram seven songs into 22 minutes. It's also a Wham Episode that sees Twilight Sparkle becoming an alicorn princess.
    • The season 4 episode "Pinkie Pride" is also a musical episode. With good reason, as "Weird Al" Yankovic guest-stars as rival party planner Cheese Sandwich.
    • The season 5 episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" features six songs, among some major Character Development.
    • The season 6 episode "A Hearth's Warming Tail", unlike the above three, does not have a musical guest star and is not a Wham Episode; however, it does fit the Christmas Episode feel.
  • Nature Cat may have songs in some episodes, but there is a full musical episode titled "Onward and Song-ward" in which Daisy has to write a song for the Woodstock Chella Palooza, all while singing along about nature with her friends (and there are four songs in total).
  • The Octonauts has "The Great Barrier Reef" episode, released in 2020, where they must find a way to hold back hungry swarms of coral-eating starfish to save a new friend’s fragile reef home.
  • Over the Garden Wall's fourth episode, "Songs of the Dark Lantern," has the characters arrive at a tavern where the patrons are prone to breaking out in song about everything.
  • The second half of the hour long "Return of Doctor Blowhole" The Penguins of Madagascar special is a musical episode. An incident involving a power cell, a device used to turn people evil and an MP3 player creates a machine that forces everyone to sing in it's field of effect. Cue the villain taking it over and the rest of the cast trying to stop it...all in song! Alex the lion - who is Skipper's spirit guide - is the only character unaffected by the device due to being a spirit, but he decides to sing along anyway.
  • Invoked in the Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero episode "The Princess Most Fair", where the heroes and villains are teleported to a kingdom that magically compels its inhabitants to sing everything they say.
  • Pepper Ann had one. Pepper Ann was auditioning for a musical at school, fell off the stage, and blacked out; when she came to her life was a musical. It turned out to be a dream when she came to for real.
  • Phineas and Ferb has one or more songs per episode, but there's a number of full-fledged examples:
    • "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together" has four songs, one of which was nominated for an Daytime Emmy award.
    • The Christmas Episode would also qualify.
    • The "Wizard of Odd", a Whole-Plot Reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which has the added bonus of having its Musical Episode status lampshaded at every possible opportunity.
    • "Rollercoaster: The Musical" is a full musical episode based off the plot of the first episode, where most of the catchphrases and running gags get their own songs.
  • The Pinky and the Brain episode "Mouse of La Mancha" is, as the title suggests, a Whole-Plot Reference to Man of La Mancha, with appropriately altered versions of the title song and "To Dream the Impossible Dream".
  • The Popeye cartoon "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" has almost all the music and words played to the tune of the song.
    • A number of other Popeye shorts (mainly in the Fleischer Studios era) are this as well.
  • As the title indicates, "Garbage Night: The Musical" is the musical episode of Pound Puppies (1980s).
  • Except for a few sentences, the entire episode "See Me Feel Me Gnomey" of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) is completely in song. Which in this case makes it a Rock Opera. In fact, the title of the episode is a reference to The Who's Tommy.
  • Ready Jet Go!:
    • "Tiny Blue Dot" is the most famous example. The basic plot is that Jet, Sean, and Sydney are bored on a hot summer day. So Carrot and Celery take them to space to show them why they chose to study Earth in the first place. There are a lot of emphasis put on the songs in this episode.
    • "Lone Star", the Cowboy Episode, is a Western-flavored musical.
    • "Back to Bortron 7", the one-hour special, has a total of eight songs.
    • "Potatoes on Mars", which has four songs and is inspired by retro rock music.
  • Reboot's recap of the third season in the last few minutes of the last episode (of the third season) does this.
  • Rocko's Modern Life had the Earth Day Episode "Zanzibar", which was lampshaded throughout ("How is it you all know the words? Did you rehearse?" "Oh, yeah, every Thursday. Didn't you see the flyers?")
    Chorus: R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle!
    C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E conserve!
    Don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E
    Pollute the rivers, sky, or sea
    Or else you're gonna get what you deserve!
  • Ruby Gloom did an hour-long episode called "Hair(less): The Musical".
  • Rugrats had an episode where the rest of the babies try to teach Dil to appreciate music. To do so, they sing their own renditions (complete with reworked lyrics) of classic songs such as "Bicycle Built For Two," "You Made Me Love You," and "Pack Up Your Troubles."
    • There was also the laundromat-set West Side Story parody "Wash/Dry Story".
  • The direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire is essentially a musical as the Scooby gang and the feature's incidental characters break out singing throughout.
  • The Simpsons has done numerous musical episodes, usually starring Lisa:
    Disclaimer at the end of the episode: At the insistence of our lawyers, we have no knowledge of a musical based on the life of Eva Peron.
  • South Park has done many musical episodes, too, including The Movie.
    • Perhaps most notably, "Elementary School Musical" in which a new kid appears who is forced by his father to treat the world like a musical. Most of the school joins in.
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast had "Boatshow".
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Squidbillies: "America: Why I Love Her".
  • Steven Universe has "Mr. Greg", which doubled as a serious Character Development episode where Greg and Pearl finally hash out their feelings about Steven's Missing Mom Rose Quartz (the three of them were in a Love Triangle that Greg won with little effort) and finally becoming friends during a trip to Empire City. There's also "Last One Out of Beach City", which doesn't have the characters sing, but the usual background music is replaced with songs by indie rock musician Mike Krol, as they're going to see his concert.
  • "Bad Rap" from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, where everyone speaks in rhyme throughout.
  • Teen Titans Go! has an episode where they go the opera.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures:
    • The series had two music video episodes. The first was "Tiny Toon Music Television" and the second was "Toon TV". Both episodes have the characters lip-syncing to classic songs from the '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.
    • There's also "Music Day", an episode with three music-themed shorts. In "Ruffled Ruffee", Buster does battle wih a sappy Raffi parody, in "The Horn Blows at Lunchtime", Sneezer causes assumed flatulence in the cafeteria during lunchtime when he practices his trumpet and eats limburger cheese at the same time, and in "Loon Lake", Shirley stars in a play of Swan Lake with the snooty Perfecto Prep swans.
  • Total Drama World Tour is a musical season. Chris would require the contestants to sing during certain challenges, mainly to mess with them.
  • "I Have Heard the Robots Singing" from Transformers: Rescue Bots, the first musical episode in the history of the Transformers franchise.
  • Every episode of Vampirina has a song worth always sixty to seventy seconds, but the most important musical episode with the longest musical number is called "The Vamp-Opera" in which Vee attempts to use a hybrid spell to help with her writer's block, only to accidentally turn the world into a Sung-Through Musical, and she and everyone else have to find a way to break the curse, all while in song.
  • VeggieTales's "Lyle the Kindly Viking" has more songs more frequently than most episodes. At one point Sven (Larry) sings a line that wasn't necessary to do so, and later admits it's a musical while he also sings that line.
  • Wander over Yonder has "My Fair Hatey", an episode in which Wander helps Lord Hater prepare to ask Lord Dominator out on a date, while Commander Peepers teams up with Sylvia to put Dominator out of commission once and for all.

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