Sandbox / Improv Wick Check

Wicks: 516, with a target of 50

The work has improvised content

1. Series.Colgate Comedy Hour: Some guests preferred to do this rather than follow the script.
2. WebVideo.Sillypplproductions2: Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Considering most of the videos are improv, this is bound to happen.
3. Funny.Austin Powers: Made even better by the scene being completely unscripted; the chair just decided to go on the fritz, Myers just decided to start saying whatever was on his mind, and everyone just decided to Throw It In!
4. Series.Dick And Doms Funny Business: The rap improvsers, Abandoman, end each show.
5. YMMV.The Trail To Oregon: And You Thought It Would Fail: Nick Lang revealed after the fact that lots of people in Team Starkid had low hopes for TTO, given that it was a highly slapdash production that had been through countless rewrites since Jeff Blim was in college and its script still wasn't fully set in stone right up to opening night, and that Ani has a much larger cast because most people who were given the option thought that Ani would obviously be the more successful show. In hindsight, the tiny cast and the loosey-goosey improvisational feel of TTO made it one of Starkid's most popular shows ever, and the fact that TTO was so much fun to do is a major reason it's the only Starkid show that's been remounted off-Broadway after its original run.
6. WebVideo.Fact Fiend: The subject of The Janitor On Scrubs Made Up His Own Lines, which has Karl explain that Neil Flynn, the titular Janitor from Scrubs essentially improvised all his lines. This makes his characters Cloud Cuckoo Lander nature when talking to his colleagues make significantly more sense.
7. Funny.The Forty Year Old Virgin: The waxing scene. Just the entire thing. The best part? It was all improvised, and Steve Carell's actual chest was getting waxed.
8. Theatre.Hamilton: In "The Room Where it Happens", Burr's line "Congress is fighting over where to put the capital" is followed by incomprehensible shouting from the chorus who were told they could shout any location they wanted but preferably somewhere in the Thirteen Colonies. Lin-Manuel Miranda has noted that even he's not sure if the cast followed that instruction.
9. Insane Proprietor: One episode of Rick and Morty features a (clearly ad-libbed) commercial by "Ants-In-My-Eyes Johnson", whose prices are low due to the fact that he can't see anything because of the ants in his eyes. People are seen in the background taking stuff from his store without paying during the entire commercial.
10. Film.This Is Spinal Tap: The vast majority of the dialogue in the movie was improvised. Basically, the cast were given extensive back-stories and character sketches, and turned loose in front of the camera. Reiner shot several hours of footage, and distilled the best parts down into the movie. A couple hours of additional footage were included on the DVD releases, while quite a bit more circulates on a bootleg three-VHS set. This basic set-up was used by Christopher Guest to make his own improvised mockumentaries, including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration and used many of the original cast members.
11. Trivia.Alien Abduction Incident In Lake County: The actors were largely hired for their improv experience. Also mislabeled Trivia example
12. Trivia.Robotech: There were many different Ad Bumpers for the show. Each would feature a different character for the show lending their own style and adlibs to the "After These Messages" and "Now Back To Our Show" lines. Also mislabeled Trivia example
13. Trivia.Nightmare Time S 1 E 1 The Hatchetfield Ape Man And Watcher World: At one point the Internet lag caused by doing this as a Zoom call causes one of these — there's an awkwardly long Beat between Konk proposing to Lucy and Professor Hidgens bursting violently into the room to reveal Ted's secret, prompting Joey Richter to try to awkwardly improv a next line for Konk as though Konk doesn't know what to say next after a woman accepts his proposal.
14. EdEddNEddy.Tropes H To P: A surprisingly notable aversion of this for the series in whole. Despite the completely random lines that Ed and some of the other characters say throughout the series, every last one of them was written into the script first. Ed's voice actor, Matt Hill, once explained that Danny Antonucci did not allow the actors to improv or ad-lib even the smallest amount. This once lead to a recording session lasting FIFTY-SIX takes before Danny finally thought that the delivery was perfect to use for the episode.
15. Characters.Star Wars Tatooine: All of their dialogue was riffed by their actors.
16. Theatre.Waiting For Godot: Most performances include at least some, even if it's only physical comedy, especially when it comes to the cast's reactions to Lucky's speech.
17. Recap.Burn Notice S 1 E 9 Hard Bargain: Michael's dialogue about bearer bonds was more or less made up by Donovan on the spot.
18. Film.Dr Strangelove: Kubrick used three cameras to shoot his Dr. Strangelove scenes so the best material could be edited together. Most famously, much of the hotline telephone monologue is said to be improvised, as is the behavior of his Evil Hand in the second-to-last scene.
19. Series.Green Wing: Part of the auditions were "improv battles" so naturally all of the actors had the freedom to mess around with the script as long as the end result was good. In the DVD extras the writers joked how they would create the perfect script and the actors would simply ignore it.
20. VideoGame.Roadkill: According to Word of God, the majority of the comedic segments on the talk radio stations were mostly improved and ad-libbed by the actors from a local improv comedy group.
21. Funny.Persona 5: The tendency towards Improv comedy leads to several memorable moments (bearing in mind these are just from the recorded performances from the DVDs and were different in all of the others).
22. WesternAnimation.Fritz The Cat: A few scenes, such as the opening on the construction site and the conversation among the patrons in the crow bar, were voiced by NYC pedestrians whom Bakshi would approach at random and interview, paying them $5 each and using audio of their candid conversations as dialogue.
23. YMMV.Yandere High School: Railroading: Depending on your definition of roleplay. In a Q&A, Sam claimed that he plans out each video, with only minor leeway for Improv.
24. Film.I Love You Man: Several of Peter's lines were improvised by Paul Rudd, which was most likely to to add to the clumsiness of what he says.
25. Film.Barbatachthian: a surprising amount given it’s the same actor playing multiple characters.
26. Film.Breaker Morant: As Morant and Handcock walk to the chairs to be executed, they hold hands in a show of solidarity. This was improvised by Woodward and Bryan Brown, the actor who played Handcock. Years later, Woodward learned that this actually happened.
27. Film.The Florida Project: Much of the dialogue and interaction with the children was improvised by the child actors as they played together.

Improv as a genre / the work is built around improv

1. Cutaway Gag: The cutaway gag is often seen in long-form Improv comedy shows. Sometimes when two players are doing a scene, a third player will tag one of them out and do a short scene with the other player about something that had just been mentioned, after which the player who was tagged out tags back in and resumes the original scene.
2. The Walking Dead (2010): Playing Against Type: Steven Yeun (Glenn) and Josh McDermitt (Eugene) are trained in Improv comedy.
3. Throw It In!: Not to be confused with Enforced Method Acting, when something unexpected is deliberately done to an actor in order to elicit a realistic response, or Improv, where there is very little or no script at all and the actors are making up large chunks as they go along.
4. WebVideo.Ascension Academy: A joining of Machinima and Live-Action Role-Play (LARP), Ascension Academy is an Improv Roleplay series set in a Fantasy World created by Stealth RG.

Improvised music

1. Music.Spillane: All tracks feature at least some improvisation, sometimes against a through-composed backdrop, sometimes as collective improvisation.
2. Music.All Things Must Pass: Harrison gave the backing musicians free reign to change arrangements on their own - a fine idea given how much talent he was surrounded with. The third record consists of nothing but short improvised jams.
3. Awesome.King Crimson: It's rare that a musician's decision not to play can count as a Moment of Awesome, but Bill Bruford managed it on the band's live improvisation "Trio". His decision was credited by the other band members as having a significant impact on the direction of the piece, and he received a composition co-credit for contributing what the band labelled "admirable restraint".
4. Music.The Velvet Underground: They did this often even in their composed songs; as The Complete Matrix Tapes attests, they never performed a song the same way twice. A good chunk of their live discography also includes songs that were completely improvised, such as "Melody Laughter" and "The Nothing Song"; however, this element of their music would drop off somewhat after John Cale left the group.
5. Music.Ravi Shankar: Much of his music was improvised on stage. His album "Improvisations" (1962) is a prime example, but Indian classical music is based on improvisation, so it goes with the territory.^note One of the fundamental elements of Indian classical music is the rāg or raga, which is not exactly a tune, or a piece of music like a Western sonata. It's a selection of notes in a certain order, and the musician improvises using the raga as a basis. No one performance of any raga sounds exactly like any other, but all performances of any given raga have a similar character due to being based on the same raga.
6. Music.Buena Vista Social Club: Ibrahim Ferrer improvised vocals at certain points during "Candela".
7. Epic Rocking: And their live material, too. Most of their songs get vastly expanded from their studio versions live with lots of improv; it’s probably a large part of why they were so famous as a live act, alongside their instrumental skill, their absolutely gigantic repertoire, and their habit of never playing songs the same way twice. Look at the tracklist for Dick's Pick's Volume 4. Note that the three longest songs are a continuous suite of music, meaning that they played for 90 minutes without stopping. It was commonplace for the band to string several songs together into an epic jam that lasted an hour or more, particularly in its final set.

An in-universe work has improvised content

1. Derailed for Details: In Saki's short story The Story-Teller, the story-teller is so successful with the children because of his ability to readily answer their irrelevant questions and incorporate them into the story.
2. Funny.Bug Fables: An easy-to-miss dialogue occurs during the quest "Theater Help Wanted!"; if you, during the second act (a fight with a Thief and a Bandit), let both enemies escape with your items, they actually flee the theater, much to Team Snakemouth's confusion, until Leif improvs the scene by claiming that the battle invigorated them. Outside, you can hear a voice call for security, pretty much confirming that the bandits you fight in the second act are actual bandits, who used their roles in the theater as an excuse to find a way to steal items there.
3. Recap.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 4 E 14 Filli Vanilli: After her first couple of performances with the Ponytones, Fluttershy starts to get more confidence and ad lib her voiceover parts, which causes Big Macintosh to have trouble with his lip syncing. This begins with just taking harmonic liberties with the baritone lead at the Mayor's ribbon cutting ceremony, but by her final clandestine performance at Sugar Cube Corner she replaces many of the original lyrics with free-form riffing.

An in-universe work discusses improv as a genre

1. Characters.Internet Historian: A stage performer who does improvisational theatre, or at least tries to. Debuts in In The Field video "monsters." and reappears in "mythology.
2. ArcWords.Live Action Films: Liberal Arts: Variations of "Please Say Yes" and "Don't Say No". ^Explanation It's based on the principle of Improv in that one must say "yes, and..." to whatever scene or combination is handed to them in order to keep the scene going. This is a recurring theme in the movie, even applying this principle to life in the following scenes. Life, like an improv scene, cannot advance if we do not respond with "yes, and..." This is one of the central conflicts faced by Jesse. He was allowing outside forces to dictate "yes, and..." so his scene had stopped advancing. He was stuck in the romanticized version of life he had created in college and he wasn't happy. Zibby represented the "yes, and..." conflict, and throughout their early interactions he says "yes" to everything and lets Zibby dictate the "and..." The film makes clear that this relationship is unhealthy. The resolution finally comes when Zibby tells him that she wants to have sex with him. He finally takes control of the "and..." then thanks her for teaching him this lesson. For the rest of the film we finally see him advancing his scene. He advances his love life with Ana and they show that he is now happy.
3. Recap.Steven Universe S 5 E 16 Letters To Lars: Jamie starts an improvisational comedy troupe, the "Beach City Laugh Guards", with Amethyst, Barb, Mr. Smiley, and Peridot. Dewey tries to make himself part of it.
4. Recap.The Office USS 2 E 9 Email Surveillance: He finds out he's the only employee not invited to a barbecue at Jim's house, so he goes to crash it after finishing up his improv class.

Battle improv

1. Literature.The Saga Of Billy: Improv Fu: Your talent for this, and for Improv as a whole, is what make you and Uther so dangerous.
2. Literature.The Fortress Of The Black Cauldron: Arch-Enemy: Uther and Virilus were the central forces of each of their sides during the last war. Now you oppose the dark lord with the same kind of tactics that your grandfather used against him, making Uther's bloodline Virilus' true arch-enemy.

Unsure / not enough context / other

1. Music.Nighthawks At The Diner: The intro to "On A Foggy Night"
2. Series.Russell Howards Good News: The Mystery Guest sections particularly.
3. WebVideo.Best Of The Worst: Jay likes to think of the pre-fight argument between the band managers in Miami Connection as this. A later scene, wherein the black character's friends repeatedly ask him to tell them what's wrong, provokes similar speculation. In-universe speculation